So I’m wandering around YouTube and I see a few posts of clips from the old Superman TV series. I used to scramble for the TV set every day after school to watch these, and to this day still feel a little thrill whenever I hear the harp and strings trilling the intro to the theme music. The series first aired in 1952, a year before I was born, and the last episodes were finished and aired sometime in 1957 or 58. I became an avid childhood fan sometime around 62 or 63 when the episodes began appearing on local after school TV. I think the first episode I ever watched was Panic In The Sky, which many fans say was the best episode of the series.
I was in elementary school, and our TV set back then was a black and white vacuum tube affair with rabbit’s ears antenna resting on the top of the set. That was actually the typical setup in most homes back then. You turned the thing on and then you had to wait a minute or so for all the tubes to warm up before you saw or heard anything. And even then it usually took another five minutes or so for things to settle down and you got a picture that wasn’t fuzzy and didn’t flutter or roll. Often this was accompanied by a lot of fiddling with the rabbit’s ears. Luckily by the time I got home from school the TV had already been warmed up from playing all of grandma’s daytime TV soap operas. If I got home from school early it was As The World Turns. If I got home late it was General Hospital. Thankfully, in their infinite wisdom and greedy willingness to exploit a much younger and more easily dazzled audience that the local TV station operators knew wouldn’t sit still for Will Doris Find Out That Ted Is Her Long Lost Brother Before She Marries Him, after 4PM the soaps gave way to Superman, Astro Boy, Supercar, and The Cisco Kid.
I saw several posts on YouTube of the opening titles for various seasons of Superman. So just for kicks and grins I clicked on the opening titles for the first season. In the comments below I saw this…
(5 months ago)
Brings back great childhood memories!
(3 months ago)
Sure does.
I used to watch this on Nick at Night when I was 8 or 9. Was a great show.
Arrggh…! For the record, Nick at Night was spawned off of Nickelodeon in 1985, by which time I was 32. Am I that old? Vacuum tubes? Rabbit’s ears? Yeah…I reckon. Damn. How did that happen?
Singer Ian ‘H’ Watkins’ has told of the "complete nightmare" of growing up gay in the south Wales valleys.
The former Steps singer, who is from the Rhondda, filmed a personal account for BBC Wales’ Week In Week Out.
In the programme, he also looked at schools’ treatment of gay issues and admitted he was bullied "relentlessly".
Making the documentary, he said he was shocked to be told by one Christian campaigner that being gay made him no better than a serial killer.
Christian Voice director, Stephen Green, told Watkins his lifestyle was "sinful", and made him no better than US mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Mr Green also told the former Celebrity Big Brother contestant he could become straight if he wanted to.
The comparison to Dahmer who was jailed for life in 1992 after the Wisconsin trial heard evidence of his cannibalism after murdering his victims came when Watkins told Mr Green he was "completely happy" being gay and that he was in a loving relationship.
Mr Green added: "Jeremy (sic) Dahmer was happy murdering people, does that make it right?"
The comment shocked Watkins and he responded: "So, being completely happy and at one with yourself, and being in a happy, loving relationship is the same as murdering somebody?"
But Mr Green stuck to his guns during the exchange: "Sin is sin…in the eyes of God, sin is sin…"
When Watkins referred to people being born gay, Mr Green told him: "I don’t believe anybody is born homosexual. God wouldn’t allow anybody to be born homosexual."
Watkins, who came out when he was in the Big Brother house alongside Shilpa Shetty and Jade Goody, says he was "absolutely flabbergasted" by the comments.
You might ask why, since like a lot of gay people he’d been hearing them most of his life. But staring into the face of grinning depravity always comes as a shock, no matter how often you’ve seen it before. That wasn’t a conversation about Watkin’s homosexuality, it was about his happiness. Green saw it…saw it was real the moment Watkins told him of it…saw it in his face, in his voice, in that peaceful aura truly happy people gently radiate. He saw it, and his immediate reflex was to punch it out. And he reached for the first weapon he could wrap his hands around to do it. Ah…Jeffrey Dahmer…the cannibal…that’ll do the trick… And he swung. He swung at that innermost place in Watkin’s heart where that joy had taken root.
It wasn’t sin Green was striking out at. God is just the grown up bully’s substitute for mother’s skirt…something to hide behind when the bullied start looking like they’ve had enough. It was the happiness in Watkin’s voice Green hated, it was his joy, it was the sight of a person in love, and it was pure reflex. And he did it, with the same brutally carnal delight a playground bully takes in busting apart that nice toy the neighbor’s kid just got for his birthday…for the pleasure of seeing the look in the kid’s eyes when he realizes his toy is gone. The tears afterward, are like free candy. Green is probably still savoring the look on Watkin’s face at the moment of impact. He’ll be savoring it for weeks.
Yes…My Hair Is Long, Isn’t It? And…My Blue Jeans…They Fit So Well Don’t They…?
It’s been a while since I’ve been catcalled by some jackass in a passing car, but it just happened a while ago, and in front of where I work no less.
I’d just ducked across the street to the little student coffee hutch in Bloomberg to get a bagel, since the cafeteria here was out by the time I got in. I was walking back toward the crosswalk when I heard a car behind me beep its horn and saw the driver motioning me to go ahead and cross. Most of the drivers here are friendly to pedestrians, probably because this being a university campus there are so many. Drivers that hate navigating a ton of pedestrian crosswalks have plenty of alternative routes. Anyway…so I start crossing and then I hear the passenger shout out something at me. I didn’t quite catch it, but the driver, a young guy looked really embarrassed.
