take this bright, showy, and gay marriage, please

I'm a language conservative.

• “alot” isn't a word (get Firefox 3 tomorrow, it suggests the correction thanks to a bug I filed)
• It's “take the reins” no matter how how many people pick "reigns" or "rains"
• I even bemoan the loss of gay for "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"

So I have some sympathy when people say don't redefine marriage, it should remain

the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law

Just add “gay marriage” to other phrases like "civil marriage", "shotgun marriage", etc.

But... clearly two people in a committed relationship willing to officially enter into a partnership should receive all the benefits and legal protection afforded to straight partners. Anything else is homophobia. I've never seen any public figure who claims to be against redefining “marriage” seriously propose the amendments to every law required to bring homosexual domestic partnership up to parity.

Besides, seeing today all the creaky middle-aged couples on TV who've waited 9 years, 18 years, 50 years to pledge their undying love for each other, you'd have to be an unfeeling jerk not to feel:

The gay-marriage issue is over and done with. The upshot: love won.

That's from Anna Quindlen's Newsweek column (somewhat poorly reasoned as usual), where she also writes

Here's what I don't understand: is there so much love and commitment in the world that we can afford, as a society, to be contemptuous of some portion of it? If two women in white want to join hands in front of their families and friends and vow to love and honor one another until they die, the only reasonable response to that is happy tears, awed admiration and societal approval. And—this part is just personal opinion—one of those big honking KitchenAid mixers with the dough hook.

(None of this applies to my situation, as a pre-surgery post-hormone bisexual transgender, it would take an entire CSI episode to figure out if I'm in a marriage with the opposite sex or not.)

Valentines: most amazing book of love ever

Come February 14th, you can't help thinking about the four kinds of love:

1. "Philia"
   Friendship, brotherly love
2. "Eros"
   The drive to create or procreate
3. "Agape"
   The one who is devoted to the other
4. "lust"
   The current favorite

or maybe all 57:Love is Hell, far more than the Simpsons or Futurama, is Matt Groening's magnum opus. Every single panel is stuffed with jokes, ideas, and painfully true insights.

I just ordered five more copies. This and Anna Karenina say more about love than any other books I've read. From Amazon's Look Inside the Book, the cover, and Chapter I.

And, damn, I just realized he wrote the strips in 1984. Best music ever, LA Olympics, the festive federalism design movement that the Olympics introduced, Macintosh release (shortly after Lisa and VisiOn. The high point of Western civilization!