The other night we were sitting our friends’ 3-yr-old, Ben. Ben had recently gotten the first two seasons of Scooby-Doo for Christmas, and we were watching a few episodes. He was already wound-up with excitement and was getting kind of loud when we started the ghost pirate ship episode. Early into the episode, the gang’s little rowboat is cut in two by the ghost ship, and they all end up in the water. Cut to a shot of Scooby and Shaggy treading water. Ben jumps up from his little Spongebob Squarepants chair, hopping up and down while pointing at the television and shrieking as only a 3-yr-old can: “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!! SHAGGY AND SCOOBY-DOO ARE DROWNING!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”
I think I’m going to like that kid when he gets older.
I really wish I’d splurged and had hot-water coils embedded in the driveway slab.
Because the world doesn’t have enough Harry Potter.
Shrubbery on ice. 2005 began with an ice storm that encased our world in 1/4″ of ice. Ironically, the night before we had watched “The Day After Tomorrow”.
Remember in grade school when someone’s pen or ruler would go missing, and the teacher would make everyone in class stay in from recess until the perpetrator ‘fessed up? It was mass punishment, meant to incite the innocent to turn upon the guilty party and pressure them to cave in.
Now it appears that the federal government, speaking through the Metatron of the Social Security Administration, is engaging in mass punishment of people living in counties that don’t subscribe to the dogma that same-sex marriage is harmful to the mortal souls of heterosexuals. Perhaps the feds believe that by unduly punishing heterosexuals for the “crimes” of the county that the heteros will rise up against their local government and pressure them to change their marriage policy.
Social Security Rejects Multnomah County Marriage Licenses
By Colin Fogarty
PORTLAND, OR 2004-12-20 The social security administration is not accepting marriage licenses issued by Multnomah County after March of this year.
As Colin Fogarty reports, the agency considers documents from heterosexual couples just as legally suspect as those from same-sex couples.
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The federal Defense of Marriage Act already bars Social Security spousal benefits to same-sex couples.
What’s in question now is when someone asks the Social Security Administration to sign off on a name change. Anyone doing that needs a legal document proving they are who they say they are.
The agency doesn’t accept marriage licenses granted to gay couples in Multnomah County, San Francisco, New Paltz, New York and Asbury Park, New Jersey.
The agency also goes one step further, saying it won’t accept any marriage documents issued in those places at the time gay couples were getting married.
That means heterosexual couples who got married at the same time could have trouble changing their names.
Social Security stresses, though, that it does accept other proof of ID, such as a driver’s license.
Testing my new cameraphone. What did we ever do before the ability to
instantly transmit the image of a cat with its head in the toilet?
And now for something completely different.
I’d like to draw your attention to the file cabinet on the left, just below the blog archives. That’s the Collapsing File Cabinet, an entirely new blog that will serve as a clipping service for this blog. Too many of the posts here have begun to consist primarily of uncommented links to other articles, and that bothered me. If this blog becomes little more than a series of time-sensitive bookmarks, then what’s the point? I want Collapsing World to be about my thoughts and words, not someone else’s. For that reason, all of the articles and other blog entries I come across that I want to share but cannot substantially expound upon, will go into the Collapsing File Cabinet. Please, visit it frequently. There’s good stuff in there, just not perhaps a good fit for in here. I hope that in the posts to come you’ll get to see more of me and less copying and pasting. (And no, Albert, by that I do not mean that I’ll be posting nude pictures of myself!)
Oh, and get yourself a Bloglines account. It’s worth it. You’ll wonder how you managed all of those blogs and newsgroups and news sites until now.
–The NYT calls upon China to save Tiger Leaping Gorge.
–I didn’t know I was unAmerican. Watch Ian Rhett’s music video, then figure out what you’re going to do for the next four years.
–This story, like Charlie the parrot herself, is a bit musty but still funny.
–I want one!
–Remember the currency exchange fountain that was intended as an experiment in integrating aesthetically-pleasing data feedback into our surroundings? This IM flower pot adds itself to the further goal of “softening” our hard-wired environment. Whenever its owner’s girlfriend logs on to IM, the flower opens and blooms, then closes again when she logs off. Imagine a large, multi-colored bouquet for someone with a large friends list! What color and type of flower would you like to be?
