July 2010 Archives

i was a bit hungry after my workout.

i ordered a carne asada burrito and two chicken deluxe tacos.

the cashier asked if i would like chips and salsa. i said i would. she handed me chips and salsa for two people.

ha!

i had a nice cup of ceylon tea with a coworker, from a bag.

it had a little bitterness at the end, which got me to remembering why i generally stay away from tea: like coffee, tobacco, beermaking, audio gear, barbecue, or software, it's exactly the sort of thing i will geek out on, buy a bunch of crap, finally have a great cup, and then drop the hobby. that's a rabbit hole i've been down too many times.

still, i wonder what i'd have to do to improve that cup? i'm sure it would have been better in a real mug, with proper water.

when i go for a max single deadlift, i spend 2 days worth of energy in 10 seconds.

and that is why i feel like crap all weekend long, starting friday at 11am.

the expiration time on this week's milk jug is my ATM PIN!

i may as well pull a YES ON PROP 19.

420 goes all the way to the ends of my bar, but i've got more m*a. this was my first single with my new belt, and in fact, only my second workout with the belt. i don't know how much of its effect is psychological, but i gotta say 420 with a belt was actually FAR easier than 410 done extra-raw.

just for kicks, assuming my questionable squat was good, my PL total for today would have been 965. gotta get that squat up to break 1000, it's still > 100lbs behind the DL (ouch!).

for the record:

405: yehat theme from sc2
410: yehat theme from sc2 (froyo the night before)
375x3: NPR
420: infected mushroom (froyo the night before)

edited to add that froyo is anabolic. both times i went for frozen yogurt on thursday night, i set a pr the next day.

i contracted with an award winning photographer to snap some photos of my new pipe. here it is:

and here it is with extra chins:

it's actually bigger than i was expecting (though it looks small profiled against so many chins), and while i don't think it reaches the level of perfection of my other dal fiume, i also paid a lot less for it. i have noticed something about my smoking habits: my favored tobacco category flip-flops when i buy a dal fiume. witness:

going into chicago, my favorite tobacco style was straight virginia, or virginia/perique blends. i bought my first dal fiume from the man himself, intending to use it for Va and Va/Per blends. I smoked a couple such bowls in it, then didn't touch it for 3 months, having switched almost entirely to english blends.

Then I realized that I didn't have a nice Dal Fiume pipe for English blends, so I bought this new one for exactly that, smoked one nice English blend in it, and then promptly switched back over to Va and Va/Oriental blends. I call this the sainttoad Dal Fiume paradox.

i made a promise the other day: i won't buy any pipe that costs more in dollars than i can deadlift in pounds.

that settled, i decided to buy a dal fiume that had been offered on marty's site for far too long. marty, who is more or less local for me, made me a bitchin deal that kept the cost under my deadlift.

so now i'm the proud owner of two dal fiume pipes, one for english blends, one for the rest.

heard on the radio on the morning commute, re: elena kagan: "some people feel she is not mainstream enough"

right. she's a friggin supreme court nominee. by definition, that makes her non-mainstream. there's never been a mainstream person on the supreme court. so what?

I've decided that I should start hiking again. Two weekends ago we went for a piddly 2 mile hike. This weekend we found an easy five miler and drove to Portola Redwoods State Park to walk it.

When we got there I strapped into my old hiking boots: Altama waterproof light combat boots. They've got hundreds of miles on them, and I used to like them a lot. Now, though, they hurt my right football, and, being shoes, I hate them.

As we walked to the ranger station to pay our fee (yay CA!) I thought: well, I guess I'll just have to train up to wearing these. Maybe I can start wearing them to work, that'll get me re-used to them. Then I had a better idea: why not leverage my existing training in flip-flop walking? Why not do a flip-flop hike? So I went back to the car and swapped out my boots for the flip flops. Instant relief.

About a mile into the hike, I realized I could do better. I took off the shoes and went barefoot. I alternated between flip flops and barefoot throughout the hike, maintaining a pretty good pace in each (it seemed close to my old hiking pace, in fact). I had to walk through some deep mud that revealed the flaws of hiking in flip flops, and I probably caught an amoeba (or hookworm if I'm lucky) but overall, I enjoyed the hike a lot more by feeling the forest droppings beneath my feet. Afterwards and the next day, my feet were a lot more happy than they had been the previous week after a much easier hike.

