This is brilliant: a site made to look like an old rabbit-ear set, watching old Christmas specials, ads, and promos from the mid to late 1980s. Right now, they're airing some old cartoons from that era. The Diff'rent Strokes cover of TV guide that you can click on and get a schedule for is equally inspired. I juse saw some Pac-Man cartoons and then a He-Man/She-Ra one. (My word, they were both awful).
(via Daily Dish)
Meet Weng Weng. I'm about (apparently) 30 years too late to this party. But what a fun party it is. Note: I watched this with the sound turned down, so I have no idea how atrocious the music is. The images speak for themselves.
This website purports to analyze a blog page and "type" the author. It's certainly an easy interface: just plug in a web address of a blog. My results:
INTP - The Thinkers | |
 | The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about. |
As it happens INTP is, in fact, my Myers-Briggs type. Sometimes the "I" moves over to "E" -- that's "Introversion" to "Extroversion" -- depending on my mood. To further cement the Blog Typealizer's place in pop-pseudopsychology, "the logical and analytical type" is the overwhelming consensus of astrologers everywhere as being the defining descriptor for Virgo. And, sadly, it all actually really does describe my modus operandi pretty damn well.
P.S. The picture is off in two ways: I don't use a Mac and I don't drink Jolt! Cola. Otherwise, heheheh.
Happy Veteran's Day!
President-Elect Obama (ooo, that sounds good!) has overcome the tide of American history and become the first black man to win a presidential election.
Damn, that's nice.
The fact that I think he's a smart guy and takes up positions that I agree with makes it all the better. And better still is that his race was beside the point as to why he was elected.
But, damn it, bigotry won in other races, and one of which probably has more immediate impact on me. Prop 8, the initiative to write discriminiation into the California constitution, has passed.
In practice, my world is merely set back to May 14th, 2008, the day before the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing gay marriage. Civil unions are still there. I live in a county and city that voted 77% against it. But there are a couple of differences. A little bit of hope died, which I suppose was long overdue. See, before May 14th, there was always the possibility that things could work out in our favor. And then when did the next day, well, it was a nice honeymoon. Some of my friends are now married as well, which is also awesome, even if their status is now in doubt.
But for a slim majority to actually go as far as they did, prodded by the lies and fears of a out-of-state-religiously-funded group, and, as Z-Man put it, to actually wake up with fewer rights than I did the night before, is beyond disheartening to me right now.
But, as others have pointed out, time is on the side of progress and tolerance. The younger generation is strongly in favor of equal rights. The small people with small fears are a dying breed. What was once a "never in my lifetime" thing has come to pass and is gaining ground. It really does help when you think of it more as a long struggle than just a single skirmish. Because the trajectory of the whole thing is pretty clear.
If I sound like I'm trying to talk myself up, I am. Because it still kinda hurts right now. But even before I started writing this, I felt the first stirrings of sweet, sweet sublimation working its slow alchemy, turning my despair into anger and the will . . . to fight.
So, I'm just putting it out here, because I'm way overdue to bleg ("begging on a blog"). Because I'm ambivalent about blegging, especially when I know most of the people who read this blog, and most of them aren't in a position to do much about it.
But here goes, 11th hour or no. Next week is probably going to be the most important election of my lifetime. Well, in a way, 2000 might have been, I suppose, had we known, truly, how awful Bush would be for this country. But at this point, I think it's safe to say that his time as leader will not be thought of well in history's hindsight. I was an Obama supporter from early in the Democratic primaries, and I never thought he'd make it this far. His appeal to me was pretty strong based on his record, his message, and his stance on the Iraq war from the get-go, but, after 8 years of Bush and the Right Wing Noise Machine, I wasn't particularly sanguine about his chances. I'm delighted to have been proven wrong.
But that's not even the most significant thing on the ballot for me, here in California. Of course, I'm talking about Proposition 8, the one that will enshrine bigotry in the state constitution, denying equal civil rights to 'mos like me. Whatever your feelings on state-sanctioned marriage, such a move is a catapult back into the dark ages.
