Toto’s Africa by Perpetuum Jazzile, performed live at Vokal Xtravaganzza 2008 (October 2008).
via They Bless The Rains Down in Africa – Towleroad
I am, along with Andy from Towleroad, am impressed by the thuderstorm before the song. Watch it.
Last week a PA State Senator had this to say
LEACH: How would he [Eichelberger] want to encourage stability in gay couples?
EICHELBERGER: I wouldn’t. I mean they can practice whatever sexual activity they like to practice, but there’s no reason to give them special consideration. We don’t give them special consideration in Pennsylvania for any reason. Why in the world would we allow them to marry?
LEACH: How would you encourage gay couples to be able to provide for their families?
EICHELBERGER: Well, I wouldn’t.
…HOST: Are you saying that by their very nature homosexual relationships are dysfunctional?
EICHELBERGER: [Pause] Um. I guess I would say that. I would say that.
LEACH: Should our only policy towards [same-sex] couples be one of punishment, to somehow prove that they’ve done something wrong?
EICHELBERGER: They’re not being punished. We’re allowing them to exist, and do what every American can do. We’re just not rewarding them with any special designation.
Damn that’s a strong cup of hate.
When asked if he would apologize, Eichelberger answered, “No. I think you know my answer to that.”
Francine Busby is running for the seat in the 50th district in CA’s 2010 congressional election
Congressional candidate Francine Busby was being hosted at the home of a lesbian couple in San Diego, where they and 30 guests raised funds for her campaign. A neighbor of the couple began shouting homophobic slurs over his backyard fence and then apparently called the police to complain about the noise. What happened next is surreal.
via Joe. My. God.: Cops Raid San Diego Dem Home Fundraiser With Helicopter, Arrests, Pepper Spray.
She was using a megaphone for a short while but 8-8:30pm hardly counts as a noise violation, the guests at the fundraisers are described as “middle-aged supporters;” which we all know just are wild and crazy with noise. Oh wait.
So the neighbor shouts obscenities about gay people from behind the bushes, which lead the police to believe that they needed to use pepper spray to control the 60 year olds fundraiser guests. The neighbors didn’t even notice the event until the police showed up. And show up they did, seven deputies, a sergeant and a helicopter.
see also Cops Arrest Host, Use Pepper Spray at Candidate’s Fundraiser – Towleroad
and also, an update on the Ft. Worth raids via JMG
The Fort Worth Police Department still has some explaining to do about what happened early Sunday at a southside gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge.
Or some clarifying or some illuminating or some supplementary detailing – anything to mitigate the apparently self-administered public-relations shot-to-the-foot it suffered after what it keeps calling a routine “bar check.”
‘Cause – Problem No. 1 – bar patrons who were there say it wasn’t a “check,” it was a “raid.” Problem No. 2, this particular “check” ended with a kid in the intensive-care unit with a head injury.
Problem No. 3, in what I can only hope is a spectacularly infelicitous coincidence, all this took place on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Raid.
I hate being hated. but not that much, don’t you worry.
Saturday night, on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in NYC, police reportedly entered Fort Worth’s Rainbow Lounge gay bar and began arresting people with unnecessary force for public intoxication. Multiple first-hand accounts suggest that the arrests were random and unwarranted.
In all, seven were arrested and one remains hospitalized with a brain injury that occurred during the incident: “About 18 hours after officers with the Fort Worth Police Department and agents with the Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission raided a Fort Worth gay bar, about 150 to 200 people gathered on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse in downtown Fort Worth Sunday night, June 28, to protest the raid.”
I’m sure more details will come to light as time goes by, but they couldn’t have had better timing to plan a raid on a gay bar if they wanted to get publicity for their beatings. The 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots?
If they are legit in their bar raid (they have every right to raid bars to check for intoxication in Ft. Worth) then they should have at least attempted to not create a huge news situation by beating the hell out of gay bar patrons on the 40th anniversary of cops beating the hell out of gay bar patrons in a way that sparked the beginning of the gay rights movement.
romaine, cabbage, green onion, green pepper, celery, carrots, hard boiled egg, cubed: turkey breast, ham, Colby Jack
via salad for lunch on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.
Ugh, I wrote this post but wp screwed it up once again so here is a “mostly accurate” re-write:
Kev and I made salads last night for lunch today so we didn’t have to make it in the morning (we already had the kitchen in full swing from the chicken veggie lasagna, more on that later).
Cabbage was leftover from the coleslaw we made for Father’s Day, it added a nice crunch to the salad.
