Speaking of Horst Burbulla...

Note - this following post talks about abortion and might offend some readers - feel free to skip down to the end where I'll talk about commericals and other shit.

Got an interesting fax the other day...talking about babies and how wonderful they are and gee, isn't it great when they hold onto your finger in their tiny little hands and then you read them stories and they grow and love you and you love them and love love love love love? Well, too bad, 'cause there won't be any babies any more thanks to same-sex marriage!

Or something like that...these people are really hard to understand. It's like they start out arguing against gay marriage, and then they hear themselves and they're all, shit, that's not convincing, so they go off on tangents and ramble until they wind up at something outrageous like "NO MORE BABIES EVER!!" and then they're all, yeah, good one, and they don't bother checking to see if their argument makes any sense because they're too busy being all indignant and self-righteous and dumb.

And this is where I get especially sensitive to the anti-equal-marriaage activists: when they bring out their procreation trump card. When they start to tell me that marriage exists for the sole purpose of penis-in-vagina-type conception of the next generation. When they say that biology is destiny, and I'm here to make babies, and they start to eye my uterus all covetously, like, seriously, get your own freakin' uterus!

I gotta say, on issues like gay marriage and abortion, these guys have such random, circuitous reasoning. I mean, they go on and on about how we need to stop Bill C-38 because families are the cornerstone of society, and I just want to poke them in the eye, because nobody is saying that families aren't important; in fact, this whole bill came about because a group of dedicated individuals are fighting for the right to have families for the very reason that they are so important to society. GAH! Do these people even listen to themselves? "Families are so important that we need to prevent more of them from happening!"

Same thing on the abortion issue - when I wander down the street and some parade of "abortion is murder" folks are wandering up and down the sidewalk I just want to push them in front of the bus and shout, "No, this is murder!" I can understand that they are against abortion. I GET IT! But what they don't get is that the pro-choicers, like the pro-lifers, would rather live in a world without abortion. Nobody LIKES abortion. No one sets out in life with the goal to have as many abortions as possible. No little girl ever thinks "Gee, I can't wait to grow up and have an abortion!" No little boy ever hopes that one day a sexual partner of his will have an abortion. Nobody wants to live in a world where abortions are the norm, pro-choice or otherwise, and it seems like a certain segment of pro-lifers don't get this.

See, the real issue is not abortions. Abortions are a by-product of unwanted pregnancies. THIS is the real issue, THIS is what people should be working to prevent, if they want to stop abortions. And this is the angle that most pro-choicers take, with an emphasis on family planning, education, and the availability of cheap and safe birth control - with great success! And this is also the angle taken by certain pro-life groups, who recognize that for a lot of women the choice to have an abortion is the result of financial insecurity, social pressures and the stigma of single parenthood. But then you get the (and I'm sorry to stereotype, but it holds pretty true around this town anyway) old men wandering around with their "Jesus hates sluts" signs or whatever hateful rhetoric is popular nowadays, and I just can't take it. Like, you know what, buddy? It's awfully easy for you to say that no one should have access to a procedure that YOU HAVE NEVER NOR WILL YOU EVER NEED.

Now, I'm not saying that men shouldn't have a say in this debate. Obviously, however a child is conceived, there is always a male and female biological parent. And, equally obviously, if those two people implicated in the conception of child disagree on whether to proceed with a pregnancy, you have a 1-1 tie. And when you've go to break the tie, well - again, obviously - the tie goes to the person who's ACTUALLY PREGNANT. And it's when the other side starts disputing that last statement that I just go ballistic.

So what does this have to do with same-sex marriage? Well, the two are linked pretty closely. It's mostly the same groups who protest both issues and the recent debate over Bill c-38 has given these groups the opportunity to sneak in references to abortions, polygamy, pedophilia, etc., as "arguments" against the bill. Strangely enough, theses same groups that would pressure women into adoption rather than abortion protest against that child having two loving, same-sex parents. Huh. Seems that for all their self-righteousness about children and families, all that matters to these folks is that we do as they say, but not as they do. Apparently, they're the only ones who get to be hypocrites.

And now on to other things!

Saw the best commercial the other night - it was about 20 seconds of all sorts of women going about their daily lives, and then stopping, as if something had suddenly occurred to them. Like: woman brushing her teeth, suddenly stops; woman typing at work, suddenly stops; woman reading a book, walking her dog, buying groceries, etc. And halfway through this commercial I turn to D and say "This is an ad for birth control". And sure enough, it was an ad for the birth control patch. And he's all, "How'd you know that?" And I'm all "That is the exact look a woman gets on her face when she suddenly realizes she forgot to take her pill." A great example of an advertising campaign that really knows its target audience.

Also, I'm currently reading the most excellent novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, which totally rocks. Yes, it is about magic, no, it is not Harry Potter for grown-ups which is a dumb-ass thing to say, like all books about magic are rip-offs of HP and all movies about ancient Rome are just rip-offs of Ben-Hur and all TV shows about cooking should pay royalties to Julia Child because a topic can be used once in every medium and after that there's nothing original or fresh to say about it. Anyway, the book is a fabulous read and also pretty hefty in case you ever meet somebody who starts talking about how it's really just re-working the old LOTR wizard angle and you need something with which to smack some sense into them. For this, I recommend the hardcover edition.

Also, went to see Be Cool yesterday, and let me just say that until you have seen Dwayne Jonhson deliver a "monologue" from Bring it On, you have not truly lived.

Last but not least - D and I just signed up for zip.ca, and are looking for some little-know cinematic gems we can watch and adore. Any suggestions?