This morning I saw a truck coming down my road with a Dale Earnhardt license plate and stickers on the back, right beside Obama '08 and Gatewood stickers, and it warmed my heart. We need more Nascar fans supporting our causes.

On another note, I've heard the best argument yet against Kentucky legalizing marijuana. This is from a forum in response to an article in the Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Law.

Anonymous - What would happen if diamonds were suddenly as available as coal? The economic system of Eastern Kentucky is dependent on the money from both fighting the weed and the money its high price brings to the economy. Make it legal and you destroy the economics of scarcity. We should attempt to measure the economic input and output of the region to determine the value illegal activity adds to the economy.

He makes a valid point. I know that the extra state troopers and the drug money do have an economic impact. They're both out there spending money at local businesses. You take away the legal status, and suddenly marijuana is just another factory crop grown on multi-million dollar farms, and more poor people are out of a job. On the other hand, if we legalized possession but not production, people could still benefit by not being harassed by law enforcement for their private stash, but the growers could still make a living, probably even a better one.

Recently there was a debate on topix.com in our local community forum about gay marriage. I present to you here Someguy’s various arguments for the rights of gays to marry and against the detractors of those rights. I didn’t include his opponents’ viewpoints, but they’re not very appealing anyway. You can probably figure out to what he’s responding each time. I think he was feeling pretty angry when he wrote some of this, so I hope you’ll bear with him when he occasionally lapses into attacks directly against some of his opponents. I’ve edited very slightly for clarity in places.

Part I
What's great about time is that it keeps moving forward. No matter who is right you can bet that in fifty years ideas about being gay being a sin will be seen as antiquated, and this debate will be over. Just as your grandparents views on miscegenation have thankfully become socially unacceptable, so too will your views on homosexuality. Eventually you'll have to take comfort in your own opinion that you're right and stop harassing the innocent victims of your "funny looks," laughter, name-calling, and unfair treatment under the law. You can call our society a godless one if you like, but hopefully we'll all enjoy the same freedoms that make our society great, including the freedom to leave if you so wish. More likely, you'll leave the same way your racist grandparents did. You'll finally just die off.

Part II
Where are you from? When you make a statement that something is not accepted, what does that mean? Does it mean that it's illegal? Does it mean people will be harassed or even assaulted? I think you just mean that the bigots are still shouting louder than the rest of us, at least in your own social circle.

Part III
While you guys are arguing back and forth, you're missing the larger point. As long as people feel free to be prejudiced against gays, gays will be persecuted. This is not about your opinion. I have no problem with whatever your opinion is at all. I personally think that people who like to eat pickled pigs' feet are gross, but the difference is that I don't try to get involved in their lives. I don't try to treat them differently under the law because they do something that I think is gross. This thread is about gay marriage. It is not about whether you should be allowed not to agree with homosexuality, whether you think homosexual behavior is a sin, or whether you disown your kids if they happen to be gay. It's about the persecution of a group of people by denying them the legal right to marry their chosen life-partners. As long as you support that persecution, it goes beyond matters of opinion. Your gay friends have every right to be ANGRY with you for that, and they should be angry. Has it occurred to you that the topic doesn't come up because they hate you a little for it? This is not a difference of opinion. It's a difference of treatment under the law. Equal treatment under the law is a cornerstone of the American way of life. The founders of our country held it to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let me put it this way, and I'm being completely serious here, if you work against the right of gay couples to marry that straight couples enjoy, then you are un-American. If you want a country run by the Bible, then I invite you to find your own piece of dirt and start one. We practice religious freedom here, and that means that religion, be it Leviticus, Genesis, or what-have-you, should have no bearing on how you are treated under the law. No one is trying to make you march in the gay pride parade, or wear a rainbow pin, or attend the wedding of your gay friends should they fall in love with each other. Just get out of the damned way.

