Lying on his cot in the Longworth House Office Building in the small of the night, Jason Chaffetz had a scary dream: The conservative Republican from Utah had beaten the odds, defeated an incumbent and made it to Washington, only to end up by some bizarre twist of events arm-in-arm with Marion Barry, the crack-smoking laughingstock former mayor of the District of Columbia.
"Oh man, if I had run a campaign saying I’d be working closely with Marion Barry, I don’t know that I would have been elected," Chaffetz says
Mirror, mirror on the wall… Sure you’d have been elected Jason. Your voters are cut from the same cloth you are…the same bolt of cloth Washington’s former Mayor For Life was cut from. Barry wasn’t our ally, we were his tools…his useful stepping stones to political power. Just like we are to you. And to your voters, we’re convenient scapegoats for every cheapshit failure of personal character. We give them someone to blame for how lousy their lives are, how dead and rotten their conscience is, so they don’t have to blame themselves. Useful tools Jason…that’s what gay people are. To Barry. To you. To your constituents. Tools. Nothing more. Look in Barry’s empty smiling eyes Jason, and see yourself.
So go ahead and smoke yourself some crack Jason. It won’t matter. Smoke it right in church if you like. As long as you’re willing to put a knife in the hearts of loving, devoted same sex couples you’ll still be a Mormon in good standing. Because nothing matters more then the war against The Homosexual, not even the resurrection. You could spit in Christ’s face on Judgment Day and as long as you’ve left a trail of destruction in the lives of gay and lesbian people you’ll make it to heaven on a red carpet. Oh wait…Mormons think they get to be gods in the afterlife don’t they…?
Oh…you think…? And there I read that the study was done via the German youth magazine Bravo, which "combines no-holds-barred sex advice with explicit photos".
Wow. I’m sitting here trying to picture what my teen years would have been like if American youth magazines had treated sex that matter of factly. Damn.
My co-workers and I at the Space Telescope Science Institute watch the launch of Atlantis in the main auditorium…
Atlantis went up right on schedule and it was just about a perfect burn to orbit. So good they didn’t need to tweak it a tad immediately after main engine cut-off like they often do. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll be able to do all the work on Hubble they want to this mission. If they can, then the telescope may very well keep on giving us great science about the heavens for the next decade.
First… Robin Wilson, professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, writing in the Los Angles Times…
So what should states do to respond to [these] clashes between same-sex relationships and religious liberty?
What they should not do is what New Hampshire’s Senate did last week: pay lip-service to religious freedom while enacting meaningless protections. New Hampshire’s bill provides that "members of the clergy … shall not be obligated … to officiate at any particular civil marriage or religious rite of marriage in violation of their right to free exercise of religion." But this is a hollow guarantee: The 1st Amendment already provides such protection.
Okay. Got that? All those religious freedom clauses being written into same-sex marriage statutes are hollow, since the 1st Amendment already establishes religious freedom in the first place. Well…duh. But that’s not the point.
Here’s the point…
In her May 3 Times Op-Ed article, "The flip-side of same-sex marriage," Robin Wilson urges state legislators across the country to undertake "the careful crafting of robust religious protections" when they draft laws to recognize same-sex marriages. Her goal in recommending such religious accommodations is to "allow Americans with radically different views on moral questions to live in peace and equality in the same society."
I share Wilson’s goals. States that recognize same-sex marriages should protect the autonomy rights of religious individuals and institutions at the same time that they protect the autonomy rights of gay and lesbian individuals and couples. But Wilson’s column does little to promote the careful crafting of accommodations to achieve the equality she seeks.
Wilson starts off on the wrong foot. She characterizes clauses such as the one in the New Hampshire same-sex marriage bill that reiterates the protection of clergy from being required to officiate at same-sex marriage ceremonies as "meaningless protections" and a "hollow guarantee" since the 1st Amendment already provides such protection.
Where was Wilson six months ago when we had an election in which the opponents of same-sex marriage insisted that the defeat of Proposition 8 would result in churches being forced to conduct marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples?