Probably, it was something like "Get a haircut!" which I got tired of sometime back in 1973. I thought I caught the word "hair…" anyway, but I’m still not sure. At work, I wear it in a ponytail that I’m pleased to say goes halfway down my back. Long hair is high maintenance stuff, and if I didn’t have the thing for long haired males that I do, mine would be as short now as as most other American males’ (alas, alas…).
The point being, hair like this is work. It has to be brushed constantly…and after a nice drive in the countryside with the windows down and the moonroof open it’s a mass of knots I have to carefully detangle. Showers with me are three-fourths hair care and one-fourth the rest of me. When the conditioner I use suddenly goes missing on the store shelves I panic. I take pride in my hair. It may look unruly because it’s never cut, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get a lot of TLC. It gets tons. It’s my mane. Grey streaked now though it is. People have been known to enjoy running their fingers through it.
So…Get Over It!
Last time I got catcalled was last summer while I was walking out of the Lambda Rising here in Baltimore’s little gay neighborhood. But that time it was "Nice ass!". "Nice ass!" is always welcome.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A man who was found with a woman’s body packed in dry ice in his hotel room told a newspaper that her death may have been in some way connected to religion.
”Everything that happened was for religious reasons,” Stephen David Royds told The Orange County Register on Sunday.
Royds spoke to the newspaper in a brief interview from jail. He repeated the statement four times but did not elaborate.
Detectives found the body of Monique Felicia Trepp, 33, fully clothed inside a large Rubbermaid container late Thursday after arresting Royds at the Fairmont Newport Beach for investigation of selling and possessing cocaine, police Sgt. Evan Sailor said.
Sometimes, it’s the little details that keep you wondering…
Along with Trepp’s body, police found porch swings, toy night-vision goggles and large sake bottles with lamp sockets stuffed into their spouts in the room of Stephen David Royds.
Note to self: Don’t open the door to missionaries without a gun…
Via Dan Savage over at SLOG… Seems like this is my week to revisit some folks I’ve done political cartoons on. This time it’s Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern, who back in May of 2005 demanded that all Oklahoma public libraries move any book with a gay or lesbian character or theme into a restricted adults only section. Not that Oklahoma has any shortage of office holders who like to gay bash for votes, but Kern if anything, represents a portion of America distinctive for the authenticity and the stamina of its hate. Hear it speak:
Gay America doesn’t really need to hear this. This sort of thing is nothing new to us. We hear it all the time. We know what it is that we’re facing. It is straight America that needs to hear this. All of you, who think that the gay community exaggerates the threat we face every day in a nation where this kind of poisonous vitriol remains largely unexamined, unacknowledged, and unconfronted. The reason Sally Kern can feel free to say that gay people, Gay People, are a cancer spreading throughout America isn’t that she was speaking before a small group of like minded bigots, but that the larger community of heterosexual Americans don’t bother paying attention to the torrent of hate right under their noses. Until it actually kills some poor kid like Matthew Shepard, or Lawrence King. For the sake of your country, for the sake of your own personal safety because more and more these days, straight people are getting gay bashed too, you need to listen to this.
The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation.
Not everyone’s lifestyle is equal. Just like not all religions are equal.
No society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more then, you know, a few decades.
It’s the death knell for this country.
I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has. Even more so then terrorism.
They’re going after…in schools…two year olds.
They’re going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle.
Gays are infiltrating city councils.
Have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is controlled by gays? There are some others…Pittsburgh Pennsylvania…Kensington Maryland…Oregon, West Palm Beach Florida and many other places in Florida… What’s happening? And they are winning elections.
If you’ve got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, you know I’m going to just forget about it because the rest of me is fine? It spreads. Okay? And this stuff is deadly and it is spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.
This is what republicans have been driving voters to the polls with for decades now. And it’s been killing people. And they don’t care, as long as it wins them elections.
Via Pam’s House Blend… Right Wing Watch has this video up on McCain’s new buddy, Ron Parsley, whom I’ve done a political cartoon about previously…
“This so-called hate crimes legislation would preferred status to people based on entirely on who they choose as a sexual partner. What if they change their mind the next night!”
“Why is marriage under attack?!…Why is the family coming under such brutal attack from the forces of darkness…”
“I will lift my voice against THE AGENDA of America’s tortured and angry homosexual population…”
“In essence the Supreme Court of the United States on June 26, 2003, legalized the perverted act of sodomy. And we said nothing…”
“This is not about homosexual rights or lesbian rights…this is about THE DESTRUCTION of the VERY COVENANT (organ music rises up in the background as he waves his finger desperately) They are seeking to “redefine” marriage. In other words, they are intending to PERVERT God’s original intention!”
Parsley, an Ohio megachurch pulpit thumper once shouted out at the “War on Christians” conference in 2006, “A spiritual invasion is taking place! Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!” When these righteous men of god, these men of high moral values speak of war, people listen. And here’s the blood payoff…
The mistake when these people rail against hate crime laws, is to take the rhetoric at face value. They’re babbling that those laws will restrict their ability to preach lock and load sermons from the pulpit, but it’s not the loss of their the first amendment rights they’re worried about. When Parsley shouts “lock and load” he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s calling for blood on the streets. If his useful tools, the young male thugs he’s counting on strike fear into the hearts of gay people, suddenly find themselves being held accountable for their actions, then they might think twice and Parsley’s work, and that of his fellow hate mongers will all be in vain. They’re not worried about being silenced. They’re worried that their words won’t have the desired effect anymore, that the bloodshed will stop. A fearful homosexual, is a good homosexual. A dead homosexual, is an even better one.
We’ve Decided, After Much Prayer, To Stop Calling Them Stripes…
Behold, Exodus International’s ministry to persons afflicted with Same Sex Attractions…
…or Was at least, if you take their word for it. You know you can take them at their word don’t you…?