The turkey breast and ham were from the deli, I had them slice the lunch meat 1/2″ thick then I cubed it. Each slice was ~1/2lb, I used half a slice of each for the 2 salads (1/8th lb. of each meat per salad). The Colby Jack I just cut into cube-like shapes and added it to plastic baggies so it wouldn’t “melt” into the salad overnight.
We bought croutons last night but in the rush of the morning they were forgotten in the cupboard.
June 25th, 2009
Farrah Fawcett, who soared to fame as a national sex symbol in the late 1970s on television’s campy “Charlie’s Angels” and in a swimsuit poster that showcased her feathery mane and made her a generation’s favorite pinup, died Thursday. She was 62.
via Pop culture icon Farrah Fawcett dies at 62 – Los Angeles Times.
I don’t know that I ever saw that many episodes of the original Charlie’s Angels (nor would she really be a sex symbol for me…) butI do remember her being on The Six Million Dollar Man
June 25th, 2009
A second private autopsy on Jackson’s body was completed Saturday at the family’s request so they could have a second opinion on the cause of death. The first autopsy conducted Friday was inconclusive, but foul play was ruled out and the coroner’s office said it could take up to six weeks to get the full results.
via Michael Jackson’s Doctor Not A Suspect, Family Ordered Second Autopsy – ABC News.
Apparently Michael Jackson brought down the internets when he died.
June 28th, 2009
Television pitchman Billy Mays — who built his fame by appearing on commercials and infomercials promoting household products and gadgets — died Sunday.
OxyClean and OrangeGlow will never be the same.
Today a friend asked me a question that the folks at Stanley tell me they hear all the time: why does the claw — you know, the little catch at the end of your short tape measure — move back and forth? Is it just poorly attached? The short answer: no, the loose claw is no accident of manufacture. It’s loose on purpose. The longer answer lies after the jump.
via Toolmonger » Blog Archive » FYI: Why Tape Measure Claws Move Around.
I guess I never pondered it before but the answer shows they were pretty smart when they designed it that way.
For the Summer, everyone’s favorite bakery, Sprinkles, has launched a new product: frozen frosting shots. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. For $.75, at all Sprinkles locations, you can actually purchase a shot of frosting that’s frozen.
Cause that’s what America needs
You might recall that Sanford earned his homophobic stripes for ordering the SC Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Department to stop an ad agreement with Amro Worldwide, a travel promoter, after it began to market the state to potential gay tourists. He said it wasn’t right to use state dollars to market to groups with a “specific social agenda.”
But it’s OK for him to drive his state-owned SUV to the airport for a “specific sexual agenda.”
The AWOL Senator whose staff told the press he was hiking the Appalachian trail was really in Argentina havin himself a good ‘ole affair. Which lets him join the gay hating “family values” coalition of people who don’t actually have family values.
Sanford has also been an opponent of same-sex marriage, saying in 2004, “As Jenny and I are the parents of four little boys, we’ve always taught our kids that marriage was something between a man and a woman.” [The Post and Courier, 2/11/04]
A co-worker told me about that quote, I can’t find it in the Post and Courier but Think Progress has a nice wrap up of all the lovely things Sanford has said from his moral high ground, addressing Clinton’s affair, how the GOP reacts to affairs, and the above.
Wonkette also linked to a Media Matters screencap of Fox News labeling Sanford as a Democrat.
Rachel Maddow has been following this story while I still throught it was a non-issue, so I’m sure she will have something good to say about it tonight.
It takes two years after marrying an American before you can qualify for citizenship. If your spouse dies before then, you get sent home.
Well that would suck.
So the head of the Department of Homeland Security can suspend the enforcement of the Widow’s Penalty in order to give Congress time to “fix the law,” but Barack Obama—the President of the United States, Commander in Chief, Janet Napolitano’s boss—he can’t suspend enforcement of DADT to give Congress time to “fix the law.” Is that it? Or is Obama administration only capable of recognizing an injustice and taking action when the lives of heterosexuals are being destroyed?
via Is Janet Napolitano More Powerful Than Barack Obama? | Slog | The Stranger.
She learned of the issue and she ordered the deportation to be deferred for two years so that Congress has time to fix the law. Seems like a no biggie. Except…
We hear over and over again that Obama “can’t” use his executive power to stop DADT, even though 77 members of Congress sent him a letter yesterday urging him to use that very same executive power to stop discharges under DADT.
Apparently its a whole lot easier to stand up for widows, widowers, and their children than it is to stand up for equal rights for everyone.
You might have gone down the rabbit hole before. But never with a guide quite as attuned to the fantastic as Tim Burton.
