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Wed.Feb.14.2007

10:21 pm EST        12°F (–11°C) in Obetz, OH

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On this Valentine’s Day, I can most certainly say that I have ZERO love whatsoever for trucking in shitty weather. Earlier this afternoon, I needed my second pull from a wrecker in a month to get out of a truck stop in Anna, OH, which is roughly 100 miles (161 km) from here along Interstate 75. There just isn’t much else you can do when you’re halfway up to your axles in snow — nothing else I tried, which included attempting to install my tire chains and later “rocking” the truck using high gears, moved me any more than a foot. This shit is really getting old, fast.

At least I was able to make use of some of the extra time afforded by being stuck in the snow. Last night, I managed to get three new highway pages done for that section of my site; I’ve also recently started to work on a few others, including some of the most murderously difficult ones I’m trying to save for last. I did a quick count of how many I have done and how many I have left to do, and I am sitting on 62% (just barely short of 5/8ths) complete right now.

While I’m sitting here getting loaded, I had one other quick observation I wanted to bring up here. On most occasions when I have seen “mainstream” media articles that talk about homosexuality, and in particular about GLBT people as the human beings (gasp! say the so-called “Christians”) we are, the reporters always seem to have to include some quote they solicited from a so-called “pro-‘family’” or other “fundamentalist ‘Christian’” source. The most recent example I saw of this was in the February 8 edition of USA Today, which featured a front-page article entitled “Gay teens coming out earlier to peers and family.” Specifically, buried in the article was a quote from Peter Sprigg of the so-called “Family ‘Research’ Council,” in which he told the blatant lie (thoroughly disproven by yours truly here) that homosexuality is somehow “harmful” to society.

Apparently our “mainstream” corporate media need to be taught a little lesson here. If she were writing an article about a black student group, would USA Today’s Marilyn Elias (the writer of the aforementioned article) have solicited comments from the Ku Klux Klan? Should reporters in the 1930s have solicited comments about Jews from Adolf Hitler, or should today’s reporters do likewise from skinhead and neo-Nazi groups? How about an article covering America or American people, with commentary from Osama bin Laden? By interviewing a purveyor of similar hatred like Peter Sprigg, Marilyn Elias has suggested that all of those would be fine and dandy.

It is high time that not only our media, but also all Americans, stop affording such deference to these Nazi-esque purveyors of hatred simply because said purveyors of hatred claim that their hatred is somehow “Christian.” The same can be said on a worldwide basis, in any situation in which any religion is used to justify evil — for example, average everyday Muslims must stand up to the extremists in their midst, the ones who selectively misuse the Qur’an and profane the name of Allah in the same way that so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’” selectively misuse the Bible and profane the name of God. The fundamental question for humanity to answer is this: are we going to act in order to make the various religions of the world into unifying forces for the greater common good of all, or are we going to let our theological pissing contests utterly destroy the world? I sincerely hope we will choose the former, but current events indicate a lurch toward the latter.

This load is going to be ready before too long, and then I’ll be looking to go about two hours with it tonight. I will have all day tomorrow to get it over to northeastern Pennsylvania, roughly 440 miles (about 700 km) from here.