What’s on TV…

So, traditionally, I don’t watch a lot of TV, especially when I was still playing World of Warcraft like a crack fiend.  Now that I’ve broken free of that, and really don’t play games all that much anymore, I have to find new and creative ways of wasting time.  And by creative, I mean finding TV shows that don’t totally suck.  I’m very glad I have a really nice DVR system now… it makes watching the very limited and random selection of TV shows I can tolerate a hell of a lot easier.  So, what am I watching these days?

1.  The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart (and the Colbert Report, by proxy)

Really, kind of a no brainer there… I really think that the news I get from Stewart is as reliable as what I get from Anderson Cooper, and it’s a hell of a lot more balanced than anything I could hope to see on Fox.  Which I don’t watch.  Ever.  The stupid fuckers… (pssst!  I really dislike those guys!)  As for Colbert, I like his show, even though he’s being deliberately disingenuous.  He puts enough sarcasm in his delivery though, that it’s easy to get the point he’s trying to make.

2.  NCIS

What can I say… I’m madly in love with Abby, their happy-goth forensic scientist.  Also, the entire cast just works really well together.  I really got into the show when I started watching reruns on USA last year, and I went back and watched every episode.  It’s a good show!  They’ve got their gothed out science geek (double whammy for me, right?), their slightly chubby computer geek (who had a relationship with said gothed out science geek early on), their wise cracking detective, bad ass Israeli special forces assassin, and the silent but deadly (seriously, he was a sniper… and he’s taken out a couple people in the show that way) head agent.  The team interaction is great, the stories are well written, and the humor is right up my ally.  I can’t wait to get into the next season.

3.  Eureka

I just got into this show this season, after hearing that Wil Wheaton was guest staring in a zombie-themed episode.  That’s pretty much the trifecta of awesomeness right there… Mad Scientists, Zombies, and Wesley Crusher.  What did you expect me to do?  Anyway, watching that episode and the crossover episode with Claudia from Warehouse 13, I decided to watch the entire series.  I burned through the first three seasons in less than a week, and was thoroughly hooked.  The concept is awesome:  Take the idea of a ‘Spark’ from Girl Genius (i.e. a genius mad scientist who can invent all kinds of pseudo-science gadgets).  Now put about 3000 of those folks in a town in Oregon, and put them all to work for a company called Global Dynamics.  Hilarity ensues.  They’re doing something weird in season 4 though, involving time travel and ret-conning big chunks of the city history.  It doesn’t look like they plan on fixing the time stream, either.  Not sure how I feel about this, but I’ll keep watching it.

4.  Warehouse 13

In a similar vein to Eureka, this one is about a couple of secret service agents who got recruited to work for a secret government program that confiscates and quarantines ‘Artifacts’.  Where Eureka has a modern-science feel to it, this one most definitely has a steampunk aesthetic.  The ‘artifacts’ are devices or nick knacks held by famous people in history that have attained some sort of mysterious power or ability.  Things like Lewis Carrol’s mirror, that traps the soul of anyone who looks into the mirror for to long, and replaces that soul with Alice (who, by the way, is completely homicidally insane).  It’s a neat premise, and the cast has good chemistry with each other, so it’s fun to watch. 

5.  Haven

This one is brand new on SyFy.  It’s about a small town in Main, right on the coast, where a bunch of spooky shit starts happening.  My first thought…  C’thulu!  However, it looks like this was based on a book by Steven King about a missing persons cold case.  Not sure where the tie in to all the spooky shit comes in (i.e. the last episode had a girl who could draw someone’s picture, then anything that happened to the picture happened to the person.  Yes, someone had their face erased!).  I’m still holding out for a C’thulu tie in, but it may be a season or two before they get that far.

6.  Futurama

New season!  Need I say more?  NO!

 

So yeah… finally, TV worth watching, at least by my understandably abnormal standards.  Just in time for the new semester of school to start.  Nothing like having a distraction when I should be studying :P

Crash

What the hell is wrong with these assholes?

