The phrase "activist judge" will pop up in this gay marriage discussion, of course. People will insist that this judge is circumventing the will of the people, the will represented by the legislature in passing certain laws, or backing certain legal definitions over others.
I'm sorry --I'm really sorry -- but if you use the term "activist judge", then frankly you know absolutely nothing about how the US works. Nothing. Nada. You are in point of fact, and again I apologize, an idiot. Allow me to explain.
The Founding Fathers (who never, ever, EVER wanted us to completely trust the guys in charge, by the way) formed the three branches of the government -- executive/legislative/judicial -- so they would be in opposition. Laws are passed, judges decide if they make sense, the laws are overturned or approved, the executive branch referees. The branches of the government are not supposed to like each other. It's called "checks and balances", not "checks and hugs." This is the fundamental basis for the United States government. A third-grader can understand this.
I'm going to say this slowly. Judges. Are. Supposed. To. Overturn. Laws. Not all of them. But yeah, some of them. Then there are appeals, or new laws are passed, and the process starts all over again. That's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work.
You can disagree with a judge overturning a law you like, fine, that's democracy. But implying the judge has no right to overturn a law because said law represents the will of the majority, and therefore that judge is an "activist" judge, well, sadly, that reveals a depth of ignorance about the Constitution and the writings of the Founding Fathers which automatically disqualifies you from the discussion.
No, seriously. If you say you disagree with gay marriage, fine -- I disagree with you, but you're entitled to whatever opinion you have in your skull. But as soon as you use the phrase "activist judge", you take yourself out of the game. Not according to me. I like you. No, you're an idiot according to Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Ben Franklin, et al. So, go read the Federalist Papers, and preferably leaf through Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, and come back when you have a basic understanding of civics. And you'd better know what the Lemon Test is, too, or you -- again -- must shut your trap and go back and do the required reading.
I am reminded of one of the finest examples of practical political instruction I've ever witnessed. I was at a bar with DJ MCarthey many years ago, and some idiot tourist a few stools down started sounding off. What was particularly galling was the man's ignorance of basic history. After a few minutes of this:
DJ: "You could feel free to shut yer gob."
Tourist: "Everybody's entitled to their opinion."
At which, DJ flicked his cigarette ten feet across the bar, popping it off the man's forehead, as he replied:
"No, you ignorant fuck, everyone's entitled to their informed opinion."
A beating ensued. I believe more civics lessons would stick if delivered in this manner.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Gay Marriage
Well, a California judge has ruled California can't ban gay marriage.
Dammit, get to the important stuff. Like banning anyone who can't parallel park their SUV from owning one.
A few brief thoughts on this: first, some of you may recognize a bit of the below. I got a couple requests to pull the gay marriage section from Oh, Oh Canada for separate citation. You can skip right past this.
The main argument against gay marriage, as I understand it, is that it's some sort of attack on Christian living, or Christian beliefs. That Christians will lose ...um ... damn, I thought I understood it for a second, let me look it up again ...
Back. The right to worship Christ? No. Umm, the right to educate their children as Christians? No ... hold on ... their own marriages, performed in a Church, will be invalidated ... no, that's not true ... they'll be forced to accept homosexuals in their churches and perform gay marriages ... no, also not true, individual churches are immune to enforced acceptance (thanks to separation of Church and State -- hey, sometimes it is good for both goose and gander!) ...
Here's the problem -- and I really do believe that misunderstanding this is the root of many issue in America today:
Your beliefs are not your rights. The government is in the job of enforcing your rights, not your beliefs.
The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation. It does not tell you who to marry, how to marry, who to love, what God to worship, what books to read ... that is not its job. The government's job when it comes to marriage is to make sure the legal mumbo-jumbo is observed. All the things that make marriage "marriage", all the emotional and religious context, that's up to the individual couples and their communities, be those communites Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, civil ...
