Banging My Head Against The Wand. Wall. Wand. Ouch. Dammit.
So I’m trying to learn German. It isn’t logical since, living here in North America, the sensible second language for me to try to pick up is Spanish. But the illogical motivation is way stronger then the logical one and I know when to give in. It’s not just a certain someone I know. I get intensely curious about a thing and then it becomes an obsession. Photography was like that. And computers. Everyone who knows me knows how I get when something grabs my attention.
German is a puzzle. In a way that Spanish just isn’t. I was down in Mexico last year for the first time and while I could barely speak a word of it, I found it wasn’t too terribly hard to intuit the meanings of some words and phrases. In part, living here in North America, I have been exposed to a lot of fractured Spanish. Amigo. Gracious. Por Favor. Dónde está el baño? But I also found I could read things like signs down there pretty well, even for words I would have had no clue about.
For example. It was hot down in Puerto Vallarta and I wore my sandals a lot as I strolled through the town with my camera. They were a new pair…I’d bought them down in Key West just a few months previously. So I was still breaking them in. I noticed one morning I was starting to get a blister on one heel. The last thing I wanted was something to keep me from walking around comfortably, so I started looking around for a place that sold bandages ("patches", as I’m told the English call them…). The local convenience store chain, OXXO, which was everywhere down there, didn’t seem to have any. I wandered around for a bit and then I saw a little store tucked in the middle of a block with a sign above it that read: Farmacia.
Hmmm…sounds like "Pharmacy"… And so it was. I wandered in and saw a shop that differed little from any small in town U.S. drugstore I’d ever seen, other then some of the brands were unfamiliar. Now then…let me go to Google and get a quick translation of pharmacy in German. Ah…Apotheke…
Well…actually I think I’d have figured that one out too. But the point is many common Spanish words sound like English words. I don’t need that. No necesito que. German, not so much. And I’ve spent my entire life with Spanish hovering in the background. Half my family tree is in California. I am no where near conversant in Spanish, but its sounds are familiar to me. Beautiful even. German just sounds…odd. And the rules are confusing.
There are two words for "you". Sie and Du. And you better get the context of using them right or you’ll offend someone. Sie is the more formal. When in doubt with Germans, use the more formal language. So Sie is "you". Except when it isn’t. Like "excuse me"…Entschuldigen Sie. I think that’s you excuse me…but I’m not sure at this point. And…just look at that damn word. Entschuldigen.Try to pronounce it just by looking at it. Go ahead. Then there is this little oddity: Do you understand? Verstehen Sie? I understand. Ich verstehe. Verstehen. Verstehe. It’s the same word. But it isn’t. Or it is but only sometimes. I see that e – en difference in a lot of German words and I think one pronunciation is when it’s about you and the other when it’s about someone else. Why? Just…why?
I’m not complaining. I’m…puzzled. And my head just wants to crack it now. There’s a certain someone down in Florida who I would love to impress by speaking a little German to him next time I see him. But that’s almost beside the point now. How the hell do Germans understand each other? I’m not complaining. It’s bewildering and I won’t have that. At some level the rules must make sense to them. I just don’t get it.
But that’s where you always start from. Not getting it. I have some language lessons on my iPod that I’ve been going over. And over. And over. Two weeks now and I’m still stuck on lesson one. But I made a conceptual breakthrough of sorts the other day. I’m not so much learning a new language at this point, as learning some new words. The language is in the rules…the syntax…the grammer. I’ll learn that when I get enough new words into my head that I can play with it.
It’s like music isn’t the notes…it’s the melodies and harmonies. It’s the song. I already had two ways to say "excuse me" in English. Excuse me. Pardon me. Same thing, mostly. Yes, there are shades of difference. But there it is. Two ways of saying "excuse me" Now I have a third way. Entschuldigen Sie. Three ways to say it. Two of them are English, and one is German. But it’s the same thing. The point is, you don’t learn the words by linking them to other words (what’s German for ‘excuse me’…?). You have to link them in your brain to meanings. Imagine yourself in a situation where you mean to say something…(excuse me)…and then say the new word until it digs into that meaning along with the other words that you know, that express that thing…(Entschuldigen Sie). Then you’ve got it. The word that is.
