why?

because i have an affinity for quotations, especially particularly good ones, and this book is so incredibly quotable.

from EL&IC by J.S. Foer.

"we could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened."


"just because you're an athiest, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are."


"in the end, everyone loses everyone. there was no invention to get around that one. and so i felt, that night, like turtle that everything else in the universe is on top of."


"humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with the lips. so in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are."


"the books had been buried, so i hid this time behind a group of trees, i imagined their roots wrapped around the books, pulling nourishment from the pages, i imagined rings of letters in their trunks..."

here's to a grain of sand.

"What would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a grain of sand and moved it on milimeter?"

I said "I'd probably die of dehydration."

He said "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?"

I said, "I dunno, what?"

He said, "Think about it."

I thought about it. "I guess I would have moved a grain of sand."

"Which would mean?"

"Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?"

"Which would mean you changed the Sahara."

"So?"

"So? So the Sahara is a vast desert that's existed for millions of years and you changed it."

"That's true!" I said, sitting up. "I changed the Sahara!"

"Which means?"

...

"I changed the course of human history."

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
page 86, J.S. Foer

i'm making lilith 2010 a priority.

you strut your rasta wear
and your suicide poem,
and a cross from a faith that died
before jesus came.

you're building a mystery.

i don't understand why

no one seems to want to ask
"how the fuck did we let this happen?"

we should be asking this of ourselves every day.

as we focus all of our attention for a few minutes on Haiti, before the next disaster strikes, we are apparently blind to the fact that we've been wholly ignorant to the state of a nation so close to our shores. ignorant to the fact that it represents a tiny per cent of the rest of the developing world that we've steeped in poverty as a result of our seemingly infinite greed.

climate change is undoubtedly the cause for the number of natural disasters that have hit world-wide over the last decade, disasters that are off the charts in comparison to those prior in our recorded meterological history which, even before the new millenium, were seen to be of increasing intensity.


and apparently no one saw this coming.
and apparently no one will ask "why?"

still, i don't quite understand
what's so threatening.
what it is that's so easily identified,
some
red flag i'm ignorant to.
because all i know is what i know
and
that's not much of anything at all.


we are buried

in a time when at once
our television sets blare bad news
and terror is a word in the vocabularies of our children
with eyes wide open to a world that is trapped in a
haze of chaos.

and i've got a room full of memories
i'd pay to forget.
walls built of regret. and guilt.
doors with hinges that refuse to give
with handles that stick
rooms filled with misunderstandings.

so it pays to have a perspective you haven't bought.
and i'm short on insight
but i'm pushing for change
while i push through walls of
quiet.

because they've got nothing to say to me.

earthquake in Haiti

an earthquake moved through Haiti tonight, just before 5 PM eastern standard time, about 10 miles west of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, one of the poorest cities in the world.

the people who are without power, hospitals, ambulences, rescue teams, food, water, shelter, and even communication need help ASAP.


TEXT "Haiti" to (90999) for an automatic $10 donation. Keep Port-au-Prince and the Haitian people in thoughts and hearts tonight...



how to help:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34834553/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show

no on H8

the trial began today.

fools, said i, you do not know.
silence like a cancer grows.
hear my words that i might teach you.
take my arms that i might reach you.

but my words, like silent raindrops, fell.
and echoed in the wells of silence.

and america doesn't have to answer to anybody.
unless or until
god (or the space aliens)
come to kick our ass.

the one and only brett dennen.

NYS Senate Votes No.

Today I watched as the New York State Senate debated live, loudly, and in color, whether a tax paying, working, loving couple has the right to marry. Regardless of my gender or orientation, or that of anyone else's, my rights as a New Yorker were up for a vote. All of ours were. Those of our friends and of our loved ones. 62 people stood up and decided for us, debating a bill that is concerned with a basic right that should never have been up for a vote in the first place.

The rights of the minority should never be subject to a vote cast by the majority.

And I'm not even a real believer in "till death do us part," but I cannot help but feel ashamed to be represented by some of the women and men who serve me as a citizen of America and a resident of New York.

Reading the results of a vote is far different from watching as politicians debate matters of their own personal moralities with disregard for the civil rights, and lack thereof, of the constituency that put them into office. I was deeply saddened each time I heard "No" as the roll was called.

Was this matter not supposed to have been voted upon back in June, before the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall, before the apparently threatening novel concept of almost-equality caused two of the state's democrats to defect and throw the senate into a frenzy, postponing the vote for six months?

