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The Public Blogging of Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Homophobiaphilia, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay]. We also read the Corner and OpJournal so the right buttock will be punished as well.
All comments subject to publication. Or dismissal. Or Both.
The Club for Growth, a libertarianish anti-tax group, fires newly hired gay leader of its Arizona state affiliate for being tall, metallic and living on the roof. Gay had nothing to do with it.
(Via Nick Gillespie, who is readier than me to believe that people who are socially tolerant when it doesn't cost them anything--and maybe even gains them something-- will remain so when there's a price to pay.)
Here's Ad Age's illustrated ad rate card for the network's fall prime time lineup. It's in pdf (i.e. Please Don't Fuck with my computer).
It's mostly of interest to me because I stopped watching the broadcast networks after I got my own personal rooftop azimuth ornament and heavy weather early warning device, my dish of plenty. It was fun counting all the shows I'd never heard of.
10-8
Cold Case
The Lyon's Den
Ortegas
The Ringers
Arrested Development
Yes, Dear
Still Standing
Kiss Me, Genius
2 1/2 Men
The Parkers
Thrill Jockey
Half and Half
Opposite Sex
I'm with Her
Jake 2.0
One Tree Hill
Rock Me Baby
The Petting Zoo
Karen Sisco
My Wife
Threat Matrix
George Lopez
Tru Calling
Sob Sisters
Hidalgo
What I Like
Miss Match
Joan of Arcadia
Back to Kansas
The Second Honeymooners
OK, I made a few of these up. I believe it's seven of them, but I'm not completely sure.
The world isn't looking for a Brecht/Weill Weimar-vibe drag chanteuse, but the world gets a lot of things it isn't looking for. I've got the names, so if you want to invest in some Blue Angelish bondage gear, black lipstick, and a few scratchy records (or CD anthologies that preserve the scratches--scratch, hiss and pop are central to my vision of this mess) I think you've got an act.
Lotte Goodthatdoesme is your handle for the low rent gigs.
Trio, the odd and arty Canadian cable channel (it must be Canadian--the Bare Naked Ladies turn up way more than the laws of chance, the rules of common decency and limits of human endurance would otherwise allow) showed a very enjoyable semi-documentary about three Australian drag performers last night. It dated from around the time of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, two of the stars of the doc were consultants on that film. One of them had a 12 year old son, whose humor and sangfroid were a miracle of charm. You have to see this kid traipsing through a medieval town in the south of France with his dad's drag posse. He's oblivious to them and excited about the strangeness of the town until they camp it up too much with some impromptu snapshot vogueing in front of a fountain in the town square. The kid responds with the classic kid line , "Stop it, you're embarrassing me!".
A couple excellent drag numbers in the show. Especially the avant-drag version of Laurie Anderson's Sharkey's Night (with William Burroughs on lead vocals). Scarlet Billows and Lotte Goodthatdoesme would be well advised to study this performance.
I know we all took comfort in this thought, "OK, can't be me, I'm not in Scotland." Except perhaps for our Scottish readers. God only knows how they dealt with the news and rationalized themselves out of the picture.
And then there's the question of the tradeoff. Yeah, it's 400 million years old. But it's also two-thirds the length of the body .
There are roughly 2 million children in foster care in any given year.
As I read it I recalled that there are roughly 2 million people incarcerated in the US as well.
As surprised as I was that there were so many kids in foster care, the number of foster children adopted in the US surprised me even more, but in the opposite direction: 51,000. So about 2.5 % of the total.
And apparently it was a better than usual year in several states, due in part to the bonus system the feds have introduced which rewards states for increases in their annual adoption rates. It must have been a worse year than usual in several more states though, since the total number of foster children adopted was the same for last year and the year before that.
I wonder how many of the 2 million prisoners get released every year. Here's betting the churn rate there is better than it is for kids in foster care.
Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn. I hate to be scooped by the Corner. And they do it so often, though it's usually with gay stuff, their area of special expertise and abiding concern. But on Monday Ramesh Ponnuru made an observation that stole some thunder with my name on it. The lousy, monogrammed-thunder thief. How many times have I thought this thought? How many times have I considered making this point here?
I don't mind pro-tax propaganda in the New York Times Magazine. It's what the readers want, after all. I'm sure the letters section of the magazine will in two weeks' time carry plenty of letters from readers appalled at President Bush's scary right-wing agenda. (No publication's letter-writers are quite so Pavlovian as the Times Magazine's.)
My god, the laughs the NYT's Magazine letters section has given me over the years, asking nothing in return. The great majority of letters there divide dependably along two lines:
1. Total ass lathering, teacher's pettery and Pinocchio (at his most extensive) brown-nosing, in gratitude for the Times tickling the readers prejudices unto ideological orgasm.
