Just curious…is there any other theme park in the world that spits out seven pages of legalize along with your one page of reservation info?

I’m still not finished with the pencils, but I decided to switch gears for a bit and do the inking on the pages that are finished.  I have three pages inked and scanned in now, and I hope to have the whole pencils and inking part done by Tuesday.  That’ll just leave the Photoshop part, which is where I touch things up a tad and add the word balloons and stuff.

Then…I’m going to Disneyworld.  For a few days.  A co-worker invited me to hang out with him and his family while they’re down there and with gasoline prices being what they are now I wanted to go Somewhere on my vacation after all.  My initial plan when I blocked out these two weeks of vacation was to just stay home and work on A Coming Out Story and take care of a few household chores.  But I need a change of scenery severely.  This has been a stressful year for me, and particularly in the days surrounding the election.  I’ve been so…angry…after Proposition 8.  I’m actually looking forward to immersing myself for a few days in a fantasy world where there’s nothing but blue sky and happy times all around.  I’d book a week in Pleasantville right now if I could. 

In lieu of that, I booked a room inside of Disneyworld at one of their onsite hotels and got a "park hopper" pass, which basically lets you wander around the entire enclave.  Otherwise your ticket only gets you into one theme park at a time.  I’ve never been to Disneyland in California yet, but Disneyworld is so friggin’ huge you can actually disappear into it and not come back out for days.  Which is my plan this time.  Last time, I just stepped a toe in, and wandered about Pleasure Island for an evening.  This time I’m just going to immerse myself in it.

For the first time in my life, I just want to leave the world behind.  At least for a while.  All my other travels have been about exploring the world…or at least the part of the world I can get to by driving down some random highways.  Now I just want to get far away from it.  I want to see if I can recapture, for a moment, what it felt like back when I was a kid, and the life I had ahead of me looked so wonderful…so full of promise…

When I get back I’ll finish up the artwork on episode 11 and get it posted.

Something needs to be done to fix this system…

Toyota Claims Ownership of Fan Wallpapers

Toyota, one of the biggest car companies in the world, is often a name synonymous with quality. There is even a philosophy of doing business, called “The Toyota Way”, which emphasizes that the right result will come from the right process, and that solving the root problems brings the organization the greatest benefit.

This ‘Way’ is probably not communicated to its lawyers in great detail, which is why Desktopnexus, a site that provides desktop backgrounds, has been contacted by them. In perhaps one of the most wildly arrogant demands in DMCA history, Toyota’s lawyers are demanding the withdrawal of all wallpapers that feature a Toyota, Scion, or Lexus. The site’s owner, Harry Maugans contacted Toyota to clarify. He was told that all images featuring Toyota vehicles should be removed, even images with copyright belonging to others.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, Maugans said: “Their lawyer, Garrett Biggs, told us that if we wanted them to specifically identify their images, we would have to pay for them to do so”. Maugans also said he was afraid it would come to a lawsuit, fearing the attrition effect that is so common now in copyright disputes. Toyota, with cash assets of over $23 Billion can surely afford to spin out the legal costs in an attempt to bankrupt the site – the same strategy that is often used to ‘encourage‘ a settlement in RIAA cases.

Yet, Toyota has also been cagey. These demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice. While sending such a notice would require the takedown, it also requires that the person sending the notice legally certify that they are legal representatives for the copyright holders at issue. Making a false statement is ‘punishable under penalty of perjury‘, which is not taken lightly in US courts.

This is a multi-billion dollar corporation, basically using the legal system to grind a small website owner into dirt.  A good faith legal challenge would contain specifics about what which images were infringing and which ones weren’t.  This is about corporate arrogance, less then greed, because there is no way Toyota is suffering financial loss from a fan website that is putting up wall papers for the use of other fans.  It’s not even like the RIAA sending out takedown notices.  At least what’s being illegally copied in that case is the actual product.  A web site that allows people to freely upload and download their own photographs of automobiles isn’t stealing anything from Toyota.  A Toyota copyrighted image, yes.  But Toyota is telling them to take everything down, or be either billed or sued into oblivion.

I have a suggestion.  How about people upload their images of broken down or wreaked Toyotas instead?  Maybe Toyota would like it if all anyone ever saw of their products on the Internet were images of broken down, rusted, junked abandoned or wreaked ones instead.

And just to get my digs in…I looked at a Lexus back when I was thinking about trading in the Accord.  I looked at two different Acura models, the new Accord, the Lexus ES, and the (then) new Mercedes C300.  I’d have bought any of the Acura’s before I’d have bought the Lexus.  Yes, the Lexus was the more sumptuous of the lot, but that cushy comfort came at the expense of everything else an autombile is supposed to be, including road feel, performance and handling.  It Looked nice.  And it felt nice too.  Until you sat in the Mercedes and right away you noticed how much more solid the German car was.  The Mercedes, the Accord and both the Acura’s ran rings around it on the highway, and I have never experienced anything like the Mercedes at high speeds, or on twisty backroads.  And mine’s only a ‘C’ class.  A Lexus sedan is worth the money, only if you care more about the upholstery then the way it drives.

