Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I am staying at a hotel that uses the Timex T610S alarm clock, which purports to be able to use “nature sounds” to wake a person up. Last I checked, nature doesn’t require an alarm clock and an electrical grid to make sounds, but okay, I thought, I’ll try it.

I chose Forest sounds. When it started this morning, I went to the window, because it sounded kind of like a car accident, or maybe a set of old bed springs and a bad techno whistle. I think it was supposed to be crickets and an owl, over and over again in a short loop.

Not the best breath of fresh air for overcrowded city folk who crave camp.

Right wing Republicans keep on saying that it’s okay to deny same-sex couples equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the Constitution because same-sex marriages are inherently unnatural. The idea is that anything unnatural is therefore ungodly. Of course, these Republicans don’t spend their time attacking unnatural things like cars, or light bulbs, or chewy granola bars. Their righteous wrath is oddly restrained to just same-sex marriage.

The scientific truth is that same-sex marriages are not really unnatural at all. There are many examples of same-sex reproduction in nature. In fact, in many species, three are no males at all – only females who breed with each other. Then there are hermaphrodites, like snails, and even fruit trees. Oh, the immorality!

Today there’s a report of research by Lindsay Young, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii. Her studies have included observations of lesbian albatrosses setting up long-term nesting relationships with each other that involve considerable physical intimacy.

Same-sex marriage occurs in nature, it seems. Therefore, same-sex marriage is natural. By the standards of right wing Republicans, that ought to mean that evangelical churches should start pushing Congress to make same-sex marriage legal across the United States.

How likely do you think that is it happen? Maybe the right wing Republicans’ efforts to deny equal protection under the law to same-sex couples doesn’t have a thing to do with what’s natural. Maybe they’re just jerks.

Roger and Gallet Paris, which is actually headquartered not in Paris, but in Monmouth, New Jersey, produces a “gentle nature shampoo”.

Where in nature are the shampoos found? I could save some money by going to get some there, maybe, if it’s somewhere near me.

I’d hate to contribute to an ecological crisis, though, by taking too much shampoo out of its natural environment.