Best Game Ever

I'm obviously coming a little late to the party here, but I've just seen my new favorite Improv Everywhere mission. If you don't know Improv Everywhere, take a second and check out their website, because they really are more fun than should probably be legal. Every year they bring us the No Pants Subway Ride, among other absurd stunts, all of which increase the sum total of joy in the world. Because I was not paying attention, I missed this one:
Brilliant.

Thanks to Zach for the email!

Prickly Zuchini and other Wonders of Summertime

Thursday is greenmarket day outside of Lincoln Center, and since I'm frequently there on Thursdays, I try to take advantage of it as much as possible. There are lots of wonderful things, and people, at the market each time I go there, and I want to take it all home. That said, I have both finite funds, and finite shopping totes. This most recent Thursday, my list looked like this:

Honey
Eggs
Lettuce
Carrots
Some green thing for the bunnies

Honey and eggs were easy, there's an apple outfit that also brings along a number of items from their neighbors. They were kind enough one week to bring me some apple branches as chew toys for the rabbits, at no charge - they seemed to think it was a great lark. We've been going through honey like mad lately, as Dave has been making lots of honey wheat bread. And toasting it. And covering it with, you guessed it, honey.

Sadly, the people from whom I prefer to buy my carrots, Stokes Farm, had none this week, which meant that the fantastic (and free) bag of discarded carrot tops was also unavailable. (Most carrot purchasers let the folks there take the tops off for them, and he woman who usually mans their stall is always happy to give me as many of the carrot tops as I can carry, which is great, as the bunnies love them.) I had to buy my carrots elsewhere, and I must say, I was not as pleased with them. I still got my lettuce (and some sorrel) from Stokes, and I also found some perfect small summer squash. I got two yellow and two zucchini, and they were so fresh and so close to their planty root (no pun intended) that the stems still prickled when I selected them. I'd forgotten just how spiky squash ARE when you pick them. It's been years since my mom had a garden, and I certainly have no room for one here, but those little spiny caps made me wish yet again that I did. There's nothing like fresh squash. Nothing.

Except maybe fresh corn.

Or fresh tomatoes.

Or...

I sauteed them, with some onion and some garlic, in just a little olive oil. So perfect.

Winnable Flame War?

While I'm pointing you around the Internet, check out this guy. His name is Sean Tevis, and he's running for State Representative in Kansas. Why should I care about Kansas, you ask? Well, really no good reason. Kansas is too flat for me. But this guy is just the sense of humor I wish we had more of in politics.

Running for Office: It's Like A Flame War with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner

The weblog is an engaging look at the process of running for state office, and if you've got that $8 bucks to throw his way, do it.

Moonshot

Everytime I hear Al Gore speak, I lament that he was never our president. If this Al Gore, the passionate, articulate, engaging climate warrior Al Gore, had been the one running for president in 2000 he would have won by enough that the election couldn't have been lifted in a Floridian bank heist. He's found his voice in his cause and has become so much more than an ex-Vice President in the process.

That said, check out the speech he gave today at Constitution Hall in DC:

He's right. We can do more, and we should do more. The solution doesn't lie with individual choices, though I certainly advocate your making wise ones with the environment in mind, but rather with public choices. Policy, and the political will that drives it, is the only way forward. The US used to be a world leader. We can't just sit around playing Risk while the rest of the world worries (or doesn't) about this crisis. Some of the things he argues in this well written and superbly delivered oration are things that I've talked about, as recently as this morning.

"Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges — the economic, environmental and national security crises.
We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.
But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.
The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels."
-Thanks to Climate Progress for the transcript

I highly recommend taking the time to watch this speech, and then calling your elected officials and candidates for office about it. Then think about it, remember it, when choosing where to bestow your vote in the fall. This is the sort of thing that we CAN do, as long as we DO it.

I hope I'm in a better mood at the end of October.

