Friday morning’s threat level has been raised to “a hot cup of tea.”

[bodlon]

I finished reading Digger this morning. There were tears. It's a very good story, and I spent a lot of time being impressed at how much expression Ursula Vernon managed to wring out of things (impassive statues, people in veils, wombats, etc.) that aren't necessarily all that expressive in theory.

But yes. If you like reading stories with pictures, take the time for this one. It's good.

~*~

Hey world? Can we have a minute? Because I'd like to take some time and go over homophobia real quick since it seems like some people who are in the news -- like, say, Ted Nugent and Rick Santorum -- just aren't quite getting the concept.

I suspect a lot of this is probably because we know that bigotry is bad unto being a thing one can point to and describe as evil, but that we don't feel (or at least don't want to feel) like bad, evil people. We're just good, right-thinking people acting on common sense!

(And yeah, I said "we." Look outside sometime or turn on a television. It's okay. I'll wait.)

So here's a clue. If you have a sudden impulse, after saying "I love gay people!" to then hold forth on how we folk who are given to same-sex love and desire should still not be allowed to marry, or how repulsive you find our sexual congress (bonus points for declaring it unnatural or comparing it to bestiality), or that you would not like your children to be gay, or that when we die we are ineligible to enjoy what you envision a happy afterlife to be, or that children should not know that we exist, or that AIDS is your gods punishment for our existence, or that we should not hold public office, or that we're predatory and child molesters, or that we're naturally dishonest because of that whole closet thing, or how our presence on the battlefield undermines military readiness, or really any other asinine statement which basically boils down to the idea that our sexual orientation makes us somehow less worthy than straight people, that's a whopping great dose of homophobia you need to be unpacking.

Especially if you, at any point in the conversation, declare, "some of my best friends are gay!" You know. Just to hammer home how homophobic you aren't because you happen to know someone who does that icky thing you don't like.

This should be simple. Apparently it isn't.

~*~

- I know a startling number of people who desperately need this t-shirt.

- The US CDC has posted guidelines on preparing for a zombie apocalypse. With the exception of how they really need to revise the short section on the origins of the zombie mythos for accuracy, this merits propagation.

- It's a good thing I don't work for the US Government: Feds must stop writing gibberish under new law. Mostly I am skeptical that one can legislate clarity, and wonder how necessary or useful this law is as there's no real recourse built into it for citizens if the government gives us something incomprehensible. Also, I actually really like (and use!) words like heretofore and promulgate. Then again, with grown-ups dying out, perhaps this is a necessary step?

- Here. Have a really great piece about food being sacred in the pagan religions.

- I'm a bit late posting on this, but a Psychology Today blogger, Satoshi Kanazawa, made an appalling post this week about race and attractiveness. His article claimed that black women were objectively less attractive (as well as less intelligent) than...well, pretty much everyone ever. While it appears to have been pulled down, another has now posted on problems in the first blog post. It's not unproblematic either, but...well, you know how homophobia should be easy to spot? Yeah, the same principles appear to apply, especially when you're trying to use bad science to prove that it's fine and natural to treat someone badly.

- There's an article today on the NYT about how families are dealing with the latest rapture cult. I feel terrible for some of these kids, whose lives and educations are being disrupted. Having been on the receiving end some really horrible conversations of the "I'm afraid you're going to Hell" variety, this dug up a lot of old sorrow and anger. Also, looking at how Harold Camping came to his conclusions, I also feel terribly sorry for basic arithmetic. And calendars.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com