-Letter to the Editor, Alan Brownstein, May 11, 2009
[Emphasis mine] See…here’s the problem: No Alan…you don’t share Wilson’s goals. Wilson’s goals are that his gay and lesbian neighbors remain second class citizens, Regardless Of What The Law Says. This claptrap about churches being forced to marry same-sex couples, and all the other crap, is what we in the IT profession call FUD… Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Wilson is a goddamned professor of law…he’ knows goddamned well that the first Amendment prevents states from doing to churches, precisely what the Proposition 8 hatemongers said they would. And no…you didn’t see him taking them to task for it in the pages of the L.A. Times, did you? There’s a reason for that. It isn’t the religious freedom clause in New Hampshire that’s hollow. As far as Wilson is concerned it’s the First Amendment that’s hollow.
So now what’s happening is that states and some gay rights activists are starting to call the religious rights bluff on this and expressly including religious freedom protections in their same-sex marriage and civil unions statutes. And naturally, now we find out the truth…that the first amendment protections aren’t enough. What they want is a religious exemption from the equal opportunity laws that everyone else must abide by. A Specific Exemption in fact, just to accommodate their specific hatred of a specific class of people…gay people. They want to be able to deny gay people health care and medicine, housing, jobs, services…in short, they want to be free to keep on persecuting gay people and same-sex couples regardless of their status in the eyes of the law.
What you have to understand about the religious right is they’ve elevated persecuting gay people to a religious piety greater then that of belief in the resurrection. You aren’t saved by the blood of Jesus Christ…you are saved by your hatred of homosexual people. That is what religion is in the kook pews. If a nurse can’t eject a gay person’s spouse from their hospital room, they have no freedom of religion. Because it isn’t Jesus who saves. Salvation depends on how much you hate your gay neighbor. If we don’t bleed, they aren’t being righteous enough.
Basically, I got tired of how it was always getting in my face unless I had it pulled back into a ponytail. This is how I always used to wear it.
I’d forgotten how energetic the wave in my hair is. Without all that extra weight it just comes roaring back, even when I blow dry it.
I’m going to let it grow out again in the back and sides eventually, but I’m keeping the bang because I don’t like it getting in my eyes. The problem has always been finding hair stylists who know how to do long-haired guys any good. That was why I just let it all grow out some years ago…I’d given up on hair stylists and decided to just let it grow and pull it back into a pony tail when necessary. And…I wanted to see just how long I could get it to grow. Now I know…about a third of the way down my back. That’s it. It won’t grow any longer then that. I have this very fine baby hair and it takes forever to grow and it never gets very long. I was hoping I could get it down to my waist. But…not…
I’m Not Druck. Duck. Drunk. I’m Just Naturally Confused And Disoriented…
Via Sullivan… I find it hard to believe that the United States Of America drink more per capita then Cuba, Brazil and Mexico, and less then Britain, Germany, France, Spain and…Greenland…
Be interesting to see that broken down for the U.S. by state.
"[President Barack Obama] says he wants to appoint judges who show empathy, but what does that mean?" said Wendy Long, chief counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. "Who do you have empathy for?"
…
"Empathy," says Wendy Long, scornfully spitting out the word like an epithet. "What does that mean?" I wonder if it’s possible to answer that question in a way she could ever understand.
No.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions…
So you’re calling again now. And I’m actually picking up the phone and talking to you again. Wow. It’s been a while hasn’t it? A while since I stopped returning your calls. Because you voted one too many times for George Bush. Because you didn’t seem to give a good goddamn how much slime the republicans threw into your gay friend’s face. Because you didn’t seem to care one whit how hard they tried to make everyone hate people like me. Hey…look at us. We’re talking again! So nice. When we talk nowadays, it’s almost like old times. But that’s the problem.
So once again I get to hear about your life. What you’re up to. All your successes. All your disappointments. That’s what friends do. We share our lives with each other, the good times and the bad. The highs and the lows. Well…wait…except I’m suppose to hide a part of my life from you aren’t I? And not a small part either. Not judging from how often you talk about that part of yours. Your love life that is. Still single are we? Yeah. I know the feeling. I know a lot about being single, and lonely that you will never know. But then, you don’t want to know.
That was always the bargain wasn’t it old friend? I get to hear about your girlfriend problems. I get to hear about the latest cute new girl you’re seeing nowadays. I get to hear about how the two of you got it on. I get to hear about how great you felt afterward. Hey, I know the feeling! But you’d rather I didn’t tell you that I suppose. Feels great at our age doesn’t it though. We’re both getting old now aren’t we? Not quite the sexy young guys we used to be back in the day. Except I was never allowed to think of myself that way, even back then. Even back when I was young and cute and could have made something of it. I wasn’t allowed to be that. Cute. Sexy. Desirable. I had to keep it under wraps. I had to play it low key. You didn’t want to hear about my struggles with the dating and mating game. You didn’t even want to know I was interested in any of that. Because that meant bringing up the fact of my sexuality. Yeah…yeah…I know… You’re Not Gay. I got that then. I get it now. What I didn’t really get back then was that I wasn’t allowed to be gay either.