In August, 2007 after a lot of prayer, deliberation and listening to friends and critics alike — but mostly the Lord — we decided to back out of policy issues and our Director of Government Affairs took a position with another organization.
Jim Burroway has more Here. Peterson Toscano notes the shift in Exodus policy in his blog post Lovely Shifts And Dramatic Changes. Allow me to be the grouch here. Take another look at that anti-hate crime laws poster. It’s a damn lie. And they knew it was a damn lie while they were creating it. And in that, it is eminently typical of the quality of Exodus International’s relationship to honesty with regard to…well…goddamn near everything. Homosexuals… homosexuality… Teh Gay Lifestyle… ex-gay therapy… They have lied in the past. Brazenly. Ingeniously. Unashamedly. Unhesitatingly. But we can trust them now, can’t we?
Um….no. Let’s look at what’s being said here. Really look…
It may sound nuanced but we weren’t really involved in “politics.” We never worked for the direct election or defeat of a candidate.
No Alan…that doesn’t sound ‘nuanced’. It sounds duplicitous. Never mind that lobbying politicians and voters on policy issues is politics too, observe the telltale adjective…the Direct election or defeat of a candidate? I’m laughing in your face Alan. Exodus has always been a republican tool in election campaigns. Why have so many of Exodus’ "Change Is Possible" billboard campaigns been waged in swing states, with relatively small gay populations? You know goddamned well why. The republican candidate bashes the democrat over their stand on gay rights issues. You folks come along and tell the voters that homosexuals don’t have to be homosexual if they don’t want to anyway, thereby allowing the republican gay basher to blame gays for their own persecution, and the voters to tell themselves that by voting against gay rights they’re not hurting anyone, because the gays can always stop being gay when they’ve had enough.
The primary function of Exodus has always been to make political gay bashing palatable to voters. I mean…look…you don’t actually Change very many homosexuals do you? If I ran a corporation whose main product failed miserably so often I’d have gone out of business long ago. But Change isn’t your product. Animus toward homosexuals is your product. And by that measure, you’re still worth the money the religious right spends on you, if not quite as much as before.
Ever since John Smid had that brilliant idea of dragging gay teenagers into ex-gay therapy against their will, you folks have had to endure a lot more critical scrutiny then before, and one fall out of that is that people are starting to notice all the political activism you’re doing tends to contradict your ersatz message of love. You’re more effective for the anti-gay right when people really believe that all you’re trying to do is help all those poor victims of Same Sex Attraction Disorder who hate themselves because…well…because of all the goddamned lies your kind likes to spread about them. Hence, the costume change. And notice how it went from "We are not a political organization" to "We are not a political organization Anymore." Nice. But…yes…you are…
One area that we found to be incredibly beneficial was simply sharing our stories with lawmakers. If and when there are opportunities to do that we will.
The word for that is Lobbying Alan.
I know…I know…it’s So Hard to remember what words really mean after spending so many years as a mindless cog a lie factory…isn’t it. But they Do mean things, existence exists, reality is real, and when all is said and done that’s the enemy you’ve been fighting all your life right there, not teh gay, not teh liberal, not teh secular.
Once upon a time there was a gay teenager, who fell in love with a beautiful high school classmate. But at first, he didn’t know that the wonderful thing he was feeling, that he’d never before felt in his life, was love. The days were more beautiful then before. The wind at his face was sharper and sweeter. The sunsets were a little more brilliant. The stars shone a little more intensely in the night sky. He felt more alive then he ever had before in his life. But he did not know it was love that he felt.
For one thing, the gay teenager had been taught that gay people don’t love. Gays, he was taught, just have sex. Ugly, monstrous, murderous, sordid and twisted sex. He was taught that gays often killed the people they had sex with. He was taught that gays usually mutilated the bodies of the people they had sex with. He was taught that gays raped children. He was taught that gays hated themselves, because deep down inside, they knew how sick and twisted they were.
His teachers taught him those things about gay people. The newspapers and magazines he read said those things about gay people. The TV shows and movies he watched told him stories about the ugly things gays did to normal people, and to each other.
And since the gay teenager knew deep down inside that he wasn’t any of those horrible, evil things he had been taught that gays were, he believed he couldn’t possibly be one. His family thought he was a lazy dreamer. His grades in school were barely passable. His teachers and his mother scolded him constantly for not doing his homework. But he knew he wasn’t a monster. So he couldn’t be in love. Because to be in love with another male would have meant that he Was a monster.
All through his junior year, and through most of his senior year, he could not allow himself to believe that it was love he felt for the beautiful classmate. He could only glance silently, and then quickly away, as they passed each other in the hallway, feeling a terrible longing deep in his heart that he couldn’t understand, because he knew it could not be love.
But the classmate he was in love with had a good heart. He worked hard in school, and at home, and treated all his friends well, and he was trusted and loved by all of them. One day he spoke to the gay teenager, and soon after they began to talk to one another as they met throughout their schoolday. They began finding times and places they could be alone together. In the library. In certain empty classrooms, or certain empty corners of the school, at certain times of the day. Wherever they knew they could be alone. And they would meet at the end of their schoolday at his locker, and walk together into the world outside their school, where they would part company…the gay teenager to his mom’s apartment across the railroad tracks, his classmate to his parent’s house in the nice neighborhood across the street.
And one day…one bright beautiful day the gay teenager would never forget…he realized that he Was in love, and that to be in love with another male was beautiful after all. Because he saw that he had fallen in love with someone who was as beautiful within, as they were without. Because he saw that he had fallen in love with someone whose heart was as good as his smile was beautiful. Because the one he loved was smart, and worked hard, and treated his friends with love. And the gay teenager saw it was all of that which he had fallen in love with; not merely the surface beauty his eyes could see, but also the inner beauty his heart saw as well.