Via Scientific American…  It’s not only our brains that make us stand out from the rest of the critters here on planet Earth.  Brains actually receive a lot of pre-processed input.  Turns out our auditory system has a few neat tricks of its own too…

Why Dogs Don’t Enjoy Music

Anyone with normal hearing can distinguish between the musical tones in a scale: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. We take this ability for granted, but among most mammals the feat is unparalleled.

This finding is one of many insights into the remarkable acuity of human hearing garnered by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, reported in January in the journal Nature.

…

The study revealed that groups of exquisitely sensitive neurons exist along the auditory nerve on its way from the ear to the auditory cortex. In these neurons natural sounds, such as the human voice, elicit a completely different and far more complex set of responses than do artificial noises such as pure tones. In this mixed environ­ment humans can easily detect frequencies as fine as one twelfth of an octave—a half step in musical terminology.

The vexing question is: Why? Bats are the only mammal with a better ability to hear changes in pitch than humans do. Predatory species such as dogs are not nearly as sensitive—they can dis­criminate resolutions of one third of an octave. Even our primate relatives do not come close: macaques can resolve only half an octave. These results suggest the fine discrimination of sound is not a necessity for survival.

More likely, the researchers speculate, humans use their fine hearing to facilitate working memory and learning capa­bilities, but more research is needed to explore this puzzle.

I have a strong hunch about that.  It isn’t memory and learning.  It’s communication.  Speech.  Try this sometime while listening to people around you chatting: try to ignore the words and just listen to the sounds of the voices as if you were listening to birds, or dogs or some other animals.  Humans have an Amazing range of vocalizations.  You think birds are good at it, but compared to humans birds are johnny one-notes.  Think of how much information is conveyed by tone of voice alone, in a conversation. 

Consider the sentence "The cow jumped over the moon".  A human speaking those words could convey astonishment or indifference or anger or fear simply by how they inflect the speaking of that string of words.  Just by slightly changing the inflection on the word "moon" you can change the sentence from a statement into a question.  It’s not just cadence.  It’s tone.  The better you can decode tone, the better you can tell what other people mean…how they feel…the better you can grasp what is being said.  And not only that, but the greater becomes the potential bandwidth of communication.  Because now information can be carried by both words and tone of voice.

Tone is the first language we have.  Human infants don’t do words.  They do coos and gurgles and squeals and cries.  A human sitting not far from a baby knows exactly how it’s feeling by all the little non-verbal vocalizations it’s making.  Is it content?  Is it delighted?  Is it curious?  Is it upset?  Does it need its diapers changed?  It needs to tell you these things and it can’t if it has to use words it hasn’t had time to learn yet.  But as we grow older, we don’t discard the language of tone.  In fact, it grows and develops along with us.  We learn to use it better…more deftly…just like we do our verbal languages.  How much is conveyed by lovers to one another, simply by a sigh?  And the longer a couple has been together, the more intimately they learn each other’s tone signals.  Like music, how the words are spoken goes right to the heart.

That’s why we evolved the more highly attenuated detection of tone.  It’s a communication thing.  The bigger brain needed it.  Words alone weren’t enough.  And I’ll bet this is why music affects us so profoundly, yet so irrationally.  Recall this from the article… 

In these neurons natural sounds, such as the human voice, elicit a completely different and far more complex set of responses than do artificial noises such as pure tones.

Music isn’t pure tones though.  Not even minimalist scores like those of Philip Glass.  A gathering of instruments in an orchestra, or even a single instrument playing a melody all by itself, produces a complex layering of tones that I’ll bet hits those neuron in just the same way.  It Is communication, but a different kind.  It’s communication that goes right past the logical analytical brain with its ear for words, to the heart, which listens to tones.  Tone was the first language.

The stereotype of our pre-human ancestors is that they communicated in simple grunts and barks.  Perhaps.  But even without language yet, those vocalizations may have carried a lot of information in them simply by tone alone.  Language evolved from those vocalizations, and gave them more precision, because the growing brain needed that.  But as our capacity for language developed and grew, so did our capacity to decode tone, because that was also a channel of communication.  But they’re different channels.  The logical rational brain likes words.  The emotional intuitive brain responds to tone.  When interacting with others, the one who can decode both those things best has a big advantage. 

So Orpheus probably didn’t tame the savage beasts by the sound of his lyre, because the beasts are mostly tone deaf.  But the beast within…yeah.  Absolutely.  Here’s an experiment: Humans that are tone deaf, or who have difficulty decoding tone…how well do they interact socially?

[Edited a bit more then a tad…]

I was at a local Office Max the other day looking for a few household office supplies, when I noticed that the cordless phone set I bought with my credit card "bonus points", that sold for ninety bucks at Costco, was selling for one-hundred and forty there.  Wow.  And I hadn’t had to shell out anything to buy them.  Well…other then the fraction of a cent extra my credit card company is adding to every dollar of charge I put on the card to support the bonus point plan that is.

