Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Thursday, February 27, 2014

So As Long As We're STILL Talking About Marriage, How About a Practical Improvement to the Institution?

Am I supposed to capitalize the word "As," in that title?

Ahem. Getting back to the topic, there should be a machine.....THE MARRIAGULATOR....and you and your intended step into it single, and are pitched out the other side MARRIED!

There has to be at least one witness, who stands outside the machine viewing the proceedings on a monitor and has their hand on the emergency "IF ANYONE HERE OBJECTS" button at all times. It's the witness's job to protect that button, because if that button gets hit, the intendeds are spat out the single side! And then they're like, "Hey asshole! What the hell, what's the objection?! WHO PRESSED THAT BUTTON?"

"Now we have to put in another $2.50!"

Inputs include:

1. the marriage license,

2. legal IDs for the intendeds and also for the official witness,

3. handprint identifications of same, scanned on a hi-tech looking panel. There should be some bright light effect that sweeps up and down the hand when you press it against the panel.

4. photographic evidence taken of same,

5. voiceprint ID recorded from each, and

6. the intendeds themselves. Naturally! Without that input, nothing's going to come out the other end.

7. Two dollars and fifty cents, plus any applicable state taxes and fees.

All of these are input into the machine (the witness stands outside, as we've said). The soon-to-be-weds step into the large, padded main chamber of the hulking, metallic booth. It's kind of like the Doctor's TARDIS, except not bigger on the inside than the outside (which would be prohibitively expensive). But the inside is nonetheless nothing to sneeze at! Upholstered in rich, Corinthian leather. Tan and silver trimmings. That "new marriage" smell.

The chamber seals.

Then it LIFTS UP, on an apparatus like a mechanical bull!! The couple is tossed and jostled against each other, protected from side and top impacts by the padding, as the machine SHOUTS THE VOWS (or whatever - the official terms & conditions, etc) at them, in a ROBOT VOICE! The couple gives the responses as directed, which the machine records duly until - CLIMAX OF THE CEREMONY:

The lights dim,

A glow suffuses the couple from all sides,

(Each soon-to-be-spouse picks a color as "your favorite color," chosen from a touchscreen color wheel during the input phase. I forgot that. Go back and mentally add that at about five and a half of the inputs, it's not exactly vital...it's a little on the needlessly decorative side, but still kind of cool to see the combined glow of our two favorite colors, and what that combination forebodes! Right? A touch of mysticism is traditional in these things. Getting back to the climax of the ceremony, now.

Parentheses close.

The chamber settles....

...the machine asks and gets the final "I do's" - each from each, and each validated against the previously-sampled voiceprint!

Outside, the witness verifies, by simply flipping up the protective cover and turning one of those nuclear-release keys! You know, like they use in movies to verify launch of ballistic missiles. Except in this case, there is only one key, and consequently no bullshit "it must be absolutely simultaneous!" requirement.

The ceremony is now complete. The exit door unseals, and the robot voice booms:

"I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU MARITALLY JOINED. COMMENCE PUBLICALLY-SUITABLE ORAL MUTUAL GRATIFICATION PROCESS"

Happy kiss! Fanfare of synth trumpets, as the now-marrieds exit!

The fanfare should sound a little like a midi version of the Tron theme, maybe. OR DUBSTEP. Dubstep also acceptable. Or better yet - Daft Punk, perfect. Have they written a wedding song yet? I have one they could use! Call me up, Daft Punk!

Annnnnd another happy spousal unit exits the chamber in triumph.

How about it, right? Anybody got a SERIOUS reason why the heck not? This would make the whole marriage process considerably cheaper, if nothing else. Yet as you can see from all the pageantry, there would be absolutely no loss in sanctity, and no encheapening of the institution of marriage itself. Clearly with all of that going into it, a very big deal indeed has been made, of marriage. Nothing of any consequence has been given short shrift, or even medium shrift. The MARRIAGULATOR gives full shrift to every ceremony it performs!

Oh shoot, wait! I forgot to mention - and this is very important detail for many many of our walking betrothed! Of course, for those couples who wish to include a celebrant in there, they can take one in with them. Add that to "inputs," if so - at about five and a half. You'd get a voiceprint and hand scan et cetera from the celebrant as well, and at the appropriate time the robot voice would solemnly intone: "DO YOU, CELEBRANT'S NAME, BLESS AND SANCTIFY INCLUDE ADDITIONAL WORDING THIS UNION BY THE POWER VESTED IN YOU BY..."

