Archive - 2008

Oh, and by the way, I'm back. 

The holidays are, mostly, over.  The craziness has finally settled down and I am back in the home office, in my jammies and slippers, typing away madly.  After all the water problems and Christmas preparation craziness, we flew off to Texas for a week to spend the Christmas holiday with the in-laws, who live outside of Fort Worth.  I have pictures of longhorns to prove it.

Our flight back yesterday was fine until the pilot came on and told us that they'd closed the airport here because of bad visibility.  We circled.  Then we circled some more.  Then they wanted us to circle even longer, but we were running out of gas, so we diverted to Des Moines for more (and where they wouldn't let us off the bloody plane), and then flew back up to the Twin Cities, where we were finally allowed to land---three hours late.  It could have been worse, I suppose, and an airport full of angry, frustrated travelers does much to make you choke down your bitterness over the whole business as you avoid tripping over the stranded multitudes as you make your way to baggage claim.  At least we weren't too close to the kids on the plane, who screamed as the pressure changes bothered their poor little ears; they were just background noise as we were seated directly over the wing and the engine noise reduced their volume. 

And all this was because of one bloody inch of snow.  That's right.  One inch of snow that was blowing across the runways in a horrible fashion.  It screwed the proverbial pooch. 

Despite the cold, despite the snow, despite the absolute lack of humidity, I'm glad to be home.  Regular blogging will resume shortly. 

Just as soon as I've got the laundry done. 

As many of you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, know, my beloved nephew, James, is a Type I diabetic.  So when we ask him if he's high, we're not asking if he's been smoking dope---which would be a serious problem because he's only nine---we're asking if his blood sugar is high, which, as we've learned over the years, generally means something of a personality disorder.  He might be crabby, snipping at people for the least likely reason.  He might be a spaz, running all over the place.  He just becomes a whole different person.  Before he was diagnosed a week after his third birthday, we just came to the conclusion that he was one of God's cranky children.  Turns out, however, that he wasn't feeling well.  His personality did a one-eighty after he was diagnosed.  He became a sweet, somewhat biddable child---but his red hair ensured that "somewhat" would be the operative word in that description.  It was a battle to keep his numbers in the proper place, and it was a fight that was well-fought by my sister, brother-in-law, his extended family, and James himself, once he finally realized that how he felt was directly related to his numbers.  But lately this hasn't been much of an issue---because James finally went on a Omnipod pump. 

The pump has changed things dramatically for James.  He can now run around like a normal kid, without worrying if whatever activity he's doing at the moment might knock his numbers out of whack.  While he still cannot snarf a Snickers any time he would like, it's at least theoretically possible that, with the pump, he might do so---he would simply have to readjust whatever else he ate around it.  The pump is great as it delivers insulin directly to his body, without shots, so it keeps his blood sugar numbers nice and even---which means a biddable James, who is not high.  Or low.    But who, in great Goldilockian fashion, is just right.  

As a promotion, the company that puts out the Omnipod, is having a video contest, in which the users of the Omnipod pump describe how the pump has changed their lives.  For James, the pump has meant freedom.  I'll let him do the talking.  The video includes cameos from his family, his teacher and his fourth grade class.

 

Now, the prize for winning this contest is a MacBookPro, and since James is an enterprising youth (he already shares a daily paper route with his brother), whose parents aren't inclined to buy he and his siblings everything under the moon and the stars, he wants that laptop. He wants it badly.  Since the contest is judged, partially, by hits, I'm doing my part to help him win the coveted MacBook by embedding it here.  Watch it a few times.  Run it in the background as many times as you can.  You know, game it.  {Insert deliberate wink and nod here} If you're one of my blogger buddies, embed it on your own site, if you would be so kind, to ensure as many hits as possible.  At times, James has been hobbled by his diabetes.  He doesn't get to eat any of his Halloween candy (his mother buys it off him).  He's endured more shots in his short life than any of us will ever have to endure.  This seems a small way to make up for what the kid has gone through. 

Thanks for your support, my devoted Cake Eater readers. 

Bless the Minneapolis Sewer and Water guys. 

Within three hours yesterday afternoon, they managed to locate the leak in the water intake pipe, fix it, and then backfill the hole in the yard they made to accomplish said tasks. 

Bless them. 