Judging from the wear on my flip flops, I'd estimate that each pair has only about 20 hiking miles in them, but that's okay, since they cost me $2.50 a pair. Time to stock up, or just use the free alternative.

It's Frobuary 2, YOMHC 0x66!

I am the Toe Cutter!

i was gesturing during a phone call and pricked myself on my desk cactus. two thorns. argh!

i really needed a shave today, from the looks of me, it's been at least a week.

when i reached for my ultra modern super duper high tech cordless electric shaver, it had 0 battery charge.

this appears to be a feature of this shaver: if I don't use it for a week, even if it is sitting in the charging cradle, when I actually really need it, the battery is dead. To make things even worse, it turns out that this shaver must be run on battery -- I can plug it into the wall, but that will only charge it, not allow me to use it! Argh! And it takes a good 20 minutes to charge up enough for a shave, maybe.

So I fell back on my old double edged razor. I took one of the two remaining Swedish Gillette blades, the most awesome blades I have, and gave myself a shave. It turns out the super duper high tech electric shaver delivers both a closer shave and a less irritating one that even my best and most unavailable (no longer produced) double edged razor, but the DE does have the distinct advantage of being actually usable 24/7/365.

i had quite the laugh the other day when creating my character in Borderlands.

The default name for the soldier (AKA gunslinger) was "Roland".

Har har har!

On a related note, I just finished book 3 of The Dark Tower (with a main character named "Roland", occupation Gunslinger, see?).

I've never really read any of King's "horror" books. I've read The Stand (and liked it), I've read his book on writing (uh, I think it's called "On Writing") and loved it. The Dark Tower has some awkward stuff, and it sure is long (which was his explicit goal, according to Himself), but I'm digging it.

i managed to pull 410 today without being stressed out of my gourd all week.

it was not as solid a lift as my 405 pull, but rippetoe points out (sensibly?) that if the form were perfect, it wouldn't be a max effort.

anyhow, i'm curious as to why i wasn't freaked out with stomach aches and stress and such all week. one theory is that i really didn't commit to a 410 attempt until this morning. another theory is that i spent all week eating like a lifter (was going to put in some kind of animal like whale or horse or something, but really, i ate like a lifter, not a plankton vacuum or a grass shitter) and my recovery was maximal (i gained 3-4lbs over last week, though measurements are far from precise).

i did realize last night that i hadn't spent every waking moment visualizing the lift. in fact i thought about it very little. really, i'd say i wasn't stressed simply because i'd already reached my goal, wasn't worried about injuring myself, and this lift was simply gravy: if i did it, great, if i didn't, i already had 405 in the bag.

is that you continue to execute the old plan until you get a new one. i do, at least.

i frequently tell people who haven't walked away in the middle of my blabbing about deadlifts that the hard part is the first two inches, and that after that, i have no trouble locking it out.

well today when the bar, loaded with 410 lbs, got to about 6 inches, it got hard. at that point, i thought to myself: "now what?"

it sure was tempting to dump the bar and say "405 is my max", but instead i just lifted it. 410 was a lot harder than 405. i'd like to say only 90lbs to go for a 500lb deadlift, but i think i'm done with singles for a bit. i got a proper powerlifting belt and while it's satisfying to lift raw, the concerns of safety dictate that i should learn to use a belt.

i used to worry that using the belt would be too much of a crutch, and indeed top lifting coaches agree. but i think i'm to the point where i know how to properly stabilize my core without the belt.

i have to say that the hardest part about lifting 405 was not laughing after it passed the 2 inch mark.

i was going to wear my kilt in celebration of my lift, but it no longer fits.

such is the price i paid.

one other important thing i learned along the way: for a 225lb lifter with my history (nearly a decade of lifting), a 405lb deadlift is not terribly impressive, particularly when you consider my wimpy squat and bench press.

however, I'm not "a 225lb lifter with my history (nearly a decade of lifting)", I'm me, and for me, a 405lb deadlift is impressive.

there's a very important point in there, for the wise.

now, i'm off to find some bifurcated garments that fit :(

at a body weight of 226, i reached my goal of a 405lb deadlift.

the careful reader will note that the original goal was for a set of five. i did a single. it was good enough for me to consider the goal "reached" and make new plans.

