RevSpork

America Askew, Revisited

A while back, I posted a fun little article about how ridiculous it was that some states ban gay marriage but allow bestiality.  North Carolina's passage of their anti-gay marriage amendment yesterday reminded me of this post, so I decided to do an overview of the old maps I made.

There were a few things I noticed: one, my original map regarding the legality of zoophilia was inaccurate.  I stated that some states, including North Carolina and Arkansas, did not actually bar bestiality when they actually did.  (My oops!)  Numero dos, the legal landscape regarding both gay marriage and zoophilia have changed since 2009.  Florida, for example, made bestiality illegal in 2011.  (I must also add that the bill failed in the state legislature twice before passing the third time.)  On the other hand, Kansas, in the process of redoing their criminal code, legalized human-animal nookie (presumably inadvertently, although you never know) in 2010. 

After a little rejiggering of the map, here is a more accurate map of states that permit bestiality, info brought to you by the fine folks at wikipedia:

...and here is a map of states that ban both gay marriage and civil unions:

...and here is a map that bans gay marriage and civil unions, AND allows bestiality:

Number: 5
Number of states that allow gay marriage:6 (laws in Washington state and Maryland are pending due to popular referenda)

Looks like gay marriage is running ahead.  But fear not, Rover rompers!  Guess which state, in cleaning up their criminal sodomy code, could end up legalizing zoophilia the way Kansas did?  No really, take a wild guess at who might join my "brown map..."

Been a while since I posted? Yes.

It's past 1:30am Monday morning.  Far-off thunder perks up now and then, and the cats are puttering around, but for the most part it's a quiet night.  I've either had little to say about the world around me over the past month, or I've been too busy with school to post.  I did a full-time load in graduate school this semester, the first time I've done since my earlier, failed attempt at a master's degree. It was a tough slog - man, it was tough - but I managed to survive with a minimum of emotional and mental injury, if not fatigue.  There was at least one time during the semester where I hit a wall, but I managed to overcome it, thanks to my bud / baby sister Lupu and a very bad casino in the suburbs, who took away my roulette money soon after they had to reboot the scoreboard because it crashed. 

I have two more classes to take before I get my Master's degree in Library and Information Science, which should be by the end of the year.  I'm taking one LIS class during the summer (it starts in less than 17 hours), and one more during the fall. 

Thanks to the State of Illinois, however, I'm not even close to getting my certification.  The degree is awesome, sure, and it will hopefully land me a job in library-land.  School libraries, however, are a different story.  In order to work as a librarian at a school library in the state, I need to be certified in the School Library Media Program, which is a totally different ball of academic wax.  Among other things, I need to:

1. Take three specific education classes;
2. Take three standardized skills tests;
3. Complete 100 hours of pre-clinical observation at a variety of school libraries;
4. Eat a 96-ounce steak, a baked potato, and a two-liter bottle of A&W root beer in 60 minutes;
5. A bunch of other things.

And that's all before I begin work on my clinicals. Once that's all done, then I can work at a school library... assuming there are any left by the time I finish. 

Yeah, I'm being a little pessimistic, but it's not that bad.  I've turned in 25 observation hours so far, and I plan to contact some very nice librarians to garner some more before the end of the school year.  And I passed the first skills test so far, so I'm not doing so bad.  It's just a lot of work. 

In the meantime, my wife has decided to explore the dead people in my family tree (which is a huge portion of it so far), and now she's checking birth records from Italy, which is a special treat since she knows as much Italian as I do, which is to say none.  Hell, I can't even remember half the swear words and obscene gestures my mother inadvertently taught me as a child. I'm no help, either - I couldn't care less about my ancestors.  I figure if they wanted me to know more about them, they'd drop by the apartment more often. 

Finally, Jack and Felix are getting along just fine.  In fact, Jack just dropped by the office to demand why I'm not playing with him.  There are reasons for this, the number one reason being I really want to go to bed. 

Eh, what the hell. See you folks later.

¿Que más loco? - iun juego muy atractivo espectáculo!

[Note: Blame Google Translator, not me, for that title.  I was going for "A Very Sexy Game Show."

iHola, amigos!  Welcome back to ¿Que más loco?, the game show that will lock you in a straitjacket if you try to convince mass transit riders you're Judy Garland. But enough of my personal life; [insert laugh track] on with the program!

A few days ago, the Tennessee state legislature passed bills (House Bill 3621 and Senate Bill 3310) forbidding sex education teachers to "promote any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity." 

What does this mean?  Don't ask me.  Neither bill provides any examples of "gateway sexual activity" whatsoever.  So, amigos, you'll have to help the teenagers of Tennessee out! 

For ten points per "yes" answer, would any of the following activities be considered "gateway sexual activity" to the politicians in Tennessee and thus illegal for sex education teachers to discuss?

1. Hand-slapping
2. Nose-picking
3. Taco-chewing
4. Lasagna-baking
5. Speaking Spanish like Gael García Bernal
6. Spider-squashing
7. Pornography-pondering
8. Gun-fellating
9. Watching "Mad Men" for more than just an interest in 1960s advertising
10. Pickled pepper-picking

Aha, you are mucho smart!  90 points!  (You were correct: gun-fellating is not considered an illegal gateway sexual activity in Tennessee!) But these next activities, they are much harder!  Twenty points for each one you get correct!  Watch out: some of these are muy tricky!