And because his classmate studied hard, the gay teenager also began to study hard. His grades went up and his teachers and his mother were pleased. And because his classmate worked after school, the gay teenager got a job and worked nights too and earned money for himself and his mother, and his family who had thought him nothing more then a lazy dreamer were pleased. And because his classmate was bound for college, the gay teenager, whose own father had never graduated from high school, decided he must go to college too. And he did.
And whenever they met for the rest of that last summer together, whenever his classmate smiled at him, the gay teenager smiled too. And for the rest of his life, the gay man the gay teenager eventually became would smile whenever he remembered it. And he never hated himself.
He never hated himself.
He had been taught that to be gay was to be a terrible monster. He had been taught that to be gay was to be human garbage. He had been taught that to be homosexual, was to never know love. But because self understanding had happened to him in just that way…and because of who it was he had fallen into first love with…he knew at once, as soon as he saw it, that he had been taught lies. He Did know love. And it Was beautiful. And it Was good. And the gay teenager saw the truth of it, and how fine and beautiful it was. And he never hated himself.
And because of that, he never did any of the self destructive things that ignorant people taught him that gay people do. Oh for certain he partied it up like all of his boyhood friends. But he never tried to destroy his mind with drugs or alcohol because he knew there was nothing wrong with the person he was. And he never sought out sex with strangers in the alleys or toilets or empty parks, because he knew his heart wasn’t ugly, and that his heart’s desires weren’t terrible, but noble and good and decent, and the love he was looking for, that his heart needed, couldn’t be found in the toilet, and didn’t belong in the gutter, and wasn’t to be given away to strangers.
Because he never hated himself. Because of that first love.
Happy birthday. I wish for you all the best that life can bring your way, and everything your heart holds dear. Life took us in different directions as life will do, and there is never any going back. But the boy is father to the man and you are still that decent, good-hearted, hard working person I knew way back when, and a lot of what I am today I am because of that. It could have gone in so many different directions for me back then, taken so many hard and cruel and ugly turns like it did for so many gay guys of our generation and it didn’t because of you.
Thank you.
And…
Alles Gute! Alles Gute! All the best! All the best!
I grew up in the suburbs…in various garden apartments my mom moved us to, as her employer relocated from time to time, and as her income level rose marginally. My earliest memories are of living in the city though, in Washington D.C. close to the Northeast freight yards. I used to watch the trains from the screened in porch on our second floor of our apartment. As soon as she could, mom moved us out of the city, so I wouldn’t have to attend city schools which she felt were dangerous. To this day I cannot imagine how much worse it could have been for me in the city, because I was bullied pretty constantly throughout grade school anyway, all the way until my high school years at Woodward, which were heaven by comparison.
I vividly remember the first nice garden apartment we moved to in the suburbs. It had a balcony with large plate glass sliding doors and tons of green spaces between the buildings for kids to play in. And it had Air Conditioning! I thought we’d really moved up in the world. Then I began making friends at school who lived in houses…real houses…with upstairs and downstairs and basements and everything. The suburbs were heaven it seemed. Just…heaven.
After years of listening to David Brooks go on and on and on about how real Americans loved the exurbs—we can’t get enough of those big yards, soulless bedroom communities, and long commutes—I was thrilled to read this piece in The Atlantic yesterday.
Pent-up demand for urban living is evident in housing prices. Twenty years ago, urban housing was a bargain in most central cities. Today, it carries an enormous price premium. Per square foot, urban residential neighborhood space goes for 40 percent to 200 percent more than traditional suburban space in areas as diverse as New York City; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C….
Author Christopher Leinberger points out that American exurbs are likely to suffer the same fate that American inner cities did from the ’50s to the ’80s: soaring crime rates, deteriorating schools, falling property values…
The experience of cities during the 1950s through the ’80s suggests that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families—and in all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments….
As the residents of inner-city neighborhoods did before them, suburban homeowners will surely try to prevent the division of neighborhood houses into rental units, which would herald the arrival of the poor. And many will likely succeed, for a time. But eventually, the owners of these fringe houses will have to sell to someone, and they’re not likely to find many buyers; offers from would-be landlords will start to look better, and neighborhood restrictions will relax. Stopping a fundamental market shift by legislation or regulation is generally impossible.
Which suburbs will avoid this fate? According to Leinberger suburbs and exurbs served by commuter rail—particularly those with walkable urban-ish centers (older suburbs with small retail strips in their “downtowns areas” or newer developments with “lifestyle centers”)—may buck the trend. But as gas prices continue to rise and more people choose walkable cities over car-dependent exurbs, the fate of McMansions will be sealed: they will become, Leinberger argues, “the new slums.”
I moved into the city here in Baltimore after I got the staff position at Space Telescope. I am within a short walking distance of work, two nice grocery stores, several drug stores, and some really nice restaurants. I seldom need to drive anywhere most days, unless I need to get something at the Home Depot or Sears. The rising cost of driving anywhere has cut into my lifestyle somewhat, since I love to do cross-country roadtrips. But it’s not critical, other then it drives the price of all the goods and services I buy up too and that’s more the problem for me then the cost of gasoline itself. No…I don’t have all the nice green space around me I did in the suburbs. But my neighborhood is very walkable. City life I’m finding, can be just as nice as life in the suburbs was.
