May 2008 Archives
While the Pevensie kids got pulled away from narnia for 1300 years, their acting as if they had never forgotten their combat skills as Kings and Queens of Narnia was impressive. The melee swordfighting choreography and battle scenes were awesome. I especially liked the Telmarines' double-shot catapult. I would like either a catapult or a trebuchet for Christmas, thanks. Oh, and I still haven't gotten a battle-mastodon mount for Christmas either, by the way.
If you watch closely, there seems to be a shout-out to the Bear community in the scene when Peter and King Miraz are dueling to the death. A talking brown bear attends the battle, and when Peter is in grave danger in the fight scene, you can see the bear clutching his pearls in excitement. Maybe I was looking into it too much, but you know how Disney is filled with creative gays.
If you're familiar with the series of books, you can spot the evil Silver Chair in some scenes, and the debut of Reepicheep the mouse, who plays a role in the next book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. That one was my favorite, and I hope it's the next film in the Chronicles movies.
The new P.G. Plaza is recently developed, much like Columbia Heights. The Plaza proper has dancing fountains surrounded by nice condos and office space, and reminded me of the Soviet-style quartal I lived in in Kazakstan. There, each quartal surrounded a central recreation/play area, and the first floors of each apartment lining the quartal had bread stores, pharmacies and other places to get your basic victuals. Four quartals surrounded a small bazaar where you could get fresh meat and vegetables. If you wanted other stuff or harder to get produce you had to take a bus into the city to the main bazaar. Anyway, I found it interesting that these newer socialist-style developments so closely mirror Soviet-style living arrangements. The only thing missing is for the residents to have a summer home, or dacha, where they chill over the weekends. I suppose an American's beach share is sort of a comparison.
I'll have to credit Manhunt with practicing skills that can also be applied to my job search. A job hunt is a lot like dating or tricking - it takes time and selectivity skills, as you need to be able to filter out any options that would have you wasting your time e-mailing or calling about the job, as you certainly don't want to find yourself in a situation where you want to get out quickly. Headhunters are like trolls or PNP queens - they're flighty or extremely desperate, depending on the hour. An interview is like a coffee or drink date, and the hiring process is sort of like the follow-up dating situation. Being hired is a kind of a relationship, as you'll be with that job in the long-term, so you have to choose carefully.
So with the recent California ruling on same-sex marriages there's another media and blogosphere onslaught of comments and positions on gay marriage, which can be summed up like this:
"OMG OMG OMG! GAY MARRIAGE EQUALITY CIVIL UNIONS!"
I am all for the benefits and priviliges that marriage provides to a couple, and hope we will one day achieve the same benefits from a legal union that straight people do.
But I also hope we can avoid some of the pitfalls and inappropriate use of marriage so gleefully embraced by heterosexuals. One nice thing about being gay is that once you're out and everyone knows, some degree of pressure is off. Amongst my group of high school friends, I saw the increasing pressure on the final single females of my posse to wed and bear children. Having been a homo for so long, I can't imagine having to put up with that crap: the questions of why you are still single or if you are married, why you don't yet have children.
This pressure is everywhere, from wedding contests on morning talk shows to that very special wedding episode on your favorite sitcom. It's the perceived inevitable endpoint to any straight relationship. Back home it goes like this: you graduate high school, get a job, get married and have children - not necessarily in that order. Upon later visits to Wisconsin I found that model to be flawed, as several high school classmates are now divorced, sometimes twice over. I think in many cases one of the two heteros was more interested in the wedding, not necessarily the marriage early on. And I think heteros totally take for granted the legal benefits gained from a marriage. They don't even think about it much at all.
I can't say how I'd think about marriage if I were straight, but if my brain chemistry were to suddenly shift into breeder mode, I would still approach relationships cautiously and consider marriage only in the event that I have lived with someone sustainably for a long time, and that we were considering marriage for the right reasons.
I've also observed that the older my hetero friends get, the nicer, shorter, and cheaper the weddings get as well. I think they eventually come to recognize that the wedding acknowledges the relationship, not the other way around. Weddings, in my opinion, are for the close friends and family, not necessarily for the couple. The couple knows they are a pair, the wedding is a ritual that serves to draw attention to and validate the marriage. But far too often, the ideas of marriage and wedding get mixed up somehow.
What I worry about is that if homos eventually get the right to marry, their perceptions towards that legal institution and ceremonial ritual will follow in the footsteps of our breederfolk brethren, and we'll end up with a big mess of expensive weddings and tragic divorces where the only people who benefit are the lawyers and credit card companies. It's not gay marriage that people need to fear, it's gay weddings.
