I was driving up to Reedville (I just made a mis-stroke and it made me realize that Reedville is an anagram of Deerville - nothing could be closer to the truth.  While my co-workers - hunters all - are bemoaning their inability to find the beasts, this morning I counted seven and saw some more I couldn't make out clearly, prancing across my backyard looking for my most valuable shrubbery to destroy) - anyway on this drive I found myself behind a vehicle with a new and different version of that silly fish that people in large numbers affix to their cars.  My favorite version is the one I call 'drunken Jesus' because it has a cross where the eye would be, just like the old cartoons of Dagwood and his ilk had in  the Sunday comics when they indulged not wisely but too well.  I wonder they don't place a whirl of stars around the poor fish's head.  (I am also big on the ones which encapsulate the word "ικϑος", and it leads me to wonder who on earth imagines that someone, who cannot recognize a picture of a fish when he sees it, would happen to be fluent in Ancient Greek  and seeing the word 'fish' there would be enlightened as to what he was looking at.) Anyway, I fell to musing one how much less annoying the christian cults would be if they actually adhered to those bits of the bible which they seem to ignore: in this case, the bit about not making a show of one's religion.   (By the way, that question mark in the fish word should be a theta, but that's what happens when one transfers stuff from Apple to Spaces)

There are a slew of folks whom seem to profess great affection for, and belief in, the late J. Christ of biblical fame, and who profess a nearly equal passion for the ideas which the founders of our nation enshrined in the Constitution.  So it is perplexing to me - or would be if I had any faith whatever in either the intelligence or integrity of my fellow man - why these same folks have not only a disregard, but a positive disdain, for one well-known principle on which both of these literary efforts agree strongly which is expressed from the mouth of the biblical hero Jesus himself as, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's", and which shows up in the Constitution as "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" together with the the banning of "prohibiting the free exercise thereof".   Leaving aside the context of Jesus' statement - the weaselling out of a tight spot when the issue of financial support for the foreign occupiers of Israel was raised (Well, sir, are you a traitor to your people or to your rulers?), much like any modern candidate might weasel in a debate on a tough issue, we still have a pretty clear maxim on the separation of the secular and the religious.

It would seem to me, then, that the state or nation has no business marrying (or divorcing) anybody, since marriage is pretty much a religious exercise with plenty of regulation from any cult worth its salt, mostly based on the pretty fiction that said relationship extends at least unto death and in many cases - enough to stop me cold in my tracks right here - beyond death.  What the state does have an interest in is determining rights of property, inheritance, decision-making (medical decisions, for instance) within a legal entity or organization or partnership and so forth.   So all this  rannygazoo over the various efforts to enable or disable marriage for persons of the same gender seems to be mostly a confusion between what is Caesar's and what is the other guy's.  You'd think that one side, at least, would be clear on that. 

I personally cannot imagine being married or civilly united with anyone, and I have less than no concern whether or not other folks are, or are not, so encumbered.  Well, not entirely NO concern, because I do think that children do best with two parents rather than one, and doubly so when it is the same two for the duration of the child's younger years at least.  I'll even grant (although I am not really convinced) that it might be better if there is one parent of each sex; however, I suspect that two loving parents of the same sex are still better than one parent, and that any loving parent - whether one alone or one of a pair - is better than none, although I suspect no parent at all is better by several furlongs than some of the cruel and careless parents I have known in my day, both those paired and those single.   When no children are concerned, I really see no need for any union whatever, unless one subscribes to the idea that there should be no sex without some treaty of union between the two players.  Most sects would make that union marriage; personally I think a pre-nup covers most of the bases (with or without the ensuing nup). 