I’d come there looking for Dymo Label Maker tape…the old plastic stuff in various colors with an adhesive backing.  I actually have several rolls of the stuff here, that I’d bought cheap in the 1970s, that I was hoping to use for…I dunno…the rest of my life maybe.  But it turns out the adhesive degrades over time I guess, because the labels won’t stick to anything anymore.  So I went out to buy some new and discovered of course that my 1970s label technology is so…1970s.  Now it’s all some sort of electric imprinted tape stuff.  Bleh.  I like my colored plastic labels.  But Office Max wasn’t selling that stuff anymore.  I think I can order it online though.

I picked up some other things on my list and walked to the cashier and that was when I noticed how low budget things were getting in that store.  The sales isles were nicely stocked and well kept, but the front of the store by the registers looked desolate, and the employees manning them ragged and depressed.  Boxes of returned or damaged goods were scattered around, inventory was haphazardly tossed here and there.  There was only one person manning a checkout line that was pretty long, and the other employees you could see were all wandering around indifferently with other chores, completely ignoring the long line.  The store had maybe three-fourths the staff it should have had to keep things running smoothly and the ones that were there were all simply overworked and you could tell that beyond the breaking point was their normal day. When a person is depressed, you see it in their disheveled clothes and you see it in their disheveled faces.  I’ve seen this before in other retail stores that were on the verge of going belly up.

It’s a vicious circle that starts when management decides to treat its workers like they’re just another expense they can cut to the bone.  I’ve worked in retail and it’s hard work for low wages as it is.  Time was though, back when I was a kid and labor still had some clout in this country, that service workers could at least make a living wage.  Maybe not the greatest of one, but at least you could get by.  A small apartment, a cheap second hand car maybe.  A forty hour work week could get you a basic living, and if you wanted more you could take night courses.  At least you had enough free time to recover from your week before you had to get back to the grind.  Nowadays that’s nearly impossible on a service wage.  My mother raised me on the wages of a basic clerical job and what impresses me about that looking back was that was in a time when the glass ceiling ruled and women made only a fraction of what men did for the same work. 

But that was pre-Reagan America.  There is simply no way mom could have made a home for us doing that kind of work today.  Service workers are hurting bad, and the result is you walk into a store or office and the atmosphere reeks of despair.  How management expects to attract and hold on to customers in that kind of environment is beyond me, other then the obvious fact that they’re morons who should be the first ones out the door when layoffs…excuse me…Downsizing…happens. 

I do a lot of bulk shopping at Costco, and one thing you notice about them is their people are not just busy but Engaged with it.  I never feel like I’m walking through someone’s eviction pile when I shop there, unlike say the Office Max I was just at.  Costco isn’t Bloomingdale’s, its isles are sometimes cluttered and it does have long lines but that’s because they have lots of customers who buy tons of stuff.  It’s actually pleasant shopping there.  Costco tries hard to pay a living wage to its people.  And Wall Street is constantly bellyaching about it.  I read one jackass investment columnist who said that Costco treats its employees better then its investors.  But Costco makes money and that’s better then Wall Street can say about itself these days. 

Via SLOG…  A sign held up at the East Lansing Michigan protest…

H8 Is Easy…Love Takes Courage

I also like the ones I’m seeing that read "Separation Of Church And Hate"…

The more people look at what happened in California, the more the vast scope of Mormon involvement in anti-gay politics, both in terms of money and organizational prowess, becomes known.  In this article in Today’s New York Times, the bottom line is made perfectly clear: without the vigorous support of the Mormon church, Proposition 8 would have failed.  The Mormon church wrote its will into the constitution of the state of California though lies and stealth, and lots and lots of money that its members were ordered to contribute…

Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage

As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

…

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to “closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.

Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.

But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead…

…

…the “Yes” side also initially faced apathy from middle-of-the-road California voters who were largely unconcerned about same-sex marriage. The overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said, was “Who cares? I’m not gay.”

To counter that, advertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little further explanation.

Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.

“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said.

They lied through their teeth and they threw a torrent of hate and Mormon church money into it and they steamrollered over the rights of devoted loving couples so they could become gods in their own universe someday.  And now they’re upset that people are taking the fight back to them.

Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

And just what would you do, you gutter crawling bigot, if someone cut your ring finger off?   Laugh it off?  Shake the other guy’s hand?  No you wouldn’t.  But you expect us to roll over and play dead because we’re homosexuals and homosexuals don’t have feelings, and homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  There is no reason for us to be angry with you, because you didn’t take anything sacred away from us, because we don’t feel love the way you do, because we’re not human like you are.  We’re Satan’s followers, and we don’t have human emotions like you Future Gods In Training do.

Fruit…did you say?  Fuck you Ashton.  I’ve got your fruit right here.  You sow poison in the earth, you get poison back out of it.  Now eat it.  Or as another gay man, James Baldwin once said…

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

Baldwin wouldn’t have been allowed in one of your churches, even if he wasn’t gay, because according to your…prophets…black people were cursed by God and that’s why their skin is black.  Your church has been elevating the cheapshit prejudices of its barstool prophets into holy writ for generations and now and a reckoning is long overdue. This isn’t your private universe, it’s the United States of America and it belongs to all of us, not just you White And Delightsome Gods In Waiting.  The United States of America is not your private universe, and you are not gods, however highly you might think of yourselves.  So fuck off.