Oh I could be gay…Theoretically. I could be gay as some abstract concept you could put in some safe place in the back of your mind. I could be the oddball artistic little nerd nobody expected to date girls for some unspoken reason. I could be that. I could be out of the closet, so long as I kept being out of the closet in the closet. That was always how our friendship worked.
And I went along with it. Because you didn’t have anti-gay prejudices. You were just…misinformed. Like I was. I knew how that worked. They taught me the same lies about homosexuals they taught you. I knew this. I knew from firsthand experience how it was to live with all the stereotypes in my head that you have in yours. The mincing faggot. The swishing queer. The lurking child molester. The dangerous sexual pervert, waiting in the men’s rooms…in the bushes. Cocksuckers. Ass fuckers. I laughed at all the same fag jokes you did all through grade school. They were fairies. They were queers. They were homos. I understood this the same as the rest of you guys. And then puberty came along and tapped me on the shoulder. It took a while…you can appreciate why…but one day I finally came to understand that I was gay myself. Kinda gave me a whole new perspective on the subject, that.
I came out to myself when I was 17. That was back in 1971. And because the guy I fell in love with was so decent and good hearted, because I saw that what I had fallen in love with was the person, not just any random male body, I realized that there was nothing wrong with me. In that rush of first love I learned that what I had been taught about homosexuals was a load of horseshit. The fact of my homosexuality was there, staring me in the face, every time I laid eyes on the guy I was in love with. Making my heart beat. Making my knees tremble. Putting knots in my stomach and sweat on my brow. It was terrifying. It was wonderful. First love is like that. And there I was, feeling that for another guy. Yet I knew I was none of the things I had been taught that homosexuals were. And because of that, I was able to accept it. I am a homosexual. But I’m still me. I knew both of those things were true. So I never hated myself. Because of him. Because of how it hit me in just that way. I was in love, and it was wonderful. And nobody was happy for me.
Mom would have cried her heart out. The preacher in our church would have warned me direly that God considered homosexuality an abomination and I was going to hell. Maybe everyone in my life would turn against me. I could go to jail. That’s not what usually happens to a young guy, who wakes up one day to find he’s in love. But I grew up in a world where the radios played rock and roll love songs about young guys and girls in love, and locker rooms echoed with jokes about homos who suck cock.
It’s a pure miracle I didn’t hate myself, but I didn’t. I was in love. But looking back I never really felt good about myself either. How could I, when I still heard all the fag jokes I used to laugh at? How could I, when could still hear our gym teachers telling us in Sex Ed that homosexuals were dangerous, deranged, sexual psychopaths who raped children and killed the people they had sex with? How could I feel good about myself, when from Every…Fucking…Direction…I was being told that homosexuals were ridiculous, pathetic, repulsive, and that same-sex love was a sick parody of the real thing.
Oh…I had pride. I was chock full of gay pride. I felt good about myself In Theory. But you don’t come of age in a world that is constantly screaming in your face that you’re a sick, twisted pervert without being wounded somehow, somewhere. I remember sitting in a movie theater watching "Something For Everyone" with my straight friends, and when the evil homosexual villain at the center of the story embraced and kissed the naive countess’s son, the entire theater erupted in a collective Ewwwwwwww! That character was an evil murdering, blackmailing manipulating bastard, but it was that kiss that made the audience’s gorge rise. I can still hear it to this day. Ewwwwwwwwwwww! It was spontaneous. It filled the theater. That was the world I grew up in. How was I supposed to see my love life as anything but completely disgusting to everyone?
How then, was I supposed to see myself as desirable?
How especially, when I had so many straight friends, male and female, who kept signaling to me…tactfully of course…that they shared the audience’s disgust at my sexuality. It took a while, and a lot of sweating…but I finally began to come out to my friends shortly after that first high school crush. Do you remember when I came out to you? I have a question: Have you ever sat down and pictured your friend Bruce sitting in one of those Sex Ed classes…the ones we all had back then…while his teachers taught him and everyone sitting in that class around him, that homosexuals were sick, sexually twisted, mentally ill deviants who raped children, lurked around public toilets and killed the people they had sex with? Picture it now then, because that’s what happened to me. I sat through it all only to discover years later that I was one of the people they were talking about. Now recall again that moment when I came out to you. Maybe you noticed how white my knuckles were.
