Just Kristin

I shared a few of my favorite Tay­lor Mali videos with the lovelies at our home on Christ­mas eve, and had come here first to find a link, but couldn’t find one. For the rest of you lovelies, then, here are two fan­tas­tic slam poems by a teacher I wish could be cloned.

The sound qual­ity makes the text a neces­sity, but all the same, well worth watching/reading/listening to.

As men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous post, D bought me soaps and bath bombs for Christ­mas. They came from Vil­lain­ess Soaps, a com­pany based in Waverly, Ten­nessee who have been receiv­ing lots of good press lately. No doubt my lovely man-friend noticed them while “putz­ing” and, see­ing that they were sim­i­lar in mor­bid­ity and/or gen­eral odd­ity to the lovely per­fumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, he knew I would appre­ci­ate them for at least that. I received at least 12 bars of soap and 2 tubes of bath bombs, all of which smell ter­rific, but the only ones I have tried so far have been the “Grundy”-scented Kaboom and soap. Its pack­age copy describ­ing the scent reads thusly:

Swamp moss and fresh-turned earth with a ruth­less heart of vetiver, and a dis­tin­guished splash of bay rum.

It is, I can vouch, just that, in the best way pos­si­ble. It is what the grave would smell like if the grave were a good place. I love it. More reviews later, after I use up my Grundy. :D

I just got out of the tub after an hour of steep­ing myself in the aroma of newly-turned, moist earth and moss, an olfac­tory best-case scen(t)ario in my opin­ion. This fra­grant stew­ing of my body and soul was made pos­si­ble by the fantab­u­lous D, a man who knows me like he knows emacs com­mands and still loves me. Present-giving may be hard for some guys, but over and over again he out­does him­self, from Mr. Sui­cide to a Valentine’s bou­quet of microbes, sub­scrip­tions to both Poets & Writ­ers and Bizarre, a Rosie the Riv­eter doll, boxes made of wood that get filled and refilled with moon­light (yes, he actu­ally goes out and col­lects it for me!), end­less num­bers of books and an equally increas­ing num­ber of book­shelves, home­made candy but­tons, and now, a col­lec­tion of soaps and and bath­bombs from Vil­lain­ess Soap. Of course, all of this is just stuff, really, com­pared to the corny stuff about his mak­ing me more me etc. etc. etc., but still, no mean feat! I love you, D. If you will keep read­ing blogs to put me to sleep after “adult time”, I will keep bless­ing you when you pass gass. Deal? Will you marry me? Or at least join me in bed where, com­pletely hid­den beneath the cov­ers, my tem­porar­ily un-stuffed nose is pick­ing up moss and moist earth and flan­nel and you and me? Quick! I can feel the snif­fles returning!

Saw this set of signs on the door of the Point Loma Vons this morning.

I am hot then cold then hot then cold and can­not sleep any­more for hav­ing slept so long. I am hop­ing that the warmth of lap­top on chest as I lie here in bed will lull me back to dream­land, and I hope my dreams are as fan­tas­tic as the story told by this lit­tle one, who I am sure will be her generation’s Gaiman.

Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo.

Orig­i­nally uploaded by dal­ven­jah

What a great exhi­bi­tion Sat­ur­day night! Now I can’t wait until Jan­u­ary…
I won­der if the fab­u­lous­ness of it all is what caused, some­how, and old, rusty pair of men’s boot skates to show up on my bed­room floor… :P Take that, doub­ty­pantses! Now, how long step 2 will take, I don’t know…

Peo­ple in the other 49 have a skewed view of Cal­i­for­nia as being an ultra-liberal state filled with “fruits and nuts”. Unfor­tu­nately, they couldn’t be more wrong, a reg­u­lar asser­tion of mine now proven by the elec­tion results for Propo­si­tion 8, a mea­sure which effec­tively amends the state con­sti­tu­tion to read that “Only mar­riage between a man and a woman is valid or rec­og­nized in Cal­i­for­nia.” The fact that this propo­si­tion passed proves my long-held belief that Cal­i­for­nia can be, in (both social and geo­graph­i­cal) areas, just as dis­gust­ingly big­oted as other states.