…
There is the usual Burton-esque ghoulishness (Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen, whose favorite retort is “Off with their heads,” has a moat filled with bobbing noggins), but Zanuck assures most kids can handle it. “The book itself is pretty dark,” he notes. “This is for little people and people who read it when they were little 50 years ago.”via First look: What a weird ‘Wonderland’ Burton’s made – USATODAY.com.
Unfortunately this will not be a movie version of American McGee’s Alice, a hauntingly creepy video game story of Alice working her way through a deranged Wonderland. There was talk of a movie called Alice in the past, but it sorta died as it kept changing hands, Dimension to 20th Century Fox to Universal Pictures. In 2008 it was still in “turnaround” @ Universal. A new installment to the series is supposedly in the works with the help of Spicy Horse, the people who worked on Grimm.
I love the stories of video games, some of them are extremely in depth and well done. The problem is I don’t like playing video games. If you wanna play a video game I will gladly watch as long as you don’t mind occasionally explaining some storyline, but I just don’t really enjoy figuring them out for myself; I usually get stuck figuring out what to do next, the free form worlds don’t have enough structure for me to figure out where I need to go.
Even if Burton’s Wonderland isn’t the scary spectacle I think Lewis Carrol’s work deserves, I still have high hopes for it and will definitely watch it at some point.
via Towleroad
Won’t someone please think of the aliens!
“According to hitherto unconfirmed reports, both Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin saw UFOs shortly after their historic landing on the Moon in Apollo 11 on 21 July 1969. I remember hearing one of the astronauts refer to a “light” in or on a carter during the television transmission, followed by a request from mission control for further information. Nothing more was heard.”
via NASA moon bombing violates space law & may cause conflict with lunar ET/UFO civilizations.
Hooray for nut jobs. It at least makes for a funny read, arguments that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin saw UFOs after landing on the Moon, and that slamming a “space-based kinetic weapon” into the Moon is part of the US Government’s plan to establish dominance over the native inhabitants of the Moon.
HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie.
From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.
After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.
The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.
Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film.
Sad story, makes the eye allergies act up.
via the consumerist
Ryan Reynolds Gets Down to Skin for Entertainment Weekly – Towleroad
So, there is no way that I would want to see The Proposal based on its merits as a film, but I might watch it because Ryan Reynolds is nice to look at. Turns out he is married to another supposed Hollywood “hottie” Scarlett Johansson. Anyway:
The more prominent of his two tights-centric roles fit the actor perfectly, and it’s hardly an accident: For the past six years, Reynolds had been trying to develop a Deadpool franchise on his own. “At its core, this is a movie about a guy in a red spandex suit who’s in the midst of a shame spiral. That cracks me up,” he says, promising the next film will hew closer to the original Marvel mythology than Wolverine allowed.
I think the X-Men movies are always fun, and its a super nerdy universe to explore on wikipedia, but its just more fun @ the movies.
Fleet Feet Sports Dirt Cheap Trail Series Presented by Salomon – Race #3
Wednesday June 17, 2009 Ellison Wetlands, Rochester, NY
210 Finishers( 80 Female, 129 Male, 1 Unknown )
Pos Bib Name Gender Class Age City Time
77 129 Justin Newcomer M66 M20-24 24 Rochester 0:40:45
I apparently usually finish in the 70s, which out of 200+ people is fine with me. This race was very technical, lots of hills, plenty of high speed corners, stairs, a gate (it was supposed to be open but…), and of course, tons and tons of rain. The rain made what would have already been a difficult course even harder because the whole trail turned to mud, and slick slimey mud at that. I mud-surfed 6-10 feet at one point, doing all I could to not fall over. Other areas, falling over was inevetiable and once you did go down it was nearly impossible to stand back up so we just slid down the hill on our backsides. Everyone finished the race covered in mud, some of us just had more mud than others.
Even when its pouring there is never enough water to actually take a shower in it so I used my tech shirt to sop up runoff water along the road and wrung it out to wash myself. Eventually I just sat in the runoff stream, a most effective way to get mud off your butt, legs and shoes.
Changing in the car was a bit of a mess, I didn’t bring a towel or clothes other than the khakis and polo I wore to work. Fortunately they gave out the Dirt Cheap shirts at yesterday’s race and I sat on that while I changed from my race shorts to the khakis, and then I ended up just putting that shirt on, I had a nice polo on and I still wasn’t actually “clean,” just cleaner.
It was a blast, next month we start all over again but doing the courses in the other direction.
not sure what happened, but Apache seems to have been hung, and it had the whole server tied up as it did its thing (or rather, didn’t do its thing)
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I read the internet, so you don't have to
