Honeymoon!

Greetings! We are a newly-married couple, arriving for our honeymoon. We may have gotten a little lost, though -- the roads around here don't seem to match the map. Is this the Haunted Castle of the Vampires, where we booked a three-night stay with scenic views and unique experiences? It is? Oh, excellent! Well, do let us come right in, I'm sure we'll be very comfortable here.

Quick Note

I feel like maybe I don't say this often enough or loudly enough, but I am tremendously grateful to be married to Beautiful Wife. 

Challenge: One Meal

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: One meal everyone should try

I can't think of any dishes that I'm hip enough to know about and other people might be missing out on, so I'm just going to plug Beautiful Wife's spinach bread, which is simple and delicious and amazingly filling (and also vegetarian). Basically, you cook up some spinach; then you take a loaf of french bread and scoop out the center. (Dinner rolls work too, if they're reasonably big.) Then you fill the bread with a mixture of spinach, cheese, garlic, and olive oil, and you wrap it in tin foil and bake it. 

And then you eat it. 

And then you eat more of it, because it was so good. 

Seriously, y'all. For a very simple recipe, this is great stuff.

Tentacle Check

So... we wound up making a visit to the emergency room Wednesday night. Basically, Beautiful Wife came down with something over the weekend, and whatever it was seems to have set off some sort of rash on the front of her torso, right around the areas where she'd had her surgery. Now, the most recent surgery was back in December, so this wasn't anything directly to do with that, but still... worrisome. Especially as one area was hot and swollen -- almost hardened -- and painful. 

So, we went to one of those Quick Care places (which turned out to be more like Eventual Care, but never mind that now). And we waited. 

Time has no meaning here...

When the doctor finally came in and saw us, he basically took one look and said, "You should go find an emergency room where they can do a proper CT scan of that thing. I'll call ahead and let them know you're coming." Which he evidently did, and it saved us some time on checking in. 

So it was... maybe seven o'clock? ...when we headed down to the hospital where Beautiful Wife had gotten her surgery, and where they'd have all her records. And then we checked in. And then we waited. 

And then they took some blood and moved us to another waiting room farther inside the building. 

And then we waited. 

Eventually they got us into a room. 

And then we waited. 

Finally, Beautiful Wife got looked over by a couple of doctors, and we explained the whole thing and our concerns, and they agreed that they needed to do a CT scan to see if this was something just on the skin, or if there was a abscess or something happening deeper down. 

And then we waited. 

The secret to waiting in a hospital is to come prepared. I hadn't, exactly, but we had phones and Kindles and some chargers and a plucky, can-do attitude... and also, I managed to cadge a dry-erase marker off of one of the nurses.

So we managed.

It's important to make sure the doctors understand your concerns, after all.

So, we did eventually get the CT scan and we did eventually get the results from the CT scan, and the doctor on duty and the plastic surgeon who happened to be available looked them over and concurred that we could go back home and deal with this with oral antibiotics. There wasn't any sort of abscess, and even more reassuring they found absolutely no evidence that my wife was growing a tentacle out of her belly. 

But it was still three in the morning by the time we got home, and Thursday was -- understandably -- a day when not a whole lot got accomplished.

Blogging Challenge: Lucky

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: Something "lucky" that happened to you.

Y'all... that's my wife. 

"Send tweet," as the kids say these days. 

Thing is, I don't mean that I'm incredibly lucky to have her in my life -- though that, too, is true. No, I mean that the fact that we managed to connect and get married only happened because of an apparent coincidence of truly cosmic proportions. I did my best to tell the story and explain the absolute absurdity of the circumstances surrounding it here.

It was the kind of luck that feels like fate.

 

Challenge: Showing Love

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: ways to show someone you love them

...It's eleven o'clock on the night before this prompt is supposed to go up, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Okay, no, that's not right, I do know how to answer that. I know, because Beautiful Wife took the dog for a walk earlier -- much earlier -- and when she still wasn't back at a quarter to eleven I called and asked if she wanted me to come pick her up. (She was at her mom's house; it was the only thing that made sense under the circumstance.) So one way, obviously, is to realize that it's very late and your spouse is still out with the dog and then go rescue them so they don't have to walk all the way home.

But also, I spent an hour this weekend going over Secondborn's homework and helping him work it out. So that's another way to show someone you love them: help them with math.

