A Princely View of Things

Well, it's good to know that if Michael Jackson ever becomes sane again (or ever becomes black again) that there will be someone to take his place. Thank God for Prince to fill the void in the wacky pop singer's personal life category if we ever need one.



Prince has always been an odd duck. He's this wispy dude with little pipe cleaner arms that flail about like linguini when he's playing he guitar in a manner that is simply unbelievable. So don't get me wrong; I DIG Prince. He's one of the few little femmy guys who I think could totally kick somebody's ass if they picked a fight with him. I can't think of any others who could, can you? (Seriously, think about it. Clay Aiken? Toast. Ryan Seacrest? He'd curl up in a ball on the floor and sob for days. I think I made my point.) But he gave an interview with a one Tavis Smiley, who does a talk show on PBS.

No! No! No! That's GUY Smiley! I'm talking about Tavis Smiley.

That's better. So Tavis Smiley interviews Prince and the thing that obviously stands out at first about Prince is that the man is thin. Rail thin. We're talking Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie thin. His head is shaped like a Q-tip on top of a breadstick. And it seems to float on top of his neck, which is quite odd.

But if looks were the strangest thing about this interview, I wouldn't have much to go on. (Besides, in order for his looks to warrant being totally "strange" he'd have to look stranger than Michael Jackson, which is a pretty difficult feat for anyone to accomplish.) It's when Tavis asks him about the lyrics of a song "Dreamer" from Princes album LotusFlow3r that we get a glimpse inside of this guy's head.

According to an article in Rolling Stone, Prince tells him, "..when I saw the "State of the Black Union," Dick Gregory really moved me...I show it to everybody...especially white folks, because they need to hear that, so that they know more about all of us."

OK, look, I have an issue with something. It's the part about ..."so that they know more about all of us." US?? Prince is black?!

Then he continued on with odyssey of oddness with, "He said something...about this phenomena of chem trails and when I was a kid, I used to see these trails in the sky all the time and I'd say, "Oh, that's cool - a jet just went over." And then you started to see a whole bunch of them and the next you know, everybody in your neighborhood was fighting and arguing and you didn't know why, okay? And you really didn't know why. I mean, everybody was fighting. So he started riffing about the chem trails...I was so moved that I had to write the song." Um, what?

Even if you've never heard the term 'chem trails', you likely know that they are the white exhaust or 'smoke' that airplanes sometimes leave in the sky. Prince and Dick Gregory and a bunch of other softheads believe that the airplane exhaust is really a cover for the chemicals that the government is spreading over the land to control the people or something like that. They believe it's a big conspiracy. The Chem Trails Conspiracy. All rightee then. What else?

Well, as I looked through the transcript of the interview over there on PBS I found out that Prince is somewhat of a history buff when he revealed, "We're all indentured servants. When I found out there were eight presidents before George Washington, I wanted to smack somebody. I wanted to know why I was taught otherwise. Just tell me the whole story - I'll fill in the blanks. But don't tell me something that you think I'm supposed to know." Um, wait.

Eight presidents before George Washington? The George Washington who was the FIRST President? I find that unlikely. I find it even more unlikely that PRINCE would be the one informing me of this if it were true. After a quick check (God bless those Google boys) my suspicions were confirmed. Prince is nuts.

There were not eight presidents before George Washington. Prince is referring to the time when the Confederation Congress was running the show based on the Articles of the Confederation. But it was the Constitution, NOT the Articles of Confederation, that created the position known as President of the United States. And I could elaborate more on this concept, but I'm supposed to be amusing, not boring! (Actually, I should just be able to say "Prince is nuts" and leave it at that after the sort of statement that he made, but for some reason, you have to explain WHY people are nuts. That used to be one of the great things about other people's nuttiness; there was no need for explanation. They were just crazy. But if you do need more explanation, the folks over there at Snopes.com have done a fabulous job of it.)

