The Tory Party

2729 MOQ

Remember that time I made a model of the house I grew up in? From Paradise Point, at Camp Lejeune?

No?

1/2″ scale. Slightly cattywampus.

Katie Smith, if you’re out there, please don’t mock me for putting the garage on the left. I was working from a floor plan of that version, thinking I would be smart and remember to flip it as I was making it. RONG.

Also note it is white and not mustard yellow. Doing yellow to the model just seemed… mean.

If you look closely in the upstairs windows you can see a fourteen year old working out and listening to “Ten” on cassette.

Dinosaur Comics

There is a thing? I do? Which is getting on board with trends five years after critical zeitgeist. This is why I am just getting into avant garde life experiences like Starbucks and fitted T-shirts. In a hot minute I’m going to take up Harry Potter, Queer Eye, and Madonna’s hostile pants from the “Ray of Light” video.

(But eventch I will aspire to relevance by asplain about Steve and Barry’s, and how they make me pee my pants with happiness. How I take off a Steve and Barry’s shirt at the end of the day, and feel a tinge of sorrow that it will be a while before I can wear it again. IT IS THAT REAL.

Twice weekly

If I want to start dressing like I’m 19 now that I’m almost thirty DON’T JUDGE ME.)

Anyhoo. A friend sent me a sweet-ass link from Dinosaur Comics. Click only if you are prepared to lose forty-five minutes of your life! Into bliss!

T-shirt WANT

On an unrelated note, am I the only person who calls these things “salt-cellars”?

GIS says YES

Testing out a wpSS Spreadsheet

I’ve had bad luck with WordPress plugins, mostly due to the fact that when it comes to handling other people’s code I am dumb as a bag of hammers and ADD as The Go! Team.

WordPress spreadsheet plugin courtesy TimRohrer.com

Mellowing Out

I’ve been feeling a bit. Stressed out.

It would be nice if I could say it hasn’t been self-inflicted. But nobody’s made my multiple competing commitments but me. If it were just classwork (two models, three renderings, two budgets, two presentations, two papers, two final exams, two field trips and portfolio review) and ALDI (only a couple of five-hour shifts a week, and just about my only exercise) I’d be fine.

But being on the search committee for the new film dean (must… talk… in front of grownups…) and also trying to get a movie made… and then taking on some web design jobs to see if I can transition out of ALDI… possibly a bit foolish.

Then my love interest left town for the weekend, and I didn’t realize what a Calgon calming influence he was until I didn’t have him anymore. It’s almost as if you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. Did I just make that up? Write that down, copyright Me.

So there’s been over the last few days a slight melting down.

But I did something about five minutes ago that changed the course of everything. More mellowing than all the hot baths or cold beers in the world.

I held my soup pot while Jake the Dog licked it clean.

Peering into the eyes of an eating dog is like staring into the heart of tranquility itself. And now I am mellow.

I rule!

Also, I lost my phone. Again. Second time in six weeks. And again due to low-rise pants in a truck stop bathroom. So if y’all could shoot me your phone numbers again, that’s be teh awesome.

Don’t put your phone in your pocket, people, they be slippery.

Abortion. And stuff.

Ye-e-e-eah. `Cause I know all you hard-working people were slogging into your Friday thinking, y`know what I really need to kick off my weekend? Some under-informed Internet yokel’s rambling opinion on abortion.

Far be it from me to deny you.

Now, I realize that abortion rights are not the most important political issue — hell, not even the most important women’s issue. Poverty, HIV, health care, education, even ol` contraception maybe, but not abortion. Abortion is what the GOP dangles in front of people to distract them from what’s really going on. It must be very shiny.

We’re getting somewhere now, aren’t we?

And I realize that *everybody’s* opinion on abortion comes from a good place. So if everybody takes sides and screams “You hate babies!” “Oh yeah? You hate women!” at each other, everybody just gets more hurt and angry and it ends in tears and upsetting billboards on I-95. And yet *everybody* fundamentally agrees that they want fewer abortions to happen in the world. The dirty hippies want to do this with education and prophylactics. The conservatives want to do this by making abortion illegal. Okay. This is called “killing the messenger.” But if *everybody* has the same objective, then why can’t we get together and work on making it happen?

Now *there’s* a bunch of guys I`d trust with my pachinko.

I say this and yet… there’s one kind of abortion opinion I just can’t hang with.

If you feel like abortion is between a woman and a doctor, and the law has no business in it no matter what the circumstances, then I agree with you. Maybe you and I can sit down over chai tea and Frookies and talk about how great it is to agree completely and what great progressives we are and maybe not mention how little we’ve done to actually effect change in this regard.

If you have the position of the Catholic Church — that in matters of conception from A to Z it is a sin to interfere with God’s will — then I respect it. Maybe you and I can have a vigorous conversation about whether religion should shape public policy. Maybe you might get aggravated when I suggest that a condom is no match for God’s will, so what’s the harm? But I`d shake your hand coming and going because the Catholic position is consistent and crushes gray areas like Kurt Angle does Eddie Guerro OMG!!!1

And most of the life-begins-at-conception people fit this bill, too. If you don’t believe contraception is a burnable offense, but you still think abortion is no never nothing no time never acceptable, then you’re still good people and we’ve got a lot to talk about.

But if you’re one of these people who is against abortion except in cases of rape or incest — GET OFF THE FENCE. The “rape or incest” exception is for people who haven’t thought about it too hard and want to sound moral without being unreasonable to women who, you know, *just experienced felonious assault.* Lemme break it down for you: the “rape or incest” exception means you don’t think abortion should be an option for a woman unless *it’s not her fault she got pregnant.* You don’t care about life and babies and stuff. You care about women who consent to sex getting what they deserve. I`m not even going to get into how you would want rape proven to your satisfaction, or how long you think that would take (goodbye morning-after pill). If you really feel a life is a life is a life and deserves a shot no matter how it got here, then be pro-life. If you really feel like childbearing is a private issue between a woman and her doctor (and Roe v. Wade was a right to privacy finding), then be pro-choice.

I think I`m done.

Of course, I realize there are more ways to think about abortion than these few, but these are the funnest!!!1