And the unsurprises just keep on coming.  You know the old story about how so many right wing anti-gay warriors turn out to have gay children?  Phillys Schlafly?  Alan Keyes?  Charles Socarides, late of NARTH?  Recall how the man who spear headed California Proposition 22, which was the first swing at same-sex marriages back in 2000, Pete Knight, turned out to have had a gay son?  

Isn’t it interesting how so many of the most vitirolic gay haters have gay children of their own?  Like…they’re punishing their kids, by waging war on the entire gay community?  Like…all of us have to bleed, because hating their own flesh and blood just isn’t good enough?  Isn’t it so very…unsurprising…that 67 year old Gary Lawrence, Mormon, California State LDS Grassroots Director, and prominent organizer of the Proposition 8 campaign, has a gay son?  Surprise, surprise, surprise.

It’s worth remembering in the wake of Proposition 8, that Mormon abuse of their own gay children has been well known for some time now.  If you thought it was tough growing up gay in a Southern Baptist household, just listen to the stories of gay Mormon kids.  And…(Via Pam’s House Blend), like all the children of the anti-gay culture war, this particular son has his own heartbreaking story to tell…

Matthew Lawrence, 28, of Santa Ana, California is just one of approximately 500 people who have contacted Signing for Something ( http://www.signingforsomething… )in the last few days to announce his resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of the Mormon Church’s handling of and involvement in the gay marriage issue.  Matthew is gay and is the son of Gary Lawrence, 67, who is the “State LDS Grassroots Director” for the state of California.  (See http://yesonprop8.blogspot.com… ).

Matthew Lawrence, in an e-mail interview with this diarist, said that although he is “extremely upset and frustrated” with his family and that he has “cut off communication with them,” that “at the end of the day, I do love them.”  The elder Lawrence was also the Mormon Church’s point man for the Prop 22 campaign in 2000.  Matt says, “I love my family so much, but it’s hard to not take this personally.  We had a brief falling-out over Prop. 22, but that got mended.  But two anti-gay initiatives in eight years, it’s impossible not to feel attacked.”

Matthew was particularly hurt when “my father said that opponents of Prop. 8 are akin to Lucifer’s followers in the pre-existence.”  (Printed in Meridian Magazine online, and reported in the Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_… and other newspapers). Matthew’s plea to his father and others is “We can all agree to disagree and respect each other’s informed opinions and decisions, but don’t put me and Satan in the same sentence please.” 

“This issue isn’t about gay marriage,” writes Matthew. ” This is about certain religious factions that believe homosexuality is disgusting, immoral and wrong and needs to be stamped out. . . .  It’s a problem to be ‘fixed.'” Matthew writes that his family sent him to multiple counselors during his youth, and even sent him to live with relatives in Utah which he writes was an attempt to “straighten me out” by living with what he describes as “homophobic cousins.”  He said while in Utah it wasn’t unusual for his cousin to call him a “faggot” at school and that his “aunt and uncle did nothing to discourage his behavior.” 

…don’t put me and Satan in the same sentence please.  Is this too much to ask?  Never mind the gay stranger down the street who wears horns every time you set eyes on them.  Never mind that same-sex couple you can casually condemn to eternal hellfire because they’re not part of your own family, but someone else’s, and it’s always easy to toss someone else’s children, someone else’s loved ones, into the fiery lake for all eternity.  Is it too much to ask you to stop demonizing your own children?  Is it too much to ask you to stop putting your righteous knives into their hearts too?  They want your love…they Need your love.  Can you stop putting them side by side with Satan in your eyes?  In your hearts?  At long last, is this too much to ask?

I only have a couple major revolving credit cards.  I generally don’t like them, but they’re handy when traveling and for upgrading the hardware here at Casa del Garrett.  One of my cards has been pushing their "bonus points" schemes at me for years now, and I’ve never really bothered keeping track of how much of that stuff I’ve accumulated, since I figured sooner or later it would all just disappear back into the promotional void from whence it came.

Basically, every time you use that card you get some "bonus points", that supposedly you can use to buy things from their "bonus awards" catalog.  Okay…I’m old enough to be familiar with the concept here…

The Giant Food stores nearby when I was a kid gave those things out, and the Super Giant department store further down Rockville Pike had a Top Value Stamp redemption store on site.  The way it worked was, every time you bought something at Giant, or any place that gave out Top Value Stamps, you got stamps along with your change and receipt.  The more you spent, the more stamps you got.  You then took your stamps home and filled up your stamp books with them…thusly…

Those are the 1-stamp stamps.  There were also larger 10-stamp stamps, that you could stick on the beginning of a row to "fill" it. 

It was a promotional gimmick, designed to secure customer loyalty.  Another store down the street might have cheaper prices, but they didn’t give you stamps.  So if you were working on getting something from the stamp catalog, you kept buying where you got the stamps from. 

Say…you were looking to buy yourself a nice new camera or projector…

It’s kinda hard to read there…but note the prices are in "books"  That’s how it worked, basically.  Or…say you were pestering your mom for a new bike…

So 24 books would get you a neat Huffy Dragster and be the envy of all your friends.  So long as you didn’t tell them it was a Top Value Stamp bike or then you’d get mercilessly ridiculed.  And a mere 12916 books got you the Italian motor scooter. 

