So, am I evil?

Well, Derrrr.... For obvs I am, you've all known me for years and you all know that I am.

But I noticed something yesterday that made me think that I might be evil in a totally new (to me) previously undiscovered way... Something I'd never previously considered as even capable of being the reason that I'd have been tarred and feathered and thrown out of the badly maintained Wacky Warehouse that I like to call 'life'.

Pretty much every day nowadays is some kind of 'Day' - I don't mean Thursday or Tuesday (Although those are most definitely both days) I mean things like these, that the UN/UNESCO ask us to casually observe:

11th. Feb - International Day of Women & Girls in Science
23rd. March - International Meteorological Day
24th. March - International Tuberculosis Day (Which can be quite noisy if the 23rd. was damp and foggy)

It continues like this all the way through the year with us having

15th. Oct - World Handwashing Day, followed by
16th. Oct - Global Food Day

And ending up with:

20th. December - International Human Solidarity Day

Then you've got 'Days' specific to your particular Country or Deity of choice, There's Saints days and other High days - Days made up by retailers just to sell stock - Appropriated Pagan days - Yearly (or bi-yearly or quad yearly) sporting events that have their own 'Day'

Not to mention things that have their own 'Week' Like 'Shark Week' for instance... And... Erm... Probably others too.

But, the one I'm talking about in this instance is a global holiday that bounces around the calendar like a frog in a machine used for polishing old ball-bearings...

MOTHER'S DAY

It's celebrated all around the world, on the Second Sunday in February, or the 3rd, 8th, 21st or 25th of March, the 4th Sunday in Lent (In the UK), the 7th of April, 8th, 10th, 15th, 19th, 26th, 30th, or the 1st, 2nd or Last Sunday of May, 1st of June, 2nd Sunday of June, 1st. Monday of July, 12th & 15th August, 2nd Monday or 3rd. Sunday of October, 14th. October, 3rd. or 16th. November, and the 8th & 22nd of December...

There are also a couple of countries that celebrate it on non-Gregorian dates using their own wibbly-wobbly date system that I'm not willing to explain. I mean, the last paragraph kind of got away from me a little - And I'll wager a £5 note against a bag of freshly collected donkey eyelids that you skipped a lot of those dates, and who'd blame you? We've all got better things to do haven't we?

But let's get back to me, and how I'm evil and so full of wrongissitude that all my toes are due to pop off my feet and into the stratosphere at any given moment.

Here are some facts that you probably already know if you've read the blog for more than a couple of decades...

• I have been happily married to the long-suffering Mrs. Dandy for almost twenty years (Yes, I'm old, I know, I've gotten over it and so should you.)
• We have two children together. Lovely, wonderful children who never give us a moment's trouble 
• My Mother, whom I may have mentioned a couple of times before whilst she was both dead and alive... Is currently dead... But this hasn't stopped her being quite a vocal part of our lives.

So, on Monday (Which happened to be the day after the 4th Sunday of Lent) - I was greeted by several, if not many, posts from people who I previously considered friends - Waxing lyrical about gifts that they had bought their WIVES for MOTHER'S Day...

Do you see my issue? My Wife is Not My Mother (Because it would make things really awkward when I did that thing she likes with the egg-whisk) and My Mother is dead, which if nothing else makes it difficult for her to open cards and things that I'd bought hastily from the petrol station and wrapped in second-hand paper that I'd saved from Christmas.

So I didn't buy my WIFE a present... You see where I'm going with this don't you? - I'm going to neither confirm nor deny that I financially assisted in the purchase of the presents/cards that one or more of my Children bought for THEIR MOTHER (MY WIFE)

When I told these fairweather friends that I have never bought anyone other than MY MOTHER a MOTHER'S DAY present, well... I can only imagine that there was a quite literal intake of breath on their part. They expressed their shock via the medium of the strongly worded reply to my admission and a couple of them wondered how I ever got allowed to use an egg-whisk in the first place with a stingy attitude like that.

But, My Faithful Bloggerites (remind me never to use that word again) what do you think? I'm interested in answers from all people in all situations, Mothers, Fathers, Kids, Male, Female, Non-CIS, CIS, NCIS, SVU, Super-Intelligent Shades of the colour Blue.

What did you do?

And much more importantly, What should I do next year? (Especially if I want to employ another piece of kitchen equipment for a use for which it wasn't originally designed?)

And to carry on the theme... Here's a nice picture about love and stuff... There's a rock shaped like a heart and everything.