You want to cut this nation’s dependency on oil down? Mass transit isn’t going to do it. The cost of all the service to the entire sprawling suburbs necessary to make suburbanites want to use it will amount to about as much oil consumption as if people just drove their cars anyway. What is needed, is to make the cities livable, so people will move into them, close enough to work to walk it, or a short light rail or bus ride, and close enough to all their routine shopping, like for food, that they won’t need to drive nearly so much.
The suburbs were heaven, but heaven wasn’t sustainable. They were only nice so long as most people lived in the cities and the roads weren’t jammed and the cost of gasoline wasn’t much. As the cost of gasoline keeps rising, the balance of population between the cities and the suburbs may go back to something more like what it was. But it will never be the middle class heaven it once was again. I don’t think they’ll turn into great swaths of slums either though, since so many working poor and poor people will still need to get to and from jobs and various city services and things and that means either driving or public transportation again and I just don’t see public transportation being that widely accessible in the sprawling suburbs. Public transportation will always make more sense in the densely packed cities then in the suburbs. I think the suburbs will eventually go back to being what they once were…either farmland or a place where the rich build their mansions.
Can you tell the difference between music that passed through a pricey Monster stereo Cable, and a coat hanger? A reader forwarded us a post from the Audioholics Home Theater Forum and its author says no. He says his brother ran an experiment on him and four other audio aficionados listening to a new CD from a new group blindfolded. Seven different songs were played, each time heard with the speaker hooked up to Monster Cables, and the other time, hooked up to coat hanger wire. Nobody could determine which was the Monster Cable and which was the coat hanger. The kicker? None of the subjects even knew that coat hangers were going to be used.
The powerful winter storm system that swept across Central Europe this weekend nearly caused a massive air traffic disaster on Saturday in Hamburg. A Lufthansa jet struggled through 90 kilometer-per-hour (56 miles per hour) crosswinds on its approach into the Hamburg airport. After skidding dramatically across the runway in an aborted landing, the plane’s pilot opted to take off once again.
I’d have to say that was a good decision…
Video: SPIEGEL TV
Okay…when I go out to the Open Source Conference in Portland again this year…I am definitely driving. My brother wants to see my new car anyway…
No…Actually The Grass Isn’t Any Greener Over There Either…
Whenever someone starts preaching to me about how the sex lives of gay people are sad and broken I just cheerfully point them to the tons, literally tons, of articles out there written by heterosexuals, for heterosexuals on how to fix their own broken sex lives. If the grass is any greener on their side of the fence I’ve yet to see it. Other then the fact that their marriages are given some security in the rule of law that ours are not, their intimate sex lives don’t seem any less difficult to manage then our own.
And believe it or not, single though I’ve been most of my life, and gay ever since…well, puberty…I read those articles now and then, mostly for clues as to what pitfalls to avoid in the event that my own sex life happens to improve. Even though they’re written with a basic premise of gender difference in the relationship, a lot of it can I think, apply to same sex couples too. Conversely, I think opposite sex couples could learn a thing or two from our households too. How gender equality works in practice being one of them, but also how it is to keep things together in a hostile world. When all you have is literally each other, and you have to find a way to make it work without the support of the world around you, then you really know what your union is made of. The same sex couples who have made it in this world, under that kind of relentless emotional stress, are my heroes.
He’s a 38-year-old executive. She’s a 34-year-old homemaker. He says they never fight, and in many ways they’re compatible — but not when it comes to sex.
"It’s almost like a checklist," says Jon (who asked that his real name not be used) of their once-a-month lovemaking. The problem, he believes, is a lack of desire.
Sexually unfulfilling marriages aren’t limited to new parents or aging baby boomers with hormone imbalances. They can ensnare even the relatively young and the recently married. When they are unable to blame kids, stress or physical issues, many couples struggle unhappily to identify — and resolve — the problems behind their lackluster sex life.
Couples end up in sexually unfulfilling marriages for a variety of reasons, says Marty Klein, a licensed marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Palo Alto, California. One reason, he says, is America’s obsession with marriage.
Laura Berman, a Chicago sex therapist and relationship expert, agrees. "We put the blinders on when we’re dating," she says. "We focus so much on the wedding, we don’t notice the warning signs."
That obsession with marriage being fueled in part, by the fundamentalist kook pews here. Not everyone is temperamentally suited for marriage, and in any case, after you’re married is the wrong time to find out you’re not sexually compatible. Having sex while dating and before marriage, or for that matter when marriage isn’t even a goal, isn’t unhealthy unless it’s unloving. Much as the right hates the sex drive, it’s an important part of our being. Just ask your gay and lesbian neighbors: It does us great harm to put sex in the closet.
In more ways then one. As I was scanning down that CNN article, I saw this on the page…
When your spouse announces he’s gay… Which, wasn’t one of those Surprising reasons you’re not having sex either as it turned out. A lot of right wing pulpit thumpers say that sex before marriage is responsible for weakening the institution of marriage, but it isn’t. It’s the padded cell they’ve put marriage into on the one hand, and sex on the other, that’s weakened it. There is nothing wrong with sex that is truly loving and joyful. The more gay people know that and accept that there is nothing wrong with them and that their sex drives are as legitimate and as beautiful as those of heterosexuals, the fewer surprised spouses there’ll be. And the more intimately couples know each other before they tie the knot, the more likely they’ll go into it with that beautiful body and soul union that can make a marriage endure anything.
I’ve seen it happen. Maybe someday it’ll happen to me. If the pulpit thumpers would just get the fuck off our backs and out of our beds, it might happen to more of us.
A leaked Dell presentation accused Microsoft of making late changes to Windows Vista which forced key hardware partners to "limp out with issues" when the OS launched last year.
