Tomorrow our Christmas season will officially begin. Darren and Chris are having an ‘erection party’ (putting up the Christmas tree - get your minds out of the gutter) with 20 some of their closest friends joining them. Todd
Tomorrow our Christmas season will officially begin. Darren and Chris are having an ‘erection party’ (putting up the Christmas tree - get your minds out of the gutter) with 20 some of their closest friends joining them. Todd
Iím visiting family for the holiday, and you know what that means? Cable TV (and lots of food, and family visiting, of course, but weíll leave that entry for later.)
Anyway, with thanksgiving being a football holiday, weíve been reduced to watching make over shows. We caught a Trading Spaces (thereís a 48 hour marathon going on, so tune in, if your interested.) which was an interesting experience, and I watched a Queer Eye, because I find gay guys acting unabashedly nelly, very cute and entertaining.
The actual content of the shows are kind of blah. I mean itís a great idea and all, and I was really just trying to watch the gayness in the whole ordeal. But, one thing that we all (the family) found entertaining was that when ever someone sees the changes they say ìOh My God,î accenting the ëmyí about four times in a high voice. ìOh, my GOD!î ìOh MY god!î ìOH my God!î and so forth.
I mean come on. What kind of self respecting straight guy says ìoh my godî six times on camera. For that matter, what kind of gay guy doesnít say ìHFSî (as my father so tactfully put it), at least once be for the ìoh my gods start?î
And the only thing I can think of is this scene from the forth of fifth UK Queer as Folk when thereís a surprise party for Vinceís (Michael from the American version) 30th birthday part, except he knows itís a surprise party. Itís at Stuartís (Brain) house, and Vinceís boyfriend or pack of friends (boyfriend = David/Cameron and friends = Alexander/Emmit and Ted) are taking him to Stuartís but Vince knows about it, so for at least ten minutes Vince is saying ìOh, my GOD!î ìOh MY god!î ìOH my God!î in an attempt to sound authentic when he fakes surprise at his party.
In the next scene Stuart cornerës him and says ìhowëd you know.î It was priceless. Having said all that, Iím probably remembering it all differently, but in any case…
I continue to maintain my opinion that its generally harmless and a great deal of fun. I did hear a lot of ìlets make your bedroom a sanctuary,î and ìit feels like a whole new me,î which was too touchy feely. But then Iím in this ìembrace your labels, and make them work for you, instead of working for your labelsî phase right now, so itís all good.
Well it’s certianly been an eventfull evening. My instalation of windows which I’ve probably been using for the past nine or more months has finaly bitten the dust. Mind you, my data is all nice and safe and it can stay there. It’s nerve wracking becasue I’ve agreed to go out of town this weekend, and my computer situation is compleatly up in the air.
See I want to instal Gentoo Linux on my PC and have that be my primary operating system. I really do have a lot of affection for Windows and all, but there’s little reason not to change, and I’d like something a little less touchy. For the moment (becasue the instalation of windows that I’ve been using for the past several months is dying slowly), I’m reduced to Knoppix, the bootable CD linux distrabution. It’s a nifty idea, and lets people get used to the idea of linux, and is a great diagnostic operating system that’ll quickly let people know that it really is Windows messing up, and not their processor blowing out.
As for primary OS aplications, it doesn’t work so well. My issue with it is that I have three NTFS drives, and no way to write data anywhere… even to a flopy disk. Now two of those three drives are backed up and ready to be formated for the eventual arival of Gentoo, and I’d really be happy to turn one or both of them into FAT drives, but, I can’t figure out how to do that right now.
Having said that, linux is prety nice, I must admit. The longer I sit here looking dumbfounded at the whole thing the less excited I get about the whole matter, but it’ll be nice. I hope. I’ve wanted to at least put on a linux distrabution for just in case, and I know that if I just layer over the old windows install with new stuff (becasue the problem is totally not that serious I think) I’ll never do it. So maybe some of this torture is self imposed, but I could find out that Gentoo is really awsome and that I’ll end up liking it and wanting to not go back to windows perminatly afterwords. But first I have to figure out what a stupid tar.bz2 file has to do with anything and how I get a CD to install from.