405 was my goal because it's 4 45lb plates (the big ones) on each side of the bar, but since i don't have 4x45, i had to make due with the less photogenic 2x45, 1x35, 1x25, 2x10, 2x5:

did the bar bend? I don't know. at the last moment, my mind said "you can't do this", i told my mind to fuck off, and i pulled it with effort to spare (but not enough to spare on a double, heh).

let the record show that I did this with no damage to my shins:

no shoes, no pants, no straps, no wraps, no belt makes this a no-no-no-no lift. yay.

i pulled the weight to the Yehat Theme from star control 2. usually I lift to infected mushroom, but this seemed more appropriate. i can tell you: youtube does not make it easy to play a playlist, and even worse, it is impossible (as far as a dumb powerlifter like me can tell) to put a song on repeat. i was attempting to play the song via the PS3 so I could enjoy it through my stereo instead of my laptop (in other words, hear it). The PS3 has a real crappy browser, and youtube has a real crappy PS3 (or HD or whatever) mode that makes it even more impossible to skip around in a playlist.

Altogether, it was an entirely unsatisfactory experience trying to get one god damned song to play to help me pull the weight.

however, I have commented before here on harnessing The Power Of Pissed Off, and I suppose the frustration at the near impossibility of enjoying a 20 year old song for 3 minutes on state of the art technology contributed a little to my brief struggle vs. mean old mister gravity.

In the past, one of my failings was an expectation of perfect training conditions. i'd try to optimize my meals, my sleep, my training hours, everything, and if anything was amiss, I'd use that as an excuse for failure.

this time around, I planned non-optimal conditions into my routine. in fact, this entire year, I've been lifting on the notion that I want to be able to make my deadlifts in a "matter of fact" fashion, without grunting, fanfare, or theatrics. you know, like my buddy here. that's 390 kilograms, not pounds like me.

so when I stepped up to the bar after suboptimal sleep last night, with suboptimal music technology to assist me, on the border of both an anxiety attack and a stomach spasm (my treacherous mind and body tag-teaming to fuck me up), and then, at that very last moment, when the little voice told me "you can't do it", I was ready. it doesn't get a lot less optimal than that, at least not for me (since I'm not training in, say, Kandahar, and it's unlikely that I will be). Despite all those little irritations, for me, it was just another day, another deadlift.

deadlifts have been on my mind. I've made that pull a thousand times in my mind's eye. I talk about deadlifting. I practice my deadlifts in the shower and getting off the can. I dream about deadlifting. Two nights ago I dreamed that I was loading up for the 405 but I ran out of plates. So I grabbed some fruit salad to make the weight, but the chunks of pineapple and melon kept falling off the bar. What was I to do!? Wake up, I guess. Anyhow, my obsession has paid off to the extent that I've reached my goal, but it is nonetheless an obsession, and i have again become unbalanced force.

I note with amusement that then I said what good is a 400lb squat if i can't enjoy ice cream?.

I don't have a 400lb squat, but I do have a 405lb deadlift, and you'd better believe I'm going to enjoy some ice cream PDQ. But alas, I must balance my forces and return to a more equalized state, where I don't abstain from things in fear of screwing up tomorrow's lifts. I've done the lift I wanted to do, and now, I'll spend a couple of days figuring out where to go from here.

now, if you'll excuse me, i must get back to my regularly scheduled week long panic attack. the euphoria of lifting is wearing off and the stress of recovery is setting in. also, i have to hit "Replay" in the goddamn youtubes to hear this song again.

apparently that couldn't wait until tomorrow.

i need an "old me" category.

i do like that via youtube, i can relive middle school.

or was that high school?

anyhow, i miss the sc2 universe. i never should have left.

i can taste the microwave burritos while listening to the hyperspace theme.

