I Will Survive

Editorial note: I copied and pasted this from my phone with some minor editing.

It's 530 a.m. and I'm standing behind about two hundred people to get into a Target. I'm typing this into my phone. I've had no time to blog lately and figured that this was as good a time as any.

Why am I doing this? I've never done this before-participate in one of those door busters sales the day after Thanksgiving.

But I talked to my sister Lorraine yesterday. She's stressing because she wants to get my niece and nephew a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. And supply is limited. I told her I wanted one too and I'd be on the lookout for her. So that's why I'm here.

I think I should get some extra points for my gay card. I hate shopping. But surely standing in line at five thirty in the morning is worth some points! It's now 5:45 and there are about one hundred people behind me. These people are crazy. I want to reiterate that I'm here in the hopes of attaining a hard to get item. Not because I want to buy Ernest Saves Christmas for the low price of $4.95 (from 6-9 am only).

I looked at the ads yesterday. There was nothing great about them. My goal is to run into the store and see if they have the Wii. If they don't I'm going down the shopping complex to gamestop. There were only ten people in line there when I pulled in this morning and they don't open til seven.

I have a feeling that I'll end up standing around for two hours for nothing. Hopefully that's not the case. 8 more minutes til showtime. I'm putting my phone away. I'm going to need both hands to push everyone out of my way.

I hope It's something like in the 80s when cabbage patch dolls were scarce and parents fought tooth and nail for those ugly dolls. That's the true spirit of Christmas. Right?

OK. Target was a bust. That place was absolutely crazy. Everyone was packed in the technology section. You couldn't move between the shopping carts. The people behind the camera desk were overwhelmed. It was surreal. Honestly there weren't amazing deals. Sadly, they only had 24 Wiis. Those were gone before I crossed the shoe department...

I love video games but i can't stand the freaks that work and shop at game stores. This guy behind me (I'm now at gamestop) is calling everyone "guy." And when someone asked if he was standing in line for a Wii he got all offended like his manhood was questioned. Then he made a big show of saying that he would never want a Wii. And that he wasn't here to buy anything but to exchange a game.

Who the fuck gets in line an hour before a store opens to exchange a game? I hate him. The two ladies behind me are talking to him. His voice is grating. I hope the game he's exchanging isn't in. He wears his wedding ring around his neck. First, he mentioned his wife. I quickly turned around when he said that because I couldn't believe he would be married. Then I noticed he wears his wedding ring around his neck. For the love of God, WHY? Because the extra weight will slow him down a tenth of a second while playing Halo 2?

It's five minutes til opening and the store manager is getting out of his car. How do I know this? The annoying man just announced it to the whole crowd. The manager said they only have six Wiis and no PS3s. The first couple of people cheer and everyone else groans. Oh well. I'll try again next week.

Editorial note: Joe tried going to WalMart to get a $50 portable DVD player for his nephew. The scene looked like this.

Vote Bitches!

Doublespeak and doublethink

I find it interesting that the mainstream media does not question George Bush on his doublespeak. I always thought doublespeak was an Orwellian phrase used in 1984. It turns out it isn’t.

According to Wikipedia: Doublespeak may be considered, in Orwell's lexicography, as the B vocabulary of Newspeak, words "deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them."

The phrase Bush and many others use that drives me to distraction is “activist judges.” He uttered this phrase the other day when describing the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision that the marriage laws were unfair. He and many right wingers believe that marriage is under assault from the gays.

This kind of rhetoric is irritating. First, divorce is the biggest threat to marriage. Second, most American families aren’t married anymore. According to the U.S. Census, a greater number of couples are living together and not marrying. Third, the court didn’t say same-sex marriage had to become legal. It did state that the legislature had to create something that gives all of the rights, privileges and burdens of marriage. This means it could be called domestic partnerships, civil unions, etc. It doesn’t matter. But loving same-sex partners deserve equality.

“Activist judges” are crucial to American equality. If the majority ruled and got its way all of the time, then we’d still have slavery, interracial marriages would be illegal and segregation would be ok.

Thank God for court decisions like Brown v Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia. Those aren’t cases where judges are activists. Those are cases where the judges righted some serious wrongs.

Also, Georgie Porgie must have a terrible memory. Two years ago he endorsed this kind of thing. He said same that gays should be allowed to have the same rights as marriage, “if the state chooses to do so.”

The Catholic Church loves to do a different kind of doublespeak with the gays. Actually, it's more like talking out of its ass. While in the same breath it calls gays “intrinsically disordered,” the Church says that gays shouldn’t be discriminated against. Read this first paragraph from an AP story:

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops said Wednesday they are developing new guidelines for ministry to gays, reaffirming church opposition to same-sex marriage and adoption by gays, while condemning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

OK. Do they not understand that by opposing same-sex marriage and adoption by gays they ARE discriminating. I mean, this is logic 101.

And for being a “loving” religion it’s an awful and evil institution. It closes an adoption agency because it doesn’t want the horrible gays to become parents. It encourages parishioners to vote for state amendments that ban same-sex marriage. It actually sides with anti-gay groups like this right-wing Christian conservative group just to denigrate and push down gays.

Yet I don’t hear any voices other than my own and other liberal bloggers calling out these discrepancies. Where is the mainstream media? Shouldn’t they be pointing these things out? Where are the straight allies saying enough is enough? Where are our families? Our brothers and our sisters? Shouldn’t they be marching to Washington and to the Vatican to defend us?

If not, we’re going to have to rely on “activist judges” to give us (the minority) the same rights and privileges as other human beings.