a vinculo matrimonii [translation]

I have new eyeglasses. Shortly after the eye exam and new frame selection, Sh and I were walking home, and she commented that the salesguy had it all wrong: "At one point you tried a pair on, and he said, 'Everybody's wearing those these days,' and I thought, 'This guy's never going to sell Eric on frames; doesn't he realize that Eric will run screaming from anything that everybody is doing?'"

That's my gal.

She's right. Though I try to not just run counter to every fashion the crowd is following, I'm highly suspicious of doing something just because everybody else does.

For example, Dan Savage's recent book The Commitment details his grueling decision about whether to get married to his boyfriend. Reading it, I felt like it was inappropriate for me to take advantage of the privileges that heterosexual marriage provides when committed couples (with children, even!) are barred from similar benefits.

The list of benefits is pretty long. Various web sources suggest that there are presently around 1,400 advantages provided by state and federal law to married couples. Many of these can be duplicated by other complicated legal means, but some—such as inheritance of Social Security benefits—are completely confined to only heterosexually married couples.

This is unfair. And I feel like there's absolutely nothing I can do about this. Except, perhaps, try to empathize.

There's a point in The Commitment that really stands out in my memory. I found it online here, but the important bit is:

"It wasn't until 1215 that the [Catholic] church finally decreed marriage a sacrament," [E.J.] Graff writes [in What is Marriage For?], "...and according to the church, what turned two individuals into a married couple? It was—drum roll, please—the couple's private vows. Why a drum roll? Because the church insisted that a private promise was an unbreakable sacrament... After a great many theological volleys and debates, theologians decided that a marriage was made and permanently sealed the moment that the pair knowingly and willingly said 'I marry you.' Even if they said their vows in absolute secrecy, with no witnesses."

The emphasis is mine [Dan Savage's].

I grabbed the Henning Mankell novel out of Terry's hands and handed him Graff's book.

"You have to read this," I said.

Here was a marriage ceremony we could get behind. It had the added benefit of being a more traditional, ancient, and sacred marriage ceremony, a marriage ceremony that predated cake toppers and florists and obviated the need for seating charts. If marriage was a promise two people made to each other, and if you didn't have to make it in front of anyone else, then here was a marriage ceremony infused with quiet dignity. All we had to do to turn our anniversary party into our wedding reception was mutter "I marry you" to each other before we walked in the door.

We wouldn't even have to tell anyone we did it.

I'd been thinking about proposing to Sh for a long time, but I couldn't come up with a good way to do it. My married friends always have such great stories about how it happened—on a beach, a surprise ring, a family heirloom, a special moment. I had no ideas how to go about it, and the last thing I wanted was someone else's input. This is my chance to ask a very important question, so it should come from my heart, not someone else's romantic notions.

It turns out what I had in my heart was "wing it". (Well, and "don't do it the way other people usually do," of course.)

Sh was working up in the Castro at the time (also known as "the gayest neighborhood in the gayest city in the United States"), and we'd occasionally stopped by Brand X Antiques while wandering around there in our free time. One day we stopped in, and I noticed they sold rings there. So I started asking about their ring selection. Sh noticed, and we started looking together, admiring their antique rings, hearing descriptions of the various materials, shapes, designs, what works well, what he thought made the most sense for wedding bands, etc.

It was really fun. We didn't come to any solid conclusions that day, but a while later we stopped there once more together, and more closely considered the rings. I have a thing for copper (and non-traditionalism), so I was thinking a copper ring would be cool. Sh digs silvery colors, so was leaning more toward white gold. F (one of the proprietors of Brand X) mentioned that copper is the metal that tints rose gold, and that nickel is in white gold. I was leaning toward rose gold as a general concept when I found out that nickel and copper with gold make plum gold, and looky here, there just happens to be an awesome men's band made of that alloy.

In the meantime, Sh had found a nice curlicue-engraved white gold ring that sparkled as if it were diamond-encrusted. It wasn't the perfect size, but F assured us it could be stretched. Then F pointed out that Sh has normal knuckles that are large enough to hold a ring on, while I have tapered fingers that require something like a vise grip from the ring to hold it on. (In case I haven't sufficiently demonstrated how totally cool F is, I was completely fascinated by all the little facts and tidbits he was sharing with us about all the rings we were looking through.)

F pointed out that some of the rings we were looking at were one-of-a-kind antiques, so if we really really liked a certain ring, we should consider buying it soon to avoid losing it to someone else. (Sure, this is a common pressure sales technique, but I never felt pressured by F, so you should just wash away your cynicism right now, reader.) With this in mind, I bought the ring I liked. Sh was surprised, and softly admitted that she wanted to buy a ring, too, which I gladly accommodated.

It was at this point that F and his partner T revealed that they had recently celebrated their 25th anniversary together.

Twenty-five years. It seems like forever. Maybe I'm just getting maudlin, but there's something about buying wedding bands from a couple that's been together for 25 years. It feels like a blessing.

So I wholeheartedly endorse Brand X Antiques in San Francisco's Castro district. Unless you're queasy about pictures of naked men with enormous penises. No, I'll endorse them even then. You just need to get over it.

After Sh's ring had been resized, she wanted to start wearing it. (To be honest, I kinda wanted to start wearing mine, too. I can't stand jewelry, generally, but my ring is awesome. (Better than Sh's, even, but don't tell her I said that.)) So I asked Sh to read The Commitment. She enjoyed the book very much, and kinda saw my point about how getting legally married feels wrong these days.

A couple days later, maybe a little tipsy from rice wine, holding her in my arms, I told Sh, "I marry you." Much to my delight, she said the same to me, and we are now illegally married.

The next day, the first thing I remember her saying to me, like a kid on Christmas morning: "So can we wear our rings now??"

We do.

