Smells Fishy

I know I am far to late to be jumping on the anti-Prop 8 bandwagon, but hear me out. It stinks big time.

Follow me now to Tangentville... Buster, a healthy eater, typically does not show any sort of enthusiasm for canned cat food with one exception. He goes nuts for this whole mackerel in gravy which is exactly what it sounds like: small, whole curled up stinky fish in an oily brown sauce. This is the only canned food that makes him lick his plate clean. It stinks up my entire apartment. My hands smell like fish even after a good soapy scrub. Forget aromatic cheeses. This cat food trumps all in its rank of smells offensive to my olfactory sense.

In fact, the only thing that I can think of that might smell worse is taking a dip in a jacuzzi filled with vomit. But even that would be a relatively bearable smell when compared with the injustice of Prop 8.

As a recovering Californian with two Californian parents, I usually hear a smattering about the state's political issues, even when they do not merit national attention. Everything I have heard about this proposition reeks of absurd levels of ugly.

My parents (who sent Buster a Frisbee in the mail today ?!??) have put to light some of the brand of crazy that propagated this stench-ridden issue. My mom, an elementary school counselor, spoke of a little girl who's parents participated in an official "re-commitment ceremony" of marriage in their church as a way to promote the measure. Religion mixed with ritual and spectacle. Seems quite literally medieval to this performance scholar.

My dad's reaction to Prop 8 almost caught me off guard. As the most conservative of the birds in our immediate nest, I thought he might be a hard sell. Instead, he had a lot of really fantastic and rational arguments against the passage of the measure. It was the sole reason he voted (he proudly wrote in "None of the above" for president, but that's another story). In fact, Miguel was sort of fired up about the whole thing. "Why is this even on the ballot? Does the Supreme Court even matter anymore?" he asked. He pointed out a lot of instances of organizations illustrating their lack of backbone by remaining neutral in respect to the measure. "Fucking hypocrites!" Mike shouted into the phone receiver. Fucking hypocrites indeed.

I tried to collect my thoughts on the matter, but between looking for a job and imagining a Japanese-style game show called Ichiban Alcoholic with my friends, I watched this video from MSNBC. It is far more eloquent than I can muster, and it pretty much says it all.



Anyway, I think it's time to do something about that awful smell.