Meet Stanton the Office Cat. A co-worker found him in the park across from the office when he was a kitten. He’s been at The Firm for ten years. The first day we met he was anything but standoffish. He followed me around the office, making sure I felt at home.
Unfortunately things deteriorated quickly thereafter. When I petted his spit-shined coat, I promptly rubbed my fingers in my eyes. Every five-year-old with allergies knows you wash your hands after touching an animal you’re allergic to, but in a rush to make new friends, I forgot my allergy-smarts.
The rest of the day was spent sneezing and fumbling blindly around the office in search of eye drops. Stanton got the message that I was more of a dog person and started ignoring me around the copy machine.
He’s taken our relationship to the next level by scratching his cat-parts all over my keyboard and puking hairballs under my desk. Sometimes if he’s feeling especially cooperative, he’ll poop in my office, rather than his litter box.
I’m returning the favor by forcing him to watch Live Puppy Cam and making Lolcats out of his pictures.
This post is part of the Write to Marry Day - Support for Marriage Equality.
"I don't think the world's biggest problem is two people who love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. (via comments on dooce.com)"
With things heating up in the final days before the election, I have endured and read about some unfortunate confrontations over "the homosexuals" and their battle "against" marriage in California. I have donated to the cause, and fretted about the consequences of Proposition 8.
While I am worried that marriage rights will be taken away in California, I am incredibly disturbed by the tendency to de-humanize and vilify lesbians and gays in order to mobilize people to vote against them. I worry people forget that these individuals have mothers, fathers and partners who love and care for them, that they are more interested in building their own lives than in destroying the lives of others, and that they only ask the rights which others already enjoy.
I wonder if hate crimes against lesbians and gays would have decreased, rather than increased in the past year, if people could see lesbians and gays as actual people they could be friends with, rather than enemies.
I wonder if my father would still be talking to me, if he could see me as something other than an enemy to his marriage and family.
I wonder if Prop 8 would have less support, if more people had lesbian and gay friends in their immediate circles.
It's more difficult to vilify and then discriminate against a group of people when we put a face on them and/or get to know them. The brilliance of blogging is that it gives us the chance to see lesbians and gays as something more than a threatening, ominous enemy, but as real people, people we could be friends with, people we could even support and love.
I hope people will take the chance to put a face on the individuals that will be affected by Prop 8 (One example: We Are Not the Enemy), and I hope they will support equality by voting No on Prop 8.
“There are large groups of white folk getting killed all at one time. Eight or nine of them get shot at work all together. But whenever somebody goes on a rampage you don’t really hear news about ten or eleven black people getting killed altogether.
Cause we run… If I’m with you and you start running, well dammit, I’m gonna start running. That’s just how it goes. Once we stop running I’ll find out what it was, we was runnin’ about…
Meanwhile, white people walk right to the trouble. ‘What the heck is going on?’ [BANG]” - Cedric the Entertainer
I first saw this clip a few months after moving from Utah (1.4 violent crimes per 1,000 people) to Washington, D.C. (14.46 violent crimes per 1,000 people) At the time I was living in the BYU dorms where 1) we were required to carry around rape whistles & mace, 2) students weren’t allowed outside the compound before sunrise, dusk, or on particularly overcast days and 3) we were each assigned a bathroom buddy so we didn’t have to walk the halls alone at night.
Now I live in Shaw, where I can hear gunshots outside my apartment window.
[BANG] [BANG] [BANG] [BANG] [BANG] [BANG]
It’s the week before the 4th of July, and I figure kids are setting off fireworks. So, I stick my head out my window into the alley way behind my apartment to catch a glimpse, and I see two kids bolting frantically away from the sound. I duck my head back in, and the doubt and panic sets in.
OMG! What if that was really a bunch of gunshots!?!? Should I call the police!?!
I run out to my living room to tell my roommates who haven’t heard a thing.
Roommates: Are you sure it wasn’t fireworks? Doesn’t your experience with handguns always include a big screen, surround sound and popcorn? Maybe we should walk back there and check, before we call the police?
Me: No! No! No! That’s what we’re programmed to do. That’s an instinct we need to start ignoring!
But it is difficult. Even I’m feeling the urge strongly. The genetic disposition I have to run into the middle of gunfire was most likely inherited from my father’s family (of Scandinavian descent), a point my Asian mother reiterates every time she calls me “twinkie" (yellow on the outside, white on the inside).
After fifteen minutes of discussing the many ways in which young professional ex-suburbanites get killed, I tell my roommates I have to venture out anyway. Young Apollo is going to be walking from the metro to the apartment, and I don’t want him walking alone. Never mind that I’ll be walking alone to meet him. No, I can put myself in danger, but HE is not allowed to (a moronic hypocrisy Young Apollo continues to point out).
I tip toe outside and make my way to the metro, careful to take cover behind every available tree. I cross the street to avoid the alleyway behind my apartment, but as I pass, I see a police officer with a flashlight searching the ground. I wave to him and walk over (because it’s obviously safe to walk back towards the origin of gunfire if the PoPo have arrived). I ask if he’s looking for fireworks (trying not to give up on my obviously false hopes and inevitably revealing my incredible naïveté). He says he’s actually looking for bullet encasings because they got FIVE calls about six gunshots.
[GULP] Whoa! About that...
And I proceed to give him my description of the suspects: young, tall, slim, gray jacket, blue t-shirt, kinda blurry? Nope, didn’t see a gun... Very helpful I’m sure. He takes my report and contact info and tells me they haven’t found any bodies or damage, but that if they do, he’ll get in touch with me.
Meet Stanton the Office Cat. A co-worker found him in the park across from the office when he was a kitten. He’s been at The Firm for ten years. The first day we met he was anything but standoffish. He followed me around the office, making sure I felt at home.