But it seemed to go well. You said it was okay. You said it didn’t matter. I was still your friend. I was so relieved…so happy. My friends were cool!
Er…as long as I kept it low key. But that was okay. I had to know reconciling your mental image of me with the stereotypes we were all fed wasn’t going to happen overnight. I could be patient. I had to be. You were my friend. I came out to you and you didn’t walk off in disgust. I figured I was the luckiest guy in the world to have friends like you. Of course you were a little nervous about the whole thing. Good god I was terrified! I could cut you some slack. Jeeze. I figured once you saw that I wasn’t any of that crap we were all taught that homosexuals were, you’d treat me just like anyone else.
But that never happened did it? At least not with you. And let it be said you weren’t the only straight friend of mine who never got over it. Some did. But only some. And for the rest who didn’t, I ended up doing something no one should ever have to do: I stifled my human need for love and companionship, so you wouldn’t have to deal with it. I put a pillow over it and suffocated it. I did that because I thought it was for the best while I tried to coax you out of your…well…your cheapshit prejudices.
So there we are…two young men in the prime of our lives…and you’re talking about how messed up it is that your new girlfriend broke up with you. And I nod my head and start talking about how much I miss the guy I fell in love with back in high school. WHOOPS! Can’t talk about that because it reminds you that Bruce likes having sex with guys. So let’s change the subject. So how about that movie we saw last week? Great flick wasn’t it? And…damn…the lead actress was smokin hot! I guess…but I kinda liked that cute guy who played the part of… WHOOPS! Can’t talk about that because it reminds you that Bruce likes to look at guy’s bodies the way you like to look at girl’s. So let’s change the subject. How about we get something to eat and listen to some tunes? I have some OJ in the fridge… None for me thanks…I’m boycotting Orange Juice. Huh? Orange Juice? What for? Well Anita Bryant… WHOOPS!
Damn boy…why is it that gays always want to talk about sex?
But Forcing the issue would just be too hardassed of me, too demanding. We were all victims of the same homophobic crap we were taught. Those were the excuses I kept making for you, whenever you signaled to me in some unspoken way that the thought of Bruce having a boyfriend of his own was a tad…repellent. A bit Disgusting. Uhm…Gross. All that time I kept being patent with you, and all that time you were teaching me to accept the fact that I was disgusting. Friend.
So I went out into the world back then, and tried to find a lover, knowing deep down inside that the sight of two males in love was a repulsive thing to…well…to just about everyone…Ewwwwwwwww! Most of my friends included. So I went into the world looking for love, understanding that same-sex love was utterly gross to most people. Disgusting. Sick. Ugly. Had you told me that in so many words I’d have walked away from you. Instead, you fed me the poison slowly, one drop at a time, one sour look at a time, one change of the subject at a time. I had to be careful. I had to be respectful of your sensitivities. And every time I approached a beautiful guy, someone who attracted me, someone decent, and smart, and good-hearted, someone who made my heart skip a beat, I approached them not as a potential lover, but the way I’d been conditioned to behave. By my friends. By you. Carefully. Trying hard not to shock and offend.
And now I’m 55 years old, and still single.
In my 30s, when the fear began to creep into my heart that I might not find someone to love after all, I began to pour myself into a series of charcoal and ink drawings, and a couple oil paintings, of young male couples in love. I put everything I had, everything I wanted to say at that point in my life, about love and desire and finding your heart’s desire in another’s smile, into those drawings and paintings. Nothing even vaguely pornographic, they were about love, but also about being in love body and soul. All my unfulfilled yearnings, all my hopes and dreams. I put them down on paper and canvas. I showed a couple of them to you…or tried to…once. You took one look and I could see in your eyes that it was as if I’d shown you gay pornography. No…worse then that. Pornography you might have just laughed at. But this was two guys in love and that completely squicked you out. So I didn’t show you the rest.
