Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Lately I've been feeling, well...not distracted, but not necessarily overwhelmed either. Despite all the political fuckery going on (and boy howdy do I have thoughts on that), I've been trying my best to approach all that in a different way. It certainly does bother me, and not a day goes by when I don't mutter some version of goddamn I really fucking hate conservatives right now under my breath, but I'm trying to get out of a very longstanding and extremely unhealthy habit of emotionally reacting to it with undirected dread and anxiety. I'm accepting that it's there and it's happening, I'm just trying not to spiral like I used to.

But it's not really all that, either. Part of it might be that I'm still getting used to living in our New Digs and getting used to not being at the old place anymore, but I think most of it lately has been on the creative end of things.

It's not that I don't want to work on this Trilogy Remaster -- I've been wanting to do it for a good couple of years, to be honest -- but more that I feel like I haven't been completely honest with my writing career these last few years. Like I could -- like I should be dedicating more time and energy to it than I have. Granted, I'm getting older and I can't really stay up until 2am doing five hour marathon sessions like I used to, especially since I have early morning Day Job hours. But I just feel like it's been ages since I've taken it as seriously as I used to. Phoning it in sometimes, doing the bare minimum, throwing my books out there with zero follow-up.

So what's the plan, then?

That's a good question indeed. The plan is something I think I'll need to work on over the next few weeks or so.

Woo, I've got today off! The last couple of days at work haven't been too bad. Last night got a little exhausting, as it was raining hard for quite a long time and keeping everyone at home, only to have a sudden surge come in once it stopped. If anything it was an eight hour shift that felt like twelve. Bleh!

Noted, I'm thinking I'm probably going to need a social media detox again. It's partly because the Rs are up to their usual destructive nonsense again and everybody (rightfully) has something to say about it; I do too, but I often feel overwhelmed whenever this wave comes rushing through and I end up wasting a day spiraling by watching the destruction in real time on Threads or wherever, and I REALLY need to stop doing that. It helps no one and it certainly doesn't help me either. Plus, I've finally got my blood pressure down to normal levels these days and I'd like it to stay there. Sure, I'll check the news for updates, but otherwise I need to back away. So yeah, I'm still out here, just keeping a safe distance. Planning and preparing ahead of time.

Anyway, going to spend the day getting things done that need doing.

I spent most of yesterday not tweeting about the Biden/Harris win, which was kind of unexpected but makes sense. I think part of it was due to just feeling so constantly stressed and irritated over the last four years, and when the news broke yesterday morning, my reaction was just...relief. It felt like whatever had been gripping the back of my neck since late 2016 had finally relented. It felt like I could just live without being on constant alert. We finally had someone who would not gleefully inspire hatred and violence. I don't claim to be the smartest person in the room but my fucking god, I was so far ahead of that fuckwit the entire time. So instead, I spent the entirety of Saturday just basking in the positive news, the celebration and the relief of everyone else. We still have a long way to go, not only cleaning up all the shit he's caused but moving forward from it as well, and I hope we'll have a better chance to do it this time.

I do of course have a few thoughts about it all, but I figured what I really needed to do was just...experience it first.


Meanwhile, not much else happened this weekend except a bit of shopping and house cleaning. We're doing a bit of book purging in preparation for my donation to the SF Public Library a few weeks from now, and I'm also gathering more things to donate to Goodwill when I have the chance. I'm still kinda sorta sticking to the whiteboard schedule, which is fine. I'm finally letting myself sink back into a few routines here and there, knowing full well that they're not habits but chores and projects to keep me from distraction. [This does kind of sound like I'm finally accepting and understanding that I may have ADD, and one of the things I'd been thinking of doing was getting tested. I'd wanted to do it earlier but, y'know, pandemic and all. I figured I'd let the bigger issue pass and calm down a bit first.] 

As for this coming week, no big plans other than digging in my heels on a few writing projects that need more heel-digging!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend! :) 

Okay, I really need to stay off Twitter and Facebook today, or I'm not going to get jackshit done.

See y'all on the flipside.

This morning I read an entry on the FB that a friend had commented on (I know, I know...that way lies madness) and let's just say it was quite a willingly ignorant and privileged rant. Short version distilled to 'Trump is our President now, deal with it' followed by deciding he's going to go on a mass blocking/defriending spree because he's sick of reading about all the whining.

