What a long, strange month it's been

First off, I am never getting a flu shot again. I am currently going through my second bout of winter sickness, which is one more than I have in a normal year. I am not happy. It is all the Husband's fault, though (both the flu shot and the current illness).

Speaking of the Husband, he is upset by this season's American Idol voting. I figure the folks who've left so far probably shouldn't have, but they weren't going to win anyway.

I was in Sacramento on Monday for a meeting, and the Governor spoke at our luncheon. He really does sound just like those caricatures.

You know how you never really know someone until you travel with them? We went to the City last weekend with some friends. Ay yi yi! We won't be traveling with them again.

My nephew apparently knocked up his girlfriend, so I get to take an unscheduled cross-country flight this summer for their shotgun wedding. At least in the middle of all this craziness we got our taxes done and we are getting money back (though I still have to pay the state).

Heaven and hell

So last night we watched "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown." Not to spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but at the end the squirrel dies (almost). The vision of heaven in the movie (in which paradise--for the squirrel, at least--is represented by a giant nut) reminded me of a thought I had the other night after watching the film "God and Gays," namely: There is no way homosexuality condemns one to hell.

Think about it: Hell, in the traditional view, is supposed to consist of fire and pain. It's usually represented with lots of vibrant reds and oranges, and creative application of torture. This, for a lot of gay men, is not punishment. I'm not into the whole pain thing, but my idea of eternal punishment is a world in which everything is gray. I saw an interview once with a woman who claimed to have visited hell, and she said the pervasive sense was of overwhelming hopelessness. To me, that would be a world completely devoid of variety. A hell in which there is some vision of difference is not hell at all; if that's the afterlife to which gay people are condemned (which of course I don't believe, but just assuming for the sake of argument it is), then someone's not doing a very good job in the damnation department.