I had one drawing…I titled it "Moment of Recognition"…of two young guys sharing a look…that was all, just a look, as they briefly, lightly, touched hands while having a quiet moment alone. They weren’t even actually holding hands…just fingers lightly touching…eyes looking into eyes…a slightly astonished look on their faces…the moment before the smile… I wanted to capture that look in their faces, that hushed sudden timeless moment in time, when they both realize that they’re in love. I remember that moment. By then I’d had it more then once. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. It’s the most wonderful part of being alive. And I was really happy with what I was able to get on the artboard. I thought I’d captured it. And I guess I did, because it sure got a reaction. I showed it to another straight friend and I could swear I saw the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "What’s that about?" he asked, in a very perturbed voice. But he knew damn well what it was about.
So I told myself to be patient, and in the process let the wound dig itself deeper and deeper into me. I knew the beauty and sacredness of love wasn’t denied to same-sex lovers too. I knew that. Intellectually. Rationally. But your disgust was like a ball and chain around my heart, allowing it to soar only so far. I eventually stopped drawing. For nearly a decade and a half I did not pick up my tools again. I put down my cameras too. I just didn’t want to deal with my feelings anymore. I stopped creating artwork altogether. That’s another landscape of my life that should have more in it then it does. Friend.
So now you’re calling again. So now I’m picking up the phone again and talking to you. It’s almost like old times isn’t it? But that’s the problem, and I am over being the "some" in "some of my best friends are…".
The other day you phoned and shortly into the conversation you told me about that cute next door neighbor. The one who made mad love to you one night, and then the next didn’t want you calling her. The one who you later found out was playing you against her old boyfriend that she’s still mad at, but still seeing. I got the whole story, listened supportively, fell back into the old routine of being a friend. Yes, says I…I know how it is to be jerked around by a young cutie. There is this really cute guy guy who moved in just a few doors down from me, who gives me this hot and cold routine…one moment he’s all flirty, the next he’s treating me like an old troll… But you didn’t want to hear about that, and quickly changed the subject.
You wonder why I don’t call? I am 55 years old now, single, alone, and sick with loneliness, and one thing I bitterly regret is spending so many of the precious moments of the prime of my life with people who thought there was something wrong with me.
I came out to myself back in 1971 and actually managed to feel good about myself afterward. Looking back, that was a miracle. That was three years before the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. But I was stupid. I trusted in some of the people in my life, just a tad too much. The kind of friendship you offered me was the one poison I didn’t know any better not to drink. I came of age in a world that thought I was the most disgusting thing ever. I didn’t need friends telling me to accept that. I needed friends to tell me that I was beautiful, desirable, and just as deserving of love as anyone else. I look at the pictures taken of me back then and I cannot believe that really cute gay kid never found a boyfriend. But he never did. And that was okay with you. My friend.
You want to know why I don’t call anymore? There’s a vast and empty wasteland in my heart where love should have been, and one of the signposts pointing to it has your name on it.
I’m not laying it entirely at your doorstep. There were larger forces in the culture we both lived in, grew up in, working hard to insure that no gay person ever knew what it was to be loved. But you said I was your friend. So I stifled that part of me. Not just for you, but for the others too. The others who couldn’t handle it. And now…I’m 55 years old and I don’t know how to set it free. That was something I was supposed to learn decades ago, and I never did. And now here I am. Alone in my little Baltimore rowhouse. Talking to you on the phone. Listening while you tell me about your latest heartache. Old friend.
At any rate, while looking at Wikipedia for a Calhoun image, I saw this list of places named after John Calhoun. It’s a long list! And while I suppose I would hesitate to specifically place the blame for any current problems in American society on the fact that there are all these towns and counties and streets named after the guy, it is always striking for a historically informed northerner to see how thoroughly un-disavowed the legacy of white supremacy is in southern official culture. Get on 395 in DC and take the bridge across the Potomac, exiting onto Route 1, and you’ll find yourself on Jefferson Davis Highway. Yes. A highway named after the political leader of a rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States of America, founded on the principle that democracy was less important than the right of white people to own black people. Right there on signs and everything.
Travel in the South much? As Atrios said, Nobody could have predicted that the election of an African-American president would cause Southern states to start declaring their independence.
Go ahead and laugh as you whistle past the civil war graveyard. Calhoun was instrumental in getting the southern states of his time to pass similar nullification resolutions. It was the first rumbling of the ocean of bloodshed to come. That war killed more Americans then all our other wars combined. And far too many leaders in the South today think they’re still living in the Confederate States of America, and that it would be a glorious thing to rise again. Better millions of Americans die, better The United States of America is buried under a mountain of wreckage, then all Americans can live together peaceably, as equals, with liberty and justice for all.
