Hilarious story, but really embarrassing. They gave us a free shake. I snubbed my nose at it like-eh disgusting…

Mariela stuck the shake in the door and went in to the Dentist. I came to my senses about the shake and strained all the way across the car….eeeeeehhhh *pop* –I could feel the chick-fil-a cup burst beneath me. It was empty. The cup holders full to their brims.

how much does a jettie cup holder hold?, originally uploaded by CopyCatFilms.

• This year we are required to complete THREE federal returns–now that we’re in a civil union.
• We have to file the Illinois return jointly…as if we’re married (and so that we can see just how discriminated we were on the federal level…
• And to top it off–we cannot file the IL 1040 using WebFile.  Why?  I dunno.  Fuck you Illinois and the anti-discrimination history you try to ride on.  That’s right. Keep clockin them dollars, sellin Abe Lincoln’s face on anything that will stand still.  Takin my money.  I’m riding a horse outta this town…
• And we can’t even file it electronically! We have to print it out like some kind of OLD PERSON:

Yes America–someday the children will all be old enough to know how extremely stupid this is–and they’ll be ashamed of how you’ve been acting.  I can’t wait.

Lastly, this is just for Mariela as I’ve often had a hard time completing box 15.  Funny that this morning, it came up as an error for me to fix.  Maybe it’s just a sign that I outta be paying and discriminated in another state? Maybe one with…oh say…SUNSHINE once in a while!

Fleetwood Mac Dance Tour – St. Louis
Enchanted – Chicago
Enchanted – St. Louis
Fleetwood Mac – Knoxville, TN
Fleetwood Mac – Nashville, TN
Stevie Nicks & Chris Isaack – Chicago
Stevie Nicks – London, Ontario
Stevie Nicks – Rosemont, IL (Chicago)
Stevie Nicks – Sound STAGE Sessions, Chicago

…I’m sure there’s more…

Thanks for all the good times Stevie.  We genuinely have a blast following you around…

Of course, I never thought I’d get to meet her, let alone have a private interview with her. When Farrin nonchalantly said to me, “you might have to interview Judy Shepard” I was excited as shit and scared all at once. And that feeling pretty much stayed with me until the interview was done. Knowing that this woman has been advocating for gay rights and hate-crime legislation for over thirteen years is amazing in itself, but when Judy speaks, it’s another thing entirely.

The woman speaks from the heart and somehow it cuts right through all the pretense and bullshit and litigious, pedantic speak that we are all so accustomed to. And she isn’t crude or crass about it either. She’s just a real mother telling her story. It feels as though everything is crystal clear to Judy: ignorance is what breeds hate, the church is pretty good at pushing that agenda along too for anyone who wants someone to think for them, and we need to tell our personal stories because that is what changes people’s hearts and minds.

Before our interview, Judy gave the keynote speech at HER day at the Center on Halsted and for someone “preaching to the choir” she had some really poignant things to say. She reminded us that coming out once is not enough. In order to change people’s hearts, and in turn, change something as big as legislation based on hate, we have to remind our friends, families, coworkers and other people in our lives,  of the things that effect us. We also need to simply keep talking about our lives and our partners in a normal way — because it is normal. If we don’t, how do we expect to gain allies? And having a large base of allies is what wins civil rights. I had never thought of it like that and now I absolutely believe it to be true. I think it is so clear to Judy Shepard because she is constantly sharing her story and moving others, often changing people’s minds. She is the best kind of ally to have on our side and it makes me proud. The Matthew Shepard Foundation is amazing and in 2009 hate-crime legislation including sexual orientation and gender was finally signed into law.

After her keynote, Judy met us in the conference room that we had set up and gave us a great 10 minute interview, which will be up on the IMPACT website soon. She answered questions on bullying in schools, the kind of role she believes mothers should play and how to deal with knowing and accepting that your child is LGBT. The answers rolled off her tongue and even though I suspect that she’s become pretty at ease with public speaking, her answers felt real and not at all canned. It was such an honor and even though it’s been days now since she gave us the interview, I’m still giddy about it. Mark of a true hero I suppose, though she would never call herself that. She prefers “pissed off mother”.

I am OFF blood pressure medicine and I am within normal levels!! Its like a fucking miracle!  I don’t fall asleep on the couch at 8:30p these days.  I can pound away at my little laptop on all my crazy projects, learning software to carry me into the clouds or the beach or something like that. The point is that I’m stoked about it…

But I’m not done.
I don’t EVER want to go on those horrible medicines again.

I’ve had a few strange encounters recently with the person I was 10 years ago…I won’t go into the insane details, but it’s funny because I realized that she would actually be proud of me now, I really believe.  Crazy!  It’s a nice realization.  I don’t think that crazy little dyke would have imagined the awesome stuff I’ve been doing lately.

Happy Birthday to me.
Here’s a very special little ditty from last year’s birthday that I just found on my iPhone. For you:

Birthday Paycheck Island

I miss Heartland’s bathroom already. It gives me the wisdom to just keep on keepin on.

Everything comes down to me?, originally uploaded by CopyCatFilms.

I consume large amounts of bytes each day. I can’t let go of old data no matter how hard I try. I admit it.  I’m a digital hoarder.  So then what will my world look like even in 20 years?? And then if that is extreme…think of what the WORLD will look like! Will it be clouded over and junked up with servers?? Will we have furniture designed out of servers and hard drives?  Will all of our heat be generated by the rpm’s of hard drives?  Will the only air-conditioning eventually be attached to the house-server as a whole-house hard-drive-fan cooling system?  Will HVAC be replaced by some other acronym?  How will they make computers start to forget? Do we want them to only live as long as we do? Is that the green thing to do? Should a computer only be able to contain one copy of something for the length of a really long lifetime–otherwise it should be forgotten and erased? Is that encouraging people to print? Or is it only encouraging people to print the things that actually matter? Or is it entirely wrong because storage gets smaller and smaller in physical size? Even so…will our world just be overrun with nano-sized diodes of memory material?  What if that is all a black hole is?  Is it better that they’re so small that we can’t see them?  (After all, you can’t really see bed bugs but they can make you absolutely nuts!) But then does it matter how small it is–if its leaching something out into our world either way?  We don’t really KNOW the long-term affects of living around so much hardware.  So then is it really green to let them forget. Keep it manageable and move on?  Let the world regenerate in a lifetime if data is not made into something more special within that lifespan…

It all seems reasonable enough for me to go to sleep about it. Good morning Wednesday.

I love this quote:

Yours truly will be running one of the cameras for the webivization! And my lovely lady will even be the Clapper.  We’re super excited to be involved with such an incredible event.  So while I’m busy practicing with my camera (and lifting weights for your image stabilization pleasure) and Mariela practices with the clapboard–you should be rushing to get your tickets:

• Tickets
• I Hate Tommy Finch site — plan your weekend in Chicago and follow all the details!
• And be sure to check out the recent SheWired article!

If you’d like to be awesome and give this pic a vote, we will not only be eternally grateful, we will also use any and all winnings toward more Wacom products, (which incidentally we LOVE) to create more photos, graphics and even cool stuff for you like the Silent Movie Card Template. So please click on the pic and vote. Easy peasy signin with FB or email. THANKS!!

I have to say that I’m so grateful that my aunt walked right out of the pentagon.

But I wish everyone could have been as blissfully ignorant as we were.  Sadly, it changed all of our lives–whether we were aware of it or not.  Clearly, the world needs more sex, sunshine, love, lust, and desert heat…