They did not have to jackhammer the slab in the basement, as I'd been told.  They found the leak, which was near the stopbox in the sidewalk, and did their work from there.  Dave, the landlord's fix-it-guy told me that they'd be showing up around noon.  I was dreading arriving at home, wondering what sort of shape the house and yard would be in.  But, by the time I was home from the hospital, around two-thirty or so, they were shoveling the dirt back into the hole, and when I walked up the hill to my front door, they announced, with no small amount of glee, that we had our water back.  Shocked, I asked, "Are you serious?  Really?  That was fast!"  He grinned.  "We got it quickly.  You'll want to go through the house and turn on all the faucets to get the air bubbles out."  "Ok," I replied, still stunned.  "Thank you!"   I went inside and did as he asked, and then watched from the front window as four guys shoveled dirt back into the hole they'd made at the base of the hill to fix the problem and put an orange cone over the spot where the new sidewalk had been jackhammered.  Dressed in the typical brown winter coveralls and hooded jackets of the average contractor, they made short work of the problem while snow fell upon them at a decent clip, and within good time had packed up their gear and drove away.  

I'm amazed.  Seriously.  I have nothing but admiration for the guys who tough it out and work during the winter.  Many outdoors contractors up here in frozen tundra land work like crazy during the summer so they have the financial werewithal to avoid having to take jobs during the winter.  These are the guys who become snowbirds in their early thirties, and play golf all winter long in a warm climate.  Or, if they have to work in the winter, they solely take indoor jobs---and if they have to take outdoor jobs, they usually bitch and moan about the cold and then get the job done as quickly as they can, which means that it's a temporary fix, only meant to last until the snow melts, so you have to pay them twice to get one fix.   I can't say that I blame them for any of it, because there's nothing worse than having to work outside all day long when it's five below and snow is falling, but it does become annoying when you've got a problem and this is the attitude you run up against.  You have to live and work in the cold, why aren't they set up for it?  Why don't they just accept the conditions and get on with it?  It gets a bit old, and you have a tendency to find another contractor. 

Yet, of course, there are jobs that require outside work, even in winter, and these hardy souls just seem to man up and do the work, because they, ahem, can make good money while the snow is falling.  These are the guys who climb up on icy, snowy roofs to clear them of said meteorological goodies so ice dams don't form when it warms up a bit.  This is considered regular household maintenence here during the winter, and there are plenty of people willing to do the work. Same goes for the trash collectors, cable and satellite installers, cops, and the snow plow guys, who clear parking lots and driveways in the wee hours of the morning---and, of course, the water and sewer guys who were out here yesterday.  They just put their heads down and got to work---and, while of course they were undoubtedly happy that they could get out of the weather at the end of the job, they put in a permanent fix, because it obviously didn't occur to them to do otherwise.  Life goes on, even in winter, and things must be maintained and fixed, otherwise worse things will happen.  These are the guys who understand that things should be done right the first time and bad, cold weather is no excuse.  They have my eternal admiration for having to deal with the snow and the cold.  I couldn't do it.  I admire them because they think it's just part of the working conditions.  Bless them. 

I'm now going to take a shower, and not worry for the first time in days that my next door neighbors are staring at their meter, watching the little blue star turn round and round as I use their water to wash, whilst wondering how much the city is going to ding them for our usage, even though we told them we would take care of the overage.  {insert windy, happy sigh here}  It's going to be lovely.

What's worse?  A bad novel?  Or the audio version of a bad novel?

Discuss. 

It's currently -1 outside.  I'm toasty and comfortable here in the office. 

Unfortunately, my water pipes on the outside of the house aren't quite so toasty.  They're shivering, trying to stay warm, under blankets and bags of leaves that, somehow, missed the last leaf pickup before Thanksgiving and are with us for the duration of the winter.  Now, normally, our water supply would be as secure and warm as anyone else's because we usually get our water, again, like everyone else: through buried pipes.  Alas, however, on Friday, we had to hook up, via garden hose, to our very pissy next door neighbor's water supply. 

And it's entirely my fault. 

Before Thanksgiving, I went to bed in the wee hours of the morning, waking the husband up when I crawled into bed, per usual.  Thanks to menopause, I usually have some issues with trying to get to sleep, but this night it wasn't my lack of sleep regulating hormones that kept me awake: it was a strange vibration coming from down in the basement.  It sounded like it was right below our bed.  The husband, when informed of this, went to investigate.  Naked as a jaybird, he strutted down to the basement,  fully confident in his manly man abilities to sort the problem out.  After about fifteen minutes of running all over the place, then getting chilled and coming back into the bedroom for his bathrobe, he announced his findings: there was a vibration in the water intake pipe.  Since someone is flipping the house across the street, there had been guys in the street, working on the plumbing, attached to this particular project, and the husband assumed some air bubbles had gotten into the pipe when they were working on it, and a call to the city's public works department was in order. 

