"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
The perfect ending to what was a wonderful continuation of a near-perfect comic to film adaptation. My only complaint is that I missed any hype about Michael Chabon writing the script; had I know that, I probably would have seen it sooner (and thus had more opportunity to see it again).
Megan Slankard was on TLC’s show “What Not to Wear” tonight, and since Lunar decided I needed a shot of adrenaline right before falling asleep and knocked over my altar offerings, I sat down to watch. The show itself didn’t hold that much interest, but Megan herself did. Her voice and music remind me of a cross between Tori Amos and Natalie Imbruglia, with a little something else thrown in for good measure.
Check her out, she’s definitely worth a listen.
The cursor bobbed across the screen, jerking from menu to menu. “You can make this work?” he said, half question and half order.
She pursed her lips, trying not to laugh, and leaned around the corner of the desk. “I hate these mice,” she said conversationally, placing her right hand over the large optical mouse. “Mac’s don’t need this many buttons, and the wheel is just irritating.”
“I only take what they give me.”
“Yeah, I know. …still hate them, though.” she grinned this time. She moved the mouse quickly across the screen, clicking the file name and popping the extensions menu open.
“How do you move the mouse so smoothly?” he asked. It was then she noticed his hand was still on the outside of the mouse; she had been preoccupied both by trying to fix the program and the closeness of him. It amused her that in her preoccupation she hadn’t noticed his hand; ouija boards came to mind and she smiled again.
“It’s sort of like a mental map, I guess…” she centered the mouse on the screen. “I guess I know just how much to flick my wrist to move it from center to anywhere on the screen,…” her words trailed off as he moved his fingers over hers.
“Like this?” he pulled the mouse quickly to the right. It jerked a little, partly from her resistance.
“Uh, sort of…” she wasn’t sure how to handle this, or herself. Taking a deep breathe, she could smell him, soap and spice. “You need to move more smoothly, though – less from the wrist and more from the arm.” She took control of the mouse and it moved smoothly across the screen. “I generally prefer using my right hand for the mouse, too” she nodded slightly at his left hand, fingers still over hers.
“Well if I use my right hand, I’m always taking my hand off the mouse to type.” he pressed gently down on her fingers, stroking back lightly. He looked at her then, his expression carefully neutral, only his eyes showing a quiet question. Her breathe caught in her throat. His hand was large, almost completely covering hers, and soft, without callouses. She raised her thumb, hesitating and then pressing it against the edge of his hand. His eyes softened into a smile, and she shyly looked down at the keyboard. “I, I think that should fix the problem…” she almost whispered. She started to stand back and pull her hand off the mouse; they faced the office door, but it was open and if anyone walked by…
His fingers laced through hers and squeezed, stopping her movement. “There are some other… Things, maybe you can sit down and help me with?” Her eyes went wide at the innuendo as he turned red. “I, that is, I-” he stuttered, gesturing at the computer with his free hand.
Frozen there, they paused for a moment, poised over a line both knew shouldn’t be crossed. An unspoken question hung between them, and she gazed at his face in search of an answer. She smiled again, a slow flush spreading across her face as moved around the desk to sit next to him. Resting her foot next to his and squeezing his hand, she said “Yes, yes I think I can.”
Faced with overwhelming demand, the University of Washington has stopped accepting applications from community college students and won’t consider them until the spring and possibly summer quarters of 2005. The decision means that hundreds of transfer students who normally would expect to finish their bachelor’s degrees at the UW will have to change or postpone their plans. When the university does start accepting applications, the competition to get in will be intense, officials said yesterday. And, if those students want to stay near Seattle and enter one of the UW’s two branch campuses, they’d better hurry.Officials at UW-Tacoma and at UW-Bothell say those campuses, too, will be turning away students by fall.
– Seattle PI
Ouch. This makes me sad. The Direct Transfer Agreement was the only way it was possible for me to get into UW; I’m a non-traditional, older student; the DTA meant I could transfer here without having to worry about my lack of SAT scores or community service and other “rounding” qualifiers. While my GPA was hardly an issue, the lack of SAT scores themselves would have been a serious blocking issue.
I’m at work right now, and freshman orientation for family and students is going on; we’re swarmed with incoming students. It’s wonderful to see all these fresh and excited faces; they’re so young! But at the same time, I realize that there are hundreds of older students who won’t be making this same tour anymore. And, as the saying goes, there but for the grace of god…
TO: President Bush, Senators, and Representatives
SUBJECT: Marriage Equality
Dear President Bush, Senators, and Representatives:
In 1883, the United States Supreme Court upheld state bans on interracial marriages. For the next 75 years, anyone supporting interracial marriages was accused of being anti-family, of seeking to destroy good, old fashioned family values, of trying to undermine the value of marriage.
While the Supreme Court overruled Pace v. Alabama in 1967’s Loving v Virginia, and ruled such laws unconstitutional, it wasn’t until 2000 that Alabama became the last state to repeal such hateful laws. Those anti-miscegenation laws are a reminder of an ugly past that toleratead and even encouraged blind hatred, bigotry, and racism. That it is the past is something every American should be proud of, that we have overcome and risen above blind prejudice and stereotype to grant equal rights to people regardless of their skin colour.
It took over 75 years for Americans to accept that love is colourblind. It would be a tragedy if it took our great nation another 75 years to apply that same equal right and liberty to gay and lesbian couples who simply want the same legal recourse to declare their love as Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving did back in 1967.
Love does not discriminate, and neither should our government. I urge you to reject the politics of hate and division. Everyone has the same rights. There is no place in America for a Constitutional amendment denying marriage equality to anyone.
Sincerely,