1. Fist-bumping
2. Log-kissing
3. Church-licking
4. Weiner roasts
5. Boob-scratching
6. Making up a word that starts with vag- (e.g. "Steven Seagal is ... VAGILANTE OF JUSTICE!"
7. Unitarianism
8. Listening to any music by Marvin Gaye
9. Ukulele-plucking
10. Sitting on a washing machine, no matter which cycle it's on

iDios mio!  You are on a roll! Okay, on we go to the bonus round: 100 points!   If you select the correct answers, you'll win YOUR VERY OWN SEAT IN THE TENNESSEE LEGISLATURE!

1. Donating to Planned Parenthood
2. Teaching your child about birth control
3. Being an adolescent

Congratulations!!! Thank you for playing ¿Que más loco?

Burning Questions - Self-referential edition

1. Why, among my over 800 blog entries, the ones most linked by folks in WWW-land are nearly decade-old posts about Anbesol and Willy Wonka? 

2. Why does chilled red wine taste better to me than wine at room temperature?  Why do I like it even better with an ice cube?

3. Why is the hair on top of my head nearly gone, but I need to trim my eyebrows at least once a week to avoid looking like a pervert in a 1950s educational high school film?

4. Why can't I win the lottery?  And why is it that whoever does never sees fit to share their winnings with me?

5. Will anyone besides my wife ever find me cute?

6. Finally, could someone lend me their power stapler?  The vinyl upholstry on this chair is coming off.

Making Chicago baseball history

There's nothing like baseball to remind you that spring is here: that slightly warmer air, that mildewy odor covering the outdoors, the sight of hundreds of millionaires hitting and throwing a ball back and forth for 162 days (not including playoffs). 

This spring, however, may be a special one to baseball fans in Chicago.  This season, the two Chicago major league teams - The White Sox and the Cubs - may be so terrible, they could lose 200 games between them.

Mind you, these two teams are less known for their great victories than their struggles.  Yet during the long history of these two teams, they have never lost 200 games between them in any given season.  It's a difficult feat to pull off: for example, both the Cubs and White Sox finished below .500 last season, but the teams between them lost 91 and 83 games respectively, giving us a total of 174 losses. 

Sure, they've won 200 games between them, back in 1906, when the 116-win Chicago Cubs faced the 93-win White Sox in the World Series.  (The Sox won.)  But as mediocre as the two teams are overall, they're rarely out-and-out horrible at the same time. For example, the White Sox endured a 106-loss season (and three managers) in 1970, but that year the Cubs had finished a respectable 84-78, good for 2nd place in the division.  Total losses: 184.  Similarly, when the Cubs schlubbed their way to a 103-loss season in 1962 (incredibly, one of only two years they reached three digits in the loss column), the White Sox tallied up a 85-77 record, good enough for fifth place in a hotly-contested division. 

So how close have Chicago's American and National League representatives come to a combined 200 losses?  The year was 1948.  Harry S Truman was battling his way to reelection.  Dinah Shore had the most popular song in "Buttons & Bows," and Chicago baseball was awful.  The White Sox finished dead last in the American League with a 51-101 record, and the Cubs were similarly pathetic, finishing at the back of the National League with a 64-90 record.  (Keep in mind, they played fewer games back then, so losing ninety games was even more of a suckitude performance than now.) Total number of losses? 191.  Not too shabby. 

I'm sure some of you baseball buffs are saying, c'mon, quit dumping on Chicago.  How hard is it for a two-baseball team city to lose 200 games?  New York did it many times (to be fair, they also had three major league baseball teams until 1957), but in 1965 they came fairly close, with the Yankees losing 85 games and the Mets 112 (Total losses: 197).  Boston baseball pulled off the 200-loss mark a few times, most pathetically in 1906 (207 losses between the Boston Americans [now Red Sox] and the Boston Beaneaters [???] [now Atlanta Braves]).  Philadelphia pulled it off, as has St. Louis.  (Explains why they're all one-team cities now.)  Los Angeles hasn't come very close (189 losses in 1992 between the Dodgers and the California Angels), but they've had two franchises less than half as long as Chicago and thus haven't had the opportunity to truly stink as a city. 

But this could be the year for Chicago baseball.  Sports Illustrated predicts both Chicago teams to lose a total of 191 (95 for the White Sox, 96 for the Cubs) games this season, and prognosticators always play conservative with the truly special teams.  NBC Sports predicts a kinder 181 losses for Chicago. Baseball America and betfirms.com predict a similarly sad time for the Second City.  A mathematics professor, who has been (fairly accurately) predicting baseball finishes for over a decade now, bestows on the Chicago teams only 172 losses, but he has to have a bad year sometime. 

As the White Sox and Cubs splutter to the plate next week, I will start my chant: 200, 200, 200.  Perhaps, even in Chicago, a little baseball miracle could happen to an eager young man such as myself.