In his fine diary today, PapaChach muses again about his late wife, makes me get all misty (wry grin), and includes an excellent song.

Got me thinking about my brother, and excellent songs.

When I got to California for his funeral last October, my sis-in-law had a request. They needed three songs for the service. She'd picked two. Her request to me: pick the third, and it has to be an REM song.

Which was fitting.

...and it's gotta be a good one. Because this is going to be the worst mother's day of my mother's life. It's going to be the first MD she has two children instead of three.

And it gets worse. Mother's Day is 5/11. The day before, 5/10? That would've been my brother's 40th birthday if he hadn't died at 39.

My mother would prefer to be out in CA, with my sis-in-law and the three grandchildren, on that weekend. That's not possible, however: my sister is graduating from law school the following Sunday. Mom and Dad will be staying in Boston for that. (They're heading for CA the next day).

Back when I was 20,which was 1985-ish, I was attending the Boston campus at the University of Massachusetts. I lived (and still do) in a suburb about 20 miles north of Boston. UMass-Boston is a commuter campus, and parking sucked, so I did the train-subway thing.

I had a friend, Leisa, who lived in Boston--Jamaica Plain--and drove to school most days. We occasionally hung out together. One fine spring day, we decided to go hang out at the beach at Castle Island in South Boston.

More on the flip....

I'm no newbie, I've been here since '04. And I'm no kid, I'm 43. And I'm not an Obama-worshiper; I like him, I was proud to vote for him, but I would've voted Edwards or Dodd if they'd been HRC's main competition on Super Tuesday.

But I don't understand how anybody who's been here since, oh, at least 2006, could be for Clinton.

Because, aren't these the gates we're supposed to be crashing?

Think about it.

The short answer: because Reagan was a trojan horse. He was the Stealth Wingnut. He got people to vote for him that would've been appalled by his ideology if he'd run as an ideologue. The man was, when elected, the most conservative president since, oh, Hoover. He might still be, depending on how conservative you think Dubya is. He created a sea-change in the definition of American Government, in a way that still reverbates today. But he didn't run that way.

So, whither Obama?

On the flip.

I am transgendered. And I'm pissed off.

This diary is partially a vent; but I hope there will be at least a wee bit of educational content.

First of all, I think we need to talk about a few definitions. TG, TS, transman, transwoman, what does it all mean? Talking about that may help some of you realize where I, and others here, are coming from.

Follow me over the flip.

In Krugman's column today (and Times Select is free this week), he says this:

Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.

I have some thoughts about this. Follow me to the flip:

Back when Maron and Riley had "Morning Sedition" on Air America, they did this thing called The Liberal Confessional, where Maron would 'confess his liberal sins' to Riley. It was usually funny, and often incisive. I remember one when Maron's confession was, "I'm really a lazy-ass about recycling." I could relate to that one.

But I've got a really big one. So, I'm here, confessing my big fat liberal sin. It's this:

I'm finding it very, very hard to give a crap about Darfur.

More on the flip.

A Texas high-schooler has been denied a place in the Texas all-state choir.

Not because he can't sing. But because, using his falsetto range, he sings soprano.

And boys can't be sopranos, don't you know.

Somebody better tell Frankie Valli that.

Story is here.

As most of you know, I'm a writer. And I've actually written a bit about abortion. This is fiction, yes, but this--plus the real-life kicker at the end--is my response to "Why men don't get veto power."

It happened in my big epic novel. Sophia and Warren were sophomores in college when she discovered she was pregnant. Long-term relationship--since freshman year in high school--not without its ups and downs but very stable by that point.

Sophie suspected, but was in a bit of denial. When she could no longer ignore the symptoms, she got a pregnancy test. It was positive.

Her first instinct? Abortion.

Read on.

The Emergency Contraceptive Act is expected to reach a vote in the MA state senate soon.

NARAL is sponsoring a 'write your state senator' campaign. It's here.

There are two things this bill will do: first, it will mandate that emergency rooms have Emergency Contraception on hand for rape victims. Second, it will allow pharmacists, after going through a training course, to dispense EC without a prescription.

It's a good bill--another way to make it easier to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and with less hoops for the woman to run through.

I urge any Kossacks from MA to follow the link and send a letter off to your state senator. I've done so. Fred Berry's good on choice, so I'm sure he's amenable to this--but it doesn't hurt to send the letter.
 