2. Aggrieved, backhanded spanking as the readers express their distress that daddy let them down by printing some piece that didn't further enshrine their already thoroughly consecrated, and perpetually venerated, opinions--that made them question for even one queasy second the worth of their family heirloom wisdom.
The letters can, in other words, be categorized as exhibiting either a self-satisfaction monumental and joyful, or a self-satisfaction dolorous and monumental. Is there a funnier, or worse, letters page anywhere?
Well, hmmm, the NYT's Book review letters half-page has been a comic horror show, too, in the years since they cut it down to its current pitiful state, but the giggles and chills there are more from the stultifying irrelevance of most of what they choose to print.
This brief Guardian piece about Madonna's book release tea party is bitchy in a formulaic way, but still amusing. It ends with Madge's revelation of the sociobiology behind the fable. She's attempting to stalker-proof and ambition-neuter future generations, so that Lourdes and (hmmm, what is it, Fatima?) will be safe in their inherited splendor. Her next book should be titled The Selfish Genie:
I'm not interested in being recognised as a writer, I'm interested in getting the message out there. The book deals with jealousy, envy and being covetous of what other people have and what a waste of time that is.
Update: I just re-read the Guardian story and realize I was a bit unfair. I didn't give Angelique Chrisafis credit for her wittiest line, which flew by on my first reading. It's almost invisible in its poisonous nonchalance (it doesn't get any better than that):
Madonna, 45, climbed on to a swing...
Climbed on to is, of course, a stock phrase of descriptive mockery. It's the apposite ,45, that pushes this line towards immortality.
11:56 AM
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Tree Climbing Is Good
I just read (or whatever it is you do to picture books) The Animal Trail: Four Seasons of Wildlife Photography by Manabu Miyazaki (out of print apparently). It's easily one of the best books of animal photography I've ever seen and it redoubles my skepticism that photographers should be considered artists in any meaningful sense. All the pictures were taken by cameras secreted in the Japanese woods and triggered by infrared motion detectors. All honor to Manubu Miyazaki (and his illustrious ancestors) for his ingenuity and diligence, but the only artistic choice was which pictures to keep and which to throw out. Which pictures were successful captures of wildlife and which were accidental exposures by the hair trigger motion switch. Hare trigger I mean, some of the best pics are of hares and winter rabbits.
Nevertheless (or everthemoreso) they are brilliant photos.
Really though, I wasn't intending to post yet not another gripe about the dubious stature of the photographic arts, I wanted to post a link to a picture of a Martens, an intriguing animal that I'd never seen or heard of before I saw this book. It's a kind Japanese snow weasel. I couldn't find any pictures as good as the ones in Miyazaki's book, but I did find a wonderful site about the wild animals of Japan. Try not to be charmed while reading these excerpts:
URSIDAE Brown Bear
Brown Bear is living in only Hokkaido. This is the biggest animal in Japan.
URSIDAE Black Bear
This is a small bear to lives in Honshu. They have a white pattern of the new moon type in the breast.
CANIDAE Raccoon Dog
Raccoon dog is the animal of the dog family though they are good at the tree climbing
CANIDAE Fox
Fox appears well with Raccoon Dog in the Japanese folk tale. In the old days Japanese believed they could be put under a spell by a fox.
MUSTELIDAE Sable
A sable is the animal who has the fur of the superlative degree. They are finished in Hokkaido
MUSTELIDAE Ermine
Ermine lives in the high mountain. They come up to person because they aren't afraid of the person.
MUSTELIDAE Sea otter
Sea otter is in the Weasel family to live in the sea. Their fur is the highest grade of goods. Because of that, they were very much caught. They doesn't breed in Japan. When he grows up, a head becomes a silver color.
MUSTELIDAE Japanese Badger
Sub seed of the badger distributed in the Eurasian continent. Because it was delicious, the meat of the badger was made the one for food from the old days.
MUSTELIDAE Martens
Martens is quick, and tree climbing is good. It is the most fearful natural enemy for the squirrel and the mouse. There are two types yellow and gray.
So finally, back to our new animal friend, the Martens. It is of the yellow type that I am wanting a picture to find, but there is none from looking the internet to see.
Here is the Martens in his brown summer coat. Just imagine him with a yellow-shading-to-orange body and tail, brown legs (they keep the summer color) and a completely white head. A fearsome enemy in the darting eyes of squirrels and mice, a magical creature for human eyes to gaze upon.
The Martens (yellow type), is the Agenda Bender animal dude of the Japanese winter.
8:30 PM