"Late OS code changes broke drivers and applications, forcing key commodities to miss launch or limp out with issues," said one slide in a Dell presentation dated March 25, 2007, about two months after Vista’s launch at retail and availability on new PCs.
The criticism was just one of many under the heading ‘What did not go well?’
Others ranged from knocks against Vista’s Windows Anytime Upgrade scheme, an in-place upgrade option, to several slams on ‘Windows Vista Capable’, the marketing programme that targeted PC buyers shopping for machines in the months leading up to Vista’s debut.
Funny how all the problems with Vista can be boiled down to two things: Microsoft’s tyrannical software license branding/activation scheme, and Vista’s locking down of the hardware to enforce film and music industry anti-piracy schemes.
In an email to CEO Steve Ballmer written less than three weeks after he took over the post, Sinofsky [chief of Windows development] spelled out his three reasons why Vista stumbled out the gate.
"No one really believed we would ever ship so they didn’t start the work until very late in 2006," Sinofsky said. "This led to the lack of availability [of device drivers]."
Okay…that’s bullshit. The reason why hardware vendors got started late, was because they kept having to start over. That’s right there in Sinofsky’s points two and three:
Next on his list: Changes to the operating systems’ video and audio infrastructure. "Massive changes in the underpinnings for video and audio really led to a poor experience at RTM," he said. "This change led to incompatibilities. For example, you don’t get Aero with an XP driver, but your card might not (ever) have a Vista driver."
Finally, said Sinofsky, other changes in Vista blocked Windows XP drivers altogether. "This is across the board for printers, scanners, WAN, accessories and so on. Many of the associated applets don’t run within the constraints of the security model or the new video/audio driver models."
The hardware driver issues arise from Microsoft’s changes to the hardware API to prevent anyone from tapping a pure digital signal and thereby bypassing Vista’s DRM. Microsoft has gone as far as to demand that video and audio circuitry not provide any way for a signal to be tapped directly from the hardware, as a requirement for Vista certification.
The problems with Anytime Upgrade revolved around the fact that you had to have your original install disks so the software could verify that you had a non-pirated copy of Windows XP before it would install Vista. A lot of folks didn’t get those from the hardware vendors. Others had trouble with the validation process that resulted in their computers being rendered inoperable. Some were told that their license was invalid, even though they had legitimately purchased it, and then found they could not downgrade back to XP. For many it was a nightmare.
This is what happens when you put profit over reliability. Software license branding, digital rights management, all add complexity to operating system software, which needs to be as straightforward and elegantly designed as possible for the sake of reliability. But the only thing Microsoft and Hollywood give a good goddamn about in terms of reliability is the sound of the cash register. Microsoft became a multi-billion dollar company distributing software that could be easily copied, and for them to get pissed off enough about piracy that they’re willing to break your computer to make sure it doesn’t have an unlicensed copy of Windows running on it is on its face more a measure of their corporate greed then how bad the problem of software piracy may have been. Windows piracy couldn’t have been so bad if honest software purchasers made Bill Gates a billionaire fifty-six times over could it? Unless of course, even that wasn’t enough money for him.
This is why I’m running Linux at home, and a smattering of Apple Macs. Yes, iTunes has DRM embedded in it too, but Apple seems not as paranoid about it as Redmond. And Linux is open source, so I don’t have to worry that if I have a hardware failure my OS won’t work anymore when I swap out whatever broke with something new. Amazon.Com is selling DRM free music now that I can play on both iTunes and my Linux boxes just fine. I don’t need Microsoft anymore in my home anymore. And the fact is that Linux is a mature enough technology now that most folks, who just use their computers for email, text editing, maybe a little checkbook balancing and web surfing would have no trouble using it at all.
For the moment, it looks like most people are standing pat on XP, or even older versions of Windows. They don’t see the need to upgrade, especially when Microsoft keeps making the upgrade path more and more onerous. Vista is costly not only for the software itself but the hardware you have to buy to run it smoothly. It didn’t have to be this way. Microsoft could have had a hit on their hands if they’d produced Vista for their customers, and not their stockholders and Hollywood media moguls. Greed and paranoia about piracy are killing the music industry. It’ll do the same to the big software companies too if they want it to.
According to the emails made public last week, Microsoft will apply the lessons it learned with Vista the next time around. "There is really nothing we can do in the short term," noted Joan Kalkman, the general manager of OEM and embedded worldwide marketing, in a message written a week after Sinofsky’s. "In the long term we have worked hard to establish and have committed to an OEM Theme for Windows 7 planning.
Committed to an OEM Theme for Windows 7 planning. Committed to an OEM Theme for Windows 7 planning. Committed to an OEM Theme for Windows 7 planning. Take that apart and try to figure out what it means. Go ahead. I give Microsoft another decade before it completely implodes. Nobody cares about their goddamned slogans and buzzwords anymore. It all sounded so cool back when Microsoft was a bunch of bratty young computer geeks running rings around stogy old IBM, but it just doesn’t fucking cut it now.
It was never about the promise of the personal computer was it Bill? It was never about taking technology out of the hands of big corporations and their mammoth data processing centers and putting it on people’s desktops and giving them control over their own data and empowering them. It was all about money wasn’t it Bill? Software was never about empowering people, it was just a way for you to become rich. And now you’re even bigger then IBM, stodgier, and way more paranoid, and all the little computer geek children are writing Open Source software now that anyone can copy and modify and use however they want to and running Linux and BSD and they don’t give a shit about Microsoft. And they’re wearing t-shirts that say, In a world without fences, who needs Gates?
