Bowhair Pasta; CDs Again; Not So Equal Rights

This morning, I scurried around the house in preparation for taking momsy to lunch. On my days off, I rarely leave home before noon, but today I needed to be out the door and down the path by 10:30. By some shade of kismet, my body touched the car seat almost on time.

Alas, that my car has no covering but is subject to the heat of the summer sun. Which means that it is a tad warm when you open the door. I let down all the windows to allow the air to circulate, then turned on the AC. Traffic was light, so I had no problem driving. I did detect an odd odor, though.

As I was standing in momsy's living room, I noticed how dirty her tv screen was. I tried to clean it with water and a paper towel since there was no glass cleaner. But I only made matters worse. In the car, I mentioned that when we got back I would give her a bottle of cleaner I kept in the trunk.

We drove along the Interstate circling the city. A one point the car in the left lane almost hit me, and I had to zip to the right and ended up in the nearby exit lane. But it only took a slight detour to get back on the highway.

At Macaroni's, mother always orders a chicken dish with bowtie pasta, but I can never remember the Italian name. So I asked the nice server for dishes with "bowhair" pasta, which gave her pause. Realizing what I'd said, I babbled something about if you combined bowtie and angelhair pasta, you would have bowhair pasta, or even angeltie pasta. At least, I didn't say angeltit pasta.

Once back, I hopped out and opened the trunk for the glass cleaner. Instead, I found a large puddle of bleach in the plastic container that I use to hold groceries and such. After finishing the laundry Sunday, I'd placed the detergent, stain remover and bleach in the container and forgot about them. Fortunately, the container did what a good container should do: contain. Otherwise, I would have had bleach all over the damn place. BTW this obviously was the source of the "odd odor."

As Saturday and Sunday, I went looking for a small stero system for my new office. My requirments are simple: I don't want to pay hundreds; I want it to have a small footprint; and I want it to be fairly decent. I think I may have found just the one at the great emporium of all things electronic - Circuit City. But I going to think about it for a day or so.

Next I zigged and zagged to the used CD place. Again, I was the only customer. (If you don't count the man who came in and said you'd never guess what had happened to him. His wife had ripped the CD player out of his car, and he was trying to get rid of his CD collection. The rest of the conversation I didn't catch, but the clerk would not accept the CDs. Is there a thriving market in stolen CDs?) This was my longest stay, and I really did try to find something worth buying. No luck! A meager slection. Almost nothing from any major artists. Nothing from any cult artists. The stock is the kind of stuff you would buy, then realize how lousy it was, and get rid of.

FYI - a letter to the editor in Sunday's "The New York Times." "Thirty-nine states, including New York, permit employment, housing and credit discrimination against gay people. Only Vermont grants gay couples something similiar to marriage, yet in the last five years, the federal government and 32 states have passed laws banning the recognition of same-sex marriages. We cannot serve openly in the military or get estate tax benefits no matter how long we live together.

Eighteen states still criminalize consensual gay sex. Anti-gay initiatives will be on the November ballot in four sates and at least five municipalities. I could go on and on.

Sympathetic portrayals of gay people on television, being recognized as a market by companies and having a lot of elected officials coming to our events should not be confused with actually winning equal rights." (Matt Foreman, Executive Director of Empire State Pride Agenda.)

PAX!