He has a book out, and it bothers me.

In one section about the role of lawmakers, the Pope takes another swipe at gay marriages when he refers to "pressures" on the European Parliament to allow them.

"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.

Yeah, gay marriage is evil alright. But not priestly child abuse. I know, I know, cheap shot, but c'mon.

Here it is - today, I learned that French food is really, really good.

Last night was bad - stomach yuckiness - but today has made up for it. Three big positives for the day... First, the plumber showed up and diagnosed my stink problem - 8 feet of rusted out sewer pipe. He fixed it, but there's still a big puddle of sewage to be cleaned up. Ah well - at least no more's gonna add to the yuck. Landlord said he'd air it out, put a layer of lime on it, and remove it later. So that's good.

Second good thing - discs 1 and 2 of Angel season 5 just showed up. Meaning I've got 8 episodes' worth of brand-spankin' new-to-me Joss Whedon television to watch, which is a very good thing.

Third and most of all - Arwen's plane lands in San Jose in five hours. =)

"Deadwood" on DVD, more specifically, and the opening music just keeps making me think of "Firefly". That was such a good show. Can't wait for the movie...

I've heard that horrible "Love Hurts" song so many times now that my gut reaction to hearing the opening is to want to throw a book at the nearest speaker. It's terrible. And annoying. I don't think the band that recorded it (Nazareth - I had to look that up) ever did anything else with any longevity, for which can be very, very thankful. I always assumed that it was a shitty song written by a shitty band - but no, it's just a song covered by a very shitty band. It's actually an Everly Brothers song, as best as I can tell, written by their producer, Boudleaux Bryant. I learned this today, when iTunes, in its inestimable wisdom (with the aid of a playlist selecting songs I hadn't yet rated from my massive stash o' music), decided to play Gram Parsons' and Emmylou Harris' version of the song. Which is great - not surprisingly, since it IS Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Definitely worth listening to.

iTunes and the iPod have been a revelation for me, even over my earlier mp3 player. I'm finally going through the hyyyyyuge number of albums I bought or was given and never really listened to - the Gram Parsons collection being one of those that jumps out at me right now, along with British Sea Power's "Decline of British Sea Power", My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless", and Meghan Toohey's folk stuff. I'm actually making a dent in rating everything - only 3600 or so songs to go out of 4400!

The times, they are a-changin' in the Massachusetts legislature. New Speaker DiMasi has appointed his leadership, and it looks almost nothing like the Finneran-era leadership. Minorities, liberals, and Finneran opponents have moved into prominent positions - Byron Rushing, one of my favorite politicians in any state, is the new second assistant Majority Leader, putting him near the top in the leadership. I'm waiting for this year's constitutional convention, though - that's when we'll see how these changes (combined with the three seats that went from anti-marriage to pro-marriage in the election and the three anti-election seats that are up for special elections) impact the anti-marriage amendment. Only five votes needed to change sides to kill it this year - as I said, three already have, and we know of at least two state senators in leadership who wanted to vote against it but stayed because Traviglini told them to. Getting their votes would be enough - combine that with the likelihood of at least a few more people changing their minds to oppose the amendment (especially after seeing that NO ONE lost an election in Massachusetts due to not being a homophobe), and I'd be surprised if the anti-marriage amendment makes it out alive.

A New York state judge has ruled that the New York state constitution "guarantees basic freedoms to lesbian and gay people – and that those rights are violated when same-sex couples are not allowed to marry. The ruling said the state Constitution requires same-sex couples to have equal access to marriage, and that the couples represented by Lambda Legal must be given marriage licenses." This is just the lowest level court in New York state, but the legal analysis I've seen so far suggests that this ruling stands a very good chance of surviving appeal. In case you're a hardcore legal-type who actually can read these things, here's the text of the ruling. This is definitely great news.

In the same vein as an earlier post - it's 70 degrees out right now. Seriously. It's February 1, and it's *70* degrees outside. That's just WRONG. I appreciate - no, I love - the lack of snow, but this is ridiculous.