Part IV
If [omitted] is in the medical field I hope she doesn't get the opportunity to treat me or mine. Thanks a lot, now I'll be looking askance at every native-American looking healthcare worker I see. She is not a credit to any group to which she belongs, be it healthcare workers, women, or the Cherokee. I had some hope that she was a self-righteous teenager whose eventual time spent with smarter people would cause a change in her heinous views, but apparently she is already an adult, and one at least partly responsible for the well-being of others. That scares me. To see what she's written I'd have thought her incapable of earning a degree, or perhaps even a high school diploma. How does a person reach adulthood and hold a real job and still be such a bigot?

Part V
Empathy for a group does not demand that you be part of that group. Just as there were some whites who felt empathy for [omitted]'s persecuted ancestors, there are many straight people like me who feel empathy for our homosexual friends and family members.

Hating is fun, isn't it? Hate allows you to trivialize your own problems and focus on poorly defined arguments with people you barely or even do not know. It's easy to forget your own depression when you're filled with outrage. It's easy not to worry about an overdue loan payment or whether your electricity might be cut off this month or how you're going to keep your husband from finding another woman when you start to get old when you can worry instead about what the gay people or the black people or the Mexicans are busy doing to undermine your "way of life." It also helps you to feel like part of a group. The solidarity of hatred is comforting and insulating. I can understand why you hate. Hatred is as old as the human race, but that doesn't make it okay. Eventually it will poison you and it will poison your relationships and it will seep into the good parts of your character and turn them bad. Focus on your own life, instead of blaming others for problems you don't even really understand. Every moment spent solving your own problems will make you a better person. You will feel better. You will be better.

Part VI
Two things, then I'm going to let this go. First of all, being gay isn't a lifestyle, any more than being straight is a lifestyle. I don't know you, so I don't know if you consider being straight a lifestyle, but I don't think that most heterosexuals do. I know that I don't. I believe it's hardwired into me to be attracted to the opposite sex, not because I choose to be, but just because that's the way it is. I don't call that a lifestyle - a lifestate, if anything. I admit that sometimes people experiment with homosexuality because they think that it's interesting or because they think that it makes them interesting, and certainly if you still believe it's a sin then you make a valid point that as society normalizes homosexuality, this experimentation will increase. True homosexuals, however, are not experimenting. They feel as strongly about their attraction to their own sex as you do about the opposite sex. You speak of how disgusting their sex acts are, but to them, sex acts between heterosexual couples seem just as disgusting, at least if they contemplate engaging in those acts themselves. Because their attractions and aversions are not a choice, many of them find it offensive when you say that being gay is a "lifestyle," and I think when you look at the flip side of the coin, you'll admit at least to yourself that you'd find it offensive if someone said your married life to your husband is a "lifestyle."

Second, and more important, gays are not trying to get extra benefits and rights from the government. This argument may come from the fact that gays have fought for the right to be among the protected classes to protect which there are enhanced penalties for "hate crimes." It's hard to fault their argument. There's no doubt that gay people are sometimes the victims of violent crime for no other reason than that they are gay. That's the very situation that hate crimes legislation was created to address. While I'm inclined to agree that a crime is a crime no matter whom it's committed against, it's more about the reason behind the crime than it is about the crime itself. The legislation is designed to punish bigotry that promotes violence, and so to reduce the promotion of violence among bigots.
As for rights that gay people are fighting for, they're rights that you and I already enjoy. Even without a will in place, I can rest assured that my property, if I should die before my wife, will pass to her so that she can continue to raise our children in the home that we've provided. Should I be comatose in the hospital before my death, she will be allowed to visit me, no questions asked, and if it should come time to pull the plug and let me go, then she will make that decision, not my parents, not my children, my spouse. Furthermore, to prevent my death, I might choose to sign on to my wife's health insurance coverage, or to spend money on my medicine from her flexible spending account. As long as gay people are denied the right to marry, then these rights that you and I take for granted are beyond them without thousands of dollars of legal advice and contract writing, and some of them, like health insurance, are a complete impossibility. They're not fighting for extra rights and benefits, just the same rights and benefits.
I know that the two of you, [omitted] and [omitted], will not agree with what I have written here. You may even shout it down from the highest mountain, or the longest thread as the case may be, but I do hope that some part of it has made an impact. It isn't because I want to change your mind, because I think that for now at least you're much too entrenched to change your mind about gay people or gay marriage, but so that maybe next time you won't be quite as negative toward the homosexuals you encounter in your lives, and that when the day comes when gays are granted equal rights under the law, perhaps you can learn to live with them as equal members in society.
Thank you for reading.

