No Celery Please

I am not sure if this says more about me, or the state of our country, or the fact that even though my main exposure to Fox News is through The Daily Show, I still see too much of it for my own mental health.

But I signed this petition today… http://www.MillionForMarriage.org

I am a supporter of people doing whatever they want as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else. (“An it harm none, do as thou wilt” is a lovely principle, and even though I am not a witch, I agree with it.) This includes marriage rights for gay people, and, actually, whole rafts of other people as well. I think that if two people want to set up a household together for the purposes of maintaining a stable partnership, then they should get all the economic and tax advantages as everyone else.

For me, as a completely non-religious person, marriage is a tax status, and I don’t see why some people should be randomly denied a tax status based on their sexual orientation.

But my point here is not that I think GLBT (and XYZWTOAMFEYS, for that matter) folks should be allowed to marry.

The point I started with was.. I went to this web site, and I filled out the information.  And for about 2 seconds before I pushed the “submit” button, I found myself thinking… “Now… when the religious right completes its takeover of the country and they are beginning the ideological cleansing of the rest of us, is my name on this list going to cause me to be among the first sent to the “re-education” center?”

I pushed the button anyway… but the impulse to worry that exercising my right to sign a petition might come back to haunt me.  Hmmm, yeah, I found that a bit worrying.  I hope it’s just a sign of my own mental issues (which, lord, I know I have) and not indicative of something we actually have to worry about in this country.

And then I Change Things

But he still totally rocks!

Saw “kingdom of the crystal skulls” this weekend.

Hugely silly.  They threw everything they had into this movie.  Including the kitchen sink, which they were practically sitting in as they went careening down the river.

Still.  FABULOUS!  I adored every silly, completely ridiculous minute of it.

Totally recommend it if you haven’t seen it.  I’d say it’s definitely the second best Indi-flick… after the original, of course.  You can’t top Raiders of the Lost Ark, man.

We have a little garden in back of our house with bird a squirrell feeders and a bird bath.

There are three chipmunks who frequent this place to eat the spilled seeds from the ground and do other, cute, chipmunk-y things.

The SB has named them.

Chip

Dale

and…

Thelonious

I found that hi-larious.

Because that’s just the kind of weirdos we are.

OK, OK, I know that reading advice columns is probably a vastly unhealthy pass-time.  But what can I say?  I love the things.  I think because it makes me feel so very normal to read the stuff people write in to them.

Today, though, I have become ticked.  The Ask Amy column will often have some wacky advice, but today… I mean, where is this woman’s brain?

Here’s the column…

Dear Amy: My boyfriend and I were watching my 5-year-old niece. She came to me and told me that my boyfriend said he was going to punch her in the nose. I know that when my boyfriend is playing with the kids he plays around and says things, but he is adamant that he didn’t say that.

I spoke with my niece’s parents, and we chalked it up as a misunderstanding.

But now my boyfriend does not want her playing with him, and he refuses to watch her unless someone is with him every minute.

He is in law enforcement and says he sees things like this all the time, situations in which a kid accuses an adult of doing something and the adult gets in trouble. His exact words were, “God forbid she said I touched her.”

I don’t know how to get him to understand that she is a 5-year-old kid with a vivid imagination, and I feel this might be the end of our relationship. -Helpless and Clueless

Dear Helpless: Most of what young children say has some basis in reality. You should believe your niece but also assume that perhaps your boyfriend was horsing around and that his statement was taken out of context.

Your boyfriend is the adult in this scenario, and it is his job to put things in perspective. Being in law enforcement, he should be more – not less – understanding about this incident. The fact that he is so punitive and blames a 5-year-old for this incident highlights his own immaturity.

I do agree with him about this one thing, however: He should not be alone with your niece because he can’t be trusted to treat her well.

OK, now, let’s start with her comment “Most of what young children say has some basis in reality”… I don’t even know where to begin with that, but I have known quite a few young children, and I have heard some stories, by golly, that I don’t think have ever had a passing acquaintance with “reality”. 

But that’s not my main problem with this.

My problem is that she is BLAMING this guy for “punishing”  kid who has already proven willing to tell tales on him.  She says “Being in law enforcement, he should be more – not less – understanding about this incident. “  Is she kidding?  Being in law enforcement means that he has seen plenty of people’s lives ruined just by someone making an accusation.  He clearly knows the consequences of this.  Once someone says “he touched me” or “he raped me”, it doesn’t matter one little bit who is telling the truth… the “he” in the situation is forever untrustworthy and his life is pretty much ruined. (Ask the Duke Lacross Team).

If I was in his place, there is NO WAY IN HELL I would ever be alone with that kid again… Does Amy know how fast the news would pick up the “law enforcement man abuses little girl” story?

Kids know the fastest way to get someone in trouble nowadays is to play the abuse card. They see the news.  They know why their teachers are afraid to pat them on the back.  And some of them (not all, but some) will use that all over the place to get what they want.

Even with my own nieces and nephews, whom I adore and trust and think are wonderful (mostly), I try my best not to be alone in a room with them for any extended period of time, or to leave the SB alone in a room with them for any extended period of time.  It’s just good sense, really… One pissed off kid makes a remark and bam, lives are ruined, families are torn asunder, people are sent to jail. It’s not that I think my nieces and nephews would ever do something like that.  But I also think it’s easier to make sure that they can’t by simply not providing the opportunity. Also, let’s face it, the only person in the world that I really 100% trust is the SB… everyone else is just a little bit suspect.

Now I am not saying that there aren’t horrible adults out there who should be severely punished for doing horrible things to children.  Because there are. And they should be caught, and have very bad things done to them.

However, I firmly believe that just because a kid says something, that does not make it true, and there definitely are kids out there who will exploit the system just because they can.  What’s the best way to protect yourself from that? 

Never be alone with ‘em. 

In this, I think the guy in this letter is right on the mark… and the first bit of proof is the parting comment… “He should not be alone with your niece because he can’t be trusted to treat her well. ”

Well by golly, here we are… the kid said something about this guy, and now, “he can’t be trusted” – see how simple it is? 

Grrrr…

Starting a huge project that will likely last the whole summer.

Even with a temp and an intern, I am going to be cranking.  I hope last week isn’t indicative of the whole rest of the summer.  I didn’t get a chance to come up for air at all.

The blogging, she may suffer.

Hoping we get a little more settled.

I believe that something I had in the salad for lunch yesterday at Red Robin may not have been washed as thouroughly as it should have been.

Bleh.

Not sick anymore, but gonna be dragging the rest of the day from not sleeping.

Red Robin is dead to me.