Let's learn law with the DTWOF!

Alison Bechdel brilliantly defines habeas corpus in terms a grade-schooler could understand. If only Dubya were as smart as grade-schoolers. 

DTWOF #458: Below the Law

And speaking of Alison Bechdel, her new graphic memoir is one of the most brilliant pieces of new literature I have ever read. Run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and buy Fun Home. Listen to NPR's story about it (and her) here.

I'm sick of the so-called "gay marriage" topic

First and most important, let us consider who has made it a topic: the people opposed to it. The people putting it on ballots, platforms, and advertising are people hoping to use it as a wedge issue to divide progressives. The rest of us have generally preferred to focus on things of much greater importance, like this disastrous mess of a war in Iraq. Naturally these types of topics aren't as much fun for those people, since the politicians they've bought are for the most part the ones who got us into this mess in the first place.

Next we have a terminology problem. First, "gay" leaves out a lot of the people affected--lesbians, bis, trans, whatevers, and all the other kinds of non-traditional families. Second, "marriage" is missing the point: it's not about a lacy veil and a march down the aisle of a flower-bedecked church, it's about basic fairness in all manner of tax, inheritance, insurance, medical decision-making and hospital visitation rights, child custody laws, and so on.

Herewith my proposal.

Recognize that there are two separate issues: marriage and civil union.

Marriage is a religious institution with moral standing. Allow religious organizations the freedom to define for themselves what marriage is and who is eligible to participate. Allow people the freedom to choose for themselves whether to participate in religious organizations, to choose to join them or not, and to choose which other organizations' marriages they will respect and honor. Marriage confers only those privileges and responsibilities defined by the organization. The means to dissolve or annul marriages or to disallow dissolution or annulment is also assigned to the marriage-granting institution to define and regulate. Marriage has no legal standing.

Civil union is a legal institution with legal standing. Allow the states and nation to define what civil union is and let a reading of the Constitution make clear that all are equally eligible to participate. Civil union confers legal and financial privileges and responsibilities and binds its members as legally and financially responsible for each other. The means to dissolve or annul civil unions or to disallow dissolution or annulment is also assigned to the state to define and regulate. Civil union has no moral standing.

Legal dependency is just that: legal dependency. My legal dependents are my natural-born or legally adopted children and anyone else for whom I take legal responsibility.

Keep church and state separate. Keep marriage and civil union separate.

If you want both marriage and civil union, get both. If you want one but not the other, get one.

I am free to persuade my church to marry me to my female partner, and if I succeed, we shall be married in the eyes of my church and our fellow congregants. If you don't go to my church or respect my church, you are free to consider me unmarried. You don't have to send me a wedding present or say congratulations, and you don't have to send me a sympathy card if someday I am bereaved. If we have sexual relations, you are free to consider them adulterous, scandalous, promiscuous, fornicatory, and all other manner of immoral; I shall not.

However, if my partner and I have joined in civil union, whether or not we have been married, and I get in a car wreck, and you work at the hospital treating me, you must respect my partner's input as you would any legal spouse's. If you employ me, you must offer my partner and our dependents--be they our naturally-born or legally-adopted children, or our senile parents[-in-law], or our disabled siblings, or even the refugees on whom we have taken pity and for whom we have taken legal responsibility--same insurance benefits you offer to any legal partners and dependents. If you have rental property, you must consider our lease application on its merits. If you are a tax collector, you must offer us the same dizzying array of loopholes, gotchas, deductions, and messy choices as all the straight couples get--you must ding us or discount us the same as any other civilly-united couple filing jointly or separately.

I'm sick of this topic and wouldn't mind never having to debate or write on it again. For those who want more, here's some interesting reading from reasonable people: http://www.beyondmarriage.org/.

It's always the easy stuff that gets you

It's a truism that when you're writing, it'll always be the bonehead easy stuff you get wrong. Anything tricky, after all, you'll look up and confirm. The stuff you think you've always known will be where you make your errors, and of course you never bother checking the stuff you know.

Turns out I know bupkes about Superman. I think I've seen part of a movie and a few partial episodes of the TV show, and I thought I'd read a few of the comic books, but then I realized those were Spiderman... in fact, I think the TV episodes I saw were Spiderman, too, so maybe my Superman knowledge is worse than pathetic.

My boss is a Superman expert, and he set me straight on my astonishingly dense series of errors from last night:

• George Reeves was the first; Christopher Reeve (no S) was the second
• They're not related
• Superman actually started in animated films in the 40s
• ...oh hell, let's hear it from the expert, shall we?

