I didn't pay much attention to the fuss over Amendment One in North Carolina, partially because I'm less interested now in marriage-equality questions at the state level than at the federal level, but mostly because I was confident it would pass.

But I just went and read some stuff about it, and fuck me if I don't have the same reaction to it as I had to California's Proposition 8 (which you should read if you didn't before, because it's hilarious):  these people don't know what they've done to themselves.

Now, Amendment one is superior to Proposition 8 in that at least it's grammatically sensical.  But by amending their constitution to include the sentence "Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State" but not defining the word "union," along with eliminating any chance for marriage equality, here are some things North Carolinians have also ensured:

• Adoption is no longer legal in North Carolina.
• Companies can no longer incorporate in North Carolina.  This includes churches.  And schools.
• In fact, now that I think about it, all previous adoptions in North Carolina are now void, as are all previous incorporations.  Which means that by passing Amendment One North Carolinians have dissolved all schools and Christian churches (as well as all organizations of any other faiths) in the state.  They weren't really paying that much attention to Jesus anyway, so I guess it's okay.

Seriously, people.  It's one thing to be homophobic.  But to be homophobic and careless with language is something else entirely.

Because I've been trying to figure out for, literally, a decade how to make Shirley Jackson work in a modern urban setting.  And I could never, ever get it.

And now here you come with Cabin in the Woods and make it crystal clear.

Damn you.

Imagine yourself in a large group of people.  An official-looking person asks the group to separate into twenty-six smaller groups, organized according to the first letter of members' first names.

Then another official-looking person comes into the room wheeling a cart of cupcakes in three different flavors:  chocolate, say, lemon, and red velvet.  (The you in this thought experiment both loves cupcakes and loves chocolate, lemon, and red velvet cupcakes equally.)  As the official-looking person walks around the room, she offers each person his or her choice of cupcakes (this is apparently a bottomless cart).  Some people choose chocolate, some lemon, and some red velvet.

Then, when the official-looking person gets to your group, the people who share the first letter of your first name, she says, "Oh, sorry, the lemon cupcakes aren't for you.  You may have your pick of the chocolate and the red velvet."  You take a cupcake, perhaps chocolate, perhaps red velvet.

Then she continues on, offering members of the rest of the groups their choice of all three kinds of cupcakes.

So here's the question:  Are you angry that you weren't given the choices the other groups were given?  If so, how angry?  (I will reveal that, in the piece I'm working on that includes this thought experiment, the title of the section is Fuck You and Your Goddamn Cupcake, which ought to make my answer clear, but you have no obligation to agree with me.) 

Note, please, that the question I'm asking isn't about practicality—a cupcake is a cupcake, I still like red velvet, if that's the way it worked out then whatever—but about the visceral emotional reaction you do or don't have to the thought.

MIKE and JOEL (singing along with the stereo):  Once more, you opened the door, and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on and on.

JOEL:  God, we're so gay.

MIKE:  We're old, too.  Don't forget old.

JOEL:  God, we're so gay and old.

I enjoyed Avatar when I saw it in the movie theater.  I thought it was visually gorgeous and deeply moving.  At the same time I was deeply disturbed by its politics.  "Yeah," I said to friends the next day, "I just saw Blue Like Me."  Thank God the white guy could come and save all the colored people.  The—I don't know what to call it; blueface?—aspect just made it feel more shamefully self-satisfied.

The thing that I could never figure out was whether their acceptance/celebration of him once he showed up riding the Great Leonopteryx was realistic or just an Orientalist fantasy.  On the one hand, it was his fault that the humans were there in the first place, and how could that be forgiven him in any way?  On the other hand, he did lead them to a victory that implied the humans would never come back, so from a certain perspective they were better off even though he'd destroyed their home, and they did place a pretty high premium on being Toruk Makto.  I tried and tried to figure out an analog in my life so that I could test the proposition, but I failed.

Then, last night, when the Home Tree fell, Mike—I'd mentioned my difficulty to him—said, "Well, obviously, it's 9/11."  And I was like, Jesus Christ, I'm an idiot.

And it was pretty easy from that point on.  I mean, imagine (if you're an American) somebody shows up, insinuates himself into your life, makes you trust him and like him, and then says, oh, by the way, I gave Osama bin Laden the plans to the World Trade Center.  As far as I'm concerned, at least, nothing he did after that could possibly lead me to forgive him.  He could probably manage it so that I would only want to see him exiled or thrown in prison forever rather than being executed for treason—which is saying something, since the list of people I think should be executed for treason is a long one—but if he was then like, oh, my friend Sigourney Weaver is dying, can you help her, I'd be like, fuck off.

"The Omaticaya," said Mike when I suggested as much to him, "are much more forgiving than we are.  You can tell because they're blue and wear loincloths."

I'm almost hesitant to post this, given how obvious it all seems now that I've figured it out, but one of my new year's resolutions is to revivify my moribund blog, and it seems I'm now well-medicated enough to prefer follow-through to avoiding embarrassment.

Note, please, that none of this makes the colors in Avatar any less pretty.