Well, with one thing and another, I didn't get around to calling public works until last Thursday.  They sent a guy out and he sniffed out the problem, and it wasn't air bubbles in the line.  It was, instead, a leak in the intake.  He assumed that it was reasonably small, as we hadn't noticed too much of a change in water pressure, and that it was also draining out the sewer line, which was nearby.  It needed to be fixed, though, and to do get that done, I informed the husband and he in turn informed the landlord. 

This is when the handbasket pulled the "Go to directly to hell.  Do not pass 'Go.'  Do not collect $200" card, and went on its merry way to the underworld.  

The landlord's fix-it guy, a nice chap, and, with a complete set of city water workers, showed up the next day, unnanounced, to suss out the problem.  They turned the water off and then turned it back on again, deciding that they would, indeed, have to replace the water pipe from the street, but that it wasn't urgent, and could be taken care of in the near future.  Like, on a warm day.  They left, and Dave, the fix-it guy, told me he'd call me when he had a game plan.  Unfortunately, a few moments after they were gone, I had to call them to come back.  After the water is turned off, it's my habit to go to all the faucets and turn them on, to get the air out of the pipes.  When I don't do this, and turn the faucet on later, I always hit the ceiling, like a cartoon cat, when the air bubbles come out, and make weird noises.  This is the easiest way to prevent my heart coming out of my chest.  Well, this time, not only wasn't there any air, there wasn't any water, either.  I ran around to all the faucets, and there wasn't a drop, except in the basement, but that was only at a trickle.  

It would seem that when they turned the water off, the backed up pressure in the pipe blew the small leak open further.  According to Dave, when he came back and dragged the city water guys with him, the water was now not exiting via the sewer line, as before, but was instead flowing down the inside of the hill, and if they took off the utility cap in the sidewalk, they could see it rushing out.  Yippeee.  This meant poor Dave spent the rest of the day, coming in and out of the house, trying to get us hooked up to a water supply---our neighbor's water, which was attached via a garden hose that snakes between their house and ours.  The guys Dave brought with him had to first, defrost the silcock, because, as the city water guy said as he glared at me, we hadn't turned them off and they were frozen.  I had no idea I was supposed to do this, and told him as much.  He just kept on with the malevolent glaring.  Second, they had to acquire the neighbor's permission to hook up.  The water guys assured the hesitant neighbors that it wouldn't affect their pressure and they would adjust their water bill.  I'm told it took much wheedling and pleading, but they got the job done.  They insulated the hose, and, to keep it warm, furthermore stacked the aforementioned bags of leaves around our silcock to keep it warm, and unfrozen.  As they did this, I worked on the Christmas cards, and kept an eye on their movements from the warmth and comfort of my living room chair while Christmas carols played in the background.  By five thirty, we had water, the guys were gone, and all was well.  I could finally take a shower, this day being the one day I hadn't because I'd had physical therapy early, had woken late, and had to hustle down to the pain clinic unshowered.  Then we went out to dinner, and all was right with the world.  As it got up to forty on Saturday, we weren't too worried about the hose freezing. 

But it did freeze last night.  Yesterday was a weird Minnesota Meterological day.  It was raining when I got up, and as I had to travel to the northern burbs to meet Mr. H. for coffee, I was a bit concerned it might turn to ice, but it didn't: it simply rained.  It did, however, turn to freezing rain about an hour after I returned, and turned the streets into a skating rink.  The temperatures plummeted all day long, and it went from raining, to raining ice, to snowing.  

And, of course, the damn silcock froze up right when it was snowing the hardest.  The poor husband, again being the manly man with manly man abilities, went outside to see where the line was frozen.  It was 6 degrees when he did this and the wind was howling, making the falling snow actually look like that in a freshly shaken snow globe.  He assumed, rightly, that the silcock had frozen, and in a freakin' snow storm, he stayed put, crouched by the silcock, warming it with a hair dryer, waiting for me to tell him that the water had started flowing.  This took about a half-hour, and, after wrapping the defrosted silcock with a wool blanket, and restacking the bags of leaves, he finally came in, and he was frozen, with a rosy, chapped face and was panting, having had his breath robbed by the cold.  