UPDATE: Oh my.

it's that even if i pretend i wont, i eventually end up getting the highest quality dingus in whatever category of dingus i'm shopping.

the unfortunate truth is that i tend to ignore the above fact and buy lower quality "good enough" dinguses, and then realize i should have bought the #1, and then i DO buy the #1, and i'm stuck with the "good enough" in addition.

also, i keep forgetting that i hate shoes, but i bought myself a website to remind me. i can use that as an OTHER reason on my zappos return form.

they accurately represented my lifting goals and philosophy to a bodybuilder friend of theirs, who claimed:

1) heavy deadlifts will hurt my back
2) there are "other ways" to "get that V shaped torso"

my parents pointed out that i'm not a bodybuilder ("already married" i told them to remind him next time), i don't give a crap about whether my torso is shaped like a V or a VW, and presumably they told him that my back is just fine.

my back is isn't V shaped, it's more like the yen: V shaped with some tires near the bottom.

lots of folks who have never done heavy deadlifts (or heavy anything, the folks who have never done a max double or max single (Dan John makes the distinction between different "max"es: the max you do on some random day in the gym, versus the max you train a year to make, and a number of grades in between. i'm speaking here of the max that you train a year to make)) think that i'm suddenly going to asplode on the bar, and to tell you the truth, when i approach that heavy single, i often fear the same thing. but it's simply not true.

the truth is that in order to even lift that heavy single a millimeter off the floor, my technique must be close to perfect. my muscles must be at maximal contraction, my joints, spine, and bones must be all perfectly aligned. here's an experiment: go grab something heavy, like your car or your house. now contort yourself into a disadvantageous position, one that is not like the starting position of a deadlift. now try to move the object. did you hurt yourself? No. Likewise, if I'm positioned wrong or not strong enough to move the bar off the floor, I'm not going to hurt myself.

Now, once it's off the floor, we're in injury territory. If anything is out of whack in my positioning, or my muscles are loose, or my back rounds, it's pain city. But again: if any of those things were true, it's unlikely I would have gotten the bar off the floor at all (although two weeks I did manage it, but two weeks ago I was re-learning a lesson about tightness off the floor).

Finally, and here's the most important part: I'm more likely to hurt myself in a set of 10 light biceps curls than a set of 1 heavy deadlift. As the length of the set increases, the attention to proper technique drifts, and things begin to get sloppy. And when things get sloppy, people get hurt.

Weight lifting injuries happen when poor technique is used, NOT because of the heavy weight. Heavy weight can increase or decrease the likelihood of poor technique, depending on the circumstances. But in general, lifting is practice, and if the practice is done a little at a time, and attention is focused, those sets will be practicing good technique, and the technique that is practiced will be reinforced.

Doing lots of long sets of sloppy form is practicing bad form, and what is practiced is reinforced.

In summary: a short, heavy set requires maximal attention to form, safefy, and concentration and thus is much less likely to result in an injury than a long set with easy weight.

i paired wine with barbecue!

i'd been going about it all wrong: attempting to pair reds with the smokey good stuff. well, that's a mistake. it just doesn't work and anyone who says it does isn't eating barbecue.

last night i paired a nice, cheap morovino pinot grigio with the previously here-mentioned bourbon molasses ribs, and a bit of leftover goat. in other words, i paired it with both fake and real barbecue.

it was a fabulous match! chilly, fruity, sweet -- but not so sweet that it interfered with the sweet/spicy/smokey flavors on the barbecue. it was a true pairing, the wine and the food complemented each other.

i think it went okay with hops airplant or whatever sorry excuse for food she was eating, too, but i was too greased up by goat (goat is a fatty animal, there's no denying it) to pay much attention. i'm lucky i didn't drop my glass with my goatfingers.

i was in the mood for baby backs, but at the meat counter, the spareribs were on sale for 2 bucks a pound and i couldn't pass that up. spare ribs it was.

i was on a mission, with multiple objectives:

1) create a tasty meal
2) inventory reduction: the blackstrap molasses that has been in my fridge for about 1.5 years, the apple cider i got for the last batch of ribs, the tomato paste that i got for the last batch of ribs
3) decide once and for all whether i hate mops
4) decide once and for all whether it's a good idea to "sizzle" the ribs, as raichlin likes to do
5) find out whether the admonishments against high-sugar sauce (it'll burn!) were worth worrying over

while i ate the ribs, we watched "GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra", a patriotic movie for a patriotic weekend (except it isn't, any longer: GI Joe is now a multinational force, bleh). We got right to the climax, and the DVD seized up, then skipped ahead 5 minutes to the resolution. In other words, we totally missed the ending.

