I started reading a forum for computer people... it had a section called the Coffee House and there was a discussion about gay marriages. It's funny but I have known a lot of gays and lesbians in my time and I have never heard them insult and threaten violence to a straight couple because they were straight. I recall growing up aroiund people who felt that way about blacks. I have seen flyers being passed around proving blacks were bald apes. Not a bad statement if you allow that whites are also bald apes. So now it's gays are inferior species threatening the future of mankind, as if the WMD we all own isn't a threat, or smokestacks in Ohio, or the draft coming back.

Shows to go you that computer folks are not subject to fits of logic any more than non-computer folks. Oddly enough, non-computer folks are also prone to loud, even violent declarations that they don't know computers, don't want to know computers.....exactly what these gay-haters say about gays. Except they're probably wrong, about knowing any. They may work shoulder to shoulder with one or more gay guys.

There was a guy at my job who told me one day that come Monday he would be coming to work as a woman, following that one year requirement before having the operation. I thought he showed a lot of courage, although he was, in fact, most likely crazy as a hoot owl....but he was a great programmer and was straight as they come...for a transsexual. Said when HE became SHE, she would be a lesbian, because he had no interest in men. I understand this is not uncommon. Oddly enough the men at work treated Alice very badly, hiding files, destroying property and so forth. So Alice retired early and before leaving she told me that there was one other person in the office who was having the operation soon, but had not come out of the closet yet. Nobody knew.

So is a gay man less a man for being gay? Is a comatose man less a man for being immobile? Am I any less a man for not working in an office or having never cheated on my sweetie-pie? Gosh I hope not. The only people who threatened my life, holding guns to my head and saying things like "I'm gonna blow your brains all over the desert!" were white and straight, so I have a problem with that group. And I'm in it.

There's a game where you try to explain certain things about life on earth to a person from another world. I think about doing that for my son: explaining things like the War on Terror being fought by breaking into a priest's house at 1 AM and blowing him and his son into comatose conditions. It was a mistake, the wrong house or something. "Why, dad?" asks Jon...... I don't know. Men with weapons and attitudes are running the show.

If Jon comes home, if Jon can communicate, if Jon can travel....maybe we'll all run to Sweden and try to find freedom and tolerance there. Funny how the American Dream used to be freedom and tolerance and now it's Global Domination and Acculmulation of Vast Amounts of Wealth.....preferably requiring collaterol damage. Because any country that sends young people to die and be blown into broken pieces and then shuts down VA hospitals is just screwy. Any state that closes down the only facility that has a long term coma stimulation and rehab program is just screwy. Any human that thinks other humans are less than human and deserve violence done to them is just screwy.

My garden is being planted. My herbs are coming up. I weed with trepidation....what right do I have to kill some plants and save others? Why should the grass be punished so I can maybe grow my green beans? I apologize to the weeds and try to find a way to transplant them to a safer part of the garden. I have found that most of the "weeds" are medicinal and good for my bronchitis or my back pain. Others taste good. So I have modified my pogrom, my genocide. I try not to kill things because I do not feel right about taking life. I want to be able to tell my children that I tried to be non-violent. It's harder than you might think. So many things are trying to kill me.

I pulled a tick off my arm and crushed it. It may not have been able to "see me" as life. I might have been a blood warehouse to it. Skeeters only bite if they are female and they need the food for their eggs. Life has a price but we don't need to tax it as well. I try not to kill people. I try not to kill birds or dogs or cats, and I try not to hang out with people who like to kill, or talk about killing. It seems unwise.

So there you have it. I'm a tree hugging, pro-choice, pro-life, anti-war, pro-technology and pro-organic gardening and I like to use wood to fire my kilns. The extra carbon dioxide may just change the weather long enough to distract governments from waging war. It's a small thing, my kilns and bonfires, but every little bit helps.