the world is your acorn

BananaGuard.

Since my excited discovery of the Dunkin Donuts in Cool Springs, I’ve been about 4 or 5 times. Every time there is some disappointment. Usually the wait is way too long given the ratio of employees behind the counter and customers waiting in line. Sometimes it’s just incorrect filling of orders. Today we had a ridiculous wait even though there were at least three employees standing around doing nothing. Our donuts came promptly, but our iced coffee order didn’t get filled until The Little Red Haired Girl went up to ask the boy standing by the coffee doing nothing. He apologized, asked what our order was, gave us two iced creams with a tiny bit of coffee in them, and apologized again.

Where is the owner? Where is the manager? How can the place possibly be so poorly run? Why do they have no system of filling orders? I come from a place where 4 people behind the counter serve 20 people in a minute for hours on end without a hitch. I get that a brand new store won’t have that kind of efficiency, but at I should at least be in and out of there in 10 minutes if there are only 2 people ahead of me in line, right?

I don’t mean to complain; I’m grateful that there is a Dunkin Donuts in our area, and that Mr. Rando is initiating The Return of the chain to Middle Tennessee. However, it hurts my heart that it’s such a disappointment every time. Surely it will have to get better if his plan of opening 12 in the next 5 years is to succeed. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

So, our trusty 1999 Chevy Blazer is no longer so very trusty. There seem to be some expensive leakage problems involving anti-freeze and the ability to heat our car. We have decided to just trade it in for something smaller, more fuel efficient, and more Japanese. In short, we are going to get a Prius.

Of course, The Little Red Haired Girl and I have no idea how to go about buying a car, nor do we really want to learn. Why can’t buying a car just be like buying groceries or computers? Why do you have to go in there and fear getting cheated and lied to? I am not looking forward to the experience, and any useful tips would be greatly appreciated.

There are a couple of lamb shanks that marinated for two nights in the oven right now. They’ve been there for over an hour, and they are starting to smell delicious. How am I supposed to wait until dinner time to eat them?

Why does the bathroom by my office suddenly smell like the stairwell of a parking garage? You know that smell? What is it, anyway?
ick.

This I do not need.
Via Lifehacker

How am I supposed to get any work done with all this drilling and construction and stuff going on in the building? As if I need any more excuses to just pack up, go home, and watch tv.

I have been thinking about what Kat said over at NIT yesterday about both the Vote No on 1 and James Dobson events being at churches. If I understand correctly, I think the main argument was for separation of church and state. Which I vehemently agree with. I have spent many hours since yesterday thinking about* the issue, and here’s what I came up with:

It is a religious issue. The major arguments against gay marriage (or for defining marriage as between a man and a woman) are religious arguments. How do we fight on our side without entering the religious arena? I personally don’t see marriage as a religious institution, but many do. Even had our event not been on church property, it would have been a religious event. Religious faith leaders would have spoken, and they would have spoken as religious faith leaders. And, even as a non-Christian, it was extremely important for me to hear Christian ministers and pastors from different denominations saying “No, we do not support this amendment. No, not all Christians hate you.”

I wonder if it is ok or not for churches to endorse a political issue. Everything Guy made the point to me today that “separation of church and state” is to protect the people and political mechanisms, not to protect the churches. Churches must stay out of politics, but the law does not say anything about the converse. So is it bad for your church to tell you how to vote? Especially if the issue at hand is one that reeks of moral judgements? My gut instinct is to say hell yeah it’s bad, but I can’t say why. If I am to accord respect to my fellow citizens, then I have to assume they are smart enough to make their own decisions, and if their church endorses something they still have the freedom to disagree. But I suppose I just don’t trust my fellow citizens enough. Or I’ve grown to fear the power of religion.

I haven’t come to any conclusions. I still don’t know how appropriate or not it was for Vote No to have their event at that church. What I do know is that I want say that appropriate doesn’t even seem to be an issue at this point, and that appropriate won’t win our fight. I want to say that politics isn’t appropriate, and neither is the government making rulings on marriage. I want to say that appropriate stopped having meaning a long time ago for me when I understood that a majority of voting American citizens believe that my sexual preference is wrong, or unnatural, or a disease, and that it’s their business in the first place.

I guess I’ve stopped writing from my head and am now just pissy, so I’m done.

*And by “thinking about” I might mean rationalizing, but you make the call

On Saturday morning, Everything Guy and I canvassed for the Vote No on 1 campaign at Oktberfest in Germantown. I don’t generally like to canvas because when I talk to strangers I tend to over-analyze the interaction until it makes me crazy. When canvassing the problem is magnified exponentially because there are bound to be people who disagree and want to argue. I am generally pretty good about walking away from people who disagree with me and wishing them a good day, but this past Saturday we had a particularly bad encounter which I haven’t been able to get off my mind since.

The story will betray my own prejudices, but I’ll tell it anyway. The point of canvassing for us is more to make sure people are aware of the issue, not to change folks’ minds. Which means that, if someone is obviously homophobic or doesn’t want to talk, we let it go. This one guy on Saturday, however, wanted to talk. And wanted to disagree. His idea of “talking,” though, involved spouting some sort of Conservative Christian party line to us, not listening to our side, then responding with the next irrational non-sequitor queued up in his little brain.

One thing I suggested was that, even if he believes that Jesus says homosexuality is wrong and that gays should have no rights in society, this is a constitutional issue rather than a gay issue. The law already deals with gay marriage, but what place does the content of that law have in our state constitution? His response was that he felt it has to be in the constitution so that the homosexuals don’t come back the next year and amend it for their own purposes. The statement was so nonsensical that I was struck speechless. Did he really think that? Does he believe in some sort of “homosexual agenda?” Or does he just repeat whatever he has been told? I can’t think of a single feasible reason for the “arguments” that he was making. None of it made any sense to me. Were we not making sense to him? Or did he not care what we were saying?

Anyway, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the conversation (if you can call it that) since then. It’s difficult for me to articulate why it bothered me so much. Maybe it was that I couldn’t “win” the argument, since we seemed just to be talking past each other. Maybe it was being faced with the stark reality that there are real life people like that out there, allowed to vote and procreate. Maybe it was remembering that I am no longer living in a place where peer pressure leans toward tolerance and political correctness, where “Jesus says so” was never enough to finish a debate.

Last night, watching news coverage of Dobson’s hate rally at Two Rivers Baptist Church, I felt entirely deflated. I find it hard to believe that people hate me so much that they’d go out of their way to gather together, talk about how their values trump mine, and strategize to take rights away from me and my family. Rights that do not in any way effect how they would live their own lives. What makes people do such things?

More importantly, does this mean that I am not strong enough to fight for my people? Once done with my education here in Nashville, will I just run back to a safe space, leaving those living here to continue to be shat on by hateful, ignorant neighbors? Do I regret my involvement with this campaign, wishing I had just stayed in my safe university bubble, hiding from the Southern homophobic majority?

I admire and am grateful for those who can stand for what they believe in and fight the fight in the face of homophobic spitefulness. I’m coming to discover that I am not very good at it, and do not like it much. I’d like to do my part, and won’t discontinue my involvement in the campaign, but it is becoming very hard for me to feel charitably towards the people who work so hard to promote hate and meanness for no good reason.

Stand For All Families event is on tonight, rain or shine. We have a tent, lots of chairs, great speakers and live music. Come support ALL families!