a thought regarding gender

The other day, a stranger was greeting my dog. 

"Oh, aren't you such a good -- " she gushed, pausing mid-sentence to look up at me.  "Is it a boy or a girl?"

"He's a boy"

"Ah!  Then -- good boy!" she finally finished.

In that moment, I felt rather strange.  This person was so concerned about correctly gendering and addressing a creature that (a) has no real gender expression, culturally speaking, and (b) doesn't really understand language anyway.  My dog wouldn't care if you called him a girl.  He wouldn't care if you called him a monkey, or a pineapple.  He doesn't know words.  Honestly, if he didn't actually identify as a boy dog I wouldn't know, because he can't tell me.  And I could have said anything; it's not like she demanded to inspect his genitals to make sure I wasn't "lying" to her.  She just moved on with appreciating a cute animal.

But the fact that the situation caused her enough concern that she needed to check in with me in order to not accidentally mis-gender was interesting.  Here was a culturally sanctioned interchange, designed to efficiently clear up an issue of gendered address. It was a pretty cool dynamic, really, just applied to a not terribly culturally significant situation.  It was simple, brief, and effective.

And then people freak out when they can't immediately gender another person, or when someone asks to be gendered in the way that is correct for them, which might conflict with others' perceptions or assumptions.  Somehow the mandate to simply check in on the situation, request information, and then respect that information, totally evaporates with humans. 

It would be nice if we afforded our fellow humans the same respect for gender that that lady showed to my dog.

bento friday: adorable heart edition

For this friday's bento feature, I made good use of my heart-shaped silicone muffin cups.  Those things are dang useful for containing all sorts of stuff.  However, they're only one size, so the teriyaki sausage and bell pepper stir fry is split between two of them.  Oh well.

And yes, that's an onigiri.  I'm pseudo-paleo, and rice is tasty sometimes.  Whatevs.

Underneath: miso-ginger zucchini and broccoli.

Have I told you the magic thing about fresh ginger?  I adore fresh ginger, but was always buying a piece, stashing it in the fridge, and using maybe a third of it before it got either all moldy or desiccated.  Sadface.

Then I learned a thing!  Here's the secret: you can grate frozen ginger. 

Now I keep my ginger in a baggie in the freezer, and just pull it out and grate it directly into whatever I'm making.  No need to remember to defrost, no more food waste, and no more "I totally have ginger, no prob... oh, it's a ball of mold.  Oops."

BOOM.

bento friday, because reasons

Going back through the archives, it looks like I used to post bento things on Fridays.  Maybe I should start doing that again. Oh hey, it's Friday!  I should write a thing.

Look at me being all grown-up and stuff.

SO.

First off, I've talked about these zucchini noodles (adorably called 'zoodles').  They're... well, they're not noodles.  Because they, well, have the texture of zucchini.  But they are long and skinny and fun to slurp, so they largely serve the same purpose.  Good enough for me.

Zoodles!

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate the gloriousness that is a big pile of fresh shiitake mushrooms?  There's a sort of international market that sells these at a tiny fraction of the price you get from fancy grocery stores.  They are amazing.  They are my world.  Mmm.

Mmm.  Yes.

Anyway, assembled into bento form, we have this lovely creation below.

Left: broccoli and beef stir fry over zoodles.

Right: teriyaki shiitake mushrooms, and a soy-sauce-coated hard-boiled egg.

Tasty.

awesome thing of the day: cupcakes for equality

So you've heard about the hubbub in Indiana, right?  The whole "Religious Freedom" legislation exempting businesses from serving customers if they don't "agree" with their personal lives?  It's harmful nonsense, pandering to those who feel a misplaced need to not only control other people, but to assert their rights to bigotry and overt hatred under the guise of religious freedom.

There's one now-famous bit about a pizza parlor refusing to cater a hypothetical gay wedding.  Thankfully, there are some Christians out there who are sick and tired of their religious being defined by hatred.  And one in particular is taking direct demonstrative action:

"To prove that not every Christian business owner is obsessed with their clients’ sex lives, a New York Christian pastor says he and his church plan to hand out cupcakes near several gay-friendly bars in New York with the help of local bakers.

They’re calling it a 'Christian Cake Mob.'"

<3

another bento, because I don't know what else to say yet

This bento is made of lazy.