And that brings me around to my absolute favorite, which works for both Beautiful Wife and Firstborn: tea. Especially tea with little notes attached to it. "You are amazing and you can do all the things. Here is tea." "I'm very proud of the way you're taking care of your responsibilities. Have some tea." "This tea was forged in the cauldron of the gods and may only be drunk by the most beautiful and wonderful of women."

But those are just some particular examples. Showing someone you love them is basically just a matter of understanding their needs and desires -- and then being mindful about helping them when they need and want it. Our dishwasher broke, and I did the dishes myself, by hand, so we would have forks, without complaining (much) or asking for help from Beautiful Wife. That shows love. I leave Firstborn in charge of his own bedtime and wakeups, because he's shown that he can handle that and still get his schoolwork and etc. done. That shows love. 

Pay attention, and do what you can to show appreciation and support. Everything else is just details.

Challenge: Characters who remind me...

This is part of the weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. If you'd like to participate, you can find the prompts here. They also put up a post every Wednesday where you go and link your response -- and see everyone else's. Check out their homepage to find it.

(I feel a little bad about this honestly, because I like going through everybody else's answers and responding and lately I don't feel like I've been able to do that as much as want or should. But, well... I'm going to put in a short answer for this week because Monday and Tuesday were crazy, so don't feel like you need to comment if you don't want to.)

Anyway, this week the topic is Characters Who Remind Me of Myself and Why, and by the dark and forgotten gods I do not have the energy left for that sort of introspection. I remember writing characters who were what I wanted to be; I remember writing about character who helped me process situations I'd gotten myself into. I remember writing about characters who seemed like fun at the time, and turned out to be more personal than I realized. But at the moment I really can't process any of that.

So I'm going to go another way with this. Because while I don't often look at a fictional character and think, My God, that's me... I do have one moment that strikes me that way every time I watch it... except it reminds me of Beautiful Wife:



"I've done something completely insane," she says. "I've invited all my dads to my wedding and now they all think they're giving me away."

"Hold on," says Skye. "You invited these guys and you didn't tell me?"

"No, no I-- I thought you'd try to stop me."

In the movie, Skye gets a bit upset. I can't really blame him. But this is about the point where I usually find myself lifting a wry eyebrow. Really?

Missing: A Poem

My wife left the house
to get two things
some silicon tape
some toilet paper
The silicon tape-
-it comes from Home Depot

But we get the toilet paper-
-at Target

I do not know
How long
She has been gone

An hour?
A day?
A week?
(I miss her)

I feel certain
That she still lives

But time
Does strange things
Inside Target

Marital Arguments Made Simple

Saturday afternoon, in the car on the way to breakfast (finally):

Beautiful Wife: “Are you mad at me?”

Me: “No, I’m starving. We could have a big fight if you want, though.”

Beautiful Wife, sounding tired: “Let’s not.”

Me “We could not and say we did.”

Beautiful Wife: “Let’s do that.”

Me: “Boys, your mother and I just had a huge fight. There was lots of screaming.”

Firstborn, darkly: “I heard.”

Nonsense Love Poem

Composed last week while sitting in the shower trying to coax my brain into getting ready for work. Apparently, it preferred to do this:

You and me
are like two cups of tea
in complementary
mugs


Me and you
Are nothing that new
but we hold it together
with hugs

My Random Poetry: Trapped

Right, so: I guess this is a preface to a preface. Sorry. Anyway: my mother died a little over a year ago. Last weekend, my father, in the process of cleaning our her things, found that she'd apparently kept a poem I wrote in the bottom of a dresser drawer. (The poem was in the drawer, I mean. I don't generally make a habit of writing in the bottom of dresser drawers.)

Among the various oddities involved in this discovery: I have no memory of writing this. None. I might have an extant copy of it in my files somewhere, but if so I don't know where and haven't looked at it in years. I had actually forgotten that it ever existed.

Having now re-read it, I think I have a vague memory of the conversation that provoked it and the poem itself. But at this point, I'm honestly unsure whether that's a true memory, or whether my brain is just putting together some kind of backfill/retcon pseudomemory. The biggest argument for the idea that I wrote it is simply the fact that the printed paper had my name on it.