Toodles! - Don't forget to leave your opinion in the space provide below...

So, Gay Marriage… What’s that all about?

I’ve talked about people who enjoy the close company of other people of the same or similar gender before.  I remember discussing their traditional love of musical theatre, their almost superhuman ability to match superfluous, but to the untrained eye wildly different, sofa cushions, and also their general flamboyance.  Which is something I wholeheartedly agree with, if you’re gonna do something, you may as well do it fabulously!

But these tropes are only usually applied to gay people who have ‘outie’ reproductive organs.  What about those with ‘innies’?

Well, I’ll be the first person to admit that I have more experience with gay men than I have with gay women or [Whisper] Lesbians [/Whisper] as some like to be called. (I’ll tell you what, let’s get the jokes out of the way first, OK?)

Haha! I bet you have!

I can lend you a DVD if you like!

Experience? With gay men? Woooo! – you complete bender!

And so on…

But this is odd when you stop to think about it, because my niece is ‘one of them’ and in a few days she will be getting married to her female life partner (or they might be being ‘civil partnered’ I don’t know I’m not au fait with all the ins and outs of the process – All I know is that I’m probably going to have to dress up and not drink anywhere near enough at the reception because: driving, just like I would at anyone else’s wedding)

And that’s the thing you see – the thing that gets me, is that when you think about it there’s no real difference between ‘Same-sex marriage and Different-sex marriage… Apart from the details of what happens on the wedding night that is, possibly.  Again, no first-hand experience, so I’m not qualified to judge.  Keen readers will have noticed that I didn’t say Normal marriage either, because, like, I used to own an owl, so my idea of ‘normal’ is different from most people’s.

What I’m trying to say, in an ugly and, on-the-surface completely uninformed way, is that in my opinion, the union of two people who care deeply about each other is a marriage.  It shouldn’t confer any more or any less rights and responsibilities on anyone depending on the race, creed, gender, level of disability or even species of all the spouses.

Yes, you heard me right… As long as the haddock loves you and you love the haddock, they why not? (My more vanilla readers might wonder how the haddock can give its consent to such a union, but when a haddock really loves you, you just ‘know’ OK? It’s in the eyes…) It makes no difference to me, or you, or that guy behind you trying to read over your shoulder (He’s gone now, don’t worry, although he did look a bit shifty and I couldn’t really see what he was doing with his hands.)

There’s a quote you see sometimes on the Internet, often attributed to the Writer and Comedian Liz Feldman (as it is in the example below – I’ve asked her if she ever actually said it, and if she replies, I’ll let you know)

In case you have a smartphone with a tiny screen, it says, “It’s very dear to me, the issue of Gay Marriage. Or, as I like to call it: ‘Marriage.’  You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not Gay Lunch. I parked my car; I didn’t Gay Park it.”

And that sums it all up pretty well actually, there are people out there who’ve done the almost impossible, they’ve found the one someone out of just over seven billion, that they want to (initially at least, at this specific point in time) spend the rest of their life with in some kind of fulfilling relationship.   What business is it of yours or mine?  When it gets down to it – What difference will them letting the world how much they love each other make to you, or me?

Let me give you a hint… The answer’s none, despite what googly-eyed maddists will say it won’t bring down some random God’s wrath, it won’t cause floods or hurricanes, or confuse children, or infect the heterosexual majority and lead to record-shops selling out of KD Lang and Liza Minnelli.  It won’t lead to a global outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases, we won’t all get AIDS (Remember AIDS? It was like ‘terrorists’, but in the 90’s)

I’m incredibly proud of my niece and her partner; To be completely honest, I’m slightly more proud of them than I would be if my nephew was getting married to a female partner, because they’re doing something, out of choice, that’s difficult.

Something that really, really shouldn’t be.

-oOo-

P.S. My pride in them has nothing to do with the fact that I find it hugely funny that my father-in-law’s religion requires him to be staunchly anti-homosexual . He’s not homophobic, he doesn’t fear them in the slightest, he just treats them as Godless abominations… And he has no idea why, other than some guy, writing a book of rules to keep the populace in their place some time ago said that that’s how he should think.

Well, maybe just a little bit.

-oOo-

P.P.S. UPDATE!

OK, so, remember how I said that I'd asked Liz Feldman if she'd actually ever said that quote? - Well, she didn't answer the question, but she did do this....

I can live with that I guess...