So my life has been super weird for a while.  Transitioning back into desk-job-land can be a little disorienting after a prolonged period wherein my existence was mostly made up of binge-watching Babylon 5 and eating Nutella with a spoon while naked. 

Hey, don't judge.

Anyway, I floundered around a little bit.  I'm now re-embracing my white-collar reality, and part of that means realizing just how dang expensive my coworkers' habit of going out to eat every single day for lunch gets to be.  On top of that, the whole dietary limitation thing means there's... maybe one or two things I can order at a given restaurant, and friends, that gets boring. 

So.  Prepping real lunches suddenly makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.  Last week I made a frightfully general pronouncement of the "I'm gonna do this now!" variety, but hadn't really, like, planned or anything.  So last week was a little haphazard.  But being the obsessive planner that I am, this week, by golly, there's strategy.  With shopping in advance and everything.  See me adulting all over the place?

So this morning I got up with the alarm instead of dawdling in a warm bed, and made this delicious creation.  It took about 20 minutes and took up only two pans and one spatula, making it totally manageable.  This one also neatly illustrates two of the most often used tools in my bento cooking toolbox. 

Simple Veg Stir Fry
The idea is simple: cut up whatever veg you have languishing in the fridge, saute it a bit, and top with whatever sauce sounds tasty.

In this case, that looked like:

1.  zucchini slices and canned bamboo shoots sauteed in sunflower oil, with bottled Szechuan sauce and red pepper flakes stirred in (note: this one wasn't mine, cuz I shouldn't have the red pepper.  I forgot to snap a shot of my bento today); and
2. weird little mushrooms I got from an ethnic market sauteed in butter, with fresh spinach, mirin, and soy sauce (you can't really see this one, as it's under the steak).

But the basic model is remarkably versatile.  Instant side dish, foundation on which to layer something fancier, or bento filler.  Add something proteiny and you could  make a meal out of just stir-fried stuff, though for bento I like making multiple little dishes.  While my bento are super-boring by some standards and I'm neither cool enough nor motivated enough to get into kyaraben, I do feel that having several dishes in the box makes it somehow fancier and less like leftovers.

Teriyaki <insert meat here>
So at the store, I was poking around and found a ridiculously gorgeous looking steak.  I didn't recognize the type of cut, but it was deep red and beautiful, so I took a chance and bought it.  I kinda know nothing about meat; it's a bit of a skills gap.  Must fix that someday.

Last night it was sliced up super-thin (across the grain, of course!) and tossed in a baggie with some soy sauce, mirin, and brown sugar to marinate.  Normally I'd use some sake as well, but we appear to be out at the moment so whatever.  This morning I fried it in some sesame oil for like two minutes (cast iron over high heat gives the most satisfying browning without overcooking), added a little extra of the sauce ingredients, and topped with sesame seeds.  Super easy!

This model (slice meat, marinate overnight, fry up) is a good one, and seriously takes maybe five minutes in the morning.  Chicken and steak are great for this.  Delicious and so trivial to do. 



The combination of these two generic "recipes" facilitates a lot of not having to think in the morning, but still winding up with a tasty lunch.  And I appreciate that rather a  lot.

a return, a complicated, and a bento

It's been a while.

A lot of life has happened.  A LOT.  And we'll get to that.  For now let's say that my life was turned upside down for a while, but that I've gotten back on track and it's all starting to make sense.  Honestly, it's pretty awesome now.

Frankly, I've been a little intimidated with the idea of coming back to blogging, because of the sheer enormity of what's happened, and how intense it would be to try to explain everything satisfactorily.  But you know what?  Maybe it's better to write a thing, rather than waiting to write the perfect, all-encompassing thing.

So instead of delving into my personal drama... have a bento!  That's right -- after a long hiatus for the above-mentioned chaos, bento is once again a thing in my life!  It's a little more complicated now, because:

1. I went paleo-ish about a year and a half ago, so am avoiding most grains and starches, and
2. I'm currently on a low-to-no-acid diet as ordered by the medical establishment.  That means no tomatoes, vinegar, caffeine, citrus, most fruits, carbonated stuff, or chocolate. Also no spicy things, like chile.  Graaaaaarrrrgh.

So the intersection in the Venn diagram of the above situations is... rather limited.

But by golly, I'm gonna figure it out. Assisted rather significantly by this epic collection of paleo lunches. 

Meatball Bento!

