I woke up this morning feeling just zonked, which is a medical term that means someone had flipped my autoplilot switch and I couldn't get myself back to normal. Workshop's got me exhausted, and my body is punishing me for wearing it down (or giving me permission to rest, depending on how you look at it) by making me sick. So I'm playing hookie tonight.
I saw I Heart Huckabees on Tuesday. Fantastic movie--I can't recommend it enough. It starts out like an absurdist play and then slowly moves into something much more human and worldly without violating the world it's created in its opening scenes. Anyway, I thought it was wonderful, fun, beautiful, inspiring.
And Barry Yourgrau has a new Web site, which should have information about where he's doing readings. If you're not familiar with his work, Barry Yourgrau writes flash fiction stories--maybe a page or two in length--that read like someone narrating his dreams to you. My favorite description of his work, so far is:
"reading barry yourgrau is addictive, like putting peanuts in your nose & they turn into these spaceships or something"-- roy blount jr
And that's really him in a nutshell. His writing has inspired mine a great deal. In my senior directing class, I tried to create a play, based on his book, The Sadness of Sex (the film version of which is on IFilms, and you can see my pale attempt to imitate his style in "Plum Wine". My Korpervelt series of stories (which will be on my Web site when my Web site is up and running) takes a lot of what I get out of his writing and superimposes my own fantasies, dreams, etc. onto it. At least, they came from a place that was very much inspired by his works.
Anyway, check out the link to his site on my sidebar. There's lots of links to articles about him and where and when he will be reading. If you live in NYC, I recommend you see one. That means you, Kim.
Life's had a weird synchronicity to it recently. I've been dreaming lots of dreams about my Amanda, not fun dreams either. I keep having dreams where we leave each other. Or tell each other to go away. But there's always some sort of warmth in all of it. And while that's happening, the Universe has been answering my request for new people and for people who knew the old me by sending new people to me left and right and sliding people from back in Philly into my life here. Which has made me happy.
I still have no Internet at home. Soon, hopefully, I'll have my WiFi up and running but until then, I'm limited to writing at work. Which means I'm not going to be entering as much as before.
It also means I leave at five. Which is what I'm going to do right...now.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Monday, October 25, 2004
A Brief Hiatus to Move
On Saturday at 1:00 a.m., my friend, Matt Lang, and I spent a half hour chatting about politics with a CTA security guard and a cop.
"Those are the issues," Matt turned to me and said as we stood on the platform afterward, "Abortion, the war, and gay marriage. That's what's going to determine our next president."
The security guard and the cop were both against the war. They were both prochoice (although the cop was only for abortion in the cases of rape and such...but still, that puts him against Bush's extremism), and all for gay marriage. I hadn't expected that, and it made me very happy to hear.
Last weekend, I moved into a new place, a spacious and pretty single-bedroom in Lincoln Square. It's a very me place—a bit old and falling apart in places, but generally very nice and well-lit, with ceiling fans, a good kitchen, and a bedroom that's dark enough that my eyes have to adapt to it every night when I go to sleep. This beats the near-daylight I had in my last bedroom.
So far, the only problem I've had with the place is that there isn't a phone. I spent two hours on Thursday on the phone with AT&T, trying to work out what the problem was, and when they finally told me I was going to have to pay at least a hundred, fifty dollars just to get it working, I finally broke down, cancelled my service with them, and got a cell phone. For years, I have resisted them, but AT&T convinced me it was high time to get one. Bastards.
This leaves me without Internet access for the time being, so for now, I'm writing from work. And I'm going to see about getting WiFi for my laptop, so I can make use of one of the dozen or so free WiFi cafes around where I live.
National Novel Writing Month
I was reminded, as I logged into blogspot, that this month is National Novel Writing Month. What is National Novel Writing Month, you ask? National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, since my fingers are getting tired typing out the full name of the holiday) is an experiment in writing a novel, not based on quality, but on quantity. More than that, it's an attempt to get people past their initial fears and woes about writing, and just write something for the fun of it. In the words of their Web site:
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
It's a great idea, as far as I'm concerned. One of the hardest things about writing, for me, is getting the inner editor to shut the fuck up for a little while and let me write. I find having a deadline helps. Anyway, I invite everyone to write a novel in this month, stop worrying about whether it's good or not, and just write. If you can't write a novel, write a short story or a piece of flash fiction. Send it to me. I'll post it.
links...
