Our Queer Oppressors

there is a map to the holes - e mail me for the facts -- i just have to make sure you are NOT a 40 yo and please be a Cal student. The maps to the Cal Holes are the best map you can get this term. Full of fun and yum yum and good time.. we have the best holes in the UC system.!!

The mercator of glory holes. The Amerigo Vespucci of yum yum good times. I get a definite trainspotting vibe from this guy.

I can't say I'm shocked by revelations of bathroom sex on a college campus (I can say I will always read an article about the same.) The story is more interesting to me for its incidental descriptions of the perks and incentives available to campus queers with an eye on the prize. Honestly.

Selections from the Patriot exposé:

The students partake in anonymous sex in campus bathroom stalls, where they use “glory holes” to peer into the stall next door to see if it is occupied by a man interested in sex. If it is, the student will cross into the stall and engage with him sexually, usually without any mutual acquaintance

That usually without any mutual acqauintance is, well, glorious. Partake in anonymous sex is an exceptionally polite construct. Peer as well, is an odd choice in verbs. Jarringly punctilious stylists these Berkeley conservatives. I blame Buckley.

UCLGBTIA, a subcommittee of the alliance and the Queer Resource Center, also received university money for the controversial Queer Conference, held on campus February 2002. The conference featured such workshop topics as: A New Generation of BDSM; Safer Sex: What to Know Before You Blow; Buzz Off: Sex Toys for All Genders; and Dykes Doin’ Photo.

UCLGBTIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd hate to be a letterman on that team. Or a cheerleader for it. And who thinks up these smarmy workshop topics? Why is it that all such attempts to cuten sex up with pep squad non-chalance make it seem wholly disgusting? Subcommittees, Resource Centers and workhops, somehow they've managed to turn gay sex into a state subsidized bureaucracy.

But John Mendoza, co-chair of the UC Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Intersex Association, described the Web site as “a great place for people to express themselves.”

Ah! UCLGBTIA decoded. Intersex must be the new state of the art jargon add-on for acronymn conscious queers.

Police have received notice of glory holes on campus, and they usually respond by “trying to deconstruct” them, said UC police Capt. Bill Cooper.

Isn't that the English departments job, Cap'n?

The Queer Resource Center, located in the Eshleman Hall front office for the UC Berkeley Queer Alliance, receives free office space and over $9,000 a year for activities from the student government. Numerous other queer-themed groups beneath the overarching Queer Council also receive monies totaling in the thousands.

By contrast, both the Cal Berkeley Democrats and Berkeley College Republicans received $4,500 from the ASUC for the 2001-2002 academic year, and the Campus Crusade for Christ received $200.

A rew tentacle for the queeroctopus: The overarching Queer Council. The Campus Crusade for Christ should consider a name change. The Qampus Qrusade for Qurist might get a little more cash action.

Police at London's Heathrow airport arrested Courtney Love this morning after she allegedly verbally abused the crew of a Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles.

Love, 38, was traveling in the airliner's Upper Class cabin on her way to a London benefit hosted by Elton John and Kevin Spacey.

Yeah, I just checked at the Virgin Air site and your booking choices are economy, premium economy and upper class. How thoroughly undroll to bail out on the joke like that. Economy and premium economy? They not only bailed on the joke they threw it out of the emergency exit with no parachute. No wonder Courtney was pissed.

A Rose Flower and a Rice Flower

Andromeda Heights

We're building a home on the side of a mountain
Above the clouds, next to the sky
And after our labours the stars will be neighbours
We'll take our place with them in space

We're not using concrete or plaster or wood -
They'd lower the tone of our new neighbourhood
And mortar will crumble with age and neglect
We're building our home upon love and respect
And when we've built it we'll call it Andromeda Heights
When we've built it we'll call it Andromeda Heights
When we've built it we'll call it Andromeda Heights

We're building a home on the side of a mountain
Above the clouds, next to the sky
Our plans are ambitious - a blueprint of wishes
That will come true and when they do...

Folks in the valley will look up and say
"You've finally built it can we come and stay ?";
And cynics will marvel and say "we confess -
There were times when we thought it was just an address !
But now that we've seen it we know it's Andromeda Heights
Now we've seen it we know it's Andromeda Heights
Now we've seen it we know it's Andromeda Heights.";

We're building a home on the side of a mountain
Above the clouds, next to the sky
And after our labours the stars will be neighbours
We'll take our place with them in space

Update: I forgot to mention that McAloon also sings the cheeriest line of media criticism I know (except maybe for Lou Reed's towering joke, I need a mistrial to clear my name):

MTV US apologises if we have offended the people of India and the memory of Mahatma Gandhi. We have the utmost respect for Gandhi and all that he represents as a revered Indian leader and one of the most important figures in world history.

We recognise and respect that various cultures may view this programming differently, and we regret any offence taken by the content in the show.

Hmmmm, we regret any offence taken by the content in the show. So who is it apologizing to and for what? The people of India for any offence to the memory of the father of the nation the cartoon might cause or to the cartoon characters for the embarrassment they must feel being asscoiated with MTV's corporate culture.

Hey India, check it out. I was searching the MTV site for the full text of their apology only to discover that this is not an isolated instance of Gandhi goofing. My search turned up mention of this outrage!

Also, some portion of the purchase price of any Amazon product you buy through this site will now go to better use than you would make of it. We get a kickback of 110% on your cost, I believe. It's a loss leader/internet economics kind of thing. I could explain it, but frankly I don't think you'd understand.

Derbeyshite

Must... Refrain... From... Punching... Monitor
1/29/2003
If, somehow, you still retain some glimmer of doubt that John Derbyshire is a complete and irredeemable piece of shit, don't worry. Derb is working hard to remove all uncertainty.

And here is the post he was commenting on:

TAKING BACK THE LANGUAGE [John Derbyshire]
Number of readers so far (10:35 a.m.) who have e-mailed in to thank, praise, or congratulate me on using the word "gay" in its original and proper sense: six. Thank you all. Yes, I shall make a habit of it, and I urge other NRO writers to do the same.

I tend to think of Derb more as an irradiated piece of shit, absolutely glowing in his shittiness. But Julian's response was pretty much mine when I first read this bit of Derbyshite. Then I recalled that J.D. had a quite different reaction to neological usages of gay that he perceived as tilting hateward. Three weeks ago the Derb was charmed by this retrofit of the word.

Thursday, January 2, 2003
REPORT FROM THE SLOPES [John Derbyshire]
"Skiing in the rain, just skiing in the rain..." That's how it was New Year's Day on Hunter Mountain. Interesting effect: we ended up sugar-glazed, covered all over with rain that had frozen to ice. Snowboarders now around 50 per cent on the slopes--amazing. Seems like just yesterday I saw my first-ever snowboarder (actually about 7-8 yrs ago, I think). Nellie Muriel declares that green & blue slopes (i.e. beginner and intermediate) are "gay" -- the latest, and I think rather interesting, sub-teen synonym for "beneath contempt," "babyish," "lame," etc. The way snowboarding is coming up, I'm afraid that pretty soon skiing with two skis will be "gay."

How's that for a variable commitment to taking back the language? Daddy is proud of his girl's use of gay as a pre-tween pejorative in early January and up on his sway-back high horse at month's end, leading the charge to repatriate gay to the 19th century, it's only true and proper home. Derb finds it an interesting refinement of the vernacular when a word that is synonymous with homosexual is broadened to mean beneath contempt. The fallback position is to scale back the definition to exclude the connotation of homosexual. Only matter of fact usages of gay in its modern meaning are a problem.

Derb must have gotten snow in his tin ear though since even his gloss on his kid's use of gay is inept. Gay has been kid jargon for lame and the like for years, but his addition of beneath contempt to the list of definitions is a projection of Derb's inner malicious child. There is an irony to the use of gay by kids that Derb entirely misses, just as he missed its prevalence until just this month. He was so delighted by the pejorative cast of his daughter's slang that he ignores the obvious and amusing flip-side to this use of the word. How the omnipresence of the word as a sly insult makes even young children comfortable with the word in all its glory, all it meanings. Oops. Or maybe Derb finally did realize this at month's end and thus his change of heart. Too dangerous to let the meaning further expand, better to try to put it back in the smallest box you can find. One that would also fit Derb's humanity and joie de vivre.

Incidentally, Derb did his bargain basement Mencken routine (sorry, H.L.) again that same day when he updated his ski-slope epiphany post with this:

RE: CONTEMPTUOUS USUAGE OF "GAY" [John Derbyshire]
Around a quarter million readers have e-mailed in to tell me that the usage of "gay" that I remarked on was current among teens and pre-teens at least as far back as the late 1970s. Thanks to all. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. Truly, I am hopelessly out of touch with teen culture. It's nice to know, though, that NRO has such a firm grip on the 30-something demographic.

1941
December 10-Chased down the street by a tailor from whom he had stolen a bolt of fabric, he is stopped, near Notre-Dame Cathedral, by a bookstore owner from whom he he had lifted a volume of Proust. He is sentenced to three months and one day in prison.

You got that? This must be the gayest crime spree in history. Running down the street with stolen fabric, he's nabbed for his prior Proust hijacking. The chronology that begins the biography is full of these Genet-arrested-for-stealing-goes-to-jail entries. A lot of fabric theft too: "arrested for stealing cloth", "he is caught stealing a shirt and a piece of silk". And book heists. Maybe he was making clothes for the books.

I could understand that.

Some Genet wannabe should steal this.

Correction Tuesday

Future Canadian Prime Minister (after things REALLY loosen up), Mark Wickens writes:

Fascinating history post today, but I think bug-chasing was still on the mind when you wrote "entymology". :-)

Let me remind everyone that this page is typed by my cat and while she is hard working and earnest she is still, afterall, a CAT--with all that implies; a short attention span, a limited vocabulary and less than ideal typing abilities. Mark's correction at least was kind spirited.

Speaking of kitten executive assistants, this book is full of such things. It is one of the most amusing books you are ever likely to read. It is my typist's favorite book [by far >*.*< ]. I keep waiting for its author to write something as perfect. He hasn't yet, though Motherless Brooklyn was very good.

But perfection one time is one time more than usual, so Jonathan Lethem is the Agenda Bender dude of the day.

UN INSPECTORS [Andrew Stuttaford]
Just a thought: the UN inspectors should ask to see those two men who tried to contact them yesterday.

Three terrific records. Remind me to sign up for that Amazon affiliates thing sometime so I can make a buck off my exquisite taste:

Charlie Haden Quartet West: The Art of Song

16 Horsepower: Secret South

CHASING THE BUG-CHASING STORY [Rod Dreher]
This is getting interesting. Newsweek has a piece up that largely follows Andrew Sullivan's criticism of the story's sourcing. An NRO reader writes, of the RS piece: "Nothing really new here though. I was aware of that whole scene back in the early 90s here in San Francisco. There were conversion parties where a [passive anal sex partner] would be infected or Russian roulette orgy parties where one unknown person would have AIDS."

Dreher had accepted the RS story as true in an initial post, had linked to Andrew Sullivan's demoltion of it in a second post and then jumped back in with the post above. I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to send Rod an email myself with similar first-hand testimony of HIV blood in the punch bowl parties, or HIV Piñata parties (not sure how those would work yet, need to brush up my memories). And it's not just that Dreher did no follow-up to substantiate the facts of this singular email, the second instance mentioned--the russian roulette parties--is a logical impossibility. How exactly does one organize an HIV roulette party with one HIV+ partyboy circulating among the other HIV- revelers? How exactly do you find the unknown HIV+ and how does he stay unknown? Likewise the HIV- party majority? Who is hosting these parties, God on his gay weekend trips to town? Whoever did throw these parties must have been as omniscient as Rod is noniscient.

On the Request Line

Kind of reminds me of Strafe's Set it Off. Not as brilliant as that one of a kind record (almost 20 years old and it still fascinates) but it has that same struck-by-genius-in-the-basement-one-time-only magic. (30 seconds of the Strafe magic here --you gotta look).

Sexy chick voice sings:

I met a boy his name was Jay he was so fine
I met a girl her name was Jane she wanted to be mine
I met a boy his name was Jay he was the one
I met a girl her name was Jane she wanted to have fun
He had a vision of things that I needed,
She understood how a woman should be treated
Got a decision which one should I choose
When it comes to Jay and Jane there's just no way to lose

Chorus:
I do both Jay and Jane
They make me feel the same
There's no shame to my game
I do both Jay and Jane

Hahahaha, I do both Jay and Jane, so stupid, so great.

There should have been an answer record. Sexy chico voice singing, well, pretty much the same thing. I have a quibble with the names though. Jay is OK, lot of Jays walking around these days, but Janes seem kind of scarce to me. I think Seth and Beth would have been truer to the times. Or maybe Sean and Dawn. Or Cameron and Gabrielle, just to clear the dancefloor.

Ordinary Heterosexuals

He's mentioned Dr. Judith Reisman in the Corner several times in the last couple days. She's been involved in a dispute with Variety, the show business koran (cliché remodeling--a house specialty), over a rejected ad of hers that supposedly debunks Alfred Kinsey. A film about the sex researcher is currently in production, so Reisman had her hook to hang a little advertprop on--in the great PETA tradition. I've read enough to know that Kinsey's methods are open to pretty substantial criticism so I assumed Reisman was rehashing those points. But then I read the article about the rejected ad and discovered that Reisman was coming from a somewhat unexpected direction, that her criticisms were a little more, oh, let's just say hardline. Oh, let's just further say the simple fact is Dr. Reisman has a bug up her ass as big as the Ritz. Ad copy a la Dr. R.:

MGM/United Artists and Myriad Pictures' upcoming feature film celebrates Alfred C. Kinsey, a man who produced and directed the rape and torture of hundreds of infants and children. Kinsey will be played by actor Liam Neeson.

...Kinsey’s data are based on reports from co-workers who sexually abused more than 300 minors to prove that children 'enjoy' sex with pedophiles. Some of the victims were only 2 months old and subjected to more than 24 hours of non-stop sexual atrocities. One Kinsey contributor was a WWII Nazi officer. His young victims had to choose between rape or the gas chamber.

Dreher deserves some slight credit for later linking this blog explication of Resiman's history and methods. But what kind of timed-release hate drugs is Rod taking that he could have pumped up Reisman for even one hot, sweaty N'Orleans second? Will he link any gay bashing bughouse prophet who registers a domain name and scrapes together the server fees? Or only the ones who can also scrape together the Ph.D. tuition fees? And what is it with this straight faced Dr. Reisman shit? I thought the Corner cons saw through bogus honorifics. Or does their disdain for laughable Dr. tags only extend to black clerics, educrats and liberal academics? Does a Ph.D.1980 in Communications from Case Western Reserve University all of a sudden become a scary credential when the credentialed communicates anti-gay slander? The National Review style book must be a ripe hairball of cross referenced particularities and countervailing exceptions.

In his most recent post Dreher says that Reisman feels she's being subjected to a smear campaign and she urges readers to visit her page and see for themselves what she's all about. I do too. I linked the page of her most recent articles. I've only read one so far but I will return again many times to this box of culture-con candy, this bag of crunchy-con potato chips (like Rap Snacks but with Master Rod D on the front instead of Master P). A few bites from just one:

Cracking the 'chicken' code
Editor's note: The following
column contains content of a sexual nature that some readers may find objectionable

By Judith A. Reisman & Eunice Van Winkle Ray

...Ordinary heterosexuals can no more understand the secret homophile argot than can ordinary Americans understand Mandarin Chinese. Dr. Reisman's formal academic studies included training in a World War II scientific method used to decode the Axis intentions by reading, categorizing and then analyzing their words and phrases. Today this same "content analysis" method opens up the secret code of the pederast-homophile movement

Oh, it's impossible, I can't excerpt this thing. I want to quote every word. You have to read it all. Amusing too, how Reisman makes a fairly good point about the inaptness of the party theme and the ineptness of the benefit planners (who provide the text for her exegesis and homocode cracking) and then displays her own vastly superior talent for ineptness and her near super powers of inaptitude. Show off.

And Eunice Van Winkle Ray, the co-authoress from heaven. Or outerspace anyway. Hold your ray gun to my head, press your space face close to mine, love, freakout in a moon-con daydream oh yeah.

Fair warning, Eunice. Your name inflames me, I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa comin' for you!

Reparations

Outrageous Decorations and more.......

Yeah, the copy is a little odd, Not on helping...but also our generational, uhm, OK. But the premise works.

But Tommy's even better than his name promises. Classical liberal, anti-theocrat, who supports gay rights unequivocally. Here's his party's statement of principles.

Just when I thought the 'gressives had lost their sense of absurdist fun forever they come roaring back. This story is highly evocative of that special delirium that always seems so Manhattan to me--apartment building civil wars, common area neuroticism in full hot house flower. Dueling lesbians slugging it out over the stars and stripes display in the lobby. The star spangled sister wouldn't talk to the press but the anti-Betsy Ross did. You'll no doubt be surprised to read that she believes "the flag is more of a negative symbol because of what it means around the world." I wonder if she's going to reconsider her own sexuality given her tendency to put things to a world wide plebiscite. But that's not the funny part.