A few days ago, I made a big batch of ginger-teriyaki meatballs based very loosely on these ones.  I used carrots instead of sweet potato, dumped in a crapload (that's a technical measurement, there) of fresh chopped ginger, and some random teriyaki sauce that was in the fridge.  I omitted the cilantro because I hate that stuff, the tomato paste because I can't have that anymore, and... okay, so I didn't follow the recipe at all.  But it gave me the idea, damn it!

Anyway, I made a batch of those and froze 'em, because dudes, I am lazy in the mornings.  This morning I had a plan to make cracklin' chicken, because it sounds awesome, but then morning happened and somehow dealing with raw meat just didn't seem like a thing to do.  So voila!  Magical pre-made freezer meatballs to the rescue. I'm a genius.

We have:

• Some broccoli and bell pepper, fry-steamed an then tossed with soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and powdered ginger.  Topped with black sesame seeds. 
• Magical pre-made freezer meatballs of the ginger-teriyaki variety, fried a bit to thaw and warm, and dressed with some Szechuan stir-fry sauce that was in the fridge.
• Under the meatballs: a few handfuls of spinach, quickly sauteed in the pan used for the other veg, with toasted sesame oil.
• Under the spinach: zucchini and carrot "noodles," made with a julienne peeler (kinda like this one).  These things are awesome.  They turn veg into remarkably noodle-like strands.  For today, I mixed zucchini and carrot, and boiled them super-briefly (like maybe 2 minutes) before topping them with the other stuff.  You can't really see them under the stuff, but trust me, they're there. 
  
  Zucchini "noodles" have been an awesome tool to have for paleo cooking in general.  I've topped them with tomato sauce, fried eggs, pesto... it's magical.  Okay, so they don't actually taste like noodles, because they're all busy tasting like zucchini, but it does provide one with a spaghettiesque eating experience of slurping up long skinny things covered in sauce.  And that's good enough for me.
  
  I also learned recently that in some circles these things are referred to as "zoodles."  That is freaking adorable.  
  

 So... it's a bento!  And it's paleo, and it's my-weird-diet-restrictions-friendly, and it'll probably be reasonably tasty.  Win. 

loving representation

Image taken from Upworthy, and totally copyright Braden Summers please don't sue me for showcasing your beautiful work. 

When we think of the epitome of romantic love, when we summon up an image of what it means to be in love, who are the participants?

One photographer, Braden Summers, though gay himself, realized that even he automatically conjured heteronormative images of same-sex couples.  He realized how much this deeply exclusive image fails to represent the fullness of humanity and of love, so he set about (via Kickstarter) to travel around the world combatting this representation issue with his camera.  And the results are breathtakingly gorgeous.

You rock, dude.

Kickstarter video and photograph set available here.  It makes my heart go pitter-pat.

best valentine ever

(via Medium Rawr)

awesome thing of the day: rupert grint and an ice cream truck

So Rupert Grint, of Ron Weasley fame, is apparently an amazingly cool human being.

What did he do with his (probably massive) wealth from rocketing to stardom via the Harry Potter franchise?

He bought an ice cream truck.

He drives it around, looking for kids, and then gives them ice cream.  For free.  Cuz the kids looked like they were 'in need of ice creams.'

This dude is seriously awesome.

awesome thing of the day: kickass a capella of epicness

Welp.  This performance of FSU's AcaBelles a capella troupe performing Lorde's "Royals" is pretty much the best thing ever.

I couldn't get the video to embed properly for some reason, so follow the link and go watch it.  Now.

Via Fannie:

"Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), a day dedicated "to memorializing those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice." 

Transgender women, particularly trans women of color, are disproportionately likely to be victims of violence and murder. In 2012, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs noted that 53% of all anti-LGBTQ hate crimes were committed against transgender women and that 73% of homicide victims were people of color."

As a society, we fail so very much on transgender issues.  Even most mainstream lesbian, gay, and queer groups and movements are very cis-dominated and -focused.

This is extremely unacceptable.  Trans people are people, dammit, and deserve so so so much better as a baseline of decency.  We've got to get way better at this, y'all.

on empathy, again

So this is old news, but I've been sitting on it for a while and figuring out what I have to say about it.