Ok… I know I’ve already written about the Prop 8 ruling… but lets face it, this is going to be in the news for awhile, and like anything else in the news, it’s going to get attention from both sides of the issue.  Today’s example in extreme asshattery comes from one David Frum, a republican author who wants conservatism to ‘win’ again (whatever the fuck that means), and is a regular columnist for CNN.  He’s written an editorial called ‘Bristol Palin and the Future of Marriage’.  In this article, Frum makes the case that the recent re-breakup between Bristol and Levi is more important than the ruling on Prop 8 last week, that re-legalized same sex marriages in California.  Frum went on to say things like ‘Same Sex marriage has lead people to believe that having children out of wedlock is normal’, and that children born outside of wedlock are less likely to finish school, more likely to experience poverty, and more likely to go to prison.  He attempts to make the case that allowing same sex marriages is tantamount to dooming children across the land to lives of uneducated poverty and prison. 

After reading this article, I would very much like to find David Frum, and kick him in the head.

So, let me start my rebuttal with the obvious glaring hole in Frum’s argument.  No where in his editorial, or in court last week, was anyone anywhere able to prove that same sex marriage leads to  less hetero-sexual marriages.  Furthermore, no one has been able to prove that same sex marriages promote promiscuity between unmarried couples.  (Hollywood does a FAAAAAR better job of doing that for us, but that’s another rant).  Since Frum’s entire argument relies on the notion that same sex marriages lead to more children out of wedlock, we could stop right here and be confident we’ve made our case.  However, I would like to point out the other, far more obvious fact about same sex couples (both in and out of marriage)… THEY DON’T HAVE CHILDREN ACCIDENTALLY!  I’ve never heard of a pair of lesbians having pre-martial sex and ‘accidentally’ getting knocked up!  It just doesn’t happen!  And if it did?  Guess what!  THEY AREN’T FUCKING LESBIANS!  We learned that shit in biology 101!  How the FUCK can you make the case that same sex marriages promote unwed pregnancies?  It’s fucking ridiculous, and Frum should be a ashamed of himself for committing such a stupid thought to words, much less publishing them in a national forum!

Of course, Frum’s own data works against him.  Allow me to present exhibit A:

Notice that Alaska is not among the handful of states that allow same sex marriages.  (It does allow marriage to first cousins though, which might explain Bristol’s mom… but I digress…)  However, Frum’s ‘data’ shows that nearly 30% of white women in 2007 who gave birth, did so out of wedlock.  Is he implying that 30% of the white people in the USA live in that 5% of the country, and that those 30% of white children born were born in areas that allow same sex marriage?  He is certainly implying that same sex marriage is the only factor that leads kids to think marriage isn’t necessary.  So, given her mother’s very public stance on the issues and her geographic location, the notion that Bristol’s exposure to same sex marriage made her think that it was cool to get knocked up at 16 before getting married, during her mother’s failed attempt at running for VP is really not holding much water.  I may be going out on a limb here, but I think it’s safe to say that some other factor lead her to believe it was cool to get knocked up early and unwed.  Hrmmm… what could it be, what could it be?  Could it be…. SATAN?!?!  Nope… it’s probably just some pussy in glitter:

But anyway, enough about Bristol.  I’m writing this post to rip on Frum here, for being an asshat and continuing to push the notion that same sex marriage is hurting our children.  Frum isn’t the only one doing this either.  Most analysts agree that the PR blitz in ‘08 about Prop 8 was largely successful because they played on a parents fear that allowing same sex marriages would somehow make their kids gay.  Now they are changing their tune slightly, and saying that it wont make them gay, it will just make them disrespect the institution or marriage, presumably because it’s not an exclusive thing anymore, and just old anyone can get married now!  It’s the same bullshit move with a fresh coat of paint tacked onto it.  It isn’t any more true now than it was in ‘08, and I’m sick and tired of seeing these assholes hide their intolerance and bigotry behind the shield of ‘SAVE THE CHILDREN!’.  This bullshit is doing more harm than good and it needs to stop!

If 2 people are lucky enough to find happiness together, let them be happy!  This doesn’t hurt anyone!  A Man and a Woman, a White and Black, and Jew and a Christian, who cares, and why are any of these couples fundamentally different or entitled to any different treatment?  Marriage is about love and happiness, plain and simple.  Denying marriage to same sex couples is teaching your kids that it’s ok to oppress people because they are different from you.  If you think that’s a good idea, than a few unwed teens having babies is the least of your problems!