Dear reader, I do not wish to inflict this suffering on you, so I will say now: my mission was completed with success in all objectives.

i salted and peppered the ribs heavily and put them on the grill, over a water pan in the back, with the front burner on high and the rear two off. this puts the grill at about 300-315F. they were on a total of 2 hours, meat side up the whole time, except for the last 5 minutes, where i put them meat side down over direct medium.

i mopped them every 20 minutes, after the first 20 minutes on, with my mop, the recipe of which I shall presently share. i split the mop in half before i began applying it, so i had a bunch left over for sauce, or for the next batch.

the mop:
- 2C apple cider
- 1C ketchup (annie's organic ketchup. if you've never had it, don't scoff at the price tag, it's worth every penny, and it's 100% tomatos, no HFCS bullshit)
- 2T tomato paste (still didn't get rid of all my paste, argh)
- 3/4C blackstrap molasses (i probably had 1C of it but I got tired of waiting for it to emerge from the bottle)
- 1T fresh ground fennel (hell yeah)
- 1t fresh ground pepper
- 1t fresh ground cumin
- 1/2t allspice
- 1t chipotle powder (might be a little much for the heat-challenged. it is well tempered by the ribs, but if you're using this as a sauce on low-fat meat, like chicken, it may be too fiery)
- 1t granulated garlic
- 1/8C white wine vinegar (a primo vinegar, too, that hops got me)
- 1/2C bourbon (michter's american whisky, in this case, but close enough to bourbon)

i heated that up and fretted constantly about whether it should boil or not (thus carmelizing all the sugars), kept it warm the whole time, mopping every 20 minutes.

the ribs were delicious and did not require additional sauce at serving, although the additional sauce was not unwelcome. crispy, caramelized, and nicely textured. the only way these could have been better would require smoking them, and i didn't have the time yesterday.

if you, dear reader, should try this recipe, make sure you like the taste of molasses.

she: why are you so cranky?
me: sorry, i just had a very expensive bad dinner and i had to drink most of the wine
she: so you should be happy!

okay, this'll be two posts in one, i guess.

i've said before here that i'm applying Dan John's advice on goal setting. There are three other pieces of advice that he gave, which I have not mentioned before. The first is to act as if you've already achieved your goal. I've thought about that but haven't really figured out a way to apply it in this case, other than buying larger underpants to accomodate the sort of tuchus that can deadlift 405 lbs, which, it does turn out, is a much larger tuchus than the one i sport when i'm pulling 250.

Dan John also advises leveraging the greater wealth possessed by an older guy vs a younger guy to advance the older guy's training. it is true, i do have more money now than i did when i was younger, and so i decided to invest in a squat rack. i still have the booth, but it's unassembled in the garage, finding no place in our home due to its size. the squat rack breaks down to a relatively un-noticeable form, although, as a certain dear reader is sure to point out, the platform underneath the rack does not.

finally, Coach John advises telling everyone about your goal, which I have certainly done. But the wisdom of age (har har) added an addendum for me which was not in the book: I've shared my goals with the people I know who will support them, or, at the very least, not discourage me. The last time I drove toward 400, I made the mistake of telling that goal to some friends who were less than supportive. It's silly to blame my failure to pass 380 on my unsupportive pals, but at the very least, they did not help.

this time around, hops is as supportive as she can be given her frustration that my interests have narrowed (temporarily, honest) to eating, resting, and once a week, deadlifting.

the rest of my pals have shown mostly disinterest, but that's a whole lot better than doubt.

anyhow, the "tell everyone about it" thing is pretty helpful this time around. i felt like quitting last week, but i'm too far in to quit now, and honestly, i'm making tremendous progress.