Some background: New York City has this stop-and-frisk policy, wherein police can target random people walking down the street and give them pat-downs, with no requirement for suspicious behavior or anything.  And whaddaya know, surprise surprise, those 'randomly' targeted for this tend to NOT be white men.  Who could've guessed?  So quite a few people are piping up to point out that this is not an okay situation, what with the enabling of racially targeted police harassment and all.

New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, had this to say, when defending the policy:

"If I had a son who was stopped, I might feel differently about it, but nevertheless..."

What we have here is a radical and blatant failing of empathy.  "Well, if I were personally affected by this issue I might care, but because of being a powerful white man I'm not, so whatevs." ???

He said this out loud.  

He knows.

He just fails to give a shit, because it doesn't actually impact his little self-bubble.

To care only about issues that affect himself, while claiming to represent a city (a city that, newsflash, contains people unlike him as well, in many different ways, because hey diversity), and implementing garbage policies that are questionable at best and then immediately abused for racial targeting, and to do nothing about that and further to not even see the problem with that?

If this man wasn't busy being actively harmful to his constituents (who are real people who really exist, by the way), I would feel sorry for him.  That's one hell of a limited existence you've got there, bub.

homecoming, or the kids are all right

A school in Florida elected a couple with Down syndrome as homecoming royalty.

An Illinois school elected a gay homecoming king and a lesbian homecoming queen.

In New Hampshire, they have a transgender homecoming king.



As we grown-ups work to confront entrenched and shitty biases that keep people from really seeing and accepting each others, the kids are figuring this shit out too.  Not to say that social justice work is irrelevant (hardly!) but that it really does work to change the world, tiny piece by tiny piece.  Continuing to bust our asses to make the world a more accepting place has real results, and here's a lovely bit of proof.

The kids, they are okay.



Also, happy Ada Lovelace Day!

the power of ignorance

I've learned to avoid certain topics around my boss.

Politics.  Social issues.  Equality.  Really anything other than science or technology.

But occasionally I still feel compelled to try.  It seems to be an exercise in futility, but I have a really hard time believing that a fully-functional, intelligent, seemingly kind and decent human being can still have such glaringly consistent fail when it comes to thinking about any perspective other than his own.

It's a radical failure of empathy, and it's profoundly disheartening.  Like the time he took objection to my celebratory attitude over marriage equality wins, pointing out that if homosexual people can get married and adopt children, then those children will all grow up gay and then 'our' (!) population will decline into instability.  I mean really.  These thoughts can really exist in a real live human's brain?  I find that baffling.

Anyway, a while back I tried again.  I forget how the conversation started, but we wound up discussing how there are cultural pressures at work that devalue female people's accomplishments, intelligence, and capabilities while overvaluing appearance.  How this pressure results in forcing a ranking of priorities onto these people, and encourages emphasizing and working on appearance over other pursuits. How it's sad that 'performing pretty' is such a heavy-handed requirement, to the point that many female people neglect to develop other aspects of themselves because of focusing exclusively on appearance.  It's a little simplistic, but I thought it was a good conversation.  I did have to gently steer away from trajectories that would have wound up in 'dang shallow wimmens and their makeup, they ought to just knock that off' territory and stay focused on social effects and causes rather than individual blame, but it was pretty encouraging, overall.

At this point a coworker arrived, and noted my recent haircut.  I'd gotten another one over that weekend, because I like change and we all know how I feel about haircuts.   Boss-man then passive-aggressively opined that I cut my hair 'just to make him [my boss] mad.'

I really don't even.

After I was done gaping a bit in astonished silence, I calmly explained that no, I wasn't actually thinking about the effect my making choices about myself might have on my boss's preferences.  No, dude, you aren't the reason I do, well, anything that's unrelated to the performance of my job.  I wanted to add that it's conceited as fuck for him to blithely assert that he must be the center of my universe like that, but restrained myself.

While mentally preparing myself to launch into a conversation about how his policing of my appearance and attempting to apply pressure in how I had to present myself ties neatly into our immediate conversation about requirements placed on women, he dialed his sexist ignorance up to eleven.

'Well, I think women should all have long hair because it's pretty.'

What the everloving fuck?

Wait, let me say that a bit louder.

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK???

When we'd JUST, not three minutes earlier, had a whole conversation about how judging people (especially women) for their appearance is really shitty?  How enforcing one's preferences onto another's body is unconscionable?  Now you're going to assert that your personal aesthetic preference necessarily MUST dictate the behavior of everyone ever?