And to briefly touch on his claim of all of us being "indentured servants", he might want to check the definition of such again, as we're not. I understand that he's basically trying to imply that we're all "workin' for the man" or something like that, but indentured servitude is not how we're going about it. Following that however, Smiley said, "We're indentured servants and we've got a Black president now?" And that's when we learned that Prince doesn't vote. "Well, I don't vote. I don't have nothing to do with it. I got no dog in that race." Um, we weren't voting for dogs.

You know, people like that? I'm glad they don't vote. Really. That's fine with me. In fact, there are a lot of people who DO vote who I wish would not vote. Simply because they have no idea what they're voting FOR or AGAINST. The feel good voters! (Translation: Morons, that is correct.) When Smiley asked him why he didn't vote, he said, "Well, the reason why is because I'm one of Jehovah's witnesses and we've never voted. That's not to say that I don't think Barack Obama - President Obama - is a very smart individual and he seems like he means well. Prophecy is what we all have to go by now."

Oh, for hell's sake! Couldn't he have just said he was a Jehovah's Witness at the beginning of the interview and saved us all the perplexing stares and Scooby head tilts?! If they had just put a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen that said "Tonight's guest is a Jehovah's Witness", THEN instead of saying, "What?!" when he's talking about eight other Presidents, we simply would have gone, "Aaahhh. OK." .

I'm just glad the wackiness will continue even after Michael Jackson doesn't continue. Though I have the feeling that after Michael's concerts in London in July, there might not be any need for a successor to the Throne of Wackiness. Those concerts might give us all something to talk about for a long, long time. But even if they don't, it's good to know we can just pull Prince out of the cupboard and wind him up and let him go! Hours of entertainment fun for the whole family!

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Flori-duh Duhs It Again

Well, they don't call it Flori-duh for nothing. You know, when this country was founded, it would seem as if those founding guys didn't think that everyone was qualified to vote in elections. (I make that assumption based upon how only males who owned land were allowed to vote at first. They couldn't let the women vote! God forbid! Who knows what those females might start voting for, eh? Some sort of kinder, more gentler nation or some kind of crap like that.) It would also seem as if those founding guys might have known something that we didn't. (They really should have left us better notes.) They either innately knew that everyone wasn't qualified to vote or they had a vision of what Flori-duh would become some day (a debacle that if they really had foreseen the situation there, they should have just let Spain keep the darn thing).

Those in Duval County in Florida seemed to, oh, let's say "go against the flow" when it came to voting for their choice for President of the United States. I really don't see how the election process in this country can be all that complicated. You go into the booth with your ballot. You look at your ballot with the choices that you have to select from. (Your choices will also be written in just about any damn language that you would like them to be in. That's because you're only allowed to vote in this country if you are a legal citizen. And you can't become a legal citizen of this country if you do not read, write and speak English. Thus, since everyone who is voting should be able to read and write English and there is no need for ballots in any language other than English, they make sure to print ballots in every language under the sun. Because that makes sense. Usually this is where I twist off, but the campaigns dragged on for so damn long this year, I'm just too tired to twist right now. Maybe later.) And then you mark your box and you're done! Oh, if only it were that easy for the Flori-duh residents.

Can we all say "hanging chad"? Of course we can. My point. Oh, and I do realize that there may be those of you who are from Flori-duh who are reading this right now (or having it read to you because...well...you know...). Therefore, I'll type slower. Moving on....

There is a spot on the ballot for a "write-in candidate". The thing is, in order for your vote for a "write-in candidate" to count, the "write-in candidate" has to be registered. If they're not registered, your vote for someone who was never going to be elected in the first place(but who you wanted to vote for to make a point or a statement or some other Flori-duh rationale) doesn't count. And like I just implied, it wouldn't matter if it did count. When you have two guys who are the candidates for the two major parties and who are going to be receiving millions of votes nationwide, your one vote for your dog isn't going to matter even if you had managed to register Spot as an official write-in candidate. But of course, that was never going to happen in the first place. (Mainly because Spot wouldn't tell you how to spell his name on the form.)