With all the marital discord that lands in court and the subsequent eager attempts to savage the children by the two parties who just moments ago were mooning over each other as being the greatest guy or gal on Earth, I see no reason for the law to get involved in anything as messy as marriage.  Leave marriage to the various faiths, who are far less filled with the milk of human kindness than any civil court could ever hope to be.   No law should ever force any cult into marrying or dissolving the marriage, or banning or condoning the marriage, of anyone.  Civil law, for the good of the citizenry, should establish the earliest age at which sexual relations are permissable, since there is good evidence that sex engaged in with someone too young to give his or her informed consent is severely damaging.  Let the churches marry off twelve-year-olds - or three-year-olds - if they wish, but let the law also ensure that the sexual aspects of those marriages not begin until the proper age is reached by both parties.  I have heard from many of my married friends that a sexless marriage is not exactly a rara avis, so this would introduce no novelty into the world as we know it. 

Religion rules morals and government rules ethics.  Others are free to determine which of these they most want to find in their daily dealings with others, but for me, give me the ethical man in preference to the moral man any day.  Laws can be made and unmade by the majority of folks as determined by their representatives; dogma is made by a few and then enforced for all time with utter disregard for changes in circumstances, until it becomes so ridiculously out of touch it dies a natural and welcome death.  I know there are still folks who kill a goat or a cow to honor or propitiate some vaporous entity floating in the ether, but I would not care to do so and would hardly find myself joining some gang that wanted thus to express their devotion.  The sacrificing of virgins has given way to the killing of girls who are caught becoming non-virgins in some parts of the world (I guess it is progress to move from killing those who have done nothing to killing those who have done something); and in my youth the sequestering or 'sending away', and expelling from school - or society - of female non-virgins who were not wise enough or lucky enough to prevent conception has been reduced these days to forcing the girl to have the kid and raise it - usually unaided by the man (or petrie dish or toilet seat) involved, but then damn few of these groups were founded by women. 

There are areas that are the concern of both faith and the civil authority, but in surprisingly numerous areas of life one of these two seems to wish to meddle in the sole province of the other.   I should think it would be easy enough apply all the legal rights and constraints to any couple who formally enters into a legal union, and deny them to those who do not, whether or not they choose to marry in a church or temple or bath house.  Equally, it would be easy to administer whatever sacraments, rites or benefits are claimed to accrue to those who meet the provisions of a faith, and to deny these things to those whom that faith despises, whatever their legal status.   Separating these two ideas would be a done deal tomorrow, I imagine, if young women could be convinced that they could have not one but two "Big Days" in which they could indulge all their most extravagant, pointless and mindless fantasies, forcing all who had previously loved or liked or breathed the same air as themselves to take part in mind-numbingly dull exercises and to give them large, expensive tokens of their regard. 

Speaking of this latter issue, it has caused me no little shame and embarrassment to see many gays piling on that bandwagon of extravagant vulgarity that is the modern wedding.  There is, or was, a program on Logo, the gay cable channel,  (It was unfortunately not named "You're as Bad as They Are") which followed various same-sex couples through the process of planning their weddings and the ceremony itself.  I watched a couple of episodes with that same fascination which used to draw so many to public hangings.  I finally could take no more after seeing two lads make a great deal of fuss over choosing a church to marry in.  Um, how about the one you attended regularly?  And if you did not attend any or if the one you attended refused to marry you, then why a church at all?   When I was younger, every wedding reception in my family occurred in the home of the bride.  One saw people there whom one actually knew and cared for and with whom one liked to socialize.  Poor mama cooked the food (with help sometimes, from others) and perhaps served with it a purchased cake, with a couple of dolls on top.  The bills were probably paid off within a year.   Since that time I have found very few weddings to be any fun at all, and I have been to a lot of them.  More than a few weddings have lasted nearly as long as the marriage, the latter of which topics no one seems to have given much thought to at all.   The bride requires her "perfect day" in which she is "the most beautiful girl in the world" (neither of which fantasies came even close to being realized) and the groom requires an occasion to stand tongue-tied and red-faced listening to cliched innuendo and, if he is exceptionally vulgar, to begin the marriage much as he will subsequently end it, by shoving cake in his beloved's face, although frequently the ending facial is provided with something a good deal harder and less sugar-laden than cake. 