The big recession in the early 1970s killed off a lot of the old big suburban department stores and the stamps seemed to vanish along with them. I think people figured out they weren’t really saving any money buying things with stamps.  It was kinda fun when the economy was doing okay…but when jobs suddenly became scarce and incomes went down people watched their money a lot more carefully.  But I still have a few things here at Casa del Garrett that mom bought with those Top Value Stamps back in the day, including the clock radio I’ve had at my bedside ever since I was in third grade. The clock still works, but the radio needs new tubes.  Yes…I said tubes.

When the credit card companies started pushing their "bonus point" thing at me I just shrugged it off.  Been there…done that.  At least the stamps were finger candy.  We East African plains apes love our finger candy.  But those "bonus points" have kept right on accumulating, and just last week I got another one of their bonus award catalogs and while I was fixing dinner, decided to browse it for a bit while waiting for my soup to heat up.  My eyes lingered on a nice Panasonic cordless phone set with caller id digital answering and 3 remote handsets.

For the past couple years or so I’ve been really wanting to get rid of the absolutely terrible Motorola cordless phones I have here.  I’m usually better at judging the quality of the stuff I buy but I really got taken by Motorola that time.  I regretted buying those things I think from the first day I installed them. The volume controls do nothing…the answering machine doesn’t respond to commands while it’s playing a message or answering a call…the handsets don’t hold their charge for very long and the battery life indicators lie through their teeth…the sound quality is horrible…  I could go on… 

So for almost a couple years now, whenever I’ve walked into any electronics stores, I’ve found myself wandering over to the cordless phone shelves and pondering whether it was worth it to just buy new ones.  I’d look at this model and that, and almost start walking to the cashier with a set, only to put it back and walk away again because I was determined to get my money’s worth out of the damn Motorolas.

So I’m looking at these cordless phones from Panasonic in this bonus points catalog thing and just for kicks and grins I decided to see how much of that bonus point stuff I’d managed to gather over the years.  

Turns out…quite a bit.  Enough to get a nice flatscreen TV if I wanted.  But the TV I have works just fine thank you.  It may not be HDTV ready…but I barely watch TV any more these days anyway.  There were some nice digital video cameras, but I’m a still photography kinda guy.  And there was tons of the usual junk.  But…jeeze…if I already have enough points to get a nice new cordless phone set, then it’s not like I’m spending any new money to replace the Motorolas I despised…

So I decided to bite.  I logged onto the redemption web site and cashed in some of my points for a new cordless phone set, that would have cost me about ninety bucks had I bought them at Costco.  They were waiting for me when I got home from work this afternoon and I’m charging the batteries now.  It’s a Much nicer set then the Motorolas, and I didn’t have to spend any money to get them (I realize the cost to me was folded into my use of that card over all these years…).  Which is good because, ironically, with the economy being on the edge that it is, I’m trying not to use my credit cards much now.  I’m in a pay cash or do without mode for the time being.

It still feels…I dunno…fake somehow.  Insubstantial.  Unreal.  I mean…the new phone set is real enough.  But these damn bonus point things are just…not even there.  They’re something theoretical.  Virtual.  Am I that old I need something in my hand to believe it has some value?  Even the damn credit cards in my wallet are Something.  My bonus points were never anything more then a number on my monthly credit card statements, that I never really payed any attention to because it seemed beside the point…the point of the statements being how much I’d spent and where and how much I owed.  Points?  Points?  Right…sure…whatever.  No "points" have ever crossed my palms, but somehow they are there.  Out there.  Somewhere.  The new phones are Nice.  But somehow some part of me inside is still left wondering what exactly it was I just spent to buy them.

[Edited a tad…]

If you think it’s only marriage they want to take from us, you are sadly mistaken.  Note this exchange in the chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court, buried within a legal debate about monuments in public parks…

Justices Grapple With Question of Church Monument as Free Speech Issue

WASHINGTON — The hypothetical questions were flying at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and that was not a good sign for Summum, a small church that wants to place a monument to the Seven Aphorisms of its faith near a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah.

The questioning suggested that the justices were finding it hard to identify a principle that would compel the city to accept the Summum monument without creating havoc in public parks around the nation.

The justices start tossing out various examples of what can and cannot be excluded…and then this comes up…

Would it be all right, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, for the government to exclude the names of gay soldiers from the Vietnam memorial?

This was rhetorical on Stevens’ part.  Stevens is one of the sane justices on the bench.  But its prime fascist  jumped on it gleefully…

Mr. Joseffer had to be pressed to answer the question about excluding the names of gay soldiers. In the end, he said the First Amendment’s free speech clause, at least, places no limits on whom the government chooses to honor.

Justice Scalia agreed. “It seems to me the government could disfavor homosexuality,” he said, “just as it could disfavor abortion.”

This wasn’t even about homosexuality.  This was just an aside from Scalia…nothing more.  But dig it.  If the government wants to exclude the names of gay soldiers, who gave their lives for their country, from the Vietnam memorial, that would be fine by Scalia.  And never doubt it, this would also be fine with Roberts, Thomas and Alito.