And I guess that some of the Flori-duh voters felt the need to write-in their votes for a wide variety of unregistered write-in candidates for President. Candidates such as Stephen Colbert and George W. Bush. Wait. What?

Never mind the Colbert vote. Bush?! Yes, Bush. Two Duval County, Flori-duh voters cast their vote for George W. Bush to serve a third term. Never mind the fact that he can't serve a third term. Who in the hell would want him to serve a third term?! Who are you people?

Other unregistered write-in candidates receiving votes (but not as many as Colbert or W. Thus, one vote each.) from Flori-duh voters were :

• Joe the Plumber (Good Lord, people...)
• John Doe (Shouldn't that have been John D-oh!)
• Bill Clinton
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Bill O'Reilly
• Tiger Woods
• Bobby Bowden
• Tommy Chong (Only if Cheech is Veep!)
• Willie Nelson
• Homer Simpson
  

Theodore Roosevelt?!!? Who in the hell in Flori-duh even knows who Theodore Roosevelt WAS?!?! And Homer Simpson? Good Lord sir or ma'am, you are a bloody idiot. That's not even cute. It's just ridiculously stupid. How did you even manage to find your polling place that day is what I want to know? And you have to be at least 18 to vote, right? Sure. How has that person managed to keep himself alive for at least 18 years when they're so obviously incompetent? It's a mystery.

Some of the other write-in votes that voters wrote in were:

• They Both Suck '08
• May the best man win
• None (anarchy) (The anarchy notation can be taken to mean one of three things. 1) They didn't want a candidate, they wanted anarchy, 2) They wrote in "none" when there is obviously a box that says "None" which you can select, so they felt they were being anarchical by going against that "rule", or 3) They're just a freaking moron.)

The unregistered write-in candidate garnering the most votes was Hillary Clinton (whose name is among the many, many misspellings in the article over there at the fab-ulous website of WJXT in Jacksonville, Flori-duh. ::::sigh:::: Oh, well, at least they fit the narrative.). She managed to get 234 votes over there in Duval County. That's 211 more votes than the two candidates who tied at 23 votes each. Those two? Jesus and "None of the Above". Um...."None of the Above" was voted for the same number of times that Jesus Christ was voted for? Huh. That would seem to indicate that Flori-duh is going to hell.

Who else received write-in votes from the hillbilly mecca of the universe? Well, there are those who are more of a statement or an opinion than they are a candidate. (Like the statement made by the person who wrote in their choice for "Hilary Bush". That's a statement all right.) Those would include:

• Intentionally left blank


• Undecided


• Abstain


• Against All
  

Cartoon (or other cartoon-ish and fictional)characters as the preferred leader (for some) to lead this fine country included:

• Donald Duck (Donald Duck never wore pants. Pantsless-ness in the Presidency was already a problem in one administration. I don't think we need another guy who has an aversion to a nice trouser.)
  
  
  
  
• Mickey Mouse (Mickey had a myriad of costumes, but in general, he never had on a shirt and just wore those red shorts. Again, it's just asking for trouble over there in the White House, what with all of those interns still running around.)






• Pago Possum (which I believe is supposed to read "Pogo Possum", but I'll just add that to the list of misspellings in the news story)








• Bugs Bunny (As if he needed to one up both Donald and Mickey, Bugs Bunny wore NO clothes.)
  
• Alfred E. Newman
  
• Mr. Bill

Celebrity write-in votes were cast for:

• Bill Cosby (Bill Cosby? What the hell?)
• Bill Nye (the Science Guy)
• Chuck Norris (Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits.)
• Morgan Freeman (Huh?)
• Oprah (I'm surprised she only managed one vote)
• Weird Al Yancovic (this voter must be related to the voter who wanted Bill Cosby. Both of 'em, stuck in the 80s.)

Yeah, I had never really given a lot of thought about whether or not everyone should have the right to vote, but I'm giving it a lot of thought now!

