Entries from January 2005 ↓

In today’s installment of Homophobia Today, the Concerned Women for America (CWA) are, um, concerned that PBS animated character Buster is making being gay look, um, normal. Found this link at Michael Bérubé’s site.

CWA Applauds Education Secretary Spellings for Busting ‘Buster’; Group Urges Constituents to Voice Support for Her Action Against PBS

“For years, PBS has been slipping pro-homosexual messages into its programming,” said Robert Knight, director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute. “And the federal bureaucracy and their client, the education establishment, have done their share to destroy children’s innocence using the cover of ‘diversity.’ Along comes Secretary Spellings, who takes action as a servant of the people instead of a timid, go-along bureaucrat. Good for her.”

Yes, clearly we should go back to the good old days when Bert and Ernie lived together quietly and humbly, under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The yet-to-be-aired episode of Postcards from Buster, titled “Sugartime,” features an animated rabbit taking a tour of Vermont during the early spring. Along with farm life and maple sugaring, the episode explores Vermont’s same-sex “civil unions” by featuring two lesbian couples.

Sugartime, indeed.

“Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television,” Spellings added, requesting that a funding grant be returned and that the Department of Education be removed as a backer of the segment.

“Parents don’t want their children homosexualized in the name of ‘education,’” Knight said. “Mrs. Spellings has given notice that left-wing lobbies will have to find other ways to peddle their pansexual propaganda. Let’s hope that other leaders in federal and state agencies find a backbone thanks to her courageous example.”

Children are being homosexualized, now? What exactly does that mean? It sounds like being pasteurized; our children are being subjected to a process by which they’re made to be homosexual? And how come I never get to see any of this Pansexual Propaganda? That sounds interesting.

How interesting, Concerned Women, since the vast majority of homosexuals in the world grew up with straight parents, watching straight television. They did not have PBS to encourage them. No one in the American media before 1990 suggested being gay might be fun, or even, for that matter, alright. And we still have all these gay people running around trying to get married. What’s that all about? Could it be that people who are gay do not catch it from cartoon characters?

I apologize to my non-homophobic readers, for I appear to be engaging in one of my favorite rants. But until these people get some sense, I am afraid I will have to keep at it from time to time. Bear with me.

In the great abyss which is the new reality television, producers are willing to sink lower and lower in order to gather our attention. Whereas reality TV was once an original concept (with an albeit absurd premise–that what we would see in the fishbowl on the screen would represent some kind of reality), it’s now been done to death.

The latest offerings from VH1 are the nadir (the Ralph Nadir, if you will):
Celebrities on a diet (Daniel Baldwin vs. the judge from Divorce Court), a burgeoning reality-romance featuring Brigitte Nielson and Flava Flav, and the new edition of the Surreal Life, featuring a whole lot of people I’ve never heard of, and Christopher Knight, AKA Peter Brady.

He looks as he did all those decades ago, that Peter Brady. He always was a hunk, even as a gawky teenager.

Tonight, I took a break from grovelling-for-money (aka fellowship applications with looming deadlines), and my current reality was pretty frustrating. In the offerings of the local cable service, frankly, I was fit for nothing more sophisticated than reality TV tonight.

And I saw clean-as-a-whistle Peter Brady (who’s gotta be 47 now) getting a lap dance in prime time on a Sunday night.

All my illusions are now shattered.

If this is reality, I’ll take some more fiction, please.

On the other hand, here’s some real reality: the Children of Iraq

I was at Times Square on Wednesday night, and saw a man sitting-crouching in one of those passages where you walk from one subway line to another. He was holding a cardboard sign that read, “Tell me off for $2.00.”

It was one of those creative variations on the panhandle–singing from people who are not musicians being the most popular one I’ve seen. And this was original; I’d never seen it before. I wondered if this was just the service contemporary urban dwellers needed.