Language comes later. Language is how the words make sentances…how they link together to tell you a story. A language is a way to tell a story. Entschuldigen Sie. Verstehen Sie English? Please…because I only know a few crumbs of German…
BARCELONA, Spain–iPhone maker Apple isn’t at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 along with the rest of the mobile phone industry, but the company’s growing success is definitely top of mind for key executives in the mobile market.
The iPhone and Apple’s successful App Store got more than a passing mention on Tuesday during a panel moderated by The Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg.
…
Ballmer argued that device openness was important to give customers more choices. And he pointed to the number of choices that Windows Mobile customers have when choosing a device.
"I agree that no single company can create all the hardware and software," he said. "Openness is central because it’s the foundation of choice."
This from the company that tied Internet Explorer to the Windows OS in order to kill Netscape. This from the company that penalized computer makers (and for all I know still does) for offering their customers Linux too if they wanted Linux. This from the man who still insists that Linux violates a number of Microsoft patents, but won’t say which ones. This from the company that gamed the ISO standards process by forcing through its own 6000+ page "open xml" format, which is riddled with Redmond patents, and Microsoft Office legacy bugs and glitches over the vendor neutral Open Document format, so Microsoft could claim MS Office documents were "open", despite the fact that nobody but Microsoft can implement this so-called "open" format in its entirety. Openess anyone?
Yeah…Apple is a closed system. You can’t run the iPhone OS on any other phone but an iPhone. You can’t run Mac OS on any other computers but Apple’s. Apple hardware needs Apple software to run. Microsoft’s definition of openness on the other hand, is everything needs Microsoft software to run. When the whole world is locked tight as a drum into Microsoft platforms, then everything will be naturally and seemlessly interoperable. Openness.
Hey Steve…you want openness? Publish your file formats.
I’ve just added the list of categories and tags at the ends of my posts…finally. I’ve been meaning to make them visible at the end of the posts ever since I moved the blog to WordPress. This makes it easier for me, and presumably all of you, to sort through stuff here by the groupings I’ve been assigning stuff. Hopefully, you’ll just be able to click on a tag to see a list of other posts I’ve given the same tag to. I want to create a menu of categories later.
This is mostly for my own ability to organize and sort through stuff here. The blog has mutated over the years from being a simple life blog into a place where I vent about politics and gay rights and where I tell people about current art projects. Making the categories and tags visible allows me, and you, to filter what’s displayed if I (or you) are searching for something.
This is all "under development" at the moment, so some things may or may not work at any given moment, or I may remove or re-arrange things from time to time until I’m satisfied. You’ll notice a lot of the posts are in the "Uncategorized" category. That’s because of my initial unfamiliarity with difference between tags and categories as they’re usually used in blogs. I think I have a better grasp of the concepts now, and I’m going to be re-arranging some of the categories and tags on my posts over the next few weeks. Stay tuned…
A House committee rejected Rep. Jennifer Seelig’s HB160, which would have offered two, unmarried cohabiting adults — including same-sex couples — rights of inheritance and medical decision making for one another.
Nope. We can’t even allow same-sex couples to have inheritance rights, or make medical decisions if one is incapacitated. Let alone protect gays from job discrimination, let alone allow them to adopt. No common ground there. Same sex couples need to consider this carefully when planning trips that might take either or both of them into or through Utah. Getting sick or injured could be just the beginning of your nightmare in Mormonland.
I’m going to have a heart attack from this surprise.
Strong comments against the gay community were made recently by Utah senator Chris Buttars during work on the documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition" just a year since he called a black baby a "dark, ugly thing" on the Utah State Senate floor.
He compared gays to radical Muslims and suggested they may be America’s greatest threat, likening gay rights to "the beginning of the end." Although the footage has only been seen by Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate, some audio has been released.
Buttars describes gays as having "anything goes" morals, and "the meanest buggers" he’d ever seen; some comments were too graphic to include. He also takes credit for "killing" every bill related to gay rights in the Utah State Senate since 2001.
"What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that because anything goes."
"They’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of."
Common ground. You folks out there just keep right on searching for that common ground. And when some gay basher splits your head open because he’s been told that gays, with their anything goes morality, are the greatest threat to America, you’ll have found it. Common ground.