While I've been digitally incapacitated, people have been sending me links left and right, and now I'm going to post the ones I have in a single mad URL purge. Enjoy.
In addition to war, abortion, and gay marriage, the link between sex and voting seems to be a common theme this election year. My friend, Lara, sent me a link to Votergasm, a site dedicated to getting people laid for the act of voting. Which, just like getting people laid for voting Democrat, I'm all for (actually, I'm for getting people laid in general—they always seem so happy afterward. But these are particularly good reasons for it).
Also on the political front, a coworker sent me a link to Slap the Candidate.
Finally, there's the story of Wergle Flomp and Poetry.com. The year after I graduated college, when I had no money and too much time on my hands, I came across Poetry.com, and found their contest for—I think it was $5,000. So I wrote a twenty-line poem over a beer or three and then sent it to them and was all sorts of thrilled when they wrote me back saying that they liked my poem and wanted to publish it in their anthology. It wasn't until a little while later that I realized they would publish anyone in their anthology. So the story of Wergle Flomp made me grin, and checking their Web site, I find that my poem, "Man Melts the Sand so He can See the World", my twenty-line little gem, still sits there as a Mark of Cain, just to remind me not to be a sucker, and also to remind me that I know more now than I did then (you can find it, if you go to poetry.com and enter my name into the search engine).
(Incidentally, when Mudlark offered to publish me, their acceptance letter was so similar to the acceptance letter Poetry.com sent me that I responded to them somewhat angrily. The editor, William Slaughter, wrote me back saying that I had made him laugh—this was the first time a writer answered an acceptance letter in anger. Embarrassed, I apologized and explained myself. He was very understanding and kind about the whole thing.)
"Those are the issues," Matt turned to me and said as we stood on the platform afterward, "Abortion, the war, and gay marriage. That's what's going to determine our next president."
The security guard and the cop were both against the war. They were both prochoice (although the cop was only for abortion in the cases of rape and such...but still, that puts him against Bush's extremism), and all for gay marriage. I hadn't expected that, and it made me very happy to hear.
Last weekend, I moved into a new place, a spacious and pretty single-bedroom in Lincoln Square. It's a very me place—a bit old and falling apart in places, but generally very nice and well-lit, with ceiling fans, a good kitchen, and a bedroom that's dark enough that my eyes have to adapt to it every night when I go to sleep. This beats the near-daylight I had in my last bedroom.
So far, the only problem I've had with the place is that there isn't a phone. I spent two hours on Thursday on the phone with AT&T, trying to work out what the problem was, and when they finally told me I was going to have to pay at least a hundred, fifty dollars just to get it working, I finally broke down, cancelled my service with them, and got a cell phone. For years, I have resisted them, but AT&T convinced me it was high time to get one. Bastards.
This leaves me without Internet access for the time being, so for now, I'm writing from work. And I'm going to see about getting WiFi for my laptop, so I can make use of one of the dozen or so free WiFi cafes around where I live.
National Novel Writing Month
I was reminded, as I logged into blogspot, that this month is National Novel Writing Month. What is National Novel Writing Month, you ask? National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, since my fingers are getting tired typing out the full name of the holiday) is an experiment in writing a novel, not based on quality, but on quantity. More than that, it's an attempt to get people past their initial fears and woes about writing, and just write something for the fun of it. In the words of their Web site:
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
It's a great idea, as far as I'm concerned. One of the hardest things about writing, for me, is getting the inner editor to shut the fuck up for a little while and let me write. I find having a deadline helps. Anyway, I invite everyone to write a novel in this month, stop worrying about whether it's good or not, and just write. If you can't write a novel, write a short story or a piece of flash fiction. Send it to me. I'll post it.
links...
While I've been digitally incapacitated, people have been sending me links left and right, and now I'm going to post the ones I have in a single mad URL purge. Enjoy.
In addition to war, abortion, and gay marriage, the link between sex and voting seems to be a common theme this election year. My friend, Lara, sent me a link to Votergasm, a site dedicated to getting people laid for the act of voting. Which, just like getting people laid for voting Democrat, I'm all for (actually, I'm for getting people laid in general—they always seem so happy afterward. But these are particularly good reasons for it).
Also on the political front, a coworker sent me a link to Slap the Candidate.