I realized then that we must have been having entirely different conversations at each other.  I was thrilled to discuss how artificially enforced societal expectations lead to a stifling of individuality, and wouldn't it be awesome if we could move past that and let people be people, so they could be free to express themselves in whatever way felt authentic to them.  I think he wanted to talk about how women are silly for wearing makeup because he personally didn't understand or approve of it.

Maybe someday I'll be strong enough to shoulder through these situations.  Maybe someday I'll have the patience and steely resolve to get beyond my own flabbergasted injury, to continue speaking calmly to thoughtlessly judgmental bigots and have that conversation.

But in that moment, on that day, I couldn't do it.  I lapsed into stunned silence, and went back to work.

But my heart hurt.

damn it, George Takei

[Trigger warning for consent-ignoring rape apologia, slut-shaming, and racism]

I like George Takei a lot.  He leverages his fame to raise awareness of his causes such as gay rights and Japanese-American detainment.  I think he's done some work with autism too.  He's become something of an Internet icon for tolerance and awesomeness.  Good stuff.  Yay!

However, he's been having a lot of intersectionality fail of late.

So you may remember this, wherein George Takei, awesome human being and justice advocate and actor, posted a rather thoughtless meme that implied that strippers are bad people and/or the result of bad parenting.

Some of his followers pointed out how un-cool that was, and he apologized. That was cool, even if it didn't feel like he *quite* understood what was going on. But okay. Those who commented wanted him to know that we think so highly of him that we assume he'd like to know when he's hurting folks, and maybe that information will be acted upon. Learning is neat.

But... it hasn't stopped.  This tendency, though being keenly aware of the importance of the social justice issues by which he's personally affected, to thoughtlessly inflict harm on other oppressed categories of people.

Just in the last few days, we've had this:

And then this:

Not cool, Takei.  The first displays gross victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and callous disregard for the concept of consent all in one fell swoop.  The second... well.  Cute jokes about very real and terrifying people who terrorized and murdered people based on race with support of societal structures at large do not exist in a vacuum.  This really isn't all that hard.

I get it: intersectionality is hard.  Wearing blinders is easy.  Being aware of how your words serve to enforce oppression in a multi-dimensional kyriarchy takes work.  But George Takei, kick-ass gay rights activist, wants folks to do that work for his causes, while not bothering to do his own work to understand the issues that affect others.  I really wish he'd take a second and actually think about what he's saying, beyond whether it's a cute pun.  I'd hoped for better from someone I truly admire like George Takei.  A world full of institutionalized inequality and oppression is what social justice-aware folks confront on a daily basis, but this sort of drivel is somehow extra-disappointing and heartbreaking when it comes from supposed 'allies.'

Intersectionality is critically important.  We're all in this together.

In the immortal words of Flavia Dzodan, my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. 

-----
Edited to add trigger warning because I should really remember to add those.

awesome thing of the day: kickass six-year-old dancer

This little dancer is beyond amazing.  Holy crapmonkies, but she's six year old and kicks so much ass.  Also, she has seriously impressive poise and stage presence.  Go watch her.  Impressed you will be.  B-girl Terra, you freaking rock.

geek girls

So there's this thing, wherein certain domains of fandom are considered to be male-only clubs and female geeks are questioned and harassed and ridiculed and told they can't possibly like what they like and challenged to 'prove' their fandom because obviously people with breasts are incapable of properly liking science fiction.  Or something.

Anyway, this video response to that phenomenon is fantastic.  Many of my favorite people show up in it.  You should watch it.

(link for if embed fails)

today in SCIENCE!

Scientists have determined the objectively correct way to optimally melt cheese onto toast.

Just so you know.

on gatekeeping and ownership

For people without cable, we sure do watch a lot of television.

One of our current favorite shows is Leverage.  It's a con/heist show that somehow manages to be compelling despite the overwhelming volume of other con/heist entertainment out there.  It's available on Netflix, is really quite good, and you should watch it.

Anyway, there was a particular exchange in one episode that I'd like to address.  In The Bottle Job, the plot centers around the young woman, Cora, who owns the bar above which Main Character Nate rents an apartment.  Apparently Nate kind of grew up in that bar while his dad conducted criminal business, and has been around to watch Cora grow up.

She's also a hot redhead, so there's that.