If you belong to a church which is against same-sex marriage, fine. If this judgement stands, your church will not be forced to marry gay people. Do you know why? Because, and I will take this slowly, odds are gay people are not going to your church. Strange gay people are not going to paratroop in and occupy your vestry. This law will not make you have to look at gay people, or associate with them, or like them. You will not have to forgive them, or even agree with them. The special vows that make marriage a holy institution to you, they will not being saying them in your church, changing the meaning of those vows to you. They do not change what "marriage" means to you. You can continue to argue that gay people are bad or wrong or evil in God's eyes, and do so freely. Do you understand? Your. Life. Does. Not. Change. Your rights are not abridged. And so, your right to find them objectionable or icky or evil ends where their right to enter into a legal contract begins.
You may have excellent moral, or religious, or personal arguments against same-sex marriage. But you do not have a single decent legal one. And that is the government's reach, and no farther.
All that, of course, is me trying to convince someone with silly things like logic. For me personally, it quite simply boils down to this:
Christianity survived the death of its founder, centuries of brutal persecution by the most powerful Empire on earth, Crusades, corruption, bad popes, multiple schisms -- and still spread and thrived, converting over the course of its history hundreds of millions of people from wildly diverse, often hostile cultures.
It'll survive two guys sharing a life insurance policy.
Dammit, get to the important stuff. Like banning anyone who can't parallel park their SUV from owning one.
A few brief thoughts on this: first, some of you may recognize a bit of the below. I got a couple requests to pull the gay marriage section from Oh, Oh Canada for separate citation. You can skip right past this.
The main argument against gay marriage, as I understand it, is that it's some sort of attack on Christian living, or Christian beliefs. That Christians will lose ...um ... damn, I thought I understood it for a second, let me look it up again ...
Back. The right to worship Christ? No. Umm, the right to educate their children as Christians? No ... hold on ... their own marriages, performed in a Church, will be invalidated ... no, that's not true ... they'll be forced to accept homosexuals in their churches and perform gay marriages ... no, also not true, individual churches are immune to enforced acceptance (thanks to separation of Church and State -- hey, sometimes it is good for both goose and gander!) ...
Here's the problem -- and I really do believe that misunderstanding this is the root of many issue in America today:
Your beliefs are not your rights. The government is in the job of enforcing your rights, not your beliefs.
The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation. It does not tell you who to marry, how to marry, who to love, what God to worship, what books to read ... that is not its job. The government's job when it comes to marriage is to make sure the legal mumbo-jumbo is observed. All the things that make marriage "marriage", all the emotional and religious context, that's up to the individual couples and their communities, be those communites Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, civil ...
If you belong to a church which is against same-sex marriage, fine. If this judgement stands, your church will not be forced to marry gay people. Do you know why? Because, and I will take this slowly, odds are gay people are not going to your church. Strange gay people are not going to paratroop in and occupy your vestry. This law will not make you have to look at gay people, or associate with them, or like them. You will not have to forgive them, or even agree with them. The special vows that make marriage a holy institution to you, they will not being saying them in your church, changing the meaning of those vows to you. They do not change what "marriage" means to you. You can continue to argue that gay people are bad or wrong or evil in God's eyes, and do so freely. Do you understand? Your. Life. Does. Not. Change. Your rights are not abridged. And so, your right to find them objectionable or icky or evil ends where their right to enter into a legal contract begins.
You may have excellent moral, or religious, or personal arguments against same-sex marriage. But you do not have a single decent legal one. And that is the government's reach, and no farther.
All that, of course, is me trying to convince someone with silly things like logic. For me personally, it quite simply boils down to this:
Christianity survived the death of its founder, centuries of brutal persecution by the most powerful Empire on earth, Crusades, corruption, bad popes, multiple schisms -- and still spread and thrived, converting over the course of its history hundreds of millions of people from wildly diverse, often hostile cultures.
It'll survive two guys sharing a life insurance policy.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
It smells like Doritos and Mountain Dew ...
"Doctor, there's an infection in my dice-throwing hand."
"Yes, it's ... Gamegrene."
New link added in Gaming, of the pen-and-paper kind. Smart essays without navel-gazing. Some good OGL stuff, and practical guides ot out-of-the-way systems. They're spot-on with a mention that D20 Call of Cthulhu was a well-designed and unjustly discarded system.
