Month: June 2003

I started writing this entry this morning at work, but got sidetracked by work—bet you didn’t see that one coming. It’s not really done, but I’m to lazy to go back and fix the flow and flesh out the rest of the thoughts… maybe it will make since, if not, sorry.

So the Toni Awards where given out the other day and Hairspray won for best score. No big deal, but the two guys who won it happen to be gay—not a shocker in the theater world, what has people cheering or jeering is the fact that the two of them kissed on stage, in prime time, on live tv. (found this story [www.guardian.co.uk] in the Guardian a UK paper.)

Mr Shaiman turned to Mr Wittman and said: “I love this man. We’re not allowed to get married in this world … But I’d like to declare, in front of all these people, I love you and I’d like to live with you the rest of my life.”

As a tangent the story mentions a recent backlash against gays and lesbians:

John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, banned an established gay pride event at the justice department. In April, a Pennsylvania senator, Rick Santorum, linked homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, and incest.

Now the second comment we can throw out as a standard ‘I get a strange feeling in my tummy when I talk about gays’ textbook Christian comment. (though I would be interested to know the number of gays who become Mormon polygamist or West Virginians who are gay?) But John Ashcroft should be sued by the ACLU over banning a pride event at the DOJ. Personally I am against all ‘special interest group’ recognition days/weeks/months and such—I think it points out the differences and polarizes society because too many people cannot look beyond those differences once they are pointed out. However I have no doubt that John Ashcroft will not be banning any ‘black history month’ activities at the DOJ (political suicide) and there is no fundamental difference between black Americans celebrating being black and gay Americans celebrating being gay. John Ashcroft should be forced to set down for being a bigoted chauvinist.

What is it that people are so afraid of? What is it that two consenting adult people do together in their own home that scares so many people? Why do we hold on so tightly to our Judaic-Christian
fourth century b.c.e ethics? I just don’t understand. Somehow sodomy is so bad to Christians that they can conveniently forget about ‘brotherly love’ and acceptance. They can even kill? I thought there was a commandment against that.

I like this line:

Same sex kissing is not unheard of on US TV. The first, most memorable kiss was on LA Law in 1992 by Amanda Donohoe and Michele Greene. Roseanne, Ellen, Ally McBeal, Friends, ER, and Spin City followed suit. Gay male affection is far more rare.

No shit. That’s because guys love to watch girls kiss… so it’s more socially acceptable to be a homosexual woman. Even the fat, white, Christian men or greasy, redneck, white trash who make all the noise about gays like to see two women go at it.

Congratulations to R█████ on his getting hitched this weekend. And I’m sorry I did not make it to the wedding…

Well, it’s a year ago today that I left London and came back the Virginia. In some ways the year has gone by really fast. In other ways it has crawled by at a snails pace. In the most important way it has crawled by—It’s been a year since I saw C███████. That’s way to long. And there is nothing I can do about it right now. I hope I can pull together enough cash to go see her over the summer, but I don’t know because airline tickets have gone up in price. I still really wish I could find some way to go back to Europe—not only to be with C███████ but because I would like to live there for a few more years while I am still in my twenties. To emerge myself in another culture totally as part of that culture, not as a visitor. Even being in England and traveling around Europe for a long as I was there was still the “i’m visiting, I go back to the US in X months/weeks/days.” I would like to be there and not have that, to say, I live here. I feel like the last time I was truly happy was when I was broke walking around London, counting the pounds in my wallet to know if I could take the Tube or not. Maybe I’m just romancing it but… I guess I need to stop living in the past and get on with it. I don’t like living in the past, I think people do it way too much, but when it’s quiet and I’m not busy that’s where my thoughs go, to Islington, Angel, and The City. To the Tube, St. Pauls, and Tower Bridge. To pubs, khebab vans, and fish and chip shops. I have not found anything here to fill the void left by leaving London. I have picked up my life several times—for good and for bad reasons, and started over and it always takes a long time to rebuild. It’s never easy and it’s depressing. I’m happy with who I am, I’m happy with my job, I just wish I was closer to the people I love. Mostly to C███████ but also I wish A—– and Sherman where here, and I wish I got to see and hang out with S██████ and J███████ more. Ok. Enough…. I just need to keep moving forward fixing the things I can and not worrying about those I cannot.

I found this story [indyweek.com] linked from Jeffery Zeldman Presents [www.zeldman.com].

Basically:
School sets up new computer system
Student starts online journal
Computer system has serious problem
Rumors at school say someone hacked the system

Student posts journal entry entitled ‘Someone hacked the Gibson’

School initiates investigation of computer system problem
Student is called to office
Student is interrogated by two supposed FBI agents—who turn out to be FBI Agents in training (no clearance yet!)

Best part of the story:

Freaked out by what she thought was a brush with the feds, Carter went home and decided to close down her experiment with online expression. True to its name, “Text into Nothing” disappeared with a few commands from Carter’s keyboard. In its place, she posted a farewell missive that warned her readers to lie low: “To anyone who has ever posted on my journal: I am sorry. The FBI most likely has your IP address and your blog address/e-mail address if you posted that. The FBI has been reading my diary.”

Carter described how she’d been interrogated about the blog, and wrote that, given recent events, “I am sorry that I’ve had an online journal. I would highly recommend anyone to take down theirs.” Carter says that the main lesson she’s learned is that it’s time to retreat from posting personal information online. “I know that the government now has forever my extremely personal teenage diary,” Carter concluded. “Hell yes, I’m mad. I will no longer be posting in this
diary.”

First off, any FBI agent working with or in training to be part of the ‘High Tech Crime Task Force’ should be familiar with movies like Hackers, Sneakers, War Games and the like. Because they are, no matter how unrealistic, a part of hacker culture.

Secondly, anyone who post ANYTHING to the Internet should have no expectation of any privacy. The Internet by default is in the public domain—and chances are that anything you have ever posted has been cataloged, categorized and indexed by Google and one or more branches
of the government. Not only are the things you put on the Internet out there for anyone to read—so is a lot of stuff you would not think about. Many localities and government bodies have been or are posting records to the Internet. Things that have long been in the public record but where only accessible by someone who bothered to go through the effort to fill out requests or go to the records building can now search for information online—court proceedings, police records and other things that could contain information on you. This is the stuff privacy advocates scream about. The Internet is no more than a ‘ministry of information’ which is not run by big brother, but is usable by him—or anyone else who cares to.

At least she got the moral: if you don’t want it to be public information—keep it off the Internet.

And honey! Use a brush!

issue number one :: So, I moved confusion.cc from my old web-host to a co-hosting site with codejunkie and several other sites. This caused a little bit of confusion last week with the site coming and going for several days. All is better now, my email works again and the site is up. I have some ideas for things I want to change—but they are ideas I have had for some time… maybe now I will change them. But probably not. C’est la vie.

issue number two :: Anyway, I was very depressed last week. Lazy, tired, unhappy. I think going to a my friend Rob’s bachelors party was the trigger. Hanging out with a bunch of guys talking about and staring at girls just drilled into my head how lonely I am because C███████ is in England. That on top of working long hours and the copious amounts of rainy days we have had in the past few weeks just got me down. Things feel much better now.