This is the first parade I've missed in a few years.  It didn't go right by my office today, and I had soem work to do, and it was raining.  Oh well, no pictures.  I just wasn't feeling it.

We're in a Biggest Loser type competition at work, so I've placed myself on a 1500 calorie a day diet, or as close as I can get to it, anyway.  I find that 1500 calories is not a great deal of food.  For one thing I've abandoned about 95% of the grains (wheat, corn, potatoes, bourbon, beer) that I normally consume, in favor of vegetables and meats.  You'd think that with so many fewer calories I'd save money, but meats and vegetables are expensive, especially since I tend to favor meats whenever possible.  This is supposed to go on for fourteen weeks.  I find myself trying to estimate how many calories will be safe to consume with my lifestyle when the diet is over.  That number is also a little depressing.

I once went on a diet of one thousand calories a day and lost weight very quickly, but I figure the more severe a diet, the less likely the results will be permanent.  I have fourteen weeks, why not take my time?

I just got my truck out of the shop today.  It seems like it's in there a lot, but I still have it a whole lot more than I don't have it.  This time it was the fuel pump.  The fuel pump acted up once on me a little over a month ago, and then was fine for three or four weeks, and then nothing.  I had the truck hauled to the garage (by chain by my brother and dad while I was at work) and when the mechanic looked at it, it started fine.  Still I had him change it out, so hopefully it's a problem I won't have to deal with anymore.  What is beginning to get old is the cost of the repairs.  The whole affair cost me $200, but I guess that's better than a car payment.

As my truck's odometer has begun its third spin, I do wonder if perhaps it isn't time to trade it in.  As a matter of fact, when the cash for clunkers program came out, I was ready to sign up.  Unfortunately out of the two clunkers I had, both of them had gone through a period of non-insurance while they were being repaired.  So to save a few dollars in insurance, I lost getting $4500 in trade-in value out of them.  Sometimes you can't win for losing, and that applies almost universally with insurance companies.

I did eventually trade my Jeep though, but not for a car.  A gentleman came by the house last weekend and offered me $700 for it.  That was about half what I felt it was worth, but I was getting pretty tired of looking at it taking up space in my driveway (actually over in the grass), so in a way the offer was appealing.  I called up another man who had been interested sometime before and offered to sell it to him for $1200, which was a lot closer to what I thought it was worth.  When I went to his shop to ask him what he thought of the deal after taking another look at it, he had a ski boat hitched to his truck.  I think he saw my eyes light up.  I mentioned a trade, and he told me that though he had $1600 in the boat he'd let me have it for the Jeep plus $300.  Needless to say, I am now a boat owner.  Don't look for me on skis though.  I intend to use it as a pleasure craft, something to take me wherever I want to go in the lake, as slow as I feel like.

Speaking of trading things in, I heard a theory that no matter how long you keep your car, or how often you trade, you'll spend about $3000 per year either paying for it or keeping it running.  I was told that some of my in-laws kept track and that for them it was true.  I personally find that rather difficult to believe.  I know most years I don't spend $6000 on cars.  There's just no way.  So if anyone knows something about this theory that I don't please feel free to let me know.  If it costs the same, I'm sure I'd rather be driving something newer.  It does occur to me now that maybe that's during the time you pay payments on it, that if you buy used or buy new it will cost the same during the life of the loan.  I don't know.

There was some difficulty in finding enough coaches for the U-18 group for fall soccer so I volunteered to coach Ethan's team.  Mind you Ethan is twelve, so with a span of ages that wide it makes for an interesting team dynamic.  I've never coached anything in my life so I expect it will be quite an experience, and hopefully not pure misery for me or for the team.  This has been a secret desire of mine since last year when I would coach Ethan from the sidelines.  It was the only time during any sport that he actually listened to me, and he was pleased with the results.  I would tell him where the other team was going to inbounds the ball, and where he should position himself in order to cut off the run or even the pass.  Hopefully I can do that on a much larger scale.  The draft for players is this evening.

