Tycho Talk

I am getting really tired of politicians attacking contraceptives. It used to be crazy-pants to say you were against contraception so they were very careful to say it was all about abortion... now apparently they feel just dandy saying contraception is a problem. Assholes. That mandatory ultrasound in Virginia, with no possibility of opt-out by woman or doctor, really pissed me off. Dan Savage said "Call it what it is: state-sanctioned rape. [...] forcing a vaginal probe into a woman's vagina without her consent meets the legal definition of rape in Virginia." True, and super-fucked up. It boggles my mind that people could think this is okay.

Hmm, a whole mess of stuff has happened, and I have been lax in posting.

My birthday definitely had it's good points. I kayaked, and the weather could not have been more perfect. It was the first time I went by myself, but it wasn't too much of a challenge; it's a broad, shallow river so really it's mostly about steering. The trees were turning, and I even saw a very shy deer among them. Dinner that evening was delightful... business was slow and they pulled out a fancy almost-a-throne chair that usually graces one of their semi-private rooms. I think about 16 people showed up. I had delicious gulyash or goulash or whatever, and black forest cake.

The coven-closing went about as well as could be expected. On Sunday, I engaged in life-affirming activities of which I shall speak nae further, but I got a little over two hours of sleep before going into work the next morning. I regret nothing! Going to work on two hours of sleep is a pretty surreal experience, I will say. I was down 40 or so IQ points, had the dexterity of a .10 BAC and you know how you have an internal clock that tells you approximately what time it is? That was offline, so every time I looked at the clock I was completely surprised. It was interesting.

Tomorrow, I am going to the UT-Aggie game here in town. I'm going with a bunch of Aggies, and will be in my Longhorn finery. The weather looks like it could be terrible, though the forecast for rain seems to be shaping up to blow itself out by the evening- then it'll just be cold. UT is scheduled to lose. Well, I can live with this.

I commissioned a ring that was supposed to be ready two weeks ago, but was ready today. When I went to pick it up, it was white gold, though I was expecting yellow. When I mentioned this, he said he could've had it ready 2 weeks ago if he'd known that. Bother. But it sure looked awesome... I can't wait to see it in yellow gold.

Tonight I went back to choir for the first time since last spring. Folks were glad to see me, and they were really hurting for tenors, so it's no wonder. We're right about ready to ramp up and practice the hell out of a couple of pieces for the end of season performance. One's a many-layered Kings Singers bit, and the other is in Latin. Me gusta.

Australia, you confuse me. I thought you were cool, man.

I Await a Rebuttal from the Itty Bitty Titty Committee.

In other news, become a certified virgin. Or make your friends virgins. Well, at least they're throwing money at AIDS research.

Alternate title- The Double Standard- Still Around, Still Stupid!

Women Have Become Too Easy

(from Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter)

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): It's your choice, Scorpio. You could be a creative dynamo who changes the course of local history -- or you could be a plain old boring sex maniac. What'll it be? We here at the Free Will Astrology Libido Management Center encourage you to at least partially sublimate your unruly mojo into beautiful works of art, innovative business solutions, and brilliant strokes of collaboration. You don't have to stop boinking altogether; just make it the second most important thing you rather than your raison d'etre.

Can you tell what this is a picture of?




Some people can tell right off the bat, but some squint and guess and have no idea.

I swiped it off this site, Erotica Cover Art; in addition to some eye candy the author is just having a blast making snarky comments about today's smut and the covers they slap on it that make little sense. They're usually aimed at women, and rarely have men depicted. Why is that? The journal pokes around the question, and I'll be giving it a read.

We went to the 4th Friday movie night over at Heather and Heath's and watched some John Hughes movies, plus 'Say Anything'. It was a nice relaxing evening, which was cool because I had been feeling bad and left work early. It was quite stormy too.

Saturday was unbooked since Sunday was one of those 'go to church then go directly home to teach class' days. We sort of just fucked around and I got on a bit of a house cleaning tear. We visited the local motorcycle shop and Eric ordered me a summer jacket. I confess, while I always wear a helmet I will wear no jacket when it gets hot. I have an armored motorcycle jacket but it's really thick and bulky. The one we've ordered is basically nylon mesh holding some armor in place. It's about as cool as you can get without just taping the armor directly to my body (which would present other problems). And I mean cool in the temperature sense; it looks a little dorky but it beats breaking an elbow if I fall off the bike.

