Day Three Grade Report

When I arrived at work yesterday morning Crista, our departmental assistant*, asked how I was doing. I could barely get out the words, "not well" because I was fighting tears. Crista, being a practical soul, prescribed mocha and fetched me one.

Without that small kindness, I'm not sure I could have made it through the day.

I hurt all day yesterday. I got a lot done at work, but it was in the continual presence of chronic discomfort. By the time I got myself loaded into the car for school, I was back to the edge of tears. The Motrin helped, I guess, but didn't really stave off the pain. I avoided talking to people at school because I knew that the question How are you doing? would set off the waterworks again. Got through Torts, moved on to Civ Pro, where the prof pointed out that our first written assignment is due Monday. Tears threatened again. Survived that, got home. Another one bites the dust.

I am irritated with myself for not getting better, but the reality is that I have no energy left for recovery, and that's slowing the pace. I guess the measure of progress is going to be how late into the week I can get before falling apart. Only Tuesday this week, maybe Wednesday next. I feel tumbled and ragged, like a frayed bit of cloth on the side of a highway, crushed.

Got about 4 hours of sleep last night, with the discomfort and the waking. Back to work now. Much homework, as always.

*What's the difference between a departmental assistant and a secretary? About $7,000 a year.

One small step for commercialism, one giant leap...

The front page of Yahoo has a Valentine's Day ad showing a couple embracing. A man has his back to the camera, the roses he has obviously just flourished draped around his shoulders in the hand of his...

ambigously-gendered partner. Woman? Man? I really can't say. And I think this is the idea.

Congratulations to the gay community. This is the biggest stride forward in acceptance you have ever made.

In the U.S., rights are things we grant to those who make us sqeamish, long before we grant them acceptance. Despite the continuing lag in accepting homosexuals as appropriate legal life partners, we have afforded as much protection as is legally practical. And yet gays and lesbians have remained on the fringe in the minds of the average American.

Why? Because nobody mainstream markets to them. The U.S. is all about commerce, mainstream, Target/Wal-Mart/Costco commerce. Every radical idea eventually gets stirred into the slumgulleon stew of America and made palatable to the average Joe Sixpack. Music is the greatest example. Rap may still be the angry music of the people, but we also sell stuff with watered down versions of it. And everything in America that becomes mainstream eventually enters the selling machine.

Ads aimed at a demographic are the ultimate acknowledgement that it exists. Mainstream huckstering for the gay dollar has begun.

Welcome to the front of the bus.