You’d think he’s never seen Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari. There’s nought so queer as folk Andrew. We Americans have our own strange little ways too. Take a trip into Sid and Marty Kroft land sometime.
You want strange Andrew…? Try a little…Walt Disney? Oh yes. This clip is from Alice in Wonderland, and some of the best animation ever produced. The animator who did the character of Alice was a master…simply a master. But the entire film is a masterpiece of animation. The eye candy is everywhere and it all moves and flows perfectly. This clip from the film starts off being your usual Disney cartoon slapstick but the strange comes in at about 2:15 into it. Remember, Disney did Fantasia too…
I’ll bet if I poked around British movies and TV I could find myself some grade ‘A’ strange in there too. We humans are a funny lot. Strange makes the world go ’round Andrew…
We’re sure your eight cats are wonderful company, but it might be time to get out more. Join a club. Take a class. Do it for your health.
According to researchers at the University of Chicago, isolating yourself from human contact triggers all sorts of terrible bodily responses, including upping your blood pressure, releasing a stress hormone called cortisol (which, p.s., makes you fat), and makes you a prime candidate for Alzheimer’s Disease. It’ll also probably mess with your sleep habits, ding your immune system, and make you depressed.
In fact, said John Cacioppo, who revealed the research findings at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the overall health difference between a lonely person and a popular person was akin to that between a smoker and a non-smoker.
Swell. But this isn’t news. Science has known for quite some time now that being alone deducts years off your life, the same way smoking or drinking too much does. But the lonely are humanity’s cast-offs. Nobody gives a flying fuck about us. Until one of us goes off the deep end.
Save for the occasional misanthrope, most of us aren’t isolated from the world of the living by choice. We’re alone for a variety of reasons, most of which I have a hunch, have to do with many, many failed attempts at romance, and the resultant fear and self-doubt that comes of it. The more you fail, the more you begin to see yourself, deep down inside, as unworthy of companionship.
And friends who sit on chances for you to meet someone who might be a good match until that chance is stone dead, like it didn’t really matter all that much to them so it shouldn’t matter to you either, and then tell you its your own damn fault for not having a lover anyway, don’t help that negative self image much. Yes…I’m talking about you Mr. L. Oh…and also the ones who tell you you’re too ugly to be boyfriend material.
After a while, you get used to feeling the years being shaved off your life, and vanishing down a dark hole. After a while, you find yourself wishing the end comes sooner, rather then later…
So even if you don’t smoke, drink, or overeat, you might want to at least join Facebook, or you may as well have been doing shots of Jaeger before breakfast…
I’d as soon drop a cinder block on my head as drink Jagermeister. German eiswein is lovely, just lovely…if they serve drinks in Paradise then they’re serving German eiswein…but swear to God German liquor is just plain evil.
But I can see how trying to live all by yourself is like trying to exist on a diet of Jagermeister. Yes. Yes…that’s what it’s like. In fact…I’ll bet a lot of lonely people do literally just that.
I was just going through the server logs and found another visitor to my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story, who came here via the following Google search:
coming out story garrett
This isn’t the first time it’s happened either. I’ve had roughly…oh…a half dozen or so occurrences of someone coming here looking for my cartoon specifically. That is, some combination of the cartoon name and mine used as a search string. They don’t know where on the web to find it I reckon, but they know the name of the cartoon and they know the name of the guy who is doing it.
That’s just…amazing. Considering I am not advertising this cartoon At All… I know it’s been picked up on some cartoon aggregators…most notibly the list at gaycomics.free.fr. I get lots of traffic from there every day…mostly people who just check the main page to see if a new episode is up. For them I’ve just added a set of better progress bars to the page, so people can see how things are moving along, and be reassured that the cartoon hasn’t been abandoned because I am so slow at getting out new episodes.
But this is new. I get hits all the time on "coming out stories" or "coming out" or "gay coming out story" or "gay teen coming out story" But only recently…in the past four or five months, have I had any of those searches include my name…it’s always my last name…in the search string.