But whatever you choose to do with your relationship - if there is a wedding, never, ever skimp on the food for the guests. That's all I have to say about that.
To honor the Memorial Day holiday, I sat in Logan Circle to start my class text reading assignments. My old roomate was there too, who is also unemployed and in the same field as I am. In times of budget crises, public affairs and communicators are the first to go, especially, mysteriously, after the website has been redesigned...
Anyway, he told me that John Logan, the man for which the circle is named, was one of the first to call for some kind of rememberance for America's soldiers. How fitting that I had decided to chill in the park on this day. Turns out Herb has a more detailed call to pour one out for John Logan on this memorial weekend.
The Circle seems to have it's own rhythm, with homeless and unemployed people enjoying the park up until about 5pm. Then the dog walkers come in and they are eager to chat with you, even if it appears that you are trying to read. But then when you chat with them, the conversation is aborted when some other dog walker appears, their dogs start fighting, and then they fuss over the dogs.
I didn't get that invite to anybody's beach house that I was hoping for, but it's OK since I hear the beach was jam-packed anyway. I have a much nicer time when the crowds are down in September. Plus I'm not the biggest fan of baking on the beach during the hotter months, so the cooler autumn months are breferred.
That's not to say there hasn't been any action here in the 'hood. Friday night was ridiculous, with nothing less than a street party going on the other end of the block at that address, again. The funny thing was, it looked like the party was going to start the next night too, with requisite car-washing and loitiering by a lot of people who don't actually live on this block, as usual. But when I came back from the gym, the street was serene but for a gathering of four older ladies having a chat where the mob would usually be. It seems the ruckus awakened the ancients of the block and they are not amused. Visits by the police are nice, but temporary, and only serves to excite the mob. What has longer term effects in many neighborhoods in this city is when the elders get involved. Do not anger the ancients.
The sun hadn't yet set when I heard a group of kids out front later that afternoon. It's not unusual, as they like to look at the fish in the pond. But then I heard rocks moving and water splashing, put my shoes on and went outside to see a group of pre-teens up in the yard trying to catch my fish with a cup. With an ornery, "Get the fuck out of there, you little shits!" and they scattered to the winds. Little shits.
And tonight, someone got their hands on a four-wheeler, and is vrooming up and down the street, ad nauseam.
Now I know what I want to go as for next Halloween and for the 17th Street High Heel Race:
Now all I need are some Centurion attendants to haul the giant hot tub full of goo (and Jimbo in Hybrid drag).
No matter how many times I've gone to the university bookstore to buy the texts for my courses, the textbook prices are always shocking. It's a racket!
Still, the books at left and the graduate level couse I'm taking this summer, crisis communication management, should be interesting. I have experienced a number of crises as a communicator in various work situations that I hope I can apply to class discussion and case studies. Knowing how people react and predicting what they will want to know (or hear) is a valuable skill as a public affairs or communications specialist.
Yes, the blog entries have been sparse of late, but I can't complain. Bites for job offers have happened almost daily, albeit mostly from headhunters asking me if I want to work for some kinda "financial services management" position. Didn't they read my resume? It takes a bit of time to call and screen to sift through the jobs I'm actually interested in, vs. filling a slot in a job that pays well but will ultimately not be to my interests. There are still a lot of irons in the fire though, and I'm not sweating at the moment.
It is interesting to compare my situation now as opposed to five years ago, when the dot-com workers were flooding the job market. Either my experiences and skills have become richer, there are fewer HTML jockeys in the market, or HR people are using online resources a lot more. Or all of the above. These days "content management systems" (CMS) are the shit, as opposed to just putting 'HTML' on your resume. Thankfully, I don't have to build or manage the CMS, just manage content in these new jobs. CMS has taken a lot of grunt work out of managing websites, so writers and content managers can focus on what people are really interested in - valuable information and interesting things to read. It doesn't hurt that the system I/we use to blog is also a kind of CMS. I've been doing this for over 10 years, so it's a breeze. Please don't tell anyone it's easy! The tricky part is letting the hiring people know I use Moveable Type, Greymatter, Dreamweaver, Contribute or Serena Collage without leading them to this here blog. Probably another reason I'm blogging less, and more G-rated of late.
In my spare time, I've discovered that there is a wide selection of Klingon bat'leth - double-bladed ancestral weapons - available at the pawn shop north of 14th and R, NW, on the west side of the street where Sparky's used to be. I'm totally serious.