Have you ever done a google search on your first name?  Having a fairly unique first name I did.  I learned two things.  First, the entire Brinton family is out there providing with me a touch of anonymity just by living their lives and doing the things they do.  Second, if you see enough references to your name and it's not referring to you, it begins to lose meaning.  Is this what al those guys named things like John and William face every day?  Or I guess by this point they don't face it maybe.  It's just a fact of their existense they've soaked up.  Sometimes when having a conversation with a Nathan about a Nathan or with an Aaron about an Aaron, I've wondered, "Isn't it weird for you to talk about this guy when he shares your name?"  Maybe not, I guess.  Maybe a name is just a name.

Mike Huckabee, whom I heard speak for the first time well before the 2008 primary, and who impressed me as the kind of guy that might just save the Republican party, has decided to draw a line in the sand against progressive policies.  I already didn't like him after I looked into his "Fair Tax" plan, which no one in the middle class should support, but now he's also offended my sense of what makes good foreign policy.  In a move designed to please his hardcore religious base (not because it helps them in any way, but because they'll think it will make the second coming happen a little sooner), Mike Huckabee has declared he is strongly against an autonamous Palestinian state.  He's said there's simply no room for such a thing inside the Jewish homeland.

I finally finished the drywall in my garage yesterday.  I'd had these two huge twelve foot pieces of drywall in there taking up space and generally being in the way.  All I really needed was about eight feet of one piece to finish things, but it was around the door and included two electrical outlets.  In total I had to cut and hang five small pieces.  Since I jumped in on the job in somewhat impromptu fashion, I didn't even have a utility knife handy.  I didn't figure out until this morning why one should not use a pocket knife to cut drywall.  My thumbs and fingers are very sore and there are lots of tiny little cuts on my left index finger from it just generally being slightly too close to the action while I was attempting to maintain straight lines.  Overall I was pretty pleased with the results though.  I may recut the first piece that I did.  It contained the outlets (I started with the hardest piece so it would keep getting easier) and I neglected to take the hardware out of the outlets before trying to push the drywall around them.  I didn't realize there was such an overhang.  I'd given myself a quarter inch to play with, but it was too close and cracked the drywall so that it still shows even with the faceplates on.  On the other hand, it's in the garage where appearance doesn't mean too much.

I got completely taken by AT&T a couple months ago.  I called to complain about something unrelated and while on the phone they convinced me that I would save a few dollars each month by switching to a different plan.  I think I must be on some kind of list they have of subversives who they should attempt to hurt at every turn.  After switching to the new plan, my phone bill has gone up twenty dollars in two months.  They say part of that is some sort of pro-rating, since I didn't have a bill for part of that time, but then this month it was the same thing.  What gives?
07/28/2009     $74.40      
07/02/2009     $79.09    
05/12/2009     $53.79    
04/27/2009     $53.47    
03/27/2009     $57.96    
03/05/2009     $51.48    
02/24/2009     $55.00    
01/05/2009     $48.74

I've been watching True Blood on HBO lately.  Every episode pretty much ends in a cliff-hanger.  Instead of being disappointed with that old trick, it really does leave me looking forward to every Sunday night.  When I think about the state of television these days I always compare it to the shows I watched when I was young.  In The Cosby Show, or All in the Family, or even later in Seinfeld and Friends, there were never any lingering issues at the end of an episode.  All the loose ends had been tied up.  That may be the difference between a family friendly sitcom and a serious-minded HBO drama series, but still, it seem industry wide.  Even the one episode and done cop shows now have backstory built in so that there's something going on from week to week.  This new concept in television is very hard on a body.  I got the boxed set for a seaon I missed of Weeds a few days ago, and finally sat down to watch it.  At the end of every episode I found myself wanting more, and instead of just watching a couple and then quitting I ended up watching ten in a row.  Maybe I need to get Showtime, just to keep that from happening again.