It was written by someone from my podunk town (he's living in The Big City now, not that it makes a difference) who I suppose means well, but let's face it -- he's a townie who I'm sure would be hanging out with his buddies at the Gas n' Sip on a Friday night because it's a conscious choice. Someone who's full of misguided opinions disguised as TRUTH because he read something somewhere and reacted with 'YEAH! What HE said!' and left it at that.

Not sure if he's one who would call himself Deplorable like it was a badge to be proud of (I never quite got that -- why would someone willingly want to have an online presence that tells all and sundry, "Hi! I'm an Asshole!"?), but it would not surprise me if he'd at least entertained the idea.

I briefly -- very briefly -- entertained the idea of calling him out on it, but I'm sure all he would do is lol his ass off and block me. And besides, I've got more important things to do.

I used to get frustrated at people like this, but now I just feel kind of sorry for them.

There's two kinds of ignorance out there. There's simple ignorance: when one doesn't know any better, when one wasn't made aware of the larger picture. Then there's willing ignorance: when one refuses to know any better, when one sees the larger picture and decides it's not for them. A lot of people start out with the first kind but learn from experience and move on. But there are those who graduate to the second kind and stay there, because it's easier and more comforting.

I used to be the same way, back in the day. I won't ignore my podunk roots. But this has nothing to do with growing up in a small town, nor is that an excuse for deciding to continue to be willingly ignorant. I learned early on that there's a bigger world out there, and I embraced it. [Yes, I will also admit to making wrong turns along the way, but again -- I learned from it and moved on.]

Do I think I'm better than these people because I think they're wrong-headed and willingly blind? Well, no. We are who we are, and we're not a hundred percent one or the other. I feel bad for them because they're closing their eyes to something that can and often will affect them at some point.

It's a mindset that I've never quite understood, but I see it all sorts of places -- in people, in business, in politics. It's the refusal to budge and be proven wrong. Because being wrong means you're weak. And you can't have that. So you dig in, and dig in, and dig in, utterly convinced that you're right and everyone else is wrong, and you'll prove that you'll win the day.

Well, sadly, logic and Real Life usually has other plans, and it never ends well.

I especially have issues with this type of thinking when it comes to big-P Patriotism. For a number of years I never quite understood what "patriotism" meant, because I always felt it was sold as wide-eyed reverence for the flag, unquestioning idolatry of the military, and an overly simplistic view of the Constitution. It felt so...surface to me, to put a word to it. It felt like one of those 80s Rambo movies. It wasn't until these last few weeks that I finally found my own meaning for that word, witnessing the overwhelming frustration and reaction to Trump's terribly misguided executive orders. The immediate response was strong, and it was visceral. Lawyers heading to airports of their own volition to take care of foreign travelers. Millions of people marching in major cities and even small towns all over the country because they were pissed off (I am proud to say I was one of them). Circuit courts shooting down the travel ban order. Sanctuary cities stating they weren't going to play along. The ACLU jumping in on Day One -- Minute One, to be honest -- saying they had our backs...and then receiving the highest amount of donations they've ever had as a group.

THAT, I realized, was patriotism to me. Not this feel-good flagwaving crap, but the immediate action response of watching over everyone, whoever they may be, without question.

Am I Elitist for thinking this way? Go ahead and call me that if you must, I don't mind. All I'm trying to do is let you know there's a Bigger Picture out there that you're willingly ignoring for whatever reason. If that bothers you so much that you refuse to see situations from someone else's point of view, well...that's on you, dude. All I'm saying is that you're making yourself look like a shallow jackass.

So. Been almost two weeks and Fuckwit and Co. are already shaking things up. As I'd commented on Twitter, it seems he's purposely picking all the biggest assholes in the universe for his cabinet. I'm half-seriously expecting Martin Shkreli to show up in a position somewhere.

I'm still agitated, to be sure. And I know part of it is because I feel like I want to do more than just make calls and tweet reminders and hold signs. I'm not belittling that, because it's been known to work very well in the past. I think I'm agitated because I want to do something other than that to make a point and a difference but I'm still not sure what yet.

There's also that nagging in the back of my head that I don't want this to overtake my life. Let me explain that a bit: I don't want to lose myself in a cyclone of reactionary indignation that I know for a fact would happen to me. I can't and shouldn't react to all this by simply feeling angry at the man or his administration or the party and the people that put him there. Going that route would only end up with me becoming a loudmouthed cynical jerk with very little filter. That's not me, and that's not what I want to be.

