"I am a beautiful animal! I am a destroyer of worlds! I am HARRY FUCKING POTTER!"

Sorry to disappear entirely yesterday, it was a busy, busy day and when I got home and turned on the laptop it started having "issues" so I just gave up. Of course I didn't manage to get out of work until around 7 last night so passing out was a higher priority than posting. Wait, actually eating was the highest priority, I was starved!

My sis just sent me a link to Wizard People, Dear Reader, which the site describes as:
[A]n unauthorized re-envisioning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by Brad Neely. To experience it, viewers need to get a copy of the first Harry Potter movie (known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Europe) and watch it with the sound off, replacing Neely's narration with the original soundtrack.

There's a download on the site or you can order a pre-made CD. If I can get my laptop working this baby's mine. Won't have time to watch tonight, as there is new BSG (hooray!) and the SG-1 ep actually looks kind of cool (Bugs!), but maybe I can give it a try either Saturday night (after cat sitting) or Sunday afternoon. I must say I'm intrigued.

Picked up a few new icons and got rid of some of the older ones. I also think I worked out the font problem with comments, if you're still having issues lemme know and I'll see if I can tweak it some more.

Every sperm is sacred

*sigh*
S. Dakota House Bans Abortion to Instigate Court Fight:

Lawmakers in South Dakota overwhelmingly approved legislation Thursday that would prohibit almost all abortions in the state. House Bill 1215 passed 47-22, after representatives voted against inserting amendments that would exempt women impregnated as the result of rape or incest. The bill, which now goes to the state Senate, makes an exception if the women’s life is in danger.

Citing controversial conclusions by the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, the bill states that scientific studies and scientific advances show that life begins at conception, and “each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization.”

Power to the Blastocyst Americans!

The bill further says that in order “to fully protect the rights, interests, and health of the pregnant mother, the rights, interest, and life of her unborn child, and the mother's fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child, abortions in South Dakota should be prohibited.”

Did I miss that Amendment to the Constitution?

"What the public doesn't realize is that the building blocks are already in place to re-criminalize abortion if Roe is overturned," Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, told the LA Times.

Representative Roger Hunt (R-Brandon), the chief sponsor of the South Dakota bill, said the timing is right for the "Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act," in the wake of the new Supreme Court appointments: conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Or perhaps more accurately: "The Women Don't Have the Moral and Intellectual Capacity to Decide for Themselves What's Best for Their Health and Blastocyst Protection Act".

Hunt, who has also sponsored legislation banning same-sex marriages, was one of a strong majority of abortion opponents on the 17-member governor-appointed abortion task force. After the group issued a final report to lawmakers last month, the four pro-choice advocates on the committee – including South Dakota State Director for Planned Parenthood Kate Looby – charged that majority members changed its content and tone without their knowledge or approval.

Why I'm shocked, shocked to find fundamentalists trying to influence, if not hijack such reports. And color me stunned that the anti-choice folks also come down firmly on the side of homophobia...

Looby and the other three dissidents on the abortion task force proposed a package of legislation to promote sex education and access to contraception, but lawmakers are one step ahead of thwarting those efforts. Also passed last week in South Dakota was HB 1194, which prohibits distribution of contraceptives to students on public school property, unless it is done by the parent of the student receiving the contraception. After the overwhelming 51-17 vote, that legislation, too, now moves to the state senate.

South Dakota lawmakers are also considering a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment that would preclude "any right relating to abortion." If passed, the issue would go before voters in the next general election.

Meanwhile, a ban similar to that passed by the South Dakota House last week was introduced in Kentucky and has 36 co-sponsors; Indiana also saw the introduction of comparable legislation that would prohibit all abortions unless a women’s life is in danger.

And Pandagon posts a great piece entitled "Terribly Tired of the Abortion Debate" that I really recommend you all take a look at:

That is why I’m tired of this debate that isn’t really a debate. It isn’t a debate because a great deal of those involved aren’t in any position to be arguing it. Men, for example men like Tony Abbott, should not be making, shaping or commenting on policy surrounding abortion. They simply don’t have the qualifications, namely the possession of a uterus. That would eliminate 50% of the people that could participate in this debate that isn’t a debate. And, on the same point you may like to contradict me, you may like to say, ‘but, DQ, you’re a man, why are you weighing in on this debate that isn’t a debate?’ Which raises some serious soul-searching in this blogger and leads him to posit the following caveat - an argument in favor of choice is not an argument in favor of abortion. There is no such thing as a pro-abortion lobbyist. There is no group of evil, hairy-necked sub-humans simply getting pregnant in order to kill unborn babies. Abortion is a tough choice that must be made by an individual. It is an act that can be right or wrong for different people at different times and for different reasons. Simply supporting an individuals right to self determination is not a position on an individual’s actions (therefore not really weighing into the debate that isn‘t a debate), however telling women they are unfit to make that decision is a terrible judgement.

Lockdown

Ok, everybody, say it with me now, "Rule of law! Rule of law! Rule of law!":

A Palm Beach poll worker says he tried to help GOP-loving pundit Ann Coulter vote in the right precinct last week. But, Jim Whited says, Coulter dashed out of the polling place when he told her she needed to file a change of address.

"I even ran out after her," he says. "But she was fast."

Later, elections records show, Coulter cast her ballot 2 miles up the road — in the wrong precinct.

Whited, a former candidate for WPB mayor, was posted at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Feb. 7 as a $185-a-day precinct adviser, records confirm.

"Ms. Coulter came to me, and the address we had for her in the computer didn't match the address I know she lives at," Whited says.

He says he remembered a Page Two story in April about Coulter, 44, buying a $1.8 million home on Seabreeze Avenue. Yet county elections records show Coulter gave an address in June at the northern tip of the island, on Indian Road, when she registered. Turns out the addresses are in different precincts.

The Dark Lord Speaks

cyranocyrano just sent me this and I had to share:

As many of you have heard, Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange’s condition has been upgraded to “aura slightly tweaked, but rallying nicely, thank you very much” by the healing wizards of Hoppesheadde Hospital. The circumstances of last Monday’s wand injury remain somewhat mysterious, owing in large part to Lord Voldemort’s reluctance to speak.

Fortunately, Balls and Walnuts enjoys an excellent working relationship with Severus Snape, Hogwarts’ Potions Master and Defense Against the Dark Arts Instructor. Although Lord Voldemort declined interviews with CNN and MSNBC, he agreed to talk either with Brit Hume of Fox News, or Severus Snape of Balls and Walnuts. Upon reflection, he granted the interview to Severus, stating, “Hume’s a softball-lobbing simpleton, a moron and a muggle. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Please go read the rest, trust me, you'll be glad you did.