The flag, anti-flag hallway hassles were getting out of hand so:

... the co-op decided to put the issue up to a vote, the choices offered were: a) keeping the flag up all the time; b) displaying it only on national holidays; and c) keeping the flag out of the lobby altogether. The voting sheet was left with the building doorman.

And here's why I'm suing Ms. Negative Symbol for the severe laugh line damage she caused me. Anti-Betsy heard the sound of distant jackboots closing in on her Village co-op.

[She] said that having to sign a petition on the issue in the presence of the doorperson “reminds me of the loyalty oaths of the fifties.”

The West 50's or the East? I heard the co-ops up there take no prisoners. That "doorperson" is a nice touch too.

Yuk #2: Julian Sanchez links a bloody vivisection of the young (nice-tablecloth) turks of the conservative movement. It goes on a little long but not as long as a night out on the right side of town with these candlelit junior coco's (connoisseur conservatives).

And Rod Dreher never disappoints. He missed the hook here though. He should have played it as the deterioration of the usually dependably conservative Elliot family germ line. From T.S. to Missy. (T.S. Elliot would be a genius hiphopnom, ref-ing Missy and T.S.--especially since T.S. gives you two jokes in one). Rod is right that 11 year old girls love this song. Both my 11ish nieces knew every word at Christmas, an amazing enough feat, but even more remarkable is they reproduced the backward looped parts perfectly too. Check out the lyrics Rod links and find the drummer boy ref he is so disgusted by (it was way too subtle for me--I've heard the song a hundred times and never caught that the drummer boy line was a sacrilegious shoutout to that central figure in the Christian mythos--The Little Drummer Boy). Wonder if he'd be shocked by Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer irreverence too.

The Bender does agree with the Rodster on this much: I'm no big fan of the Missy song either. I find it tiring, too much of the same. The rockcrit nutbusting over the song is almost as ludicrous (hey, Ludakris!) as Dreher's abomination of it. The elephant sound effects gets a smile from me every time though and the ghetto chinese section has been known to make me laugh.

*Agenda Bender lived in Boston for a year.

One typical straight-male teen put-down of so-called boy bands is that they’re “too gay.” How do you respond to that?

As a young boy from the South, what kind of exposure did you have to gay people?

Without outing anyone, do you know of popular young gay musicians who are afraid to come out?

Do you think the industry and the people who buy records are more accepting of gay people?

Have you ever felt like you or N'Sync were being specifically marketed to attract gay people?

What did you think when you first had contact with a gay person?

When did you first become aware of your gay following?

What is it about your new record that an average gay music fan would find interesting or appealing?

What about your cameo as a hairdresser in On the Line?

Can you tell me whether any of your handlers are gay?

As an average gay reader of average gay magazines I must say I was very gay disappointed by the gay questions left ungayasked. What's the matter, Advocate, afraid to ruffle some music industry feathers? Where are these questions?

If your parents were gay, do you think they would be accepting of your straightness?

If you have children, like say 8 kids, and they all turn out gay, what do you think the odds of that are?

Would you sing the national anthem at the Gay Games?

Would you stick around for any of the events? Diving maybe?

Me and you--can you do the gay math?

What about Iraq? Is there a gay scene there as far you know?

I heard somewhere your parents are gay, is that true?

If you could be any gay sex act which would it be?

Can you say that again?

Are you familiar with the concept of a mercy F?

Do you think gay people ask too many questions?

Do I gay annoy you?

From the Agenda Bender mailbag:

MR. WOO CHONG
CHINA TRUST COMMERCIAL BANK.
NAN KAN BRANCH, TAIWAN
REPUBLIC OF CHINA

I am Mr. Woo Chong, Bank Manager of Chinatrust Commercial Bank, Nan Kan branch, Taiwan, R.O.C. I have urgent and very confidential business proposition for you.

On June 6, 1998, a British Oil consultant...valued at US$30,000,000.00 (Thirty Million Dollars) in my branch...This sum of US$30,000,000.00 is still sitting in my Bank...According to Laws of Republic of China, at the expiration of 5 (five) years, the money will revert to the ownership of the Chinese Government if nobody applies to claim the fund...Please observe utmost confidentiality, and rest assured that this transaction would be most profitable for both of us because I shall require your assistance to invest my share in your country.Awaiting your urgent reply via my email address.

Thanks and regards.

Mr. Woo Chong

Mr. Chung, the head of our Asian securities department, replied:

woo hoo! count me in. sign me up. thanks.
-- wang chung

Next, our business associate Mariam Acheba writes to let us know that she wants us to take our budding relationship to the next level:

My dear friend,

I thank you so much for your response to my email. How are you really doing overthere? i hope all is well. To me, i am well also except that i have to get this money out into someone who is reliable's account before my government should step on it again.

...My lawyer will prepare all the neccessary documents backing up this money for you. You are going to contact him and speak with him on phone about it also.

I want you to contact him as soon as possible. below is my lawyer's contact details:

NAME : BARR. JOHN AYORE
COMPANY : AYORE & CO CHAMBERS
ADDRESS : 102, OLUYOLE LAYOUT, LAGOS
TELEPHONE: 234-803-3279474
EMAIL : ayore_chamber@lawyer.com

I will call him to let him know about you. make sure you get back to me after you might have contacted him.

Thank you and may allah bless you.
Hajia Mariam.

Mr. Bear (late of Bear Stearns), who runs our African investment portfolio, wrote Mariam's lawyer:

Agenda Bender is Irish, when it suits our purposes. So this article caught our smiling eyes:

Internet browser that quadruples surf speed wins Irish science prize

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

DUBLIN (AFP) - A computer browser that is said to least quadruple surfing speeds on the Internet has won the top prize at an Irish exhibition for young scientists, it was announced on Saturday.

Adnan Osmani, 16, a student at Saint Finian's College in Mullingar, central Ireland spent 18 months writing 780,000 lines of computer code to develop the browser. Known as "XWEBS", the system works with an ordinary Internet connection using a 56K modem on a normal telephone line

Shouldn't his name be Adnan O'smani? Interesting, our second Adnan in just a few days. Hope he doesn't suffer from the Irish curse like the other Adnan.

Bonus joke: What's Irish and stays out all night?

I'm on my way to being inconsolable (from Mobylives):

The ALSO, YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO SKINNY Award . . . In August, it was revealed by the writers' group the Underground Literary Alliance that Jonathan Franzen had, the previous year, applied for and won a National Endowment for the Arts grant of $20,000 — after signing a deal for book and movie rights to "The Corrections" reportedly worth over a million dollars. It was further revealed that one of the judges for the award was Franzen's close personal friend, Rick Moody. Franzen told the ULA that he used the money to buy two paintings, "since visual artists can't get NEAs anymore."

I'm on my way to potty mouth prison .

Dozens of oil tankers, part of the merchant marine, suddenly dropped their anchors and declared solidarity with the opposition. One ship, the Pilin Leon, was headed for Cuba (Chavez supplied free oil to Fidel Castro’s government). Some companies use names of kings and heroes, others use names of presidents or business leaders, in Venezuela, oil tankers are named after the country’s second greatest export: beauty queens. Pilin Leon was the Venezuelan beauty queen who became Miss World 1981. The drama surrounding the Pilin Leon became the focus of the struggle. Miss Leon herself, in London judging the Miss Universe contest that had recently been moved from Nigeria, sent the ship’s crew a message that she was proud of them and hoped they would stand firm. They did.

Or you can take my word that this is the best of the them, if only for the detail in the blue tongue. Remember while looking at it that it is meant for adults who work at a U.S. military base.

Compare with this for graphic power and this for kitsch subtlety.

This archive comparing magazine cover art of recent times and decades past makes the contrast even more striking.

BEVERLY HILLS, 1986
On one of those multiple girl jobs, Madame Alex asked me to go see Prince Fahad of Saudi Arabia, who at the time was 17 years old. There was an entire squadron of local female talent at the Beverly Hilton for the young stud to choose from. I arrived to find him skateboarding on the marble floors of his hotel suite...

[cut to]...we went to his bedroom and the kid wasted no time making his moves. He was very thin, good-looking, tall and broad shouldered. Mostly, however, he was very well endowed. If nothing else, this prince was the prince of penis. I stared at him, mesmerized by his huge dick.

On the flip-side, at the other end of the bell curve, there's this description of an immensely wealthy individual who I will only identify as Mr. K. Not enough to go on? OK, but this is all I'm giving you, Mr. Adnan K. You could boil me in oil and I wouldn't give up his last name. I gave Fahad's full identity since I don't believe it's possible to libel anyone it that direction. THIS is the direction that hurts:

Europe 1984
I really hate to say anything negative about Adnan, but one of the most powerful men in the world has a penis the size of my thumb. It was definitely the smallest penis I have ever seen in my life.

In all fairness, we really have no way of knowing how big her thumb is.

Axis Bold as Love

I should have known that the pull would be too hard to resist. Lance was just too important to me, the show was something I had to see, and right away. The original An American Family series was one of the scattered peaks of my personal teenage wasteland, I used to watch it every week with my american family. Years later living in New York I saw Lance's band, The Mumps, a half-dozen times. I have the Mumps' 45 they do a screen shot of in the documentary, Rock and Roll This, Rock and Roll That , somewhere in a pile of 45's ten feet from where I write this. That record and that band name give a hint of Lance's humor and charm. The Mumps is a pretty good new wave band name by itself, but it is a great and deeply clever one in disguise. The hidden joke was that Pat Loud, Lance's mom, made a passing reference once to the possibility that Lance's difference might have been the result of the mumps (christ, now I can't even remember the precise reference) that she suffered while carrying him (?), or he suffered as a child (?). In either case the band name explained and excused the band in such a funny and subtle way, explained why that guy jumping around the stage with such joy and camp abandon was jumping around the stage with such joy and camp abandon--it was the mumps' fault. And if you don't smile at the title Rock and Roll This and Rock and Roll That, leaving aside the fact the joke (ie the record) is over 20 years old, then fuck you and your shadow too.

I also would always read any article bylined by Lance in the years since, and I was always running into them. They were invariably worth reading, he was an entertaining writer--smart, witty, and (this is the key and the thing that set him apart from most) excited to be interviewing or writing about whoever he was interviewing or writing about. Which is why Lance's comment in the movie that all his life, even then at the excruciating end of it, he woke up excited, like it was his birthday, was a revelation. As soon as he said it I realized that was what had always been so attractive about Lance in everything he did, he was excited to be there--in the original TV series, on the stage at CBGBs, in the pages of Details, sitting on the windowsill at the Chelsea--WHEREVER. It's also why his admission that he shot up speed for 20 years was such a sad surprise to me. I should know enough now to never be shocked by anyone's drug secrets. I've seen enough people who I knew well and never would have expected to go there not only go there but take up permanent residence that I shouldn't be surprised it happened to someone I only knew from television, rockclub stages and in print. Still it seems wronger than usual that Lance made that turn.

I didn't write about the show yesterday because it was even harder to watch then I'd expected. Lance's decline was one of the cruelest imaginable. There's a continuum of the devastation from AIDS even in its terminal stages and Lance was on the bitterest edge of it, no doubt due in large measure to his dual infection with HIV and Hepatitis C. So the physical transformation of that lovely kid riding his bike with the such freedom down the hills of Santa Barbara in 1971 to the hobbled old man saying goodbye to his cats 30 years later in the hills of Echo Park is too heartbreaking. The spirit was still (and forever) lovely but the change in form left me speechless. I was going to put it out of my head for a week or two before writing about it. But something Andrew Sullivan wrote this morning changed my mind because it brought home (a resonant cliché in the circumstances) the surprise ending to Lance's documentary.

Andrew wrote (and I'll print it all since, unbelievably, there are still no links to posts on Sullivan's page--memo to Andrew's web guy: fix that, it's beyond ridiculous):

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?: I found James Q. Wilson's paean to the family to be very persuasive. I was particularly glad he saw how family structure can change over time in ways that are good and inclusive - especially with regard to the status of women. Fatherhood is indeed vital, as this touching piece about Eminem also shows (Stanley Kurtz alerted me to it). I might add one thing: fatherhood is especially important for gay kids. So many, when they come to realize their sexual orientation, withdraw from their father out of fear of his rejection; and some fathers withdraw after discovering or somehow sensing their child's difference. This is terribly destructive to both, may take decades to heal properly, and is, I think, a key reason for some of the psychological problems gay men and women deal with. Notice here how being pro-family and being gay-friendly are not exclusive categories. Far from it. Gay people are an intrinsic part of families, even very traditional ones; and one of the goals of the fight for equal marriage rights is to find a way to bring gay people more fully and deeply into the bonds of family life. How sad that some conservatives don't seem to see this, and in fact compound the psychological damage done to families with gay members by perpetuating fear and panic about homosexuals. Compassionate conservatism must find a way to bring the virtues of family life to everyone. Yes, leave no child behind. But that includes the gay ones.

At the end of the documentary right before the credits roll there's a brief notation on a black screen that says something to the effect that Lance's parents, Bill and Pat Loud, are again living together in accord with Lance's final wish that they reunite.

There are 30 years of history compressed into that stunning sentence and I won't even try to decompress it beyond saying that if you don't find your worldview, and more specifically your view of not just that American Family but all American families, reshaped in a breathtaking way by those few words, if they don't make you feel alive to the possibilities and the beauties of families in America (and any mostly free place) then, again, fuck you. And this time I mean it.

But my recommendation won't get you that job at the National Review anyway.

This story made me laugh all the way through. Print it out and give it to the next kid you see who from a distance looks like an approaching rickshaw driver, they can add it to their backpack library. Some excerpts:

Backpacks can hurt you, but not the way you think
Tripping, bludgeoning more common than back strain

Tripping over backpacks and the use of book-laden school bags as a "weapon" to whack other students pose a greater health hazard to children than back strain, says a new U.S. study on one of the surprise perils of modern education.

The analysis of 247 backpack-related injuries by researchers from hospitals in Michigan and Ohio shows that back injuries from toting heavy loads are a relatively minor problem. More common were cuts to the head and face from bags being flung violently.

Other common complaints were hands punctured by pencils and other sharp objects while reaching for books and ankle injuries from tripping over poorly stored knapsacks. All caused far more emergency room visits than back problems associated with lugging heavy loads of homework

"Recommending that children put the backpacks in a safe place so they do not trip over them, and not to use them as a weapon to hit another person, could eliminate more than 40 per cent of backpack injuries" treated in emergency departments, concludes the research team led by Brent Wiersema, an orthopedist at a hospital in Warren, Michigan.

"Public health officials should expand their backpack safety initiatives to cover injuries caused by tripping over a backpack and being hit by a backpack."

"The floor is no place for a backpack," he said.

Especially if there's a compliant 5 year old anywhere nearby to strap it to.

I should add that I am certain bike riding with a heavy backpack puts a ridiculous strain on your back and is a bad idea. Not that this knowledge stops me from doing exactly that, but this is about YOU.

So I won't remember to watch the Lance Loud doc on PBS tonight. I hope it's on sometime though when I'm watching TELEVISION and I run into it. Don't think it will be easy to watch but I will anyway.

In the box that invites you to enter an url first paste this: www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp

Then, just to be fair in the Princeton way (aka soixante-neuf), go back HERE and this time paste this: www.commondreams.org/

Repeat daily until eternity.

After that you're on your own. I'm sure you can think of other pages that could be improved in this way.

In my fruitless search for a bigger, better copy of this bureaucratic artwork I found this. Which was a pretty good payoff for my effort.

Will some please animate the DEA logo and the gay Mac logo so that the grim raver attacks the half eaten rainbow apple. It is my belief that animated gif logo voodoo will help precipitate the singularity. Call it a ravelation.

JANUARY 03, 2003
Astrologer Sydney Omarr, 76, Is Dead
His Syndicated Column to Live On

LOS ANGELES -- (AP) Sydney Omarr, the astrologer to the stars who came to write horoscopes that appear in more than 200 newspapers, has died. He was 76.

Omarr, who was blinded and paralyzed from the neck down by multiple sclerosis, died Thursday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica of complications from a heart attack, the Los Angeles Times reported. His ex-wife, assistants, and several close friends were by his side.

Born Sidney Kimmelman in Philadelphia, Omarr decided to change his name at age 15 after watching a movie called "Shanghai Gesture," starring Victor Mature as a character named Omar. He changed the spelling of his first name and adopted Omar as his last name, but added a second "r," in accordance with certain numerological formulas

His career began to take off after he enlisted in the Army at 17. Omarr was sent to Okinawa during World War II, where his weekly Armed Forces Radio program, "Sydney Omarr's Almanac," predicted the outcomes of professional boxing matches and horse races.

After the war he took journalism courses at Mexico City College.

His column, which is owned by the Tribune Co., appears in more than 200 daily newspapers. Arrangements are being made for his assistants to continue producing the column under Omarr's name, the Times reported.

Omarr is survived by his sister, Leah Lederhandler.

Dig the sis, they don't make monikers like that anymore.

Seems to me like the assistants must have been "producing the column under Omarr's name" for quite a while now. My assistants have likewise vowed to keep producing Agenda Bender beyond my allotted time and I in return have vowed to kill them all before I go.

