May they burn in hell for their crimes...

Lesbian's brutal gang rape investigated in Calif.
By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.
Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.
"It just pushes it beyond fathomable," he said. "The level of trauma — physical and emotional — this victim has suffered is extreme."
Authorities are characterizing the attack as a hate crime but declined to reveal why they think the woman was singled out because of her sexual orientation. Gagan would say only that the victim lived openly with a female partner and had a rainbow flag sticker on her car.
The 45-minute attack began when one of the men approached the woman as she crossed the street, struck her with a blunt object, ordered her to disrobe and sexually assaulted her on the spot with the help of the other men.
When the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building, where she was raped again inside and outside the vehicle. The assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car. Officers found the car abandoned two days later.
The woman sought help from a nearby resident, and she was examined at a hospital. Although the victim said she did not know her attackers, detectives hope someone in the community knows them. One of the men went by the nickname "Blue" and another was called "Pato," according to authorities.
Richmond police are offering a $10,000 award for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.
Gay rights advocates note that hate crimes based on sexual orientation have increased nationwide as of late. There were 1,415 such crimes in 2006 and 1,460 in 2007, both times making up about 16 percent of the total, according to the FBI.
Avy Skolnik, a coordinator with the New York-based National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, noted that gay, lesbian and transgender crime victims may be more reluctant than heterosexual victims to contact police.
"Assailants target LGBT people of all gender identities with sexual assault," he said. "Such targeting is one of the most cruel, dehumanizing and violent forms of hate violence that our communities experience."
Skolnik said the group plans to analyze hate crime data to see whether fluctuations may be related to the gay marriage bans that appeared on ballots this year in California, Arizona and Florida.
"Anytime there is an anti-LGBT initiative, we tend to see spikes both in the numbers and the severity of attacks," he said. "People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice."


The most important thing we can take from this, since we have a luxury of not being the victim, is that when anti-LGBT laws are passed-- "People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice."

UNACCEPTABLE!!!

Majel Barrett Roddenberry 1932-2008

She was literally a piece of American pop culture history.
So fabulous.

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

It's from a song. Love it.

In September I volunteered to help out at the marriage booth for the Boulder Pride Block Party!
It was a lovely day and we had so much fun. The event was in the middle of Pearl St. and the marriage booth was conveniently located in front of the courthouse. I volunteered as a Rent-a-Bride and helped The Funky Reverend perform illegal weddings. We informed people of rights they still would not have as a same-sex or illegally married couple. We had about the same turnout of both couples. No one wanted to rent me though. Boohoo. My theory is that they knew I wasn't gay. I mean, who wants to marry a straight girl? Not me! I looked super though so whatever.
It's a good day when you can spend it with great people doing something that you really care about.

Quinn rented himself out to marry Nuclia Waste on stage. It was a beautiful event.

There's me on the left.

These guys were something... I don't know if the honeymoon is still on. They'd only been together for a couple days.

And these guys were so cute. They have been together for 6 years.

I've been slacking--Here's an overview.

There's all sorts of stuff I haven't been blogging about. None of it all that life changing but, you know....
Way back in July, after I moved back to Longmont, we went to Tausha's wedding in Wyoming.

That was a fun family event.

For the July 4th weekend we had yet another family gathering. Almost everybody came and took over mom's house and we had lots of food, wet children, and baseball. The boy got to go to their first major league baseball game. I'm not sure they really knew what to do with everything. They've never been anywhere that big before and with so many people. Jordan found the secret to homeruns apparently.

I got to go to a couple more games over the summer with Ed. Awesome as always.

Katie came to visit in August. We hung out in Boulder, and took a trip up to Estes. I've been gone too long and she's a Kansas native so we didn't make it all the way up to Trail Ridge. I couldn't breathe by the time we got to the Stanley. (Which by the way, charges $5 to just get up and look at the bloody hotel! I DO NOT recommend it anymore!) Most of it's spook and charm has vanished. It's too bad.

We had a fantastic time as always. Katie drove her all by herself in mum's brand new car. It was very exciting. She brought some fabulous gluten free bread that we all hogged down. There was an incident with pepper...but that's really to be expected.

