Random News Drop

Lots of interesting random news from the BBC today.

I Get My Pretty Purple (Lavender) Diploma Today!

I was totally quoted by the Athens Banner-Herald TWICE in one week! ;o)

Best Mad Lib EVER!

Here are some purple tips for running the best graduation party ever:

Provide your guests with plenty of strawberries and drano. No one like to be hungry or exciting!

Leap your fanciest strap-on and wear dark shoes. You wouldn't want your boobies to hurt while you're pooping with Jon!

When masturbating at a party, it's always polite to bring fresh moster boogers or a a box of peni, at least that's what Brittney Spears says you should do!

Last but not least, you should always wear clean socks...

(Thanks Becky and Bethany!)

Stupid Breeders...

I just came across this LA Times op-ed piece from early LGBT activist Larry Kramer (thanks Digg.com!). I'll post the whole thing below as I feel it is an excelent piece:

Why do straights hate gays?
An 72-year-old gay activist isn't hopeful about the future.
By Larry Kramer, LARRY KRAMER is the founder of the protest group ACT UP and the author of "The Tragedy of Today's Gays."
March 20, 2007

DEAR STRAIGHT PEOPLE,

Why do you hate gay people so much?

Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing political commentator, Ann Coulter, gets away with calling a straight presidential candidate a faggot. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people, is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions that Pace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

Gays should not vote for any of them. There is not a candidate or major public figure who would not sell gays down the river. We have seen this time after time, even from supposedly progressive politicians such as President Clinton with his "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and his support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act. Of course, it's possible that being shunned by gays will make politicians more popular, but at least we will have our self-respect. To vote for them is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us.

Don't any of you wonder why heterosexuals treat gays so brutally year after year after year, as your people take away our manhood, our womanhood, our personhood? Why, even as we die you don't leave us alone. What we can leave our surviving lovers is taxed far more punitively than what you leave your (legal) surviving spouses. Why do you do this? My lover will be unable to afford to live in the house we have made for each other over our lifetime together. This does not happen to you. Taxation without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War. Gay people have paid all the taxes you have. But you have equality, and we don't.

And there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come. If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is.

Our feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.

You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.

Homosexuality is a punishable crime in a zillion countries, as is any activism on behalf of it. Punishable means prison. Punishable means death. The U.S. government refused our requests that it protest after gay teenagers were hanged in Iran, but it protests many other foreign cruelties. Who cares if a faggot dies? Parts of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop, who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?

Well, whoever thought we'd have to worry about Florida? A young gay man was just killed in Florida because of his sexual orientation. I get reports of gays slain in our country every week. Few of them make news. Fewer are prosecuted. Do you consider it acceptable that 20,000 Christian youths make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls? This is not free speech. This is another version of hate. It is all one world of gay-hate. It always was.

Gays do not realize that the more we become visible, the more we come out of the closet, the more we are hated. Don't those of you straights who claim not to hate us have a responsibility to denounce the hate? Why is it socially acceptable to joke about "girlie men" or to discriminate against us legally with "constitutional" amendments banning gay marriage? Because we cannot marry, we can pass on only a fraction of our estates, we do not have equal parenting rights and we cannot live with a foreigner we love who does not have government permission to stay in this country. These are the equal protections that the Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

Why do you hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much change coming.

I think your hate is evil.

What do we do to you that is so awful? Why do you feel compelled to come after us with such frightful energy? Does this somehow make you feel safer and legitimate? What possible harm comes to you if we marry, or are taxed just like you, or are protected from assault by laws that say it is morally wrong to assault people out of hatred? The reasons always offered are religious ones, but certainly they are not based on the love all religions proclaim.

And even if your objections to gays are religious, why do you have to legislate them so hatefully? Make no mistake: Forbidding gay people to love or marry is based on hate, pure and simple.

You may say you don't hate us, but the people you vote for do, so what's the difference? Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal. Which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you. You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you.

Obama on Virginia Tech

Obama on Virginia Tech

And the reason that we don't do anything about it is not technical, it's not because we lack the policies, it's because our politics is broken. Because we have given up believing that we can change things and so we turn away. And we look inward and we worry about ourselves. We stop believing that this government is of and by and for the people - we think that's just a bunch of words in a textbook somewhat. And it's that same disengagement that allows us to tolerate violence even though we know we really shouldn't and makes us feel isolated, makes us feel powerless....

Somebody said that the way we do that is by electing me, I appreciate you saying that, but let me say this: this campaign - and this I mean - this campaign cannot be about me, it is a vehicle for your hopes, it's a vehicle for your dreams. If you make a decision that change is gonna happen, then change will happen.

Texting Terrorism

I've been catching up on news this morning and came across an interesting article from Inside Higher Ed. It goes into depth about the college's response to the attacks and at one point brings up what I fond to be a compelling idea I feel should be more widespread: text messaging. The quote:

But the one medium that the university could not take advantage of was also the one that most experts cited as being the most useful: text messages. While not a major component of most universities’ crisis strategies at the moment, the messages are beginning to take hold. One university that has been a pioneer in using text messaging is Montclair State University, a mostly commuter campus in New Jersey that requires all incoming students to purchase a cell phone and service that are compatible with the campus’s network. “We’ve made some deliberate decisions about it, and that is that we’ll only use it for emergency reasons,” said Karen Pennington, the vice president of student development and campus life.

The email response of VT is being widely criticized as passive (in addition to too-long delayed). Text messaging seems a very appropriate communication tool at colleges and even in civic settings that is not being utilized. I know of Amber Alerts for lost children, but I can't think of any other crisis situation that that utilizes this medium.

Per Request, my "Take" on Virginia Tech

Well, I'm not sure how much there is to "take" on. A man kills 30 some people, including someone I know personally, a close friend of one of my best friends. Pretty clear-cut atrocity to me.

I will say that I try not to let stuff like this get to me very much. Not in a heartless-I-don't-care-about-them way, but a not-letting-fear-run-my-life kinda way.

After 9/11, or after the Madrid M-11 bombings (I had a friend there too, but she's fine) it's a shame that people changed their actions and beliefs out of fear. America gave Bush a blank check and initiated some of the greatest atrocities over seas in decades. Madrid swung the immanent election to the underdog opposition party.

Fear is the signature on that check, and I for one refuse to sign my name.

life is good

Oh Television...

So I got a free trial of local channel cable television and I figured I have a month and a half left here, so why not. I turned on the TV when I got home today after it was set up and thus spoke my screen:

Soon after, we found out Tiffany [his wife] was pregnant, but we don't know if the baby is mine or my brother's.

Wow, I must have missed a lot by not having TV for the last couple years ;o) Just in case you're still in suspense, it turns out the baby was actually his.

April 1, 2007

Happy April Fools

dont miss:

"Now that I have Gmail Paper, I understand the difference between labels and folders. I had one message with two labels, but when I tried to stick the paper version into two filing cabinets at the same time, it just wouldn’t go."



Within sixty minutes -- assuming proper data flow -- the other end of your fiber-optic cable should have reached the nearest TiSP Access Node, where our Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) will remove the sinker and plug the line into our global data networking system.

Rosie O'Donnell: "What do you have to do to get impeached in this country?"

This made my day ;o) Watch till the end, it's all golden.

"Nearly everyone in this administration is under indictment or suspicion, nearly every person, from Karl Rove, to Rumsfeld, to Gonzales. What do you have to do to get impeached in this country? What do you have to do?" - Rosie O'Donnell on "The View" March 29th, 2007