But we had water!

And we still do.  I chatted with Dave this morning, at seven-thirty no less, and he said he'd received a very angry call from our next door neighbor last night, who, apparently, is more than a bit costive, was incredibly cheesed about the entire situation.  Dave told me the time he called and I said, "Well, that was the time Michael was out there with the hair dryer."  He understood, and we both sighed.  He told me he was arranging for the job to start tomorrow morning, which isn't soon enough for our neighbor, but as it's tricky, I'm just glad it's getting done as quickly as it is.  Dave not only has to arrange the job with a plumber, the city has to be in on it, as does a set of sewer guys.  Supposedly, too, they're going to have to jackhammer the slab to get to the problem, as well.  But fortunately, they don't have to dig up the yard to replace the pipe.  They can pull it out at the base of the hill, as the stop box, and can insert a new one from the house.  Or so I was given to understand.  Fortunately, I won't be home tomorrow, so I should miss most of the excitement.  Thank God. 

All of this hassle, if one can believe it, started with me noticing a vibration whilst trying to drop off to sleep.  The law of unintended consequences has kicked in once again, and since it's Christmas, I'm sincerely hoping this is the only unintended consequence that hits us. 

Keep your fingers crossed, eh?

Al Franken has truly plumbed a new depth in this recount business. His idea, in case you couldn't be bothered to watch the video, is to show the people who had their absentee ballots rejected. Even though they claim they didn't do anything wrong!  Never mind the fact that he even manages to exploit a quadriplegic for his own crass, political gains.  (Nicely done, Al.  Way to be diverse.  I can only imagine how that casting call went.  Franken's people's probably couldn't believe their luck and succumbed in a heap of spastic joy right there in the poor man's  living room )

Well, see here's the dealio, people.  If you don't fill out your ballot precisely as the election boards require, it's going to be rejected.  If you don't put your driver's license number on the envelope, it's going to be rejected, even if you don't have a driver's license.  How the hell is an election judge going to know that the reason you didn't fill that part out is because you don't have one?  They're going to assume that you messed up, and since they have no way of verifying who you are, it's going to be thrown into the slush pile.  There is nothing new or earth shattering about this.  The election officials NEED TO KNOW who you are, so that ballots are not being submitted willy nilly.  It's called "preventing election fraud," and if your ballot was properly rejected or improperly rejected makes no difference: there was something about it that set off alarm bells, hence it was rejected.  Duh.  It's not that hard, people.  I almost wasn't able to vote this election cycle because we'd just moved, and my driver's license did not have my current address on it.  I'd already applied for a new license----it just hadn't arrived yet and they weren't willing to take the piece of paper the DOT hands out as a temporary license in place of the real, laminated thing.  Fortunately, I had my new registration card and they were able to make it work that way. They need these bits of evidence to make sure that the process isn't corrupted.  That there is only one vote per person.  That there will be no ballot box stuffing.  It's just that simple.

If you assume that the bureaucracy is working for you, and that the burden is on them to get things right, I don't know what state you're living in because it sure as hell isn't Minnesota.   The burden is on you, and that means paying attention when there isn't a tight race, capisce?  It's your government after all, pay attention.  To illustrate this point, as I've mentioned before, during the 2004 presidential elections, I went to vote, but the husband couldn't, because he'd had his civil rights revoked per his DWI felony conviction. However, his name was still on the rolls, and he could have voted if he'd wanted to.  How do I know this?  Because I saw his name in the register, just below mine.  He didn't do it, but it became abundantly clear that the registrar hadn't been informed of his legal status at that point in time, even though it was more than a year since his revocation.  He was finally off the rolls in 2006, but there's obviously some lag time.  Earlier this year, when his civil rights were reinstated, the first thing he did was to register to vote, as he knew it might take some time to straighten things out.  Experience had proved as much.  

This is the thing that fries me about these recounts, and all the legal challenges that arise in their wake.  Every vote should be counted, yes.  But not every vote is for various reasons, and this happens all the time---it only matters when the race is close.  Everyone was shocked when it was released that there were thirty some ballots in the back seat of some election judge's car.  They weren't secure!  Are they fake?  They weren't secured!  How do we know they're for real? and so on and so forth.  This happens all the time with elections.  This isn't anything new.  Elections are messy things.  There is a lot of paper involved.  They are run, by and large, with volunteer help.   Things we don't generally like, such as the questionable security of ballots, will generally happen in such an event.  But we don't care about such irregularities when a race is a blowout.  We don't care about rejected ballots then.  We assume that everything was copacetic.  Most people move on with their lives and don't think twice about it.  But when things don't go as planned, and the race is tight as it can possibly be, well, EVERY VOTE SHOULD COUNT, DAMMIT! 

