This is the peace I’ve made: this is what I have to say. These are my own words.

Let’s call this an open letter to—well—anyone who’s gay and has to deal with family during the holidays.

I sent it to my family, and you can send it to yours. I call it

My Own Happiness.

Let’s just go right into it so there’s no misunderstandings anymore.

What you said was shortly after I had come out. We were in Grandma’s driveway and you said you disagreed with my “lifestyle” but you still loved me, because I’m your nephew.

That conversation has predicated any sort relationship that we’ve ever attempted to have.

For a time I was satisfied to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I can longer give you the benefit of the doubt.

For people to be in my life there can be no doubt.

This has only anything to do with the fact that I have wrestled with this solitary issue not only over the past month or so in deciding “what to do for Thanksgiving” but on and off for the majority of my adult life since that conversation in the driveway. You are now being called to task for something that deeply offends the character of my being.

I can’t really think of any other way to fully express my outrage and offence other than to just say that you need to change, because it’s impossible for me to. It’s as impossible for me to change who I am as it is for you to change who you are. I’m only asking you to reconcile your beliefs with that which is entirely factual.

Don’t tell me that you love me but you don’t agree with my lifestyle. Don’t ever say that to me again. You said it once and you were wrong. You said it once and you’ve colored the form of our relationship with that phrase ever since.

Even tough you may have only said it once you have articulated it again and again when you can admit that it doesn’t go against your conscience or your convictions or your higher sensibilities to elect or agree with people who are personally responsible for and deeply against my own happiness.

My own happiness hinges upon things that are against what you might call “conservative.” My own happiness hinges on the fact that you can have a husband who you can be concerned about his taxes being higher. My own happiness hinges upon the fact that your personal politics affords me no such luxury.

I live in a state and a country that is complicit in the perpetuation of my own misery. I don’t have a government that condones the very foundations of who I am as a person. I don’t have a government that believes in my own validity as a human being. It’s bigger than the both of us to hold you personally responsible for this situation, but it is neither selfish of me nor small of me to hold you personally responsible for being complacent about my own misery. It simply is not beyond me to call upon my loved ones to cease to not be outraged that the majority of the people who bother to vote have decided to vote against my own happiness.

Love to me calls upon us to fight for everyone’s own happiness.

I thought I gave up this fight long ago.

I thought I could be quiet about this.

I thought I could to bring people into my family who meant the most to me.

I thought this could be politics separate from personals. But I’ve realized that what is at stake is politics made personal.

If you vote for someone who opposes gay marriage you’re voting against me.

If the person you allow to be the President can stand up and say that one of the most important things of his administration is perpetuating my misery, then I cannot allow you to be my family.

If it’s true that you love me, then you can no longer condone a government or condone ideas which are in opposition to my own happiness.

I really don’t know any clearer way to say that. This wasn’t supposed to be this political of an issue, but the conservatives have made it an issue.

Myself and the “gay community” (to use the term that conservatives use to stereotype me and my friends and the people whom I love and care about), we all thought that this would be as in and out as the Civil Rights Movement was for African Americans–that this an open and shut case. That it’s as simple a thing to love another human being and to ask other human beings to recognize that, but what you’re saying is that it’s not so simple; what you’re saying is that you don’t agree with it.

For you to say that you don’t agree with the essential parts of my character is to say that you don’t love me.

For you not to be outraged that there are factions of our society who think that my love should be invalidated demonstrates not only a contempt for my relationships but a contempt for my character that I cannot forgive.

What I’m saying you need to do—for the sake of yourself and myself and for the sake of your conscience—is to reconcile what you heretofore believe to be true and ask yourself if the love you have for your husband and the children you have, etc. is any less than the family I might some day wish to have, and why that family somehow is less valid because it’s established on different terms than you might be used to.

I know in my heart that the love I feel for my significant others is the same love that you felt for your boyfriends and husbands and I don’t doubt your permanent love for my uncle or furthermore your daughter’s love for her husband, or anyone in my family’s desire to love—I’m saying that you have no right to invalidate my love for another human being.

If after consulting your conscience and your convictions you can endure your further complicity in my misery then I—frankly—have no more space for you in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863.

Just how fucked up can you make your operating system? (I’ll use the f*word a lot in this post…)

I learn more and more every time someone has what seems to be a simple problem… like today, when my coworker Joni’s dad couldn’t get his new printer to work. I went over to check it out: install the software, make sure it’s plugged in, turned on, etc. When I couldn’t get the HP software to install, I figured there had to be something somewhere wrong—HP writes fairly good Windows software, filling in the holes that Windows leaves out. I couldn’t find any reasonable support information and noticed they were still running service pack 1, which as of October is no longer supported.

They basically ignored every warning that Windows was giving them the past six months telling them to update their damned computer. I mean how many times can you ignore a lil note that pops up and says “Hey, asshole! It’s time to upgrade!”? So I brought the thing home to work on, knowing full well that “installing service pack 2″ isn’t as easy as it sounds.

It turns out I’ve been running into this problem all night… the registry is fucked up. Come on guys, how in the hell do you let this happen? The average end user can’t figure out how to do the shit described in the article. In MacOS something like this would involve either a simple authentication window to repair some permissions or whatever, but in Windows you have to go through this whole runaround. STUPID FUCKING WINDOWS!

This was *after* I reinstalled Windows and had to activate yet another one of these fucking things by phone just in order to get Microsoft Update to work.