I started my new job in September. The day before I had the worst tooth ache in the history of teeth. It made my first day sooo much fun. But things are good now. I'm liking the job for the most part. It's a perfect job for now, I have a super fun team, and I can wear jeans. What more could I really ask for other than a few more dollars? My first week was quite the week. We had the big all employee event with food and festivities and whatnot. I won't go into all the cool stuff but we have a PSA-ish video that might be coming out soon. Danny Glover was in it. Pretty awesome. And another cool thing that my company is doing is building a clinic in Nepal. They brought Jugat to visit us from the village near the clinic. He was very cute and kept calling us his "honorable friends." They have a lot of fun guest speakers with very cool stories.
One guy came in to talk about the Last Ocean, which is somewhere north...like all the way north. It's the last bit of ocean on the planet that isn't destroyed beyond repair. He has some amazingly cool pictures that I hope to be able to show you some day. My favorite speaker so far was a guy named JR Martinez. He was in Iraq when his humvee ran over a landmine. He was in a heavily armed vehicle so the area was evacuated before anyone even knew he was still in the burning car. He has burns over 40% of his body and has had dozens of surgeries. Now he uses his experience to help others and the guy practically glows. The way he talks to a big group of people makes you feel like you've known him for years. We got to chat with him a bit before he left. He's the nicest guy and so adorable. I think about him almost every day. Exciting news for him! He's going to be on All My Children! He told us that the day before he came he had an audition and I saw a video online on Veterans Day that he got the part! I definitely recommend checking him out on this video-- http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6193326&page=1 More to come.....

For Audra

8 Things
8 Television shows I watch....
The Simpsons
Family Guy
American Dad
Clean House
Star Trek
Ghost Hunters
King of the Hill
Um....more Family Guy

8 Favorite Restaurants....
Old Chicagos
Good Times
IHOP
Olive Garden
The Other Side (even though it doesn't exist anymore)
Gutch's
Taste of India
Ruby's...also gone.

8 Books I've read recently....
Frankenstein
Dracula
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Naked
Fight Club
The Bartemaeus Trilogy #1
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Started...Empress

8 Things that happened yesterday....
Went to Boulder
Saw James Bond
Ate Mexican food
Drank some strong margaritas
Saw my friends
Did the usual at work
Was late for work
Got lots of hugs

8 Things I am looking forward to....
Being able to eat on the right side of my mouth
Going to Kansas for Christmas
Going to Kansas for Katie's birthday
The end of my class
MOVING
Star Trek movie
Friday the 13th movie
Next pay check

8 Things I wish for....
Barrels of cash
To see my friends
To make some new friends
To figure out who the prince is
Good hot dogs
Teeth that don't hurt
Somewhere nice to live
To write an awesome horror film

8 People I'm tagging...
You're it.

I think there's a typo. I'm pretty sure his last name is Schmuck.

"This is nature meets the proud United States of America, and my US of A is going to win."ROBERT SHUMAKE, of Galveston, Tex., on the approach of Hurricane Ike.

What a moron.

Jimmy Kimmel about Sarah Palin

"She looks like one of those women in the Van Halen videos who takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair, and then all of the sudden, she's in high heels and a bikini."

And my proposed bumper sticker:

Say what you will about Hillary, but at least Chelsea never got knocked up.

KJ and the Duck Heads. Or, a few last days in Hays

Rise and shine, after a night of not sleeping in Tanner's room, for breakfast at IHOP. We all stuffed ourselves with pancakes before the long drive back to Colorado. I was going to see Dina and the boys the next weekend so it wasn't a long goodbye. But I was left to send off Katie and Judy with lots of hugs since I wasn't sure when I'd see them again.



The last night at Joe's. By the end of the evening the crowd had mostly slimmed down to the Joe's crew and the History Club crew. My usual. A fitting end.


Everyone got ducks before I left. Naturally, what does one do with a duck but put it on one's head.

This was our Scrabble game frosted in hillarity. I don't even remember why but it was quite fun. Jarrod was really getting into the spirit of things. Threats were hurled as was ice cream, but that mostly came from Martha's delivery system I think.

The Larkettes! We didn't get a 7th inning sing-along but I think we won. Maybe not.

Just a few more pictures....

It was something that looked like Spaghetti O's.


Kendra and her little Buckethead.

Me and my girls, Amanda and Tausha. Love 'em.

The "Family Reunion"

Luckily the party went better than the planning might have indicated. The grandparents kinda forgot to invite half of the family, and it was horrible timing as far as my summer goes. We had a good time though, and some of us got to see people we haven't seen in a long time or meet people we've never met.