Allow me be a bit of a stick in the mud here, but no, every vote should not count because not every vote is valid.  I'm not talking about the content.  I'm talking about the fact that people don't fill their ballots out properly.  They don't sign them.  They don't provide accurate information.  They've moved and they give the wrong address.  Whatever. If these people had shown up at the polls, they wouldn't have been allowed to vote at all, so why should the fact that they submitted absentee ballots be any different?  The only reason the people in the video above knew their ballots hadn't been counted, I'd wager, was because Al Franken's campaign contacted them.  Look, I've got some experience with this.  Back in the day, I was on the All University Election Committee at Iowa State.  I worked on one student election (actually two, because the original results were contested), which doesn't really compare with actual elections, but there are a number of base similarities---in that people need to be eligible to vote, and if they fill their ballot out incorrectly, said ballot is automatically rejected. Fair or unfair, as you please, but it is necessary that there be no doubt about the results.  Integrity is essential, because, if the whole system breaks down, so does our democracy, and it's irrelevant as to whether it's an election for a college student body president, or if it's a presidential race.  If the process has integrity, people will know their vote, most likely, counted, and they will have faith in the results.  If people don't have faith in the results, if they think the system has been gamed somehow, they will not take their place in our democracy, which is participatory in nature and needs them to survive.  It's absolutely essential.  For all that happened with Bush v. Gore in 2000, for all that was said and done, for all their bluster, the people who believed that particular race was stolen nevertheless still participated in the system.  They became activists, rather than secessionists.  That is important. 

When there's a tight race, rank, stinking partisanship becomes the judge, jury and executioner of the integrity of elections.  This is not good, to put it mildly, and it fries me whenever these recounts happen because the subsequent behavior of the candidates and their surrogates is absolutely inexcusable.  They deem it necessary to call the entire system into question to serve their own aims, yet when the dust settles, they never do anything to help shore up the integrity of the same system they challenged when it served their purposes to do so. 

This afternoon, I had my three-month checkup with Dr. Academic.  His practice moved the entire office one building over a couple of months ago, into a new addition, and, I have to say, why the hell was there no giant LCD tee vee in the waiting room when I had to go there every week or so and wait an half-hour or more to be seen?  Eh?  Eh? 

The practice has moved into a seriously suh-weet set of offices.  The place is huge, gleaming, fresh, and organized.   I had to go in last week to have blood drawn for a CA-125 (and it came back at 8, thankyouverymuch, woot!) and since the lab is right behind the lobby door, it was hard to get a sense of the place.  Well, today I had a chance to peek around a bit and I about shit a golden eggroll when I saw the treatment room.  Jesus Christ on a freakin' pogo stick, people, it was...well, how to describe it, hmmm.  Let's see.  If the old treatment room was a hotel it would be a Holiday Inn or one of those other, anonymous hotels you see by interstate exits. Serviceable, with clean sheets and bathroom, but nothing fancy.  The new treatment room is the Four Seasons, with 800 count sheets and pillow service.  Plasma tee vees galore, for the entertainment of the patient, and  it appears they finally chipped out for cable, when before you could only get the local channels.  There was room for people to actually come and visit when a patient was receiving chemo, and they helpfully provided chairs for them, surrounding the comfy recliners, which are, sadly, still coated in vinyl.  Oh, and it's now called "The Infusion Center" rather than what everyone else called it, back in the po' days: the treatment room.   I'd wager they finally got wi-fi, too.  Bastards.  I feel somewhat cheated, I must say. If I had to get cancer, and if I had to receive chemo, why the hell couldn't it have been now, when there's cable and wifi in the oncologist's office, and not then, when there wasn't?  Eh?  Eh?  It's not fair, I tell ya!  

I'm kidding.  Really and truly.  If they'd found the cancer this year, they'd be doing it at my autopsy. 