Case in point: on Thursday night I was at the slum veterinarian’s office. That’s my pet name for the vet I’ve been going to for years. He is in a rough area in an outer borough. In that ‘hood, everyone who has a dog has both a tough dog and a frou-frou dog: a pit and a shih-tzu, a rottie and a poodle, that sort of thing. One for the lap, and one to scare the people you want to scare. (Most of the pits and rotties are sweet little mushes anyway, but their appearance does the trick.)

The slum veterinarian is kind and damn good at his job. He also charges half of what any other vet charges. As a student, I find this to be the winning combination: good and cheap. So even though I’ve long since moved out of that area, and it is way out of my way, I make the trek there when my pets need anything. They’re well-cared for there.

But the slum veterinarian’s low prices come at a cost: they’re always overcrowded. They take walk-ins after people with appointments, but even with an appointment, you’ll wait an hour. And pick-ups can be 45 minutes. Plus the waiting room is small, usually kind of dirty, and overcrowded. It’s like the public hospital ER, except more of the patients will try and lick your hand.

So the other night, there I was, waiting to pick up my little shaggy monster after he got his dental cleaning. (This may sound silly to those not in the know, but small dogs often need their teeth cleaned–and it requires general anaesthetic!) And I am waiting for a bit. And while I am waiting, a twenty-something couple with a pair of pugs in tiny human t-shirts are getting more and more agitated.

It becomes apparent that the receptionist is having trouble finding their file. And she has asked them a few times to spell their last name. And though his woman is trying to get him to calm down, saying, “let’s not have an argument here,” the man completely loses it, after spelling his name and the dogs’ a few more times, he jumps up and starts yelling. What-kind-of-a-place-are-you-people-running, etc., etc.

And he throws (yes throws) his little pug down on the floor, rather too roughly for my taste. And as the woman gathers the pugs and watches, the man waves his arms and tells off first the receptionist and then the good doctor, who has heard what’s going on and come out. More words are exchanged, and the exasperated-but-still-cool doctor asks the young man to leave and go to another animal hospital.

This makes the man even angrier, as he grabs what looks to be a laptop case, “What do I look like to you? Some trash off the street?” And as the woman is taking the dogs towards the door, the man comes in for a final approach, pointing at the doc’s sign-in sheet and saying, “You’re lucky. If my name wasn’t on this piece of paper, I’d bash your face in!”

Then the vet tells his good receptionist to call 911, and the man expresses more horror at this latest insult directed towards him. As the vet repeats the request, the man exits, and for several minutes can be heard raving in anger as he goes down the street.

The thing is, I think I know what he feels like. The place can be a pain–all that waiting after a long day. And didn’t I have my own frustration earlier this week when I thought the customer service in the physician’s office was exceptionally bad? Though I personnally did not go medieval on anyone’s ass, the leap from frustration to anger and threats seems to snowball these days: in the post office, the grocery store, at stoplights in cars, people are losing their cool left and right.

When the man was well gone and my dear mutt was being presented to me with his newly odor-free grin, I said to the vet, “You know, I always worry when someone goes off like that, what if he has a gun or a knife?”

The good vet took my left hand and held it to his hip. “That’s why I carry this.”

It isn’t often I touch a man’s loaded gun.

I wondered later if what the angry-pug-man needed was not a visit to our friend in Times Square. Tell him off for $2.00. Hell, it would be my treat.

Note to my readers: something funny was going on with my site this week. I could not log on for three days, though the site stayed up. I think it’s passed now. And to those who did not see comments appear for a while–comments are moderated. And usually up within a day. But this week, I could not moderate them while the site was down. They are up and running again. Comments do work, and I love them, so please keep ‘em coming!

I fear I have disappointed the people of the Seychelles.

I still have nothing to say.

It’s a blah time: school is in session, which means a harried workpace. I had flu and then bronchitis-or-something, so did not get enough research done in the intersession. The congestion is almost gone, except when I go outside in the cold, or move around, which means cabin fever and no exercise. And my usual way of dealing with stress and the doldrums is walking out and about, and going to the YMCA.