Mom and Dina discussing important things.
So there's some southwest/Texas/Mexican thing about hanging bags of water from the trees to keep the flies away. Yeah, well, where there are Hunsicker boys and bags of water in trees there will soon be water everywhere else. Tanner was trying to pop it over my head but I moved so they had to make do with just making a mess. As you can see, grandpa was of no help. As usual.
We had enough food to feed a couple small countries, and it was all super tasty.
We played some volleyball until we realized that the ball was really hard and it really hurt. We also tried badminton. The younger ones need a little longer to get the hand-eye coordination down and us older gals need to not play in the dark. It was extremely funny at the time though.
The highlight of the weekend was of course the world's cutest freakin baby. This is Emma Jean. She's a music fan. She's working on her bongo skills.
Like I said, cutest thing ever.
Emma and Geneva, grandpa's sister. We used to chat on messenger sometimes so we knew each other but I had never met her so that was pretty nice. I was going to hide in her ginormous camper and run away with them but I decided against it. They had room though. We'll have to plan a visit to whichever Carolina they live in one of these days.
Grandpa and Clinton working on the homemade ice cream. It's clearly man's work.
I like to call this one "Beauty and the Beasts." Makes her look even cuter doesn't it?
Jordan and Flaming Marshmallows. Sounds like a band name, and relatively dangerous. We didn't do too bad. Only a few flaming ones.
Amanda and Les probably giving each other a hard time. It's apparently the natural way for people to pick on Amanda and the other way around. She was the yougest for quite a few years. We can't start to pick on Tanner and Jordan until they get a little bit bigger and won't cry.
Saying our goodbyes to great-grandma and Aunt Linda.

I got to sleep in a tent and therefore probably slept better than I would have inside so I had a good time. I didn't have to go homicidal on my family due to lack of sleep. There were a ton more people there but I have an excess of pictures of the child. They were there, we had fun. That's good enough. I was happy to see my girls, Taush, Amanda, and Emma. I don't get to see them very often. Too bad Eathon wasn't there, but we all got to talk to him on the phone. He just graduated from some paratrooper something or other. Well done to him. He's moving on to bigger and better explosives now. It's a match made in heaven. If anybody wants to see more pictures, let me know. I have some more. And if you have any EMAIL THEM!!

Long Beach Finale

Just a bit from the end of my trip.
We tried another Dirtbag's game and it was much less soggy than the first. We kicked butt and got a spot in the College World Series. I believe they promptly fell back out but they got there.

We gave the kids a bath one day. I don't remember when. We made pillows too, but that was a few days before. I don't remember if I mentioned it. It was a task to find the Joanne store. There is this phantom moving road in Long Beach that just will not allow you to get to the store.
Anyway, Wilson got grumpy and stuck his face in the corner. But he was so soft when we were done.


We went to Signal Hill/Peak/something and that was pretty cool. You can see all of Long Beach, some of the islands and beaches, and L.A. There were little educational signs and after all the rain and such we had some very nice not-so-smoggy views.

We went to the Queen Mary, which is probably the coolest boat ever. I haven't been on that many boats I guess, but this one is cool. It's one of the most haunted places and it doesn't give you much reason to doubt. Right next to it is the Russian Scorpion submarine. It's awesome just from the outside. I'd love to go back and see the inside.

The smokestacks were the best part. Well aside from the anchor. And the ghost stories. I just think they are awesome. They are freakin gigantic. If you click in the informative sign it will tell you how big they are.

My last evening there we went back to Shoreline Village, my favorite place. We did some shopping, listened to a band that was there promoting itself, and ate too many fried bread products. It was so fantastic. Then we went to have pizza with Katie and company. We went to an awesome candy store, the most awesome ever. They had Mars bars and everything that exists in the world of candy. We went to Pinkberry which is a strange little place but pretty neat. It has frozen yogurt but it is more like yogurt that is cold rather than the frozen yogurt that is pretty much ice cream. You can get fruit or nuts, and even Fruity Pebbles mixed in. I was full of pizza at the time so I just tasted Audra's but you know I would have had to get the Fruity Pebbles. After that we went to The Beach store so I could get some Long Beach State souvenirs. Who doesn't want a Dirtbags t-shirt? I know I did.

This is finally the end of my Long Beach ramblings. No one else is likely to care that much but I like to think about what I did while I was there. It was one of my favorite vacations. Audra cooked for me, I got to meet Wilson, I was chaufered around L.A., and got awesome seats at a Dodger's game. As far as California goes, you can't get much better than that in my opinion.