I don't suppose any of that is really relevant to the poem itself, but it was interesting enough that I wanted to make a note of it -- at the very least, just in case I came back and discovered it again, and wanted some context. And so but anyway, here's the poem, complete with its original preface.

An ex-girlfriend once asked me if I felt 'trapped' in our relationship. As you might expect with a question like that, she isn't my girlfriend anymore. Still, the question got me to thinking, and what with one thing and another my answer got garbled up with something I was humming, the result being the song you 're about to hear. I call it, "Trapped."

Trapped
December 2003

What started out as just a fling
Had been going on for years,
When she asked me the strangest thing.
I guess she had her fears.

Do you feel trapped by life with me?
Is there something you'd rather do?
Do you ever wish that you were free
To find somebody new?

I'd no idea how to answer that
Not a single word seemed safe.
So I stood there gaping like a prat,
'Til the silence seemed to chafe.

I could feel the darkness closing in,
I couldn't seem to see
'til I opened up my mouth again ...
... and these words came to me.

Is my heart trapped by my chest?
Is a bird trapped by its nest?
Does the fur restrict the dog?
Does the mud restrict the hog?
I know the news is gonna hurt,
But I'm trapped like a plant in its dirt.

Well she looked at me with sparkling eyes,
And she said, "I love you too.
I wouldn't want any other guys.
I'd rather be with you."

What we both know, some never learn:
Life isn't always fun.
But even when it's bad it can still be good,
If you've got the right someone.

For the record, she's my ex-girlfriend because she graduated to the position of "wife."

Love and Tea in 2017

Relationships are different. Relationships are different because people are different. But if you're going to write a magazine-article fluff-piece, you pretty much have to ignore that and pretend that the particulars of your individual, idiosyncratic relationship are actually Grand Universal Truths -- regardless of how silly that makes you sound, and regardless of the actual state of your actual current relationship. So here goes:

Hot Tea
Hot Tea is the foundation of a good relationship, a stable marriage, and solid parenting skills. If you're the first person to get up in the morning, make tea for your spouse. This will show your undying love for each other, strengthen the bonds of your marriage, and provide a stable footing for raising your children.

If you're still just dating, take your significant other out on a tea date. Try new teas. Introduce them to your favorites. Order custom teas, and use funny-shaped diffusers to brew your cups of tea. There's nothing more charming than tea, and nothing more likely to make someone fall hopelessly in love with you than a tea date.

If your kids can be trusted with the responsibility, show them how to brew tea! It'll make them feel useful, and you get tea! There's no downside. Kids! Tea! Awesomeness!

Make hot tea a central part of your relationships and your life. A relationship that doesn't share tea isn't worth having.

The Great Hotdog Schism

I love my wife, I really do. She's a lovely woman, smarter than I am in a lot of ways. There's just this one area where she's... how to say this? ...in error. Unorthodox. Heretical.

See, here's the thing. When I buy hotdogs, I do it right: Oscar Mayer Bun Length Wieners.

My wife, on the other hand, well... She buys Hebrew National Hot Dogs.

Look, it's not that they're bad hot dogs. They're perfectly yummy (by hotdog standards), they're the right length for a hotdog bun... but, well, they come seven to a pack.

Hotdog buns come eight to a pack.

Oscar Mayer Bun Length Wieners also come eight to a pack. That means that you run out of hotdogs at the same time that you run out of buns. That makes Oscar Mayer Bun Length Wieners the only sensible choice for hotdog purchases.

My wife, however, disagrees. She says that Hebrew National Hot Dogs are clearly, obviously superior because they don't have that red dye in them.

Now, all right-thinking people will agree that a bit of red dye is a small price to pay for not running out of hotdogs before you run out of buns, but my wife? She won't hear it. Perfectly sensible in all other areas, but she has this giant blind spot when it comes to hot dogs.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what has driven me to pen this epistle, to set right once and for all the correct approach to hotdogs. There is no middle ground on this. There is no backing down. There can be no reconciliation between the true believers of the Oscar Mayer Bun Length Wieners and the pernicious heretics of the Hebrew National Hotdogs.

...Not unless Hebrew National Hot Dogs start coming eight to a pack, anyway.

