I wonder how long I will have to wait for the financial crisis to trickle down to me. I am really sad so many people lost so much money, but the good thing about living below the radar with nothing to lose is . . . well, that you've got nothing to lose.

I could have written this article. Especially this part:

Like most people I know in their 20s and 30s, it takes a stretch of the imagination to understand that I have a stake in the national economy. In terms of day-to-day life, my only ties to large financial institutions are a Bank of America checking account, a single low-limit high-fee Visa card, and a Kilimanjaro of student debt, which I have come to accept as something I will die with, not from, like a benign but grapefruit-size tumor or peaceable parasite dwelling in my large intestine. When people use scary terms like "unchartered territory" and "total meltdown," my first thought is, "Would an economic cataclysm wipe out my student debt? If so, then let's press reset and start the whole damn thing over! Burn it clean!"

I'm sorry to admit that my first reaction was similarly selfish: "Maybe my student loan will disappear!" My second thought was just as selfish: "Why doesn't the government bail out all my loans while they are at it?" Yup, totally selfish. That is what living below the radar will do to you. But maybe I have a point — why is the housing market so much more important than the education market? There is all kinds of predatory lending going in the world of student loans, as well. Just something to think about.

About year ago, I was waiting in a movie theater lobby with my friend Pat. A Queen song was playing, and Pat said, "Sometimes I think about the world, and I get sad that Freddie Mercury isn't in it." I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Freddie Mercury was the first, and I think only, star that I really felt connected to on a deep level. Sure, as a kid, I was into Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and Paula Abdul (all of whom turned out to be so remarkably stable!) and I wanted to meet them so they could take me shopping or whatever. But as I grew older, my musical tastes shifted. I started listening to Queen right before Freddie Mercury died. The tabloid covers announcing his death are emblazoned in my memory — I felt cheated out of ever even having the ability to fantasize about being his friend. Even as a fantasy-prone kid, I knew there was no use in pretending to be friends with dead people.

So, why did I feel such a strong connection to Freddie Mercury? Because when I was about ten years old, I realized that I would never be a Paula or a Whitney or a Mariah. I connected with freaks and misfits and queers. And Freddie Mercury was, arguably, all those things, with bad teeth to boot, and yet he could charm and excite tens of thousands of people at a time. He was my hero. Lindsay ("You're the best friend that I've ever had. . ." ) and I used to listen to Queen together all the time in middle school when we both began to realize and appreciate that we were unusual. But there was one poppy, happy song that I was never really into as a kid that I have been listening to nonstop lately. And that is "Don't Stop Me Now." Every time I listen to it, I get a teeny bit sad that Freddie Mercury is not in the world anymore. But I get excited that I am.

A woman with a really great voice sang this pretty tune at a birthday party on Friday. I thought it was so beautiful I decided to look up the lyrics:

Caledonia by Dougie MacLean

Now I'm sitting here before the fire
The empty room, the forest choir
The flames that could not get any higher
They've withered now they've gone
But I'm steady thinking my way is clear
And I know what I will do tomorrow
When the hands are shaken and the kisses flow
Then I will disappear

© 1982 Plant Life Music Ltd

From The Conquest of Happiness:

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilization; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day. To prevent the perpetuation of poverty is necessary if the benefits of machine production are to accrue in any degree to those most in need of them; but what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable? Education in cruelty and fear is bad, but no other kind can be given by those who are themselves the slaves of these passions.[p. 17]

In this book:

Your frustration results from your habit of comparing reality to an ideal in your head. When the two don't match, you condemn reality. It doesn't occur to you that it might be infinitely easier to simply change your expectations than to bend and twist reality. [p. 93]

Gene Simmons certainly comes off as a lot more intelligent than the woman asking him questions. The following is slightly paraphrased due to my desire not to watch Elisabeth Hasselbeck more than necessary.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: I want to ask you this, though. Looking at [Gene Simmons' daughter] Sophie. Would you want her to be with a guy that said, you know what, I don't want to get married, I want to keep my options open?

Gene Simmons: I will tell you what I always tell Sophie: Stop defining yourself by men. Every women's magazine says: Ten ways to keep him interested/What does he mean?/What to say/Ten ways to keep things going/Do I have my mother's hips? Shut up!!

Slate has an interesting piece up about gay marriage. While I don't agree with it entirely, I do think that the desire to hold on to traditional gender roles is part of the issue some people have with gay marriage. That's why I think it is fascinating to see how laws are unfolding regarding trans people who want to get married — sometimes it seems like people are scrambling to make their laws comply with their bigotry.

As usual, I find the comments more interesting than the articles. One fine poster spelled it out pretty clearly here:

Ah, the same sex marriage debate. From the amount of pixels spent on it, one would think that the main threat to this country is two gay guys getting married. Yet, despite this, this article is a prime example of people who are in favor of allowing same-sex marriage not being aggressive enough in confronting the real issue. Like it or not, the grand majority of those who oppose same-sex marriage are opposed to it on religious or other grounds that show bias against homosexuality. You might not want to believe it, but that is it.

It's real simple folks. If your religion does not want to countenance two people of the same sex being recognized as married by your church then that's just fine. The problem is that too many of you confuse that type of marriage with marriage recognized by the state.

Let's get one thing perfectly clear: God did not create state sanctioned marriage. It is a creature of government, a contract that is recognized and enforced by government with laws detailing the provisions of the contract and what happens when the parties want to end the contract. Now, once you understand that, the question then becomes whether government has any rational basis to prevent Man A and Man B from entering into that contract, when it would allow Man A and Woman A to enter into that contract. That concept is known as equal protection under the laws. A concept that has been around for a while. The Massachusetts Supreme Court found that the equal protection clause of the Massachusetts constitution said that there was no rational basis for doing this, New York's highest court said that there was.

The legal debate is going to continue until eventually, it is resolved as a matter of Federal Constitutional law. However, the following are NOT valid arguments against it:

1) God created marriage (irrelevant to civil marriage)

2) Marriage is for procreation (then why can infertile people marry?)

3) It will weaken the "institution" of marriage. (check out that divorce rate)

4) If you allow gay marriage, then multiple marriages would have to be allowed, or marriages of children, or marriage between a human and a dog. (Multiple marriages, I've never understood the argument against, there is an obvious basis for not allowing children below a certain age to marry, and the last one is too ludicrous to even address)

When you strip away all of the charged language, the reality is that this is a contract created and enforced by government and there is no rational basis not to let any two people of a legal age enter into such a contract.

I don't think I agree with the comments about multiple marriage, but in any case, that's a different argument for a different day. If you read through all the comments (which is pretty annoying, with Slate's layout) you will find that there is also another common argument against gay marriage: if gay people get married, then everyone will marry his or her same sex friend to get the incredible tax benefits. First of all, I'm not sure that the tax benefits are really that amazing — if that were the case, wouldn't most of the unmarried cohabitating heteros want to cash in on that financial gain? If people are concerned that everyone will marry for money (and historically, isn't that what most people have done?) then we could either not give married couples a financial incentive since marriage is supposedly not about money anyway; or, we could make divorce laws harder (except in cases of abuse, of course) since divorce is a much bigger threat to straight marriage than gay marriage is.

It seems like there is a huge problem with semantics, and a lot of people who support civil unions just don't want to hear the words "gay" and "marriage" next to each other. So call it something else. How about the government recognizes civil marriages for straight and gay couples and the churches recognize holy marriages within their own institutions according to their own standards? I'm sure we can think of something here.