Every time I see this headline scan across my gay news lists I think maybe I’m still asleep and just dreaming that I’m awake and Monday hasn’t really started yet…
Jim Burroway makes a good catch I’d missed when looking at the new anti-gay ad campaign created by Campaign Secrets…the one that shows an unseen gay sniper putting a family and more specifically their little children in the crosshairs. This one is good…it really says it all…
By the way, we also learn that public schools no longer celebrate Father’s Day. Wait a minute. That couldn’t be because it’s celebrated on the third Sunday in June while school’s out, could it? Naah, it’s a much better story when it’s all the gays’ fault.
Dig it. Never mind that Father’s Day happens after the school year ends…just remember that the homosexuals have forced schools to stop celebrating Father’s Day.
Now…this kind of crap may actually fool a lot of people, not all of whom necessarily want someone to feed them pre-fabricated lies about gays they can pass around without taking responsibility for it. Some people will actually hear this and think…Wow…the gays took Father’s Day out of the schools… But you know goddamned well the people who made that ad knew that it was horseshit, and almost certainly so did the folks who bought it. And it’s a safe bet that its target audience doesn’t care if it’s truthful or not.
There’s your moral crusade right there. There’s your righteousness.
Remember those multiple lead poisoning in children’s toy scares? Remember that poison pet food scare. The poison toothpaste? The tainted milk…which thankfully didn’t reach our own shores (I don’t think…).
Well prepare to become afraid of anything made of steel…
An internal memo in the Environment Ministry that was sent to Germany’s states on Feb. 6 listed 15 "incidents of contaminated steel," in 12 states. The list included radioactive bars, steel cables, chippings and valve housings. The list of findings has since risen to 19.
Since last August, a total of 150 tons of contaminated metal has been seized…
The situation is a novelty in Germany. Never before have officials had to deal with so much radioactive material in transit. Last week, Gabriel announced soberly that "radioactive steel products had been found in several federal states." Internally, though, his ministry officials have described the situation as dramatic. The problem is said to have "huge dimensions," according to sources.
Some of the metal had so far exceeded the limit of 10 becquerel per gram that it had to be confiscated immediately…
More than 500 elevator buttons, which came to Berlin from France, showed radioactivity levels of 270 becquerel per gram. The buttons have since been replaced. A component found at a company in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and tested on Jan. 19 radiated an astounding 600 becquerel per gram.
The scare in Germany is being traced to three steel processing plants in India. How the radioactive material is getting into the steel is a mystery at the moment. The suspicion is that it may be medical or other radio active waste that is being carelessly recycled. There’s a lot to be said in favor of global trade. But when you are trading with nations whose environmental, employee and consumer protections are little to none, you need to be aware that cheaper isn’t always…well…cheaper…
German companies now worry that the contamination could have costly consequences. They are concerned that they might lose customers were they to deliver contaminated stainless steel. In addition, the costs of safe disposal could be as high as thousands of euros per ton of metal.
I’m assuming they built my Mercedes from steel made in Germany, but my first reflex was to go get a giger counter. Then I thought…I’ve been driving it for over a year now, so I’m probably fucked anyway. And a radioactive Mercedes-Benz would go nicely with my radioactive Fiestaware.
The Fine Art Of Inflaming Violent Passions Toward Homosexuals
Via Pam’s House Blend…and as of now racing across the net like a fire. West Virginia Christianists are gearing up for a push to enact an anti same-sex marriage amendment in their state. As always, it isn’t enough to simply make a case for heterosexual supremacy. They have to demonize gay people too. Their latest ad starts out with the image of a gay sniper putting a heterosexual family, and more specifically their little children, in the cross hairs. They are being targeted, to be gunned down, by some the homosexuals. Here’s a screen shot:
Bear in mind that this ad is running in a state that’s maybe only a tad less armed to the teeth then Texas. And the message of this particular sequence is crystal clear: The homosexuals are going to kill your family, starting with your children. Of course they’ll insist its only a metaphor. They don’t mean that homosexuals are Literally going to kill your family. Naturally all the West Virginians who see this ad will understand that.