60,000 Pacific or "White" Sturgeon are swimming around in a ball-like mass, forty feet below the surface, just downstream of Bonneville Dam in Oregon's Columbia River. Scientists believe it's not unlike the Saliva Pit behavior observed at Blowoff and Shirtless Men Drink Free at the Green Lantern. Wildlife biologists call this behavior staging. For example: "TJ was last seen at the staging area just left of the DJ booth, milling about in a ball-like mass with a bunch of Bears and masc buds."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Saves Iraq Reporter's Soul (NPR audio archive): Buffy-as-Mystical-Spirit-Guide is not unusual among geeks. What would Buffy do in your situation?
The much-anticipated 4th Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game is in print. Here's a review. My players have rebelled against changing over from 3.5, mostly due to the needless destruction of many beloved regions in the Forgotten Realms setting. Who's the asshole who decided to blow up the magocracy of Halruaa? At least Thay made it through the crisis, but jeez...
It was a fun and busy weekend hosting the lovely BrettCajun with TJ over the weekend. Brett wanted to see some rockets and capsules, so I took him to the National Mall and the Air and Space Museum. I liked all the WWII planes and Cold War missile exhibits. On Saturday we hauled him out to all the hotspots, including Nellie's, and then later to Blowoff for a dip into the Saliva Pit. But with all that socializin' and some rugby on Saturday, I'm tuckered out.
I also devoured an excellent book referred by a friend: World War Z - An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks. It's a series of testimonials by the survivors of a fictional worldwide zombie infestation, from outbreak to global offensive against the walking dead. I liked it not only for its post-apocalyptic vision, but also because it wasn't really a story about zombies, it was about people. From the initial outbreak, disasters and tragedies due to human error, to testaments to the human spirit by the end. Not really the happiest ending, but an interesting one. You can calculate your survival risk in the event of a zombie infestation on the book's website.
On Friday we went out to Duplex for some homo cookin', and I had a nice chat with a bulldog:
Later that evening we went to Cobalt for two floors of Beariness, and then to JRs for balance amongst twinkage.
Gurl and Co. came out to watch our last home match of the season, and the weather cooperated. We won both matches and I got to get some time in as scrumhalf:
One more match before the big gay rugby tournament in Dublin, which will be lots of fun.
BrettCajun comes in to visit DC tomorrow. TJ and I are hosting him, and are desperately looking for tennis venues or places with chickens to keep him happy. A visit to Blowoff is in order on Saturday at the very least.
The photo at left is a knitted (or crocheted?) version of an alien from the new Dr. Who called an Adiposian. Adiposians breed by emerging from the fat of other species, such as Earthlings. Apparently the knitter is in a knot with the show due to possible trademark and copyright infringements.
Alien knitting patterns undo Dr Who fan.
Mad knitters are also crocheting their own version of the Great Barrier Reef to bring attention to global warming.
This Saturday at 1pm we're up against our friends from Pax River at at Colmar Manor Park for the last home match of the season until we go to Dublin in June for the big gay rugby tournament.
If there's time I hope to get over to the Long View Gallery for Scott Brooks' Mid City Artists Open Studio Tour.
When I hear the phrase "carbon footprint" thrown around on The Today Show and start seeing compost for sale at Whole Foods, I start to cringe and think, "Oh dear, here we go again." You can poop in a bucket and add some grass clippings, and that's compost too. But I suppose paying for compost makes people feel better.
I saw this renewed interest in a "green movement" coming a few years ago, and stand by the comparisons to the environmental movements of the 70s and 90s, and points I made back then.
"Together, we can make an unbelievably negligible difference."
Seriously though, it's important not to make Chicken Little claims or people will throw their hands up in the air and give up. Don't ovewhelm the public with too many things they MUST do to save the environment. It's important to try to make changes, but they must be achievable as well. And scaring the public with unrealistic claims that the earth is going to blow up tomorrow will reduce the impact of the importance of trying to do something at all. And people will always have a greater interest in trying to fix local problems over problems they can't directly experience. But with the media as sensationalistic as it is today, declaring our doom on the news almost every day for a variety of reasons, I'm afraid this decade's environmental movement will merely be another blip on the radar.
If you start telling people to stop travelling by plane, they'll start to buck the idea of trying to change their lifestyle to improve the environment. Granted, we can now telecommute easier, and telecommuting is a wonderful idea in many ways. I'm guessing there's a lot of people who could travel less and work more from home or a home office. But there are a lot of people who won't want to stop flying, and making no-fly demands on these people will only result in a backlash.
