Bill's Notes

As a lifelong insomniac, I have a soft spot in my heart for other insomniacs. There's that time between 3 and 5 am when no one has any business being up, but you're awake and there's nothing to be done about it. With the advent of blogging, we now have permanent records of the thoughts that arise from that nadir of sleeplessness. You know, those 4 am posts where you think you're the only person left in the world.

Check out Kathryn Jean Lopez today in today's corner in National Review. She starts posting at 4:15 a.m. and essentially talks to herself until Jonah Goldberg shows up at 8:51.

Yep. Insomnia. Pobrecita.

Just saying.

Here.

Whatever the case, the very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision -- the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution -- strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy.

Cohen's analysis is obvious. But it's nice to see even liberals starting to get it: That extending rights to the unborn is a quintessential liberal issue.

One reason I deride the Democrats as the party of slavery, secession and segregation is their indefensible support of Roe and abortion. Because they've lost the argument, Democrats must retreat into deceptive euphemisms ("choice" and "reproductive rights") to justify emotionally what they can't otherwise justify.

BTW, my position is similar to Cohen's: Roe must go, then allow individual states to regulate abortion. A federal solution is the best answer to value judgments such as this one.

Over at Volokh Maggie Gallagher fights the good fight about same-sex "marriage". Of course she's already in trouble because she has already started talking about procreation. The problem is "procreation" has an embedded premise that, once accepted, leaves you in an increasingly untenable logical position.

Now, readers of this blog know my opinion on this. Like abortion, there's a right answer and a wrong answer. It's left as an exercise to each individual to figure out the reasons why the right answer is correct, and why the wrong answer is incorrect. There are both right and wrong reasons for the right answers. And in both cases, the solution is fairly obvious.

The problem with same-sex "marriage," is that there's no such thing. Because same-sex sex isn't sex. It's sex play, but it's not sexual intercourse. We wouldn't consider a couple married if they only engaged in oral sex, or sodomy, or masturbation, or frotteurism, or rubbed up against the furniture until they orgasmed, would we?

No, marriage involves sexual intercourse, and that requires no fewer than one woman and at least one man. End of debate. Therefore any social definition of marriage means we must have at least one woman and one man. For social reasons, we've determined polygamy isn't a good idea, so we limit marriage to one of each. Now really end of debate.

Two cannibals are eating dinner. One says to the other, "I'm having a ball. Are you?"

Here is the early frontrunner. (Hat tip: CK)

Two missionaries are immersed in a giant pot while the cannibals light a fire and dance around them. One missionary is smiling broadly. The other asks, "What are you laughing at?" The first missionary responds, "I peed in their soup."

Two cannibals are eating dinner. One says, "I hate my mother-in-law!" The other says, "Well, have you tried the potatoes?"

1. Great dinner with friends on Friday night.
2. Got out the leaf blower and cleaned off the driveway, deck and graveled area around the house. By the time I was done, the driveway was covered in leaves again. Oh well. At least there are fewer.
3. Went to Sam's Club. As my friend with me said, my purchases screamed bachelor: hamburger patties suitable for grilling, big boxes of Mini-Wheats and Minute Rice, a case of motor oil, a three-pack of spaghetti sauce, a three-pack of canned hams, and big bags of paper plates and plastic cups. I think I can make it to spring.
3. Cleared out the brush on the front of the investment property. Steered clear of the poison oak. Cut down four trees or so. Put the chain back on my chain saw.
4. Watched the White Sox win the AL pennant; something that has never happened in my lifetime.
5. Had a great pot roast dinner with friends.
6. Went to both Catholic and Evangelical services on Sunday. That was a lot of church. At the second church, God said to me, "Didn't I just see you at Mass? You're not fooling me, you know."
7. Blogged.
8. Received naughty limericks via email from friends after they read the Vogon Poetry entries. FTR, both entries were submitted by computer [experts] and they both wrote far better limericks than I can.
9. Saw Sahara, a silly but entertaining movie, purportedly about Mali. It was entertaining, but had a small verisimilitude problem: overweight, [relatively] light-skinned, English-speaking Malians. The cast mostly looked like Nigerians who've lived a long time in the West to me.
10. Laughed at the following joke: Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, "Does this taste funny to you?"


UPDATE: The above post was edited to increase sensitivity to our technically proficient readers.

Who'd have thought? They had the best record in the American League. Congrats to South-Siders. It only took three controversial calls going your way to get your team there.

... got a visitor from my former home town, Toms River. Well, sort of. The hit actually came from Georgian Court College, which is in Lakewood. But somehow that came up as "Toms River" on the SiteMeter. Welcome, anyway.

I know this is all very fascinating to y'all.

Life is rough when you're a Jets fan. Maybe I'll root for the Steelers for a while.