Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

No no no no no. No no. NO.

This is my favorite part:

“This case is about free inquiry in education, not about a religious agenda,” said Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., in his opening statement. The center, which lobbies for what it sees as the religious freedom of Christians, is defending the school district.

No, it's not religious at all. Except that it's about God.

People suck. Read the Bill of Rights again please everyone.

Wait, I revise my earlier statement. This is actually my favorite part, really:

He also challenged the accuracy of “Of Pandas and People,” the intelligent-design textbook to which Dover students are referred.

Miller said the book omits discussion of what causes extinction. Since nearly all original species are extinct, he said, any intelligent design creator would not have been very intelligent.

Ha ha ha. That makes me laugh.

OK, a while ago, like at least a month ago, I was handed this pamphlet on the street by a man who rifled through a pile of quite a variety of them before finding the one he must have decided was just perfect for me. Now generally I just take little hand-outs from people unless they're holding a sign that says something like "Jesus or Hell" (and there is a man who wears a sandwich board saying that who frequents crowded areas and events in Boston) because what's the point of arguing with them or not taking their coupon for 50% off pizza or whatever it is. However, after I was handed this, I almost turned around and walked back to tell the guy off. Since I didn't, I now have to rant about it here.

I'd like to say I will try to have some kind of intelligent counterpoint to offer but really, I think it will just be ranting and raving. In order for you to fully understand what is so upsetting about it, I need to quote the entire pamphlet to you. And just so you know, it is a publication of the Board of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church. Come on, Mennonites, you're my peeps, I grew up around you. I'm kind of annoyed that you're in Boston having random men in disguise hand out upsetting pamphlets to strangers condemning their lifestyle.

Click below for the rest of the story.

Read the rest

Oh good. Now we're going to replace National Parks and monuments with malls? I guess those are our real national monuments, aren't they?

Seriously, someone tell me, what's the best country for me to move to? I need it to be pretty easy to get permission to live there and it wouldn't hurt my ignorant self if at least kind of a lot of people spoke English. I'm willing to learn but right now I'm far from fluent in any other language.

Where should I go? Canada? I hear Vancouver is very nice. Ireland? France? Japan? Switzerland? The Netherlands? Hey, I'm half Italian, maybe they'll let me in.

Honestly, what is this country doing? Doesn't anybody care? It's embarrassing.

I just walked into a wall at my office and gave myself a bloody nose. No, I'm not joking. I have witnesses. What the hell is wrong with you, you might ask? I have no idea. I am at the reception desk while Melissa is at lunch and we have a new wireless headset. I had gotten up to tell someone he needed to move his car in the parking garage, and then I promptly turned directly into a wall. I was so shocked that I just kept walking, with him calling after me, "Are you OK?" I then of course put my hand to my nose and discovered it was bleeding. I went to the bathroom to check it out and discovered that I had a little tiny cut on the bridge of my nose, and what looks like it will be a nice bruise, and one nostril was bleeding profusely. Nothing appears to be broken... good thing I have a nice strong Italian nose, haha.

And it appears to be slowing down now, so I'm not worried about bleeding to death from my nose. But I am starting to get a bit of a headache, although the bridge of my nose seems to be in tact so I still think it's not broken or anything.

But really, I mean, people have teased me about being klutzy before but this takes the cake. I wasn't disoriented or dizzy or anything, I just forgot where the wall was and turned my face right into it. SMOOTH.

Here's a photo for your enjoyment, though what I actually should have photographed was the pile of bloody tissues in the garbage. Nice.

It is so painful to me that people continue to have this conversation. Not just a conversation, but court cases. There is some school district (well there's more than one, but one specific one just mentioned on the news) that is being sued by 6 parents and the ACLU because they are requiring that so-called "intelligent design" be taught alongside evolution in their public schools. The theory is that the universe is too complex to exist without some intelligence behind it.

Let me review for you:

1. First of all, nobody cares what you think, it's mixing religion to teach kids as fact in school that there is a diety controlling the universe. Sorry, whatever you believe, that's true.

2. Secondly, it only seems to people who can't get over themselves that we're so important that there must be someone intelligent controlling every miniscule detail of our existence.

Even if you are someone who believes in God in one form or another, you really should be able to grasp the concept that it's a big universe, that we're not the most important things in it, and that we only think we are because we are us. Get it? It really hurts my brain to think that people are so impressed with themselves. Look around guys, we're not that great.

No not medically, mentally. I am to the point already in my life, and I'm only 29, where there's very little that I actually care about anymore. I've narrowed my focus down so much to what I care about that it encompasses very few things and people. And even for the things I'm supposed to care about I don't do a very good job of showing it.

If you want to read more about what's wrong with me, click below.

Read the rest

Wow, it's been too long since I posted to this category. I'll try to be better. Because I know have lots of people who are big fans of my knitting out there. I have to keep my public happy. Ha ha.

Anyway, here is a baby blanket I'm working on for Heather's niece, Ella.

I'm using Pashmina yarn for the pink, and the cream is Cashmerino. It's sooooo soft. I'd love to make myself something with it, but an adult sized anything would cost hundreds just for the yarn. Maybe I could manage a scarf or a hat at some point.

Anyway, I'm using seed and souble-seed stitch. It's on circular needles and it's going pretty well but it's taking a long time. I'm late making it so I'm trying to finish up so I can get it to Heather while she's in Florida visiting Ella.