In any case, I bet you’re wondering why I’m going into geek babble on the Times of TealArt (it still feels a bit funny to call the main log that, but it’s kinda cool). Well I thought it might be nice to get a little more bloggy out here just in genereal, but also becasue I have an actual art acomplishment thing to talk about.
I’ve gotten myself involved with my school’s writing lab. It’s a nifty little thing… stay after school for a few hours and get work done in a nice enviroment, help other people think about their writing, and enjoy the company. The nice thing is taht, since people at my school are slackers and don’t really show up for this kind of ‘lab’, I get an English teacher at my disposal for a few hours a week, which is really nifty.
There’s this poetry contest that this english teacher was telling someone else (whose writing/poetry I’m not particularly fond of) about this really nifty and quaint poetry contest. So I thought, what the hell, I can pull together a few poems and submit them.
So I started writing a Poem, or at least trying to. It’s been a long process, and it’s taken a while, from the point of the first line, to a theme, to a couple of revisions, to some intresting developments interms of literary neatnesses. The end result is prety awsome, I think. So I’m going to have to put a little more effort into such projects in the near future.
I’m not so sure I’ll be posting this stuff here, but we’ll see. Also I should apologize now. There’s a prety neat wordprocessor in Knoppix (two or three actually, but one that I’m suited to; anyway,) the problem is they couldn’t fit the spellcheck dictionary onto the CD, which is really ok, given all the other things that they fit in around here. So this entry is assuredly rougher than you’re used to. Sorry about that folks. Some semblence of normalicy will return in due time.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5293-2003Nov21.htmlAnother look at the gay marriage issue, from a legal history point of view that I think’s intresting and important. Taking this kind of perspective it’s beliveable that Renquist might vote against defense of marriage acts. To be quite frank, the notion of “state’s rights” is foolish to me. State’s aren’t due anything more than administrative responsibilites, but at the same time states rights fil some sort of neccessary niche, and I’m not sure I can think of a way to avoid the problem entirely.
The rest of the gay blogging community seems to have issued some sort of message in relation to the Massachusetts court case. Some say, “it’s about damn time,” and it is. Some issue congratulations, which are due. Some fear the backlash, which is only reasonable. I on the other hand (as I do with a lot of current events stuff) have waited a while to let things settle down a bit, so I can comment on it with the safety of hindsight.
My prediction is that we’ll see a proper marriage reform in the next few/several years. Why? Defense of Marriage acts aren’t going to stand up in the US Supreme Court, Scalia has even said that it seems. As for a backlash, waiting isn’t going to do anything… There are always going to be radical elements who will try and insight a backlash. Here’s something interesting from a recent Washington Post article:
The nice thing about extreme legislation is that it usually doesn’t live through the courts. Legislatures and courts almost always move in opposite directions of each other, and it seems to me that it’s easier to rally the community against extremism. For example, marriage, hate crimes laws, and employment non-discrimination (ENDA) are all very noble causes, but the community will have a mixed response; however, extremists are far more likely to provoke a unified response. Also, straight-allies are even more likely to see injustices when it’s *really* pronounced.
Let use race as an example. Before and during the civil rights movement there were these grave injustices for people of color, extremist legislation, and all that bad stuff. The community was able to rally, *and* enough white folks became allies, that sweeping changes like Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, were able to pass. And now, today. There are *tons* of race issues that still need to be addressed. But, there isn’t any extremism, and white people are for the most part oblivious to the problem. As a result? There isn’t a broad movement fighting racism today. While it’s certainly not that simplistic, on some level it is, and on some level the queer movement is facing the same sort of issue.
Don’t take me to mean that we need to radicalize in order to provoke a response in order to accomplish anything, but I don’t think we need to be overly focused on appeasing those with power and working to scare no one. Ultimately it boils down to my age old conflict. If you like what the HRC is doing but now how their doing it, can you in good faith support them? I don’t have a good answer, and I’m not sure I have anything to say to this that would further the debate right now.
What? Do you think they leave money under pillows and the pot fairy comes and leaves joints while they’re sleeping?Eric Otis Scott
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