Because right now I'm in sort of a lousy one, so the All-Star Break and its attendant, well, break, is making me cranky. I miss baseball. How is Kevin Youkilis supposed to cheer me up with a grand slam if there ISN'T ANY BASEBALL?!

The All-Star Game was fun and all, but, like most of the east coast, I had work in the morning and had to give up on the tie game in the 13th inning and go to bed. I could only be more pleased with it if it had been my hero Youk with the MVP level game, rather than J.D. Drew. (Not to say that I don't like Werd, because I do, and he's been a very effective Papi stand-in. I just have a soft spot for Youk.)

Wow am I pathetic. Seriously. There will be baseball again on Friday. It's not like it's the end of the season or anything. My team is in first place (by .5 games, granted, but they'll deal with that in good order), the Yankees aren't even in second, there's still months to go. I even have nice cold beer in the fridge. I feel pathetic, but even when I'm glum, a nice baseball game really takes the edge off. It's an addiction. If I'm still feeling this underlying sadness come October and the end of the season (may it be LATE in October...) I just might have to do something drastic.

Like watch hockey.

Fun with Stat Counter

Today's random search string brought someone to my Happy Creation Day post from a few years ago. It was:

6012th birthday on october 23.

I am dying to know who was searching google for this. And more to the point, why? Whoever you are, thanks - I'd forgotten about that, and it made me laugh all over again!

The Baseball Project

I have this irritating tendency to forget that I have an emusic subscription, so I either waste a month's downloads, or I find myself scrambling at the eleventh hour to select 90 tracks. Which is what happened to me last night. I got some older Cathie Ryan, the cast recording of In The Heights and some assorted other stuff when I found this.

The Baseball Project turns out to be a collaborative project between Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate, Miracle 3) and Scott McCaughey (R.E.M.) who discovered a mutual obsession with baseball and casually discussed a baseball based musical project for several years before actually settling down to work on The Baseball Project, Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails last year. It's rare that I'm on top of something so quickly, but the album was just released last week, and on a lark, I downloaded it in it's entirety.

It's quite good. Largely story songs about some of the great or quirky baseball stories. (Plenty of material there for several more volumes!) Musically, it's easy and accessible, nothing earth shattering, but well worth the listen. Lyrically it's much more compelling. In Harvey Haddix, an argument for the inclusion of Haddix on any list of perfect game hurlers, they manage to use the names of all 17 pitchers to officially perform that feat without sounding at all stilted. For those of you to whom that made no sense, Haddix, pitching for the Pirates, took a perfect game into the 13th inning only to lose the game. It's the longest perfect stretch in one outing, and yet, since he did eventually allow one hit, not a perfect game. He did, however, pitch the 27 up, 27 down that the others did, and then again a third of a game. An interesting argument, and a fun song.

I particularly enjoyed Ted Fucking Williams as well, and The Yankee Flipper. The album as a whole is a love letter from some total baseball dorks who just happen to be first rate musicians to the sport they follow religiously. Critical in places, such as Gratitude (for Curt Flood), about the Gold Glove center fielder who's unsuccessful challenge to the reserve system opened the door for free agency (and today's sky high salaries), but still reverent and joyful.

And did I mention that it's just fun to listen to? I want to take it out for a drive!

I'll bet Video Professor could help you out with that, McSame...

Every single time I see those Video Professor (no link - if you can read this, you don't need it) commercials, I either mock them mercilessly, or I shake my head and ponder the poor fool who needs to be taught anything past "click here" for the internet.

Who could that lamebrain be?

Why, the Republican't nominee for President!

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself."

Honestly, what person under the age of 80* can possibly take him seriously? I'm willing to allow that he probably hasn't ever needed to figure out email, since there are plenty of people around him to do it for him, but web browsing? He'll have that down "fairly soon"? Really?

*My grandfather is over 80 and totally has this down, but in all fairness, my grandfather is also FAR smarter than McSame.

Friends and ancient history

Thanks Youk!

