Electric Josh

Balloon
Movies of zero-gravity water balloons! Your tax dollars making this space very happy.
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Gay II
Update to the post below asking for something other than the usual two opinions. I had thought (totally facetiously!) that it might be nice to define a new legal status called schmarriage that is indistinguishable from marriage except in name. So I'm watching the constitutional convention live on NECN, and---holy smokes!---that's exactly what they're debating. They're calling it civil unions instead of schmarriage, but that's what it is, complete with a long, disclaimery-sounding bit about how these civil unions would legally identical, except in name, to actual marriages. Geez. Note, of course, that every state would have to pass schmarriage laws for that to work. Only Vermont has even approximately such a law at the moment.
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Ayup
The Globe on Vermont accents:

"I never thought I talked weird until people started telling me that," Fletcher said. To him, the Maine accent has a strange "drag," Bostonians have a "drawl," and he still shakes his head at the memory of the "Brooklyn boys" who teased him about his accent during National Guard training at Fort Dix, N.J., in 1960. "They'd call me `Old Vermont' and `Farmer,' " Fletcher said. "I had a hard time understanding people."

As long as there are people who can impersonate this accent, and who slip occasionally into it when they're visiting (or move) back home, this accent'll still be around. And hey, at least we now gut Flatlanders acknowledging that the accent even exists.
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Gay
I'm following the coverage of the Mass legislature's constitutional convention, and this is the first time I can remember where I'm having a hard time figuring out what people (quoted in newspapers and such) actually think, if not one of the following two things:

1. Gay people are normal in every way, and should be able to get married indistinguishably from straights.
2. Gay people are weird, subhuman scum who deserve, if not death, then extreme marginalization.

So my question is this: Is there anyone out there who holds a view other than #1 or #2 above? If so, could you please enlighten me? I'm totally at a loss.
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