As Dr. Potter writes,

The first time Superman appeared in the movies was in a series of excellent animated features by the Fleischer Studios in the early 1940's. To this day, these animated films are considered classics by professionals in the field.

The first person to play Superman in the movies was Kirk Alyn, who played the character in two serials (as they were called in those days) in the 1940's. Unfortunately, these were rather cheesy films, low budget and to make matters worse, whenever Superman had to fly, they reverted to animation! So, for example, Kirk would run behind a rock and an animated Superman would take off into the sky. This didn't fool anyone at the time, not even little kids.

George Reeves first donned the cape in a movie called "Superman and the Mole Men". Due the success of this film, they decided to create a TV series called "Adventures of Superman" starring George as the Man of Steel. This TV show aired from 1952 to 1958. In the movie as well as the TV show, for the first time, they actually had a real person (George, of course) up on wires and appearing to fly. No animation! Of course, the special effects were extremely crude by today's standards. Indeed, recently Warner Brothers (who now owns DC Comics, who in turn own the rights to Superman) has issued the first 4 seasons of "Adventures of Superman" on DVD and thanks to the digital remastering, it is very easy to *see* the wires holding George up! It was this version of Superman that I grew up with as a little boy. And of course, the story goes that Reeves committed suicide because he was so depressed over being typecast as Superman and couldn't find any other work as an actor.

Then, as you know, Christopher Reeve became the Man of Tomorrow in 1978 in a very high budget, much publicized, and extremely successful movie. Chris appeared as Superman in 4 movies, the third of which was pretty disappointing and the fourth of which was so bad that we would all like to forget it ever happened!

And now, finally after all these years, "Superman Returns" with Brandon Routh.

So there you have it: I know bupkes about Superman. I do know a good song when I hear one, though, and I think you should hear it, too.

So often he does it better

My blog posts on the heat are topped by a Jon Carroll column. I don't mind when he does it better; I'm just glad I get to read him. He's right on, once again.

Another "he" who done good: my boss wrote a song that's worth checking out. You may recall from earlier posts that I work for some big ol' software company, so this is a fellow software geek we're talking about, but his song has something to say and says it well.

If you're from my generation, you might be as clueless as I was, so here's a tip on the background: the original Superman was George Reeves, father of Christopher Reeves, the guy who was famous as a movie hunk and then more famous as a spinal cord injury activist. George Reeves died under mysterious circumstances (murder? suicide? see the movie!). If anyone knows the truth and can prove it, they're not talking, but for at least one little boy in Iowa who needed his hero, the alleged suicide came as a real blow.

It's so amazing when people step way outside their usual comfort zones to do something that matters to them.

In other news, Ayse thinks my blog needs a new title. Obviously she's right, but what would it be? Use that comment link, people!

I've just learned that if you read this blog with Windows Internet Explorer, you've never seen all the stuff in the right column.

Let's take stock. Do you see nothing besides the title and recent posts? If so, you're using a crappy, lousy, horrible, inferior browser, and you should move on. Over there--->> on the right, you should see a little picture of me, a list of photo collections found within, a link to archives of old posts, a wee sudoku, and some links to other blogs I read. If you don't see that, your browser sucks.

Internet Explorer is about the lamest and most pathetic web browser I've ever attempted to use. I'll restrain myself from the urge to level a blast at all of Windows and focus my wrath on IE: it's lousy, and if it's the only web browser you've ever used, you're in for a huge surprise. Almost all the alternatives out there are better. I myself like OmniWeb, and Safari and Firefox are my backup browsers. None of them are perfect, but all of them are better. The first two are the exclusive privilege of Mac users, but those of you who haven't yet seen the light on the whole Mac vs. Whatever question could at least do yourselves the favor of trying Firefox. ("Firewho?" I hear you ask. Use Google, it's not hard to find it.) Download it and use it for two days. You might move on to something else, but you'll never go back to IE.

For those of you who do have Macs, give OmniWeb a try. It has its little problems, but I have yet to find a browser that doesn't. What OmniWeb does well, it does so well that you'll want to use it all the time, and you won't mind having to keep Safari and Firefox around for the bits and pieces it doesn't handle as well.

You know it's hot when...

...two cats and a dog all do their dead-horse impressions within feet of each other in what they've decided is the coolest room in the house.

...your black lab is too tired to get up and ask for a bite of your hot dog. 

...your cat decides that the granite countertop is a good place to lounge. 

...you work in the dark because you don't want your 100 watt light bulb heating up the room. 