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Louisiana - The Lower 48's Alaska

Well, Alaska is not alone in their voting populous not really caring if their politicians are law abiding politicians. Breathing is apparently the only qualification that one needs to be re-elected in Louisiana as well. Seriously, what is wrong with you people?

William Jefferson, a Republican, seven term congressman from Louisiana, was just re-elected last week for his eighth term. That's a pretty amazing feat in and of itself, getting elected to Congress eight times. But what I find incredibly amazing (or maybe just incredible. Definitely unbelievable.) is that the guy was re-elected to his eighth term even though he is currently under a Federal indictment of 16 charges for bribery, racketeering, obstruction of justice and money laundering. When the FBI searched his home, they found $90,000 in cash in the freezer! Probably next to a bag of peas! I know of no people who keep $90,000 in cash in their freezer.

Of course, that's not all they had on him. It's alleged that there is a videotape of Mr. Jefferson accepting cash bribes to the tune of $100,000 in $100 bills. Oh, and it's probably also worth noting that two of his associates have already pled guilty to soliciting bribes on his behalf. Said associates are now in prison with one of them serving eight years in prison and the other one serving seven. If Jefferson is found guilty of all of his charges, he faces a maximum of 235 years in prison, a number of years so ridiculous, I don't know why they even bother with the actual figure. 'For the remainder of his life, most likely' is a good enough explanation for me of what sort of time he's facing. I don't need to know that if he does manage to live well beyond the typical human lifespan capacity and make it to 235 years old, that he will be spending that longevity behind bars.

We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes over several years. The indictment alone is 95 pages long! They watched the guy as part of a public corruption probe for over 14 months! And you folks voted him BACK into office with 57 percent of the vote! He had 90K in his freezer!! What are you people thinking?

According to the folks over at the McPaper, USA Today, a one Eugene Green, Jefferson's chief of staff, said that he believes that folks voted for Jefferson because "many in his district, the only predominantly African-American one in the state, perceive him as being a key figure in helping the region bounce back from the wallop of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005." Well, how come I keep hearing about how the region has not bounced? And those were three years ago. You'd hope, wouldn't ya, that things would have bounced by now? Do you think that it took three years because he was bouncing all by himself? I don't think that's a good enough reason. What else do you have?

Well, the article continues to say that "This summer, Jefferson helped lead a delegation of House leaders, including Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, on a tour of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast." Wait. What? Because the man is a good tour guide it was reason enough to vote him back into office?! And if you're wondering why it was important for the article to mention that James Clyburn was there, that's a reasonable inquiry. One which I don't have an answer for because the article didn't say. (Perhaps he's just a difficult person to take on a tour. You know, the kind always hopping over the velvet ropes, not staying in line, those sorts of things.)

His brown nosing chief of staff also added "I don't think you can be in Congress as long as he's been without having made good relations with your colleagues. It's because of those relationships that he's been so effective." And I don't think you can work for a politician for as long as I'm guessing you have without being able to throw out a line of bull-s every time you open your mouth to defend him. Spare me.

So, basically what the voters are saying is that if they perceive that an elected official is doing a good job for them, then it's perfectly OK for them to break the law along the way and not have to worry about not getting re-elected. I just don't understand that line of thinking. What if it wasn't bribery or some other white collar-y crime? What if the guy was indicted for being a prostitute stabbing, serial killer? Would that be OK with y'all because at least he's getting the hookers out of town? Pedophile? Polygamist? Either of those grounds to note vote someone into public office? Anyone? Anyone? Probably not.

I think the democratic process that we have in this country is about as good of a system as you can have. It's not flawless, but what is? It works the way that it is supposed to work. But when you have to rely on voters who are misguided, misinformed, uninformed, or just completely unable to see the bigger picture, well, it frightens me. Do you folks really even understand the importance of being able to cast a ballot? It's a responsibility and it's one that I wish the people in Louisiana and Alaska would take a bit more seriously. At least inform yourselves, people. Please.