I’ve been driving Traveler to work even though I can walk it, just for the pleasure of getting behind the wheel with that three-pointed star in the center of it at least once in a day. It’s only about a mile to work down a couple local side streets so its not as though I’m plowing through heavy commuter traffic. The other day as I was parking, one of the Grants Office folks spotted me getting out and I heard her say, cheerfully, "No Way! No Way!" "Yes," says I, a tad embarrassed…I didn’t buy the car to draw attention to myself…"I’ve wanted one of these since I was a teenager." And she says to me "I always figured you to get a Prius…"
She’s about the sixth person to tell me that. And not just a hybrid mind you, but Specifically a Prius. I figure it must be the ponytail.
I grew up in a waste-not-want-not household and I’m still that way to this day. I kept my last wallet until there was almost nothing left of it but the duct tape holding it together, and even then I’d have held onto it until a friend of mine tactfully suggested that pulling it out on a date wasn’t likely to win me a boyfriend. I’ve owned four new cars in my life so far. The last one, the Honda Accord, was an exception to the rule in that I traded it in while it still had a lot of value in it. But that was so I could buy Traveler. The other cars I owned until they were on their last legs. The Prism had over two-hundred thousand miles on it when I gave it up. If Traveler lives up to Mercedes’ legendary longevity (and I’m keeping my fingers crossed about that) it may well be the last car I ever have to buy. That’s green enough. And I think I’ve spared this good earth more gas fumes by living within walking distance of work, then commuting daily from the suburbs would have produced, even driving a Prius thank you. On the other hand, I probably make it up with my long distance road trips.
Hate me, I love to drive. I hate commuting, but I love to drive. That’s why I bought a Mercedes-Benz and not a Prius. When Daimler makes a Mercedes hybrid I might drive one then. On the other hand, they’re wringing out even more fuel efficiency from their diesels now from what I hear.
I’ve done two road trips with Traveler now…the one to Key West last Christmas, and just last weekend to Memphis Tennessee, and the car was a pure pleasure to drive down the highway on both trips. It is quiet, it is very comfortable, and so vault-solid you just feel absolutely safe and secure. I only wish it had a tad more trunk space. I’m getting real used to having the setting on the nav system that shows me on a split-screen how far to the upcoming highway exits and what services are available at each one. That way I don’t have to jump off at the first exit I see that has gas or some place to eat, if I know that there are more, and possibly better ones coming up after them, and that they’re not too far. (My brother just recently bought one of those aftermarket nav systems for his truck and he swears by it now.) The car gives you a clear view of everything around you, and a solid feel for the road under the wheels. Every control is within reach and easy to manipulate (contra Consumer Reports, who keep bellyaching about where Mercedes puts the cruse control stalk…I don’t have a problem with it…), every gauge is clear and easy to read. I can tuck the nav system display away, and still get directions from it from the center display on my speedometer. And of course, I hear the voice. In two miles…prepare to…turn left…
Gas is more expensive, since Traveler drinks only premium, and gets fewer miles per gallon then the Accord did. But if I keep a steady foot, or use the cruse control a lot, I get close to 30 mpg over a distance of highway driving (I averaged 29.7 on the Memphis trip), which isn’t bad for a luxury four door sedan with a V6. I have a feeling though, when they finally start shipping the diesels into this country, I’ll be wishing I waited for one. Especially if they bring in the little four banger. Thing is, diesel is even more costly then premium gasoline. Last night I saw diesel selling for $3.70 a gallon at a station that was selling premium for $3.29.
But I am still so thrilled to have this car that I still have to get into it at least once a day and take it somewhere. At some point I suppose the cost of gas will attenuate that. Then I’ll probably turn into one of those middle-age guys you see constantly washing and waxing their car out front of the house on the days I can’t drive it because the gas budget ran out. A friend’s father once bought a himself a brand new Mercedes sedan to replace the old one that just kept chugging along year after year, but was looking a bit run down. He very seldom drove the new one anywhere, preferring to keep it all nice and clean and spotless…and in the garage. He kept on driving the old one instead, I guess because he wasn’t afraid of getting the old one dirty and dinged. So the new one almost never moved out of that garage. The family took to calling it The Queen Mary. This will not be Traveler’s fate. We are driving from one end of this country to the other, down any road that looks interesting, for as long as my health and gas money hold out.
"I think what — what I’m saying is — and I had not gotten into the equal protection argument, Texas has the right to set moral standards and can set bright line moral standards for its people. And in the setting of those moral standards, I believe that they can say that certain kinds of activity can exist and certain kinds of activity cannot exist." -Charles A. Rosenthal.
I hadn’t known the details of how Rosenthal’s incriminating emails were discovered…only that they’d seen the light of day via some sort of legal proceedings against him. Apparently it began with a Houston drug raid. Some neighbors took photos of the raid and were later harassed and arrested by the police for it. At trial they were exonerated, and they sued. During discovery proceedings, they subpoenaed Rosenthal’s emails and that’s when the whole shit pile that is Rosenthal’s inner nature came tumbling out…the racist jokes, the pornography, the love notes to his secretary… But wait…it gets Even Better…
But the thing that took Rosenthal down was not his adulterous affair. Nor was it his racism.
Rosenthal scorned the judge’s orders and did not turn over all of his email. Instead, he deleted over 2,500 email just days after being ordered to remit it. This got him in a heap of trouble.
A grand jury indicted a Texas Supreme Court justice Thursday [January 17, 2008] on arson-related charges. But on Friday the district attorney’s office that brought the case to the grand jury in the first place dropped the charges, angering members of the panel and drawing allegations of political backscratching.
Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, who is himself embroiled in a scandal involving inappropriate e-mails found on his office computer, said there was insufficient evidence to support the charges against Justice David Medina, a fellow Republican.