What I need to do is be creative about it.

How, I'm not sure, but I'm still thinking about it.


But in other news...we're on the back end of A's month-long visit to Manila. The apartment has remained clean and in one piece, nothing caught fire, I'm eating reasonably well (sort of), I'm making sure I at least get outside and go places if I don't hit the gym (which I really should do), and I'm getting a lot of editing work done. Yeah, it's still a bit quiet and lonely here, but I'm doing okay. Keeping busy and doing my best not to be a lazy bachelor! Still, looking forward to her return! :)

First off, the happy news. HUGE congratulations to Cixin Liu for winning the Best Novel Hugo for The Three-Body Problem. It's one hell of a great novel, definitely one you should all read.

Now, let's get this off my chest.

Let's talk about the SFF genre for a moment, just for what it is--a subcategory of fiction that leans less towards literary (though can include variants of it) and more towards the imaginative (although it doesn't always need to be a requirement). Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, which is about a potential alien invasion, though framed in the context of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and math and science nerdiness. Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, which has little to no overt SFF components other than a young boy's overactive imagination. Rachel Hartman's Seraphina and Shadow Scale, which deal with dragons as the excluded Other, and a young girl trying to return peace to her land. Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni, at its heart a Jewish love story based in Manhattan that happens to feature the titular characters. Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto series, which a bumbling outcast ninja grows from a knucklehead goofball to his village's leader by sheer determination and crystal-clear focus on his goal--to protect everyone in the same village that hated him for his past history. Yasutaka Tsutsui's Paprika, in which a female neurologist and her team find a new method to combat neurological disorders, only to end up fighting a disturbed fellow scientist bent on using their method for mind control. Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, in which a man must try to keep his sanity while fighting an alien war he doesn't fully understand. Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves, in which the physical dimensions of a house literally become the amplifier of a couple's disintegrating marriage. Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, in which a terrorist act turns San Francisco into a police state, and a teenager committed to personal freedom.

These are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of stories out there in this genre that I write in. One could easily argue what is and what isn't genre, but that's completely a matter of opinion. Some of these are filed in YA, others in comics, others in literary fiction, while some are completely at home in the SF/F section of your local book store. Point being, there's all sorts of stories out there, covering all sorts of subjects, in all sorts of settings.

Yes, there are also the military SF stories and the classic space operas. There's also the vampire stories, the steampunk stories, the alternate reality stories, the New Weird stories. The only reason I don't mention them here is merely because I'm not a fan of them. I acknowledge they exist, I'm sure they're well-written, and I have nothing bad to say about them at all. I just don't read them because I'm not interested in them.

The issue I find the most irritating about the Puppies is that my and others' disinterest in those subjects is perceived as a legitimate reason that the Hugos are politically rigged. Even more so that I apparently have to explain to many of them that I'm not saying that I think the stories suck and that they should all be thrown in a fire and burned to a crisp at a toasty 451°F. I just don't like them. I don't like whiskey either, but that doesn't mean that I demand all distilleries be closed forever. I just happen to like vodka and rum instead.

There's a lot of life to be lived out there. It's too short to waste time forcing myself to like something that doesn't jive with me at all. Someone else will like it, I'm sure. Hell, I'm pretty sure I'll have detractors with A Division of Souls, if it ever gains any traction. And I'm cool with that. It's not for everyone.

What fascinates me in a car-crash sort of way is the reaction that this sometimes just doesn't seem to be enough for the Puppies. In a very short, unscientific version of this manufactured War On Genre:
--Certain writers (many rightwing conservatives) (no, really, I'm not making that up) complain their works aren't getting nominated, or are passed over for more "liberal" stories (such as the Cixin Liu novel, which in reality is FAR from being a liberal story).
--Fault is then placed on the readers, who are obviously being given the Kool Aid of said 'liberal' writers*
--Writers then realize that via a loophole in the voting process, they can stack the deck by getting a bunch of people to purchase the voting fee (a reasonable $40 this year) so they can throw in all kinds of distinctly right-wing and conservative-leaning stories and writers.**
--Many fans who are annoyed and angered by this disgusting stacking of the deck "to prove a point" decide that instead of voting for stories that may or may not even be quality, a No Award response is given instead.***
--Honest voting, honest vote counts, and rule abiding show conclusively that a majority of the readers would rather vote for quality over personal politics.
--End result 1: Absolutely NONE of the Puppy-backed stories win a single award.
--End result 2: Nearly all of the Puppy-backed followers are, appropriately and predictably, violently upset that their nefarious plans did not work, and said nomination riggers state loudly and angrily that This Only Goes to Prove That The Hugos Are Rigged.
--End result 2.5: Puppies are also outraged that the genre is full of Social Justice Warriors and that we're now being forced to read about Asians and Blacks and Queers and Girls and (gasp!) Feelings! How DARE they tell us what to do! This is a free country! Rights! Morality! USA! USA! Whatever Amendment I can use for this one!****
--End result 3: Many level-headed fans shake their head at all this nonsense and happily continue reading whatever the hell they like to read.