On the issue, then, of gay marriage, I feel about the same as I do about marriage in general: that it should be the province of whatever church or fraternity or social grouping one adheres to, and that the legalities and interests of the legal system should be expressed in some other form of legal contract available TO anyone WITH anyone.  Further, since there is general agreement among religions that the main purpose of marriage is to produce children, and as the government pretty much feels that the protection, if not the production of children, is a major concern of their version of marriage or civil union, I believe that any two people, not already bound by an existing civil contract of union, who apply to a government for such union, and who are denied this, should be exempt from any other obligation to children and the parents thereof, notably school taxes (so long as they do not burden the system with ex-contractual children of their own).   Folks should be free to go as deeply into debt, and express themselves with whatever degree of vulgarity they deem suitable to celebrate either a religious marriage or a civil union, or both. 

On the other hand, the battle against gay marriage as expressed by opposition to such proposals as the recent Proposition 8 in California has nothing whatever to do with marriage or civil union, or the protection of these, in any way.  Were any of these opponents - especially the Big Three - the Mormons, the Catholics, and the Focus on Families group the least bit interested in the 'saving'  or 'sanctity' of marriage, they'd be plowing their cash and influence into outlawing divorce, and since they profess to see both eternal bonding and the will of god in marriage between two people - a single man and a single woman - none of them would permit those who attempted to dissolve this bond or worse, to enter into second and third marriages, to enter their sacred precincts, and would return any donations to the givers when the givers were such people, just as politicians reluctantly return any donations from those with whom they feel sullied to be in league.   But I suppose the first law of any Faith is that all money is holy once it enters its coffers; still, a little seemliness, or at least consistency, seems in order.  

These people are haters of gay people and ought to be open in saying so.  These people know very well that these laws will not suddenly compel the married man or woman to leave his or her mate to move in next door with someone of his or her own sex, or in any other way change the rights or relationships of heterosexual married folks.  The bullshit about hating the 'sin', but loving the sinner is flimsy and thin and transparently untrue as soon as one examines their treatment of those sinners whom the Big Three of opposition profess to love so dearly.  Stripped of all the rhetoric and subterfuge, the opposition to these propositions are nothing more than expressions of distaste and dislike.   Moreover, contributions by these organizations to political causes are prima facie evidence that they should not be exempt from taxation, since they have chosen to depart from the principle of keeping the civil and religious separate.  This should not be a one-way street; if the churches wish to meddle in the affairs of civil authorities, then those civil authorities should be not only free, but required, to meddle back in the form of audits and taxes. 

Just thought I'd mention it - oh, and Happy Thanksgivvey.

Since I paid off the last of my debts with last month's Social Security cheque, and since I have not yet begun to put the subsequent lavish installments of this socialistic boon into the tankless water heating system that I plan to install so that I may at last enjoy the huge built-in "bathtub" (actually it is a tiled drop in the floor that goes down about 30 inches to form a vast rectangular pool) that inspired me to purchase this manse in the first place, I have been indulging in an orgy of spending on extravagant gifts for the only person in my life -  moi, as Miss Piggy would say.  I seem to have this flaw in my make-up, that "vacation" means to me not only a joyful and soon ended freedom from the slavery of my normal - i. e. working - life, but an equal freedom from any awareness of consequences or even from common sense, which, of course is part of un cercle méchant that usually makes it necessary to extend the foreseeable term of my servitude.  However since GWB, in what I had fondly and naively hoped was his last act of malevolent incompetence, has destroyed my retirement savings to the point where a person so averse as I am to a life in a cardboard box under a bridge in the snows of Western New York dining on roadkill must put aside thoughts of retirement and bend my aged shoulders to the laborer's wheel unto the end of this life and possibly beyond if, as my pal jeankfl so ardently and inexplicably believes, there is some divinity floating in the æther who, having been malicious enough to endow us with GWB in the here and now, would additionally inflict eternal life upon us.  I used the term 'naively' up there at the beginning of that last meandering sentence, because I pretty much felt that, short of bombing Iran and getting us into a third war (which he might possibly spin that by bombing the land that sits there keeping Afghanistan from smashing into Iraq as merging the current duet of war into a single entity, thus leaving us with 'only one war' - an act of spin that would fit neatly into a universe where a passel of dented and scraped armored vehicles and a blurred photograph of an old feed mill can be spun into Weapons of Mass Destruction) - there wasn't much else ol' George could do to ruin his native land.  But then I heard this week (or last - it all flows into a dull nightmare of sameness lately) that the next few months are to be spent using executive directives or departmental revisions of guidelines, or whatever careful of framework of regulations it is that keeps your water safe to drink and ensures that your spouse doesn't remain at work in the mine trapped under a mountain or two of fallen granite, in order to gut existing regulations which business finds onerous; after all, why should Yellowstone just sit there all lumpy and bumpy when it can be smoothed out and filled with poorly made homes?   A day without savaging the structure and well-being of the land is a day wasted.   