Anyway, to get back to the random observation of the day, CNN was blaring in the waiting room, and Rick Sanchez was hyperventilating over the Blago-whateverhisnameis indictments.  It occurred to me that the only surprising thing about this entire mess is that they actually arrested the guy.  The only way that could happen is if he truly went to a place where no one would cover for him.  And he did.  He was that blatant; that arrogant, that no one was willing to stick their neck out to protect him.  When the Democratic Party Machine in Illinois are willing to hand over a governorship simply because they don't want to look bad, you know it's bad.  

My thought is that he's a sacrificial lamb offered up to the media to keep them from looking further into The Chosen One's political past (you know, now that they've got the guy they want, they can't keep giving him free passes---they have to get him to work on what they want.  The media as a constituent, who knew it could happen?), but what do I know? 

One thing's for certain: Blago-whatever is the single dumbest politician in the history of Illinois.  Dude.  Everyone knows that Illinois politicians know which side their bread is buttered on and who does the buttering.  It's an open secret.   To shoot your mouth off, on a line you know is bugged, about getting this, that or the other for a senate appointment?  Christ.  That's just fucking dumb.  Papa Daley is spinning at 4000 RPM's in his grave. 

Cops should devote a special episode to him.

Last night, Vlad the Impaler decided to spend three hours on television in Russia, in his usual festive holiday fashion, taking phone calls from his people. 

Because the peasants are his people.  And he loves his people.  PULL!*  

Erm...anyway.  Here be the highlights:

{...}Fielding questions about everything from Nato to unemployment benefits to Christmas trees, he made few new policy pronouncements but projected the impression that a strong man was at the helm and knew what to do.

Russia’s central bank would continue to defend the rouble from “sharp swings” in the exchange rate, he said. He reiterated the line that other politicians have taken that the state might take stakes in Russia’s large companies to prevent them from bankruptcy.

For people who had lost their jobs and had to pay off mortgages, Mr Putin announced the federal mortgage agency would take over loans from commercial banks and not demand early repayment. He promised large-scale help for the mounting number of unemployed.

Among the 1.3m calls, no concern was too minuscule to be dealt with. The people of the small Siberian town of Pokrovska wanted a sports centre built. “We will absolutely try to react” he told the audience.

A caller from the eastern province of Bashkyria complained that his sister had been deprived of her invalidity benefits. “It must have been a mistake. We’ll see what we can do,” Mr Putin assured him.

The majority of callers were worried about the economy, rising inflation and unemployment. Russians were either uninterested in speculation that Mr Putin planned to return prematurely to the presidency, or the questions were filtered out.{...}

But wait...it gets better. 

{...}Mr Putin was asked to offer his opinion on what kind of Christmas tree should someone buy (“artificial Christmas trees can also be entertaining”), and a young girl named Dasha called from Buryatia to ask for a new dress for the new year. “New years is a time to think not only of what you want but what your grandmother wants as well,” said Mr Putin, before inviting the girl’s family to Moscow.{...}

Ah, the paternalistic Vlad.  The one we know and love so much.  The one who not only, apparently, cares about what kind of Christmas tree one should get for the holiday season, but who apparently doesn't like it when his adopted daughter, named Georgia, tries to rebel against papa's dearest held wishes that she not date that awful NATO boy. 

And then beats the shit out of her to get what he wants.

One wonders when his other daughter, Ukraine, will start acting up?

*spot the quote

Or in Beaker's case, an Ode to Joy with a self-destructive streak that would give Amy Winehouse a run for her money..

 

If only they could fit this into Die Hard we'd be stylin.

{shamelessly filched from Sheila} 

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Sigh.

I'm a supporter of gay marriage or civil unions or whatever you want to call them.  It's the libertarian in me.  It's a civil rights issue.  It bothers me that the husband and I were automatically granted any number of legal rights when we got married because we're straight.  That my gay and lesbian friends don't receive the same legal rights when they pair up bothers me.  And I am talking about the civil definition of marriage here---not a church mandated definition.  I'm strictly talking about the legal rights granted when two people are legally married.  I don't think churches should be forced to marry people who live outside of their beliefs. I don't think legalizing same-sex civil unions is going to open the door to legalizing polygamy.  I don't think gay marriage is going to hurt the institution of marriage; I think it's actually going to save it. To badly paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke:  I'm so conservative I want gays and lesbians to get married so they can start bitching about high taxes, bad schools and the like.  After all, they could probably teach us a thing or two about political activism.   

That said, as much as I love Marc Shaiman, this little video is not the way to go about persuading people to support your cause.