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

[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.