Parenting is all about the Little Disasters

Let me tell you how my morning is going:

1. I've slept on the floor in Secondborn's room for two nights straight. I do this because if I don't, there's a seventy percent chance on any given night that the boy will wake up at two o'clock in the morning and attempt to come and sleep atop his mother. If I'm in the room with him, he doesn't do this. If I try to sleep in his bed, he sleeps on top of me... and I don't sleep so well with toes in my eyes or elbows in my ears (or, on one memorable occasion, both).

So: me, on the floor, "sleeping".

2. Unlike my preferred under-the-covers-in-a-real-bed arrangement, being on the floor in Secondborn's room puts me in the perfect position to hear everything that goes on in the house. Someone brushing their teeth, for example. Or running a bath. Or clunking dishes and cabinets in the kitchen. It doesn't matter how quiet they try to be; I'm ten feet away through an open doorway. There is no ignoring it.

This probably explains how I came to be dreaming that I was visiting my Supposed Former Wife at a very, very strange military base. (There was a bar created entirely for oriental personnel. It served sake. Also, the windows on our quarters were blacked out, and we had turn out all our lights when the rest of the base did -- it was like nobody was supposed to know we were there, even though we were walking around the base normally during the day.)

So: when I was sleeping, weird and slightly disturbing dreams.

3. Firstborn woke up approximately two hours before Secondborn did, and therefore woke me up approximately two hours before I wanted to. I sent him off to watch videos in his room. He woke me up again. I sent him off to watch different videos on my Kindle Fire in the back room. He woke me up again to explain that he needed to use my computer instead. I sent him off to do so. He woke me up again: "Daddy, I have news! I've learned all the controls on--" "I don't need news, I need sleep."

Then Secondborn woke up.

So: no more sleep.

4. Every parent has a list of inviolable rules that they would never have come up with if they didn't A) have kids, and B) have the particular kids that share their household. This morning's example is this: Never Keep Paint In The Kitchen Pantry. This morning, you see...

No. You know what? I can't even bring myself to describe it. I'm just going to leave it to you to envision what might have happened.

So: me, instead of making breakfast, performing a massive, messy cleanup on a massive, messy mess.

Yeah.

5. It's now ten o'clock in the morning, and nobody -- including me -- has had breakfast yet.

So: hungry. So, so hungry.

We're... going out to breakfast. Now.

Real Parenting Conversations: Last Nerve

I arrived home last night to discover that my wife had retreated to the back room. Why? Because the boys had taken Secondborn's room, which we've been valiantly attempting to clean, and torn it completely apart. Scattered things around, pulled all the clothing bins out, broken at least one of them... They hadn't actually knocked over the furniture, but it still looked like a typhoon had hit the room. When I went to investigate, I couldn't even open Secondborn's door; two of the bins were wedged between it and the shelves. It would open far enough for the boys to squeeze in and out, but I had to get Firstborn to move some things before I could come in and help them clean up.

This led to the following conversation later in the evening:

Beautiful Woman: "Thank you for seeing that the boys had done me in."

Me: "Well, the look of abject despair on your face was a big clue."

Honestly, though, I hear people talk about how they have to work on their marriage, or how marriage takes a lot of effort, and I just... I kind of disagree. Your marriage shouldn't be one of your problems. Your marriage should be where you go to get help when you have problems. (That's true for friendships, too, and if you aren't married then you ought to be able to get help from your friends when you really need it; I don't mean to imply that marriage is the only way to do this.)

Why I Want A Wife

Somebody linked to this earlier... yesterday, I think. It was written in 1971, but an awful lot of it still seems awfully relevant...

Why I Want A Wife

I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent, support myself, and if need be, support those dependent upon me. I want a wife who will work and send me to school. And while I am going to school I want a wife to take care of my children. I want a wife a wife to keep track of the children's doctor and dentist appointments. And to keep track of mine, too. I want a wife to make sure my children eat properly and are kept clean. I want a wife who will wash the children's clothes and keep them mended. I want a wife who is a good nurturing attendant to my children, who arranges for their schooling, makes sure that they have an adequate social life with their peers, takes them to the park, the zoo, etc. I want a wife who takes care of the children when they are sick, a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special care, because, of course, I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at work and not lose the job. It may mean a small cut in my wife's income from time to time, but I guess I can tolerate that. Needless to say, my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the children while my wife is working.