Last updated by eric Sat Jul 22 14:34 2006 | deed | link

Paete, non dolet [translation]

Mongo: I spent a lot of time playing Animal Crossing last night. I found a cliff at one point and kept trying to guide the character over the edge.

Bernice: They have power switches for a reason, you know.

Mongo: It wouldn't let me, though! No matter how often I rammed myself up against the cliff's edge, it just kept walking me in place. I felt it was a metaphor for existence, or God's eternal love.

Bernice: Or perhaps an allegory of video gameplay.

Last updated by eric Mon May 15 20:55 2006 | deed | link

tenax propositi [translation]

When Carl Castanaveras was still a young boy, before puberty turned him into a Peaceforcer weapon, an officer of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force once asked him what he wished to do with his life.

The question startled the boy. He had been raised by doctors and scientists and Malko Kalharri; the Peaceforcer's question was not the sort of thing anyone had ever asked of him before.

After a moment's consideration he said, "Am I supposed to do something with it?"

— Emerald Eyes

Last updated by eric Sat Mar 11 17:59 2006 | deed | link

mutatis mutandis [translation]

Sometimes, finding things on the web is easy. Last night I had trouble convincing A that her relatives were actually first cousins, once removed. She maintained that they were second cousins. This is a discussion I've found myself in far too often to count, so long ago I had investigated the exact terminology and committed it to memory. That wasn't enough to convince A, though, so I fired up the computer and on the first search we found the page which provided all the details we required.

Sometimes, though, finding things on the web is more challenging. After our success with discovering cousin definitions, A asked if it was possible to find the song that she had heard on the radio the other day. This got kinda complicated.

The first attempt was based on the fact that the song was probably titled "Sweater Song". This search showed us that there's a song out there by Weezer that's really pretty popular, and about sweaters. So then we tried again, this time removing Weezer from the equation. No luck here, either—the results not only didn't have the song we were looking for, but still had Weezer results due to many pages talking about the song without using "Weezer", or else using some altered version like "Weezerton".

By this point it'd gotten personal. This obscure little song thinks it can elude my mighty search prowess? We'll just see about that!

I went back to A for more details, like lyrics mentioned in the song, hoping that someone somewhere had recorded the lyrics on the web. She said that the song mentions that the sweater was left in a car after camping, so we added those keywords. Still no luck. "After" isn't a very good word to query on, though, so I took it out and replaced it with "lyrics". Google was getting us nowhere.

The lyrics search column on A9.com has some good results for a certain timespan of songs, so I took a stab at it, just searching for "sweater". No dice, though having only 33 results to wade through was nice.

I moved over to the Amazon.com music search, with which I am intimately familiar. If we can't find the lyrics directly, maybe we can find it based on the song title. Except, well, there are a LOT of songs that match just the keyword "sweater", and checking for "sweater song" just brings up that horrid Weezer again. I'm really starting to dislike Weezer, and not just because I once confused them with Ween, much to the entertainment of my friends.

All right, A, where did you hear the song? On NPR? Okay, let's check on the NPR website. Ah, you were listening to KQED? Let's look through the KQED archives, then.

Hey look, the archives only go back a couple weeks. You say you were listening to it a couple months ago? Super.

All right, back to Google, then. (Why not A9? I still haven't figured out how to make them my default search site in the Safari search field.) Since, according to A, the song was featured on the same NPR show as Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", maybe someone mentioned that in their weblog, and we can search on it. Or maybe not. Too many results? Try another keyword. Still too many results, and none appear useful? Try going back to an earlier strategy of looking for lyrics, get briefly excited that it might be Liz Phair, but no, it's not. It's maybe from the 80's? Let's try that, then. Well, let's go back to the original query and build up from there again. If there are so many sites that mention Weezer's "Undone", let's try removing that keyword from the query. Hey, that looks promising, at the bottom of the first page, a post about Meryn Cadell that mentions a "Sweater Song" released in 1991 (well, not the 80's, but close).

One last search, including the artist's name in quotation marks, and we've found the lyrics to Meryn Cadell's "The Sweater".

Now if only there were some legal way of listening to at least a snippet of the song online. At least Meryn Cadell's website includes lyrics and shows which album the song is available on, and there are copies available for sale on Amazon.com.

After all that, no one was really that impressed. Ah well.

Last updated by eric Sun Oct 23 11:46 2005 | deed | link

eureka [translation]

Every year I try to join a non-profit society of some sort. Last year was the Cartoon Art Museum here in lovely San Francisco. This year I'm feeling the need to contribute to something that fits into my eco-lovin' boots, so when I found out that The Sierra Club is based in San Francisco as well, I thought I'd found my cause.

After checking out their website, though, I discovered they're a bunch of naturalists. I respect nature (and naturalists), but I'm not really interested in actively supporting such things. So I was at a loss yet again.

Today, though, Sh sent me this article about the Slow Food movement and the plan to feed the homeless of San Francisco with organically-grown foods (which nicely dovetails into the recent Grist article about the unaffordability of organic foods, which, hey, looky that, mentions Slow Food). Not only does "Slow Food" fit into the culinary training that Sh is pursuing, but it's also about reducing the resources required to deliver the necessities of life, which fits well into my Weltanschauung.

Best of all, there's a San Francisco "convivium", which apparently was the first convivium in the United States.

Sure, the Slow Food guiding principles lean a little toward granola hippiedom, but overall it seems like the right choice.

Last updated by eric Thu Oct 20 21:46 2005 | deed | link

in camera [translation]

Me: See? Top hats are cool. If Jim Broadbent can pull it off, I totally can, too.
Her: Jim Broadbent can't pull it off. Harold Zidler can.
Me: I wonder whether Baz Luhrmann is gay.

Last updated by eric Sat Oct 15 09:16 2005 | deed | link