I had considered briefly holding off my spending for a week, in order to not rev up the economy and thereby influence the outcome of the election, but last Thursday I downloaded a bunch of songs from iTunes and after paying no less than $40 for the lot, found a message when I tried to move them to my iPod that said iPod was full, and that $37 worth of these songs would not be playing on that treasured but ancient device anytime soon.  Well, that was it for me; I was powerless in the grip of such a disaster.  Taking a page from GWB's playbook, I said, "Damn the effect on the country," and tore out and bought myself a new iPod, which promises a capacity, instead of that measly thousand songs the old one could encompass, of a tasty 30,000.  The physical profile of the slick new device is, of course, such that my old in-car player, which I plug into the cigarette lighter, will not fit it and so I had to purchase a new one.  Then it occurred to me that having such a slick new device with its delightful ability to reproduce even the smothered belch of the fat guy in seat Q of row 7 in the audience at the live recording of Mahler's Seventh (if Mahler HAD a Seventh, and if I were ever so refined as to buy something like that), it made no sense to have my music merely broadcast in my car, which, like all Mazdas, is as noisy as jet flight would be, if one were able to ride in a jet with the top down, when there were expensive earphones on the market which blocked ambient sound and faithfully produced the recordings I was going to put into my new iPod even unto that posited belch. 

Thoughts of the noisiness of my car set me to musing on the fact that it had grown considerably more noisy, producing new and, quite frankly, alarming sounds of late, and in addition that the due date for my annual inspection had just passed; that it is entirely likely that the first state wise enough to ban the use of hand-held cellphones while driving would also have added a rider to the effect that it is equally illegal to wear noise-suppressing headphones while doing same; thus it would be costly to be stopped by the gendarmerie for doing so only to have them discover that I was such a scofflaw as to be driving with expired inspection stickers.  I therefore hied me to the nearby inspection station and said grandly (with a lordly wave of my hand), "Inspect it!  Fix it!".   Well it turns out that the alarming noises were mostly being caused by the fact that these all-purpose tires, which I had put on my car when the virtually treadless wonders that had served me well in Alabama, had proved to be thin reeds upon which to lean amidst the snows of New York, were in the process of disintegration, being wracked with fissured irregularities and uneven spots and god knows what else. 

"Don't you," asked Brian the service station man, who seems about to become my new best friend, "rotate them?"  Well, of course, I have HEARD of rotating tires, but I had no idea that people actually DID it, unless they were fanatic car-ophilic teenagers or the kind of men who have allergies.  I mean, don't the damn things rotate thousands of times, every time you drive somewhere?  Why would one get flat spots or worn spots in just one or two places; does the wheel leave the ground for a bit on each spin so as to leave less-worn spots, thereby making noise and put me at risk of life and limb?  "I have," added Brian in a conspiratorial manner, "a set of studded wheels which someone special-ordered and then never showed up to purchase, which would fit your car.  And studs are the best," he added, "for winter driving."  