The author's name is Judy Syfers. Go read the whole thing (if you aren't familiar with it already).

One Side of a Phone Conversation

We've had several calls in the last several days purporting to be from "Windows Technical Support" and calling to tell us - or, more specifically, the Beautiful Woman - that her computer had a virus. This a fairly transparent scam, probably aimed at getting her to download an actual virus - or possibly pay them to fix a nonexistent problem. So, this evening, as we were cleaning up after dinner, the phone rang (again) and the Beautiful Woman answered it. Thus, I was treated to the following side of the conversation.

Ladies and gentlemen, my wife:

"Hello?"

"...Yes?"

"Really? You are from Microsoft Office and I have a virus on my computer? Please, PLEASE tell me about it."

"Keep talking. I'm fascinated. I'm RIVETED."

"I'm sure you have so much to share. Tell me more!"

"...He hung up." (Insert impish grin here.) "He probably thought I was keeping him on the line so we could trace the call."

Did I say No Disasters?

Okay, I might have been a bit premature in my last post. You know, the one where I said that this summer had, for a succession of reasons, been especially stressful - but that none of those reasons were actual disasters. I say this because, within twenty-four hours of typing that, Secondborn - who was supposed to be going to sleep in his bed - managed to fall off the bed and whack himself in the left eye. Neither of us were in the room when it happened; the Beautiful Wife got in there first, and her best guess is that he was trying to reach something on the shelves by standing on the railing of the bed, and slipped.

So: pow. Upset boy, both parents in the room, immediate inspection of two-year-old.

My first impression was that he was hurt - because, you know, he was still crying, and he only does that if he's actually in pain - but probably not badly. He had a little blood in his mouth, so he'd probably bitten his lip or his cheek, but nothing too serious.

Then I noticed a spot of blood up on his cheekbone, just below his eye. That didn't come from his mouth... I looked more closely, and saw that he had a deep, curved gash there. Also, his eye was starting to puff up. This was going to need stitches.

The real hero of the night was Firstborn, who got himself dressed in time to help hold the ice-filled wash-cloth on his brother's face so that Mommy and Daddy could pull on clothes. Then we dumped everyone in the car and drove calmly down to the emergency room, because if there's one thing I refuse to do, it's making a bad situation worse by trying to hurry. At the emergency room, Firstborn promised to give Secondborn his feather if he could be good while they were there.

The doctor put three stitches in the cut, and told us to come back in six days and have them taken out. Secondborn was very brave about it. So was Firstborn, actually, though in his case the bravery was expressed by sitting on the chair and playing Fruit Ninja while his brother screamed a little bit, when he could reasonably have been freaking out instead.

Then both boys got popsicles and we all went home. I think some sort of reward is in order, particularly for Firstborn. For a six-year-old, he handled himself very well.

It's probably worth stopping to note that... well, let me put it this way: this is my Happily Ever After. I found the woman of my dreams, I married her, and now we're living Happily Ever After. But Happily Ever After doesn't mean that nothing ever goes wrong. It means that when something does go wrong, we pull together and get through it. In a romance, the wedding is often the end of the story - but it's also the start of another story, potentially richer and more complex than the courtship ever was.

NC Amendment One vs. History

I don't really have anything profound - or even useful - to say about this. (North Carolina just amended its constitution to define marriage as only existing between one man and one woman. I'm told that the last time North Carolina amended their constitution, it was to ban interracial marriage, but I haven't been able to find a citation to support that assertion. Update: Oh, look, a cite!)

As a political move against gay marriage, it was completely unnecessary; gay marriage was already illegal in the state, and gay marriages which took place in other states were not recognized by NC. If it was meant - as at least one supporter suggested - as a message to the rest of the country, then it's almost certainly a complete waste of time; at least, the message I hear is not "marriage can only exist between a man and a woman," but rather "the majority of North Carolina voters support institutionalized bigotry." If it was meant to close some loophole in the existing law - by, say, denying any possibility of legally recognized civil unions, which it does - then a full-scale constitutional amendment is massive overkill... and in addition, it seems likely to create difficulties in prosecuting domestic violence and similar issues. The whole thing is profoundly bad idea, and the absolute best I can hope for is that it isn't quite as destructive as I expect it to be.