Next we headed to Home Depot. Eric needed some parts for the windscreen he was putting on his bike, and we also checked out doors. When this whole siding thing goes down they're going to paint our door to match, which is darned nice of them otherwise we'd have a sage green house with a peach-pink door. Which would suuuuck. So they have your usual exterior door selection, including some with frosted glass insets. One had a lovely pattern called 'Radiant Star' which is, effectively, a pentacle. It wasn't even that expensive. I'm pushing for that one. Wouldn't that be cool?

No one else was up for the movie, but it's all good; Eric and I went and it was quite amusing. I got to sleep around 2:30 or so, and was woken up 2 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off at 7 by thunder. I drove in a storm and by the time we snuck out at second service, it was sunny and breezy. Our singing seemed to go well- I still screwed up the French piece a couple of times but not in a way that anyone except maybe the person next to me would notice. French is hard! The Mozart in Latin was easy by comparison. Having string and harp accompaniment was lovely.

Then I rushed home and taught the final of the 13 introductory Wicca classes. We started with six, 2 dropped out, and the remaining four plan to take Dedication. Yay!

Then I was starving, so Eric and I went for Mexican. I don't know what it is with Mexican lately; I generally could take it or leave it but there's something about low-rent cheese enchiladas that I've been craving. Eric got a large margarita, which was ridiculously large, and since he gets slutty when he has a buzz we went home and had sloppy drunk sex. It wasn't that late, maybe 5, and I suppose I could've been more productive, but the thing I wanted most of all was to take a nap- so I did. I can be such a guy sometimes. Eric of course jumped out of bed and was all busy being creative. But I had opened the windows and it was wonderfully cool and damn, it was a nice nap.

Friday and yesterday were so nice, and today mostly just sucked. It felt like everything I tried to do was thwarted. Ever have one of those days?

First, Eric woke me up by trying to sneak his penis, um, somewhere, and to make a long story short we ended up breaking it. Oh, nothing permanent, I don't imagine, but it was pretty badly insulted, as they say in the medical biz. He just rolled a one. I was very slightly injured, but nothing near as bad. He actually went to the internet to research it. He thinks he'll be back on the horse tomorrow, but still.

We planned to meet Cathy and Dave at noon for the Empty Bowl project. They were on a short leash so we figured if we went a bit after they'd started, the crowd would be a little smaller. Oh no; the line to get in was at least twice as long as I've seen it. We all agreed that we'd find another way to donate, and just went to eat lunch at a nearby cafe.

I called several people to try to make evening plans, but could reach no one. Then it was time to head out; I'd decided to go to the Austin Area Interreligious Ministries Thanksgiving service. The service was due to be held at a Baptist church, but when they figured out that other people with other, non-Baptist religions (specifically Muslims) would be worshiping, they freaked and withdrew their invitation days before the event, the assholes. And a local synagogue stepped up to the plate and offered their place.

Well, I left with little gas but enough to get there. Then the highway I was traveling inexplicably became packed solid, and I sat in traffic as the minutes ticked by and my gas light came on. I tried to extricate myself, and got turned around and made it to a gas station on fumes, and almost turned around and went home. I decided to stick it out anyway, and walked up to the place a half-hour after they were supposed to have started- but they'd started late too, so I think I only missed about 15 minutes. It was standing room only, hundreds and hundreds of people! I didn't hear all of it from where I was but I caught the salient points and heard all sorts of interesting music and blessings. I figured I'd see someone I knew, at least some pagans, but no luck. I did see someone from work- a super-supervisor who used to be my boss. That was odd; she seemed really, really happy to see me there and gave me a big ol' hug... she's really not the huggy type. Maybe she was brimming with good will toward men and stuff.

No socializing plans seemed to gel for the evening, and I was in a weirdly social mood so it made me feel sort of crabby. But things got better at that point. We went to Whole Foods for healthy dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening unlocking a lot of Guitar Hero 2, which was harder than 3, oddly. But it was fun. But they don't have a co-operative career mode, which means instead of us both playing we were passing the guitar back and forth and taking turns. I know it's the same plastic guitar with the same buttons and all, but for some reason I play worse when I'm playing lead guitar. I guess all those years of playing French horn has made me psychologically inclined to be more comfortable playing back-up.

Oh yeah, we watched 'A Wrinkle in Time' which we'd gotten from Netflix. It was made in 2003, and was a lot prettier than I'd expected- good special effects. The overtly Christian things were removed, and they jacked with the plot some to add in more action. It was also really treacly in parts. Could be worse, could be the remake of 'The Dark Is Rising' (grrr). But I'd say if you liked the book, it's worth a watch. They tried to make it a modern day story, and I don't think they did too bad a job of it.

Forget that wineglass shit. ( possibly TMI )