Genre writing is always evolving. Did Wells and Shelley expect Tolkien to be such a huge thing? Did Bester and Doc Smith expect Gibson and Stephenson to be such a huge thing? Probably not, but I'm sure they embraced the change anyway. Fans read whatever captures their interest, then and now, and that includes new stories, uncharted territory, and even stories of Other People.

Really, that's all this boils down to--fear of change, which in America tends to be a very conservative world view. [Actually I'm sure it's like that everywhere. I'm currently reading a history of 70s UK that shows members of Parliament reacting the same way to "liberal permissiveness".] Sure, tempering change with responsibility and a reasonable amount of attention is always a good thing, but let's be realistic: things change whether we want them to or not. Nothing gold can stay. *****

So let's accept that there are Things We May Not Like Out There, and Things We Like That Aren't Popular, AND THAT'S OKAY TOO and move on.


* Yeah, I know using the old Jim Jones bit here is in poor taste, but I'm proving a point. Their reaction to 'liberal bias' in SF/F does in fact tend to lean towards such tasteless descriptions.
** In a fascinating turn of events, this move actually kind of backfired on them, as many of their suggested writers pulled themselves out of the running--some of them first-time nominees--simply because they felt this was a ridiculously petty move. Integrity over politics, yay!
*** My favorite responses thus far on Twitter have been "I don't even care about the Hugos/I don't even read SF, but good on them for ruining the party for the liberals!" So scorched-earth damage is better than a decisive win? I guess?
**** Actually, that's a bunch of bullshit, and I'm pretty sure they know it. They just don't like to read about Asians and Blacks and Queers and Girly Things, and I'M OKAY WITH THAT. I'm not about to piss in your cornflakes because you dare to read something I don't like.
***** I too have learned to embrace this. There are quite a number of places and things in my life that I wish I could revisit but no longer exist, at least not in the way I've known them. And I've made my peace with that.

Not antisocial--not in the context of going on social media and acting like a jackass. Lord knows enough has been said about that. And not in the context of refusing to log on because you've deemed social media the internet equivalent of the high school cafeteria where all the popular kids are talking loudly and happily, and you're off alone in the corner, glaring at them.

I'm talking about not being very social--that is, maybe logging on to Twitter/Facebook/LJ/wherever, maybe reading a few items, but not responding to anything (literally or figuratively), maybe not even staying for the drinks afterwards. It's not that you're finished with the drama...it's more that you just find yourself uninterested in any conversations that may be going on.

I guess that's where I'm at here...I mean, I like heading online to say hi to all my friends back east, or the newer friends I've made elsewhere that I've never met in real life, or the writers (professional or just starting out) that I consider friends as well as 'co-workers' in a way. On the same token, my slow retreat from social media over the past year has definitely been one of the best moves I've made personally. Once I shook off that habit of supposedly Needing to Be On Top of Everything, a lot of those priorities not only fell away, but after a while a lot of them started looking, well, laughable.


The major retreat for me was politics. I was never really all that interested in politics for most of my life, to be honest--sure, there was a bit of blissful ignorance involved early on, but for the most part I think there was also the fact that I tended to see the eternal battle between Republicans and Democrats to be like a sports event. Each team got together at certain preordained times and attempted to beat the snot out of each other to attain a hard-won victory. I hoped that these battles were at least for good causes, but I also knew and understood that the mindsets would eventually change around the next election cycle. Sometimes my team would win, but sometimes my team would lose and we'd be stuck with frustration for two to four years. Then things would change. Sure, I wished we'd all agree on something that works instead of what we want personally, but I didn't dwell on it. It wasn't until 2000ish when I started following politics with any seriousness, and even then I wasn't too vocal about it, nor did I have any really strong feelings either way. I only became more vocal about it by 2004, for obvious and varied reasons that I'll skip here. And by 2005 I was reading Daily Kos on a daily basis.