Oh, and you'll notice a Creative Commons tag down and to the right. I'm going to start popping up some gaming ideas here soon; some more serious articles on media theory are also due; and some teachers have asked permission to link to and summarize some of the screenwriting articles, so this seemed in order. The CC site itself is very clear and helpful -- I wound up using the cartoons provided to guide me in chossing which variant of license I wanted.
I wonder, although it would take a gamer/lawyer multiclass to be sure (don't allow it, GM's, the Lawyer's front-loaded), whether one could fold the OGL concept of D20 gaming into a specific Creative Commons license. Anyone?
"Yes, it's ... Gamegrene."
New link added in Gaming, of the pen-and-paper kind. Smart essays without navel-gazing. Some good OGL stuff, and practical guides ot out-of-the-way systems. They're spot-on with a mention that D20 Call of Cthulhu was a well-designed and unjustly discarded system.
Oh, and you'll notice a Creative Commons tag down and to the right. I'm going to start popping up some gaming ideas here soon; some more serious articles on media theory are also due; and some teachers have asked permission to link to and summarize some of the screenwriting articles, so this seemed in order. The CC site itself is very clear and helpful -- I wound up using the cartoons provided to guide me in chossing which variant of license I wanted.
I wonder, although it would take a gamer/lawyer multiclass to be sure (don't allow it, GM's, the Lawyer's front-loaded), whether one could fold the OGL concept of D20 gaming into a specific Creative Commons license. Anyone?
Friday, March 11, 2005
Cool Tools
Mark Waid, I know you're reading this. I know you're indulging your OCD rather than finishing the new issue of Legion. Do NOT follow this link to Cool Tools, a collection of the best gadgets for doing everything, everything including things you didn't know you did. If you follow.
Silly Putty by the pound, people.
It's ... full of stars ...
Silly Putty by the pound, people.
It's ... full of stars ...
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Skinning/Mining for teh gp, baby.
As I debate more/less/better categories to the right, I'm forced to put Alice's delightful, thorough Wonderland in Technogeekery until I bite the bullet and split off a Computer Gaming Section. London-based tech/gaming writer, a perfect blend of gaming enthusiasm and tight reporting style.
Direct to ... your heart.
There are many, many resources on the Interwebs for aspiring film humans. Many of them are big, popular, and well-linked. Besides providing my own little insight crumbs, I hope to point you at some of the side-roads -- useful side-roads -- for examining the industry.
Bill Cunningham is in the movie business. The direct-to-video movie business. Yes, those. And you know what that means, kids? That means he knows more about making movies than EVERY FILM STUDENT GRADUATE FROM ANY FILM SCHOOL ... EVER.
He doesn't have much content up yet, and he's much less annoyingly pedantic than I. I'm hoping he starts tossing out more hard stats and how-to's, but it's an interesting window into a world of storytelling most of us take for granted. Go look at the working writer-producer, goateed ones,
at DISC/ontent.
Bill Cunningham is in the movie business. The direct-to-video movie business. Yes, those. And you know what that means, kids? That means he knows more about making movies than EVERY FILM STUDENT GRADUATE FROM ANY FILM SCHOOL ... EVER.
He doesn't have much content up yet, and he's much less annoyingly pedantic than I. I'm hoping he starts tossing out more hard stats and how-to's, but it's an interesting window into a world of storytelling most of us take for granted. Go look at the working writer-producer, goateed ones,
at DISC/ontent.
Index-fu
The first of the humans who received a preview of LOOK Magazine, EW's sweet new movie-insider magazine, are drifting over. There's a link from my article -- about writing the first draft of a "blockbuster" -- over to here at Kung Fu Monkey.
As the article's in the screenwriting section, I have to assume most of you are here for that sort of thing. Here's a quick summary of the more on-point articles of banging out movies here on the blog. Then, what the heck, some of the other stuff I like.
Writing:
Writing Life
Writing: Beginning
Writing: Whose Viewpoint?