I was having a pretty crap sort of a day, but Kevin Youkilis has totally got my back. His cheer-me-up bid was a lovely grand slam, and the Sox are steamrollering over the poor O's right now, which is quite the mood alterer.

Night before last I was up too late chatting online with Walter, and somehow ended up hitting the Wayback Machine to see what lingering bits of my early blogs are still preserved there. There's something dreadfully narcissistic about rereading your own journal from nine years ago, but it's also quite fun. The word blog wasn't even in use when I started. I can't seem to find any entries from before Dec. 1999, but I started in Jan of that year. I've only kept it up intermittently though.

The thing that struck me most is that the friends I mentioned most often in those days are still the friends I go to when I'm feeling blue these days. I was feeling pretty low in one of those late 1999 entries, and my solution was to go out with my good friend Jess. Today? I called Jess and Jeremy to have them over to dinner. My mom told me once that her friends that she made in college were the ones she ended up keeping forever, and that seems to be true for me as well. Though there are a number of my high school friends with whom I am still close, and of course there are others since college. I wonder though, what it is about college that makes such long term friendships.

Whatever it is, I'm glad of it.

What should I do next? I know! I'll run for Congress!

The Democratic candidate for Congress in my home district (VA-01) suspended his campaign the other day, citing "past financial difficulties". He didn't have any real chance of winning, I'm sorry to say, but even having a Democrat on the ballot is fun - so often this seat isn't even contested. The incumbent won a special election last year to fill the seat of the late Jo Ann Davis, a very conservative Republican who had held the seat since 2001. Voting against Jo Ann Davis was such an exercise in futility - I think I wrote in my dad one time! Anyhow, Hummel didn't really stand a chance, but I'm sorry to see that he's suspended his campaign.

Since it's a loser anyhow though, heck, I'd run.

Except I don't think the bunnies want to move to DC, so I guess I'll skip it.

Holes in the 50 T-Shirt Strategy

The news, pundits and blogosphere have been making great hay out of the Obama campaign's much touted "50 State Strategy" and before you get the wrong idea, let me go ahead and say that I think it's a great plan. By spending time on every state, not only is Obama building momentum for his own election race, but he's substantially improving the chances of down ticket candidates. In the long run, I feel like the down ticket races are where the real change (anyone tired of that word yet?) can be effected. If we can send a bunch of better, more progressive congressfolk and senators to Washington with Senator Obama, then the chances of enacting a progressive agenda are substantially increased. Not that you can tell from the current roll-over-and-play-dead congress, but the legislative branch is capable of being either the sitting president's best ally or most implacable foe.

In the long term, party building of this nature is crucial if we want those 'red' states to turn purple and even blue. My beloved home state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, is increasingly blue (Obama leads in current composite polling data and we're about to replace an old guard republican senator with a wildly popular democratic former governor). Some of this shift can certainly be attributed to the growing population in the more liberal northern part of the state, and to the abysmal approval ratings of the Resident's administration, but a lot can also be laid at the doorstep of that popular governor's campaigning, and that of his successor, and at the foot of the huge netroots effort to elect our junior senator, Jim Webb, in 2006. Each successful race (and even the unsuccessful ones) that competes in the state enlarges and energizes the base. The 50 state strategy does this on a national level, even in places like Utah, home of the most republican congressional district in the country. (Utah's 1st District, in case you were curious, an R+26 district.)

That said, you didn't come here to hear me spout off nonsense you could have gotten at dKos. You came here to hear me spout off more trivial nonsense!

The Obama site has, as you would expect, an extensive collection of campaign related gear and garb you can buy. One prominent category is "State Shirts". I went looking for a Virginia for Obama shirt, which I would probably not have purchased, but nevertheless, I wanted to know it existed.

It doesn't.

