Equality finally prevails in California!

(CNN) — A federal judge in California on Wednesday knocked down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that voter-approved Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution — handing supporters of gay rights a major victory in a case that almost all sides say is sure to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 136-page opinion, issued by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco, is an initial step in what will likely be a lengthy fight over California’s Proposition 8, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

At stake in the trial was whether California’s ban on same-sex marriage violates gay couples’ rights to equal protection and due process, as protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The high-profile case is being watched closely by both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage, as many say it is destined to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If it does, the case could result in a landmark decision on whether people in the United States are allowed to marry people of the same sex.

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,” Walker wrote in his opinion.

“Race restrictions on marital partners were once common in most states but are now seen as archaic, shameful or even bizarre,” he added. “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.”

In a separate order, Walker also granted supporters of Proposition 8 a temporary stay, which stops his decision from taking immediate effect. They had argued, prior to his ruling, that same-sex marriages would be performed soon after his decision and could be complicated by rulings and appeals further down the legal road.

Supporters of same-sex marriage who had gathered outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco erupted in celebration upon hearing news of the judge’s opinion. They waved multi-colored and U.S. flags, and carried signs that read: “We all deserve the freedom to marry.”

“This is what American justice is all about — when a judge, an independent judge, tries hard to listen to all of the evidence, analyzes the issues, and comes to a conclusion and vindicates the rights of a minority of our citizens to be treated with decency and respect and equality in our system,” said Theodore Olson, one of the two main attorneys for the plaintiffs.

Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier, along with Jeffrey Zarrillo and Paul Katami, are the two couples at the heart of the case, which if appealed would go next to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before possibly heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have said their best bet lies with the higher courts, and vowed to appeal the federal judge’s ruling.

Proposition 8 is part of a long line of seesaw rulings, court cases, debates and protests in California over the controversial issue of same-sex marriage. It passed with some 52 percent of the vote in November 2008.

“Big surprise! We expected nothing different from Judge Vaughn Walker, after the biased way he conducted this trial,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. “With a stroke of his pen, Judge Walker has overruled the votes and values of 7 million Californians who voted for marriage as one man and one woman.”

Cheques, a dying form of payment?

4 years 7 months and 1 day later, I switched to Bank of America.  Today I just wrote the last check in my first book of checks (7 of which have been voided). Four more books left in the first box…  I used to write checks all the time for bills with my old bank because online bill pay was still new.  The only way they could do it was via a third party.  And even then, said third party company ended up sending out checks on your behalf.

Now, most all banks have bill pay integrated into their online banking solution.  Bank of America’s online banking and bill pay is far superior to any other I’ve encountered in the past.  This is why I’ve virtually stopped writing checks, with the exception of city bills (water/sewer, and taxes).  Now that the city takes online payments, I don’t write checks for anything.  Today was the extreme exception.  Had to write a check to the state for my Notary Public commission.

I can’t imagine when the next time I open my checkbook will be.  At this rate… maybe another year?  Should be interesting.

Dear FedEx: You suck.

“SmartPost”… just isn’t.  I don’t know why this exists.  This is supposed to be faster than the post office.  They claim this is due to FedEx doing most of the processing, then giving it to your local post office for delivery.  I really don’t see how.

 Let’s leave UPS out of this.  Even though they are my preferred courier.  If I were to ship something FedEx ground, the most it would take (since I live in MA) would be 5 business days to cross the country (6 if it didn’t get to FedEx until late in the day).  This is due to the package being on a truck the entire rout.  For a one pound package, the cost would be about $12.  If I were to ship the same one pound package via USPS Priority Mail, it would cost $5 and be here in 3 days tops.  Worst case, I ship it Media Mail for less money and it takes about 5-7 days (including weekends).

 Now, we look at SmartPost.  I have a package that left Texas, which is half the distance, on May 27 with a delivery date of June 4.  It arrived on June 1 in Martinsburg, West Virginia where it was “Tendered to USPS for Delivery”.  Now, if you have been paying attention, I live in MA (the west end).  West Virginia is NOT my local USPS Office.  This took 3 business days (Monday was a holiday).  It then left Martinsburg on June 2 and arrived later that day in Northborough MA, the east end of the state, where it was “Tendered to USPS for Delivery”.  Again.  Now with a delivery date of June 7.

 It then sat in Northborough until June 4 when it finally “Departed FedEx Location” once more.  The delivery date is now June 8.  If you’re counting, that’s 8 business days, and that’s no promise that it will be delivered by then.