According to Sadie Plant, in her book "Zeros And Ones", Alan Turing commited suicide by eating an apple that was laced with cyanide (but this might have been unintentional as apparently he was notioriously bad at washing his hands after scientific experiments) and, he was found dead with an apple with a couple of "bytes" taken out of it, and since the rainbow is the symbol for homosexuality, which is why he was harrassed into suicide, the rainbow apple with bytes missing for the Apple Mac symbol is actually an homage to Turing.

Here's the logo. We link you decide! By the way, worse things have happened than, say, the secret gay history of the Mac logo propagating, replicating out of bounds and otherwise exploding into the mainstream. I mean it could be true. Would Sadie Plant mislead us? She's practically a sacred shrub herself, hardly the kind of life form given to deception and artifice. So let's call it true and talk it up.

And then when he found the Advocate article that's been online since last weekend (and which doesn't say what Andrew says it does) he wrote:

He died because his immune system was severely compromised by HIV. And here's a German version of the same story. Odd that this should be restricted to the gay press. Or are we now headed back to the early 1980s?

I find Sullivan's comments here as bizarre as he finds the press coverage. Ritts, though openly gay, was apparently not open about his HIV status beyond his close circle. How is it the press's responsibility to speculate on the cause of death of a man who dies privately and suddenly? Ritts was not THAT famous. There was no public death watch over his final days, no time and nowhere near the mass interest to fuel the kind of dying-while-famous publicity rites that accompanied the deaths of Liberace, Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury.

Of that relatively small number who knew who Ritts was, I imagine nearly all of them had the same reaction I did when I first heard of his death, oh shit HIV. But then again I had exactly that same response when I heard of Jim Henson's death. So many people had this response to Henson's death (and Henson as well was much more famous than Ritts) that the rumours about the cause of his death were publicly addressed in follow-up news stories and the HIV speculation put to rest. There was not enough initial awareness of Ritts to justify rebound stories to set the record straight. What else does this show but a reasonable restraint on the part of the media to report the only the facts of Ritts' death that were immediately known to them? They certainly learned from Henson's shocking death that a fairly young man can die of unchecked pneumonia. They must certainly know that even fairly young gay men can die of illnesses not related to HIV. And I hope they know that even the HIV+ can die of something else than complications from HIV.

So I think the "colluding in shame" charge is reckless, and an insult as well to Rifts who is implicated in the collusion. And I think the broader point, that all this shows the re-emergence of AIDS shame, is psychologically tone deaf. A public death from HIV takes place in a far different context than even Freddie Mercury's early 90's death. There is still shame and secrecy surrounding HIV, but there is as well surrounding cancer and any other life-threatening condition you can mention.

We're probably hard wired for it, imperiled health is not naturally or easily shared with the tribe. Which is why the kind of candor Andrew Sullivan and so many others have displayed is so admirable, heroic even. The natural tendency to protect the imperiled self with secrecy is overcome by a reasoned decision that publicity will serve both a private and public purpose. That one's life is more likely to be saved if publicity for the disease that threatens it helps build public interest in finding and funding treatments and a cure. And that others might be spared the trials of the disease if that same publicity serves to slow its spread.

I would guess the reasons for whatever dissembling there might have been in the aftermath of Ritts death are a mix of shock and confusion at the unexpectedness of it and of an understandable hesitation to broadcast news that would result in discouraging people living with HIV. I think it's hard to underestimate this second motivation, the urge not to discourage, there is a shame in letting down that's also pretty basic to human beings but it's a form of shame that is usually cast as noble. With good reason. There is certainly an element of denial in it, but it's of a different order than the denial that surrounded some earlier famous deaths.

But that's just my guess. It too would have belonged nowhere in the initial press coverage of Herb Ritts' death. The facts of his final days will emerge soon enough, and while they won't get the burst of publicity his death prompted neither will the record be littered with pseudofacts or speculation.

Andrew would have preferred?

A New Year's Kiss

A Day at the Soviet

The 165cm-tall comedian was inducted into the dark corridors of espionage in the winter of 1933 when - after the commercial failure of the slapstick comedy Duck Soup - the brothers agreed temporarily to go their separate ways. Joseph Stalin, who was a fan, authorised a six-week tour of the Soviet Union for Harpo, a skilled harpist and mime who played with comedians across the country.

At the end of the tour, Harpo told his family, he was asked by the US ambassador in Moscow to take home some "diplomatic mail", which he was instructed to conceal in his socks. The nature of the documents remains classified.

Harpo Vs. Uncle Joe. Hardly a fair fight. And I think we all know which way that disproportion in guile and wile leans. If you don't, leave this page immediately.

The story indicates more information about Harpo's undercover career will be revealed in soon to be released documents. I wonder who else he did battle with. Harpo Vs. Castro has a nice ring. Now if only Garbo was in on the action too. She and Harpo would have been genius as an espionage couple. They both knew how to keep their mouths shut. A silent movie Nick and Nora Charles.

Harpo had several secret lives going (everybody should). His screen persona was pansexual. Deadpan sexual. Offscreen too the guity was very ambi, the id was very flu. His most famous real life flirtation was with Alexander Woollcott. Pretty clear that Woollcott was head over heels for Harpo from the moment he first saw him. Harpo was playing a deeper game but he loved Woollcott in his own way. Excellent article about the pair here. Literary journalism of a high order. This is what gay scholars could be doing if they weren't spelunking their own asses in search of gender tenure and queer studies gold. You know, actually writing interesting, accessible, informative essays about artists whose lives and work are worthy of rescue and re-evaluation. Harpo's star still burns but Woolcott could use a spark pointed in his direction. Highly flammable stuff there, be nice to see it catch fire again.

The article's author, St Lawrence University professor Ned Stuckey­French, is Agenda Bender's dude of the day.

THE CLASSIC MIDDLE NAME (ALL-NEW!) Executed for murder in 2002: Stephen Wayne Anderson (inmate, San Quentin, Calif.), Randall Wayne Hafdahl (inmate, Huntsville, Tex.)

• Sentenced for murder: Darren Wayne Campbell (Coquille, Ore.), Mark Wayne Campmire (Litchfield, Conn.), Michael Wayne Cole (Goldsboro, N.C.), Gary Wayne Davis (Louisville, Ky.), Jeffrey Wayne Gorton (Flint, Mich.), Mark Wayne Silvers (Anderson, S.C.)

• Charged with murder: Timothy Wayne Adams (Houston), Joshua Wayne Andrews (Woodbridge, Va.), Seth Wayne Campbell (Houston), Douglas Wayne Clark (Austin), David Wayne Crews (Knoxville, Tenn.), Ralph Wayne Grimes (Russell Springs, Ky.), Anthony Wayne Grimm (Springfield, Ill.), Kenneth Wayne Hall Sr. (Gaffney, S.C.), Mark Wayne Lomax (Houston), Shelly Wayne Martin (Randallstown, Md.), Jeffery Wayne Paschall (Draper, Utah), Jason Wayne Petershagen (La Marque, Tex.), David Wayne Satterfield (Mesquite, Tex.)

Information Supermax Prison!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND (I think this one is inspired by copyright litigation and all the other legal stuff I read about on Politech, actually that's probably what inspired the first one too. I have to stop reading those DMCA panic stories):

Information Hyper Sue Way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And is the camp euphemism of a humiliated (as always) Stack leaving his doctor's office with news that the trouble lies with a "weakness" in his essence and not with his wife, Lauren B., only to encounter a little kid riding the hell out of a dime store mechanical horse matched anywhere in the history of the moving image?

Thank Thank

"Lego Spybotics reeled me in in but bongkah-bongkah threw me back."

You can probably lead a rich, satisfying life without knowing this, but repetition is apparently the way Malay pluralizes certain kinds of nouns, and it makes for fun listening. My boyfriend worked in KL for two years, and we just went there for a brief vacation. Public service announcements often begin with "Pelawat-pelawat," which I think means "guests," or "guest-guest" if you're a literalist. Public service announcements at the airport begin with the jaunty "Penumpang-penumpang," which mouthful means "[Attention all] passengers."

BTW, regarding the last line: I know you were just looking for the listings, but when will all the people complaining about how McDonald's has taken over the downtowns of the World Community start bitching about the homogenization of gay bars? In Malaysia, the first place our friend took us had exposed concrete walls, wires ostentatiously running over the ceiling to bare fixtures, 500 men in cK tank tops, and a DJ who played a deafening 15-minute version of "Show Me Love" by Robyn Fucking S. If it hadn't been for the preponderence of Asians, it could have been Tampa.

Hmmmm, Tampa. Might be a good name for a gay bar in KL.

It was a vibe thing. The great Clash and Jacksons' shows were electric before the bands took the stage. They were electric before the crowd even got in the building. Pure buzz, instand karma in the parking lot and for blocks around. And then there was the scene after the Clash shows. Anyone who hung around long enough, anyone on a divine mission to talk to the band eventually got ushered in to do just that. Never saw any other band do anything like it. Sure it was self-conscious hippie/punk populism (sorry punks, sorry hippies) but fuck, THEY STILL DID IT. I'll never forget on the last night helping the head roadie who was maybe 20 figure out on the map he had spread out in front of him how to get the Clash to the next show. And I'll never forgot how cute that roadie was and thinking hey maybe I should join the circus too.

The DIY ethos got to be crabbed and formulaic (the freeze-dried leftism didn't help) and punks generally turned into some of the smuggest pricks you'd ever not want to meet, but I still like the germ of it (though I never especially liked the Germs, might have been wrong about that). I still like that even punkpop at its most least (yeah, you read that right) skews punk where it counts. Like when Blink 182 tells the kids who want to lipsync their songs on that MTV pretend-you-are-your-heroes show that really they should just you know get some guitars and MAKE UP THEIR OWN SONGS.

And I still get a thrill from the London Calling intro. Even in a Jaguar commercial. And I was more bummed then I can say to read 20 minutes ago that Joe Strummer was dead in England. And everywhere else. Except on some really good records. Records I haven't listened to in years and probably never again will, but that I certainly needed at the time.

Joe Strummer is the Agenda Bender dude of the year. For 1981. We are working our way sideways and backwards. All other years will be covered, and the honor awarded, in due course.

* am I first?

But whenever Google leads me to exotic places I always check out the rest of the paper. You know, see what's playing at the Utusan multiplex and such. Sample reportage from Utusan Online:

Plans modern villages throughout country
JITRA Dec 21 - The government plans to create modern villages complete with amenities like housing, recreational and industrial estates throughout the country, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

Be it ever so centrally planned there's no amenity like home.

Dr Mahathir visits teachers' quarters
BUKIT KAYU HITAM Dec 21 - Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad today visited the Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bandar Bukit Kayu Hitam teachers' quarters here.

Malaysia seems to suffer from a proper name glut.

Colombian superstar Shakira donates shoes to impoverished children in hometown
BOGOTA (Colombia) Dec 21 - Colombian singer Shakira returned to her hometown of Barranquilla to donate 10,000 pairs of tennis shoes to impoverished children.

Next Christmas: Tennis RACKETS.

Christian karaoke music finds a niche: From church youth groups to the shower
GRAND RAPIDS (Michigan) Dec 21 - At least a decade before karaoke clubs caught on in America in the 1980s, performers in churches were belting out songs to instrumental recordings of religious music, called solo performance tracks or accompaniment music.

My prediction for 2003: Christian karaoke shower parties--next big thing.

Girl, thought to be a boar, shot dead by neighbour
KUANTAN Dec 21 - An 11-year-old girl died after she was shot at by a neighbour who had mistaken her for a wild boar in Kampung Temai Hulu, Pekan yesterday afternoon.

Meanwhile known bores run wild.

Pas wants to protect assemblymen who marry abroad, says Zam
KUALA LUMPUR Dec 21 - Terengganu government's willingness to amend the Muslim Family Law 1985 to facilitate their state assemblymen to practise polygamy actually aims to protect them, Deputy Information Minister Datuk Zainudin Maidin said.

Good point. (OK, here's the link, read the whole thing. Wrap your mind around it and get back to me. Are they facilitating the encouragement of polygamy among assemblymen? Or protecting them from , uh, the facilities?)

Lego Spybotics mainan robotik interaktif mengujakan
SIAPA yang tidak kenal dengan bongkah-bongkah bergigi pelbagai warna penuh ceria yang menjadi mainan kegemaran kebanyakan daripada kita sejak kecil hinggalah sekarang.

Lego Spybotics reeled me in, but bongkah-bongkah threw me back.

Terengganu passes bill to regulate entertainment
KUALA TERENGGANU Dec 19 - Terengganu State Legislative Assembly here today passed an amendment bill to ensure that entertainment and places of entertainment in the state conform with the state goverment's policy on Islam.

The Entertainment and Places of Entertainment Amendment Bill 2002 will replace the Entertainment, Cinemas and Places of Entertainment Enactment 1963.

State Local Government, Housing, Environment and Public Administration Committee Chairman Datuk Wan Muttalib Embong, in tabling the bill, told the House that existing entertainment licences would remain valid but subject to new conditions.

The amendments among others will empower, other than the police, individuals to enforce the law. It also imposes higher penalty up to RM50,000 to offenders.

Later when winding up the debate, Wan Muttalib said state government amended existing enactment to regulate entertainment and places of entertainment, not closing them down or halting issuing of entertainment licences because it was also "entertainment friendly".

"The intention is to regulate entertainment to conform with the Islamic laws ... and the fine (of up to RM50,000) is to serve as deterrent," he said.

During the debate, Satiful Bahari Mamat (Pas-Paka) urged the state government to provide alternative forms of entertainment that conformed to Islamic teachings to youths in the state to prevent them from indulging in other unhealthy activities.

He feared that the absence of alternative forms of entertainment could lead to increase in social problems such as khalwat cases.

Tengku Putera Tengku Awang (BN-Telemong), in his speech, said state goverment should stop issuing licences and close all entertainment joints in the state.

If Terengganu is really an Islamic state, then it should not profit from such activities by issuing licences, he said.

"It is not appropriate for a so-called state that champions Islam when it has the power to close down places of entertainment," he said.

And I still haven't found the gay bar listings.

They find themselves at one point in the artist's luxurious upper West Side digs with a the pieces of a jungle gym spread out before them and the only instructions included in the box are in Japanese. Even as speeded up as they are the Japanese defeats them. So they "went into the living room, sat down, took a valium each and had a serious Marlboro." But before long:

We were both busy at the window with binoculars watching a teenage boy in his room in the high-rise across the street jerking off with a baseball mitt. "That's wild", DMZ observed

After we had finished watching the goings-on in every apartment across the street , mostly boring yuletide tableaus except for the two stewardess-types who were roller skating in bra and panties around the living room table, snatching, as they passed, candy canes off the Christmas tree, we realized the time was approaching noon.

Fortunately the artist's estranged wife had put the jungle gym together while they were checking out the candy cane derby. And America's favorite pastime.

As the Walt Disney Co. salvages the shipwreck that the movie "Treasure Planet" has become, studio executives are mulling why the animated, set-in-space version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" has foundered so badly that the company was forced to cut its earnings estimates for the year.

Theories abound, ranging from a badly timed release date to an unsympathetic lead character. Most intriguing, perhaps, is the idea that boys — to whom the pirate adventure was marketed — may be too distracted with louder, faster-paced entertainments to be interested in a stately, classically animated Disney epic.

I think there's a lot more (boys entertainment) now than there was some years back and that the stuff that is available is a lot edgier and is a lot more advanced for the (age group) Disney was targeting," said Tom Wolzien, a media analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "Let's say they were targeting 8- to 13-year-olds, hypothetically. Well, now your audience is reduced to single digits (in age) because by the time kids are 10, they're off doing something else" than watching Disney films.

The successful Disney animated films of recent history — "Lilo & Stitch" and "Monsters, Inc." — have targeted both boys and girls. Disney tried to make the main boy character in "Treasure Planet" appealing to boys in the "'tween" age group; he flies about on a device that looks like a cross between a snowboard and a windsurfing board.

More pointedly, has Disney lost boy viewers to the likes of "Tony Hawk's Boom Boom HuckJam," a sensory-overload arena show featuring thrash music, choreographed skateboard tricks, motocross motorcycle jumping and BMX bike acrobatics?

Some Disney officials think the potential boy audience for "Treasure Planet" was bled off by the most recent James Bond installment, "Die Another Day," which opened five days earlier

"The simple answer is that none of the people we (marketed to) wanted to see it. It happens," Cook said.

Wolzien points out that kids may not feel an attachment to Disney because the company did not make its cable channel widely available as part of basic service until recently, while rival kids channel Nickelodeon has long enjoyed widespread distribution.

"Today's kids were raised by Viacom," Wolzien said, naming Nickelodeon's parent company, "not Disney."

"I don't believe that people care to hear Elton John and Tim Rice anthems weaved into a movie anymore," Rohan said, referring to John's score for Disney's 1994 hit, "The Lion King." "It's not fresh," he said.

Rohan contrasts "Treasure Planet's" dated — or classic — animation style and story with that of DreamWorks' "Shrek," which featured a breezier, computer-generated style and two hit songs by the pop group Smash Mouth.

