I apologize that this blog has been magically deleting posts and comments recently. I’ve moved to a new host and hopefully we won’t have this issue in the future.

In April, I was sold a puppy by a store in Scottsdale. I named him Charlie. He was a Shih-Tzu and he was the most precious being on the planet. He was a clear channel of love, never far from the light of his Creator. Charlie, I found out soon after bringing him home, had parvo, and he died within a week and a half. I was devastated for a long time afterward. In some ways, I’m still healing. I still can’t bear to look at photos of him, and even writing this makes me cry. I loved Charlie very much, and every time I see a Shih-Tzu with that round, wide-eyed Charlie face, I get sad.

Under Arizona law, and under a separate contract they signed with me, the pet store was required to reimburse me for the purchase price of the pet. They had not done so, despite my repeated phone calls over the past six months, each one more emotionally draining for me than the last. Today, I filed a claim in small claims court against them. I’ve never prosecuted anyone for anything before, so this is a big deal for me. Normally I’m the kind of person who would rather just eat the financial loss than move forward with a confrontational and emotional battle like this, but these people must be held accountable. I am glad I have found the strength to take a stand.

Meanwhile, today, Barack Obama became the first black man to be elected President of the United States of America. His momentum brought out the minority vote in droves. These minorities came to vote for Barack, and they stayed to vote against gay rights. Gay marriage was banned in California, Arizona and Florida, and Arkansas passed a ban on gay couples adopting children. Exit polling indicated that minority voters were significantly less supportive of gay rights than white voters. The word “ironic” doesn’t embody enough actual ire to capture how I feel about this.

President-elect Obama took center stage in Chicago’s Grant Park and told the nation that “change has come to America.” News camera panned the faces of the tearful, multi-racial supporters, cheering in Chicago, cheering in San Francisco, cheering in Seattle and in Los Angeles and in New York City and in nations the world across. These people were elated with what, to them, is the realization of a dream of equal rights for all Americans. As they cheered, the votes that would deny basic human rights to a broad subset of the U.S. population were being counted in California and Arizona and Florida.

While Barack Obama easily won the Electoral College vote, he won the popular vote by a slim margin — around seven million votes. On a county-by-county basis, he performed far worse in the Southern states than John Kerry or Al Gore, despite his rags-to-riches story. These were votes about race.

The words that kept coming into my head were “small claims.”

These are small claims to equal rights that we are making today. That we have made with the election of Barack Obama. And they are only small claims. It is not finished. It is nowhere near finished.

You know, every time someone I know decides to kill themselves, it kind of saves my life a little bit. Because I look at the reactions and the aftermath and the fallout and the sadness and, like, it never plays out quite the way I imagine the person was hoping it would. The people you never wanted to hurt are always devastated and scarred for life, and the people you hoped would be bowled over are nonchalant, if not downright cavalier in the face of it.

And it’s just, like, if I can’t even hurt the right people with my pre-meditated death, I may as well keep chipping away at this life thing, and see if I can’t come up with a better plan in the meantime.

yeah trouble now /
i’m trouble ya’ll /
i disturb my town”

Pink, “Trouble”

I’ve always been firmly of the belief that some of life’s greatest truths are delivered via bubblegum pop lyrics. Essentially, the composers of these songs are faced with a grossly underappreciated task: What can you say in fifty words or so that will resonate with fucking everyone? The end result is often remarkably distilled emotion, a full-wall window onto the human experience. It’s not that they put it in ways you’d never thought to put it before. It’s just that you’d never thought to put it anywhere at all before.

But I’m at that point where everything resonates, where even the drivel coming from that pre-pubescent man-child on the last season of American Idol wells up tears, and that hasn’t happened in awhile, and I’m old enough now to know that it means that something is trying to get out. It’s banging on the door and it’s shouting out instructions and it’s waiting for me.

When I was a kid, I was so adept at dealing with this. It happened all the time, and I knew what to do. The reflex was automatic. I’d grab a pen and I’d get down whatever it had to say. And if other people needed to read it, then I knew that, and if they didn’t, then I knew that too. And it would be out, and done with, and gone until next time, and I could move on with my life. As I aged, something changed. I learned to value it, maybe. I learned to fear it. I don’t know. But it’s here now, in a way that it hasn’t been in a long, long time, and it wants to talk, it has something to say, and I don’t know how to let it. I can’t hear you, dude. I’m so sorry.

Russell would sooner or later put it on his head. Corrine either loved this or hated it, depending.”

Jay McInerney, Brightness Falls