sundries

[rm]

- We booked our flights for Dragon*con -- we'll be in on Thursday night around 8pm and leaving Monday around 4pm. We will be doing things away from the con. Patty wants to see the aquarium and an old friend has offered to take us around a bit. Of course, we'll also be doing the whole con drinkies and socializing thing and attending programming of personal interest and then whatever I wind up on.

- I should book my WriterCon flight, as I'm seeing good prices, but I want to wait until the schedule is out and I can make a rational decision about when I should be flying. Also, really, I should just suck it up and fly Thursday night, because crack of dawn on Friday sucks -- didn't we learn this from Dragon*Con last year?

- I have about 800 other con-related things I want to get cracking on -- such as planning out footage I want to get for the pilot, seeing what technology I can get access too for recording, etc. and also some fan-led event stuff and possibly vending stuff for WriterCon.

- Still need to mail the paperwork for the anthology. Today, today! Also I need to send the editor a bio.

- Got it felt so good to get that fic done last night. I've not been able to write like that in a while.

- I've got the Madonna essay all planned out, and I'd like to sit down and do it tonight, but I am not sure that's going to happen.

- I burned my mouth on mini tacos.

- I miss Patty.

- The latest insanity from Republicans that gay marriage is bad for the economy, specifically small businesses? I'm enraged. First, it's just not true, when one considers the studies that have been done on the wedding industry (which is mostly small businesses), but it's more than that. The assertion that the basis on which to allow or disallow a class of people rights has to do with not whether they deserve them not not, not whether they are human or not, not whether they are equal to their heterosexually partnered brothers and sisters or not, but whether it's convenient for companies? It's an attack on the very idea of freedom. It implies workers are property and it has me trembling, trembling! with fury.

- Need to decide if Patty and I are going to the Hewitt reunion. It's not my year, but the school is small and always does all classes things, and it might be a hoot (or a horror). I also didn't graduate from there, but it was ten years of my life. It's a negligible amount of money, so I should just suck it up and do it, right?

Comments

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

"The latest insanity from Republicans that gay marriage is bad for the economy, specifically small businesses?"

...wait, WHAT?

[rm.livejournal.com]

http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/1200699.html

[marcmagus]

WTF?

I'm kind of speechless.

[sethg]

Remember that the Republican coalition from Nixon through Bush II basically had three partners: cold warriors, social conservatives, and big business. When the International Godless Communist Conspiracy was something more of a live threat, it was a lot easier for these three factions to find common political ground. Now, though, big business can play ball with Democrats just as well as with Republicans (especially in this Bailout Age), social conservatives have created such a backlash that a party openly catering to them can't win a national majority, and the cold warriors are busy trying to sell the rest of the country on the need for total war with China Iraq Iran.

The chair of the RNC is trying to convince its business wing (what's left of it) to throw in with social conservatives to oppose same-sex marriage. As a strategic move, it's probably one of the least dumb things he's done since he was appointed. (Which is not saying much.)

Oh, and of course, same-sex marriage will be bad for big business, because Fortune 500 firms with no particular tie to the wedding industry will have to offer benefits to more people. (At least, that's probably the way Republican business lobbyists think; I have no idea if it's actually true.)

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Sure, but if both members of the couple already have jobs and benefits, two people on a family insurance plan is cheaper all around than two people on separate insurance plans.

[sethg]

Cheaper for the economy as a whole, but not necessarily cheaper for the employer offering a family plan.

$$$

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Surely I can't be the only cynic who thinks that the states rushing to legalize gay marriage want the moolah? I mean, come on.

I got married. I know what weddings are like. Picture yourself in a sled being chased by wolves through a dark forest at night. The wolves are bad taste. The only way they will back off is if you throw them bundles of cash. They gobble the cash instantly and they keep coming...

Re: $$$

[rm.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Weddings are big fucking business and since the initial wave of gay marriages will most likely be older couples with more money to spend and gay couples have higher disposable income on average.... it's just $$$ sense.

Illogic

[keith418.livejournal.com]

The other problem with the new GOP talking point on this is that they surely can't mean that more marriages are bad if the people are straight. For example, if the GOP pushes its so called "family values" then that would mean more straight people getting married - which means more costs for small business too. And they can't discourage one kind of marriage, on economic grounds, without discouraging the other kind, can they? They can, but they'd be violating their own logic.