A few weeks ago, things looked okay that the measure would fail by a comfortable margin. In the last several weeks, however, heavy funding, especially from out-of-state religious entities, has spread a lot of bullshit about the proposition and has, essentially, attempted to cow and frighten people into being bigots. Caveats of "I have nothing against homosexuals," or "I'm just trying to preserve the institution," or the even more transparently false, "I'm not a bigot, but..." are the spoonfulls of sugar to help this arsenic go down, but they're poor obfuscations of the truth beneath.
Just when an ascendant Obama has reached a point where batshit crazy accusations and fear-mongering are unable to cut very deeply into his lead, where, finally, we have a confident Democrat who can face down this slobbering madness at the national level, here we have, in a state long known for its fruits and nuts and tolerance, fear is trying to take root once again. In my own freaking backyard. (Tolkien nerds: think "Scouring of the Shire")
And unfortunately, it's working. The fear-mongering campaign of the Yes on 8 people is eroding the lead, and by most counts, the Nos and the Yeses are in a dead heat in the state. We've, once again, underestimated the capacity of fear and lies to overcome fairness and justice, even in the minds of those wacky Californians.
Obviously, this has a strong resonance for me. For the first time in my life, I've met someone that I would consider marrying. Given that this proposition fails, and given that we can live together next year without killing each other, I would very much like to marry Z-man.
Honestly, I never thought I'd have the chance in my lifetime. Domestic partnerships and such things were the best I was to hope for, if I were even so inclined to marry, which, until the last few years, I wasn't at all sure about. And, honestly, I won't be any worse off than I was before the California State Supreme Court ruling. Z-man and I are blessed with tolerant families, and I doubt either would make a stink over things like visitation rights, or wills, or any of that stupid crap. But we don't live in a vacuum, and other people can -- and will -- mess with you. Because they can. Because, yes, whatever Z-Man and I would have, it would be inferior to marriage. It took an anecdote about a straight military couple to drive that home.
I can't remember where I first read this story, but it was a while ago, before Massachusetts ruled to allow it. They were a straight couple, as yet unmarried, and the husband just got deployed to Iraq. They decided to hold off on the marriage part until his service was over, citing various personal reasons for their decision. They'd filed several legal documents of partnership for things like medical benefits and care, salary disbursements, account sharing -- essentially, a broad range of legal agreements that homosexuals would file under domestic partnership laws.
Well, things did not go as smoothly as planned. At one point, some issues -- I think it was health care, or possibly bank accounts, or both -- arose requiring those contracts to be invoked. The woman had to take care of these issues stateside, but was met with a surprising, baffling degree of resistance. These were either not honored or were challenged by various entities, public and private. These institutions required more proof, more confirmation, and threw up even more red tape. Everywhere she went, she was told the same thing. "Well, if you were married, this would be routine..."
Taking care of one another is one of those things couples agree to do. It's part of the deal explicitly in marriage. Here this poor woman was trying to hold her end up while her husband fought for this country, and her reward was to be met with a surreal level of obstacle. Documents meant nothing. Legal, civil agreements meant nothing. Everything we homosexuals are promised about such contracts shown to be a sham -- for two straight people serving our country.
The couple decided to marry while he was overseas to cut through this red tape. They had the option. I -- we -- won't, if Proposition 8 passes.
Separate is not equal.
If you're reading this, and you or anyone you know in California can vote there, please remind them of this. Put a face to it. Remind them that there are people who want nothing more than to look after one another without any more red tape than there already is. Remind them that vague fears of harming the children or fallacious, historically inaccurate fantasies of some Immutable Tradition of Marriage are abstractions of institutions. And that institutions serve people, and not the other way around.
I hesitate to put this here as well, but I'm going to. I don't know what, if any, good late donation like this will do, but I've donated already, and will do so again today or tomorrow.
Saw this on Otter's site. Of course, I had to take it.
"Dirty liar?" I must protest. Anyone who has to resort to subterfuge in order to seduce someone is a) someone to stay far, far away from and b) incompetent at it the actual fun part of seduction.
One of the questions was "Hey, are you looking at my girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/lover?" And the two responses were "Yes, and I'll kick your ass" (ho hum) and "There must be some misunderstanding" (zzzz).
The correct non-partnered answer is, "Yes, and you're pretty hot too. Wanna threesome?" Heheheh.