Finally, there's the story of Wergle Flomp and Poetry.com. The year after I graduated college, when I had no money and too much time on my hands, I came across Poetry.com, and found their contest for—I think it was $5,000. So I wrote a twenty-line poem over a beer or three and then sent it to them and was all sorts of thrilled when they wrote me back saying that they liked my poem and wanted to publish it in their anthology. It wasn't until a little while later that I realized they would publish anyone in their anthology. So the story of Wergle Flomp made me grin, and checking their Web site, I find that my poem, "Man Melts the Sand so He can See the World", my twenty-line little gem, still sits there as a Mark of Cain, just to remind me not to be a sucker, and also to remind me that I know more now than I did then (you can find it, if you go to poetry.com and enter my name into the search engine).
(Incidentally, when Mudlark offered to publish me, their acceptance letter was so similar to the acceptance letter Poetry.com sent me that I responded to them somewhat angrily. The editor, William Slaughter, wrote me back saying that I had made him laugh—this was the first time a writer answered an acceptance letter in anger. Embarrassed, I apologized and explained myself. He was very understanding and kind about the whole thing.)
Friday, October 15, 2004
Another Grey Day in Bizzarro World
The weather is absolutely perfect tonight. Sky clear with a hint of clouds, mild wind, chilly without being oppressive about it. I love it.
A couple of days ago, I found an alternate history, entitled "What if George W. Bush had been Elected President?" on novelist Will Shetterly's blog. To quote:
With the election only a few weeks away, I've decided to take a break from wondering whether Gore's bigger threat is McCain or Nader and instead indulge in a little speculation, inspired by Patrick Nielsen Hayden imagining the horrors of a hypothetical Bush presidency.
I wrote to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, because I couldn't find the post in which he wrote the alternate history to which this refers anywhere on his site. Patrick wrote me back and told me what everyone has probably already figured out for themselves: that there was no such post. He was very polite about the whole thing and explained to me the joke on Shetterly's blog—which, to be fair, I already got—and I deleted the e-mail, feeling generally like an idiot. Which ought to teach me not to e-mail prominent editors while I'm at work, and therefore not at my brightest.
Possibly to cheer me up from feeling like an idiot, my roommate directed me to The Horror of Blimps. It succeeded and I was cheered up.
Tomorrow is moving day. Everything I own, I found out, fits neatly into about twenty miscellaneous boxes and packages. This doesn't count things like furniture and paintings, of course, but all the rest of it. There's something kind of scary about considering that all your worldly possessions and your little mementos of the past and your knickknacks and clothes and everything else that gives your outward appearance to the world—all of it boils down neatly into twenty odd boxes and packages.
Food calls. It says, "Come eat me..."
Masochistic food...
A couple of days ago, I found an alternate history, entitled "What if George W. Bush had been Elected President?" on novelist Will Shetterly's blog. To quote:
With the election only a few weeks away, I've decided to take a break from wondering whether Gore's bigger threat is McCain or Nader and instead indulge in a little speculation, inspired by Patrick Nielsen Hayden imagining the horrors of a hypothetical Bush presidency.
I wrote to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, because I couldn't find the post in which he wrote the alternate history to which this refers anywhere on his site. Patrick wrote me back and told me what everyone has probably already figured out for themselves: that there was no such post. He was very polite about the whole thing and explained to me the joke on Shetterly's blog—which, to be fair, I already got—and I deleted the e-mail, feeling generally like an idiot. Which ought to teach me not to e-mail prominent editors while I'm at work, and therefore not at my brightest.
Possibly to cheer me up from feeling like an idiot, my roommate directed me to The Horror of Blimps. It succeeded and I was cheered up.
Tomorrow is moving day. Everything I own, I found out, fits neatly into about twenty miscellaneous boxes and packages. This doesn't count things like furniture and paintings, of course, but all the rest of it. There's something kind of scary about considering that all your worldly possessions and your little mementos of the past and your knickknacks and clothes and everything else that gives your outward appearance to the world—all of it boils down neatly into twenty odd boxes and packages.
Food calls. It says, "Come eat me..."
Masochistic food...
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
The Clock Keeps Ticking
a quick addition before I forget
Perhaps you have heard about the mysterious bulge seen on Bush's back during the first debate. If you haven't, here's a Salon.com article, and a follow-up (you'll need a Salon.com day-pass to view the articles; they're free, though, and all you have to do for them is view an ad). The Republicans have outright stated that Bush isn't wearing anything under his jacket in that photo, which is just obvious bullshit. But hey, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Bush isn't wired. So I want everyone to leave me their best speculations about what the lump could be, other than a radio receiver (so far, my favorite is my neighbor, Jim's, comment that it's either a wire, or Bush's enormous, rectangular T1 vertebra). Begin speculations...now!
debates and moving...
