So, as the celebration continued over Barack Obama’s substantial and undisputable victory in the presidential election, some other issues have not gotten the media coverage that they, in my opinion, deserve.

Most notably, California’s Proposition 8 which seeks to amend the state constitution and define marriage as between a man and a woman (neatly — and nastily — sidestepping the recent California Supreme Court decision that laws against gay marriage are unconstitutional). As of this writing, the proposition looked like it was going to pass by a narrow margin (4% or so).

The story isn’t over; a couple of suits have already been filed seeking to challenge Prop 8, and no doubt there will be many months of legal briefs and such. I hope that the courts strike down the initiative as the unconstitutional wreck that it truly is. Here’s my thinking.

In a recent blog post Phil Plait gave a very reasoned and eloquent argument against Colorado Proposition 48, which basically sought a roundabout way to amend their state constitution defining that a person becomes a person (with all the rights and such that go along with that) at the moment of conception — it seems to me, essentially, a stepping stone to banning abortion.

Thinking about California Prop 8 (and the debate over gay marriage in general) I find that a very similar argument holds; essentially, it is attempting to legislate a particular (if widely held) religious viewpoint, and the government should not be legislating and governing based on those beliefs.

I am fairly certain that in most states (I can’t speak definitively, not really having done any research) marriage is, ultimately, a civil registration — the marriage license itslef does not have any religious flavor one way or another. There are certain requirements that need to be met (usually witnesses of one sort or another, and a legally recognized authority to officiate). Everything else is gravy, and an expression of the couple who is getting married.

Stripped of all the religious pomp and ceremony that surround it, marriage in the U.S. is, essentially, a legal agreement that carries with it a number of privileges and obligations. If a couple wants to make that legal commitment to each other, what right does the government have, in the face of our stated (though in practice, ultimately theoretical) ideals of equality for all?

Two people love each other, and want to make that commitment, but are denied because they happen to both have XY (or XX) as their 23rd chromosome pair? Does that strike any other thinking person as irrational?

Now, I’m not arguing that clergy (or anyone else for that matter) be forced to officiate at a ceremony they are not comfortable performing. The religious trappings that surround marriage, and the ‘sacraments’ related to it are something the government, in my opinion, should stay well out of also — it seems a pretty clear First Amendment issue.

Marriage is, by law (if not by practice or perception) a civil matter, and legislating (even by constitutional amendment) a religiously-based definition of it is, in my humble opinion, wrong.

I hope that this misguided (if earnest) effort to ‘protect’ marriage gets struck down in the long run. But they couldn’t all be winners last night.

I’m not going to belabor this point here tonight, because it is late, I’m tired, and there are no doubt going to be a million posts across the internet breaking down the results of this election and analyzing it to death (at least until the next time around).

But the election was conceded not that long ago by Senator McCain, and while I had some real problems with the way the campaign was run — especially towards the end — the concession speech was gracious, well spoken, and McCain clearly gave the impression that he didn’t want any of his supporters to harbor long-term ill will toward the winner, or his party (time will tell whether that actually happens or not).

I will close out tonight with two thoughts; one positive, one negative. First, the negative — I’m sorry to say that I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Governor Palin on the national stage. In many respects, that woman personifies everything that has gone wrong with the Republican party over the past several years. It would be great if she would go back to her snowy home and never trouble us again, but… I just don’t think that’s likely.

On a positive note, there is a clear victor in this race. Unlike the previous two elections, which were both very close and resulted in a lot of bitterness and hard feelings, this one will not be dragged out past all sanity, and while there will no doubt be those who are unhappy with the results, they cannot argue with the numbers or the results.

I believe we may have just given ourselves another chance.

So tonight I want to talk about gaming, or rather, the lack of it that I (and my fellow geeks) have had to suffer. We had a long running Earthdawn game that started way back at First Circle, new characters, mostly new players, and all the rest. Multiple years later, the characters had reached Ninth Circle, and we were working our way to some kind of grand climax.

But then, as so many things do, it suffered the doom of family.

