Fluid dynamics hates me today.
This morning, I took a container of lukewarm water out to defrost the windshield of my car. I splashed the water on, only to have it splash right back at me and all over my skirt.
No big deal– it’s just a polyester skirt. But it was COLD!
I then decide to get a latte on my way to work. Of course I got it with a lid and a cup sleeve.
Just when the latte was cool enough to drink, my hand slipped and it upended all over the floor of my car.
I screamed for a while and tried not to cry. When I got to work, I got to assess the damage. There’s about a cup of milk in the driver’s side floor mat in my car. My nice CLEAN Kirei car.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!
I cleaned it up as best as I could. I’m going to take it to the car wash today at lunchtime for a floor rug shampooing.
Oh, and my pinkie finger still hurts.
Just an historical FYI, for everyone debating the issue of gay marriage and whether or not the state has any business getting involved…..
Initially, marriage was only a state institution (see The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest, Georges Duby; great book). In the early middle ages, the church, as a powerful social force, started to get involved, make rules about it, and declared it a sacrament (priests used to be able to marry, too, by the way, but that’s a digression for another day).
Marriage has historically been about preserving wealth. It was a way to accumulate wealth, identify your heirs, and preserve your financial legacy. There is a reason why most peasant-class people didn’t bother with the sacrament (Giovanni and Lusanna, Gene Brucker). Why pay a priest when it’s perfectly OK to just move in together? It’s not like you have any money that you need to contractually bind to one another, you know.
So, think about that when we start talking about whether or not marriage belongs in the domain of church or state. Marriage started out as a secular institution, for the purpose of identifying and collecting wealth.
Oh, and for another great historical snapshot, visit John Boswell’s academia-shattering work Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. Far more controversial than Duby’s book, but one of the forerunners of gay scholarship invading historical analysis.
Hmph. Looks like I’m going to need some kind of “overly nerdy and academically self-important” userpic soon.