Was the United States of America not an original signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights more than sixty years ago? The same document which reads:

Article 16:
• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.


Article 30
• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

I wonder especially why New York of all places? Manhattan Island holds in its herstory the Suffragettes' movement of the early twentieth century. Its streets embedded with the sights and sounds of the Stonewall Riots that launched the gay liberation movement in 1969 into a greater national conciousness. Home to Greenwich, the East Village, Alphabet City. Home to artists and misfits who sought out those neighborhoods.

The state whose borders contain one of the foremost LGBTQ friendly cities in the world is also home to a chamber of senators whom, in the year 2009, listened to the words

"Marriage Equality Act Fails 24-38."

Where did our left leaning majority go? Where did the rights of the people go? If not our state senators, will we ever see Obama make good on his promise to repeal DADT and DOMA? Or are we perpetually too focused on the war on terrorism, that we should never have started fighting, and the economy that spiraled out of control while in the hands of greedy aristocratic small-minded white men who allowed capitalism to run rampant, to even blink at human rights issues?


Why in 2009 does any legislator believe that certain constituents do not deserve the same exact rights as any other person?

We are all lessened when any one of us is denied but one fundamental right. Separate is not equal.

you don't know me at all.

You could have just propped me up on the table like a mannequin
Or a cardboard stand-up and paint me
Any face that you wanted me
To be seen.



What I'm trying to tell you
It's not gonna come out like I wanna say it cause I know you'll only change it.

"ashes" by andrea gibson

6.8 billion

i pride myself on my
steadfast commitment to
always observe the outward display of
the earth's rotation.

the illuminated sky
never fails to remind me
just how

small

[i really am] we really are.

i think of my fellow wo[man].

the person down the street
whose name i don't even know.
the billions of people who will be born and die
and will never know i existed.

labels are for soup cans.

we say that we don't appreciate labels.
that they're restrictive.


separate by gender.
then color.
orientation.
then income.
by lifestyle.


strip all of these away:

we become people.

take away that label.

we're mammals.
then animals.
then living things. alive.

...then we're just things.

...just matter occupying space.

...nothing but conciousness.



after that
what is there?



label = judgement?
...it's human nature.
is it in the nature of mammals?
of living things?
is prejudice in the nature of matter occupying space?

how can conciousness be judgemental?

when we encroach upon the territory of labels, when we turn grey matter into a plane of
black or, white,
male or female,
straight or gay,

when the lines become too defined, the results are

confusion,
misunderstanding,
ignorance,
the unknown.

then fear. fear of the unknown.

prejudice.
discontent.
violence.



it's all bullshit.
labels are for soup cans.
warhol had the right idea.

" Keith Olbermann delivered a rousing, emotional, 6-minute special comment on Prop 8 Monday night. Olbermann, who has never married, vehemently disagrees with its passage and the ban on gay marriage.
"I am not personal vested this," he said, "yet this vote is horrible. Horrible... This is about the human heart." After going through the history of marriage in the United States, and reminding viewers not only that marriage between black and white people used to be illegal in 1/3 of the country, but illegal between slaves, he made a plea for love and the spread of happiness.
"The world is barren enough... with so much hate in the world, so much meaningless division... this is what your religion tells you to do?... this is what your heart tells you to do?... You are asked to stand now on a question of love." "

WATCH:



FULL TEXT:inally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.
Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.


This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?


I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
---
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person...

Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.
"It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:
"So I be written in the Book of Love;
"I do not care about that Book above.
"Erase my name, or write it as you will,
"So I be written in the Book of Love."
---
Good night, and good luck.
________________________________________
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/keith-olbermanns-prop-8-s_n_142862.html

regina spektor makes me happy

from the respektor's myspace blog, september 12, 2008

"Summer.

I had the chance to do 3 days on the True Colors tour with the one and only Cyndi Lauper. She is indescribably great. The tour was a benefit for gay rights. Gay rights, in a free and equal country, should be implicit. That's the point of equality. It's equal. Everyone gets to have it. Somehow , someone didn't get the memo with the whole "inalienable rights" thing, and so they are not. Then again, they got the memo about guns just fine. Not seperation of church and state, though... Who is in charge of handing out these memos? It's bizarre. Then again, we are a lack of a heart beat away from having a very innexperienced woman, (an insult to all actually deserving women out there) possibly lead our country off the deep end of the edge of human reason... but that's a much longer post... "



there are full versions of this like a hundred times on youtube, but this one gets right to the point in a few seconds:

one

...beginnings are always messy.