I could rant on this for hours, but I have work to do…
Crash

Oh, the conversations I have with my mother…

So, I went home for lunch today, to find my mother (who’s in town visiting this week+), watching some space exploration show on the Science Channel.  The talking head on the TV made a comment about how we could potentially have a man on Mars by the end of President Obama’s second term.  Now… my mother is not a fan of the president.  At all.  She’s convinced that Obama isn’t a citizen, is a Muslim terrorist, and is selling out our country to the Chinese.  I’m not really sure when she became a rabid right wing nut job, but there it is, clear as day.  So, when mom heard that statement about Obama and space travel, her first reaction was ‘NO WE CAN’T!  OBAMA TOOK AWAY ALL THE MONEY FROM THE SPACE PROGRAM!  RAWRRRR!’  Of course, being the more rational of the two, I felt obligated to correct her…

I reminded her that Obama didn’t just call up the heads of NASA and have them all summarily shot in their faces.  Instead, he’s repurposed NASA towards more pressing terrestrial scientific endeavors, and turned over the task of manned space exploration to the private sector.  When asked who she would rather see running the show on space flight:  the Government or the Private sector, mom was forced to concede that we’re better off in the private sector’s hands.  The government bureaucracy is so inflated right now that between budget arguments, congressional committees, and ceaseless politicking, nothing serious would ever get done again.  However, in the past 6 months since the private sector has been let loose on the issues, we’ve already seen our first 100% private run and funded orbital object launch.  (Way to go, Space X!)

That’s the thing about my mother… she loves to argue politics, but she’s so mired in the conspiracy theories, hate and fear mongering, and eternal pessimism of the right wing that she can’t make a single argument that stands up to fact checking or the slightest amount of reason.  I make a habit of shooting down anything like that I hear her say, especially when I’m home for the holidays.  It would be hilarious, if she and my grandmother didn’t get into screaming matches over these very same things when I’m not around…

Anyway, little conversations like this make my day, especially when they result in mom having to admit that something the President did is working out positively.  I wish it was that easy to convince the rest of the folks around here of all that… but at least it’s something ;)

 

Crash

Prop 8 my homework!

(see what I did there?  Anyway…)

So, yesterday, in what will certainly be a court case for the ages, California Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker (appointed by Ronald Reagan, by the way) shot down Prop 8 as being unconstitutional.  For those of you who don’t pay attention to California politics, Prop 8 was the ballot initiative in 2008 that banned the state of California from issuing any more same sex marriage licenses.  Judge Vaughn overturned the law the grounds that it violated due process and equal treatment guaranteed by the 14th amendment.  In the verdict of the case, he said that the defendants (i.e. the state of California) failed to produce any evidence that backed up the claims that same sex marriages hurt heterosexual marriages in any way, nor was there any evidence that same sex couples were unfit parents.  He summed up the ruling by affirming that prop 8 was based on a moral point of view that held same sex marriages as inferior to heterosexual marriages, and that moral opinions were not a basis for any kind of law.  I could sum it up even more, but I have a better idea:

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to
deny rights to gay men and lesbians.  The evidence shows
conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private
moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex
couples.  FF 76, 79-80; Romer, 517 US at 634 (“[L]aws of the kind
now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage
imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons
affected.”).  Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians
without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

CONCLUSION

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in
singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.
Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than
enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-
sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.  Because California
has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and
because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its
constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,
the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. 

You can check out the full PDF case briefing here.  Personally, I think is one of the best things to come out of the judiciary system in ages.  I’m hoping that this will be the domino to fall and start the chain reaction to legalize same sex marriages across the country.  I fear that my gay friends here in Alabama may have another couple decades to wait until it’s their turn, but at least this is movement in the right direction.

I’m glad to see legislation like this coming down the pipe.  Many analysts predict that in 20 years, same sex marriage will be legal across the country (well, except here in Alabama, of course).  Now that the ball is rolling, there are a few other laws I would like to see changed across the country.  For example, Pot.  Legalize that shit, and tax the hell out of it!  People are going to smoke it either way, the only question is who gets the profits… drug runners, or the US Government and Phillip Morris?  As much as I like to dish on the corporate fat-cats who are ruining America, I would rather see all that pot money go to US companies over Mexican drug lords.  Plus, legalizing it will free up a lot of police and judiciary resources to focus on real dangerous crime.  But that’s another rant for another time…

Crash