Eternity Has Residuals
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.1)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 2)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 3)
TV: Corner Gas
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.4)
The True Geek Conversations(tm)
#3892: Batman vs. Punisher
#651: Catwoman Edition
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
Political Humor:
Who's Your Daddy, Broward County?
I Miss Republicans (nominated for a Koufax, spiffy!)
Spongiform Sexuality
Win Kamchatka, Win the World
Oh. Oh, Canada.
Comics and Geekery
Fandamentalism
The famous "Geek Hierarchy" Chart
Moral Advantage: Gamer
Comics: Year of the Bummer
Comics: Womb Crazy!
Wold Newton Universe
Zombie News/ ZOMBIE TALES
... and, just because it was always my favorite:
Top 10 John Wayne Titles That Could Also Be Porn Titles.
As the article's in the screenwriting section, I have to assume most of you are here for that sort of thing. Here's a quick summary of the more on-point articles of banging out movies here on the blog. Then, what the heck, some of the other stuff I like.
Writing:
Writing Life
Writing: Beginning
Writing: Whose Viewpoint?
Eternity Has Residuals
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.1)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 2)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 3)
TV: Corner Gas
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.4)
The True Geek Conversations(tm)
#3892: Batman vs. Punisher
#651: Catwoman Edition
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
Political Humor:
Who's Your Daddy, Broward County?
I Miss Republicans (nominated for a Koufax, spiffy!)
Spongiform Sexuality
Win Kamchatka, Win the World
Oh. Oh, Canada.
Comics and Geekery
Fandamentalism
The famous "Geek Hierarchy" Chart
Moral Advantage: Gamer
Comics: Year of the Bummer
Comics: Womb Crazy!
Wold Newton Universe
Zombie News/ ZOMBIE TALES
... and, just because it was always my favorite:
Top 10 John Wayne Titles That Could Also Be Porn Titles.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Zombie news
Well, this is kinda cool. Now that I've mastered posting pictures to my blog precisely thirty-two months after everyone else has, Ross has asked me to preview my story in ZOMBIE TALES to promo the book. We're going to do a tie-in with my favorite movie website, as I understand, so you can buy the book online.
Starting this afternoon, I'll be posting my story, Daddy Smells Different, here at the Monkey. At the end of the preview, if you dig it, and want to see more zombie goodness from Giffen (and an alt cover bythe Giff), Waid, Cosby, Nelson, Stokes, et al, then we'll have a link and a Paypal button.
Starting this afternoon, I'll be posting my story, Daddy Smells Different, here at the Monkey. At the end of the preview, if you dig it, and want to see more zombie goodness from Giffen (and an alt cover bythe Giff), Waid, Cosby, Nelson, Stokes, et al, then we'll have a link and a Paypal button.
Monday, March 07, 2005
From Ross Richie's premiere anthology book at BOOM!, (he's got a blog up until his main website's done) -- the first page of my story for ZOMBIE TALES.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Geek Sunday
Just because I had lunch with Waid on Friday, a link to Ctrl+Alt+Del's take on the Fantastic Four.
And Warren reviews the new Doctor Who. I am giddy. I once dressed like the Tom Baker Doc for Halloween as a kid. Okay, in college. Okay, on my wedding night. Fine.
There's a joke in there about a full-size Dalek costume and a voice-synthed "De-virgin-ate! DE-VIRGIN-ATE!" but I don't have the heart for it.
Coming this week -- a preview of Ross Richie's new anthology book for his brand new company BOOM! Studios. It's filled with such luminaries as Mark Waid, Keith Giffen, Andy Cosby, and a couple of us newbies.
And Warren reviews the new Doctor Who. I am giddy. I once dressed like the Tom Baker Doc for Halloween as a kid. Okay, in college. Okay, on my wedding night. Fine.
There's a joke in there about a full-size Dalek costume and a voice-synthed "De-virgin-ate! DE-VIRGIN-ATE!" but I don't have the heart for it.
Coming this week -- a preview of Ross Richie's new anthology book for his brand new company BOOM! Studios. It's filled with such luminaries as Mark Waid, Keith Giffen, Andy Cosby, and a couple of us newbies.
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