Into that dramatic pause, the celebrant would then shout, "God! Yes!" Or whatever other appropriate deity/entity/higher power pet name is preferred. And then followed by, "Yes."

Easy!

The Tough Topics #29: Domestic Abuse.

Get this straight. There's nothing funny about domestic abuse. SERIOUS. I don't care if it's wife-on-wife, husband-on-husband, wife-on-husband or the traditional, no matter what: that shit's foul. Here's the person you swore up and down to love, honor, have, hold, ravish, cherish, and what have you, and for fuck's sake to make violence upon their person!!??? I don't care what the god damn justification is!! There is never a justification to be the one to escalate from a situation of words to one of violence!

Obviously if the other is the escalator, then you're in a bad situation stuck with either fight or flee, unless you're a gifted deescalator. But that's not the point. The point is it's not justified for the person who is the one who escalates. It's not justified to raise those stakes. It's not. It's just not. I mean, you could easily make the same case of you versus strangers! Fighting is after all for fucking pussies. But the idea of striking someone to harm, someone you've sworn to love for life...that's especially off-base. What a sour note. And note, when I say "fighting's for pussies," I don't mean vagines, there! It's a different sense of the word, there is nothing cowardly about a vagina. In fact when you think about it, arguably a vagina is the single most courageous bodily organ there is. Weird how sometimes the etymology of a word can turn and diverge to evolve two senses that are pretty much antonymic! Anathema to each other. But in any case.

The point is that domestic abuse is the exclusive province of motherfuckers, and I don't mean that in the literal, usually oedipal incest way nor do I mean it in the laudatory "this person is a bad ass" Samuel L. Jackson portraying Jules in Pulp Fiction way with a sweet fucking wallet to lend the scene that extra whallop! No. I mean in the sense of when you meet some fucking god damn motherfucker who it turns out beats the spouse. Admittedly maybe I just defined it in a circular way, but I defy you to deny the validity on that.

Here's another point: "spouse" to me just means a person who espouses a love for life for someone, to share a life with that someone, who does so in some public way, and where the one espoused at reciprocates in kind. In fact, in some states that alone is enough to say BAM! MARRIED! You presented yourself as spouses and you lived together as if. Therefore you are - assuming it's One Man One Woman, which in my view is bull to the shit power in a country where government shall make no establishment of religion. Those of you who need to, please see separate tough topic on the first fucking amendment please.

You get what I'm saying here. Probably I'm belaboring something or other needlessly.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

Russia's Anti-Gay Stance: An In Depth Glance

Since when is Russia so anti-gay? I thought they were all about that stuff. Communists, you know - old-school propaganda poster boys for social progressiveness! They're not who you think of when you think of prudes. For one thing, they're all godless and shit, right? What do they base their puritanism on, in that case? Anyway, I do realize that not all Russians would consider themselves "godless," but if they're coming out officially as a gay bash nation, and they're also officially or traditionally more or less an atheist nation, then what, might I ask, the fuck? What's an anti-gay stance even based on when you take the bible out from under it. A giant turtle?

I do know that a stance like that isn't always something people feel they have to foist off on God. Of course I know there is strong anti-gay sentiment in many cultures, and in some cases it may just come down to people feeling grossed out by this whole notion of a dick in the ass. Even still, I'm just so used to anti-gay stances in this country coming down to fundamentalism that I can't even picture what another so-called "Western" nation would find to base it on. I wonder what chapter and verse the Russians cite amongst themselves to put this one over with force and emphasis?

Wasn't Lenin gay? Or wasn't legendary Marvel comics antihero/Iron Man adversary The Crimson Dynamo - wasn't he gay? I always got the idea he was gay. And speaking of propaganda posters, all those bright expressionist posters featuring the rippling, iron-jawed Idealized Worker way back in the 30s or 50s or whenever, isn't it generally acknowledged that that whole motif was basically a thinly-veiled camp fantasy? At once a sublimation and exaltation of the male homosexual libido? Why is he at work in his undershirt?

I feel like this whole gay thing is really coming out of nowhere, for Russia. It's making them look pretty weird on the global stage, to be all strutting out there on their big gay-hate parade, and can't even blame God as to why. Anyway, it's a confusing issue, and I'm sure to be paying more attention to it soon. This has been another In-Depth Glance.