But how has the left deteriorated from The Nation to taking talking points from Maddow/Olberman as if they were dittoheads taking talking points from Rush?

Re: $$$

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Niagara Falls, Toronto, Vancouver* all made money hands over fist when the tourism industry gained the ability to offer an actual bona fide marriage licence and wedding certificate, to honeymooning couples who could not obtain them at home.
From a completely cynical pointof few, egual rights for all posible consumer-units is just good Capitalism.

*I assume that the Edmonton Mall has too, but I don't know that.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Have these Republicans not seen the Prop 8 Musical?

(Bah, sorry for all the edits!) Seriously, though... Neil Patrick Harris, "there's money to be made!".

Sheesh.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

If you need/want full ADR facilities and/or a sound engineer and possibly a sound/film editor, I have some names and places for you.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Well, self more than others - it's the "American way".

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

The workers are property. They are the property of the Republican party. This is why they are angry rather than chagrined at being thrown out of power(quite unlike the old school conservatives of Canada, after the same happened to them in the general election of '93.)
If the Lincoln memorial got up and came over to have dinner with them, they would not repent.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

So I'm sorry that you burned your mouth, but this idea of "mini tacos" intrigues me and I really want to learn more.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Trader Joes mini-tacos. They have beef and chicken varieties, they are good, they cost $4 a box, and they make about 3 - 4 meals for me.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Tiny tacos? I'm picturing two inch long mini tacos. So much win. Why are there not tiny tacos in my grocery store, damn it?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yes. Exactly.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

That is utterly wonderful. I can't believe I don't have these. This is going to come down to me baking my own tiny taco shells, isn't it?

[kill.livejournal.com]

In this line of thinking, if ANYONE gets married, it costs the company more. So, yet AGAIN, their argument just as much against their idea of traditional marriage as anyone else's.

God, it's so pathetic.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

That business about being bad for business is going to run smack dab into anti-discrimination laws, big time.

Family issues, no matter what sexual orientation, are hugely expensive for businesses. Maternity leave, paternity leave, caring for sick family members, picking up the kid from school because she's sick, funerals, insurance rate changes for weddings or births--they all cost a company money. The smart companies know this, and also know that if the difference between keeping an excellent employee working and happy is the cost of a spousal premium, they'll pay it. Dumb companies go out of business.

It has to be one of the most ridiculous straw men I've ever seen. I'd LOVE to see Rachel Maddow rip that one apart.

[sethg]

How did that Dilbert cartoon go?

"I thought you said you were a family-friendly business."

"You can be friendly to your family. You just can't actually love them."

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

I picture Dogbert waving his wand and shouting arcane things at this particular Demon of Rampant Abject Stupidity.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

you should go to your reunion. it's oddly gratifying, or it confirms what you already thought. one or the other, either of which is totally fine.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I went to my actual high school 10-year one back in 2000 and it was pleasant and fine. This is just a smaller, weirder situation, and my proper (oh god!) 20th reunion is next year.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Prioritizing company costs over human costs seems to be a running theme. This morning on the new they played a clip of some pundit (no idea who) complaining about Obama's new rules on gas-efficient cars with "But I wonder how companies are going to pay to produce these cars?" I keep thinking "And how can we as a society afford *not* to?"

Everyone else above has already made the point that even the business argument is dead wrong anyway. I just think the philosophical issue is even more important: we need to consider human and long-term costs as well as immediate financial ones, to make good decisions. Sometimes doing what's right morally does cost money. If it preserves our lives, liberty, pursuit of happiness etc, or our future, sometimes we just need to suck it up and pay. What's the point of being a rich society otherwise?

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Workers are property. This upsets you, and you make fun of me for being a commie pinko whathaveyou?

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

We've got a preliminary Writercon schedule up here, but it's definitely not final yet. (I am fairly certain it's going to go later into the day Sunday, and we haven't added the fan led events yet. Plus the timing of specific panels is bound to get shuffled around a bit.)

I'd recommend coming on Thursday. That way you can get registration out of the way early, and there's always lots of fun bonding in the con suite and hotel bar on Thursday night.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, with my workshop being when it is, I'm definitely flying in Thursday night now. Thanks for letting me know about Sunday. I'm hoping to buy my plane tickets this weekend and that means not flying out at noon.