Disney's animation studios are likely in for an overhaul anyway. Thomas Schumacher, the longtime head of Disney's animation division, is said to be moving to helm the company's Broadway division. Analysts will be watching Disney closely through the spring, as the company is set to release two more animated films, "The Jungle Book II" and "Piglet's Big Movie."

This is so amusing in so many ways. I love that adult men lose sleep over their miscalculations of the "boy audience". I love when market research tanks and when, as Mr. Cook so nobly admits, "the simple answer is that none of the people we (marketed to) wanted to see it". I love that they're rethinking the market appeal of Elton John/Tim Rice ballads to the today's youth. They might want to rethink the Sting thing too. But most of all I love the fact (and it is one) that, "today's kids were raised by Viacom not Disney." I get swamped by kid culture this time every year when I'm around my nieces and nephews and Nickelodeon rules among that set like you wouldn't believe. And I'm glad for it, I'm always surprised at how funny and smart the Nick cartoons are. The couple Disney shows they watch just aren't as good, not half as clever or visually striking.

The only movies I've seen that were mentioned in the article are The Emperor's New Groove on DVD with the kids and Shrek in the theater. New Groove was better than I expected and Shrek not as good as I expected. New Groove was regulation modern era Disney animation but still inventive in parts. Shrek was state of the art computer animation and wildly original in parts. The scene in the empty courtyard of the castle when Shrek and the donkey first arrive there is stunning--that light, that emptiness, Giorgio de Chirico for tweens. But Eddie Murphy is like plutonium now, even the smallest particle of Eddie can poison an entire film.

Agenda Bender, the Nickelodeon of the Bogglesphere.

George W. Bush, Dada Prankster

My sweet lord, is the video of Barney barking at the DC school kids and getting snatched up by GWB hilarious. It's like a gift of holiday cheer to the entire nation. This pic gives a hint of the hilarity and the Reuters coverage can make you laugh all by itself:

Bush exchanged winks and jokes with the nearly 60 school children gathered in the Roosevelt Room as first lady Laura Bush read from "The night before Christmas."

Bush, who handed off the book to his wife after reading just one page aloud, complemented the children on their "nice boots" and exclaimed, "Pretty exciting so far isn't it?"

Many of the children were startled when the dog, Barney, entered the room unexpectedly. "He's pretty ferocious looking when you first look at him," Bush said of the overly eager little black dog, conceding the surprise "created a near riot."

Oh god help me I'm laughing again. Nice boots hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I'm trying to calm myself down, ok, ok let me catch my breath (don't think about the boots) ok, ok (concentrate on something sad, hmmm, like uh UGLY BOOTS--NO! stop it) ok, ok (your mind is a blank, a perfect void, feel the cold of deep space, you're swimming between planets, your oxygen is low, no one can hear you laugh in space).

OK. I'm back. You have to see the video of this though. And even the Reuters story misses GWB's best line when, apropos of nothing but apparently in an attempt to quell the 8 year old rioters with some mind fogging surrealism, holding the dog on his lap, his tie ridiculoulsy askew, his face flushed and an insane gleam in his eye (I'm talking George here not the dog) he tells the kids that Barney "wants to be a reindeer for Christmas".

Today I received an email from Nelson under the heading fwd:Jesus. I think I was expecting some inter office holiday parable or urban legend or dirty joke email, I knew it wasn't personal email but I thought it was at least a 6 degrees fwd from someone responding to some promiscuous fwd from someone I actually did know. So I was surprised to read this when I opened it:

You Have Won A Free Porn Membership!!
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Thank You Jesus! But no thanks. Besides it is a damnable lie that I was ever a porn paysite subscriber. Porn, like lesser information, wants to be free. And I respect its wishes at all times. But I love the ingratiating ploy they lead with, "In An Effort To Increase The Quality Of Traffic On The Internet." We are making life easier for porn deadbeats such as yourself. Yeah, that ought to raise the general tone of the jernt.

Finally someone has picked up and re-ignited the long extinguished Tusk torch and put the marching band sound back in pop music. It appears that the entire soundtrack plays around with the same musical idea, not surprising since the movie is set in the world of black college marching bands but still kind of daring--it's a new sound. That sound,which you hear a lot in Philly from local drum corps and neighborhood rhythm brass bands--the farm leagues for the black college bands, always knocks me out when I hear it, always seemed to me ripe for pop appropriation. Beautiful that the producer of the movie's soundtrack, Dallas Austin,
came from these same black brass band ranks and is paying back the underappreciated genre with some reinvention and (I hope) popularization.

In other music news Beethoven gets a little reinvention too . Nice to see an overappreciated composer get depopularized on the sonic stretching rack. Here our boy's 9th Symph gets slowed down, then slowed down some more. The final product is a 24 hr rendition, broken down into 19 one hour plus barely moving mini movements for your streaming pleasure. It is the best surfing music I've ever heard. Music For Surfing On a Frozen Wave I calls it. (Boing Boing tipped me off to slo mo Beetho, by the byo).

Everything on the web seems cosmic and portentous when you're reading it with this as background. I've got nothing against Ludwig, I mean he might have been on my team--he was crazy about that nephew anyway-but I agree with Ned Rorem's musicological shorthand. The world is made of German composers and French composers. We all end up rooting for one team or the other. And for me it's Allez Les Six! This unsprung Beethoven frenches him up nicely. The copyright implications of music "sampled" in this particular way--reprocessed beyond recognition--are mind boggling. Though no doubt music lawyers will find them highly boggleable. Which is to say billable.

And finally for the budding sonic manipulator on your Chrsitmas list I got some spam pushing the Radio Disney Music Mix Studio. Hey kids!:

Mix your tune, add your art, grab the mic -- a star is born! Radio Disney featuring music from Lil' J, Youngstown and Myra - is the ultimate music jam/mixing session where kids get to be a rock star by creating their own sensational songs, music videos and singing their way to the top of the charts. Choose mixes from a wide variety of music styles and customize each song by moving the music around, changing the volume, pitch, tone, speed, background sounds and vocals.

Science Daily reports (well, it reprints a Dartmouth press release anyway):

HANOVER, N.H. – Researchers at Dartmouth are getting closer to understanding how some melodies have a tendency to stick in your head or why hearing a particular song can bring back a high school dance. They have found and mapped the area in your brain that processes and tracks music. It's a place that's also active during reasoning and memory retrieval.

...Their results indicate that knowledge about the harmonic relationships of music is maintained in the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which is centrally located, right behind your forehead.

..."This region in the front of the brain where we mapped musical activity," says Janata, "is important for a number of functions, like assimilating information that is important to one's self, or mediating interactions between emotional and non-emotional information. Our results provide a stronger foundation for explaining the link between music, emotion and the brain."

...Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments, the researchers asked their eight subjects, who all had some degree of musical experience, to listen to a piece of original music. The eight-minute melody, composed by Jeffrey Birk, Dartmouth class of '02, when he was a student, moves through all 24 major and minor keys. The music was specifically crafted to shift in particular ways between and around the different keys. These relationships between the keys, representative of Western music, create a geometric pattern that is donut shaped, which is called a torus.

Not very interesting Torus video with some of the not very interesting music from the very interesting experiment here. Sort of looks like a psychedlic rainbow life-saver and sounds like a disinherited Bach walking the Casio. It's a QuickTime movie which is to say it's a slow as a rainy Sunday lame-ass Apple app. QuickTime: The (time) killer app.

Very great lyrics to the very great Sweetheart (Waitress in a Donut Shop) by the very great Dan Hicks below. Now aka Waitron in a Torus Shop.

SWEETHEART

Sweetheart but it doesn’t beat for me
It beats softly in love but not for me
Sweet lips I know I’ll never kiss
You’re what I’m afraid I must miss

*I’m a waitress in the donut shop
I see him on his morning stop
He talks of love
But he’s speaking of his sweetheart
She gives him a rough time.
He gives me his dime and then parts
Soft sighs - soft and pretty moans
in dreams I can make you my own!

*Repeat

A Crow of a Different Color

But really what bothers me about Sowell's column is that a week before reading his Jim Crow piece I read an older column of his deriding the concept of gay marriage, a column that was the equal of Jim Crow apologetics in its disgraceful illogic and debased rhetoric. And that column was hardly alone of its kind from Sowell. Arthur Silber performed a very able autopsy of it and I meant at the time to add to Arthur's anger and disappointment in Sowell my observations as a longtime reader of Sowell. But it wasn't till I read Virginia and Andrew's approving quotes from the new piece that I got angry enough myself to finally do it.

Thomas Sowell has written about gay men and women with disdain and to my mind open hatred for years. But I am not surprised that Sowell's column came as a shock to Arthur or that Sowell's shameful history here is probably unknown to Andrew and Virginia (well, I am a little surprised Mr. Sullivan wasn't a little more clued in to it.) Sowell's vicious ramblings on the topic are, as far as I have seen, entirely relegated to his opinion columns and so anyone who knows Sowell only or mostly from his books probably has no idea of his long history of cheap and repeated insult to the lives and dignity of gay people. Indeed Sowell's anti-gay marriage column was far from his worst. He's inspired to his lowest nature by AIDS. The anti gay marriage piece does give a glimpse of Sowell in his diseased homo mode:

"The only reward for giving in to unreasonable demands are more unreasonable demands. Having gotten far more money spent for AIDS than has been spent on other fatal diseases affecting far more people, gay activists are now demanding federal research on the kinds of recreational drugs used in night clubs by homosexuals, so as to make them safer. Imagine if alcoholics were to demand that the feds spend tax dollars to make drunkenness safer!"

I have to repeat this: "gay activists are now demanding federal research on the kinds of recreational drugs used in night clubs by homosexuals, so as to make them safer." That line is so demented it its extrapolations that it can only reveal the mind of a hater. I'm even giving Sowell the benefit of the doubt here that it is in fact an extrapolation (however grotesque) from a verifiable anecdote. The world is certainly large enough that somewhere, sometime some gay human beings might have expressed the wish that the feds help make club drugs safer with NIH dollars or some similar formulation. I must say though as someone who has read the gay press regularly and widely for years I can't remember ever reading anything like it. And certainly Sowell's retailing of this as the latest in the ever escalating series of outrageous demands by "gay activists" is a lie (there is NO other word) by category legerdemain. The kind of sham thinking Sowell spends much of his life pointing out and ridiculing in others.

And that was only a passing riff, consult the collected columns of Tom S. (in it's 4th volume I believe) for more and worse of the same. The paragraph quoted above is to me at least as discreditable as Trent Lott's words at the Thurmond birthday/wake. Honestly I find it even less defensible, Lott at least has the excuse that he was tickling the vanity of a 100 year old man and that his comment came amidst a series of weak tea jibes. Lott also had to share the stage with such titans of comedy as Bob Dole and Strom Thurmond Jr. so he was probably a little addled by the company. Who wouldn't be? Sowell has none of these excuses. He slanders gays with the due consideration of the written word and he duly writes variations on those slanders time and again.

And now for the kind of surprise ending that makes Agenda Bender the O'Henry of the fagosphere. (Or does that just make me into Saki? Or back into O'Henry?)

I like Thomas Sowell. I even admire him--just not wholly. I know about Sowell's grievous failing here because I've been a faithful reader for years. I admire him so much and have learned so many important things from him that I follow him even to his often execrable opinion column journalism and that's why I know about Sowell the hater. I wish I knew only Sowell the thinker and Sowell truth teller or I should say I wish that was all there was to know and that I didn't know the other part because the other part didn't exist. That he didn't shame himself with his lies and distortions about gay people. But since he does and since that issue is as personally important to me as the Jim Crow is to Sowell I need to know it. I can read, enjoy and profit from Sowell's books with no thought about Sowell the reckless sledgehammer columnist, the dumbed down propagandist. (And I should say even in the columns he's not always horrible. The columns are usually horribly written--so unlike his books--but there are often good ideas and analysis mixed in with the lamentable prose. I sometimes cringe when I see the nuance-free zone Sowell clear cuts with his hatchet in the middle of an opinion page but I still always read what's there. Call me a completist.)

I Know It When I See It

I Can Apologize Too!

Trent acquits himself with typical grace in G.R./S.R. and I think gives definitive proof that his retroactive endorsement of Strom Thurmond's presidential run was a witticism and that his committtment to racial equality is abiding.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Trent Lott: It's an effort, ah, by homosexual; and lesbians to promote their lifestyle. (CUT TO A SCENE OF WOMEN IN THE PARK, AS PART OF THE MARCH, KISSING) They don't want, ah, equal treatment, they wanna be able (CUT TO A SCENE OF TWO MEN IN DRAG, LABELLED AS MALE TRANSVESTITES) to push their ideas, to get acceptance of their lifestyle, and then get special benefits as a result of it.

Trent Lott :Minorities have come in and said,(CUT TO THREE WHITE MEN BLOWING KISSES TO THE CAMERA) we resent the homosexual community comparing, ah, skin colour to that kind of lifestyle. (CUT TO TRENT LOTT) Skin colour is not something we can control.

Trent Lott: [But homosexuality is a preference. It is something that can be dealt with. It can be controlled.]

Trent Lott (voice over):I think [that] it [flaunts] {is really, ah, false} (CUT TO A PERSON DRESSED AS THE STATUE OF LIBERTY HOLDING A SIGN SAYING "GAY IN THE U.S.A.") and makes a mockery of other legitimate Civil Rights, ah, that people have worked for, for years. (CUT TO SEN. TRENT LOTT) And to give this, kind of recognition is going to undermine all kinds of laws that are already on the books, and it's gonna hurt a lot of people that deserve these protections.

Trent Lott :If you have, um, in some small town in Mississippi, a person that comes in that's homosexual and says "I wanna job", and for, ah, whatever reason, you don't hire that person, you run the risk of being sued and put outta business. It is a mistake, ah, for lots of reasons, including the additional burden on small business men and women.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Skin colour is not something we can control." Truer words. I believe this is known as The Girl Can't Help It theory of racial equality.

Obviously, any talk of Lott harboring doubts about the benefits of racial equality is spurious. He clearly understands that the principle of full racial equality is essential. Essentially a rhetorical club for beating down gay equality. He speaks with such passion and authority on this that the makers of Gay Rights/Special Rights knew enough to step back and give Trent the movie's final words:

CUT TO SENATOR TRENT LOTT)

Trent Lott:I don't know what you're gonna call it. Call it family values, moral values; but values are very important. (CUT TO A SHOT OF THE CAPITOL) I think that's what made America great, and, ah, this will be one further degradation of our great country, and, ah, (FADE TO A SLOW MOTION SHOT OF A CHILD IN A STROLLER IN THE MARCH) we, ah, cannot allow that to happen It's important that, ah, people in America rise up and (FADE TO ANOTHER SLOW MOTION SHOT OF OTHER CHILDREN IN THE MARCH) express their indignation, and, and make it clear they're not gonna [tolerate] {follow} it, because what is at stake, ah, is the (FADE TO ANOTHER SLOW MOTION SHOT OF ANOTHER CHILD IN THE MARCH WAVING AT THE CAMERA) future of our boys, boys and girls, but also what's at stake is the (FADE TO ANOTHER SLOW MOTION SHOT OF THE MARCH, WITH A CHILD BEING LED BY ITS MOTHER AND A WOMAN IN FRONT HOLDING A PLACARD SAYING "LEGALISE SEXUALITY") future of America.

(CONTINUE THE SCENE FOR FOUR SECONDS AFTER SENATOR LOTT FINISHES, THEN FREEZE THE SHOT FOR FOUR SECONDS. FADE TO A BLACK SCREEN, THE FADE TO A GRAY SCREEN WITH THE WORDS "FOR AN ACTION PACKET OR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION, 100 S ANAHEIM BLVD., SUITE 350, ANAHEIM, CA 92 805; 714/520-0300" HOLD THIS FOR SIXTEEN SECONDS, THEN FADE TO A BLACK SCREEN, AND FADE IN THE WORDS "A JEREMIAH FILMS RELEASE, COPYRIGHT MCXCIII". FADE TO A BLACK SCREEN).

And speaking of literature I found the following books on top of the neighbor's trash this morning: A 1955 first edition hardback copy of I.B. Singer's Satan in Goray which bears the markings of The Queens Borough Public Library, Flushing Branch--the card sleeve in the back is intact and it informs us that overdue books will be charged at the rate of 5 cents daily, also that no books may be renewed--which I thought odd. A Peoples Book Club Edition of Lloyd C Douglas's The Robe from 1943. A trade paperback of Jim Carroll's 70's diaries, Forced Entries with the front cover torn off--very appropriate. And finally a Pocketbook original paperback entitled The Hell Candidate from 1980, flotsam from The Exorcist's pop cultural floodtide washing up on the icy shores of my front curb 20 years later. A novel about a minion of Satan elected president of the United States. Very excellent cover graphic of a stars and striped screaming satanic skull. Unfortunately the last couple pages are gone but the cover makes it a keeper anyway. They were all keepers. Trash picking doesn't embarrass us either.