 Eight business days!  That’s three more than standard FedEx ground shipping and two more than Media Mail would take to cross twice the distance.  Worst case for the distance, its taking 2 days longer than ground, or 5 more than Media Mail.  LONGER!  Which, if you remember correctly, SmartPost was supposed to take LESS time…  Shit, I could drive there and back in 4 days!  And that’s with taking time to stop for food and sleep…

 Here we are now, June 5, and it has been “Tendered to USPS for Delivery” yet again.  This time in my city…  Care to take a guess what showed up in today’s mail?  Six days.

School Proms… always drama…

So, I will start off by saying that I haven’t really been following this all that closely.  Things have been quite busy the past few weeks and, though I’ve been trying to keep up with the news, I haven’t had the energy to really focus on it.  With that said, I apologize in advance if I get any of the detail wrong.  Also, this post is full of sarcasm and may be a bit… rough…  I’m fairly aggravated right now (for an unrelated reason), and I’m taking it out on this post.

 This April, Fulton, Mississippi is due to have a high school prom.  And of course, they have a policy against same-sex couples attending the prom together.  Shocker I know.  Well, this female student wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom.  So, she went to the administration to explain her intentions.  The request was quite reasonable, really.  If opposite-sex couples can take the person they’re involved with to the prom as a date, why shouldn’t she be able to.  Surely there’s a logical explanation to the policy banning same-sex dates.  I mean, this is 2010, it must have been due to some old policy for some reason no longer remembered… 

 Nope.

 Now, she also wanted to wear a tux to the event.  Not completely unreasonable, but still out of the norm.  Personally, I don’t have a problem with it.  There are women (gay, straight, bi, or otherwise) that wear pant-suits.  So, a tux isn’t really that far off.  However, the school system had a problem with this as well.  Obviously.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the policy.  So, the school system did the only logical thing.  They canceled the prom.

 Makes perfect sense, right?  The girl couldn’t possibly receive any harassment from classmates about the cancelation of the prom… right?  Oh wait.  Oops.  All she wants to do is be treated like her fellow classmates…  Here we have the school not only denying her equality as a human, but they decide to make life at school a living hell for her as well.  Bonus.  It’s not like students haven’t killed themselves because of harassment at school or anything…  What’s that?  They have?  Oh.  Shit.  Good job guys!

 *facepalm*

 At any rate, the ACLU brought the case to the district court on her behalf.  The court ruled that the school’s decision to cancel the prom violated her civil rights.  However, they are not forcing the school system to re-establish the prom.  There is talk of having a private prom that is not sponsored by the school, but she may not go due to all the harassment. 

 Not far, in Cochran, Georgia, a male student got the approval to take his boyfriend to their prom. The down side?  His parents kicked him out.  This kind of story always kills me.  What kind of person are you that you can’t accept your child for the person they are?  If you love them, where’s the problem?  Just because your son is gay, doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.  Read the article.  He’s an honors student who volunteers as a tutor for at-risk students.  Seriously.  What the fuck is wrong with his parents? 

 People continue to amaze me.  I wish they’d stop doing that…

 You can read the Mississippi story here.

You can read the Georgia story here.

Starbucks Ready Brew

More commonly known as VIA.  Here’s my review of it.  And to comply with the new law regarding blog reviews… Starbucks was giving out free samples.

At any rate.  I got hold of both the Italian and Columbian roasts.  I like them both equally at this point.  Mainly because I’ve only had one of each.  Let’s begin.

Pretty simple.  We have a standard size coffee mug (for most people).  And a packet of VIA.  Open packet, dump contents into mug.

As you can see, unlike your standard rubbish clumpy instant “coffee”, VIA is very fine.  Now, lets add water.  I’ve been told that VIA works with hot water, cold water, and vodka!

Since it was 63 degrees in my house when I got up this morning, I opted for hot coffee.  You prolly guessed that is what I was going with based on the mug.  At any rate, a quick stir and the VIA has dissolved into the water and we have a nice fresh cup of coffee.

Add a little milk to the coffee and a freshly heated slice of iced lemon pound cake (also from Starbucks) and we’re good to go.  Side note about the lemon pound cake (also for the new blogging review law bullshit), my Mum bought me an entire loaf for my birthday.

The Italian blend that you see brewed here was quite good for a bold roast.  If I’m going for bold, I like Verona.  But they don’t make that in VIA form.  I have to say, this was quite good.  Especially considering the fact that it was instant.  I also tried the Columbian sometime last week.  It is a mild blend, and it was also quite good.