I’ve fixed the registry problems, which probably led to the reason why the printer wasn’t installing to begin with… how this happened is beyound me. That and they needed to upgrade anyway. The next one like this I get I’m gonna back up everything, format the hard drive, and install Windows from scratch. You will get your computer back Hopefully all this rigamarole will work and they can use their three hundred fucking dollar printer.

Or, as Microsoft puts it, “[t]he permissions issue for the registry subkey should now be resolved, and Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1 should install successfully. If you experience additional problems when you try to install Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1, repeat these steps as needed.” Repeat these steps as needed… yeah fucking right. Get a better computer, people.

That is to say if you have MacOS X you just plug in the god damned printer and it just. fucking. works. These people owe me $75 for my fucking trouble

I should’ve titled this entry Rigamarole XP Shit Pack 2

But I don’t use you anymore!

Someone commented on a post (no, not you, Jordan) back from my blogger days, as I haven’t bothered to delete that comment. Thanks, Google! So when I logged in to moderate the comment Blogger put up an index.html in the directory, which superseded Wordpress’s index.php. Well it’s gone now! So stop fucking around in there!

Now on to some more general updately things:

What’s been going on… people ask me that like every day and I make sure and tell them not much!

I did the campaign thing; I put in a lot of hours walking and phoning and then the final election challenger job on election day. Not to mention the party afterward! So my apartment is pretty much wrecked. Also visited Brad in Ann Arbor one weekend and Aaron in fucking Detroit the weekend before that… anyway, I was going to catch up on stuff this weekend, but I ended up spending most of it with Joe & Patrick. Time to do it this week… That’s about it. Nothin’ much has been going on. I spent $20 at the video store last month so I decided to get Netflix again. I told myself I couldn’t afford it, but I end up spending the money at the video store anyway. This way I get more movies that I was inevitably going to rent anyhow.

Other than that (damn I really say that a lot) there’s not much going on.

The optical drive on my xbox broke, but I can fix that for like $30. No, I don’t have the money to blow on a 360, but thank you for asking (coughs “asshole” like zefrank) nor do I want to “invest” in a whole new god damned platform.

Shout outs to Kevin Boggus down in Texas where it’s warm (Kevin, I have a pool here you can use but it’s 37 degrees outside. I bet that would make your nipples really hard!) I keep staring at his pictures because he’s gorgeous. And he’s a nice guy, too!

I’ve got like 5 applications in to the United Nations. Here’s hoping. That’d be way cool. No I was not drunk when I decided that was my career choice.

Oh yeah, I decided I wanted to work at the UN. It’s only been like 7 years since I was “supposed” to make up my mind about what I was “gonna do with my life” but you know: the gay punk rock band (“Artificial Sweetener”) fell through (our first and only single, Furious Masturbation, didn’t get any airplay at all) and the money from that bank robbery in Argentina has run dry. So it’s time to go work in Burundi for Peacekeeping Operations.

Bottom line: I finally figured out there’s a few ways to do this thing. You can:

1. Work to get rich.
2. Work to get or keep someone else rich.
3. Work to keep someone else rich.
4. Work to make the world rich.

I’m going with that last one there.

Lastly, I’ve been playing the hell out of Snow Patrol lately. Thank you, Dutch internet radio. De hits in je reet!

Leave this alone for too long and somethin gets f’d up…

As soon as I found out I was appointed to my very own precinct I took time out to go knock on doors for my candidates.

While not everyone won their respective races overall, I’m proud to say that I delivered my precinct to Sandy Lipsey by ten votes. If they were anyone’s ten votes, they sure the fuck were mine. I worked so hard these past few weeks, and seeing those totals at the end of the night was quite the win for me.

Not to mention the landslide win for Stabenow and Granholm.

I’m most proud of the fact that I helped my neighbor Tina Michaels win her home precinct 319 to 196.

Here’s the info I reported tonight:

PAUL PELLERITO
CREDENTIALED ELECTION CHALLENGER
APPOINTED BY THE
KALAMAZOO COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY

PRECINCT RESULTS
PORTAGE CITY PRECINCT 7

TOTAL BALLOTS: 1,300
BALLOTS CAST: 545
TURNOUT YIELD: 42%
TOTALS DO NOT INCLUDE ABSENTEE BALLOTS
DEM/REP BREAKDOWN FOR KEY RACES
(OTHER PARTIES NOT INCL)

GOVERNOR
GRANHOLM(D): 332
DEVOS(R): 187

SECRETARY OF STATE
LAND(R): 299
SABAUGH(D): 213

ATTORNEY GENERAL
COX(R): 261
WILLIAMS(D): 235

U.S. SENATE
STABENOW(D): 320
BOUCHARD(R): 194

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
UPTON(R): 284
CLARK(D): 231

20TH DISTRICT MI SENATE
LIPSEY(D): 268
GEORGE(R): 258

61ST DISTRICT MI CONGRESS
ROGERS(D): 291
HOOGENDYK(R): 219

KZOO COUNTY COMM
MICHAELS(D): 319
ANSARI(R): 196

Cost of Natural Gas (est for November 2006):$1.21/therm
Outside air temperature:-2°C
Thermostat Set to: 26°C
Ambient Temperature in my apartment: 23°C

I don’t like being cold in winter. Which is why I picked an apartment with “gas included.”

1. Cymraeg is not pronounced “cumrag”.

I meant to post this yesterday, but got sidetracked.
I love how people can be happy living in their small little ignorant worlds.
And it’s spoooooky…

(Find out about adulterated halloween treats here and here.)