I keep feeling like I ought to comment on the election and politics and be clever about them. But the truth is, I have very little to say about the election or the debates, at this point, that hasn't already been said better by the Daily Show, or by NOFX. My boss sent that to me and to my entire department by e-mail, today, which meant that all day long I got to listen to "the idiot son of an asshole..." blasting through tiny computer speakers. And it made me chuckle every time. Don't hate Americans...just hate our government.
Mostly, at this point, I'm just waiting for the clock to run out. I'm waiting to see if these four years have made my countrymen any smarter, or if we're all still morons. Tick, tick, tick...
Last night, I was riding home from the Tantalus workshop when, at a stop light near the Jewel next to my house, I saw my friend Dan--who has been in NYC for the last three years--walking across the street. So I said a quick goodbye to my friends and bounded out of the car at him, flailing my arms. Luckily, he doesn't carry mace and I was able to give him a big hug. He had just arrived in town and was on his way to see another friend of mine from high school, who had also just arrived in town. So instead of being good and going to sleep early like I planned, I went out and had a drink with a pair of my oldest and dearest friends, along with a few new people. And I walked home feeling like this was just another part of a string of cosmic events, and where was it leading me? And why?
Tonight was my night off, and I spent it packing up my things. It's strange to leave this apartment, but I'm off to bigger and better things. A place of my own to sit and write in. A magnificent kitchen. A bedroom that doesn't face the 7-11...
Right. It's my bedtime.
Perhaps you have heard about the mysterious bulge seen on Bush's back during the first debate. If you haven't, here's a Salon.com article, and a follow-up (you'll need a Salon.com day-pass to view the articles; they're free, though, and all you have to do for them is view an ad). The Republicans have outright stated that Bush isn't wearing anything under his jacket in that photo, which is just obvious bullshit. But hey, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Bush isn't wired. So I want everyone to leave me their best speculations about what the lump could be, other than a radio receiver (so far, my favorite is my neighbor, Jim's, comment that it's either a wire, or Bush's enormous, rectangular T1 vertebra). Begin speculations...now!
debates and moving...
I keep feeling like I ought to comment on the election and politics and be clever about them. But the truth is, I have very little to say about the election or the debates, at this point, that hasn't already been said better by the Daily Show, or by NOFX. My boss sent that to me and to my entire department by e-mail, today, which meant that all day long I got to listen to "the idiot son of an asshole..." blasting through tiny computer speakers. And it made me chuckle every time. Don't hate Americans...just hate our government.
Mostly, at this point, I'm just waiting for the clock to run out. I'm waiting to see if these four years have made my countrymen any smarter, or if we're all still morons. Tick, tick, tick...
Last night, I was riding home from the Tantalus workshop when, at a stop light near the Jewel next to my house, I saw my friend Dan--who has been in NYC for the last three years--walking across the street. So I said a quick goodbye to my friends and bounded out of the car at him, flailing my arms. Luckily, he doesn't carry mace and I was able to give him a big hug. He had just arrived in town and was on his way to see another friend of mine from high school, who had also just arrived in town. So instead of being good and going to sleep early like I planned, I went out and had a drink with a pair of my oldest and dearest friends, along with a few new people. And I walked home feeling like this was just another part of a string of cosmic events, and where was it leading me? And why?
Tonight was my night off, and I spent it packing up my things. It's strange to leave this apartment, but I'm off to bigger and better things. A place of my own to sit and write in. A magnificent kitchen. A bedroom that doesn't face the 7-11...
Right. It's my bedtime.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Should I Worship Rabbit Christ?
While I was walking down the street today, the Rabbit Jesus walked by me again with followers, this time reincarnated as a woman in a red dress and listening to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." It seems there was a religion tailor-made for me.
The week went by without too much event, with the exception that I was mildly and persistently depressed for most of it. A combination of lack of sleep and work frustrations will do that to me. But there were perks. For example, on the subject of work frustration, Jeff Vandermeer posted a set of his former odd jobs, my favorites of which are numbers 4 (because, as an editor, I can wholly understand harassing someone to the point of grammar-related violence) and number 5 (because it's just a damn good story). Until I found my present job, I worked as a temp/freelance theatre technician (i.e. functionally unemployed guy/novelist) for a few years, and the one thing I remember was consistently wondering why nobody else seemed to notice that the office was crazy. It was never anything particularly glaring--with the exception of the job in a medical-records office, in which the woman just above me had less than a high school education, couldn't organize records by the alphabet, and regularly everyone marveled at me because I could turn on a computer, or the time I was fired from a job for doing precisely the thing that my supervisor had asked, or the...okay fuck it, there were lots of things glaringly wrong in these places. Mostly, though, there was just an overall sense that something had to have gone terribly wrong in people's lives before they would accept sitting at a desk under buzzing fluorescent lamps, staring at sheets of paper so white they were blue, as normal. I never accepted that this was normal, which is why, I'm proud to say, I never made a very good temp.
