One Huge Checkmark Taken Care Of
This'll mean alot less to most of you but it will be important to some folks.

P and I have a reception location selected and we will be putting down a deposit on it either this afternoon or tomorrow. We're currently only pencilled in because the main scheduler is on vacation this week but the schedule has no conflicts on it as of yet.

The cool thing is that I'm well familiar with the site. I managed a wedding there about a year and a half ago, actually on 02.02.02, the first and only gay wedding in my long history of catering and wedding experiences. It was very nicely done and I remember that I got to take home a whole bunch of quite excellent crab cakes along with a half flat of other food.

It is on church grounds and that's probably the only detriment in my thinking. That and no hard alcohol, just beer, wine and champagne. But that's alright, no one really needs to get totally wasted at a wedding reception, do they?

Its amazing to me how much of a relief it has been, in the short time, since we've locked down on where to hold the reception. Both P and I noticed it, our drive home from across town was lighter, we were both joking with each other and we were each unburdened by the simple selection of a place to hold our party. Its not wholly ideal because there will be some movement from the wedding ceremony site to the church, its across town, but that's minor in the grand scheme of things.

The big thing is that we now know where we will be sharing the party to celebrate the combining of our two lives into one. I'm sure there will be more posts on this but for now, just be happy that we've set the major piece of the puzzle into place and the rest of the picture can start to become much clearer. All the rest of the events must, naturally, fall from where the reception is taking place. Now that that's taken care, we can proceed with all of our other tasks.

Mine for this next weekend is to try and gather up some driftwood to construct the altar. That should prove interesting as the beach is pretty clean now from the heavy winter storms. And ring designs and all the other myriad joys of the whole wedding process. Maybe we should rent Very Bad Things just to see how crazy the whole process can become?

Quotas, Discrimination and Inverted Racism

This may irritate alot of people but I'm not really going to worry about that because its something I've been thinking about. I've tried to stay out of the affirmative action debates because they don't really apply to me anymore unless I decide that I want to go to graduate school and pursue a master's or more.

But the more I think about it and the more I see qualified, hard working people being overlooked for less meritorious candidates that just happen to be people of color, the madder I get.

Yes, fat old white men have screwed black people over, they've screwed Asian people, Indian people and everyone else. You know what? They've also screwed me over to and the only difference between me and them is about thirty years, fifty pounds and several million dollars.

I am in a curious demographic these days. The demographic that supposedly rules the world and tromps all over everyone else to get there. And I do think that the fat old men are criminals, they steal from the poor to make themselves richer and fatter, they abuse women physically, sexually, emotionally and intellectually. They control governments by getting their "guy" elected who will pass laws, mandates and screeds directing more and more money and power to them and their flabby, crusted asses.

Affirmative action is, by its definition, a way to give less deserving, by virtue of their efforts and not their skin color, students an easier passage into college ahead of kids who busted their asses but just happen to be white. I'm all for mixing things up but only if the bar for everyone is raised or lowered. Discriminating against white kids can't be justified. Its racism and band aid racism at that. A lame dick academia led attempt to rectify 400 years of slavery and oppression.

You can't fix 400 years of evil action by making it somewhat easier for a black kid to get into college. You can do it and point at it enough so that people may be fooled into thinking that there's some justification for doing it. Instead of lowering the bar, how about lowering the real barrier to entry into higher education? Scholarships, full rides for top tier students. Yes, they will have to bust their asses to get in and stay in but they shouldn't have money be the limiting factor on their ability to rise.

Anyway, here's the International Herald Tribune: Affirmative Action story to work from.

In my pal, Mark's, own words....
I�ve been reading your blog and wonder if you are as heated under the collar about todays Supreme Court ruling to uphold affirmative action practices at universities (read the whole 25 page ruling here) as you are about the vehicular murdering bitch you ranted about. I am just sick that the nations� court has ruled to allow unfair and unequal factors to admit undergrads and into grad school programs. It kills me that if I applied for a grad school along with people from other ethnicities that I could easily be denied acceptance in favor of a less qualified person. Grades are fucking grades, pure and simple; performance MUST mean more than skin color, give me a break.

I purposely refused to let the past enter into this argument; anyone who is entering college now has no clue as to how it was 50 or 60 years ago and does not deserve the right to do a little bit less in high school because they know they have an advantage on a college application. All I picture is some dumb �ethnic� kid getting into his states� university and eventually squeeking out a diploma and getting a decent job because of it, while some smart white kid gets turned down and ends up at some community college getting an inferior education and ending up a fry cook or a skating rink attendant spraying deodorizer all day. Because of the ruling today, I KNOW this will happen to at least one person and that is one person too many to have been hacked down by the supreme court. Unequality is not what this country is about and I�m afraid that a precedent might be set for other little unequalities to start being OK. The Cincinnati Bengals get home field advantage all season. The NBA must let 10 people under 5� 9� play each year. Victoria Secret has to put 1 ugly girl on the cover every year. Stephen Speilberg has to make a movie starring Pauly Shore for under half a mil. Senior Citizens get a discount at Denny�s and Thrift Stores on Wednesdays (wait, they already do this...). The PGA has to let a woman play one week; Oh my God! It�s already begun! What is happening to this world!?!?