Back to Alphecca and staying with literature here is a selection that seems to me as enjoyable as any short story I've ever read. Particularly as it touches on a theme dear to me but too seldom explored in great literature, the wretched stupidity of people who drive right on your ass with their high beams frying your eyeballs. The snow squall is what makes it art. The ending is what makes its art sublime.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You can always tell someone who's new to the area. Driving home tonight in my little car I hit a snow-squall. U.S. Rt. 5 is (like all of Vermont roads) unlit by streetlamps except right in the middle of larger towns. Entering Rt. 5, I hit a huge white-out snow-squall. High beam headlights are of course useless. You have to go with low beams. There are no lights on Rt. 5. All you can see are huge flakes of snow coming at your windshield. On a weekday, Rt. 5 is rarely travelled ever since Interstate 91 opened up 30 years or so ago (not that that is much travelled. This is a rural area of a rural state.) The road is covered with snow so you can't see any painted lines and there are no tire tracks to follow. And like most of Vermont, there are no guard-rails except by the steepest of fall-offs. All you see is white. You have no idea of direction to go and can't see 20 feet in front of you.

Rawhide Kid is coming out a Reason poster tells us. Yeah, I never heard of the Kid either but if you'd asked me last week about the Rawhide Kid my first instinct would have been to say "What is he, a gay cowboy?" Kind of like naming a comicbook Fabulous Boy. There's also a link to a small archive of old Rawhide Kid covers. I'm always in the mood to browse old graphics. Check out the perspective on this RK cover. But more tellingly check out the June 1970 cover which is obviously the Rawhide Kid's tip of the cowboy hat to the first anniversary of Stonewall. Though honestly it looks like he's wearing a foreshortened chefs cap or a nun's hat from one of the lesser orders, Sisters of ths Blessed Lariat perhaps.

Link to a pop up ad? If we effing want to!

Colby Cosh, goddessmacked by Gloria Grahame, gives the pro view and God O' Machine goes all anti on Wonderful Life's ass. I'm more on Colby's side but I do love God OM's ref of the idea that fallen Bedford Falls looks like more fun than New Jerusalem Bedford Falls. In Colby's piece I especially like that he points out the foreshadowing touches that are easily overlooked in the movie. I also hadn't known that Republic Pictures had managed to pull the movie out of public domain with music rights claims, a very interesting maneuver with a lot of potential in the copyright wars--infinite protected content battles waged around competing copyright claims over sub-content embedded in the finished product. You know, sue because you copyrighted the font used in the credits.

Colby's post got me thinking about the David Thomson's novel Suspects. Thomson is the brit expat movie junkie mostly known as a critic and for his Biographical Dictionary of Film. I'd come across a couple references to Suspects as a worthy curiosity or possibly even a buried caesar lost wonder so I picked it up a few years ago. And then I put it down a few years ago, half read.

So I'm not exactly recommending Suspects since I couldn't finish it even though I kept telling myself I should like this. It weaves the backstories of 50 (a 100?) movies together in a shaggy dog tableau that reveals the secret dark heart of Hollywood, America, British expat movie fiends etc. I kind of think that Hollywood, America, Brit flickcrits etc. wear their secret dark hearts on their sleeves so maybe I was too out of sync with the premise from the start.

I finally gave up when I couldn't trick myself into giving the book any more time. But I did flip to the end expecting there was a gimmick at its core, a surprise ending payoff at least. There was and it seemed to me a good one and one I would have liked if I could have held on. Probably shouldn't say anything more than that the Wonderful Life posts are germane. I'm still not sure if the book is crap, or if it's good but I was just not in the mood for it, or if the gimmick is the only great thing a about it.

Arthur describes the psychological monstrosity of the site which is undeniable. Give me open hatred of gays from all the main religious and ideological directions over the intricate self-flagellation and elaborate testimonies of sexual-denial Courage apparently encourages. It strikes me though that there is a tawdry aspect to this that hides behind the supposedly ultra-orthodox ritualism. The site seems dirty to me, endlessly prurient, sex-obsessed in a way that tries to involve everyone else in the sexual lives of the self-proclaimed self-deniers and homosexual ascetics.

No wonder the priests in some of the stories let down the Courageists by counseling more common sense and less encyclical cross-referencing and clerical mania. My guess is the priests either aren't on the same ecclesiastical S&M; wavelength and so don't understand the part they are supposed to play or they understand it very well and are creeped the fuck out by it.

To put it simply Courage seems to me to be a cover for its own brand of sexual hijinks, it's a specialization of homosexual desire that plays at being the denial of it, a masochism built around feverish asceticism and high mass stage props. In the same way Satanism is so inextricably bound to it's putative nemesis, Roman Catholicism, that it only really exists as its inverted shadow-- is really just the backdoor entrance to the same place.

Only believers blaspheme is the shorthand.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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I always pause and reflect on the watery demise of the golden girl who liked the white stuff, Jessica Savitch, whenever I'm driving through New Hope. So I occasionally consider the possibility of being trapped in a car. But the thoughts are fleeting. Do many people give it a lot of thought? Enough to buy the tool they'll need just in case?

Absolute Swimwear, Mix & Match Bikinis
Angling Fishing Articles, Advice, Steelhead, Trout, Travel, Pictures Free Coffee
Arab American Roman Catholic Community
No more tan lines with Cooltan Tan Through Swimwear!
Amigo international (czech gay site)
Amnesty International: Saudi Arabia campaign website
Queer Muslims Home Page
Anonymizer.com -- Online Privacy Services
VATICAN CITY - Pontifical Millennium Time Capsule - Jubilee Year 3000
Scrutinizing Rumors And Exposing Hoaxes
Testimonies of Muslims who became Christians
Comparative Index to Islam : SHI'A; SHI'ITE; SHIITE; SHI'IS
Altar of Unholy Blasphemy
American Nihilist Underground Society (note the acronymn)
Blasphemy Bookmarks: Unholy Links
Adams poop page
The Van Dyke Arabic Bible in PDF Format
Art on the Net
Popular Suicide
Antifart.com(Daily fart cartoon, farting advice column, sounds of farts, videos, chat and more.)

I might just import all 1300 banned urls into my favorite places bookmarks. Big shout out and thanks for the headsup to the House of Saud!

And Evan reminded me of Bowers' illustrious second act which had slipped my mind. "Bowers, recall, was the AG of Georgia (who refused to hire a lesbian I went to law school with to work in his office on moral grounds, just a few years before his messy affair and divorce destroyed his campaign for governor and career)."

Frankly, I feel a little cheated on. There's more than a pang of jealousy seeing Julian give Stanley a whirl around the dancefloor. I consider Stan my date. But truth is I missed this latest piece from S.K., so I can hardly blame Julian for saving Stanley, abandoned as I left him to the wallflower brigade keeping the folding chairs company at the outer edge of the rec center. What a cad I am, what a gentleman is Julian.

Julian points to one novel refinement on S.K.'s standby slippery slope arguments. Stan speculates that gay marriage will lead to wanton procreation by shiftless heterosexuals with no thought to consequences because they'll know that the kid can always get a soft landing with homos who live on the hill. "If it's tough to raise him, you can always give him to a wealthy gay couple for adoption." Actually Stanley must be so subconsciously ashamed of this rhetorical construct that he only posits it as the seeming thoughts of the Gores--Al and Tipper, not Leslie and Martin. Stanley puts those words in their collective mouth and then writes them down and puts them in quotes as what they seem to him to be saying. Stanley Kurtz, the Gore Whisperer.

There is no end to demeaning terminology in porn site names or in actual sex for that matter. And hell you gotta have some hook that gets you noticed amidst all the sites promising sluts, whores and gottahaveitpigs of both sexes and all preferences. But street trash? I think it fails the buzzkill test. Does anyone want to be called street trash? Is that anybody's hot button, short circuit to orgasm secret word?

Trash by itself is such a great word. So is Street. Bad combination though, as a turn on anyway. It is of course a powerful putdown and very effective in the right circumstances. Fighting words par excellence.

So anyway they're going to revisit the 1986 decision that put the USSC's imprimatur on discrimination against gays. Current and former USSC justices have been making noises for years that the '86 was a mistake, an embarrassment to the Court. Now they can stop squeaking like mice about it and stand up on their hind legs and squeak like the venerable high muckety mucks they are.

The Hardwick decision really did include one of the more shameful lines in legal history, namely that the argument suggesting gay sex deserved any constitutional protection or gay people had any valid privacy claims was "at best, facetious". Forget the vicious disdain of that line and meditate on its dishonesty instead. The writer of those words knows the claims aren't facetious, though in his eyes they may not be substantive, but he senses that he is on the losing side in the long run so he has to cast the arguments in the most negative language possible to gain advantage for the moment. Thus he lies and says the arguments are facetious. AT BEST. But I'd wager that his gambit was a large part of the reason for the probable reversal of Hardwick 16 years later. Hardwick would have been much less of an embarrassment for the court but for those three words and for the tone of the decision that they epitomize. The words were Whizzer White's and he was joined in his malice by Warren Burger who wrote a concurring opinion of equal derision.

If those two had managed to keep their whizzers in their robes and write dry, measured opinions dismissing the claims only with regards to the law and not referencing millennia of moral teaching and the like I doubt the Supreme Court would be assuming the position so shortly after after the Hardwick ruling. And 16 years is but the blink of an eye to that crusty bunch.

One thing will certainly be lost with the new decision. Sadly, this case lacks the romance and poetry of Hardwick V. Bowers. There is no allure at all to Lawrence and Garner v. Texas. Where is the antique musk of Victorian public school raillery and euphemism so redolent in Hardwick V. Bowers? Couldn't Lambda Legal have found plaintiffs with names a little more evocative? There probably aren't a lot of Stiffjoint and Kneelers out there but they could have done better than Lawrence and Garner which have exactly zero cheap joke potential in these circumstances. Texas of course is immortalized in Never Buy Texas From A Cowboy (questionable advice by the way) but it's a stretch to think that most people are like Agenda Bender in always recalling that phrase to mind every time they read or hear that magic word.

A recent success story of bored computers churning away in their collective idiocy to do something great. While yours just hummed to itself. Would you buy a beautiful pet and keep it in a box with only airholes and a slot to throw in food, wallowing in it's own filth, whimpering in it's caged hopelessness? DUDE, It's starting to SMELL. Free that boxed beast. Let it hum with a purpose.

Think of it as a 1 GHz prayerwheel spinning like an atomic mofo 24 hrs a day and earning you valuable karma points while you sleep. How many metaphors is that? I'll stop now.

Gay owned vacuum cleaner sales and service: Suck Buddies
Lesbian owned gas station: Diesel Dyke
High end bathroom fixture and plumbing supplies: Golden Showers
Gay friendly HVAC contractors: Blow Jobs

There's a great scene in one of Stanley Elkin's novels where he describes the dread induced by an upscale shopping district full of boutiques with pun names. Not sure which of his books it is, he lost me with most of his later period books, but the early ones are all great. This might be the best.

To this end our investment division, Agenda Bender Securities, is announcing today the cessation of all further money transfers to former high ranking officials in Nigeria, their widows and their adult children until such time as we have a written statement on file from each of them condemning the violence there and a pledge to oppose the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law) on the secular legal system of Nigeria.

This was a hard decision to make since our Nigerian investments to date total nearly $400,000 with an expected rate of return on this investment of over 1,000,000%. We realize that we do possibly put some of our return at risk with the actions we are announcing today, especially in those dozen or so cases in which our transfers of funds over the period of a year or more have reached a "critical stage" and the "freeing up of funds" due us is "almost certainly imminent". But we feel that unless and until the current and recently deposed ruling elite of Nigeria, their heirs and assignees make public their commitment to a peaceful and secular Nigeria our investment dollars, and those of our clients (hello Instapundit!) would be put to better use in this country buying herbal Viagra online.

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* Nice of Michael Jackson to dangle his kid over a
balcony last week.
* Usually he just tosses them off.

In less than a year's time it was discovered that the girl's new adoptive father was molesting her and had been molesting her all during the time he was making a public controversy over a gay man adopting her and her brothers. Oh yeah I forgot to mention the kids are "all brain-damaged from fetal alcohol syndrome." Here's a pic of the gay dude with one of the boys, Agenda Bender's attempt to get you in the Thanksgiving mood. And make you cry.

These events are almost three years old so I kept trying to find an updated story to see if Craig Peterson, the gay dad--might as well give him a name at this point, had gotten the boys' sister back. I finally found an ACLU press release (cached on google) about an Indiana State Supreme Court ruling supporting the parental rights of gay parents that would seem to give the answer in a passing and pleasing way:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Craig Peterson of Indianapolis, a gay man who has adopted four children and is adopting two more, has a unique vantage point. He has endured legal challenges and public scrutiny in his adoption efforts. "The best interests of the children should always be considered," he said. "We have to be careful that we don't have such a real narrow version of what a family is."
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So the sister would make the original four and now there are two more on the way.

And all this isn't even what really got my attention about the original story linked in the comments about my post. I hadn't known the story about Peterson and his kids, though it appears to have gotten a fair amount of press, and I'm very glad to have learned of it especially it's deeply satisfying ending. What really struck me at first was that the initial link I followed took me to a Christian web site that reprinted the story and took its message to heart. How could you not of course but then it appears they took it to head. Which was less predictable. At the end of their reprint of the AP story about the events there is this:

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WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I would like your comments on how it seems to you this would be addressed:

Is the man who adopted the girl to be considered better than the homosexual?

Is heterosexual perverted sex with children less abominable than homosexual behavior?

As a professing Christian, is his sin "covered" with the "imputed righteousness of Christ" even though(and while) he committed the sin, was sent to jail, and the girl and wife were greatly injured and harmed.?

Do you think he was a born-again man at the time he was sinning against the girl?

Since he has a sin nature(say some), and will sin every day anyway(say some), does it matter the he did what he did?

Could he have refrained from the act? Or, as some say, we all sin every day in thought, word and deed, and that was just his daily sin in thought and deed.?

How low can it go?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
PLEASE, click here, and send us your thoughts

I can't think of anything that more illustrates the poverty of the doctrinal errors and practices of present day evangelical christianity.
with Tears, Dennis
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A bad day for pastor Smith. I don't think the "a virus filled my computer with porn" defense has legs though. The immaculate download defense might be worth a shot. Via Politech.

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Porn shows up in businessman's slide show
Associated Pres

FORT WORTH -- A North Texas businessman has been jailed after co-workers reported an image of child pornography showed up on a screen as he gave a computer slide presentation recently.

...Exel Inc. co-workers told police Smith had just completed a PowerPoint presentation on Sept. 4 when he tried to open another document on his laptop computer. The co-workers said a photograph of a nude young boy appeared on the screen.

...According to the police report, Smith told Exel officials that a computer virus had caused the image to appear. Nevertheless, police said Excel officials fired Smith and contacted police the following week after a search of his laptop found pornographic photos of children that appeared to have been e-mailed to others.

...Smith is also pastor of Landmark Baptist Church in Sanger. His wife, Julie Smith, said they have been married for 13 years and have two children.

"He's never hurt our children. As far as I know he's never hurt anyone's children," she said. "He has always taken very good care of me and our children. Anything we needed or wanted, he worked and I got it."

She said the congregation at the Sanger church was told Wednesday night that her husband was resigning immediately, but was not told why. He had been pastor of the church for 3 1/2 years.

A Textbook Case

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THIS MONTH'S JESSE DIRKHISING [Rod Dreher]
Last week in Chicago, police charged a 19-year-old homosexual man with the murder of a 51-year-old co-worker whose body was found in his house. Nicholas Gutierrez has reportedly confessed to killing Mary Stachowicz in a fit of rage after the Catholic woman told him his lifestyle was morally wrong. I don't believe in the idea of hate crimes; crime is crime. But quite a number of people who bring us the news do, and they're paying no notice to what easily meets their definition of a hate crime. Of course, had a Christian had been arrested on charges of murdering a gay man, you would have seen the Matthew Shepard media frenzy all over again. So far, nothing but silence from the national media. You may believe Mary Stachowicz was quite wrong in her convictions, but it is anti-Christian bigotry to believe her death should be ignored, while the death of Matthew Shepard should be marked (as I believe it should have been). The media shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. Somehow, I doubt talk radio and the blogosphere will let them.
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And here's post deuce:

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THE COURAGE OF COURAGE [Rod Dreher]
With reference to poor Mary Stachowicz, I've just heard from a Catholic friend of mine, a gentle and humane layman active nationally in Courage, the organization for homosexually-oriented Catholics who wish to live faithful to the Church's teachings (and by the way, this guy is getting no help from the bishop of his supposedly conservative diocese in establishing a local chapter). Anyway, he said he averages two death threats a week from gays hostile to his ministry. "More people need to talk about Mary Stachowicz," he writes. Sounds like in her, Courage may have found an unofficial patron saint.
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THIS MONTH'S JESSE DIRKHISING? Perhaps you are wondering, wha? huh? who? Jesse Dirkhising was the 13 year old boy who was bound and sodomized, and finally strangled by two older gay men who were trusted as family friends. They claimed the death was accidental and called the police themselves to report the death. One later pled guilty to and the other was convicted of rape and murder charges. Dirkhising is the anti-Matthew Shepard to conservatives, the innocent young man killed by homosexuals but with none of the national attention that Shepard's death received. So, you are probably assuming, this happened last month right? If Mary is this month's Jesse then Jesse must have been last month's victim of homicidal homosexuals. Actually Jesse died over 3 years ago. But in Rod Dreher's perceived space/time continuum gays are on a monthly killing spree. Last month in 1999 it was Jesse, this month it was Mary Stachowicz and next month in 2006 it will be god only knows who. (Must be a 3 year=1 month planet somewhere in the solar system, Planet Dreher perhaps).