There is no bottom here.  There is absolutely no bottom here.  You could say that gay people are to the religious right, as Jews were to the fascists…but that would be ignoring history.  In fact, gay people died right alongside of Jews in the concentration camps.  There were not as many of us, and it was harder to systematically round us up because gay is not an ethnicity.  We have always been, and always will be a diaspora…many of us hidden from view.  But we were just as hated back then, and clearly, sickeningly, frighteningly, we are just as hated by them now. 

If the day ever came when these modern day fascists achieve enough power to do with us as they have always wanted to, it will be a race to the bottom of the human gutter, and there is no bottom.

You gotta love it…

BYU graduate resigns position in Sacramento theatre over Prop. 8

Hundreds of people rallied outside a theatre in Sacramento today in support of the artistic director who resigned over his stand on Proposition 8.

After 25 years with California Musical Theatre, Scott Eckern, a BYU graduate and distinguished alumnus, has left his position as artistic director because of how he voted.

Ticket holders, donors and friends rallied outside the theatre supporting Eckern.

"Freedom should be respected, and they haven’t respected his freedom to do what he would with his funds," said supporter Jaynie Dufort.

Freedom?  Like…freedom to marry?  That freedom?

Look…it’s simple.  You kick me in the face, I will not work with you.  I will not shake your hand.  I will not walk in your door.  I will not patronize your business. I will not give you my hard earned money, just so you can take it and buy a knife to cut my ring finger off.  Don’t kick me in the face one day lady, and then expect me to forget you did it the next. 

And this prime jackass has it even worse:

"This is a witch-hunt," said Lance Christensen, who says he’s a regular patron of the theater and took off work to show his support for Eckern. 

Witch hunt…did you say?  Witch hunt?  Like telling everyone that homosexuals are going to storm the schools and start recruiting everyone’s kids?  That kind of witch hunt?  Like telling everyone that their ministers will be thrown in jail if they don’t marry same sex couples?  That kind of witch hunt?  Witch hunts like this …?

The woman continued to poke at my face with her sign and call me "nasty." Genuinely disturbed by the complete lack of rational behavior I’d seen up to this point, wanting to look into her face and possibly connect on some level with her as a fellow human being, I pulled a corner of the sign down away from my eyes and asked "why are you calling me nasty?"

That’s when she attacked, clawing, grabbing and then shoving. I didn’t fight back; she was much bigger than me. Calling me a "nasty fucker" and threatening to kick my ass, she pried my phone out of my hand and tried to break it in half while her friends egged her on.

Please note that I never touched or threatened her in any way (unless you want to consider my pulling the edge of her sign out of eye-poking territory a threatening gesture).

As she grabbed at my phone, I stood there stunned, not really sure what to do. One of the counter-protesters (the woman who you see saying "No on Prop 8" towards the beginning of this clip) quickly intervened and calmed the attacking woman down enough that I felt safe enough to try to take my phone back. After a second or two of grappling, she let go and went back to screaming at cars from a lawn chair near the side of the road.

(Big love and gratitude to the kindly counter-protester who pleaded for calm. I don’t think my phone would have survived without you!)

I stood there for another minute or two, checking the phone’s applications for damage. One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered "fuck you, dyke."

Even though I wasn’t hurt besides a small scratch on my hand, and my phone was okay, being attacked definitely shook me up. I was a bit tearful. Call me naive, but I never thought I’d actually be in physical danger just for shooting footage of their activity and pulling the edge of a person’s sign out of my eyes. Verbal insults, sure. But attacked by an anti-gay activist? In one of the most queer-friendly neighborhoods in the bay area? Yikes.

The man holding the "Vote No" sign noticed that I was in tears and approached me. We hugged to a chorus of jeers, exchanged some reassuring words, and I turned to leave. Someone called after me: "keep crying, and keep walking."…

Witch hunts…like this…?

Dobson Chokes Up Explaining God Wants Him in California to Save Marriage

James Dobson dedicated his radio program today to explaining his sudden decision, which we mentioned earlier, to go to California this weekend to join Lou Engel, Tony Perkins and others for a massive "The Call" rally of prayer and fasting in the name of saving "traditional marriage."

In the clip below, Dobson has just explained that he received a letter from Rev. Jim Garlow, one of the leading organizers of the "yes on 8" movement pleading with Dobson to attend and, after reading it, felt God’s hand on his back telling him to attend "The Call."  Dobson chokes up explaining that despite having been on the go for weeks and being exhausted, he knew God wanted him there.  Dobson had to call his son to tell him he couldn’t babysit for his grandson this weekend as planned and his son Ryan then confirmed that God wanted him in California instead.  Dobson could barely keep it together when he explained that "the Lord must be involved in this" and then hands over the program to Garlow, who also gets choked up and speaks of their level of spiritual desperation and their constant "crying out to God" to save California because they are "watching the destruction of Western civilization."