In my current job, lots of things are glaringly crazy, but the people I work with all seem to recognize this; so I at least have the comfort of knowing I'm sane.
The workshop for the next Tantalus show started this week, directed by my friend, Glen, and his roommate, Devin. I worked with Glen last year on Dreadful Penny's Midnight Cavalcade of Ghoulish Delights (say that five times fast, and win a prize), but my role in that was more as a writer than as an actor. This time, I'm an actor, and it's a little strange having Glen and Devin direct me. But the workshop's been fruitful the past couple of sessions. On Wednesday, I came to the workshop and promptly realized I was supposed to have brought an image that I felt summarized the show. I told Glen I hadn't done that, and he handed me a magic marker and some paper and said, "Well, draw something." I did. A single-page, four-panel cartoon, summarizing the entirety of Norse mythology with stick figures. I was very proud. I think rightly so.
Theresa Nielsen Hayden, who writes the Making Light blog, wrote a blog the other day on lamps, which included several pictures of paper lamps. They are gorgeous, and they inspired me to a new project. When I saw the last Redmoon show (which is what sparked my week where life felt like theatre), I was captivated by the paper lanterns that they used at the end (in which boats sailed by us on the river, joined by Death bringing the soul of one of the characters with him. The image was beautiful. The lanterns were beautiful. And I figure, since I'm moving soon, it might be a fun thing to try to make a paper lamp to light one of the rooms in my new place. My mind is already all abuzz with possibilities.
I work tomorrow, as a journalist at Graph Expo, which is much less glamorous than it sounds (or much more, depending on how glamorous you think a printing trade show would be). So I should go to bed soon. I leave you with "An Open Letter to Hummingbirds."
Off to drink some tea out of my dragon teapot. And then sleep.
The week went by without too much event, with the exception that I was mildly and persistently depressed for most of it. A combination of lack of sleep and work frustrations will do that to me. But there were perks. For example, on the subject of work frustration, Jeff Vandermeer posted a set of his former odd jobs, my favorites of which are numbers 4 (because, as an editor, I can wholly understand harassing someone to the point of grammar-related violence) and number 5 (because it's just a damn good story). Until I found my present job, I worked as a temp/freelance theatre technician (i.e. functionally unemployed guy/novelist) for a few years, and the one thing I remember was consistently wondering why nobody else seemed to notice that the office was crazy. It was never anything particularly glaring--with the exception of the job in a medical-records office, in which the woman just above me had less than a high school education, couldn't organize records by the alphabet, and regularly everyone marveled at me because I could turn on a computer, or the time I was fired from a job for doing precisely the thing that my supervisor had asked, or the...okay fuck it, there were lots of things glaringly wrong in these places. Mostly, though, there was just an overall sense that something had to have gone terribly wrong in people's lives before they would accept sitting at a desk under buzzing fluorescent lamps, staring at sheets of paper so white they were blue, as normal. I never accepted that this was normal, which is why, I'm proud to say, I never made a very good temp.
In my current job, lots of things are glaringly crazy, but the people I work with all seem to recognize this; so I at least have the comfort of knowing I'm sane.
The workshop for the next Tantalus show started this week, directed by my friend, Glen, and his roommate, Devin. I worked with Glen last year on Dreadful Penny's Midnight Cavalcade of Ghoulish Delights (say that five times fast, and win a prize), but my role in that was more as a writer than as an actor. This time, I'm an actor, and it's a little strange having Glen and Devin direct me. But the workshop's been fruitful the past couple of sessions. On Wednesday, I came to the workshop and promptly realized I was supposed to have brought an image that I felt summarized the show. I told Glen I hadn't done that, and he handed me a magic marker and some paper and said, "Well, draw something." I did. A single-page, four-panel cartoon, summarizing the entirety of Norse mythology with stick figures. I was very proud. I think rightly so.
