Want a child? Better get married…

If this passes, I may want to stop admitting that, though I grew up in Alaska, I was born in Indiana…and most of my extended family on my dad’s side is still there.

Indiana Republicans are working on a bill that will make it so that only legally married women will be allowed to reproduce.

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for  motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant “by means other than sexual intercourse.”

As Terrance points out:

You better believe gays and lesbians seeking to have children via artificial insemination, surrogacy, etc., will stopped in their tracks by this law.

What I don’t understand is why the law only addresses motherhood. Why isn’t it a class B felony under this law for a man to engage in “unauthorized reproduction”? You don’t have to read The Handmaid’s Tale to envision what these folks have in store.

Just horrendous. This needs to get stopped, as soon as possible.

(via Terrance and Boing Boing)

Update: The bill has been yanked.

A controversial proposed bill to prohibit gays, lesbians and single people from using medical procedures to become pregnant has been dropped by its legislative sponsor.

State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement this afternoon saying: “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”

Heh — “more complex than anticipated.” In other words, she realized that word had gotten out just how insane this was.

The Sesame Street Theme…in Klingon

Original:

Sunny day
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way
to where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get,
how to get to Sesame Street?

Klingon:

pem Hov jaj.
Haw’choHnIS ‘eng ‘ej Haj.
ghoch vIghaj;
‘ej pa’ muDmo’ jIbel.
chay’ Sesame He vIghoS?
SIbI’ jIHvaD ‘e’ yIDel.

Translation of the Klingon:

A day of the daytime star.
The clouds are compelled to commence fleeing, and are filled with dread.
I have a destination;
and there, because of the atmosphere, I am pleased.
Describe to me immediately
how to go to Sesame Street.

And there’s two more verses at the original location. This is so wonderful!

(via MeFi)

Another Cheaper by the Dozen?

I ranted a while ago about the Cheaper by the Dozen film, a bastardization of one of my childhood favorite books, vowing not to see the results.

It’s time for another vow — this time, sadly, for Cheaper by the Dozen 2.

Never, never, never. The only even vaguely interesting pieces of the trailer were two quarter-second long shots of girls in bikinis…and since if I ever feel the need to see that I can do a quick Flickr search, that takes care of that.

Would someone please just forcibly retire Steve Martin and put us all out of our misery?

Seattle’s Seasons in Software

The news that yesterday’s rumors are true and that NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire is flying all over the ‘net right now. NewsGator posted a quick Q&A about the acquisition, which produced this little gem from NetNewsWire’s Brent Simmons:

Q: Is Brent moving to Denver? Or Tennessee?

Greg: Yes!

Brent: No, I’ll be staying in Seattle.

Greg: Darn it, I’m 0 for 2. Denver’s not such a bad place, you know. We have 4 seasons and everything!

Brent: As a Macintosh user interface designer I like to simplify whenever possible. Four seasons is two too many. Seattle has two seasons, rainy and dry — anything more is too complex for new users. ;)

Shining

Okay, so I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve really got to check out the trailer for a little heartwarming family comedy called Shining (9.5Mb QT .mov). A definite must-see!

Bouncing and flirting

Much fun out at the_vogue tonight. Flirting with friends I hadn’t seen in a while (Tej, Suzanne, Noreen) and friends I just made tonight (Margarite, Amanda, Sarah). All in all, definitely worth going.

And on a not-at-all-unrelated side note: I’m so lucky to have a girlfriend who not only understands and appreciates that I’m an incorrigible flirt…but also thinks it’s fun and doesn’t mind in the least when I go out a-flirting (as long as I tell her all about it when I get home, if she wasn’t able to come along too). It’s a rare and wonderful thing.

iTunesFrozen (Chill)” by Collide from the album Vortex (2004, 7:37).

LJ-style links for Ecto

This is actually fairly simple, but you never know.

For ecto users who want to post LiveJournal-style links to LJ user accounts (such as [djwudi's info]djwudi) into a weblog entry on a non-LJ system:

  1. Open Window > HTML Tags.
  2. Click the + button to create a new tag set.
  3. Paste the following code into the ‘opening tag’ box (as a single line):
    <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=%*">
    <img src="http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif" alt="[%*'s info]" width="17" height="17" /></a>
    <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/%*/"><b>
    
  4. Paste the following code into the ‘closing tag’ box:
    </b></a>
    
  5. Assign a command key sequence (optional, of course — I used option-command-J).

Viola! You’re done. Now, just type someone’s LJ username into a weblog post, select it, and choose the new tag set (or type the command key sequence you set), and the LJ-style link is created.