But even more odd than Rod's calendar is Rod's catechism. According to the story Rod linked to (and yes it's from a gay news site, the case has been widely covered by the gay press, an interesting twist to Rod's charge of mass media blackout) Mary was killed by a 19 year old co-worker who said her preachments against his homosexuality (in his own home no less) enraged him. The young man accused in the crime, Nicholas Gutierrez, said he was reminded of similar arguments with his mother. The story ends with this cheerful bit of further information about Mr. Guitterrez, "Bail was set at $3 million for Gutierrez, who is a ward of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services." Clearly it's been a life of joy and plenty for Mr. Gutierrez. And what could me more appropriate than "unofficial" sainthood for Miss Stachowicz, the angel who ministered to him in his time of need.

You can't even spread the good news of God's disapproval of his life and love to a homosexual in his own home anymore without risking martyrdom. Yes the case "easily meets their definition of a hate crime." Textbook case. Haters marauding around their own livingrooms bashing innocent old ladies who just dropped by to tell them how far from God's grace they've fallen. Exactly the circumstances hate crime laws were written for.

Verses (1,650,000 results) versus Chorus (3,770,000 results)

To all our Muslim brothers and sisters, Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahamatul-Llahi Wa Barakatuhu. May the peace and blessing of Allah be upon you all.

The Miss World Riots--the very phrase gives me goosebumps. Here is the hilarious apology, the latest is an apparently endless series, from the newspaper in Nigeria that gave offense to the Prophet. Funniest is how they trot out a version of "the computer did it" defense to mollify the rubes. Here is my favorite pic from the scene.

And below are my favorite parts of the CNN, AP, CBS, Reuters, BBC, and Guardian stories. Everybody's most trusted news source, The Onion, deems any coverage of the events superfluous.

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'We are calling on the government to stop Miss World, this show of shame. For women to expose herself to men other than their husbands is forbidden,'' said one of the protesters, Hadiza Usman.

Miss World organizers insist contestants have respected conservative Muslim values by dressing conservatively.

Muslim groups say the pageant promotes promiscuity and indecency.

Shehu Sani of the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress said he watched a crowd stab one young man, then force a tire filled with gasoline around his neck and burn him alive. Sani said he saw three other bodies elsewhere in the city.

Alsa Hassan, founder of another human rights group, Alsa Care, said he saw a man dragged out of his car and beaten to death by protesters.

"We regret these incidents, but this is not the fault of Miss World. It is the result of irresponsible journalism," Din, the spokeswoman, said.

"We are calling on the government to stop Miss World, this show of shame. For women to expose herself to men other than their husbands is forbidden," said one of the protesters, Hadiza Usman.

Miss World publicist Stella Din said the contestants were safe inside their Abuja hotel, not far from where the riots took place. None of them witnessed any of the violence, she added.

Rioters pulled a local journalist off a motorcycle and told him he would be killed unless he could recite verses from Islam's holy book, the Quran. The crowd released him unharmed when they realized he was Muslim.

The fundamentalist Nigerian Muslim Umma, an umbrella group of Islamic clerics and scholars, has declared a "serious religious emergency" and issued a statement calling on the government to stop the pageant, Reuters reported.

Hundreds of police and soldiers were deployed to restore calm. Riding in pickup trucks, they fired tear gas at protesters marching through otherwise abandoned streets waving tree branches and palm fronds

Young Muslim men shouting ''Allahu Akhbar,'' or ''God is great,'' ignited makeshift barricades of tires and garbage. Others chanted, ''Down with beauty'' and ''Miss World is sin.''

Beauty pageant spokeswoman Stella Din said organizers were ''saddened'' by the deaths but would not cancel the event, scheduled for Dec. 7 in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, some 225 miles southwest of Kaduna.

''The show definitely will go on,'' she told reporters in Abuja.

The newspaper ran a brief front-page apology Monday and a longer retraction on Thursday

Winner of Miss World in 2000, India's Priyanka Chopra, defended the contest being held in Nigeria, saying it was hugely popular in developing countries. "People want to see their citizens on an international level," she told CNN.

She added that it was being held in Nigeria because last year's winner had been Miss Nigeria, Agbani Darego. She said Nigerians had been "excited and elated" at the prospect.

Update: This coverage is too fantastic to be excerpted. You should really read it all. OK, just one highlight:

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Talk about Western Colonialism/Imperialism in modern anthropology! "The aggressive, arrogant, sperm-sucking warriors of Melanesia" -- I suppose us Westerners have the superior "culture." But don't we, after all, posses an institutionalized heterosexual culture that is often incestuous, almost always non-consensual, and impelled by erroneous biological assumptions? Way to exoticse, eroticize, and totally "other" a group of people. This article is horrible.
Jen [this is bad]
November 22, 2002 2:29 AM
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Congratulations to Jen, not only is Jen's transformation into a total trendoid fool a complete success but that use of "other" as a verb is a lexical innovation of spectatcular inanity. I love it.

The first sentence is as smarmy a lead as I've ever read, "If Kurt Cobain had looked less like a rent boy on the Lido and more like, say, Howdy Doody, would he be alive and well today?" The writer, a WSJ editorial board member, has a real way with the vernacular. And a real eye for the American scene. Her knowing (and phony as a three lira bill) references to European boy whoredom must be more familiar to the WSJ audience than the common words and realities. Cobain looked like pretty much most of his third wave punk peers and they in turn looked like the punk street kids of Seattle who in turn looked like the early 90's slacker/grunge kids of pick-your-town-and-scene. Hustlers generally look like whatever the hell the rest of their generation looks like at any particular moment.

She continues: "Grotesque fantasies of homosexual rape and homicidal rage fairly leap off the pages, suggesting that the anti-establishment icon from a remote Washington State logging community was tortured by a lot more than the hot spotlight of commercial success. Yet we haven't heard a peep from reverential reviewers about such things. Why do you think that is?"

I wish she'd fairly leap off the page.

But I'll be polite and answer her question. Why do I think that is? Oh I don't know, maybe because junkie suicides are commonly understood to be profoundly unhappy and troubled human beings, and maybe because this particular junkie suicide's death throes were witnessed by a worldwide audience of millions, an audience already familiar with his nihilism and self-disgust. Maybe such an audience really won't be as surprised as our michelin guide here, Nancy Dewolf Smith, that someone who wrote a song called RAPE ME would sketch out a music video scenario for the song centered around, you know, RAPE.

And maybe such an audience wouldn't be surprised that someone who expressed his disdain for his audience, his fame and the world in general in countless interviews as well as in his own art would also express those feelings in his private journals. And probably they wouldn't be surprised by the Amok Catalogue fantasies that Cobain recycled in his diaries either. They were (and are) as commonplace among a certain set as say pop cultural cluelessness is around the table where the WSJ editorial board gathers.

The Edithhead

Oh yeah, and her personal life was a mess. More than enough drama and glama to inspire drag devotion and replication. Where is the objectivist Lypsinka to bring Ayn back to life on the stage? Maybe get a drag king too and recreate the Donahue or the Tom Snyder interviews. Hey, isn't Lypsinka's backstory Russian? Or probably it's born in Brooklyn but pretends her whole life to be Russian, but that still works.

Ivana and Anita are the drag equivalents of hydrogen and oxygen, they are the superstar elements on the drag periodic table, the basic building blocks of drag gag names. So going for the easy jokes first, last and always in the great Agenda Bender tradition we come up with Anita Cigarette and Ivana Goldbar. On the Anita tip I also like the idea of some cowgirl drag to give this name some cross platform resonance: Anita Brand'n. Staying in the basement I also like Della Sign or Dolly Sign. Then of course there is Gladys Shrugged.

But I think Rand would be better served by a dada or avant drag name. I keep coming back to What is Objectivism? as the coolest possibility. Best of course would be a drag queen who took What is Objectivism? as her stage name and then made no further reference to Rand or objectivism.

Very funny crash course in drag sensibility here. It's a 3 hr radio show featuring John Epperson, aka Lypsinka, playing movie clip audio montages and his favorite records. What makes it especially amusing is that it's public radio does drag. The hostess sucks all the fun out of drag, does that whispery over enunciated NPR thing, reads NYT's reviews of Lypsinka's shows to clue us in that we're allowed to listen to Vicki Carr records, laughs too much--usually at nothing and just generally makes the whole thing that much more camp in spite of itself. Epperson himself makes the joke right at the start that he feels like he's in the Saturday Night Live public radio skit with those two NPR chicks, "good times." She doesn't get it.

Update: Sean writes from Japan (a beautiful phrase, that): " If you guessed it was about eviscerating kittens, you've obviously seen a few Japanese comics in your day, but no--it looks like some kind of 3-minute ad for Kikkoman. The most interesting thing is a pun on "show you" (which sounds like the Japanese word for soy sauce) and "show me" (which sounds like the Japanese word for relish or peak enjoyment--that kind of thing). Unless really buffed up cartoon figures do it for you."

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BOB HANSSEN & AL GORE [Rod Dreher]
The Media Research Center complains about the following lines spoken by William Hurt, playing Soviet spy Robert Hanssen in the recent CBS movie: “Anybody who ever voted for Gore ought to be shot. The very thought of Gore daring to be President, toitering up to that psychopath and sociopath Bill Clinton for eight years. Makes my blood boil.” I see why the MRC is upset, but I have to tell you, I had a phone conversation with Hanssen that wasn't far in tone and content from that. This was several years ago, before he was exposed. He was a source of mine for a story I was working on about the politicization of the FBI under Bill Clinton. He spoke in this manner about Clinton and Janet Reno, and was particularly outraged over what he called Reno's forcing the FBI to hire lesbians. He told me gruffly that if Gore were elected, he was going to retire, because the lesbian left was going to complete its takeover the Bureau. His vehemence and intensity made it a real Strangelovian moment.
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Yeah, strangelove--can't beat it. (sending this one out to bobby h in lockdown!)

I would have thought Bob Hanssen & Me would have been the more tantalizing headline for Dreher's post but I'm grateful for it under any title. I am a Hanssen aficionado and Dreher's particulars were news to me. I read the original FBI affidavit on Bobby H. like it was a Boyd McDonald true sex story. Which is to say with great and abiding interest. (The affidavit, by the way, makes it clear the FBI investigation was built on none of their own scary powers of ratiocination but was wholly culled from the revelations made by the KGB defector).

It's fascinating that Hanssen was a source for Dreher. Previously Robert Novak had revealed Hanssen was a source for him as well. What ties these three together would appear to be their strong Catholicism and their distaste for homosexuals. Neither Dreher or Novak gives the details of how Hanssen found them or they him. Novak says he knew Hanssen only through a few phone calls, Dreher doesn't say if he ever met Hanssen or if he was just a phone pal too. But Novak certainly didn't find Hanssen by cold calling the DC metro white pages, nor did Dreher. So since they are outing RH as a source why not tell all the details? You can bet if Hanssen was a notorious homosexualist Dreher and Novak would build their analysis of the case around that fact. But the fact of his fervent Catholicism doesn't get their notice. Except obliquely as in this closing parargraph from the Novak column on his former informer:

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Robert Hanssen is an enigma and will remain so at least until he reveals himself. The speculation that he is purely the embodiment of evil tends to be undermined by the validity of his report about Ray Wickman. He really may have been living a double-life, one as a patriotic, religious American and the other as spy of the century. That sounds fanciful, but any other explanation fails.
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Now that is an interesting genuflection to the complexity of motivation coming from sledgehammer Bob. I wonder from whence the sympathy that leads to such mellow reflections springs? The spy most damaging to American interests in history is revealed and Mr Novak is ruminating on the mystery of a life split down the middle. Positing with a straight face that you can be a "patriot" during the day but a foreign agent at night. (I'm all for multi-tasking but it seems to me some of Hanssen's tasks necessarily cancelled out others of them.) That is one hell of a lot of forgiveness and understanding, especially coming from the prince of D.

I wonder if the Roberts bonded over the lesbian menace in their calls? It would seem from Dreher's report that you couldn't shut Hanssen up about the matter but Robert N. makes no mention of it. Perhaps Mr. Novak saw that as one of Hanssen's saving graces, as an aspect of the daytime good guy.

The NYT's review of the new Hanssen book from David Wise (which I have to read) gives us back the Robert Hanssen that Dreher and Novak so cruelly deny us in their memories of the spy who called me.

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Hanssen was evil in a banal way. He was a creepy ''lurker,'' the sort of person who appears in a doorway and just stands there. By all accounts a devoutly faithful Catholic, Hanssen somehow managed to go to confession for years without coming to grips with his murderous betrayal. He was, to all appearances, a good family man, and yet he arranged for a friend to watch him having intercourse with his wife. (He also pondered giving her a date-rape drug so the friend could have sex with her.) He took a stripper to Hong Kong -- but, aside from one fumbling encounter, rebuffed her advances.
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For example I think it is unlikely that the women in the picture Andrew S. links to this morning are Democratic ward leaders in San Francisco. Or Oakland. Or even Marin. Yet they are the quintessence of San Franciscan metaphysics. Willie Brown's identity politics update on Tammany is unlovely in its own right but it's the naked posers waging peace who really convey the SF mojo. The je ne sais quoi that loves to speak its quoi. And show its quoi.

Pump Up the Subtext

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More on Pelosi. For all the conservative chattering and outrage about alleged Democratic gay-baiting in Montana and South Carolina this Fall, don't we all know the subtext of Republican efforts to tag Pelosi as a "San Francisco Democrat"? Is this something we're not allowed to discuss? And why not?
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Subtext? Singular? Any adult (and almost any child) knows the gay friendly rep of SF. And the adults know that this is one of the constellation of attitudes that gives San Francisco, its satellite cities and suburbs and much of the Northern Cali surround, their national reputation. Every gay adult knows that the gays who find SF most hospitable are not some random cross section of the gay population but that subsection of the gay pop that seeks the comfort of like minds and seeks the safety and certainty of life in a hilly echo chamber. "San Francisco liberal" means something and not just one thing--that's why it works as shorthand, and that's why it bugs JMM. I would bet he's a lot less anxious to discuss what it means than he pretends here. What better way to avoid the discussion than to insinuate it's proscribed, that your opponent's motives somehow prevent you from addressing it. Clever.

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boston hair salon
... Agenda Bender, ...
www.cachebeauty.com/link_directory/ boston_hair_salon.htm - 101k -
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The attacker turned himself in after speaking with his father, a Chicago minister. “Irrespective of motivation, Morehouse has a zero tolerance policy of any act of aggression,” said the college dean.

I wonder if anyone will note that not too long ago a black man routinely risked a vicious beating, or worse, if he was thought to have looked at a white woman the “wrong” way. Would a college dean have then opined that “irrespective of motivation” such an attack would be unacceptable behavior?
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Well I didn't note it (I wish I had) but I'm glad Steve did and I hereby promote that notation as the Agenda Bender analogy of the millennium. The dean who made the statement is Eddie Gaffney. His email is egaffney@morehouse.edu. He has my deepest irrespect.

Get Your Wist On

But over the next eleven remixes the production choices of the original are reconsidered and all kinds of new choices are made. One track introduces a disco horn section, another goes for euro bombast and kraut house effects, another throws everything out but the radically reconfigured vocal which emerges and disappears amidst the sparse beats and bleats of an electro dub. The twelve taken together are about as good a primer on the techniques of modern dance music as you'll find on one disc. And since they call this multiplicity a single it's cheap too, 8 bucks list.

The original track was recorded in Stockholm and the remixes were done in NYC, North Hollywood, London and places unknown. So you can also wonder about the transnational pop trade routes as you ponder the production choices.

As I've been listening to it I couldn't help but think of the original template for this cd of remixes and the countless other such remix discs that followed it. The fountainhead of dance remixology is certainly Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm album from 1985. A record that was slammed pretty much everywhere when it came out. How could they put out a record that amounted to a collection of variations and musical comments on ONE song? What a scam, a record of padding and filler. That was the rap at the time anyway. 3 or 4 track 12 inch remixes of a single song had been commonplace among club DJ's for years but Grace's record was the first mainstream release in that format. Though really it wasn't even in that format, it remains in some ways a singular product--as a mass market release anyway.

The title song was probably the most anticipated cut in the history of dance music. The rumor was that Grace Jones was recording the PERFECT SONG in London with the hottest producer of the day, Trevor Horn. A song so powerful that everyone involved was sworn to secrecy. How many of the people who were thrilling to this buzz are even alive today to recall it? Far too few I'm afraid. Which makes that album and that song sacred relics in my estimation. I listened to it every night as I was going to sleep for months after it first came out. I haven't heard the entire album in years but every time I hear the song itself (and it was perfect) I'm sucker punched by the ghosts of 1985.