It came to a head around 2010 when I realized I was just getting too frustrated. I'd lost focus on what was important to me. Sure, there are political things that are important to me, but they're not my raison d'être...that's my writing and my ongoing research and fascination with music. Selfish? Maybe, but there's a line where I need to live my life and not everyone else's. Since then I turned it around and started focusing completely on what I really wanted to do--finish my trilogy, prepare it for submission, and work on other writing projects, and the last few years have been very fruitful for me. I may not be published yet, but the quality of my work is a hell of a lot better than it once was.


Part of the reason I brought all that up is just the way I view things on social media now. I think part of this line of thinking started when I started wondering why some of my friends are rarely online, if at all. I had a few friends from college that I never see anywhere online, so I've no idea what they might be up to these days. One of them was on Facebook but only to play those games we used to see all the time on our timelines; he did his own thing. There's another friend from the YC days who's on FB, but he and his wife only go on to post a few pictures or say hi to relatives and friends. I know of others who rarely if ever post anything at all.

It has nothing to do with not knowing how to post, or being opinionated and dismissive or even afraid of social media, or having ragequit the internet at some point...there are just those who don't find it all that important. They're the ones who post the kid pictures, the vacation pictures, the mundane "I drew/knitted/played with this today" updates. There's no Absolute Importance to it--it's just someone living life offline and wanting to share it online.

I just began to feel all the noise against that (directly and indirectly) was getting old. Sure, a lot of it's snark, but Snark as a Comedic Device gets old VERY quickly, at least for me. After a while it turns into a hack telling a dry old joke and nudging you in the ribs a little harder than necessary saying "Get it? Huh? Get it? GET IT? HUH? GET IT?" with increasing volume. Hell, even I've toned down the snark myself. I used to be downright biting in the Seinfeld 90s. Seriously, there are those of us who actually enjoy going online to check out what our friends our doing without each one of us trying to be a Comedian about it. There's something to be said that my college friend Kate posted pictures the other day of her oldest finally heading to kindergarten for the first time. It's sweet and it's fun...it serves no greater purpose other than the poster being proud of their kids or their creations. And I just never understood all the whiny bitchiness about those kinds of posts. Maybe you were just trying to be funny-snarky? I don't know, but the smartassery grew old a good couple of years ago. Sometimes I just like to enjoy the mundane, and honestly, is there really a problem with that?

Back to my point--it's not as if I'm ragequitting the internet myself here, far from it. There's too much good stuff out there to investigate, and there's a hell of a lot of great resources out there for my writing and my music interests. It's like I said earlier, I've just learned to block out all the Noise. I've defriended a number of people on various social platforms for no other reason than I just didn't feel like reading a lot of negativity. They could be totally fine people, and they can have whatever opinions they want, and they may need a platform to release some anger or personal issues, and I'm okay with that...I'm talking about the feeds that are filled with "NOPE" and "I'm just about done with humanity" and "Oh the feels" and other updates about All the Wrong in the World--the users with nothing positive to say, the ones who are actively and frequently posting (and crowing about) every injustice in the world. I'm not cutting people out of my life--I'm just choosing not to follow them on a daily basis. I can still look up their feed if I so choose. I'm just turning off the radio for a bit when I get tired.


Okay, that's enough blathering on for now. I've got a few other thoughts on this, and will probably post a bit more later.

So today I did something I rarely do anymore--feed a troll.

In particular, this was a troll who'd been following the #nerdland hashtag on Twitter (that's the one for Melissa Harris-Perry's weekend show on MSNBC) and basically complaining how we in the Democrat Party* are always whining about poor jobs and looking for handouts, as well as saying how awesome capitalism was and how Socialism = free handouts. I mentioned various personal truths such as not being able to find a decent job in or near my hometown, and having to take a job I didn't like because, well, that's all there was. In addition to that I mentioned that guaranteed, if you're stuck at a job you hate, you're gonna end up doing shitty work because you have no pride in it. To which he of course responded:

No, I want [you] to work at whatever level job you are qualified for and be thankful for your job. Is that too much to ask?

