You may remember when I poked fun at the state of Georgia for attempting to remove evolution, Charles Darwin, and many other scientific facts and theories from the biology curriculum for high school students.  Shortly after the public heard about that little gem, Georgia reversed its decision and announced it would leave the biology curriculum as it was.  So what is Georgia up to now?  I think the best way to describe it is sexual discrimination and invasion of privacy.

I'm beginning to think that Georgia's leadership, from the schools to the governments, is inhabited by mindless, soulless, incompetent and wholly unaware individuals who sit around all day looking for ways to screw their constituencies.

What makes me say that now as compared to the whole evolution/Charles Darwin episode earlier this year?

In what can only be described as legalized sexual discrimination and invasion of privacy, the Georgia House recently approved a bill which bans female genital piercings.  Including piercing in a list of genital mutilations to be outlawed, Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, could not believe that adults would even consider such a thing.

Heath said, "What?  I've never seen such a thing."

I'm not surprised by that given his apparent lack of synaptic activity.  Despite the context of the statement, I believe Heath is actually admitting that he's never seen female genitalia.  This would certainly explain his decision to try to control women's bodies through legislation.  We often try to subjugate and control that which we do not understand.

The dimwitted Heath went on to say, "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it.  I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."

OK, this is where I get confused.  Heath has likely never opened a book in his life, but I doubt he's going to try to outlaw reading (actually, given enough time, Georgia might just do that given their recent record on such things).

Inimical laws such as this amaze me in that they often appear out of nowhere and cause me to wonder what problems our leaders trying to solve with such anathema.

More important than the attempt to control women's rights to do with their bodies as they wish is the clear and simple truth that this law discriminates based on gender.  You see, there is no similar law pertaining to men.

What am I missing here?

Oh, yes, I know.

You'll be happy to hear that the bill passed the house unanimously on a 160-0 vote — all without debate.

So once again Georgia has put itself in the headlines by being stupid.  No, not Georgia as a whole — just those in charge of creating laws.

If the people of Georgia don't speak up and stop this from passing into law, however, then we'll know for certain that the entire state is indeed stupid.

Let's just hope they wake up before the book burnings begin.

I wondered if I should even put this in writing.  Somehow things written always come back to find you later when you don't need them.  Yet I cannot help but be drawn to the expression of what I am feeling and thinking.

These are the words I never speak because I feel as though they'd embarrass you, yet they haunt me day and night.  I hear them playing through my waking hours.  I hear them playing through my dreams.  They are the words I cannot say because you might see them as foolish.  We've been down this road before.  Why would we travel it again?

These are the tears you never see.  Sometimes I think they're drowning me.  It's a flood of uncontrollable longing.

These are the arms that ache to hold you yet refrain out of fear of pushing you away.  They are also the arms terrified of letting you slip through.

And this is the joy I want to know, the joy I once knew — to never be alone because of you.

I remember meeting you ten years ago and being beguiled and bemused.  I had known of you for many years before that, yet there we stood acting like two schoolboys discovering ourselves for the first time.  I was overwhelmed.  It was like a fantasy come true.

We flirted with forever only briefly, yet it whetted my appetite for more.

But neither of us was in a place to make it work.  A brief encounter, a one night stand that lasted for months.  It doesn't matter how you describe it because it was wonderful on its own.

Yet we both realized we weren't ready for such a thing, so we moved on.

We've been close friends since then.  We have no secrets from each other.  We share everything.  We enjoy spending time together.  We have mutual friends.  We have similar interests while still nurturing many differences.

Yet I wonder if we could ever enjoy what we had before without throwing away what we have now.  Our friendship is crucial to my existence and I would never want to lose it simply because there could have been more.

But I wonder what I can do to make this truth more real to you.  It's very real to me.

And I wonder from time to time if you don't already know.  Perhaps your heart can hear my heart.  Perhaps you can see it in my eyes when I look at you.  Perhaps you know me well enough after all these years to see right through whatever façade I wear.

I can't walk away from this feeling.  I can't leave it behind when I am so sure.

I don't want to be without you.  Whether we're always near simply as friends or — and I hope it's this — because we find something more between us that cannot be ignored, I know that I can't live my life without you in it.

How do I say this to you?  Dare I say it to you at all?

So I end up back where I began, longing for something that I may never have, hoping for something which may be hopeless, wanting to tell you something which I may never say to you.

These are the words I never speak.  I love you, Rick.

I've had some folks complain (dare I say bitch?) about how difficult it was becoming to view the Random Thoughts archives.  When you click on the "See previous Random Thoughts" link in the bottom of the Random Thought box on the front page, it shows you the last ten entries.  But if you click on the "See all" link at the top of that page, it then builds a new page to show you all of the entries — about 397 as of today.

After trying this little experiment once or twice, I realized precisely what people were complaining about.  It was taking about one full minute for the page to build and even longer to download and render.  That's just not acceptable.

What I've done is removed all of the individual entries and have created monthly summaries of the Random Thoughts.  This should clean up the Archives (since there will only be one Random Thoughts entry per month) and will simplify the process of viewing all of the previously posted entries.

See, I do listen.  Now shut the hell up!