which brings me to the part of the post on how great the deadlift is, from a purity point of view. simply put, there's no way to cheat at a deadlift. this distinguishes it from the bench press (bounce the bar off your chest, pull your butt up off the bench), the standing press (turn it into a push press, like i did today (argh)), and the squat, where half the time you're doing it, you're cheating without even knowing. it's not easy to know if you've hit depth on the squat. it's real easy to tell if you've locked your knees out on the deadlift.

and that's what makes the DL so satisfying for me: it's well defined. it's hard, but when you've done it, there's no doubt that you did it. the bar is up, your knees are locked, great job. now add more weight next time, and you've got something.

i've been stressing about that deadlift all week, if not all month.

now that's it's over, i feel like a heavy weight has been lifted.

heh.

heh heh.

the infected mushroom was blasting, i was as warmed up and chalked up and both psyched and relaxed as i was going to get.

every olympic-sized weight in the house was on the bar, like my favorite scene from the best superhero movie bruce willis ever starred in (as long as i don't rewatch it, like the way i rewatched and totally ruined "flight of the navigator"). i grabbed the bar, put my feet in the right places, took my breath, and lifted 390. by many standards, that's not much, but as i told at least two people this week in regards to other sports: you can't judge yourself by other people.

that's a personal record for ME. it's the most i've ever deadlifted, and also the most weight i've pulled off the ground by any means. a couple years back i sumo deadlifted 380, but that was with straps, and, as i just said, sumo deadlift.

anyhow, i didn't tweak my back like last week, though this week i re-inflamed it a little. i made a judgement call that i was better-enough, and i was right.

i have only three items on my todo list for today:

1) go to the grocery for more milk
2) eat a big big lunch
3) go out to the garage and see if i can scrounge up 15 more pounds for next week.

after that, it's another stressful week of waiting for the 30 seconds on friday when i find out if all the week's work has been worth it.

i sort of outed myself in that last post. for those of you wondering, i wanted to point out: i'm not really a full-blown jew, i'm really just kinda jew-ish.

i don't normally do this, but for some reason, the sheer idiocy and the purposefully (i assume) deceitful hand-waving of this article has got me riled up. for the record, i am not a gay googler, nor do i know any gay googlers. actually, i probably do, but it's not like they come out to me.

Anyhow, as a practitioner of logic, not to mention a fan of google, this crap offends me.

Google to Pay Heterosexuals Less Than Homosexuals

Where to begin? How about with the headline? Is there proof that this is the case? If the heterosexuals are all making X, and the homosexuals are making X-$2 and just received a $1 raise, they are still not making as much as the heterosexuals. Is this what actually happened? Who knows? Google's salary statistics are not public knowledge, so there's no way to make the conclusion contained in the post's title.

Digging a little deeper, the benefit applies to Domestic Partners, not explicitly to gay people. Framing this as gays vs straights is false to begin with, since domestic partners in California are not necessarily gay.

I'm a little punchy after a day of listening to Elena Kagan doing her best impression of the love child of Betty Friedan and Nathan Thurm

Okay, I don't know who those people are and I don't care to look them up. Well, I know who Elena Kagan is: she's a Jew who eats Chinese food on Christmas -- just like me! It will be nice to have someone who represents me sitting on the SCOTUS. But what does this have to do with Google's actions? Absolutely nothing. So why is it mentioned? Okay, I guess it's just a blog so attempts at humor are par. But it'd be nice if the humor was funny and didn't require googling (since google has a huge "ick factor". ha ha ha! that's an obscure political humor reference! google it!).

Okay, back to DP's idiocy, enough of mine.

I'm gonna take a breath and ask: what happened to letting big business do what it wants to do? What if google wanted to employ only gay people? Aren't conservatives supposed to favor letting business do what it wants?

Skipping ahead a bit:

Since it's illegal to ask an employee (or interviewee) to divulge his or her sexual preference, how exactly is Google finding out who's straight and who's gay to they know who to pay more?

That's easy: the same way my company knew when I got married. I told them, and they adjusted my benefits. There's absolutely nothing sinister or illegal or unethical or suspicious here. Because, of course, the new policy has nothing to do with who is gay or straight. It has to do with people who are paying extra taxes due to being in a domestic partnership.