Wicked hot

It's been wicked hot here since Friday. Usually on the few days a year that this area gets hot, we get coastal fog by nightfall to cool it all back down again, and those days are usually at least in August if not September or October. July in SF is famously the coldest winter Mark Twain ever spent. Usually we joke about July coming, better get out the wool sweaters. Not this month! It got up to 94 inside, 99 outside, and cooled only to 89 at night, three nights in a row and counting. I know that doesn't sound so bad to people in many areas, but what you have to realize is that we don't have air conditioners around here, so when it does get this hot, there's very little we can do about it. I was glad the July opera was over, because it was 105-115 in the tunnel suburbs.

Actually, office buildings and the wealthy people in their McMansions have air conditioning, and the power draw usually causes brownouts or rolling blackouts when we get heat waves. The utilities then beg us all to "Flex our power" and only run appliances after sunset and before sunup. They rarely mention that the wealthy should turn down their air conditioners. We sweltering hoi polloi are supposed to wash our dishes by hand and do laundry after bedtime so that the McMansions can stay cool. Right. I think instead of having rolling blackouts, they should just throttle the amount of electricity available to each home as needed, and each home can allocate its share as desired. Maybe if the McMansioners realized that their air conditioning and refrigerators were mutually exclusive choices, they'd set the AC higher than 65. And just think, the general population might finally figure out the relationships between volts, watts, and amps!

While I'm ranting, why is it that the people who think AC needs to be set at 65 are also the people who think furnaces need to be set at 75? And how come the people with the flags on their SUVs are also the people who can't be bothered to vote?)

Heat waves make me cranky.

Anyway, Saturday we woke up hot and miserable, and it didn't take me long to declare it a desperate time calling for desperate measures and mix up a batch of Danish Marys, which helped. At 3pm it was all I could do to force myself outside and light the grill to roast a chicken. Fortunately, it tasted pretty good. We were dousing ourselves in cold water several times an hour, and by the end of the day we'd gone through a gallon of iced tea and all the ice in our freezer, which is saying something when you have an ice machine.

We tried to take Candy for an afternoon walk but only got about two houses away before we had to give up--it was just too hot to move, and since she'd pooped, we just turned around and promised her a proper walk after dark. After dark it was still too hot, though, so none of us got any significant exercise Saturday.

Yesterday we woke up hot and miserable for the third day in a row and went out to buy fans. I've lived here since 1994 and never needed anything more than a wimpy little oscillating tabletop fan that I'd brought from Chicago. I don't remember even using that fan since moving to Montclair for anything but ventilating rooms with fresh paint or tile lacquer, and after the kitchen project, it was so gunky and bedraggled, I finally threw it away. However, all three critters had been doing their dead horse impressions since Friday and it was starting to worry me, so we went and bought two high-power fans for them. They've been roaring on high ever since.

We also got a sprinkler for Candy, and when we got home we stripped down a layer and took her out to play in it. V and I loved it, but Candy had to be dragged and stood there with this look of despair or at least resignation. I swear, though, she appreciated when she went back inside to flop on her pillow all wet with the fan blowing on her. She looked perky and alert for the first time in days. We also felt much better and went out with the newspaper and our wet clothes to the back deck. We decided a bucket of icy water was a nice place to keep our feet. Norton begged to come out, so I dunked his paws in the icy water several times, too. He didn't appreciate that at all, but I swear it did him some good. Gjetost, meanwhile, had retreated to the coolest, darkest corner of the house: my office, behind the milkcrates under my desk. Once we realized she was missing, it took us quite a panicky ten minutes or so to find her!

We made a cold dinner and sat down to watch a movie at 8. By the end of the movie, V pointed out that cool air was coming in, so we took Candy on her walk and felt gleeful. You know it's hot out when 85 feels like a cool breeze. She had fun growling at a couple raccoons.

Now's about the time I realized our refrigerator/freezer needed to be turned down--it was 50 in the fridge and 25 in the freezer, so that helped explain why we'd emptied the ice supply two days in a row. Poor thing just wasn't keeping up.

Here we are, day four, and it's 83 inside and 87 outside already at 10:30am. Not good.

Over the winter, we had 100-year-record rainfall, and now our supposedly coldest month is the hottest I've been through since moving to California. It's beyond me how anyone can deny that global warming is happening.

In better news, that record rainfall seems to be promising a bumper crop of Montclairberries. Before it got quite so blisteringly hot, I harvested the first big load, and we started macerating three bucketsful of the family product--one rum, two vodka. Montclairberry Slurpees are in our future.

Whoops!

Sorry about that broken link to the Deck: Before and After, Jr. photo collection. It's fixed now.

It's bloody hot here--too hot to think clearly or accomplish anything. I need to cobble together some kind of swamp-cooler for the baking kitties.