If it happens here again, it will be more Sarajevo then Gettysburg.
Andrew Sullivan noted a few days ago, a letter Stephen Fry addressed to his 16-year-old self…
Oh, lord love you, Stephen. How I admire your arrogance and rage and misery. How pure and righteous they are and how passionately storm-drenched was your adolescence. How filled with true feeling, fury, despair, joy, anxiety, shame, pride and above all, supremely above all, how overpowered it was by love. My eyes fill with tears just to think of you. Of me. Tears splash on to my keyboard now. I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognize that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul.
Sullivan adds his own reaction to the film, History Boys…
A line it from the lonely gay schoolboy was almost too much to hear: "I’m Jewish. I’m homosexual. And I’m in Sheffield … I’m fucked." Somewhere in my mind in those teenage years was a similar refrain: "I’m Catholic. I’m homosexual. And I’m in East Grinstead … I’m fucked."
But I wasn’t fucked, of course. And not-to-be-fucked, not to turn into the tragic homosexual figure, memorizing "Brief Encounter," constantly chasing unrequited love, seeking refuge in the great worlds of Hardy or Larkin or Auden as a substitute for life: that was my goal.
See…I didn’t make that my goal. I just assumed it wouldn’t happen to me, because I didn’t buy into all the crap I was told about homosexuality.
That was a mistake. It was nearly impossible to grow up in that world, and no absorb some of its contempt for gay people. And it did its work on me all the same I realize now. Which is what makes it a good idea for gay folk to write these sorts of things…these bear your soul to the world letters. It seems very self absorbed, but it isn’t necessarily. It can be useful, not just for making peace with your own past, but also as a kind of message in a bottle to other generations in other times.
Gay kids have very little to no blood connection to past generations. You kind-of pop up in your family as gay, and everyone else isn’t. Maybe if you’re lucky you have a kind gay older uncle or aunt who can tell you a thing or two about what it was like for them, how to protect yourself from the tribulations they faced, and work toward the better world for us all. But more likely if you do have older gay relatives they are terrified to be seen as being too interested in you, lest they be accused of pedophilia. So you find yourself disconnected from the past, other then as history. And that history is still mostly being taught to each new generation of gay kids, by heterosexuals. Some gay-friendly, some not. We need to tell each other our own stories, in our own words.
So a letter to your younger gay self can be useful, not just to you, but to others who need to know what it was like for those of us in the previous generation. So that, hopefully, no gay kid will have to grow up in a world ever again, where everywhere you turn, literally, someone is putting a knife into your heart…telling you that you are pathetic…ridiculous…grotesque…sick.
I’ve had a letter to my younger self percolating somewhere inside of me for quite a long time now, so it’s probably time to get it out of me. But I have a few other letters to post before I get around to The Kid I Was. I’m going to start, with a Letter To A Straight Friend. I have some others that need writing too. And then I’ll write to Bruce. There’s a lot I’d have liked to tell him.
So I get to work, and immediately after settling into my office, go wash my hands before I touch anything on my desk. I mean…since I’ve had to touch all the door knobs on the way to my desk. And as I’m washing, I’m thinking…
Remember Y2K? Remember how it turned out to be no big deal after all. That wasn’t because it wasn’t any big deal. It actually was. If nothing had been done, guarantee you nothing would have worked by the time the calendar rolled over to the year 2000. Actually, things would have begun to fail Much sooner, since all the programs that calculate things like morgages and car loans and credit card exparation dates would have begun to fail years ahead of Y2K. But never mind that. If nothing had been fixed, nothing would have worked. We computer professionals took the warnings seriously, and got to work, and Fixed The Problem. And when the magic night came along, it wasn’t much of a problem after all. Thanks to us. And what did we get for our trouble? A lot of grief about how we’d scared the whole damn world for nothing.
Now it’s Swine Flu. Excuse me…Industrial…Pig Farm…Flu. Everybody’s gotten the message. A Dangerous Flu Is Spreading… Take Precautions… Be Alert… Good Hygiene Is The Best Defense… Suppose it works. Suppose that enough people take the message about good hygiene seriously enough, and government health agencies take the threat seriously enough, that this flu does not spread so rapidly, and not so many people die of it. Will we all say afterward that the threat was overblown?