The sage in the video below is the type of voter that I am most afraid of. Actually, no, he's the type of voter that I am the next most afraid of. The type of voter I am most afraid of is the type who is completely clueless and votes anyway. The guy below is completely clueless (not only on the issues, but also on the process and the basic rules thereof), but at least he made the right choice in the end. You're going to want to be sitting down when you watch this. I'd hate to have you pass out and hit your head.

I don't know what's more unbelievable. That he didn't know that the President can only serve two terms or that he thought that Bush was doing a good job. It might be the latter.

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What's The Heck Is Wrong With Florida?

I used to think of Florida as a relatively happy place. Lots of beaches, the Magic Kingdom, the occasional hurricane that would reap a path of destruction which left only heart warming stories of the will of the people to come together as one and rebuild their lives...bigger...stronger....faster. Oh, wait, that's the 6 Million Dollar Man who did that. Never mind. But the beaches and the Magic Kingdom are happy things. But I don't think of it that way anymore. Now I think of Florida as a breeding ground and commune for the idiotic, the moronic and the dim- to slow-witted individual in general. If you hear a news story where you cannot believe that the people that the story is about would actually do/say/think whatever it was that was newsworthy, 9 times out of 10 it originates in Florida.

Let's begin with the overall intelligence of those residing in Florida who actually believe that they have the mental capacity to vote in an election. Remember, these are people just like you and me and the rest of the country's registered voters who are determining who our next President will be. The folks over there at The New Republic bring us the results of a poll which asked people who have already voted if they went with Barry or Grandpa John McCain. The results:

• John McCain - 49%


• Barry - 45%


• Don't Know- 6%
  

Wait. SIX PERCENT of people who have already voted DON'T KNOW who they voted for?! WTF, Florida? WTF?

Meanwhile, over there at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, we learn that the Florida voting rolls have some interesting individuals who are registered to vote. People like Mattie Lee Blitch who has been dead for 23 years. People like Brent Ackerman who is registered three times in two counties. And a two fer, Joseph Muro, a convicted felon who just signed up to vote. Naturally, he did so from a state mental institution for the criminally insane.

When the Sun-Sentinel looked into this matter, they found 65,000 ineligible voters and duplicate voters that were on the rolls. That includes "at least 600 dead people, 32,000 voters registered more than once and more than 33,000 convicted felons ." Some of those felons reside at the Florida Civil Commitment Center "a psychiatric lockup for pedophiles and rapists". In other news, there is a psychiatric lockup for pedophiles and rapists in Florida. (And it's not the faculty room at the Florida high schools.)

Nice job there, Florida. Dead voters, repeated voters, felonious voters, and idiotic voters who don't know who they already voted for. Yep, definitely a haven for the dense and challenged.

But then we have a story appearing in First Coast News about a one Robert Crews who, instead of showing up in court to be sentenced on a Federal gun charge, decided he would leave a fake suicide note in his truck (to throw police off of his trail), go to a home at 3am, stab his wife in the neck and then return to his home, but not before running his vehicle into several others along the way. The guy was already on parole and had a GPS ankle bracelet (designed to "restrict activities", it says. It sure didn't "restrict" a lot of this guys "activities", from what I can tell.), but it's OK that he was out because his curfew was lifted two nights of the week so that he could go fishing! Fishing, as you may or may not be aware, is key in lowering the recidivism rates of those on parole. And if you believe that then, as you may or may not be aware, you'll also remember that I am the Queen of all of England!

And here is Mr. Crews mug shot. It really answers any questions one might have, but it also provides you with a pictorial of what I'm envisioning a typical Florida resident to look like. I can't imagine the voters who already voted and didn't know who they voted for looking much different. Behold! A moronic Floridian!

When I first saw this photo, I thought that he looked kind of familiar. Not like someone I knew personally, but someone I was familiar with. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I got up to get myself a cookie. Then it hit me.