This issue reminds me of a Star Trek: Next Generation episode where the crew of the Enterprise came across a group of aliens who claimed warp travel through the same area of space in their system over prolonged periods was creating a weakening of space-time continuum. This "warp pollution" was causing dangerous rifts in time and space to open up, sucking in unwary space travellers. The Enterprise crew found the aliens' claim to be valid, and for a short time the Federation banned warp travel above warp 5 unless it was absolutely necessary in an emergency. However, the development of a safer variable geometry engine allowed space travel beyond warp 5 to be safer to time and space.
In Battlestar Galactica, can also assign multiple uses for a sewage treatment ship, like re-using it to find Earth. But my question here is, if the poop ship is off looking for Earth, is untreated sewage being jettisoned into space instead of being reused on the food processing ship? I love it that the fleet's (no pun intended) poop ship is a major part of the storyline.
This is interesting: Green Porno, staring Isalbella Rossellini.
Anyway, things can be fixed, and behavior can change, but usually only gradually. With focus, a more positive outlook, doing what you can and birth control, things can get better. I'm doing my part by being a nonbreeding homo, for starters.
My bus stop is just east of Dupont Circle on P Street, NW. I realized the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq was just across the street from where I wait for the bus. It was kinda deserted:
It has been raining much of the week with heavy downpours. No need to water the plants anytime soon.
Yesterday I went out to see Sean's installation at Artomatic, at Capital Plaza I - corner of First & M streets NE - near the NY Ave Metro. I thought the setup for all the artwork was pretty impressive. The building they're hosting the event in is an unfinished office building several stories high. Coordinating the timing of the installations must have been tricky to get the show in while the building was still unfinished, yet ready for more construction. Artomatic will be showing for a month, and is a pretty cool thing for DC. Here's a crappy cell phone pic of Sean's installation:
Early, early this morning I went out with Michael and Bryan to the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland for the International Migratory Bird Day Bird Count (Census). I'm still pretty worn out from the hour, and it was raining hard, so I can't recall too many species spotted at the moment. But my barred owl call did not fail to bring the boys to the yard. I am the best barred owl caller in the DC Metropolitan region, wings down. We also saw yellowlegs, lots of bluebirds, and many warblers identified by call. The beehives were still mostly unpopulated:
But again, it was very wet outside. I would have slept in too if I were a wise busy bee.
Madonnarama is tonight but I think I've spent all my party points for the week. And it's a nice, cool, cloudy day for several naps. I'm goin' to bed.
It's a veritable Q Street Renassance on Friday, with upstairs unholy Sean showing his work at Artomatic, and OMG DJ TM™ spinning at Apex. I'll be sure to hit the club after a Disco Nap following the art show.
I've been remarkably busy despite the lack of a job. But the spring planting is almost done, although I still have a list of things to do indoors as some tasks have been ignored since I moved in this place a year ago (like cleaning the toilet). A focused job search can only take so much time, so I'm keeping my brain busy by being busy. Although I sense I could start going koo-koo for lack of human interaction. I probably shouldn't consider a job working from home full time, although one or two days working from home doing things that require concentration and thought (writing, editing, layout, etc.) would be nice. I do crave coworker interaction.
The irony of my current situation is that I have plenty of leave time for travel, but flights are gawdawful expensive all of a sudden, so I'm stuck here unless I go on a spending spree for flights. Then again there's always backpacking which I haven't done in a while, and is relatively inexpensive and close by.
Since I'm in a Mommie Dearest way around the house, here's the Joan Crawford Megamix by master of the montage Dan-O-Rama.
To the comment troll who has already read far too much of this blog, taking far too much of it way too seriously: do like I do when anything having to do with either Obama or Clinton comes on TV - change the fucking channel. I see from the server logs that you've scoured this site on a frightening scale. If you are so fascinated and enraged by what you read here, go elsewhere and I guarantee you'll be in a better mood. Go visit Steve and Warren's blog (never safe for work), for example. I love those two - their sex life is dynamite, they're from Minnesota, always say nice things about everything, and they keep me updated on the weather in the land 'o lakes.
I'm a lounger, not a fighter:
Great shot by Brettie of a scuffle at the Rites of Spring tournament this weekend in Baltimore. In the photo they appear to be attacking the person in the wheelchair, but that is not the case, just a trick of the camera. I didn't get to play much, but the team played some good rugby against tough competition.
How does Matthew Foxxy-Fox's chest hair disappear on Lost? I'm guessing it's a nutrient deficiency from a diet heavy in island fruits, or some evil force is waxing people while they sleep.
The big paper I wrote last week for my marketing ethics class was about direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisements in periodicals marketing anti-HIV medications to the gay male target audience (marketing distribution channel, to those in the business). While chatting with a guy at a fun Baltimore Bear party this weekend, the topic came up again. He kind of shook his head ruefully when the subject of pharmaceutical ads came up, since he was an HIV social worker, and inferred that those ads are a problem.