I know, I keep saying I have nothing to say, and then I say something. But you know what I mean: it isn’t very exciting. So to amuse you, or try to do so, I will add a nice phot-ey here:

There’s just so much in this photo, and yet, it renders me speechless.

If the Green Giant does not put things in perspective, what will?

I have nothing to say to you right now.

You didn’t do anything, honey. It’s me. I just have nothing to say. No, I’m not sad, I just have nothing to say.

Well, as usual, I have one thing to say, but I thought it might bore you. You want to hear it? Okay, but don’t say I did not warn you.

gmail, baby. What the heck? I got an invite, thanks Laura. And I kind of appreciate the vast improvements over hotmail and yahoo. But there is one glaring problem with gmail: you have to hit “More Options” before you get an option to “trash” (delete) a message.

In my world, I want to see a button while I am looking at the post, and I want to click the button, and email-be-gone. But no, gmail makes this into a two-step process. And honey, I do not have time for that.

And to make matters worse, there are oodles of keyboard shortcuts for composing, searching, etc. ad infinitum, but damnit, no shortcut for deleting. Why can’t I hit the ampersand key or control+d and delete something?

Hello! I know gmail is designed so you can archive everything, but you people obviously have no idea how much email the verbal chameleon gets. No idea. And you have no concept, obviously, that most of what passes through my email, like most of what passes through my mailbox, is just plan not archivable. By a long shot.

And you people obviously have no idea how quickly someone can use up 1000 MB from their main email account, if they use your silly archive feature to archive everything. I am a recovered pack-rat, man, and I do not need this kind of system to bring me back to the gutter. Like vodka to a drunk, your gmail is to a recovered archiver.

That’s all I had to say. I feel a bit better now.

Update (1/24): My, that was a pointless rant, I do apologize. It turns out I just needed to figure out what I was doing. “Show Options” yields a two-step-delete process. but “More Actions” drop-down menu just one drop-down to delete. What an idiot I can be, eh? Well, I am laying it all on the table for you folks. And the verbal chameleon is a big enough woman to say she was wrong. Maybe I was just too tired to deal with the tiniest learning curve the other day. Or maybe I needed a good rant. In any case, thanks for nodding patiently, and not telling me I was an eejit.

Remember the beginning of Laverne and Shirley, when the sign over the Milwaukee building announces, “Welcome Milwaukee Visitors”?

Well, the site statistics provided by my server tell me that 2% of my visitors in January have been from the Seychelles. So, welcome, Seychelles visitors. (Yes, fellow English teachers, I realize, I am welcoming visitors from Seychelles, while Milwaukee was welcoming visitors to their fine city, but I like the ring of it.) I am glad you were not badly hit by the Tsunamis.

And to everyone, thanks for your patience as I expand my knowledge of how the internets work. I should say a few things, to my readers:

1/ I welcome suggestions and comments.

2/ My comments are moderated. Not, dear reader, because I do not trust you. But simply because I have not yet got Wordpress’s Blacklist plugin to work right, and I am constantly the victim of spam for p-o-k-e-r and v-i-a-g-r-a. I moderate my comments to protect you. Until this protection is automated, I thank you for your patience. The moderation means you need to include your email address, and it also means there’s a delay between when you fill out the comment form, and when your comments appear. I hope those seeking anonymity will not be put off.

With that in mind, can anyone tell me why my truefresco.org referring web pages meter produces lines through the name of referring sites?

Thank you, dear readers.

Despite not being a very materialistic person, really, I do have a few possessions that I’m quite fond of: for their utilitarian value, of course. And in the coming socialist revolution, like good bread and subway passes, all the people should have them, and a mac to hook them up to.

I love the iPod. Yes, it is way overpriced and imperfect in many ways. And product hype can be ever so annoying.