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Pork, Anyone?

Time flies like an arrow (and fruit flies like a banana). That's why you might not remember what all of the news was about exactly one week ago. That's also why I'm here to explain the unexplainable. (Here's a hint on how it's going to go: It might start with "WTF" and it might end with "they're all idiots". But I'm not giving anything else up. That's all you're getting for right now.)

Last week at this time, we were being told by those in Washington that the country is on the brink of financial doom. We were being told that our financial infrastructure, our stock market, our banking industry, all were on the verge of collapsing. And from that collapse we could expect a world wide Depression that would make the Great Depression look like a day at Disneyland without lines. Pleasant, eh? They had us all digging holes in our backyards to serve as hiding places for our cash. They had us scanning the Internet for recipes on how to boil your belt and what goes best with shoe leather, as we were clearly going to be starving as well.

They made it clear that they had to act NOW in order to avoid the certain disaster that we would face by them doing nothing. The initial idea was to give the Treasury Secretary a blank check for $700 billion dollars (a figure that came out of simply needing "a big number") and allow him to dole it out as he saw fit to financial institutions that had run themselves into the ground through a series of fraudulent actions. That document that would have allowed that was 2 pages long and gave Henry Paulson all of the authority to do whatever he wanted and gave Congress no authority or say so on what he did. How do you think those power mongering weasels over there reacted to that? Correct. With shrieks and shrills that could be likened to that of fornicating banshees.

What happened next was the House got together (as much as they could, which is to say, barely at all) and redrafted the 2 page document to include things like having some oversight and not giving the entire $700 billion all at once and things like that. Now that sounds fairly reasonable. Controlling, but reasonable. That "reason" increased the length of the document from 2 pages to approximately 137. I am not kidding. 137 pages of stuff that is mostly definitions of other stuff that needs to be voted on so that the country isn't ruined and you and I don't end up wearing a barrel. (Because really, barrels have never helped anything. You don't need to be poor and destitute AND ugly.)

OK, fine, so we're saved, right? No. Wait. What? No? Right. No. See, they voted on it, and they voted no. Then do you know what they did? After they wrote 135 additional pages of crap, after they told us we were going to self implode, after they made it sound as if there was NO time left, and after they voted down what had been presented to the public as our only hope, do you know what they did then? Correct. They took two days off for Rosh Hashanah. Wait. Wait. WTF?

Correct. Rosh Hashanah. I was a bit confused too, as I didn't realize that there was such a high number of Jewish members of the House that it warranted a couple of days off right in the middle of Armageddon. Fortunately for me, I happen to know someone who is extremely bright and quick (and really hot) who did a quick calculation/estimate for me and came up with approximately 12 members of the House would be Jewish based on averages. Twelve. I see. And they took the freaking day off? Are they unaware of what the concept of "working on a holiday" is about? They might want to sit down when they learn this: Some people actually DO work on holidays! Yes! Can you believe it! AND those people that DO sometimes work on holidays? They do so when they are NOT in the middle of, as one House member put it, "a financial 9/11." But they took off for Rosh Hashanah. That is when I lost what little, if any, confidence I had in this whole ordeal and immediately went out shopping for a much bigger mattress which to store my life savings beneath.

So while the House was off Rosh Hashanah-ing, the Senate held a little powwow and took a vote on their revised version of the "Troubled Asset Relief Program" aka TARP. (They should have called it COAT - "Cover Our Asses Today.") Their revised version is not 2 pages long either. It's also not 137 pages long. No, this thing is now four hundred and fifty one pages long. 451!!! 22,500% more pages than the original 2. 451 pages. By the time I finish reading the damn thing, the economy will have collapsed AND fixed itself by then! Are you kidding me?!? What the hell is in those 451 pages?!? Actually, forget about that for a minute. How was Rosh Hashanah?

