Today I was given the opportunity to sign a petition to give the Green Party regular party status here in Missouri. I am only too happy to strike a blow against the crock of lies and corruption that we call the Two Party System. I have been surrounded by politics my whole life, I have a degree in Political Science and have been a long time activist and in all that time, I have yet to hear one explanation for keeping third parties off the ballot that did not set off my bullshit detector.
If we let just anybody on the ballot, the ballot would be several pages long.
So? There are plenty of places in the world where the ballot is several pages long. They do fine. What harm will it cause?
With so many parties and candidates, people will get confused.
So? If you don't do your homework and fail to go into the polling place knowing the candidates and issues and how you will vote, you are a moron. Democracy is not a system for morons. It is a system for people who give enough of a crap to do their homework.
If there are more than two parties on the ballot, no candidate will get a clear majority and there will have to be a runoff election.
So? After the debacle/coup d'etat that took place last time, the idea of runoff elections look good to me.
It is time to strike a blow for democracy and open the ballot up.
Have I mentioned yet that I hate Mondays?
There is a Starbucks in Steph's new building. Not a shock, there's nearly one on every corner in Seattle. The corners without Starbucks have a Tully's or an SBC.
Anyway, I get my Raspberry Mocha Frapachino Venti. I go to grab a straw and Steph says "Is that straw big enough? They have bigger ones at the counter." I turn and a nice person says "Here you go!" and hands me a big straw.
What am I bitching about, right? I got my coffee and a straw from a nice person. However, my response to this nice person is the killer. Mind you, this happened in a split second, I wasn't wearing my new glasses, my allergies are making my eyes water, I work with lots of men and I'm used to saying this phase, etc. I took the straw and blurted "Thank you, sir!"
However, this may not have been a "sir." This person was tall, wearing slacks and a billowy shirt, an ear ring in the left ear and a rather masculine hair cut. The face was pudgy, probably from too many lattes. On fast but closer inspection, I quickly decided I had just fucked up - this was a butch girl and I had just made a rookie, hetero mistake. My gaydar must be getting overloaded or something. I slinked out of the Starbucks, begging Steph to kill me, then I walked to my building when she wouldn't.
It gets worse. I get up the escalator, and guess who I pass at the top of the stairs? Yup! Our sexual enigma. Now, I see what is almost certainly a male, in a silk shirt. Head spinning, I pretend not to see her/him and brushed past. Hopefully, s/he will be gentle when telling her/his friends what a prick I am. To this moment, I have no idea if I actually offended this person or am reading too much into two minor and quick incidents. It's the fact that I don't know that's bothering me the most. I mean, I have fought all my conservative, white bread upbringing. I have accepted homosexuality as a perfectly normal lifestyle. I have lots of friends who are some shade of gay. I went to a very gay college. Heck, Max here helped me take the first steps in this direction, he woke me up to the mistakes in my programming. Etc., etc., etc. And even with all of that, I had to throw in a gender based pronoun into a normal daily interaction with a stranger and I may have offended her/him. What a way to start a Monday.
I wish someone, anyone, could come up with a set of gender neutral, non-offensive, widely accepted pronouns. Why can't "Will & Grace" or some other popular media outlet begin using something entirely gender neutral - it would be a new fad! Only the hip kids know what these words mean! I think it would help everyone.
Well, one way or another I am working Monday. I have a temporary assignment through Manpower. It is $10 an hour for slightly less than 40 hours a week. The work sounds shitty. But I am not in a tax bracket that allows for pickiness.
The father of one of my wife's friends made a suggestion that was so patently obvious it shouldn't have been necesary for him to even make it. I of course took the suggestion, which is that downtime should be used for upgrading skills. So, I am now immersed in O'Reilly's book on MySQL. It seems like there are a fair number of database gigs out there.
Of course, once I get SQL down, they will all dry up. Such is life.
Yesterday I played hooky from work, my alergies were killng me - I would have been a miserable and pissy co-worker. So, Steph got our Optometry appointment changed. This saved us a ton of insurance hassles. Let's just say that REAL doctors aren't open on Saturdays.
So, I knew I had an astigmatism in my left eye. The last time I went to the eye doctor, two years ago, he showed this to me and illustrated that without my right eye, which is just fine, I would have a ton of trouble seeing long distances. Yesterday, I told my doctor that I had a very light perscription, that there was very little difference with or without my glasses, just a little sharper distances with them.
As I said this, he looked at me funny. I hate when people who know what they are doing do that. It means they smell a fish. So, he has a look and does his thing, and we go through all the lens switching and letter-on-the-wall reading. When done, he has me put my glasses back on and holds a pair of lenses in front of them. Surprise! I can see!
Turns out I'm keratoconic. My left eye is going ovoid, litterally going cone shaped. In the last two years my perscription has doubled. Now, I didn't start wearing glasses until my mid twenties - keratoconus is usually discovered in teenagers. This is setting in hard and fast. My optometrist is worried, as am I. If this keeps going, glasses will eventually not cure the problem. Laser surgery can only be performed on those whose perscription hasn't changed in the last year. If this keeps going it will get to the point that my left eye is as bad as, well, both of Max's eyes!
We went and picked up glasses at Lens Crafters. I just had the lenes changed in my current frames and I tasked them to find the same frames so that I can have two pair of glasses with the same perscription. Anyway, I put on the new glasses and boom! I had depth perception! The doc said it would be like getting used to glasses all over again and he was right. Everything seemed taller. Including me! I'm 6' 2" and up to now my fear of heights has never kicked in - however everytime I stand up, I get vertigo! There are no true squares in my new world, everything is a parallelegram. And, things change shape if I move my head. It's a little freaky. Sharp and clear, but still freaky.