But Dell CEO Kevin Rollins seems to be sowing some sour grapes when he compares it to another product he sees as a flash-in-the-pan (!), the Sony Walkman:

In an interview with Silicon.com, Kevin Rollins claimed the product faced an uphill struggle to capitalize on the success of the iPod and sustain it into the future, drawing parallels with Sony’s Walkman. “It’s interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it’s only this past year it’s become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman – a rage, everyone had to have one. Well you don’t hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy.”

I’m sorry, what? You don’t hear about the Walkman anymore? The Sony Walkman was huge. Yes, it was an overpriced brand-name item, and most normal folks got a cheap knock-off. But my generation spent our pre-teen and teenaged years wrapped in individual musical comfort and oblivion. It was revolutionary. In the States, “Walkman” (like Kleenex and Band-Aid and Jell-O) was one of those brand-names which managed to morph into a generic noun: what could be a better sign of the lasting hold a product has had on the populace? (In contrast, in Britain, where as a general rule brand names are not substituted as generic nouns, people have “personal stereos.” But in the U.S. it was always a “walkman,” no matter who made it.)

Yes, portable music killed quality audio, ruins our hearing, and makes everyone into anti-social hermits. But as much as I love music, I’ve never owned a really good stereo. And as a teenager, I would have been an anti-social hermit in the back of the car anyway. Sadly, I believe most families who stopped talking to one another did so well before they plugged into their headsets.

Since I stopped being a teenager, my use of personal stereo-type devices has been relegated to use in transportation and, only very occasionally, while walking down the street. Like when I tried to learn a few phrases of Polish on my way to work before a recent trip. Or when listening to Ben Kweller cheered up my commutes during a stressful and busy first week-on-the-job.

And I do lament the loss of hearing which I am convinced those headphones blaring U2’s War for most of the 80’s engendered. Or did it? My dad started to have trouble hearing in crowded bars and restaurants when he was 30, a good ten years before he started to listen to Offenbach on a personal stereo. (By the way, I’m not losing my hearing by a long shot, Thank God, but I do have trouble hearing people around a table in a crowded bar or restaurant.)

It’s true, I am an Apple junkie. They’re not perfect, but the company just seems to have a handle on user-friendly interfaces. I am the first to admit they need to bring prices down in order to get the world on board with their superior personal computing platform. They also need to listen to their users more carefully: the new under-$500 Apple Mini is a nice idea, but only for people who have a monitor lying around. The iPod Shuffle is ridiculously overpriced. And I don’t get the need for an iPod photo at all. Hasn’t everyone been asking for an Apple-designed PDA for years?

And yes, I think if I had a Creative Zen or an iRio or whatever-the-heck, I’d love it too. (Hey, especially if it was orange or pink.) It’s the utilitarian value, after all, (and the color!) that matters. But there’s something to be said for a well-made ground-breaking invention. Where’s that box of Kleenex?

Photos above from iPods Around the World at iPod Lounge.

Well, I was raving about this in Bicyclemark’s Comments, so I suppose I should continue it here.

W. was on Barbara Walters the other night, and it was much as you’d expect from him. But the man do surprise me from time to time.

Par example:

When asked whether the Tsunami was the act of an angry god, Bush replied something that it’s wrong for humans to ascribe actions to God, and that it’s wrong for us to say that God wanted certain things to happen on earth. It’s wrong to put words in God’s mouth.

I was caught completely off-guard by these remarks, since I was under the impression that God had chosen Bush to lead America, and, well, I got that idea from W. himself! Okay, maybe it wasn’t Bush directly. Maybe it was the Observer:

. . . in the lead-up to announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Bush told a Texan evangelist that he had had a premonition of some form of national disaster happening.

Bush said to James Robinson: ‘I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen… I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.’

Of course, it’s not even the Observer, but the Observer quoting a book. And we all know you can’t rely on those old things.

His supporters were making such statements for sure. See David Frum of the National Review: “For now, let’s say that while the President’s opponents have made much sport of the idea that God called George Bush to the presidency, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to doubt that God wants President Bush re-elected.”