"How much would they cost?" I asked.  Of course money would be no object - certainly not between such pals as Brian and me - but I felt that such adult attention to detail would favorably impress my new friend.

"They would be four hundred and four dollars, if you want them."  Brian said (he had already told me the cost of the oil change, inspection and so forth).  "Of course, by law, you can only have them put on after November first, and they must be replaced with other tires for summer no later than April 15.  And you MUST have them rotated every 5,000 miles, although,"  (he was eager to save a pal money, and point out the loopholes) "it wouldn't be a real problem if you went to 6,000 miles." 

"Put 'em on!" I cried.

It only occurred to me last night as I was driving my brother George's pick-up back from The Stereo Shop that if these tires were special-ordered, Brian could have meant four hundred and four dollars EACH.   And by this time I had already received a ten per cent discount on my new Sennheiser RS140 headphones from another new friend whose name I didn't quite catch, the discount being because the only set in stock was one he had taken home to try out,  ("They aren't USED," he assured me,  although one wonders why anyone would take the trouble of bringing them home if one were not going to use them).
 
So I start this Election Day with feelings of dread and anticipation.   Yes, I worry that my guy won't win - my voting track record includes Goldwater (I was very young), McGovern, Humphrey, Ford, Anderson, Carter (the time he lost) and the like, so my candidate losing is a distinct possibility - but also I worry that I have nullified the advantage of being the only person in this Bush economy who is not worried about losing his job by adding the worry that I may be paying $1616 for a set of tires I must remove in just six months.  And then I must go in my car with the new gold-studded tires to pick up my new headphones.  "I don't work tomorrow," my new friend in The Stereo Shop told me, "but I'll have my relative bring them in for you so they'll be here when we open."  Isn't it kind of odd to say "my relative"?  Not "my brother" or "my cousin" or "my great-aunt Charlene"?   I'm just asking. 

On the bright side, all the forecasters say it is going to be an exceptionally gorgeous day, with near-record high temperatures.  So if the voting machines break down and I have to stand in line for hours, or if I have to move from my house to a spot under a nearby bridge in order to pay for  tires that have a value such that they are priced by the gram weight, I will have spectacular weather in which to do so.  I doubt that the lines at the polls will be that long because this is a generally Republican area, and I have never yet heard of a voting snafu in one of those.  It would be like running out of cheese at a soiree in Wisconsin.  Plus - and I can hardly believe that New York could possibly get things so right - I was watching one of those pre-election shows, where the news guy gets so desperate for something new to say that he starts talking about the 'other' presidential candidates on the ballot and the camera went to close-up of a voting machine and it was the same old type of machine with the pulldown levers on which I cast my very first ballot!  The kind that work!  (Come to think of it, I really don't recall hearing of voting problems - the mechanical kind, not the blatant fraudulent kind, of which we have had plenty - in New York.)

I took time out, in this catalogue of a misspent vacation (using 'spent' in both senses) to call a plumber about installing a tankless water heater.   I made certain the man's name was not 'Joe' before I called, since I am sure every plumber in America thus yclept has raised his rates in anticipation of becoming rich enough to join the Republican party.  Although I infer from the fact that I went through the 'push one for this, push two for that' routine followed by a 'leave your name and the time you called', that I may have called Chris the plumber, but Chris may be a Joe in spirit.  Then I took a minute to see if my car was ready for the trek to The Stereo Shop, but apparently the studs are being carefully inset into the tires by a jeweler of some sort, because the car will not be ready until noon.  Anyway, after I left my name and the time I called as bid, I resumed my labor here until it was borne in upon me that the electronic voice had failed to request, and I had failed to give, my telephone number, so I called back and actually got Chris himself; I have an appointment for tomorrow morning before I have to leave for Smallville in my return to servitude.  So I can finish my vacation in a flurry of spending that would cause Marie Antoinette to blink. 

If you all find an uptick in the value of your 401(k) today: well, you're welcome.