One of the catch-phrases for the Pro-8ers was “pro­tect­ing mar­riage.” I have a few ques­tions for pro-8ers I would love to hear answered… intel­li­gently, please.

1. How, exactly, does extend­ing mar­riage to include that of same-sex (con­sent­ing, adult) cou­ples harm your mar­riage? I would think that the union of a same-sex cou­ple, in some home not your own, and their cre­ation of a home of their own did some­how impact your mar­riage, that the prob­lem would be with your mar­riage rather than the exis­tence of theirs. Please, do explain.
2. If the basis of your bias against same-sex mar­riage is that it stretches the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage past what is accept­able in your or your church’s world view, how is it that you were able to see legal­iz­ing big­otry based on this dis­com­fort as more accept­able than doing unto others?
3. Can you not see that your fear — and sub­se­quent hatred (reli­giously based or oth­er­wise) — of some­thing you were raised to view as wrong, if it does not harm any­one is not the basis for law?

The men­tal­ity that allows peo­ple to feel jus­ti­fied in cre­at­ing legal word­ing that will dic­tate the lives of con­sent­ing adults is juve­nile in the extreme. Two men or two women being mar­ried has no impact on you, per­son­ally, unless you are fix­ated upon it and dwelling on it. It also has no effect on any­one else, save the hap­pily mar­ried cou­ple. 8 sup­port­ers sim­ply do not want to share the word “mar­riage” with them, a clear symp­tom of a view of same-sex cou­ples as “them” instead of part of a greater “us”. You want your def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage sur­rounded by razor wire to keep out those you do not under­stand and sub­se­quently fear… even hate. This same thought process had non-missionary-position, non-penis-in-vagina sex and mixed-race mar­riage ille­gal in many states. I would expect pro-8 big­otry from those who would have us bring those laws back as well, but not from peo­ple who are able to see the wrong in such (hap­pily) dead-or-dying laws. Here, edu­cate your­selves.

Finally, if your moti­va­tion for sup­port­ing 8 was the belief that its pas­sage would some­how keep your chil­dren safe from the “homo­sex­ual agenda” (what a joke!), think again. Homo­sex­u­al­ity does not begin at mar­riage, it begins in utero. You will not, by cre­at­ing more insti­tu­tion­al­ized prej­u­dice and per­se­cu­tion, keep the one in ten of your chil­dren from being gay, but you will make their lives more dif­fi­cult, make them feel less human, and make them feel less a part of the fam­ily — yours, lit­er­ally, and the nation’s, metaphor­i­cally. Hell, non-acceptance of gay chil­dren has worked swim­mingly so far, right? Good job, mom and dad!

Ok. I am ranted-out for now. I pledge my efforts toward hav­ing 8 over­turned, California’s con­sti­tu­tion re-amended, or best of all, the fed­eral con­sti­tu­tion inter­preted and amended to include what Cal­i­for­nia has shut out. The results of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion give me hope that this nation is mov­ing toward uni­fi­ca­tion, and that big­oted, divi­sive think­ing is mov­ing into the past, these last ves­tiges being like the smoke of dying fires that will dissipate.

Also:
The bal­lot, the Reg­is­trar, and the cov­er­age.

I went to Enigma with the fam­ily, get­ting there 10 min­utes past when they like to start their last pierc­ing even though D drove like a (very well-mannered) bat out of hell. I’d had my heart set on get­ting a micro­der­mal ear­lier in the day, but had talked myself out of it by the time Matt was quite patiently ask­ing me what I wanted. Instead, I got another new opal screw — the lat­est in a long line, but this one will not get lost, I promise! Matt has fit­ted me for all but my first, and knows just how I like it. :) I asked him if he’d give me another screw, because he screwed me so well last time, and he said, “I wish I remem­bered it…” If you live in S.D. and are look­ing for a good piercer, Matt and the crew at Enigma are the best!