The only problems I have with Bono are his stupid haircut and sunglasses.

One of my patients is a burgeoning sixteen year-old skinhead, and he had me look into a band called Flatfoot 56. I'd seen them play last fall, they weren't that great, but I listened to a song or two and it sounded OK. So tonight I was glancing over their website, and they had a link to Rock for Life...yeah, guess how I responded.

I can respect people who think abortion is wrong. I may disagree with their priorities, but I can understand the sentiment. But these guys are fucking nutjobs. They can't seem to distinguish between sexual promiscuity and abortion. Apparently condoms are abortion. Apparently stopping ovulation with birth-control is the same thing as killing a human being. Hell, they can't even differentiate between inhibiting ovulation or fertilization and aborting the zygote. Illogical emotive reasoning all over the fucking place. For what it's worth, I don't think a ball of undifferentiated cells is the same thing as a human being. I think that the whole first trimester is fair game. Fuck, these people need to read an embryology textbook, and figure out that a morula is not the same thing as a human child. Coincidentally, I read this on WhiteHouse.org today:

No, it doesn't matter either that your pastors, priests, or whatever other flavor McJesus guru you slavishly obey, has now lost this fight so many times, they're now arguing it on the single-cell level.

What's more, they can't seem to understand that "pro-choice" is not the same thing as "pro-abortion." I for one, am very pro-choice, but I don't think abortion is a good thing. Ideally, it would be completely unnecessary. If every pregnancy occurred within a social matrix that would provide for the emotional and physical needs of the parents and child, then we could maybe start a dialogue. (Aaaaaahhhhhhh.........that sounds like socialism, the greatest Satanic evil ever spawned!!!!!!) Unfortunately, we're nowhere close to there, and condemning people for *preventing* unwanted pregnancy on this overcrowded ball of rock we call home is fucktarded. I will admit the line grows grayer as pregnancy progresses, but at the early stages it's a fucking lump of flesh with no working brain just following genetic cues, and our ape-like emotional attachment to our own kind (see, I brought evolution into it too!) is the only thing that enables this bullshit. But I can see the consequences for women who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, in both a medical sense and socioeconomic sense, and I have no problems with someone choosing to terminate a pregnancy.

Oh, the Rock For Life site also had something about Terri Schiavo, how she was "killed" when her feeding tube was removed. Listen, dipshits, her brain was dead long before that. Her doctors thought so, and said so. Her husband thought so. The fucking autopsy confirmed this. The only physician to dispute this was Senate Majority Leader Dr. Video-Diagnosis. If these fuckers want to define human life as a human-shaped hunk of flesh with a moderately functioning physiology, they lessen the value of human life themselves. The value is in the human capacity for self-determination, something Schiavo exercised when she told her husband she didn't want to live in a vegetative state, and something he respected by trying to let her body die once it was obvious her brain wasn't there any more.

These turds also apparently have a problem with Bono because he thinks condoms can help stop the spread of HIV. The only problems I have with Bono are his stupid haircut and sunglasses. I happen to agree that condoms help stop the spread of STDs.

Oh yeah, I decided I want nothing to do with Flatfoot 56 after looking at this site.

Speaking of right-wing nuttery, albeit of a different stripe, yesterday I read about Governor Mike of South Dakota, who halted an execution because the three-drug cocktail usually given to execute prisoners (isn't it *great* that our society has a standardized method of execution?) doesn't fit the statutory requirement stipulating a different two-drug combination. His concern was that down the line someone may feel they acted wrongly. That's like thinking, I'd feel better about killing that man by shooting him with a .44 Magnum rather than the Colt .45 I did use. Fucked in the head. As soon as they can amend the law, they're going to reschedule the execution. Now, I'm against the death penalty for a few reasons:

1. It has no preventive value on crime, despite theory
2. It's actually more expensive for the penal system than lifelong incarceration
3. In many jurisdictions there have been more exonerations of death row inmates than executions.
4. State-sanctioned revenge killing is a slippery slope that shouldn't have been started down, and should be climbed back up.
5. State-sanctioned killing denies the human capacity for change and redemption.

I'm sure I could think of more, but that was off the top of my head. This nutter is just concerned with how his executioners will feel, wondering if they used the correct tool.

I was really exhausted all day. My single mean patient that I can't stand wasn't so mean today. Not that she was nice, she just wasn't that mean.

I got invited to the Quincinera of another of my patients, which was nice of the family. I think I'm gonna go; it's this Sunday. I've never been to one, and I think it'd be cool to see. I can't for the life of me think of what to give her. We gave her a donut today.

Beyond that, nothing much today. Again, I'm really tired. I had a nice steak and salad for dinner. I think I'm gonna turn in real early tonight.

The idea of getting a dog is strongly appealing to me right now. I need to check with my landlord. Then I need to find one, right?

From Iceberg Town by Joe Meno and Nick Butcher:

We decided to have our fake birthday on a Wednesday because nothing good ever happens on a Wednesday.

It was really nice. Almost everyone in town came. The abominable snowman brought ice cream and the polar bears made a giant cake out of sugar and snow.

Everthing was going fine until we opened the gifts. There was a enormous present from the President of the United States, who did not bother to show up.

When we looked inside, we saw it was only a note.

The note said: "Farewell, awful citizens of Iceberg town. I have taken your pet deer and all your favorite records. By the time you read this, I will already be gone."