Virginia, a state that hasn't voted for Democrats on a national ticket since supporting LBJ in 1964, is currently leaning towards Barack. Not hugely, certainly within the margin of error, but the trend is continuing, and I look forward to casting my (absentee) ballot for the first democratic candidate to win the state in my lifetime. (Voting for Clinton was fun, since he did win, but since he didn't win the Commonwealth, this has the potential to be fantastically better.)

There's no shirt for Virginia? He won the primary there handily! He's contesting the state. McCain actually just made an ad buy for Virginia, for crying out loud! Republicans never have to do that! No shirt?

So that made me curious. What other states have been left out?

-Iowa (McCain 41% Obama 45.8%)
-Louisiana (Solid McCain)
-Maine (Solid Obama)
-Maryland (Solid Obama)
-Mississippi (McCain 50% Obama 44%, Rasmussen)
-Nebraska (Solid McCain)
-Nevada (McCain 45.2% Obama 41.8%)
-New Hampshire (McCain 39.4% Obama 50%)
-South Carolina (McCain 48% Obama 39%, Rasmussen)
-Virginia (McCain 45.1% Obama 46.5%)
-Washington (Solid Obama)
-Wyoming (Solid McCain)
(All poll data is composite from pollster.com, except when noted. Margins greater than 10% are considered solid.)

A bunch of these states are shaping up as battlegrounds. Hook it up with the Cafe Press already! Wouldn't they like to see those states showing their support on their torsos?

But don't worry. You can get your Guam or Puerto Rico shirts. Perfect for the non-voter in your life.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Big Bunny Breakthrough!

For the past week or two we've not attempted to get the bunnies together, relying on less direct contact between the two of them. Their cages are only about a foot apart, so they have plenty of opportunity to see and smell the other rabbit, and they both use the same room as a play area, so the territoriality was limited pretty severely. At first the two of them would leave each other little "this is mine" poops around the living room (keep in mind that rabbit feces are small dry pellets, and that becomes a much less disgusting image), but in the past week that's largely stopped. We got into a routine where we would alternate who came out to play first, and after half of the allotted play time had passed, we would surround the first bunny in the pen, and let the second bunny out to romp. They could get close enough to sniff noses, but we supervised to make sure that this never ended in nose biting, which was a danger at first. We even encouraged them to spend time near the other rabbit by placing tasty treats on both sides of the pen, as you see above. Bunny bribery is quite effective.

We, and they, had become so comfortable with this routine that when Jupiter hopped up on top of Juno's house it didn't surprise or worry anyone, Juno included. While Juno was out last night she was as relaxed as we've ever seen her, sprawled out on the floor next to Dave's home base on the couch. I've been reluctant to get the two of them together because everything had been going so smoothly, but we decided that as long as she was so chill, perhaps it would be a good time to try it out. They largely ignored one another at first, with the exception of one three foot chase scene where Jupiter was startled and ran after Juno very briefly before growing disinterested. We were entirely pleased by that reaction, since ignoring each other is a very peaceful reaction from critters that are very territorial by nature. We fed them each a carrot while sitting right near the other, and thought it was a pretty good evening. We were still sitting on the ground with them, petting and talking soothingly, when Juno slipped over to Jupiter and started trying to groom his hind legs for him. (He needs some help in that area, I must admit.) The first time she tried it, he immediately hopped up and moved a few feet away, but Juno has definitely decided that Jupiter should be her bunny, and determinedly tried again. The next time, Jupiter put up with her attentions for a while, only moving when she moved up his back with her licks. We were delighted.

We figured that the night was over when Juno headed back to her house, but before we could grab him, Jupiter had hopped right up in there with her. We were all set to grab him and pull him out, as we had no intentions of stretching their tolerance that far, but Juno was completely unaffected. We cautiously let things continue, and Jupiter hopped up on Juno's ledge with her. She still didn't care. She already seems quite fond of him!