Maybe I never got the impression from Bush but from his zealous supporters. Maybe Bush is being correct and setting the record straight for his disciples. Maybe. How helpful of him to do so after the election.

Obviously Bush realizes that it’s dangerous to associate natural disasters with God’s will:

Ever since 9/11, I’ve been really wary of men telling me God told them to do something, anything.

And why do people think God is telling them to murder people from America, or from Iraq? Why would God tell them to lead the country? Wouldn’t God tell them to get affordable prescriptions and health care for all people, everywhere, to fund public education, to lighten up on the abuse of prisoners, and stop murdering civilians and babies?

Wouldn’t God tell W. to stop lying?

Well, first I was not blogging for a bit.

Then, I was not blogging a bit with the ‘flu.

I’ve been down with the dreaded lurgy since Sunday, and just got back on the computer yesterday, for some tentative emailing. I still feel like ick, but I am now so completely bored with reading and television that I am ready to tear my hair out.

Just now I realized that I had popped the evil box on and sat down to look at the internets (as multitasking is my habit, even when unproductive), but had not chosen a program. The box is evil. The box wants you to look at the pretty lights. The box does not want you to change the channel.

So I typed away, and Keanu Reeves (ugh) was talking to some blond chick, and it was so inane, but I just ignored it, thinking it would get better or go away. And it didn’t, and just as I realized some foofy romance pop was gearing up and Keanu was heading in for the old kiss, that I had the channel-changing-and-turning-off thingy right next to me–and doggonit, I wasn’t even using it. I had the power all along and didn’t know it.

Zap! Take that Keanu. VC is back.

When I was little, my dad bought my brother and myself an electric train set. On birthdays and other gift-giving occasions (like Chrismahanakwanzakah), bro would get train cars, and I’d get houses, buildings, landscaping materials, animals, and little people. Dad built a nice big platform in the basement, and we set it all out, and added as new items came in. It sounds really pre-Feminist, but actually, I liked the houses, people, animals, and landscaping–they gave me something to do. And I think bro liked the electronic trains best.

It looked a bit like this (only with a train going round it):

The best time we ever had was the night we painted the people. They were little neutral colored people–in different shapes, with different clothes and tools attached to them, and they were maybe 3/4″ tall. And we painted them with increasing recklessness as the evening wore on–two adults with wacky senses of humor and two kids of 7 and 10. Good times. I also thought it was so cool how Arthur, played by Dudley Moore, had a train running around his spoiled drunken rich boy-man home, but then I was seven.

The whole kit and kaboodle has long been dismantled and packed away for future generations.

Thank God for the Freedom of Information Act. In this beautiful new century, we can have full knowledge of just how truly idiotic our government officials can be.

The Sunshine Project brings to light many such instances, but I draw your attention to one particular gem, demonstrating that among its grand schemes to harrass the enemy, the US considered producing chemicals which would purportedly cause the enemy to engage in sexual (and preferably homosexual) activities, with the expectation that this would be to the detriment of discipline and morale.

What the planners may not have been taking into account here is that unlike the other chemicals proposed in the report, which attract stinging bugs and bees, for example, an aphrodisiac might improve enemy morale–if troops are turned on, who’s to say they won’t be happier? More disciplined? Well, okay, I guess I see their point, they would probably not be more disciplined. But I bet the enemy would enjoy this much more than storms of stinging wasps.

Harassing, Annoying, and “Bad Guy” Identifying Chemicals (redacted)
US Air Force Wright Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB (OH)
June 1994

Comment: This “non-lethal” chemical weapons proposal from the US Air Force proposes development of a variety of chemical weapons, such as: “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behaviour”. Other chemicals proposed includes ones that “made personnel very sensitive to sunlight”, and that “attract stinging and biting bugs, rodents, and larger animals” to enemy positions.

Other Sunshine Project non-lethal weapons files are located here.

I could not believe this when a well-read librarian directed me to it, but it appears to be legit.

If the US government can conceive of a gay spray, is a right-wing fundamentalist spray far off?