The destruction of Western civilization.  The destruction of Western civilization.  The destruction of Western civilization.  You people spewed a torrent of venom on people whose only crime was being in love and wanting to get married, and now you’re complaining that we’re angry.  Bullies always complain when their playthings start fighting back don’t they?   It’s so…unfair.  We’re supposed to just accept our station in life, as their punching bags.

I know…I know…  We were supposed to just keep crying and keep walking, weren’t we?  You didn’t think there would be any hard feelings the morning after, because homosexuals don’t have any feelings.  We’re all so…flighty.  We were supposed to just go back to cutting your hair, redecorating your homes and waiting on your tables.  Fine.  Hello…I’ll be your server tonight.  My name is Fuck You.

Because…people who look like that, want people who look like that…

Speed daters go for crowd-pleasing looks

LONELY hearts beware: looking for love at a speed-dating event may leave you feeling unlovable. In big groups, people judge on looks so much that the less stunning may as well forget their clever chat-up lines.

In primates and birds, the larger the group, the better the chance that non-dominant individuals have of being chosen as a mate. Alison Lenton at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and her team looked at whether this is true for people too.

Speed-daters race through a series of "mini dates" of about 5 minutes then invite whoever catches their fancy to get in touch again later. Lenton and her team studied 118 sessions with groups of between seven and 36 people, and found to their surprise that as the size of the group grew, the offers became skewed towards just a few individuals, while the least popular ended up with fewer or no offers (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.08.025).

So why do humans seem to differ from other animals? In smaller groups, says Lenton, people trade off different qualities in prospective mates – physical attractiveness for intelligence, for example. Faced with too much choice, however, we resort to crude approaches such as choosing solely on looks….

Now I know why good looking gay guys are always telling me I should just hit the bars more often to find a mate, and are utterly oblivious to the fact that it doesn’t work for anyone but them.

I know…I know…   It’s my fault for not being more handsome.  Oh…and getting old.  Shouldn’t have done that…

Via Tom Tomorrow…  Tony Ortega over at The Village Voice blog gives a brief lesson in why Mormon theology assumes the form it does.  Basically, Smith cobbled it together from several fads that were just then sweeping the nation…

One of our favorite authors in the whole world, the late Fawn Brodie*, did the world a service by helping us all understand a really fascinating time in our country’s history — the wild, wild 1820’s.

…

Specifically, Brodie points out that three national fads had an especially tight grip on the minds of people in western New York in the early 1820s.

The first one is, Where did all these Indians come from?   After being practically wiped out in the New England states, they were no longer viewed as a threat, and in fact had just then begun to fall victim to a first wave of cheap romanticism.  James Fenimore Cooper, who Mark Twain also mocked scathingly, being a good example.  But more importantly, various men of the cloth had begun wondering where these dark skinned natives had come from, and of far greater importance, why the bible made no mention of them.  Ah…perhaps they are one of the lost tribes of Israel…

The second fad came about from news reports of the strange system of writing found in ancient Egyptian ruins.  The mysterious hieroglyphs.  The Rosetta Stone had been discovered, but it would still be years before someone finally figured out that the hieroglyphs represented vocalizations in the same way that letters of most modern alphabets do.  So there was endless fascinated speculation about what the hieroglyphs said.  Perhaps they held the key to the mysteries of the ancient world…perhaps they contained profound ancient wisdom long lost to us…

The third fad was a preoccupation with the treasure of the first Spanish explorers.  It was known that the Conquistadors had raped the ancient Mayan and Inca civilizations and carted back tons of gold to Spain.  But perhaps they had also buried some of it…somewhere…Hey…maybe right in my own back yard!!!

This third archaeological fad was not only amplified by the other two, it provided fertile ground for flim-flam artists. What better way to romanticize the (more exciting) past than to daydream about Indian gold or Spanish doubloons hidden away somewhere on your back forty? Quick to take advantage of that longing was an army of itinerant scammers: a man would arrive at a farm, claim to be a fortune-teller, and swear that he sensed the presence of buried treasure nearby. Some set the hook by showing the gullible a special "seer stone" that the fortune-teller claimed he could use to zero-in on buried gold. For a substantial fee, he’d dig up what was sure to be a whole cache of treasure that would make the farmer very rich. After being paid that fee, naturally, the fortune-teller would then make himself scarce. Farmers in western New York, in particular, seemed to be susceptible to the scam.

Hey…doesn’t this sound like the M.O. of a certain young man named Smith…

Right…

A man named Joseph Smith — who already had a court record for scamming a farmer in the buried-gold scheme — came forward and claimed that an angel had come to him four years earlier with a revelation.

What did the angel ask Smith to do? Are you ready?

— The angel, Smith said, directed him where to dig up a buried treasure, a set of gold tablets. (See: Fad Number Three, above.)

— The tablets were etched in a strange code that looked remarkably like Egyptian hieroglyphs. (See: Fad Number Two.)

— The angel gave Smith a special pair of seer stones that enabled him to read the hieroglyphs as easily as if he were reading English (a really creative combo of Fad Two and Fad Three).

— And what did the tablets describe? Have you guessed? Yes! It was the answer to the ultimate riddle, Fad Numero Uno: The super-cool, heretofore unknown and like, bizarre actual origin of North America’s Indian tribes!