Things backtracked slightly this morning while I was making breakfast. Dave let both of them out, and they were fine together, but Juno decided to go visit Jupiter in his house, which he did not especially appreciate it. Dave hustled her out of the cage (Jupiter was right behind Dave with his own ejection plan) and we shut his front door but left his top open. Jupiter is a much springier rabbit than Juno, and has no problem exiting via the roof, but Juno can't get up there to get in. At the moment they are both sleeping in their own houses, but the doors are both open so that they can go visiting if they like. Eventually I would like them to both live in Juno's expandable house, so it's very encouraging that she has so little objection to his presence.

Fangirl?

So good luck with your elections, I hope you win. - Eddie Izzard

I'm usually not a big fangirl type, but I do really enjoy Eddie Izzard, and I was quite jealous of my friend Eliza, who had birthday tickets to see him here in New York. I hadn't even considered going myself - money's tight enough without paying for event tickets to, well, anything. Especially anything at Radio City Music Hall.

Did I say I was jealous of Eliza? Because this is nothing compared to my jealousy of my friend Ben, who is on the tour bus with the Izzard tour. He somehow tripped over the gig as Lighting Director, and it couldn't have happened to a better guy, as Ben is both a very talented and skillful person, and a great friend. Still, I am quite jealous. Evidently Eddie is a very nice guy, down to earth, and whenever he gets special treatment, he expects that everyone with him gets it as well.

Big Time Promoter Dude: Gee, Mr. Izzard, we'd love to take you out for this swanky swanky five star dinner.
Eddie: Excellent, there will be seven of us.

About a week ago I got a text from Ben asking if I was coming to the shows this weekend, and I replied that no, it was a bit rich for my blood, and also a bit sold out. His reply? "Comps, Bitches!"

Not just any comps, it turns out, third row comps. And passes to the reception afterwards. Open bar, Eddie Izzard, surprisingly small group of attendees. Very cool. Eliza and her friends were trying to get a picture with Eddie, and once they accomplished that, I took a moment to thank him for waving the Obama flag throughout the south. (He encouraged the New York show to vote for Obama, but that's not anything impressive. Ben tells me he'd been doing it everywhere though, and I thought that was great.) Somehow my brief mention turned into a very cool conversation about politics and history and the oddness of growing up liberal in a largely conservative environment. Dave said that he really liked how Eddie kept looking to include him in the conversation, even though Dave himself had nothing to say.

It's always nice to hear that your favorite artists, athletes or entertainers really are the nice people you want them to be, but it's far better to find it out first hand.

Um... Squeee?

Paint the bunnies. No? Egg the paint? Um...

We've taken a step back in our rabbit matchmaking, and it seems to be successful. When the visiting dog departed last week, we moved them back into the living room and rearranged enough that they can live side-by-side in their respective houses. We haven't gotten them out together since then, but we're letting one rabbit out to romp, then after a reasonable amount of free-range romping, herding that rabbit into the pen and then letting the second rabbit out. This way they get a chance to interact in their common space but don't really have the opportunity to do any hard core chasing. They've responded really well. Now they like to stick their noses through at the other bunny and they both sniff in a very friendly manner. At first we had to watch them very closely, as noses are very tempting tooth targets, but now we trust them to behave well, and they like to lie on the floor together in their seperate areas.

It's tempting to bring them closer, but I think we'll stick with this for a while longer.

I started the paint-the-apartment project today, and I'd forgotten how tedious painting can be. Today all I accomplished was to sand and put a layer of Killz on the bedroom walls. I was reminded yet again of how poorly all the repairs and maintenance here are performed. The last time the apartment was painted was when Dave moved in, five years ago, so it's pretty grimy, especially in that room, which has been a revolving door for the past five years, starting with Dave, then Laura (and subsequently the addition of her boyfriend), then the Soap and Candle Guy, then Comic Book Guy, then Tom and most recently Jon. Each tenant has moved furniture in and out, placed beds in different spots (and therefore put their feet on different parts of the wall) and punched their own holes in the walls. It's justifiably gross. None of that really bothered me. The unfortunate bits were the parts under the old paint. The spackle that wasn't sanded before painting, the nails that weren't removed, the poorly patched holes in the wall, the cracks. I really hadn't gotten that close to the walls before, and now that I have, I'm glad it's not my foundation that those cracks are pointing out!