Aside from my overwhelming urge to invoke Godwin's Law (in particular, "Arbeit Macht Frei"), I decided that was too easy and let that one pass. I instead said that's actually not enough to ask. In so many words, I stated that work without pride in it is wasted time for all involved, and it's a hell of a lot rarer to find a job you're completely proud of nowadays. He of course suggested starting one's own business if it was that bad. Never mind how the hell someone with no finances or knowledge to do so in the first place will know how to do that.

Well. Aside from the back and forth and never the twain shall meet (and besides, I was too busy enjoying a movie), we basically ended our verbal sparring on a funny note, at least for me. He pointed out that I should be looking for a new job and do something with my life instead of whining on the internet all day.

To which I responded:

On the contrary, I'm happily married, I write, and am paying it forward to others. So stop the projection there, dude.

Well! That seemed to piss him off enough that he yelled at me for wasting his time and cluttering up his Twitter feed, and I haven't heard a lick from him since. But I have to say that payoff was probably the most fun I've had feeding a troll in quite some time. :D


On a side note, part of this came about because of something I'd mentioned on the #nerdland tag this morning about creative jobs. It's always bothered me that jobs that are creative--writing, artistry, performance, and so on--always tend to bear the stigma of being superfluous and nonprofitable, and thus not a serious career choice. I've always wondered just how many people are out there who could possibly be writers, artists or musicians in the making, if they'd only been given the opening and the ability to do so. This dates back to when I was in high school, when they'd gotten rid of the stage club (or whatever it was called), who would put on seasonal plays for the area because they didn't have the funds and no teacher wanted to be part of it unless they'd be paid for it...and yet god forbid they get rid of football...!! Sure, living in a small town, we most likely had better running backs than thespians and I don't blame them for sticking with offering sports for that majority of kids, but still--what about those of us who are interested in acting and can't play sports to save our lives? Shit outta luck, I guess.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's always bothered me that those of us who are artists and writers--especially those of us who are professional, who have to work a day job and squeeze our true passion into the two hours at the end of the day or a few hours on the weekend--why is it that if we're the creative types, it's considered a pointless career unless we're multi-million dollar mass-producers like Stephen King, Thomas Kinkade, or Lady Gaga? There's some phenomenal work out there that's done by people who are essentially paper pushers during the day, and to be honest, it's not always because they chose to do so...it's because they have to do so, to make ends meet, and to get healthcare coverage. Sure, there are those who manage to balance a Day Job and a Creative Job and have no problems with it, but there are others who may not have that luxury for one reason or another.

Sometimes it makes me wonder, too...how many people are out there, who wish they could have been an artist or a writer, who have the potential to be one, given the time and the practice...but choose not to, because it wouldn't be profitable? It kills me to think that there are potentially creative people out there who never let that gift grow and blossom, out of financial necessity.

This is PRECISELY why, now that I'm able to do so, I pay it forward as much as I can. I know friends and fellow creatives who run Kickstarter campaigns for their creative project, or need some funds to pay off an unexpected bill, and I'm always happy to donate if I can. I know people out there just starting to take their writing seriously, and I am 100% behind them and will help them how I can. If a musician's album grabs me, I will totally download or buy it from them, and even give a shameless plug or two if I can.

Because it's positive all around...everyone wins.

Because it's the right thing to do.

Because really--FUCK that "I made it by myself, you're on your own, no handouts" bullshit, Mr. Troll.

We're all in this together.



* One of my favorite bits about right wing trolls is their penchant for name calling. There's the playground level of 'libtard' and so on, and there's the nuanced misnomer like 'Democrat Party' (purposely leaving off the "ic" suffix just to annoy). It's the online version of "you're a retard and you smell funny", obviously, a cheap and easy taunt. I of course understand it happens on both sides ('rethuglicans' and so on), but it seems the right wing trolls are more vociferous and nasty about it.

...but considering I live in said state, and more importantly in Sodom and Gomorrah San Francisco, where this is a scorchingly hot topic:

Prop 8 Deemed Unconstitutional!

AMEN, HELL YES, AND BOOYAH!

Prop 8 was one of the most vile and bigoted propositions I'd ever seen on a ballot in recent time, and I'm glad they called it unconstitutional.