According to my research, the HIV medication ads showing happy, healthy HIV+ people at the beach or climbing mountainsides feed a surveyed perception that your life is not altered radically under these meds. Also, HIV+ people who read those ads tend to believe that the risk of transmission is reduced (not true) and that they can proceed with unsafe sex practices. Sadly, those ads also affect the perception of the above two issues in HIV-negative people as well, contributing to a rise in unsafe sex and HIV transmission. So basically those sunshiney ads from companies who claim to be helping, actually harm those people who read the ads. Several perception surveys support the above claims, so it's not conjecture.
Such ads by pharmaceutical companies were only allowed in the U.S. after 1996. New Zealand and the United States are the only two countries in the world that allow such advertisements on television and in publications. New Zealand is considering a ban on them as well. The reason most countries don't allow such ads to be printed or broadcast is that they are frequently misleading, or lead to an over-medicalization of daily life. In other words, you can just pop a pill and all your problems will be solved. It's not just a problem with HIV medications, but with parmaceuticals across the board.
In many of these ads the side-effects are frequently not quantified or prioritized. That is, if suicidal thoughts are one side-effect of taking Hivetra (or whatever), it needs to be put on the top of the list, in bold, underlined or whatever. But too often it's listed between headaches and diarrhea (other fun side-effects of HIV medications) in no particular order of severity.
Again, I've stated before that HIV medications are no picnic, and it's not like taking Lunesta or Benadryl. And they don't cure HIV, only treat it and extend your life. The first round of combination drug therapy my roomate was prescribed caused all his mucous membranes to blister - including his lips, nasal lining, rectum and throat. And since many drugs are rushed through the clinical trial period, many longer-term effects of the medications are not discovered until many years later (facial wasting, distended belly, fat redistribution to wierd places).
To me, the creepy part is that it's not uncommon to see these medications take up three pages of ad space in our beloved community publications, like The Advocate, Instinct and Genre. Two facing pages, or three pages is a LOT of ad space to purchase in a color glossy publication. And advertising dollars help pay for the printing and distribution of said publications. These publciations purport to speak to our community, yet are owned by pharmaceutical manufacturers who spend more dollars on marketing than they do on treatment research, and far more on marketing than on research for a cure. I checked: well over $40 BILLION by now. How critical do you think the writers of these publications are about the hand that feeds them?
You do the math - pharmaceutical companies are happy to keep supplying you with a barrage of medications as long as you are alive. And as long as people keep contracting HIV, they're still in business, and so are our community publications.
So there's another reason to continue to keep it safe, it's that in playing safe I'm stickin it to Tha Man. I'd rather not support companies that are profiting so much on a disease, so I will continue my efforts in not contracting the disease.
When Brett Favre retired from the Green Bay Packers, there really wasn't any reason to go on. But as fate would have it, the Washington Redskins signed on Colt Brennan as part of their wooftastic quarterback lineup. With Maryland's former QB Sam Hollenbach also part of the upcoming QB roster, there's definitely something to look forward to. I've seen college football and it was fun, but maybe it's time for me to check out a Redskins game at RFK.
It's been a busy week, with a major paper completed for the spring semester on Tuesday. I learned some interesting things, perhaps I'll comment on it later. For the summer I have Crisis Communication Management to look forward to, which should be fun.
Amateur personal journal blogging is over.
For those of you still on Friendster, Cylon's birthday was May 1st. Many apologies to you, Cylon Warrior, for the belated birthday wishes. And may you experience many more pleasant cycles, and that you project the most wonderful realities from here until your next rebirth on a basestar.
From Josh over at The Conjecturer: the U.S. Peace Corps program has been getting some constructive criticism lately. It appears that the age of flip-flopped and tie-dyed volunteers is over, and countries are demanding more skilled and experienced U.S. development assistance. From my personal experience in Kazakstan, I saw that older volunteers were more respected by host country nationals, and their development work was far more succsesful than post-undergraduate's efforts. With State Department diplomatic budgets shrinking, representation out in the field has fallen under more intense scrutiny. Good will on behalf of Birkenstocked Earth Goddess represenation just isn't good enough anymore in light of major health crises like AIDS in Africa, or food shortages. Countries are demanding experienced and aged assistance these days, and I agree that the Peace Corps program is long overdue for a makeover.
And no Crocs overseas, please. Apparently, someone feels more strongly about this than me!
Finally, Ask Alexyss (wash yo' nutz). Always classy. Guys, please clean your foreskin and behinds.
