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Sat.Sep.04.2004

9:36 pm EDT        73°F (23°C) in Mt. Vernon, IL

Calendar of Updates

I am finally getting a chance to update this, even though I've been meaning to do so for well over a week. Since this past Monday, I've done very little except drive, eat, and sleep — with emphasis on driving. It seems that I'm in some trouble with the company due to low total miles in the past few months; while I must say that they don't seem to understand that less than half of the productivity problems have been my fault, it is up to me to do something to fix it. Basically, I'm trying to run a little bit harder than I have been, and that ought to help bring the miles up. (It may seem funny, given what I just said, that both July and August set new records for my monthly wages — so my mileage can't be THAT bad.)

You won't notice this change, but last weekend, I made an important change to most pages on this site. With the exception of most pages in the Photography section, and updates previous to the last one in this News section, all pages on this site are now written with fully compliant HTML, using the HTML 4.01 "Transitional" standard promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (You can use this link to validate any of my pages yourself.) In addition, I also used W3C's Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) validator to validate the CSS code I use here. All of this may not seem like a big deal, but you never know who might be visiting this site (and by extension, you never know what ancient browser version they might be using, what OS their computer is running, or even if they're on a different device such as a PDA or cellphone). The key feature of fully-valid HTML is interoperability; that is to say, the ability to be displayed correctly in many different browsers, operating systems, and device environments.

The Repub-a-dub-dubs just held their quadrennial hate-fest this past week. Most of them went to great lengths to try to portray the party as moderate and inclusive, in spite of the official party platform's position that non-Wacko Satanic Righties can go fuck themselves. (Exactly as I predicted here on June 10.) However, the words of one Repub-a-dub-dub weren't even worthy of the fecal matter that he obviously has for brains. Alan Keyes, the party's candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, made a complete idiot of himself in a radio interview with comments about Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.

"If we embrace homosexuality as a proper basis for marriage, we are saying that it's possible to have a marriage state that in principle excludes procreation and is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism," Keyes said; when asked if this applied to Mary Cheney, he replied, "Of course. That goes by definition." Two days later, at a breakfast for delegates, he described homosexuality as "a selfish relationship that seeks to use organs of procreation for pure sexual gratification."

Since reality is always at odds with so-called "social conservatism," let me set the facts straight here. The clueless Keyes obviously doesn't know why most heterosexual people engage in sexual activity: they do it because it is pleasurable. On occasion, heterosexuals may actually intend to procreate through intercourse, but (a) procreation is only biologically possible for about five days out of every 28, and (b) the world's human population would be one trillion or more if every single instance of heterosexual intercourse were procreative in nature.

Nature (or God, or [insert name of deity here], whatever you want to call it) had to make sex pleasurable for humans to want to do it. Assuming for a minute that I were straight, if I could fertilize a woman's egg cell by merely snapping my fingers, would I really have a strong desire to do so? I doubt it, as I don't find snapping my fingers to be all that hugely pleasurable. (No, it doesn't hurt, either, but just wait until I get old and arthritic … wink) There is a reason why Nature made the male orgasm such an earth-shatteringly pleasurable event, and why women are even capable of any sexual stimulation at all. If sex is truly about procreation alone, there is no reason to have any special sequence of events leading up to the male orgasm (i.e., bumping and grinding — I'm trying not to be horrendously graphic here), and there is no reason for women to have a clitoris or a "G-spot."

The upshot of all of that is, people have sex because it feels good, the procreative possibilities of heterosexual vaginal intercourse aside. It doesn't matter if you're white, black, brown, yellow, red, or even green; it doesn't matter whether you're straight or gay; it doesn't matter whether you're male or female — this is a universal truth. I will grant that homosexual intercourse cannot possibly result in procreation, but Nature didn't see fit to take the pleasurable aspect of sex away from homosexuals. We have the same desire to indulge in the pleasures of sex, but for some yet-undiscovered biological or natural reason, that desire is directed in a different way. Clearly, Nature intended that sex be not only for procreation, but also for pleasure. To add to my earlier statement: If sex were for procreation alone, men would only be capable of arousal and erection, much less ejaculation, during the roughly five-day period in their intended woman's cycle in which she is capable of conceiving. The fact that teenage boys and young men, especially, are constantly interested in sex proves that procreation is not Nature's sole intention for the use of our sexual organs.

At the very least, Keyes is being highly disingenuous if he thinks heterosexuals never have sex for the purposes of "selfish hedonism." What about teenage boys, whose rampaging hormones frequently cause them to have one-track minds? I dare say that when they masturbate (or worse yet, trick some girl into substituting her vagina for his hand — which is usually the reason why teenage boys have sex, in my opinion), that's "selfish hedonism." How about post-menopausal women, women who have had hysterectomies or tubal ligations, or men who have had vasectomies? Yet more "selfish hedonism." What about men who insist their wives give them oral sex, but think it sickening to return the favor? You guessed it … "selfish hedonism."

I could go on … In any case, it is because of this distorted worldview that Alan Keyes is the biggest loser in the history of politics (lost a Senate race in his native Maryland in 1988, lost again running for Maryland's other Senate seat in 1992, and completely got his ass kicked in the 1996 and 2000 Repub-a-dub-dub presidential primaries). Patrick Guerriero, the executive director of the Log Cabin Repub-a-dub-dubs, the party's gay wing, said it best: "In a political career defined by failures, this is a new low for Alan Keyes." Amen to that, Mr. Guerriero …

The highly cute young mechanic who brought my trailer's refrigeration unit (in trucker slang, "reefer") back to life has finished his work and left the premises, so it's time for me to hook back up and start a-draggin' my wagon on toward Missouri.