Michael Steele has an interesting message for moderates, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinelreports. During a news conference at the Wisconsin GOP convention on Friday, Steele said moderates are welcome to join the Republican Party — but not to change it.
"All you moderates out there, y’all come. I mean, that’s the message," Steele said. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front."
But, he added: "Understand that when you come into someone’s house, you’re not looking to change it. You come in because that’s the place you want to be."
Get it moderates? This is not Your house…it’s Our house…
Princess Ruruna, of the Kingdom of Kod, has a problem. Her parents, the King and Queen, have left to travel abroad. Ruruna has been left to manage the nations fruit business. Much is at stake, Kod is known as "The Country of Fruit." Ruruna is not happy though, as she is swamped by paperwork and information overload. A mysterious book, sent by her father, contains Tico the fairy. Tico, and the supernatural book are going to help Princess Ruruna solve her problems with the power of the database. This is the setting for all that takes place in The Manga Guide to Databases. If you are like me and learned things like normalization and set operations from a rather dry text book, you may be quite entertained by the contents of this book. If you would like to teach others about creating and using relational databases and you want it to be fun, this book may be exactly what you need.
Er… Right. It’s Monday morning…it’s gray and rainy and chilly just like it’s been now for days and days… I’m tired, I’m about to go nuts with all this damn rain all the damn time…and this pops up on my computer screen. A Manga. About a princess. In the Country of Fruit. Suffering from information overload. Swamped with database problems. Rescued in the nick of time by Tico The Fairy. I had to stare at this for a few seconds while my brain kept insisting that I was going to wake up any moment now and Monday would begin for real this time…
If this post is confusing you…don’t worry. There’s an in-joke staring me in the face that I just can’t even think about clarifying here.
Posted by CmdrTaco from the are-you-really-surprised dept.
David Gerard writes "Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 claims support for ODF 1.1. With hard work and careful thinking, they have successfully achieved technical compliance but zero interoperability! MSO 2007sp2 won’t read ODF 1.1 from any other existing application, and its ODF is only readable by the CleverAge plugin. The post goes into detail as to how it manages this so thoroughly."
ODF: The open standard file format that only Microsoft applications can use…
[Update…] In comments Jonathan Allen points out that ODF is the Oasis Group open document standard, not Microsoft’s, which is OpenXML. I was confusing the two, and the point of the Slashdot post. This isn’t about Microsoft’s own proprietary open standard. It’s about them applying their usual Embrace, Extend and Extinguish tactic on ODF. Here’s some of the Slashdot commentary…
If it achieves 100% technical compliance with the standard, but zero interoperability, this is certainly a problem with the standard itself.
And the problem in this case is the missing formula specification. It’s not in ODF 1.1, and ODF 1.2 is still a draft. While this is Microsoft and we all "know" that this was intentional, ODF is what should be fixed first. We were all bashing OOXML specifications, but ODF 1.1’s far from perfect, as we can see.
…
That is, curiously, not quite true. ODF 1.1 doesn’t fully specify formulas, but it does specify the general syntax that should be used for them, and Microsoft seems to have ignored this. (Also, in practice, the major spreadsheets are quite similar in terms of what expressions they accept in formulas. This makes it relatively simple to convert between MS Office formulas and OpenOffice.org ones, which are what most ODF-based apps use.)
…
The irony here is that the formula language used by OpenOffice (and by other vendors) is based on that used by Excel, which itself was not fully documented when OpenOffice implemented it. So an argument, by Microsoft, not to support that language because it is not documented is rather hypocritical. Excel supports 1-2-3 files and formulas and legacy Excel versions (back to Excel 4.0) neither of which have standardized formula languages. Why are these supported? Also, the fact that the Microsoft/CleverAge add-in correctly reads and writes the legacy ODF formula syntax shows not only that it can be done, but that Microsoft already has the code to do it. The inexplicably thing is why that code never made it into Excel 2007 SP2.
Just look at this. They’re in complete technical compliance, and yet if you read an ODF file format spreadsheet into Excel and then write it back out again it’s now locked utterly into MS Office’s specific implementation of ODF. You can no longer read it back into any other spreadsheet program that supports ODF, because it can’t read Microsoft’s ODF formula implementation.
They just never stop, do they? I started out as a Microsoft platforms developer. Now I work on software that runs on many different platforms and swear to God I will never again be a Microsoft only developer. I will not help them betray the promise of the personal computer. I will not help them put handcuffs on the whole goddamned world just because that’s their business model.
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