We haven't yet picked the color that will go on top of the Killz I applied, but at least now when we do pick it, it won't have the dirty bleed through from who knows how long!

In other news, I ate the most amazing scrambled eggs this morning. I realized on Thursday while at the farmer's market to order apple twigs for the spoiled bunnies, that the purportedly free-range eggs I buy at the store aren't any cheaper than the local eggs at the farmer's market, so I've changed my egg buying. It's so worth it. The local eggs have a much brighter shade of yolk and the most wonderfully rich almost buttery taste to them. I can never go back! Now I just need to find some real butter...

Congratulations Are In Order

As some of you may remember, I spent a good portion of last summer on a walking truss at 37 Arts, running followspot for an up and coming Off-Broadway show. The patrons were always either amazed or terrified by our assent (in full fall arrest harness) to the truss on a "rope" ladder made of aircraft cable, but once we were up there, it was surprisingly comfortable to sit on the edge of the truss rail and lean against another pipe until the show started. It was a fun show to run, challenging to learn at first, and I never quite tired of it.

The show closed in mid July so that it could revamp and head to Broadway, where it opened earlier this year, and last night it won the Tony Award for Best Musical! The team also picked up Tonys for Choreography (Andy Blankenbuehler), Best Original Score (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Best Orchestration (Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman). While I don't know Andy or Bill, Lin and Alex are two of the nicest guys ever, and totally deserving of the honors.

Though the show touches on some legitimate issues - what the gentrification is doing to the character of New York neighborhoods for example - it is largely big, fun musical theatre in the best way possible, couched in a love song to a single upper Manhattan neighborhood. The music and dance are heavily influenced by latin and hip-hop styles, and it makes for a very engaging show and eminently hummable score.

While I had nothing to do with the Tony success, this is the first time that a show on which I've previously worked has been nominated for major awards (13 Tony nominations) and I'm very happy for all of the people who are still with the show. They deserved every bit, and I'm proud to have been even such a small part of a show.

A Bump in the Road to Bunny Bliss

We made the mistake of letting the bunnies have too much space to play in for their last date, as they had been getting along reasonably well in the confines of the pen, and it ended in flying fur. Just a little, and no injuries, but it's back to the pen for our furry friends. Interestingly, the dynamic appears to have changed significantly when we let them have the whole room. Now instead of Juno trying to be the dominant rabbit, Jupiter is chasing her around the room! He tugged out a small hank of her fur, but since she's shedding quite a bit, he didn't actually do any damage, just grabbed some loose fur. She's pretty mellow towards him, just doesn't want him thinking he's the top bun. Once we put them back in the smaller, more restrictive pen, they were reasonably content to sit near (but not too near) each other and ignore.

They won't be having a date today, as they are having a rough enough weekend as it is. Dave's brother and sister-in-law are in town this weekend, with their dog, Sadie. She's a big scary predator, though she wouldn't hurt a fly, and the rabbits have been moved to the spare bedroom to distance them from the terror. Since they've been moved however, their houses are now close enough that they can see and smell each other but cannot touch, the hope being that they grow increasingly comfortable.

We found the perfect rabbit carrots today at the Union Square Greenmarket. One of the farm vendors from whom I was buying a bunch of kale and lettuce for the greedy little lagomorphs had these young carrots, very long and thin, with the entirity of their extravagant tops still intact. Unlike the fully mature carrots that are marketed at the supermarkets, these are just the right size for a bunny portion, and were a big hit. I'm an advocate for eating locally and supporting local farmers, so I'm glad that I can feed my bunnies accordingly!