And Grace of my heart, where is that album with the most perfect title so long ago promised but lost to bad habits and dire realities? I speak of course (but it's not "of course"--again who even remembers the promise of it) of BLACK MARILYN. Maybe it was better left unmade. Or maybe you can find it the Buenos Aires Tower Records. Next to the library of books imagined in other books.

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BREAKING NEWS [Jonah Goldberg]

HOLLYWOOD, California (Reuters)
-- ABC is developing a gay version of 'Hart to Hart,' in which a pair of interior decorators stumble upon a murder each week, Variety reports."

Here are some titles which come to mind:

Murder, He Wrote
Columbeau
Diagnosis: Makeover
Ultra-Mod Squad
Drag-Net
Christopher Street Blues
CSI: Provincetown

Note to offended readers: Lighten up-- I'm not the one launching a TV show based on two interior decorators.
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Diagnosis: Makeover and Christopher Street Blues are almost jokes. The others aren't. But the intriguing thing about the post is the "Note to offended readers". What does this even mean? Who is he advising to lighten up and what could they possibly be offended by? The cutting edge of a butter knife humor of the teetotaling titles? Gay readers offended by the arch tone? Neither seems possible. Or is he apologizing to NRO faithful who are horrifed by all gay references on family blog like the Corner? Somebody needs to take away the keys to the internet from these too tender for this world conservatives.

And then there's the "Lighten up-I'm not the one launching a TV show based on two interior decorators." Which means? Lighten up-- I'm only commenting on the outrage not its author. In other words, lighten up about me, and then we can all be offended by the real outrage together. Background on the looming launch of this further insult to the Corner consensus. It seems Steve Martin is behind it (hope that image isn't offensive to the Corner hot house flowers). Jonah could take some lessons from Steve. His Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon joke about Sigfried and Roy was a funny gay joke and doubly rare in that it was also a funny joke told at the Academy Awards.

Note to Signorille: Gimme back my man! Goldberg is my punk. Stop recycling Agenda Bender bitch-slaps in the NY Press 3 weeks later. Well maybe don't stop. They seem to be annoying Jonah G.

This is of course the new greatest story ever told.

Mr Welles wasn't just born stupid yesterday though. Here's a sample of his pre-bust brilliance from stupidity.com's 9/11 statement:

"Quite frankly, I have a great deal of difficulty believing we would bomb Afghanistan rather than present the Taliban leaders with the alleged evidence, but maybe our military is just pushing to strut its stuff. If the evidence is so compelling, certainly, they would agree to turn Mr. bin Laden over. If it isn't, we have no business bombing anyone."

Certainly they would, would hardly be sporting of them not too. Be bounders otherwise. What kind of genius leaves this statement online? AND makes it a featured link on stupidity.com's frontpage?

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MEL: I was a film editor for the studios, I worked on a lot of major projects mainly for Columbia Pictures & United Artists. At the time I was doing films. I had always watched & bought the works of Bob Mizer. He had that little magazine called PHYSIQUE PICTORIAL. He had some great models but I had my own ideas about how I would have photographed them. I've met him a few times & we've always had a good relationship. Early on we were in contact and of course we both suffered under the oppression of the L.A.P.D. They seized his money & safe. They didn't do that with me, they only spent 10 hours going through my house looking for whatever they could find. But getting back to starting out, so I thought gee I wonder if I could sort of. . . I had a couple of friends who were really good. My lover at the time was an extremely attractive young man & I had a couple of other good friends. I asked them if they would mind just posing for me, just to see what kind of work I could achieve. They agreed and I did some work, did some pictures. I sent them to the publisher of YOUNG PHYSIQUE and MUSCLEBOY. Low and behold he was very entranced & enchanted by them, published them and gave me very good space in some of the issues. He wrote me a letter & said he was very pleased with my work would I submit more. He'd like to use it. So I thought wow there's some interest in my work so I started finding more people and doing more pictures, sending them to him.
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The year? 1961. Over the next two decades Mel helped create the Calicentric gay porn industry. Mel's films and photos are like victorian postcards compared to the products of that industry today. After police harassment in the early 80's Roberts stopped taking pictures of California Boys so we are robbed of 20 years of images that should have been. Mel's work has been rediscovered in the last couple years and his work is being featured again in books, videos and calenders. I can't find the picture on the web that to me is the iconic image of Mel's California. This is a version of it, or at least a badly reproduced picture from the same session--same dude wearing the same swimsuit that matches the same towel.

The pics that accompany this interview give a better idea of the sunshine saturated colors (and guys) that are Mel Roberts' gift to eternity.

Mel Roberts is the Agenda Bender Veteran of the year and dude of the day.

Update: Never noticed this on amazon before. On the page for Mel Roberts' California Boys there is the standard listing for Customers who bought this book also bought but above that they also list:
Customers who shopped for this item also wear:
Clean Underwear from Amazon's Eddie Bauer Store
Ladybug Rain Boots from Amazon's Nordstrom Store
Suede Headwraps from Amazon's International Male Store
Cheetah Print Slippers from Amazon's Old Navy Store

OK. I'm willing to wear the clean underwear and maybe the slippers to take out the trash but I draw the shaky line at suede headwraps and Ladybug rain boots.

This picture would seem to say it all. I love it but why not really make it your own and find the present day analogue to this? Of course if this movie does become popular this aesthetic will play to a greater audience than Sirk repeats on TCM do so it will mix with 02 in unpredictable ways. While a glamorization of the design ephemera 02 itself would have been more reinforcement than mixing.

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...Knowing that in some Taliban-held provinces, pederasty rivaled headless-goat polo (buzkashi) as the favorite pastime, I ask a Naval officer if there are any reports of Guantanamo prisoners turning to man-love. "Oh God no," he says. "Though there are some Air Force personnel over there, so who knows what's going on?"

...When I ask the Marines if they've seen anything weird, they laugh sheepishly, looking at each other. Finally, Sgt. Josh Westbrook, who sports a forearm tattoo of flaming baby heads, steps up. "They know they're being watched," he explains, "so they'll stare at you, and while they stare at you, they'll, uh, masturbate."

According to these Marines, they don't just pleasure themselves to freak out the snipers, but also to embarrass the female Army guards in the camp's interior. The weirdness doesn't end there. They've also eaten their toiletries and urinated on equipment. "The other day," says Westbrook, "one of the guys tried to do a naked cartwheel." In the most bizarre twist, Lance Corporal Devin Klebaur says a few have also been known to "put toothpaste in their ass." "What's the purpose?" I ask. "I'm not sure," he says, puzzled.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sheepish, laughing marines shyly exhanging looks, gotta love that. Bet the talibs do to. Even better than the coy jarhead lambs though is the glaringly incomplete list of reasons to masturbate while staring into a soldiers eyes.

OK, the title and the pic--2 easy jokes. But aren't easy ones the best? Penn's letter isn't embarassing in the way the other grand anti-war adverts have been. It's earnest, overwritten, and spins like a carcrash hubcap but Penn at least grants Bush humanity and acknowledges that it's not an easy call. Which makes it smarter than anything Noam Chomsky has said lately. Like since about 1981.

To Mitch and all the other muckers liberating the dreck. (And dig the .ru domain on the link--Yes!)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That's all you get for free. I hope the paying customers get the goods after this tease. Otherwise Garrison K is indulging in a rhetorical device that even the lowest gossips disdain as louche. What you have here is a mute item. The more typical and honorable device is the blind item, a morsel of gossip in which the discreditable actions are detailed but the actors remain unnamed though hints are given to their identity. Hints of such specificity that you can usually narrow the suspects down to a hot hundred or so. In the mute item the actor is named but the actions go unspoken. It's a kind of paranormal slander.

Keillor lacks the courage of his insinuations. "Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting" Keillor relates, and then bizarrely adds "but nobody bothered to ask about it". But we're all insiders here right, GK? Small townies and St. Paulie Grill girls and guys. We already know what we know (wink) why ask about it? I hear Coleman's habits and his family situation are in a jealous rage with each other over which is more infamous, which is more the talk of the town. And the Grill.

Of course Garrison doesn't mean "everyone" when he says "everyone knows", anymore than he means "knows". He's just doing the turn known as noblesse oblique beloved of mediacrats with delusions of omniscience. Which would be all of them.

I'm digging Theodore too, about 48%. He has the squalor of the welfare state down. But damned if he ever sees beauty anywhere amidst the plastic and concrete rubble. I think he's ideologically, aesthetically, temperamentally committed to not seeing it. The world is fallen and it can't get up.

T.D. generalizes like a fiend too. An unhappy anecdote recounted at the beginning of a paragraph usually morphs into a universal trend by paragraph's end.

Then there is Dalrymple's calculus of equivalences:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
...the escalation of appetite that Jeffrey Dahmer experienced, eventually finding sexual release only in congress with the intestines of his increasing numbers of murdered victims, can occur on a mass scale also, as witness a recent film, funded by the Canadian Arts Council, "normalizing" necrophilia.

And so now, when I meet lesbian patients who have used a syringe full of a male friend's semen to impregnate themselves, they challenge me to dare to pass judgment on them. For who am I to judge what is natural or unnatural, normal or abnormal, good or bad?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Check out the serial glides--sex with intestines is becoming normalized through Canadian arts subsidies (anecdote into universal, natch) AND SO NOW lesbians are artificially inseminating themselves. And giving Dalrymple attitude about it. The quote above is from Theodore at his worst.

He is much better in his latest piece. It's about the suburban new city ghettoes of Paris. Again it's all beasts and no beauty. I guess he doesn't see bodies only souls since the physical beauty of many of the citizens of the cités is as undeniable as it is unremarked by Dalrymple. Still I think he gets a lot right here. And the local color is positively fluorescent:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The ambivalence of the cité dwellers matches “official” France’s attitude toward them: over-control and interference, alternating with utter abandonment. Bureaucrats have planned every item in the physical environment, for example, and no matter how many times the inhabitants foul the nest (to use the Afrikaner’s expression), the state pays for renovation, hoping thereby to demonstrate its compassion and concern. To assure the immigrants that they and their offspring are potentially or already truly French, the streets are named for French cultural heroes: for painters in Les Tarterets (rue Gustave Courbet, for example) and for composers in Les Musiciens (rue Gabriel Fauré). Indeed, the only time I smiled in one of the cités was when I walked past two concrete bunkers with metal windows, the École maternelle Charles Baudelaire and the École maternelle Arthur Rimbaud. Fine as these two poets are, theirs are not names one would associate with kindergartens, let alone with concrete bunkers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bush Family Baby Naming Scandal!

And Jeb Bush forgot to mention Noelle in his family thank-yous. Not even a thanks for nada. He did thank his sons who were there with him and whose names are............Floofus and Baxter!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, Jeb and George.

Back to Shep. He was doing a last 5 minutes of the show smart-aleck names-in-the-news cavalcade. He mentions J-lo's new single/video "Jenny from the Block" and informs us it is about her days back in the hood. (I'm not sure why this is news since most of J-lo's singles/videos are cred drenched homages to her distant days in the hood.) Our dog Shep was saying how Jenny's old neighbors aren't as nostalgic for her as she is for them. I think he meant to say they were more likely to kick her to the curb than give her a block party. Don't ask me what his point was since I was laughing too hard to hear the story behind the jibe. You see, the affable and almost life-like Mr. Smith misspoke himself and instead said the disgruntled homies were more likely to give "her a curb job than a blow job." Bad homies.

I looked up in time to see the simulacra blink ever so slightly and move on with no reference to what had just happened. And there was the briefest offscreen laugh strangled in some cameraman's throat. Shepard only circled back to the blow job at his signoff saying he was sorry for his handjob, excuse me I mean his mistake, that he didn't know how it happened and it would never happen again.

I wonder if Rupert Buttfuck will be amused.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Streisand expressed her paranoid conspiracy theory to an audience of interior designers bidding on the chance to decorate a planned addition to her Malibu estate.

The singer, who recently sold her triplex on Central Park West for half of what she originally asked three years ago, gave up looking for another apartment in New York and is sending her furniture out west, where she is building a separate building to house the antique items.

"She's asked five top West Coast designers to bid on a project to incorporate her New York furniture into a farmhouse-like addition on her Malibu estate," said the source.

In a letter to the five candidates bidding for the job, she tells the prospects she won't have time to discuss anything until after the election.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Agenda Bender Design Group is bidding on the chance to redecorate Barbra's farmhouse-like self-regard. Our resume is a little thin but we have the requisite ass lathering skills and we delight in nodding and chuckling along with those far richer than us. And unlike those West Coast chatterbitches we can keep our pieholes shut. Mama, can you hear me?

I especially like that the interview with Steven Pinker mentions a great writer, G.K. Chesterton, a great book , A Conflict of Visions, and a great pansexual underworld dandy, Marc Bolan. This is the kind of balance I appreciate, but which one so rarely finds, in modern journalism.

Nice pics of sexploitation paperbacks accompany the article. I, like every 3rd person in North america, collect these in a desultory way. I have one of those pictured with the article. My most prized find is a copy of Chariot of Flesh written by the great Alfred Chester under the pseudonym Malcolm Nesbitt. Chariot is easily one of the dirtiest books ever written. Very possibly the dirtiest. A book so dirty the front cover is sexless--the title on white is all you get.

Basel/Bowery 58/75

It's the pic of the nuts and bolts button fly jeans that stopped me as I flipped through axm mag. Bolt boy must have carried a can of liquid wrench in his back pocket in case of emergency. Or opportunity. It's one of the pics that accompanies this article about Agenda Bender's dude of the day, Karlheinz Weinberger.

I wish I could find a bigger version of the pic online, it is also the cover of Weinberger's book. Just remember when you look at it that our hero was strutting his hardware down the mean streets of Basel. In 1958.

Looks like another case of time leakage. Better get the chronocops on it pronto.

The highlight tonight though was the hymn containing these words, Militant against the Apostasy but Maginficent for the Lord. I was thinking they don't write them like that anymore when a verse kicked in with Modernists and liberals (something, something,
something). That's when I realized yeah they do write them like that anymore. I'm guessing it's from the 60's sometime. Think it would have been Humanists and liberals if it had been later than that. Modernists is better though. Liberals is enough prosaic deadweight for one hymn to bear. Humanists would have been a crushing addition.

Google disappoints, the hymn is not to be found on the web. Maybe I dreamt it. Could have sworn I was awake and working though.

Today this headline got my attention: Was Paul Wellstone Murdered? Here's the condensed version for your edification. Note the keen understanding of probablilities, the measured use of language and the solid grounding in political reality. Go J-School!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
....Despite being outspent and outgunned, however, polls show that Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing George Bush to wage war in Iraq. He was pulling ahead of Coleman and moving toward a victory that would both be an embarrassment to the Bush administration and to Democratic Quislings such as Hillary Clinton who voted to support "the president."

Then he died.

....While an article in the New York Times on Saturday pointed out the danger politicians face due to their heavy air travel schedules, the death of a senator or member of Congress is still relatively rare, with only one other sitting U.S. Senator, liberal Republican John Heinz, dying in a plane crash since World War II. Heinz, who entered office as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, later emerged as a strong proponent of health care, social services, public transportation and the environment. He also urged reconciliation with Cuba. He died when the landing gear on his small plane failed to function, and a helicopter dispatched to survey the problem crashed into his plane

...Anyone familiar with my work knows that I'm certainly not a conspiracy theorist. But to be honest, I know I wasn't alone in my initial reaction at this week's horrible and tragic news: that being my surprise that Wellstone had lived this long. Perhaps it's just my anger and frustration at losing one of the few reputable politicians in Washington, but I also felt shame. Shame for not writing in my column, months ago, that I felt that Paul Wellstone's life, more so than any other politician in Washington, was in danger. I felt that such speculation was unprofessional and would ultimately undermine my credibility. In the end, my own self-interest triumphed, and I never put my concerns into print.

...There is no indication today that Wellstone's death was the result of foul play. What we do know, however, is that Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Anyone familiar with my work knows that I'm certainly not a conspiracy ironist. But to be honest, I know I wasn't alone in my initial reaction at this week's horrible and tragic Alternet article. Someone's been huffing the Aquanet.

Update: Hmmm just saw that Andrew Sullivan got there before me. Niman's work has riches enough for everyone though. Buffalo State must be very proud.

The better Michael Nyman played piano on this.

Extracts from the Journal of Urology

Here's the meat of it:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In their study, Spyropoulos and colleagues measured penile length and testicular volume in 52 healthy young males between the ages of 19 and 38 and compared them with other body measurements including height, weight, body mass index, index finger length and waist/hip ratio.

In lieu of measuring a man's erect penis, the team measured the flaccid, gently stretched penis, which they note is statistically correlated to erect penis length.

"Age and (body measurements) were not associated with the size of the genitalia, excluding the index finger length, which correlated significantly with the dimensions of the flaccid, maximally stretched, penis," the report indicates.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The glove industry is already reporting an explosion in demand for finger "enhancing" prosthetics. Also there are plans to unveil the "Wonder Glove" in the new year.