Can I get an L-D-S!

Pray for future generations that no new religion is born in America in this day and age.  Ortega avers that all this may be why the Mormon church needs a convenient scapegoat…even more so then other American religious right theocrats…

It’s complicated. But anyway, try to understand that if your entire worldview was based on the completely unreliable ravings of an early 19th-century flim-flam artist with a harem fetish, you too might have a burning inferiority about your belief system, and you might manifest that inferiority by picking on the queers, who make an easy target and scare the bejesus out of your typical Mormon.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…look at all those queers trying to get married!!!

THIS! 

Proposition 8 fall out – Stop whining and stand behind your donations

No doubt we will be inundated by the religious right who will wax about evil intolerant gay folks but please spare us your usual twists in logic.

You are the same folks who boycotted McDonalds and Ford Auto because of their supposed support of the "gay agenda."

Nail.  Hammer.  Bang.  And…Disney…and Kraft…and many others, especially sponsors of gay friendly TV shows.  Every goddamned time some corporation steps forward as a friend to the gay community the gay haters are all over them threatening boycotts.  

Fine.  You don’t like our boycotts?  Fuck You.  You think our boycotts amount to religious persecution?  Fuck You.  You want us to respect your deeply held religious beliefs?  Fuck You.  Welcome to the morning after.  I’ll be your server tonight.  My name is Fuck You.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints didn’t just rend the marriages of thousands of devoted, loving same sex couples.  They have ground under foot a good many longstanding community ties to local businesses too…

El Coyote: An Uncompromising Faith

About 75 people showed up for the early lunch at El Coyote Cafe to listen to Marjorie Christoffersen explain her decision to contribute to the Yes on 8 Campaign. Most of those attending were men who had been customers of Margie’s restaurant for many years. Some were children of Mormons or had been raised in the faith. And while there was at least one who just wanted to vent his anger, most truly wanted to hear Margie out and, if possible, find a solution.

El Coyote Cafe has been a little neighborhood landmark for generations.  Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin, when news of Christoffersen’s donation first became public, said of it…

El Coyote Café is a Los Angeles landmark. Over 75 years old, and still family owned, it is perhaps best known as the site of Sharon Tate’s last meal.

Locals know it as a favorite of many of who just want a meal and a drink, and don’t want to pay much to get it. A taco and enchilada with rice and beans is $9.50; pair that up with a margarita and you’re out the door for less than twenty bucks.

El Coyote is also delightfully tacky with a vast collection of “art”, the kind that includes paintings with windows that light up and frames made of shells. The waitresses wear huge Spanish dresses with lots of frills and most have been there for decades. It’s loud, it’s high in fat content and calories, it’s unsophisticated, and it’s always always busy.

But what makes El Coyote a delight is that its one of those places that are loved by straights and gays alike…

No more.  Marjorie’s is another of those thousand dollar donations that you just can’t ignore or write off as a simple response to the Mormon church’s call to support 8.  A thousand dollars isn’t pocket change.  You throw that kind of money at it, because you really want to see it pass.

And you certainly don’t want to see it undone afterward…

The first question to Margie was if she would be willing to make a personal contribution to the efforts to reverse the proposition. She responded, “I have to be faithful to my views and my church”, and quickly left the room. Her daughters remained behind, looking angry, dismissive, and indignant that those there would question their mother or them. They answered no questions nor made any statements.

And so it goes…

It was a very sad room that left today. I did not speak to anyone who said that they would continue to patronize the restaurant. They felt that they could no longer profit a woman who used their support to take away their rights. Many felt betrayed, some had lost a home.

No one stayed for lunch.

This is the sort of thing that leaves permanent wounds in a community.  The Mormon church charged like a bull in a china shop through one state after another, one community after another, one family after another, with no regard or compunction for the damage it was inflicting. All the broken hearts left in the wake of Proposition 8, the wounds of the children, the wounds of the parents, the wounds of brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, are so much worthless rubbish…the rubble righteous men are regrettably compelled to step over on their way to attaining godhood.  Same sex couples had to be shut out of the marriage chapel.  Same sex love had to be denied a place in the heart of every neighborhood, every home.  If we don’t bleed, they aren’t righteous.  If the Mormon leadership cannot rip to shreds our hopes and dreams of love, then how on earth will their god ever know how devoted they are to him?  Our ring fingers had to be cut off, so they could become gods of their own private universes.  What matters the wreckage a single community, or of thousands of communities, when your own godhood is at stake?

Word of the boycott has spread around websites and Facebook. "We should put our money where our mouth AND support is AND NOT AT EL COYOTE," says a posting on one activist’s website.

The Times also received a letter threatening a boycott of an El Pollo Loco whose owner apparently contributed to the Prop. 8 campaign.

Sonja Eddings Brown of ProtectMarriage.com said the boycott threats have extended beyond eateries.

“We have received calls today from our members in Greater Los Angeles and other parts of the state indicating that today their businesses are being hurt because they contributed money,” she said. “People who contributed have been receiving calls from people dropping their business with them.”

It matters not.  Someday, they will be made gods for doing this.