Scope-creep happens

After Jon and George and Russ and the guys finished my kitchen, way back in the fall of 2004, George tore out the rotten, ugly, hideous, cheap-ass deck-facsimile that had been his route for supply-hauling and so on for the five months he'd been slaving on my kitchen, and he built me a beautiful redwood and copper deck.

This would be the ultimate scope creep. We'd gone from redoing a kitchen, widening an opening, and redoing dining room, music studio, and entry floors, to doing all that plus tearing out, upgrading, and lighting a deck and major outdoor staircase.


The deck was awful. It was beyond awful; it was scary and hateful. When I bought the house, it was one of the declared "preexisting conditions." There was already a bounty on its everhating head: $6K. Yeah, right, $6K. I started talking to contractors and heard numbers more like $30K, and I decided I could ignore the rotting, hideous deck for a while. But five years had gone by, and Jon and George and Russ and the guys had been tromping up and down on my deck and cursing at my deck and cutting tiles on my deck and stacking old appliances on my deck and heaping debris on my deck for five months more, and it had become apparent that this deck was not only ugly and hideous but a potential liability.

George and I had shared morning coffee nearly every morning for five years, and afternoon beers and whatnot for many of those days, so by now we were family. Since the kitchen was finished and he was ready for a new project, George offered to redo my deck, showed me some sketches, and offered a reasonable estimate of materials, times, rates, and so on. We reached agreement over martinis one night (or rather, I was drinking a martini, and he was having a vodka-vermouth-olive concoction). I took care of the boring legal details, he took my deck books and sketches home to think about, and we were off.

George decided to view this holistically as a project not only of construction but of art, of mind and body, and of moral struggle, so he decided not to involve any cut-rate (not to mention illegal) day laborers. He decided to do all the work himself, including digging out the hillside as needed to have a single door-level deck and remove the steps and level change; including digging holes for piers and mixing and hauling concrete for piers; including constructing a whole new, higher, stronger retaining wall running a larger portion of the perimeter. We decided to take Before and After George pictures to go with the Before and After deck pictures, since he planned to improve his own physique along with my deck. The Before pictures are in the photo collection, but we forgot to take the Afters, unfortunately.


I helped with a bit of the shovelwork, but nothing significant, and the design process was collaborative, involving many sessions of us staring at what was done so far and discussing how next to proceed, but on the whole, this deck was a work of George Lawson art.

Did I mention that George is an artist?

Google him, and you will find a long (electronic) paper trail of his ongoing career as an artist. Eventually you'll land at his site and see his newest paintings, which were inspired by the enthusiastic reception that a painting of his received at my kitchen-warming (Smørgåsbord V: Norway and Sweden) in January 2005. I've hung two of his works, tangram dancers and turtles, in my music studio, and you'll see these in my Before:After, Jr: The Deck photo collection.

His new work is exciting. I want the Japanese firemen.

It was also a remarkable act of friendship. We grew closer, as his work grew depressing as the weather grew colder, and my software job grew depressing (because we were going through a rough spell at work). Many is the time we slurped nasty protein shakes for lunch together, dug holes together, and commiserated over our miserables states of employ. Our conversational arch over the four months (or so) that it took to redo the deck covered the nature and purpose of art, daily politics, the disastrous 2004 elections, food, life, love, and everything else that mattered then and still matters now.

We watched the series of presidential and vice-presidential debates together, always over the requisite food and drink. One dark night, George W. Bush the Despicable won reelection. As Ohio's electoral votes stood between us and doomsday, George even persuaded me to give him a haircut, and I can at least say for myself that his head looked better for the next six weeks or so than my nation did.

Back to art, my house has a George Lawson original on the west side. It's still waiting for its crowning glory, a promised redwood sculpture, perhaps of a napping cat, to be perched on the curiously unfinished-looking post at the bottom of the staircase. It's also waiting for a signature. When these are installed, we'll mix martinis and vodka concoctions and dedicate not just a beautiful work of construction and art but another wonderful branch of my family. I'll always have an extra chop on the grill for George.

V's new baby

V got a shiny new silver baby!

You found me!

I moved my blog to blogspot, because I was fed up with all the glitches and gotchas of trying to keep this thing together on my comcast homepage. A URL that's easier to remember is a nice bonus for the switch: http://erinvang.blogspot.com/. (Don't click that; you're already here.)

Here are feed options, for those who know how to use them:

• http://erinvang.blogspot.com/atom.xml


• http://feeds.feedburner.com/SoYouThinkYouWantToRemodelYourKitchen

Please let me know if you notice links not working, etc., particularly with the photo albums, which are still on the dreaded comcast.net.