Rosenthal by all appearances, was trying hard to scuttle the case developing against Texas Supreme Court justice David Medina, a fellow republican (surprise, surprise) for torching his own house due to financial troubles. Here’s how the Dallas Morning News reported it…
AUSTIN – A Harris County grand jury indicted Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina and his wife Thursday in connection with a June fire at their home in Spring, north of Houston.
But within hours of the indictments – Francisca Medina on an arson accusation, Mr. Medina on an evidence-tampering charge – Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said his office didn’t think there was enough proof to charge either of them with a crime.
"We don’t feel like there’s sufficient evidence to proceed," Mr. Rosenthal said. "We will be asking the court to dismiss those [indictments] so we can proceed with further investigations."
The district attorney’s decision not to prosecute was the only good news of the day for Mr. Medina, a 49-year-old former district judge who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Perry in 2004, and for his wife, defense attorney Terry Yates said.
They’ve "done nothing wrong," Mr. Yates said, "and will continue to fight this thing vigorously."
But legal experts say Mr. Rosenthal’s announcement – and in particular, its timing – are unusual.
…
Harris County fire officials believe the June blaze, which destroyed the Medina home and a neighbor’s house and did nearly $1 million in damage, was intentionally set. Their initial investigation focused on six people close to the justice, and was fueled by a trail of financial troubles for Mr. Medina’s family.
In 2004, the Medinas failed to pay nearly $10,000 in county and school district taxes, resulting in a lien on their home. A year later, a mortgage company attempted to seize the couple’s home, claiming they had not made a payment in four months. The suit was resolved out of court.
The Medinas’ home insurance policy had lapsed because of unpaid premiums.
Mr. Medina, a former general counsel to Mr. Perry who makes $150,000 a year as a state Supreme Court justice, has called the financial problems "miscommunications with the bank."
The June fire wasn’t the Medinas’ first. A decade ago, the family’s garage went up in flames.
When Mr. Medina was called before a grand jury last fall, he told reporters he was sure he wasn’t suspected in the fire. He said he had some ideas about who might have started it, and said Mr. Rosenthal had assured him he was only a witness.
On Thursday, Mr. Rosenthal acknowledged that’s what he told Mr. Medina – "at the time."
"Whether anything else came up that would make him a target, I don’t know I can say that," Mr. Rosenthal said.
In an interview with the Quorum Report, Jeffrey Dorrell, the assistant foreman of the grand jury, accused Mr. Rosenthal of playing politics to protect Mr. Medina.
"Rosenthal resisted these indictments with a vigor I have never seen or heard before," Mr. Dorrell told the online newsletter. "The [district attorney’s] office called my office last week and said we should not meet, the case was not viable and we should not indict. Obviously, that came from the top."
Now…consider this: Rosenthal was the second state attorney to argue in defense of the sodomy laws before the U.S. Supreme Court since the Stonewall Riots announced the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. The other guy? Michael Bowers. And Bowers, you may recall, later endured his own episodes of political scandal and cheating on his wife.
It may seem odd…surreal even…that these self appointed moral authorities on the right would keep turning out, time and time again, to have the inner moral character of a gang of crooks. But that’s only if you look no further then the surface fealty to the moral code they claim to embrace. Look deeper. Look at the moral code itself. Where does it come from?
The Bible? No. They pick and choose from the bible like customers in a cafeteria, sliding their trays down the rails…now and then finding a tasty treat to their liking, ignoring the rest. These people, for all their bellyaching about their deeply held religious values, have religious values that are skin deep and no more.
The flag? No. For all their super duper true red white and blue American super patriotism, these people have utterly no commitment at all to the basic values of liberty and justice for all. None. If anything, they find it anathema. Their vision of the American Dream, is one that enriches their own lives, only and to the degree that it kicks into the gutter everyone they personally despise. The American Dream is money in their pocket, so long as it came out of yours. Freedom isn’t a rising tide that lifts all boats, but a ladder with them at the top and the rest of us down at the bottom, holding them up. The American Way, is their way.
Look at the values these people hold, not the ones they profess. Really look at them. All their moral values, all their deeply held religious beliefs, all their breathless reverence for America, amount to one thing only: themselves. They are worshiping a mirror, and calling it Jesus. They are saluting a flag with their face on it, and stripes made of line items in their personal prosperity check list, and calling it America. And that is how the man, the lawyer, could stand before the U.S. Supreme Court and argue that the only justification the sodomy laws needed was that they reflected the moral values of the people. Whether or not they embodied or conflicted with the values this nation was founded upon were irrelevant. If the people believe it is moral to imprison homosexuals said Rosenthal, then that makes it right. It was a statement of his innermost moral character: if he believes it is moral, then it is moral. Or more specifically, if he does it, it must be moral because he did it.
And that is why the man, the lawyer, who stood before the U.S. Supreme Court and said that Texas could draw a bright line of morality for its citizens, could cheat on his wife, use his office to protect a fellow republican from criminal prosecution, and destroy incriminating evidence against himself. Never doubt that in each and every step of the way down that path, in each and every moment of the walking of it, Rosenthal knew beyond any doubt or misgiving, that he was acting morally. It isn’t that he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t think it was immoral by his standards. He was the standard. His life, his needs, his desires, his behavior. Because he did it, it Was moral.
That’s how these people think. It’s how they measure right from wrong. Jesus is the image in the mirror that nods approvingly back at them. The American way is the shape of their daily lives. Family values, is whatever goes on under their own roofs. Morality, is the stamp of approval they give to their own behavior from one moment to the next. That his how both Rosenthal and Bowers could condemn gay rights as a threat to marriage and family life, and cheat on their wives and still tell the world that they were moral men. Yes, they really believed it.
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