I don't know if I have the stomach for it all in one post. It might have to be divided into two. But let me just say this: Those 451 pages? They're not ALL about the giving financial assistance to the companies that loaned out money for mortgages to people who couldn't afford to pay them back. No, that's what it was supposed to be about. But since not enough of our fine, fine Representatives could come together and agree on passing the bill, they needed to come up with ways that might sway some to change their vote to yes. So they did that by throwing a bunch of other things into this bill as well that have absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with this bill nor with the outcome of the economy. They just figured that if they pandered to some people's desires, projects, and wants that they might be persuaded to vote yes the next time around. Hmmmmm......see, for those of us NOT currently serving in the House, there's a name for that. It's called bribery. You selfish, self serving, rat bastard, weaselly snakes.

Yeah, I was right. This has to be two posts. I need to go yak somewhere. But I am hereby formally advocating to just clean House (literally) and start over. All of the members of the House are up for re-election in November. (Just one of many reasons that some had for voting "no" the first time around for this TARP thing. ) I am formally advocating the voting for every challenger to every incumbent seat in the House. I don't care who they are. All of those who are currently in office over there need to go. Yesterday. Throw them all out and start over. I don't care who the challenger is either. Communist? I'll vote for 'em. Homeless dude? Sure. Your dog? Yes. All of them. I will be voting for every single challenger to House seats out there. If ANY of these bozos are re-elected, you have to wonder WHO the people are who voted for them AGAIN. It's like when I hear that Congress has an 11% approval rating. I don't immediately think, "Wow, they suck." But that's because I already know that. I immediately think, "Who in the hell are you 11% that think that they are doing a good job?! Who are YOU?!?!"

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All Obligations Are Not Obligatory

In case you've been living under a rock lately, Ellen DeGeneres married her girlfriend Portia deRossi in California on August 16, despite the protests of people who think that allowing same-sex marriage will lead to things that will end up ruining society. (What's next? People marrying dogs?! A sight that I, personally, would love to witness the ceremony for. Anything after that, not so much. But a person-dog wedding? THAT is entertainment at it's finest.) And those who were protesting are continuing to do so with Proposition 8.

Knowing how you would vote on Prop 8 can be confusing because 'yes' means 'no' and 'no' means 'yes'. See, Prop 8 makes it so that men and only marry women and so that women can only marry men. Prop 8 basically says that if you're gay and want to marry the one who you're being gay with, well, you can't. So if you DON'T want same-sex marriage, you vote Yes. If you DO want same-sex marriage, you vote No. See, this one could go either way, not because of the public opinion but because people get confused in that little booth sometimes (it's the only way to explain that GW is a two term President) and with the wording for Prop 8 being like it is, who knows what California will end up with? It might just turn out that you can marry your dog if it passes! Who knows?!

But here's the thing that some people feel the need to point out and make a big deal about. (Oh, exactly what the "big deal" is, I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with some people not holding up their big, gay end of the whole deal, but it's really kinda foggy.) According to IN Magazine, Ellen and Portia have not made a financial contribution to help fight Prop 8 from passing. And I guess the article is implying that because they're gay and they got married and they're celebrities that they are somehow obligated or expected to fork over a chunk of cash for this cause. You know, since they're for gay marriage and all. Um, there are many flaws with that logic, but I'll get back to that.

The article continues to cite other gay celebrities who have also not upheld their end of all of the gayness by not contributing to the fundraising efforts to fight Prop 8. "Also missing (as of Sept. 10) from the rolls were: Rosie O’Donnell, whose Feb. 27, 2004, marriage to Kelli Carpenter was nullified; Sir Elton John, who tied the civil partnership knot with partner David Furnish in England; rock star Melissa Etheridge, whose domestic partnership/wedding to actress Tammy Lynn Michaels Sept. 22, 2003, was celebrated in In Style magazine." It went on to list other names of those who are "bad gays" because they haven't made a financial donation. It lists Paul Colichman, Greg Berlanti, Marc Cherry, Bryan Singer, Joel Schumacher and Gus Van Sant as having kept their own money to themselves. Um, who are those people? I know who Schumacher and Gus are, but the other ones? Never heard of them. But congratulations on all of the gayness and on all of the money that some people think that you should give away!