As you may or may not be aware, I have a 19-month old daughter I will refer to here as the Fairy Princess, or “FP”. Our good friends Pat and Leanne (half of the ED player group in our long-term game) have a daughter of their own (“K”) about four months younger. We used to get together on Sundays to game for a few hours, have dinner, and just generally socialize.

Now that the babies are toddlers… not so much. With all the activity going on in the house, it is impossible to get FP to take a nap, and K won’t go down either — mostly because of the activity, but also a more unfamiliar setting.

We tried our best to soldier on, but it just didn’t happen. It’s a shame, because I really enjoy tabletop gaming, and I enjoy tabletop gaming with my crew. Much like my involvement with local theatre dried up when I started my job at Verizon seven years ago, real life has shifted a bit more, and I find that — while I enjoy much the same things I did in my ‘younger days’ — I no longer have the time to devote to them.

I comfort myself with the thought that, in another couple of years, the two geek-spawn will be able to entertain each other more, and perhaps we can get a new game going. Also, when they get even older, we can start gaming with them, which is a thought that cheers me up to no end.

(And maybe at that point I’ll be able to get back into community theatre… ’cause I’ve missed that as well the past several years.)

In the meantime, I’ll scratch the gaming itch as best I can with World of Warcraft. No doubt I will share some of my thoughts on that in the days to come.

This has been an interesting political season for a number of reasons, but the one that has most struck me as the last few weeks of the presidential campaigns have played out is how afraid everybody seems to be, but for very different reasons.

(Let me preface this whole thing by saying that I am not registered with either political party. Overall I have tended to vote more Republican than Democrat when it comes to political office, but the hard right faction of the Republican party has really cheesed me off over the past few years, and the election has only amplified that.)

Most of where I have seen this is in the various editorial columns and blog postings out there.

On the Democratic side, there is a definite undercurrent of Obama being the last, best hope — the one shot we have of slowing down (and possibly reversing) this downhill slide (plummet?) this country seems to be on as a result of the past eight years. There is hope to be sure, but a definite sense that until everything is tallied on Wednesday, we shouldn’t count our chickens just yet.

On the other hand, the fear on the Republican side is not a grass roots, “hope for the best, fear the worst” sort of thing, but rather the tenor of the entire campaign. The GOP tactics (especially in recent weeks) have been geared to scare the public; throwing out buzzwords (and misleading buzzwords at that) like “socialist”, “terrorist” and so forth, there is a feeling that the Republican party wants to scare me into thinking that an Obama administration will take the keys to the nation and hand them over to the bad guys (which, in the case of the hard right, means “gays and liberals and communists”).

Now I don’t buy that, and I think there are a lot of people (liberal and conservative) who are tired of a government that wants us to constantly live in fear, and hand over our liberties in order to feel safe. (As that famously misquoted Ben Franklin adage states, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”)

The other thing that has struck me, or at least the thing that I’ve noticed for the first time in… well, as long as I’ve been paying attention to that sort of thing, is how passionate just about everybody — on both sides — is about this election. There is a real sense (not a media manufactured one) that this is one of the most important presidential elections in a long time. And while I think there are some people on both sides who are just blindly swallowing the party line, I think a lot more people are actually looking at what’s going on (with the war, and the recent economic slide, and so forth) and thinking about the issues, what it means to them, and will be voting accordingly. That isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion.

Personally, I thought that an Obama/McCain campaign would be a good one, and thought that whoever won in the end the country would see a definite uptick. Sad to say, the McCain campaign (guided, no doubt, by the strong right hand of the Republican overlords) has blown all their credibility, and whatever moderate support they might have garnered (like mine) by chasing after the hard right, conservative Christian vote.

That irrational, vocal minority of the Evengelical movement (the one that denies the foundations of established scientific thought because a book says something different) is, quite frankly, a blight on the whole Christian faith. What makes it worse is that they have helped construct this culture of fear and persecution; it’s easier to control the sheep in your flock if you have them convinced the wolves are all around.

In case it isn’t clear at this point, I’m voting for Obama on Tuesday. Perhaps I’m naive, but I don’t feel the underlying sense of doom that informs much of the Democratic party’s attitudes these days. While things won’t pull a 180 on Wednseday morning, I think there will be something of a collective sigh of relief, and perhaps a collective unclenching.