Since google already extends health benefits to domestic partners, I'd wager that there's no "finding out" anything new for this new benefit. google already knows who is in a domestic partnership.

Of course, it's pretty obvious that one could infer most domestic partners are gay (that particular invitation to invasion of privacy could handily be avoided if gays could marry), but nobody at google is asking who is gay. They're adjusting payroll based on an election in an HR database.

Finally, the big one: the false equivalency:

I own a company that employs both caucasians and minorities. I put out a memo announcing that I've discovered that my white employees are paying higher property taxes, so in order to make it "fair" to everyone, I'm going to start paying white employees more so they can cover their extra property taxes.

This setup is in no way analogous to the google situation. Property taxes are not determined by sexual orientation, marriage status, or, as in the false analogy, skin color. They're determined based on the property. The most usual reason for one person to pay more property taxes than another (or at least, the ideal reason) is that he's got a more expensive property than the other.

In other words, the blogger is equating compensating owners of expensive property with offsetting the taxes incurred by legal technicalities that differentiate marriage from domestic partnership.

Owning expensive property is a choice, and it can be argued that entering a domestic partnership is also a choice. But that is not the analogy that the blogger is making. He is equating domestic partnership to being white to curry outrage at white people being over compensated. In the analogy, the white people magically have more property tax, glossing over the cause: they bought expensive property! They could have chosen to buy cheaper property and incur less property tax. But since domestic partners have no such choice (there's no cheaper domestic partnership option), and thus no option to lower the taxes incurred by their choice to be domestic partners, the situations are not analogous.

The equivalency is false, and any reasoning derived from the equivalency ("Jesse Jackson would be knocking on my door in 3...2...1...") is thus false.

Speaking as a bay area tech worker who knows an awful lot of bay area tech workers, gay, straight, transgendered, and whatever: around here, this is not a big deal. While this blogger (Doug Powers is a Michigan-based columnist and author) may be outraged that google has decided to offer this benefit to its employees, I'm pretty damn sure that nobody inside google is outraged. In fact, I'd go so far as to say nobody in the whole Bay Area is outraged. Quite the opposite.

The only remaining question is this: How many straight Google employees will go all "Chuck & Larry" just to make Google pay them a little extra money?

I guess this is supposed to be humor, again, but again, it shows how disconnected the blogger is from Bay Area culture in general, and google in particular.

If Mr. Powers is truly outraged by this egregious injustice against... uh, who exactly? Married people? Anyhow, he should take his outrage and exercise his power within the Free Market: he should stop using Google's ads (he hasn't), divest himself of any GOOG stock he owns (I have no way of knowing if he has or hasn't), stop using their products (I have no way of knowing if he has or hasn't). Otherwise he's just another gasbag hypocritically whining about how others conduct their private business.

UPDATE:

I'd also like to point out how offensive the caption is under the George Takai photo.

Now, I'm not the sort of person who takes offense at much besides stupidity. I am offended when stupidity is righteously embraced (Sarah Palin), or deceitfully employed (Rush Limbaugh). This caption is an example of the latter, assuming that the blogger himself is an intelligent person (like Rush) perpetrating calculated stupidity for personal gain (blog hits, of which, like a sucker, I've provided several).

"Live long and prosper more than straight people."

Any cursory understanding of George Takei's life would reveal that this attitude is totally alien (ha ha!) to the man. George Takei, unlike the divisive, spiteful blogger, is not about getting a leg up on people or laughing that he's got his and fuck everyone else.

In 2004, the government of Japan conferred the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, which represents the fourth highest of eight classes associated with the award. This decoration was presented in acknowledgment of his contributions to U.S.-Japanese relations.

Does that sound like someone who would say "Live long and prosper more than straight people"?

How about this: Takei has developed a friendly relationship with Stern cast member Artie Lange, whom Takei affectionately calls his "cuddly muffin." The two have become friends despite Lange's notorious penchant for his supposedly "homophobic" humor.

I'm sure Mr. Sulu is no saint, but he's worked hard in his life to be a loving uniter, not a spiteful divider, and the captioning on that photo is the kind of stupid smear that gets through my hard skin and offends me.