just be.

the world is a confusing place.

you know how people always say don't put anything in an email you wouldn't want the world to read? i blew it tonight.

using twitterific, i feel like my mother-in-law: i love the benefits of the newfangled technology, but i don't always get it. the differences between direct replies and general tweets are not always (okay, almost never) clear to me. and that's where disaster entered the picture today.

my friend katie and i had been having a conversation on the facebook about who would play us in a movie (i can't remember how it started, but there it is). we have never met in person, and i'm not even sure we've ever seen photos of each other—we met on ravelry and continued our friendship in email and fb. anyway, i declared that i pictured helen hunt or julia louis-dreyfus. she sent me a direct tweet saying, "can't remember her name, but I picture you played by Best in Show trainer." (that is one of my favorite movies, so that endears me to her, of course.) so i tweeted back, "Omg. She very dykey, but he is hilarious. The one who hooks up with jennifer Coolidge and starts bitch magazine?"

now. if you know me, you know that i'm using "dykey" ironically (and you're as shocked as i am that someone i've never met in person nails my persona so accurately. i talk way more like jane lynch than like helen or julia, though i'm nowhere near as willowy and pretty as any of them). but i am *mortified* that i sent the message out. without the context of what we had said before the tweet, it sounds like (a) i'm using "dykey" as a slur and (b) either i'm talking about some guy or i'm talking about the same woman and saying that she can't be dykey and hilarious. or something. i have been shaking and sick to my stomach ever since i hit send and realized that i'd sent it to all my twitter followers—some of whom know me but many of whom don't—and not just katie.

so i'm apologizing for any pain or confusion i may have caused anyone who read it, out in public like my words were. i hope that putting it into context alleviates any concerns, but really i'm just sorry i said it and humbly ask for forgiveness. it's not the worst thing i've ever said and wished i could swallow—but those are stories for another day. and yes, i know that putting it here on the blog opens it to a way wider audience than my twitter followers, but i'd be terrible at apologizing in 140-character snips, and i believe that an apology should be given as publicly as the wrong involved. so here it is on the blog.

and i'm getting rid of twitterific in search of an app that is a little more my speed. (speed 16.)

and now to the headlines:

• dick cheney continues to astound me with his awfulness.
• i wish i were half the wife nancy reagan was—and continues to be—to ronald.
• lawrence o'donnell was better when he was less rabid, less rude, and used fewer of his words to call people names than to state principles.
• you don't have to be a racist to oppose someone of a different race from yours.
• someone who attempts to glue your locks—twice—and who cuts the lines for your surveillance system and who drills holes in your roof is not committing vandalism. that person is preparing your location for a crime that he or she does not want you to escape and does not want watched or recorded for evidence. a crime like, say, using explosives or gas to kill everyone inside. we knew this 15 years ago when i interned with the national clinic access project. these are not new techniques or ideas. nor are they secrets. they are well-documented, widely published, nationally known methods used by a sick, misguided, sad segment of our society that is smaller than, but not qualitatively different from, any loose coalition of terrorists motivated by political or religious rationales. so let me give you a little tip for them, in case you see them: political voices can and should be expressed by voting and free speech. religious voices can and should be heard through free speech and free exercise of religion. spread the word. seems the message (and the methods) aren't making it around to everyone.

no pithy headline tonight.

• killing someone for doing something legal within his or her profession is not legal, no matter how abhorrent that something is to you. it is not self-defense.
• it is really, really cool to see a space shuttle piggybacked on a jet.
• fish should not be 15 feet long.

a little editorializing:

i have three friends who i know have had an abortion. i'm sure there are more—those are just the ones who've told me. two were single teens, one of whom had a child already and did not want to increase her family while she tried to put herself through school and lived partly on public assistance. another was married and had children already and was already overwhelmed.

abortion is heartbreaking, to me. i do believe that life begins at conception—that is, life in the sense that any organism is alive. when the one friend i knew while she was wrestling with this wrenching decision was agonizing over it, i asked her whether i could adopt the child if she carried it to term. (my husband and i do not intend to have children biologically or through adoption, and i have had my tubes tied for 11 years.) when she decided to terminate the pregnancy, i mourned the loss of a child with genes contributed by this wonderful woman and her amazing husband, a sibling for her other children.

but in no way do i believe that it is my place—or my government's place—to force any of these women, or anyone else, to carry a child to term if that woman does not believe that she can do so. it is not my place to tell her that (fill in the blank) is not a good enough reason to end her pregnancy or to make any other determination about her physical or mental health. that is up to her and her doctor, perhaps with the help and guidance of some spiritual authority or her partner or both. but it is never up to me, and it shouldn't be. my belief that the thing inside her is alive is not the same as believing that it is a person in the same sense that she is a person.

it certainly is not the same as believing that a medical professional who performs a procedure on her—a legal procedure, with her informed consent—is a murderer. and it is not the same as believing that vigilante punishment or vengeance against such professionals or their clients, families, or associates is in any way acceptable, let alone laudable. shame on randall terry and his ilk.