Theresa Nielsen Hayden, who writes the Making Light blog, wrote a blog the other day on lamps, which included several pictures of paper lamps. They are gorgeous, and they inspired me to a new project. When I saw the last Redmoon show (which is what sparked my week where life felt like theatre), I was captivated by the paper lanterns that they used at the end (in which boats sailed by us on the river, joined by Death bringing the soul of one of the characters with him. The image was beautiful. The lanterns were beautiful. And I figure, since I'm moving soon, it might be a fun thing to try to make a paper lamp to light one of the rooms in my new place. My mind is already all abuzz with possibilities.
I work tomorrow, as a journalist at Graph Expo, which is much less glamorous than it sounds (or much more, depending on how glamorous you think a printing trade show would be). So I should go to bed soon. I leave you with "An Open Letter to Hummingbirds."
Off to drink some tea out of my dragon teapot. And then sleep.
Friday, October 01, 2004
a few links...
My friend, Cat, sent me a link to this little rant on the part of the American Family Association, condemning Proctor and Gamble for their support of the "homosexual agenda."
Suppose I told you this ad, which leaves the impression that homosexual sex is normal, thrilling and exciting, was created by P&G and run in a homosexual publication called Xtra.
For starters, I've asked a couple of friends of mine who are gay and they have told me that it's true that homosexual sex is definitely thrilling and exciting (and they are generally of the opinion that it's normal, too). So the AFA can't say Proctor and Gamble is engaging in false advertising. I wish I could say I was shocked and outraged by this ad, but really it's more or less the kind of thing I would expect from a conservative family organization in Mississippi. What did surprise me, though, is that the link the AFA used to show people an example of the P&G ad no longer shows the ad. Instead, the people who run the Commercial Closet site have chosen to use that page to launch a counter offensive and give people a chance to support queer rights. At the end of the AFA rant, they suggest you call Proctor and Gamble and complain about their little ad. I, for one, think that anyone who thinks that Proctor and Gamble's support of homosexual rights (see this article for some information on that) is dead-on what they should be doing should call them at the number the AFA has so kindly provided and tell them to keep up the good work.
On the other hand, I have to admit that, upon reading an article on Neil Gaiman's site, which described Catholic outrage about sexually explicit candy wrappers, I had to at least half agree with the Catholics. Look at them! There's no denying that the lime is giving head to those cherries and the cherries are digging it.
And finally, we have an article on Making Light, which scared the shit out of me. I doubt anyone who reads this blog is planning to vote for Bush, but in case you were, read this. Can there be any doubt how awful he is?
This post is a lot heavier than I wanted it to be when I started. So to end it on a high note (and since hipsters have come up in conversation recently), I bring you hipster bingo.
My friend, Cat, sent me a link to this little rant on the part of the American Family Association, condemning Proctor and Gamble for their support of the "homosexual agenda."
Suppose I told you this ad, which leaves the impression that homosexual sex is normal, thrilling and exciting, was created by P&G and run in a homosexual publication called Xtra.
For starters, I've asked a couple of friends of mine who are gay and they have told me that it's true that homosexual sex is definitely thrilling and exciting (and they are generally of the opinion that it's normal, too). So the AFA can't say Proctor and Gamble is engaging in false advertising. I wish I could say I was shocked and outraged by this ad, but really it's more or less the kind of thing I would expect from a conservative family organization in Mississippi. What did surprise me, though, is that the link the AFA used to show people an example of the P&G ad no longer shows the ad. Instead, the people who run the Commercial Closet site have chosen to use that page to launch a counter offensive and give people a chance to support queer rights. At the end of the AFA rant, they suggest you call Proctor and Gamble and complain about their little ad. I, for one, think that anyone who thinks that Proctor and Gamble's support of homosexual rights (see this article for some information on that) is dead-on what they should be doing should call them at the number the AFA has so kindly provided and tell them to keep up the good work.
On the other hand, I have to admit that, upon reading an article on Neil Gaiman's site, which described Catholic outrage about sexually explicit candy wrappers, I had to at least half agree with the Catholics. Look at them! There's no denying that the lime is giving head to those cherries and the cherries are digging it.
And finally, we have an article on Making Light, which scared the shit out of me. I doubt anyone who reads this blog is planning to vote for Bush, but in case you were, read this. Can there be any doubt how awful he is?
This post is a lot heavier than I wanted it to be when I started. So to end it on a high note (and since hipsters have come up in conversation recently), I bring you hipster bingo.
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