The idea had bubbled up like bad champagne on both sides of my brain too. But hey I'm that way. Always surprises me how fast the Cornerarian's thoughts wing their way there. They often get there before me (and gay is my default assumption). If hypocrisy
is the tribute conscience pays to virtue, then eveready gay speculation is the tribute the Corner pays to gay visibility and consciousness. You have to say to Rod and Jonah's credit that at least they always keep the possibility that someone might be gay at the forefront of their thoughts. Well, people who have distinguished themselves as traitors (Taliban Johnny) and mass murderers anyway. Their speculations tend to run in the other direction for people who are indisputably gay and heroic. Like say a gay priest who is killed while ministering to fireman. Dreher seems to accept that Father Mychal was gay but he'll always link to articles claiming he couldn't have been-he never came on to me!

Jonah's post was particularly smirkalicious, even for him:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
IS JOHN MUHAMMED A THREEFER? [Jonah Goldberg]
We know the Sniper is a Nation of Islam Muslim (which is to say he belongs to a cult that uses Islamic jargon). We know he's black. But I've got this nagging feeling we might find out that he also practices an alternative lifestyle -- I mean besides from all of the murdering. There's just something about this Batman and Robin act -- Malvo is his "ward"? --- that strikes me as odd, in a specific way. Call it a hunch. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Posted 10:26 AM
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That "THREEFER" is fascinating. A joking reference by a worldly sophisticate to... exactly what? The list of things everyone in the Corner isn't? I have a "nagging feeling" Muhammad and Malvo would qualify as THOUSANDFERS under that rule.

And why doesn't it also strike Jonah as odd that Muhammad would go to the trouble of converting to the most openly anti-gay religious movement in the US while practicing the "alternative lifestyle" the Nation publicly scorns? Not that it's impossible, denial of desires through intense identification with the opposite is hardly unheard of, but you'd think this twist in his threefer hunch would have caught Jonah's attention.

You'd think the facts of the situation would have caught his attention too--a 17 year old boy, an illegal immigrant to this country since the age of 13 spends four years bouncing between makeshift living arrangements with his destitute mother, all the while in legal peril. This is known as having few if any options (so Malvo is up to a FOURFER on the non-Corner list). I mean why didn't he just apply to Brown and get on with his life? Instead he goes befriending an older guy in the homeless shelter (no doubt Jonah could have told him he wouldn't meet the best sort there), a guy with a need to lead and shape--even if the troops under his command numbered exactly one. A guy with a history of abducting his own children and trying to rule them from afar when they weren't under his direct control.

Call it a hunch, but these facts are just too far from Jonah's experiences for him to process.

This story from the WaPo profile made me laugh though. But even here the laugh almost doesn't make it through the pathos:

Late last year, Muhammad was seen at the Seafarers Grill in Tacoma, trying to sell frozen steaks to customers, said Tony Jones, the chef. "He said he was selling the steaks to buy his kids Christmas presents," Jones said. "He said, 'My kids are hungry.' I said, 'Go home and feed them steaks.' "

The clue that was lurking in Esera's profile (aside from his name): "Has sung the National Anthem at several sporting events ..." Wonder if those gigs will trail off.

First a question: Are last night's arrests a set-back for Bring Your Child To Work Day?

Ingredients of the game:

Jesse Walker linked the site where all things are possible saying some will laugh and some will wonder what's the joke? Is there really a person anywhere who wouldn't find this funny?

Everyone is linking the GWB madlibs speech generator. But for the wrong reasons. It's speech generating abilities are too limited. But it's a good sound effect and Bush non-sequitur palette.

Nobody is feeling the Azn Pride like Agenda B, though. "Got Rice Bitch" has been around forever but its beauty never fades. This is the greatest music video ever made, the greatest flash movie ever made and the holiest artifact on the net. My neighborhood used to be full of Vietnamese and Cambodians but it was only a temporary stop. They ended up finding other parts of the city more compatible, so The AZn flavor is mostly gone, the francophone Africans are now in ascendant. It was metalhead times when the Viet and Cambo kids were around, never will forget them walking down the street singing "We're Not Gonna Take It". The inescapable hiphop gravity pulled them in before long, so the memory of that metal moment is especially moving, its time was so brief.

OK now here is the game. Get them all up and running. "Got Rice Bitch" is the backbone. Zombo.com is the ambient overlay.

And the Bush speechifier is your DJ Shadow/Spooky/Whothefuckever playskool turntablist toolkit.

Didn't I Blow Your Mind (this time)

It's just that I think these kind of charges, accusations of hypocrisy arising out of an alleged disconnect between public pronouncements and the most personal private behavior, are inherently dangerous. They are the controversialists version of weapons of mass destruction. And their use even in circumstances where public words are at odds with private acts and where this difference exposes hypocrisy that is both glaring and relevant, that even in such extreme cases this form of argumentation is highly problematic, the weapon of last resort.

In circumstances where this test is failed utterly as it is failed with regard to Sullivan, then the charges are nothing but the most cynical ploy. They are assassination by other means , destruction by publicity. So to my mind even to attempt an explanation of how such charges might have had been allowed if the facts had been otherwise is a mistake . You end up surfing on the backwash wave from the flood that the original accusers set loose when they dynamited the dam between public and private. Any association, even by way of airy hypotheticals, is unfortunate. It puts you in their miserable proximity. Leave the saboteurs to splash around in the dirty water with only each other's unhappy company.

Atrios responds at the temporary Escahton site (Did Eschaton have to find higher ground away from the floodwaters too? Here's hoping). Can't say Atrios persuaded me at all. Check it out for yourself-- maybe you are easier. But Atrios would do himself a big favor by staying away from logical constructs like the following:

"Andy has accused my "ilk" of wishing death on Americans and supporting the abuses of brutal oppressive regimes, quite seriously. Because of this, when someone hyperbolically accuses Andy of, for example, wishing death on all Africans due to his support for the pharmaceutical industry's drug pricing policies, I don't think he can cry fowl."

Even allowing for the factual basis of the first sentence above (which I don't), debate by escalating slander is not a winning game.

There are also comments to Atrios on his page. Some reasonable and a few repulsive. Surf's up.

The impetus for Arthur's efforts is the Andrew Sullivan bashing that is a defining characteristic of more than a few port listing bloggers. In several extreme cases it almost amounts to a lifestyle choice all its own, obsessive hatred of Sullivan as raison d'etre. I first became aware of how deep the animus against Sullivan ran at the time his sex life was publicized in an attempt to discredit and humiliate him. Sullivan wrote at the time that some had expressed hope in net forums that they could shame Sullivan unto suicide with their tireless pursuit (as in run to ground) of his sex life.

I visited a few of those forums and found that if anything Sullivan had understated the case. I'm not easily shocked, least of all by the viciousness of ideological fanatics , but the consistently depraved tone of the attacks amazed me. From the hyper-creepy prurience of their fascination with Sullivan's sex life, drug use, and choice in footwear to their joyful badinage about Sullivan's HIV status and their amused speculations on his overall health, a few minutes spent in their squalid company would make you feel unclean for a week. Which reminds me of the snap diagnosis Dr. Britney Spears offered to a relentless camcorder voyeur who was stalking her on the beach in Miami "You are a sad motherfucker". Yes, I believe that is the clinical term.

The post that got this going in recent days was by Charles Murtagh who wrote about left wing gay bashing, pointing to Atrios of the Eschaton blog. Atrios had reprinted book title suggestions for Sullivan that were copied from a Datalounge forum.

Datalounge is gay news and opinion site with the intellectual breadth of an Al Gore bumpersticker, so Atrios defended his repost of the witless scurrilities from Datalounge by suggesting it can't really be homophobia since it's homos making the jokes. Ignoring the timeless truth that insults repeated are owned in their entirety by those who repeat them. Ignoring the 10 years and counting truth that the sexpref of a poster to datalounge is no more self-evident than is the real world gender of players whose Everquest incarnation is an elfen Stevie Nicks. Ignoring the fact that there were no jokes worth repeating anywhere in the bunch. Get your laugh on and read them for your self. A sample to speed you on your way:

Homosexauls[sic] are HIV spreading perverts, and I'm living proof. By Andy Sullivan

Yeah, there's a sure sign of a card carrying fag--can't spell homosexual. But of course it matters not at all how the haters get their orgasms . Framing the question as whether gays can be homophobic begs the question entirely. Homophobia is a woefully inexact term. It springs from old battles against the psychiatric classification of homosexuality as a disease. Its coining was a tactical maneuver to out disease the psychiatric establishment. You call our sex lives a disease so we'll call your classification of us a disease. Hijack the jargon and reupholster the couch. It made sense at the time but the word has lingered long after that battle was won. We call all the other hatreds by more honest names.

Fear plays a part in some hatreds but fear most often stays what it is. Fear is a superstar in its own right. Don't need no stinkin' hate to make a name for itself. More lyrics.

Most people who hate homosexuals and feel disgust in their presence just flat out hate homos and are disgusted by them. Among the haters are individuals whose own sexual repertoires include homosexual acts. Still more lyrical insight.

So among the gay haters of Sullivan those who hate the man for his ideas and his politics only will express their hatred for him along ideological lines. Those who hate his ideas and politics but who also harbor self-disgust (and others-disgust) will let the rest of us in on their secret by making Sullivan's sex life central to their critique. (Need I mention this is true of the straight haters of Sulllivan too, left though they may be).

Is this even slightly controversial? I hold no one in lower intellectual esteem than Richard Goldstein. Ok, maybe Tony Kushner. I have no hesitation calling them idiots and every synonym for idiot the english language offers. I think they are bad writers, pretentious, vague and humorless. Yet it wouldn't occur to me to further my criticism of them with details of their sex lives. It is just a profoundly fucked up thing to do. Does anyone honestly think it's just a coincidence that Sullivan alone among opinionistas has been attacked on this level? Where are the attacks on the sex lives of Christopher Hitchens, Maureen Dowd, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Pipes, Edward Said, and Bernard Lewis? They are variously despised by the left and the right and I'd wager they are hated as much as Sullivan is by their ideological foes. So why is it that only the openly gay man in the meme wars gets vilified for his politics AND his sex life? No points for the correct answer.

The abysmal Sullywatch which I'd never read before gives the fall back defense that it's all about the HIV and the hypocrisy. That Sullivan's ideas are at variance with his life and his health is the side effect of that variance and this makes that differential and all its consequences a matter for public discussion. I don't know anything about Sullywatch beyond the few hundred words I read there tonight but I know whoever wrote them is not gay. And I know whoever wrote them is deeply ignorant of the realities of gay men's lives in the HIV decades. To hold Sullivan up as an exemplar of sexual hypocrisy is so thoroughly perverse given Sullivan's record of honesty about both his sexuality and his HIV status that only the truly clueless can indulge in it. The malign (ie the willfully clueless) can indulge in it too but they give their guilty self-knowledge away with interlinear feints and pirouettes--something Mr. Sullywatch doesn't do--he just guilelessly recites arguments he doesn't understand.

Anyone who thinks Sullivan's level of candor is easy or common is fooling themselves but they aren't fooling me. Don't try to dazzle me with your superior minefield waltzing skills when you've never danced anywhere near it. And don't try to recast honorable candor as culpable deceit if you are anywhere near me.

Which is why these lines in Tony Adragna's take on this are so galling: "The whole "bare backing" thing was to show a contradiction between what Sullivan does and what he says. I think the charge is specious, but if it were actually true, then it would be nothing other than hypocrisy." Uh, Tony when specious charges are made the person wrongly charged should be let out of the dock, period. I think the principle that things are as they are but would be otherwise if they were otherwise doesn't really require further elaboration. So I give you credit for recognizing the plain fact that the charge of hypocrisy was untrue but your credit is wiped out by your bank panic explication that if the liars hadn't been lying the lie wouldn't have been a lie and they would have had a point. No shit. But they did lie and they didn't have a point. All shit.

Tony does better here: "I said "taunting" above, and that's exactly what it is, but it's not because of Andrew's sexuality. Rather, it's because of Andrew's politics. The stuff that we see Atrios pointing to, or SullyWatch's reference to Andrew as the "Blog Queen", are the radical left's attempt at calling Andrew a hypocrite — analogous to calling Justice Thomas an "Uncle Tom"."

I think this starts out well. References to Sullivan's sexual preference, even derogatory ones, are of a different order than specific reference to his sexual life. Blog Queen is to me wholly inoffensive. I don't think it comes anywhere near to "Uncle Tom" or even denotes hypocrisy. It expresses disdain, it's a dismissal of Sullivan as trifling and vain. Perfectly allowable in diatribe. As is the naked charge of hypocrisy allowable, hell, it is THE indispensable word of political invective.

But this pageis dizzy X dopey X sneezy. It's called Dayku and it is a columnar collection of haikus for peace (or more properly anti-war haikus--doubt they'd accept there is a difference). The link that got my click read dayku: little poems can stop war. So dayku appears to be a subset of haiku with two special characteristics--it has war stopping super powers and it often includes hyperlinks. I don't include all the hyperlinks in my reprints below (too much work) or the author credit. so go to the page for best effect.

Herewith a selection, a child's burqa of dayku, if you will:

The nascent U.S.
peace movement continues to
build a following.

Thank you Senator
Robert Byrd; on this sad day
you were my hero.

"I offer myself
to Saddam in exchange for
universal peace."

Harken: Yea, Biden:
Yea, Feinstein: Yea, Clinton: Yea,
Rockefeller: Yea...

Wars begin during
football season; Coach Bush is
ready for kickoff.

You do something. Start
anywhere. Do it poorly.
One thing every day.

Forced inspection of
weapons of mass destruction
occurs (in Belgium).

"once out of power
Bush and his friends could become
multi-billionaires"

We close with this mini-epic of misunderstanding and reconciliation. Let it be a lesson for Mr Bush and Mr Hussein. See how it's done?

Say, why no portraits
of women poets for peace
on Dayku's banner?

Dai Ichi says:

You must have missed our
pics of Sappho and the great
Denise Levertov.

And Yoko!

Mea culpa, then!
I guess I came sort of late
to this peace-party.

OK one more, this might be my favorite. I really do like this one.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For more than two decades, evangelical preacher Brother Ralph Gordon Stair, has railed against the sins of sexual deviance...

The charges against him say he "used coercion to accomplish his battery by enforcing his religious [and] personal beliefs with the victims." Stair was also charged with two counts of breach of trust for stealing more than $29,000 from an unnamed man's retirement fund. He was denied bond....

Stair’s community members sell all of their worldly possessions, turn over the proceeds to him and move to Colleton County to live a life of farming and prayer...

The preacher — or as he prefers to be called, "prophet"— sermonizes on numerous AM radio stations across the country...

For years Stair focuses his fire and brimstone sermons against gay men and women. "The last two Gay Pride Days have resulted in an awesome earthquake that shook the entire Western area of the country and a flood that devastated the entire Midwest"...

Stair also derided Catholics as "Mary worshippers" and the pope as "the great whore." For years, he asked people to sell their possessions, leave their cities, and join him in his compound in Canadys, SC. Until his arrest, he had approximately 100 followers living in his community.

Especially Republicans who think the imputation of homosexuality is a loathsome slur. The commercial is still funny and the flyer that Andrew links to today is good for a smile too. I know if someone slipped it under my door it would be the first campaign flyer I read with any real curiosity.

If Mike Taylor had half a clue he would have flown Lady Bunny out to Montana to endorse Max Baucus. If he had a complete clue he would have flown her out to Montana to endorse himself. Her motto, "the higher the hair, the closer to God" would have resonated with the Christian right. You'd think it would have resonated with Mike Taylor too. Back in the day anyway.

Andrew should have looked a little more closely at the Montanans for Clean Campaigns page he links to today. They are playing googoo and condemning the new Baucus flyer as "one of the most destructive political pieces of any campaign in the United States." They also think that Taylor's insulting, anti-gay statement last week was a "moving and emotional public announcement." At the end they tell us "As Montanans we have a responsibility to throw out poor leadership that no longer repsesents our values, our families and our voice. Send a message...Vote for Mike Taylor." Oh.

But it is hard to take their dismay at the tactics of the Baucus campaign seriously when you see these Montanans' version of clean campaigning. At the top of the page is a headline quote that reads "Lies and character assassination are the only way to win a campaign"~ Baucus Campaign Policy Manual*** When you follow those three asterisks down to the bottom of the page you find these smallish words.

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*** The "Baucus Campaign Policy Manual is a ficticious manual that been compiled based on reviews of past Baucus campaign activities. This is not an acutal quote but given supporting data, it could be.
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M.S. leads with his avowal that he's with Ashcroft in curtailing civil liberties in this time of crisis and he's willing to cut loose whatever constitutional guarantees the situation demands. At this point even the duller children could finish the column.

You see, as it topsy turvy turns out Signorile has been playing the sly dog all along, he's not talking about limits on free speech or assembly or privacy, no, he would start with the second amendment first--he's talking about guns. At this point even the dead children can calculate how many commas are left in the column.

There is one good joke in the piece but it's metafarcical, so while Signorile is the joke's author he doesn't see it and wouldn't get it. The joke is that Signorile thinks he is being ironic when he says he is with Ashcroft. Just as camp is the lie that tells the truth Signorile is, well, a camper who tells the truth. He is with Ashcroft. The division isn't between people who pick this amendment or that to sacrifice but those who would pick at all and those who would preserve them all. Michelangelo Signorile meet your daddy.