Dolphin’s Dock

It’s really quite simple. Economically, there is not gay marriage and straight marriage, there is only marriage. Gay people make up approximately 10% of society. Any economic argument for or against gay marriage applies to straight marriage times nine. If the GOP wants to argue that gay marriage is just too expensive, then, by default, they are making the argument that straight marriage is just too expensive by a much wider margin. Steele can’t argue that he wishes to ban gay marriage for economic reasons without simultaneously arguing that he wants to ban straight marriage even more (9X more). If “nobody should be able to get married, period” is the message the GOP wants to sell, more power to them, but I doubt it’s a winning platform.

Who cares how she answered any question or otherwise performed in the contest? She was put under scrutiny for violating contractual agreements. When she joined the Miss USA pageant she signed her name that she had not had any nude or semi-nude photos taken of her. Yet she had. She signed her name that she would not speak on behalf of any political groups without pageant approval. Yet she has. She signed that she would attend various official events as Miss California. Yet she’s been missing them.

If I lied on my resume to get the job, then began skipping work so I could go work for some of my company’s competitors, I’d be fired almost right away. That’s what Miss CA has done, yet she gets to keep her job. If getting paid to ignore your (ill-gotten) job responsibilities and do whatever you want makes you a victim, where do I sign up? I couldn’t possibly care any less about some beauty queen’s views on marriage equality, but the pity party for the hurt feelings of a spoiled brat who has gotten away with more than anyone else would have been allowed is frankly a bit nauseating.

Twilight: I like vampire movies and with all the buzz around this one, I figured it couldn’t be as bad as other people were saying. I was wrong. It was worse. Kat at Just Another Pretty Farce pretty much right when she said it was like “watching the therapeutic writing of an eleven year old girl.” Indeed, I think any tween girl would find this movie fantastic, but if you’re not in that particular demographic, it is painful to watch. For the record, eating only animals does not make one a “vegetarian” even if one is a vampire; and when vampires are exposed to sunlight they burst into flames, or skip the flames and change directly to ash. In some cases, just severe surface burns may also be acceptable, but under no circumstances do they begin to shimmer like some tweaked out raver boi with more glitter lotion than sense.

Burn After Reading: This one actually came recommended. More specifically I was told, “Brad Pitt is so funny in this.” I should have paid closer attention to the way she worded it, because it’s true that Brad Pitt managed to have a reasonably good time with his character (though I think “so funny” may have been overselling it). I like Brad Pitt (and no just because he’s nice to look at, though there is that), but, while he did what he could, one actor can’t carry a bad movie. I think this movie was supposed to be some kind of spoof of all the CIA movies that have been appearing recently. But when you can’t tell for sure, the writers haven’t done their jobs.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Another Brad Pitt movie, this one an Academy Award nominee (I don’t think it won anything but I could be wrong). I hate to make it three for three thumbs down reviews, but seeing as these are the three movies I’ve seen recently, I don’t really have a choice. Basically, the move is that Benjamin Button ages backwards. That’s it. That isn’t really a bad starting point for a plot line, but when it IS the plot line, it makes for a dull movie. Turns out that a live lived backwards isn’t really all that different from a live lived forwards. The only reason to watch a movie about somebody else’s life is because somethign rare and exciting happened to them. Just starting out old and getting younger doesn’t cut it. To make matters worse the movie is almost 3 hours long. They never say why he ages backwards (though it’s apparently somehow connected to some fancy clock that runs backwards). By the time the movie was over I was wishing I had some magical clock that could make time go backwards for me to (about 2 hours and 45 min backward to be exact).

New Hampshire may well follow suit, and even should the CA Supreme Court uphold Prop 8, another ballot initiative overturning Prop 8 may well be on the ballot as soon as next year (in CA it’s no more difficult to get rid of discrimination in the Constitution than it is to write it in). As more states do it, the bigots lose their number one weapon; fear. They can no longer preach doom and gloom, now they’ll be expected to show how granting equal rights has caused damage, and they will fail, because frankly, it doesn’t. Further, they can’t even keep pushing the activist judge nonsense, because Maine (and perhaps soon New Hampshire) is the second state to legislatively legalize marriage for all it’s citizens.