This is what gets gay people killed in this country every year. And make no mistake, the people creating and the people running these ads are well aware of that fact. But we are not so much human beings as cockroaches to them. They want us gone. They want us eliminated. If the state won’t do what Leviticus commands, then maybe Bubba will…
The video is below. The sniper shot comes in at about .53 seconds. Then it’s another four minutes plus warning everyone about the threat the homosexuals pose to families and children. In 1977 Jerry Falwell stood beside Anita Bryant, who was then fighting to have Dade County’s anti-discrimination ordinance repealed by popular vote, and told a room full of reporters that “A homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you.” Now they are, almost literally, telling people in West Virginia that we do in fact intend to kill them, and kill their children. Gay people are going to die because of this ad.
Pam over at the Blend notes this same group who made the ad…Campaign Secrets…also created an attack ad against the AARP back in 2005. AARP’s crime back then was opposing Bush’s plan to let the stock market play with your social security pension money. To discredit AARP, Campaign Secrets cooked up this little gem:
Dig it. The AARP is wrong about social security, because it hates our men in uniform and loves faggots. That, literally, was the message.
A classroom dispute at Los Angeles City College in the emotional aftermath of Proposition 8 has given rise to a lawsuit testing the balance between 1st Amendment rights and school codes on offensive speech.
Student Jonathan Lopez says his professor called him a "fascist bastard" and refused to let him finish his speech against same-sex marriage during a public speaking class last November, weeks after California voters approved the ban on such unions.
When Lopez tried to find out his mark for the speech, the professor, John Matteson, allegedly told him to "ask God what your grade is," the suit says.
Whenever I see a story like this one pop up I scan down the article for the words "Alliance Defense Fund" and I am seldom dissapointed. That’s Pat Robertson’s ACLU evil mirror and it exists, not so much to defend the rights of Christians as to inflame religious passions in the mob toward secular government. Whenever you see the Alliance Defense Fund in a news story, the first thing you have to assume is that most of what you are reading is Alliance Defense Fund spin, because they’re very good at finding reporters who are too lazy to fact check them.
This story is a case in point. Your first reaction may be to question the wisdom of calling a student a fascist bastard in class. Certainly telling a student to ask God what their grade is was way out of line. Perhaps you didn’t notice this little tidbit in the L.A. Times story…
The Los Angeles Community College District’s offices were closed Friday for the Presidents Day holiday, and the general counsel, Camille A. Goulet, could not be reached. But in a letter to Alliance, the district said it deemed Lopez’s complaint "extremely serious in nature" and had launched a private disciplinary process.
The Alliance Defense Fund is a master at this. They tossed this story out on a weekend, when nobody from the school district would be available for immediate comment. That way, they get to spin the story the entire weekend and through Monday, the holiday, without fear of anyone hearing both sides of the story.
But in a letter to Alliance, the district said it deemed Lopez’s complaint "extremely serious in nature" and had launched a private disciplinary process.
In the letter, Dean Allison Jones also said that two students had been "deeply offended" by Lopez’s address, one of whom stated that "this student should have to pay some price for preaching hate in the classroom."
We are only getting the ADL’s spin on this story…but even in that spin there is a germ of something not-quite-right. It wasn’t just the professor, but at least two students in the class who were offended enough by the speech to register complaints.
But, you say, even so, the ADL’s side of it is serious enough. Professors shouldn’t be calling students fascists. In class. Other students should be told to respect the sincerely held religious beliefs of their peers, no matter how offensive those beliefs may seem to them. But notice the one thing you aren’t hearing from the ADL, or in fact, any of the other news sources: the speech the student gave.
It isn’t there. Not in the L.A. Times. Not in the San Jose Mercury News. Not in the ADL press release. Not even in the right wing loony bin that is Town Hall even, where you would expect to find nothing but hosannas for outright Christainist Fascism. The closest you get to the actual content of the speech in Town Hall, is this:
In November, Jonathan Lopez attempted to give his informative speech on God and the ways he has seen God act miraculously in his life and in the lives of others. In the middle of that speech, Lopez spoke of God and morality and read the dictionary definition of marriage. He also read two verses from the Bible.
But before Lopez was finished with his speech, Professor Matteson interrupted him. After calling Lopez a “fascist bastard” in front of other students, Matteson invited students to leave the class if they had been offended. When no one left, the professor dismissed the entire class.
But in fact even the ADL conceeds that two students were offended enough to register their complaints. But look at that carefully. In the middle of that speech, Lopez spoke of God and morality and read the dictionary definition of marriage. He also read two verses from the Bible. Would one of those verses have been this one…perchance…?
