*Transcendental *Logic

If you’re interested in Freedom of Speech issues at all, DON’T miss Neil Gaiman’s post  on the topic.  He does the flat-out best plain-language explanation ever of why defending freedom of speech means defending ALL speech, even speech we find actively icky.

I was complaining the other day about Twilight (as I often do), for being hideously written and revoltingly anti-feminist, and someone asked me, didn’t I wish that crap like that would be taken off the shelves? 

And I said NO, I do NOT; rather I wish that people had better taste and didn’t encourage such shitty writing and horrendously stupid depictions of women by buying it — and that the best way to get them to stop buying it was not to pull it off the shelves, but rather to be just as loud and speechy as I can about how badly it sucks.  My heated soliloquies to the tune of “Good lord this Twilight crap is pure rubbish” have actually convinced a few people, you know, and those people will not only not buy Twilight; they’ll think a little more about the next art they do buy and whether it’s crappy and/or anti-woman, based on what they now believe because of what I told them about Twlight.  If Twlight didn’t exist or wasn’t being sold, that could not have happened.  So hell no, I don’t want to get rid of it.  I want it to live forever in infamy as an example of what unbelievably sucky writing looks like!

In other words, the answer to bad speech is MORE GOOD SPEECH.  This has been proven time and time again, as Maestro Gaiman does such a wonderful job of elucidating.  If you hate something, some art or communication that someone else has produced, SPEAK THE HELL UP about it — but don’t make the mistake of trying to get rid of it, or before you know it, someone will be getting rid of something you like.

Free Speech is one of the best things about America that actually stuck around and worked, and the more we defend it, the better we look to everyone and the closer the world comes to true democracy.

That’s right, I said it — If you want to spread democracy, defend the right of speech that you hate to exist.  (Then produce twice as much speech about why it sucks.  ;)

The American state of Kentucky, combining an F-you to the Constitution with the kind of critical thinking that rightfully leads to extinction via Darwinian smackdown, has decided that this is a reasonable legislation:

The 2006 law organizing the state Office of
Homeland Security lists its initial duty as “stressing the dependence
on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”

Specifically,
Homeland Security is ordered to publicize God’s benevolent protection
in its reports, and it must post a plaque at the entrance to the state
Emergency Operations Center with an 88-word statement that begins, “The
safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from
reliance upon Almighty God.”

From, though if I were you I wouldn’t read it…

Okay, so all last week my sleep-schedule was like, b-b-b-b-WAAAAAAAUGhominahomina-pfft-SPLAT.

I kid you not.

However, this resulted in the Finishing of the Room and the Actual Moving In of my honest-to-compost Dream Roommate, so although there are still some yawns and kinks, life is definitely good overall.  A good chunk of the East Coast is probably burning me in effigy this week, for stealing one of their finest and tucking her away in my distressingly Midwestern sanctuary…but they can suck it.  I’m still seeing stars, I’m so happy she’s here. 

We went walking in the woods which are inexplicably five minutes from my house* the other day.  Also, Dream Roommate goes to Taiji with me tonight.  I will overdose on Squee!

And tomorrow is Hold Onto Your Patriotic Asses Day!  I’m having a party at my house.  We will have ridiculously good food (just in case this is the last time we can afford it) and watch TV and probably throw something at least once.

Nationals aside, in my state there are two amazingly important votes going on — one (Prop 1) to legalize medical marijuana effing FINALLY, and one (Prop 2) to support stem-cell research duh.  Naturally I’ve seen more signs against both of those than for them, but this means nothing other than that stupid people are loud, and we knew that.  ;)

And AND and, remember Unnamed Project X, that recently transmogrified into a real-on-paper business?  Well, next week it starts getting real on the paper that matters most — the little green kind.  The independence of running my own business has been one of my bigger goals for a long time now, and it will mean a lot for the big goal next in line behind it … so good thoughts for me, please?  I’m nervous as hell.

…

…What, you want to watch Mr. Vampire too?  I don’t blame you, of course!  It happens to be online, free, here.  Enjoy!

*As distinguished from the woods that are inexplicably five seconds from my house.  This is why I love Michigan, seriously:  Suburb, city, doesn’t matter; the woods are never very far.  Forests own this land, and they don’t let anybody forget it — stop mowing in downtown Detroit for a year, and you’d have vines growing all the way up the skyscrapers.  LOVE this place.

I bet you didn’t see this coming: The Food Issue (NY Times)

Excerpt:

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food.

Since [Nixon's administration], federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

…It’s an excellent, BIG article on all the issues impacted by and connected to food production, including health care reform, climate change, and economic inequality. 

Expect more on the topic from me, as starting next year I’ll be a bona fide gardener, growing hopefully more than enough for my household in what used to be my lawn — what will soon be my massive permaculture garden.  (See How to Make A Forest Garden and Food Not Lawns if you want more background on what that means.)

I’m becoming quite convinced that this kind of gardening is going to be a HUGE metric for successful living in any kind of non-dystopian future; and that by doing it now, we’re not only offering our support to the environment and to smaller, simpler living; but literally, making a revolutionary statement about the future of our society.  Read the article and you’ll start to understand why, in addition to spades and gloves and trowels, I’m buying myself a black armband to garden in.