Exhibit B: Brawny Character Who Likes To Punch Things Elliott, the con team's bruiser, is a bit of a ladies' man, or possibly an exaggerator.  We get to see him chatting up models, mentioning umpteen bazillion sexual escapades in passing, and generally just being masculine and horny.

He has long hair, which I like, but that's beside the point.

ANYWAY.  BCWLTPC Elliott is firmly established as a nudge-nudge-know-what-I-mean charmer/philanderer/whatever over the course of the first season as a half.  No one has cared, least of all Nate.  The lad receives no pushback from his friends about this behavior.  To be clear, we've seen no coercive behavior, just slick seducer kind of stuff.  Oh, and he did have one serious relationship that he seems to have bailed on due to being too busy with all the superspy kickassery and stuff.

Enter Exhibit A, the hot redhead who Nate has known since she wore diapers.

Elliott, predictably, leers.

This happens:

Nate: Hey.  She's like my niece.  

Elliott: At least she's not like your daughter.  

Nate: She's like my niece.  So I don't want YOU to LIKE my niece. 

This is treated as a Final Word On The Matter.

May I register a what the fuck?  I am so so so so so so so so (so) tired of this.  Let's break it down.

1) This idea that you should only care about your relatives, out of all the female people out there?  This patriarchal display of ownership of kinfolk?  Is disgusting.  If you have a problem with Elliott's behavior, Nate, what EXACTLY has stopped you from mentioning it before?  Oh, right, it's because all those other women don't really matter, but as soon as this same behavior happens around someone you happen to have known for a long time, suddenly it's a problem.  And by way of explanation, you offer that she's practically family.

THIS DOES NOT MATTER.  If his behavior is out of line, it's always out of line.  Suddenly giving a fuck just because it's someone close to you is a really, really weak case that smacks of thinking you are the ruler of your female relatives Because Authoritative Man With Female Possessions.  Gross.  You do not own this person.

2) Also, and this is a bit of an aside, the bonus unspoken-because-it's-just-so-totally-obviously-objectively-true implication that it's 'better' for Elliott because Nate thinks of her as a niece and not a daughter, because of course a man's degree of ownership of a woman is directly proportional to the closeness of the genetic (or appropriated) relationship?  Ugh.

3) WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO POLICE THIS WOMAN'S RELATIONSHIPS???  Your friend, whose behavior in this domain you have never had an issue with before, is interested in your other friend (granted, it's at an inconvenient time because she's a bit distracted at the moment by being extorted by a loan shark, but still).  Said lady never gets to even know about this interest, because YOU, oh all-master Nate, have flexed your muscles and used the authority granted to you by having known her for a long time (!) and, presumably, being older than her and male (!) to Bravely Guard Her Sexuality by cutting off the advance.  By gatekeeping Cora's life simply because you can.  You being uncomfortable sitting with the notion of this woman living her life as a fully functional adult does not, in any way whatsoever, give you any right to demand that she behave in a way as to ease your discomfort (see pretty much every civil rights 'debate' ever, wherein one group is uncomfortable with the existence of another, and thinks they get a say in that).  She is allowed to live her own damn life as a grown ass woman.  Full stop.

An argument can be made that maybe he knows he's not her type.  We have no evidence that they've actually, like, talked at all in the past ten years, so no.  Maybe he thinks he'd be dangerous or a potential rapist?  THEN WHY HAVE YOU NEVER SAID ANYTHING BEFORE?  Nope, don't think that's it.

The only option left is that he's policing her sexuality because he can.  Because he's a man, damn it, and she's his auxiliary property.  Maybe he's 'protecting' her 'virtue.'

Barf city.  What if she really likes one-night stands with hunky beefcakes?  Would you know?  No.  In which case you're denying her something she might enjoy.  Or maybe she hates one-night stands with hunky beefcakes, in which case she can tell Elliott that herself!  Or maybe she wants his number but isn't in the mood right now.  She's, like, a person with desires and preferences and gets to make those choices.  

In either case, Nate, you can fuck right off.

HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME

As of this morning, Tuesday August 27, Bernalillo county is now issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Santa Fe followed Doña Ana county last week in just doing this thing and not waiting for legislation.

This is and amazing and fabulous stride and I'm so so so so so proud of New Mexico right now.

I'm not particularly cogent or able to be thoughtful or eloquent right now but HOLY CRAP GUYS THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE.


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!eleventy