At least, that’s my hope. Whatever the result, I think Tuesday is going to see record turnout, and I only ask that whichever side you mark on your ballot, you make it an informed choice, and not one that is driven by fear and ignorance.

Hello all. In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month; an annual event wherein you try and write a 50,000 word novel over the course of thirty days.

I tried this a couple years ago and got a little over 12k words into a novel that has languished untouched since then. Last year’s NaNo came and went without any attempt or participation from me (new baby and work woes just didn’t allow it). This year… well, things are a little different.

Let me be clear — I am not going to try and crank out 50k words over the next thirty days. But I want to do something.

So, over the next 30 days, I am going to try and post to this blog at least daily. The topics will be varied and the thoughts are likely to be scattered, but I have been itching to write more, and I’ve been telling myself that I will start writing again. I just haven’t actually done anything about it.

So, November is going to be my Blogging Month, or BlogMo. Think of it as my attempt at solidarity with my fellow struggling writers out there, and an attempt at getting into a more regular writing habit.

Mur Lafferty says, You should be writing, and she’s right. Please come along with me this November for my experiment.

I’m watching a recording of the first presidential debate (yeah, I’m a couple weeks behind), and the issue being discussed as I watch it is the war in Iraq. When Obama got the chance to address the question, he brought up the issue of whether going into Iraq in the first place was a good idea.

Honestly, isn’t that kind of an academic question at this point? I don’t think there is a lot of debate about whether going into Iraq was a good idea or not. Point is, we’re in there now, and I would like to hear how he plans to deal with the situation as it is. If he isn’t sure, that’s fine — but I would like to hear that.

The only reason I can see to bring up the ‘going in’ question when it comes to the current situation is to highlight the mismanagement of the war over the past few years (this may have changed recently, I’m not really up on the current situation). Given the unpopularity of W. among the general public these days, I can see it as a valid tactic to connect McCain to the Bush administration…

I would rather see the issue being addressed directly, rather than what seems to be a “give us a chance, because we can’t screw it up as badly as the other guy” kind of thing… not exactly something that inspires a great deal of confidence.

The Evil League of Evil is accepting applications.

That is all.

So, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’ve been playing a little World of Warcraft lately (okay, more than a little, a lot). I’ve built my dwarf warrior Varulus up to level 70, and as I’ve been tooling around at level 70 for a while, I’ve developed some feelings about the “endgame” content — that is, the high-level instances and raids that ‘wrap up’ the storylines you’ve been following as you play through the game.

WoW is a very well designed game, and it is clear that when it came to developing the first expansion (Burning Crusade), Blizzard applied a number of lessons learned from the original, making the game — especially the higher levels — more accessible to the casual gamer: the kind of player who can get a couple hours of play in at once, but doesn’t have the time to devote seven hours to an instance raid.

What I’ve found lately, and what has been frustrating me, is that the real end-game material (at least right now) is a bit too tough for my standard group to run. We’ve got the skills, we just don’t have the gear to consistently perform at the level necessary to tackle the top-end enemies without wiping half-a dozen times.

Normally, this is a matter of getting better gear and going back to tackle the parts that are too tough right now. But the better gear is — for the most part — available as drops from the places that are too tough, rewards for getting your reputation up to high levels with the different factions, or rewards for earning a lot of honor in the player-versus-player battlegrounds.

In other words, a lot of repetitive grinding, or what I’ve come to call “Final Fantasy syndrome”. I haven’t actually completed a Final Fantasy game in a long time, largely because the end-game dungeon battle is easier if you do all sorts of side-quests and grinding to get those extra levels. I just don’t have the time (or inclination). I want to see the end of the story.

I’m looking forward to the next expansion for WoW this November, because it will provide a lot of new content and story. Of course, I wonder if the same sort of thing will happen to the outland that happened to the high-level zones in the original game: nobody goes there anymore, because there is better and more interesting stuff to run.

Hi all. Quick post as I head off to bed for the night.

The soundtrack album for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is now available for purchase from iTunes.

Go and buy!