And just to hammer home the point, the article states that, "So while their visibility as openly LGBT celebrities and entertainment power players is important, their financial absence from the specific fight to save the fundamental right of same-sex couples to marry is hurting." Really? Wow. They must be having a really hard time digging up cash to fight this thing and...what? How much? Over eleven million dollars? Are you sure? That's dollars? Not pesos? (Because with Mexico being so close and all and with half of their population living here anyway, it would be a mistake that I could foresee happening.) Dollars. Really? And eleven million of them? Huh. Well, then. Are you freaking kidding me?!

Look, I'm not an accountant, I don't play one on TV and I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I do know a thing or two about math and finance. Allow me to start with the most basic of the concepts here: Eleven million of anything is a lot of that thing. Eleven million dollars, contrary to what seems to be the norm these days in devaluing the value of anything of value, is a lot of dollars. How much money have the folks who are for Prop 8 raised? Sixteen million dollars? Again, NOT pesos, right? Dollars? So, five million dollars more than those against Prop 8. OK.

Again, I'll admit to knowing next to nothing about campaigning for or against something in terms of cost. But I do know that for eleven million dollars, you can do a hell of a lot and if you're saying that you can't, then you're probably right. YOU can't. But someone else CAN.

Aside from the financial logistics (which I could ramble on about for quite some time. Probably right up until all eight of you who actually read this had lost interest and vowed never to read again. That's why I'm not delving much further into that topic. You're welcome.), I need to get back to the bad gays, Ellen and Portia. Why anyone would feel that anyone else is obligated to GIVE AWAY their money to someone or something else is beyond me. And not just give it away, but give it away blindly (basically). I have very little to absolutely NO faith in almost any group doing fundraising in any sort of political arena that they will be able to efficiently regulate and spend that money in ways that will be the most productive for their cause. NO faith. None! You have no idea where they're spending the money, what it's going for, what it's already gone for. And you will get no promises as to what your money will be spent on when you fork it over (never to be seen again, mind you). But because Ellen and Portia are....? Celebrities? They're supposed to want to throw their cash into a pile for a cause that, while I'm sure they feel is worthy, may or may not use their money efficiently? I don't think they're supposed to feel like they should do that.

Ellen and Portia are celebrities who have taken a huge risk (though not as big of a risk as it was when Ellen used her TV show to come out with all of her gayness. That awesome revelation basically cost her her career for a few years.) to publicize their relationship with each other. You're going to get more publicity out of just that event in and of itself than you are with millions of more dollars. It's not all about the money. You'd think it was, but it's not. And Ellen and Portia are no more obligated to donate money toward fighting Prop 8 than any other gay individual is obligated to do so. (Morons.) And I find it bizarre that some seem to think that they are obligated.

I don't know, maybe it's because it's election time and the candidates are all fundraising at a pace normally only seen in meth freaks after they've been up for four days, but I'm pretty tired of always being asked to give my money away. And it's always as if that is what my money is for; to give away! Hey, news flash: No, it's not. And Ellen's and Portia's money isn't for them to be giving away either. And especially not just because they're gay.

And just because I don't want to give money to a bunch of fundraisers for something that I fundamentally agree with, doesn't mean that I don't care (even though sometimes, I really don't). It just means that people are expected just to blindly hand their money over, no questions asked, and feel good about it. That doesn't make me feel very good. And if I actually did it, I'd feel like a moron for doing so. Ellen and Portia don't come across as moronic. They come across as very smart, not to mention very gay and very happy together. And I'm sure that if the fundraising individuals who are sitting on that eleven million just put as much effort into stretching that money out as far as it can go instead of belittling anyone who is gay who hasn't donated yet, they'd end up being a lot more productive. Perhaps they should try it my way so we can find out.

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