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.
We don’t know. All we know at this point, is that something was said during that class that shocked and outraged enough of the people who heard it that…well…what exactly? The suit doesn’t accuse the school of actually penalizing Lopez in any way, other then having his speech cut short and being ridiculed in front of the class. Which I’m sure has never happened to any other college student in a public speaking class. Oh yes, it accuses the the professor of making threats of retaliation…but no actual retaliation is in the ADL’s accusations. When you look at this one critically, there doesn’t seem to be much of anything at all other then…well…a lot of empty speechifying.
So what is this all about? Simple. It’s about generating a news story about Christians being persecuted to inflame the mob…to keep it fired up for the ongoing culture war. I strongly suspect that when we eventually find out what it was this lout actually said to his classmates it won’t seem such a clear cut act of religious persecution after all.
Of course…the reporters on the story could simply have done their damn jobs. The obvious thing here is to dig up what Lopez actually said. Nobody seems to have bothered doing that. And the ADL and Town Hall would have their reasons one strongly suspects, for not telling. Where are the goddamned journalists in this country? They all retire or something?
This is why I read SLOG. I’m going to steal this entire post from Dan Savage, because it perked me up when I really needed it. But you should read SLOG from time to time.
Sitting in the fake Irish pub, eating my fake Irish chow ("Irish white cheddar" makes a burger Irish—who knew?), drinking my real Irish beer. Two women at the next table are talking up Jesus. They’re trying to save a man’s soul from the dark and sinister clutches of… I think he said "lapsed Catholicism" but I’m not sure. This fake Irish pub is located in the actual American south, and overhearing conversations like this is known risk of venturing outside your hotel room. I go back to my book.
But my ears perk up when the man cites the gays as one reason he can’t quite see himself converting to… whatever strain of Christianity the two women were pushing. Knowing what we know now about sex and what science tells us about what makes people gay—he’s referring back to an earlier point he made concerning what we know about the age of the planet and the evolution of the species ("God gave us brains and reason for a reason, so we could figure these things out based on the science and evidence, right?")—it seems to him that putting people to death for being gay, per the bible, is, "a little cruel."
No, no: the bible is without error. And if our nation were more Godly, if bible-believing people would only stand up for what’s right… well, we might not be putting gay people to death, say the girls, we wouldn’t be stoning them and stuff, but we would ban gay sex and gay marriage and gay adoption and gay/straight student alliances and repeal all gay rights laws and keep gay characters off the TV. Not out of Old-Testament style vengefulness, but out of New-Testament style love and compassion and concern. Because if persecuting homosexuals—a.k.a. "fighting back against the gay agenda"—convinces even one gay person to leave their lifestyle and come back to God, "it would save a soul."
I set my burger down. "Hello, I’m a fag," I say. I assure them that I’m not angry or upset or hurt by anything that they’ve said. I just wanted them to know that I was sitting there, a big fag, eating my Irish burger within earshot. "And you’re free to think I’m going to hell and say so while I’m forced to listen. But I’m free to think you’re ridiculous and that your God is a delusion and say so while you’re forced to listen."
One of the young women assured me that they didn’t mean anything they’d said, you know, personally. "And I’ll be praying hard for you," the other one of said, giving me a wink.
"And I’ll be fucking butt for you," I replied, winking back.
Yes! Just…Yes!
You people…you callous, fucking ignorant, gutter crawling maggots who think our hopes and dreams of love and contentment are your stepping stones to heaven… If I could wave a magic wand I’d make each and every one of you loveless soulless louts re-live every gay bashing victim’s final moments every night for the rest of your lives, until you figured out that the people you are knifing in the heart with your pusillanimous cardboard McLove are human beings, not your scapegoats.
I despise you. Every night I go to bed I lay my head down on the pillow despising you a little more. You took what ought to be this life’s most wonderful experience…falling in love, and being loved…and turned it into a nightmare for so many people, so that God would know how much you love him. It wasn’t enough that Jesus died for your sins…the rest of us have to die too. Because you’re afraid that even Christ on the cross can’t cleanse the open sewer that is your love. And you may just be right…
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