And she's off. Now while I don't think it's OK that people like Martha Stewart get to go to nice-y suburban prison "camps" rather than real prisons, like the one Lil' Kim was apparently assigned to, I don't think the solution is that she should get to go to a fancy prison too, I think the solution is no fancy prisons. Oops, sorry, maybe if you're a celebrity and you think you'd be in some kind of "special" danger in prison, then you should avoid getting sent there by not doing illegal things. Just a little tip from me to you.

And by the way, this is quite a life she has. There's a rival rap group? They have a shootout over a song? Why did it take her this long to get sent to prison?

In case you forgot how stupid this guy is, check this out. What an idiot! I guess this proves that you definitely don't have to be smart to win that show, you just have to be an asshole.

I hope you don't mind, it's just a tradition we have here in our fine city.

J.C.

I don't even think I have the energy to get sufficiently outraged about this. But I would just like to say that there were 11 kids found living in cages in a house in Ohio. Bad enough. But, add to that:

• The parents say they weren't abusing or neglecting them.

• All the kids were either adopted or foster kids.

How come I knew someone who had to have like 3 home visits in her apartment in Cambridge before she could adopt a cat, but there's apparently not a single inspection when you let a family take 11 children?

Come on.

You're going to tell me this guy is contemplative and political?

Let's review some lyrics:

"And I know the government administered AIDS/ So I guess we just pray like the government say"

Huh? People are taking this guy seriously when he's saying he thinks that AIDS was a government plot? Who was it a plot against exactly? I hope he's not going to say black folks since the first epidemic was among gay white men. Oops, Kanye. Oh, wait, maybe you weren't born yet then. For Pete's sake.

I'm not sure why a bigger deal isn't being made out of this, but did everyone miss the fact that Barbara Bush said that the living conditions in the Superdome were perfectly fine because so many of the people who got stuck there "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Meaning the living conditions (you know, where there was no running water or working toilets or air conditioning or privacy) were good enough for these poor losers who wouldn't know any better anyway because they apparently already lived in piles of human excrement in their normal lives.

What the fuck is going on in this country? Honestly. Let's drop Babs off in New Orleans now, with the lawless roving gun-weilding gangs, and see what she has to say about how well it's working out for everyone.

So said our illustrious president recently. I guess his opinion changed.

Am I the only one who notices people saying "Alzheimer's Disease" like there's a T in there? Almost like they're saying "Old-Timers"? It really bothers me. I just heard someone on the radio from New Orleans pronounce it that way. What's so hard? No t's, just a z. ALZ-HEIM-ER'S.

It's like NUC-YOU-LER instead of nuclear. It makes me crazy.

Are you surprised to learn that daylight savings time doesn't save any energy? I'm not. It doesn't make sense to me that it would really have any effect one way or the other. I've never understood that. If people are awake and it's dark out, they turn on lights. I don't see why it matters if that's at 7am or 7pm. Seems pretty simple to me actually. I don't see why we need it at all. It's bizarre.

Anyway, you can listen to the news story that was on NPR about it today, it's interesting because they talk about the history of how we started standardizing time in the US and how daylight savings time got started.

Actually, what I never understood about daylight savings time is this: why do we need to save daylight in the summer when the days are the longest anyway? One of the things the government claims as a reason for keeping it is that if there is more daylight at the end of the day then people will go outside more and be more physically active and physically fit. But summer has long days anyway - shouldn't we extend the daylight hours in the winter and fall if they really want more daylight at the end of the day? I just don't get it.

This is really cool. Just keep zooming in.

More than anything else, this makes me cry.

Well, some of them.

Like the new Dodge Charger and the Chrysler 300C.

And on a totally different note, Rob got to drive a Mini last night! He gets a free membership to zipcar by being a Tufts student so we rented a Mini down the street from us for an hour last night do to a quick errand and it was really cool. Weirdo dials and controls, it seems to drive more like a manual and it was really zippy. Only Rob gets to drive it though, I'm not a zipcar member. I'll talk more about zipcar later, it's really cool.

What the hell is this?

First of all, someone needs to explain to me what the hell happened to make O'Connor resign, since the appointment to the Supreme Court is for life. Not to mention that she was one of the more liberal justices so if she actually cared about her convictions why would she resign with Senor Cuckoo Bananas in charge?

Second, how is it that someone who isn't even on the court yet could be nominated to be Chief Justice? Doesn't that seem like a position where you'd have to select the person from the people who are already on the court? I just don't understand. And I can't believe they are going to confirm this guy.

I mean really, people need to start telling me what country I can move to because I'm getting very disturbed and I don't think people are upset enough about the way this lunatic is running the country.

Likely story. I'm sure I can trust a bunch of pro-life Catholics to give me "accurate information" about abortion. I'm sure their information is completey unbiased and much more accurate than the information from a regular physician who isn't using his religion to make medical decisions.

According to Amnesty International over 3,000 people a year are executed in China. Good thing we are having the Olympics there. Everyone better make sure they didn't make a new special rule that the losers get executed.

Money really doesn't buy taste. Really. Really.

Badly dressed stars

And by the way, will everyone in Hollywood please admit that they are starving themselves? I don't see the appeal, look at poor Hilary Duff.