A Very Happy Birthday to One Of My Favorite Bloggers

If you don't currently read we move to canada, you really should. Laura is a native New Yorker happily transplanted to the greater Toronto area. Her posts are thoughtful and informative on a number of progressive topics and well written and entertaining regardless of the subject. Also she has two very charming dogs, and she sometimes posts pictures of them. I'm just sayin', is all...
It's her birthday too, so if you head over there, please wish her many happy returns of the day!

Happy Loving Day

Today is the anniversary of the landmark supreme court decision in Loving v. Virginia(1967) which ended race based bars to marriage by declaring Virginia's anti-miscegenation statutes to be unconstitutional. In this case, a interracial couple, Mildred & Richard Loving, were married in D.C. and then returned to the commonwealth to live. At the time, there were laws on the books in Virginia stating:

"If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years."(Virginia Code § 20-59)

And:

"If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage." (Virginia Code § 20-58)

When they returned to Virginia, they were charged with violating these statutes and pleaded guilty, being sentenced to one year in prison, which was suspended conditionally as long as they left the commonwealth.

So they left. They moved to D.C. and made friends with the ACLU, who drove the legal train to the Supreme Court.

The court reversed the convictions, with Chief Justice Warren stating in the majority decision that:

"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888)."

I'm sorry to have to say that it was a suit brought against my own beloved Commonwealth that occasioned this change, but I do find it encouraging that now, forty years on, this particular form of discrimination seems so antiquated. It gives me hope that soon we will find our current marriage related bigotry quaint and old-fashioned. Perhaps the next iteration of Loving v. Virginia will be a gay couple suing the Commonwealth for not recognizing their Californian marriage.

This is another reason why we need to elect Barack Obama. Can you imagine the current court, or even worse, the court after four more years of Bush (as played by John McCain), making a decision based on "the broader, organic purpose of a constitutional amendment" rather than the "passage of specific statutes"? I can't.

And yes, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a card-carrying member of the

In Which Some Introductions Are In Order

This latest development will amuse anyone who knew me as a bunny mad child - my best friend and I wrote a newspaper based on the exploits of our stuffed animals called "The Bunny Press", for crying out loud. (Yes, I was a nerd, thank you very much.)

Dave and I have adopted two bunnies from the Manhattan Shelter of NYC's Animal Care & Control. We went intending to adopt only one rabbit, if that, but we both fell in love with separate bunnies, so we decided to take both of them. On the left here is Jupiter, Dave's selection (and now my favorite, if I can be said to have a favorite - they're both pretty great) and below on the right is my selection, Juno. (The Roman goddess, not the movie, just so's you know.) Juno is now Dave's favorite, being the more mild mannered of the two. I was actually starting to worry that Juno was too forceful a name for such a sweet and friendly rabbit, until the two of them met on their first bunny "date". Turns out that our sweet girl is quite the dominatrix!

I say "date", but the process of bonding two rabbit strangers promises to be quite the challenge. You can read more about bonding rabbits, or house rabbits in general, at the House Rabbit Society. The first time they met, Juno tried to exert her dominance, which, despite her size advantage, I didn't expect, and Jupiter resented it. Yesterday was their second date and they seemed to get along better, he mostly ignoring her and her attempting occasionally to groom him. Tonight we decided to skip the date, as there was a storm and both bunnies were a bit edgy.

So there they are, our new rabbit friends, Juno & Jupiter. Expect to see a good deal more of them as they learn to be friends with each other as well as with us.

Boy am I stupid...

I can't seem to keep track of my phone today. I left it at home this morning when I left, but both our shows were out on Long Island today, so I swung by the house on the way to the first school to retrieve it. I was even smart enough to bring the charger.

Then I left the damn thing in the van when I parked it in the garage. I realized this only AFTER fighting my way to the 59th Street Bridge, so it's going to spend the night there.

When are we getting those phone implants?

edit: crap. Just realized that my phone IS my alarm clock.