Rather, it's about some of the discussions stemming from the pie ad, and some thoughts I've had.

First--I like sports. And my liking of sports is not gender-specific.

I've spent a lot of the past week or two watching the Women's Softball College World Series. ESPN's shown a lot of it. It's been very entertaining. Last night was the final game, the deciding game in the best-of-three championship, between Michigan and UCLA. Great game, went into extra innings, and Michigan won with a three-run dinger in the 10th inning. As pure athletic competition, it was thrilling. And that's the main reason I watch it. It's the same as watching the Baseball College WS, which starts next week. The exact same thing. Great athletic competition.

Mostly. Because if I told you I didn't also enjoy watching good-looking athletic women run around the bases, I'd be absolutely fucking lying to you.

More on the flip.

One of my favorite hockey players of all time, ol' Number 8 of the Boston Bruins, Cam Neely, was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame yesterday.

Cam had to wait for a while, as his career was prematurely ended by injuries, so it was shorter than the usual Hall of Fame career. But, man, he could play. He invented the hockey version of the 'power forward'. He could score, yes, absolutely; and he could pass. But he could also go into the corner and take your head off with a devastating body check. He'd also drop the gloves if he had to. Before Cam, there were 'physical, checking forwards' and there were 'offensive scoring/passing forwards'. Cam was both. He was a force; and, man, was he just flat-out fun to watch.

But it's what Cam has done since his career ended that's important, and why I'm bringing Cam to your attention today.

More on the flip.

Since everyone else is doing it <G>.

My name is Frank Downey. I am a liberal democrat and I am not hostile to faith.

What I am hostile to is attempts to give only certain expressions of
faith primacy in our system of laws.

I am a Unitarian-Universalist. Our church was formed in 1961 by the
merger of the Unitarian and Universalist churches in America, but both
of our 'father' churches have a long and illustrious history in the
USA.

A number of distinguished Americans from the years of our Nation's
birth were either Unitarians or Universalists. These include John
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, and Daniel
Webster. Unitarians and Universalists are present throughout our
history.

Continues on the flip.

However, in this case, it was clearly the fault of the so-called 'fan'. And I say that even though the jerk was a 'fan' of the Red Sox, and the athlete in question was a New York Yankee.

This just happened, in the eighth inning of the game between the Sox and the Yanks tonight. The game had been tied 5-5 until this inning. Renteria hit a double to drive in Damon for a 6-5 lead, then someone else walked, which brought up Jason Varitek.

Varitek clubbed one down the right field line. For those of you not familiar with Fewnay Park, the wall from the foul pole to straight-away right is a long curve. Balls can get caught in that curve and just hug the wall for a while. That's what happened to Varitek's hit.

More on the flip.

The position of the Catholic Church, and John Paul II, isn't just against abortion. It's against birth control of any kind. It's against any sex outside of marriage, any sex that isn't designed for procreation. In fact, it's against masturbation.

If the Pope was sincere, and that's one thing I'll definitely give him is I do think he was, that means he's never had any kind of sex, even wanking off.

How many of you could do this? (Remember, no masturbation.) Especially those of you who are male? Can't we postulate that the ability to remain completely celibate is on the far fringes of human behavior? I certainly think so.

This, of course, isn't about Pope John Paul II, really. They're all celibate, at least in theory. No sex? Ever? Anyone that can do that is either superhuman, has an abnormally low sex drive, or is repressing something very deeply (and sometimes that repression cracks like an egg and you molest altar boys.)

And this is the problem.

This was prompted by Farfolo's "There is no God" diary.

First, my biases: I am a spiritual agnostic Unitarian-Universalist who was raised Catholic. My opinions of Catholicism are mostly negative--tempered by some great Xaverian Brothers I had at my high school.

I'm an agnostic, as I said, so this isn't going to be about whether or not God exists. I have no idea what exists.

What I want to talk about is where religion becomes oppressive. Since I was raised Catholic and most of the oppressive religious people in this country are Christian, that's where I'm going to concentrate.

So, my problem is this: where faith and the Bible intersect.

More on the flip side.

Believe it or not :-).

There's other issues being bandied about that cross, or blur, or don't completely understand, the line between the personal or the political. Schiavo is a current example of that--where some people who should know better have politicized what should be a personal issue--but there's more. And some of the others are far more subtle.

And one of them, that a lot of people around here don't get--is Walmart.

More after the flip.