I will say that I prefer drip coffee, especially since my favourite blends are Pike Place and Verona.  But I would defiantly drink VIA if I couldn’t brew a pot of coffee.  Or, as if this would ever happen, I only wanted one cup.

Crumby Toaster

Came across this review on ePinions. I’m not sure how, because I’m certainly not looking for a new toaster… But I got some humor out of it none the less.

Like many of the other poor suckers who purchased this toaster, I bought it for three main reasons: its reported ability to make toast, its cool looking design, and because it was made by Oster, what I used to think was a trustworthy brandname.

I mean, how risky should it be to purchase a toaster, right? They’re just some common heating elements, a timer, and some springs, aren’t they? The last one we owned was a no-frills hand-me-down that lasted our families for some 30 odd years, so while perusing the aisles of Target’s kitchen appliances, we were looking for just a regular toaster, nothing fancy. But, when we saw this model in all of its modern-day kitchen glory, blue neon backlight and all, we drooled. The 7 toast settings seemed perfect, as did its extra-wide slots for bagels, which we often had trouble cramming into the jaws of the old one. And, the fact that it advertised three extra-special customized toasting buttons, one for toast, another for bagels, and another for frozen stuff, seemed too good to be true. And favorite feature to us, it had a very easily removable crumb tray. It was (in theory) exactly what we were looking for and more. We happily selected the black and silver model, and took it home where I must say it looked pretty slick sitting there on our countertop, a perfect match to our black appliances. A real beaut, Clark!

The toaster itself is very lightweight, feels a little flimsy after thinking about it, and is filled with plastic parts. Take it as a bad omen.

When you plug this model in, the neon blue backlight immediately spreads its bright blue glow behind whichever special button you have selected, and there’s also a sort of backglow that emanates from the slots. Cool! But, after a few days of leaving it plugged in, and staring at that blue light, I started to wish there was a way to just turn the light off. But there’s not. I know it’s not “green,” but we leave the kitchen appliances we use on a daily basis plugged in, so that they’re there and ready for speedy use. At night this baby lights up your whole countertop, it’s that bright. So it was a little strange, sitting there in our cozy kitchen at nighttime, because this thing looked like it was ready to go to a rave.

But we could forgive the smurf glow for the meantime, because at least it made toast, right? And we got so many compliments on how cool it looked, it made us feel darn spiffy.

But alas, beauty really is only skin deep.

The first thing we noticed when we began using it, was that those special customizing toasting buttons didn’t mean a thing. You could select any of the three and it didn’t make a bit of difference in the outcome of your bagel, toast, or frozen pastry. They’re totally useless. The 7 settings were useful, to an extent, but you still had to watch it carefully, because this toaster is so multitalented, it’s actually prone to over AND under-toasting. Mind boggling!

But still we kept it, we needed it, and didn’t want to eat the money we’d spent on it, since we’d foolishly thrown out the box right away. I mean, it’s a toaster!

About 3 weeks after buying it, I was making breakfast and pushed the lever down to let the toasting begin. But the lever didn’t stay down. And my toast came springing right back up. I pressed it again. Same thing. I pressed it again and again and again, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the lever to stick in the ‘toasting’ position, and so there was no heat coming on. My husband, sensing that I was about to lose it, came over and tried his darndest to get the toasting lever pressed down. No luck for him either. In frustration, he banged it on the counter and tried it one more time. It worked!

I’d love to tell you that that was just a fluke, but, it’s currently our daily routine. To get this toaster to work, you have to slam it on the counter a few times and/or wildly shake it about, and then press the lever about 20x to get the toast to stay down and the heating elements to begin. The really bad days (about 50% of the time) are the days when it refuses to work at all, despite all your hard work.

Sure, it’s cardiovascular exercise, but that’s not really what I’m looking for at 5 am when I’m running late getting ready for work. This thing must have been made in some underground factory operated by recycled robots. It’s not rocket science, this toaster-making thing. But apparently for Oster, it’s out of their league.

Any redeeming qualities for this waste of space, plastic and metal? Like I mentioned it’s design is great, maybe minus the blue neon. And the slots in it are extra wide, which do accommodate pretty much anything you can throw in it. And I have to say, this crumb tray is something they should have come up with 30 years ago – it’s located at the base of the toaster and you just slide it out, empty, and slide it back in. But the whole not-toasting thing kind of takes away from its good qualities. Just my humble opinion.

If you’re interested, the review is here.

Gummi Death

This is just awesome.