The correct partnered answer is, "I'm sorry, I was just thinking of my sexy girlfriend/boyfriend/parner/lover. What did you ask me?"
I mentioned somewhere along the way that I'd been taking improv classes at BATS. My level of attentionwhoredom is pretty high (as you can also guess), so I needed some outlet where people have to watch me (extra narcissism points: they have to pay to watch me). My goal was to take classes and eventually be onstage by this fall.
My plan appears to be nearing fruition.
Last night in class, the instructor, Dave stopped me after class and asked me to sign up for a series called The Triptych (a format of three different stories, performed consecutively in three acts, that kind of works like this:
Story 1 Story 2 Story 3 Act 1 1
2
3
Act 2 4
5
6
Act 3 7
8
9
(Above! Chart! Updated! I'm retarded!)
The numbers in the center of the grid are the order in which that story/act is performed onstage). It's a 4 week class with one performance after the four weeks with the Sunday Players. The SPs are the wannabe improvisors, novices honing their craft and learning the ropes, which pretty much describes my level of competence. They perform on the BATS stage in Fort Mason on Sundays at 7pm.
Dave is teaching the class, and was politely candid that he wanted to stack the deck a bit. I've had, oh, something like five or six classes with him now. He's a good teacher who knows how to get you out of your comfort zone and work on turning your weaknessess into strengths. Basically, I think he wants someone he's been grooming for a few months now, who's used to his style of teaching and familiar with the points he repeatedly drills us on, to be in the class. Someone who "gets" him. I can see the logic of that from his perspective, of course, and I'm delighted to participate. Well, "delighted" is too weak a word. Inside, I'm going 'WOOHOO!!"
I'm also going, "Oh, shit."
I finally posted all of my pictures from this past vacation to Snapfish. Some good ones, some meh. Enjoy!
Updated: The original itinerary for me was
Destination Arrive Washington, D.C. 17 August Gainesville 22 August St. Augustine 29 August Gainesville 1 Sept Tampa 4 Sept Miami 6 Sept Key West 10 Sept San Francisco 13 Sept
The first Gainesville trip got delayed a day because of Fay. Now Ike has me stuck in Miami, today, the 10th. Not that I'm that upset. The Biltmore hotel rocks. I think they lifted the evacuations for Key West, which means folks have been returning since yesterday. I had the foresight to reserve my room here in the Biltmore for one more night, because I suspect the rain and traffic will be unpleasant to drive through today, but should be lighter tomorrow. Less time in the Keys, but at least I can get down there.
On a more personal note, I took Zach on a tour of some of the places I lived in Miami. The first real house I can remember on SW 102 CT looks so much smaller than I remember, as does the neighborhood. It's in great shape, though. The whole area is. Supposedly, it had started to get a bit run down, but I think Andrew enforced something of a clean up in the area, if not the whole city of Miami.
The Colonial Barber Shop where I got my first professional haircut is still there, and looks nearly identical to how it looked in the 1970s. The fake panelling on the walls is gone in favor of paint, and there's only one photograph on the wall of a man and his hair, although it too appears to be left over from the 70s. I wonder if the centerfold pin-ups of naked women and boobies are posted up behind the rear "privacy wall" that separates the shop from the office.
Colonial Drive Elementary looks tiny. Village Pines Elementary even more so.
The area just after Metrozoo and around the (now named) Kendall-Tamiami Airport is unrecognizeable to me. The street that runs by the small airport is now a boulevard with six lanes, and the endless pine scrub that lined the former two-lane road are gone. As is the Don Carter Bowling Alley. In a change reminiscent of the Twin Pine/Lone Pine mall from Back to the Future (thank you, Z-man, for reminding me of that concept), my former local teen hangout is now Carter Square Shopping Mall.
My old place in Kendall Lakes Townhouses looks about the same. The clubhouse where I got bar-mitzvah'd actually looks better. The room where we had the reception is now solid white painted walls. Gone there, too, is the faux wood panelling. Ah, fake wood panelling: nothing says 1970s decor quite like you.
The Hammocks Junior High School used to sit more or less by itself surrounded by empty fields waiting for developers. The developers came, and now the school has been engulfed by houses. Sunset High, on the other hand, looks even more like a fortress. Or better yet, a stalag. The portables out back are now legion.
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