Basically, I'm thoroughly disgusted that Amendment One was even introduced, let alone passed.

That said, let me go back to the idea that Amendment One was meant as a message for the rest of the country. From the Huffington Post article linked above:

Tami Fitzgerald, who heads the pro-amendment group Vote FOR Marriage NC, said she believes the initiative awoke a silent majority of more active voters in the future.

"I think it sends a message to the rest of the country that marriage is between one man and one woman," Fitzgerald said at a celebration Tuesday night. "The whole point is simply that you don't rewrite the nature of God's design based on the demands of a group of adults."

This is, frankly, delusional. I mean, first of all, these sorts of issues never 'awake a silent majority of voters,' thus showing that you're in fact a heroic figure bravely leading the way to a brighter future despite all opposition from the forces of Evil.[1] No, what happens is that people get worked up about this one issue, vote on it, and then go back to their lives, voting or not voting in much the same ways that they've always done.

What really caught my eye, though, was that last line: "...You don't rewrite the nature of God's design..." Even if we leave aside arguments about the existence of God and the nature of His Design (which are far from settled issues), from a historical perspective this is derisible nonsense, parochial and short-sighted.

Traditional marriage? Biblical marriage? King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Lamech, Abraham, David: all had multiple wives. In 2 Samuel 12:8; God, speaking through the prophet Nathan, said that if David’s wives and concubines were not enough, He would have given David even more. (Source) Abishag was one of King David's concubines - at least in name, though the king apparently "knew her not" - and when his fourth son, Adonijah, asked to marry her, David refused to allow the match; he had the authority to do that. And yet, polygamy/polyamory remains illegal in modern America, and the idea of having formally-, legally-recognized concubine is, for most people, completely bizarre - a relic of another age. Over in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul states clearly that the Christian ideal is actually celibacy, with marriage as second-class fallback for people who can't remain celibate - "It's better to marry than to burn" is not exactly a ringing endorsement. Yet I don't see anyone advocating laws that would require people to prove that they can't remain celibate before being legally allowed to marry.[2]

Look, the definition of marriage is not some eternal, universal ideal that unrepentant sinners are only trying to change here in these Last Days. It's changed many times over the centuries, and it will again. (In fact, Amendment One to the contrary, it's changing now.) The closest thing to a consistent historical "tradition" of marriage is that marriage serves as an alliance of two families; love and even procreation are often secondary considerations, if they're considerations at all.

Yes, you can use the Bible to argue against marriage equality. The Bible was also used to argue against interracial marriage, and against the abolition of slavery. And I strongly suspect that future generations of Christians will find the former argument just as embarrassing as modern Christians find the latter two. God's word may be eternal and unchanging, but people aren't; people change, and societies change, and clinging to this idea that marriage can only ever be between one man and one woman - this revisionistic, non-traditional, not-particularly-Biblical idea - puts your Christianity on the wrong side the issue. It puts you on the side that's hurting people.

Is that really where you want to be?

Update: Christian writer Rachel Held Evans offers her own perspective on why initiatives like Amendment One are a mistake:

Regardless of whether you identify most with Side A or Side B, (or with one of the many variations within those two broad categories), it should be clear that amendments like these needlessly offend gays and lesbians, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and non-Christian—from the Church.

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

Read the whole thing.

Second Update: What if this were a fairy tale?

Third Update: A friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

"[This type of union]... is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of...government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately...will bring this nation a conflict... Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy." ~Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry, of Georgia.

Arguing against interracial marriage in 1912. Sounds creepily familiar in light of North Carolina's vote today.

She adds:

And obviously, as a proud miscegenationist, this is a cause particularly dear to my heart; had Derek and I been born just one a generation before, we might not have been permitted to marry. That's just insane to me, and it's just insane that people are saying the same ignorant stuff about preventing gay people from getting married as well.

[1] That's almost exactly the same thing the Hutaree Militia apparently thought was going to happen after they attacked law enforcement officials, except with more voting and less bloodshed. Here's the money quote: "It is believed by the HUTAREE that this engagement would then serve as a catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the Government." Yes, really.

[2] I'm tempted to add something about the long, proud history of arranged marriages here, but honestly this screed is long enough already.

It's time.

...Speaks for itself, I think.

(Tip o' the hat to John Jenkins.)