Why is it that I'm still bothered by finding out that someone I had no chance with is dating someone else??  I should know better

Why have I not learned this lesson??

I was 18 going on 19 when the wall fell. Just fresh out of high school, and without a fucking clue. Fast foward 20 years, and having a clue about the world, I don't think it's allot better. But I was in East Germany before the wall fell three times in the 70's and 80's. I can tell you this much, it was fucking miserable place. Filled with gray and drab. Today, Germany is tranformed.

And now for a update?

Back to life, it goes on. ruperthemoose and I have been here in The Capitol Region aka "albany n.y." 3 months. It's had it's rough moments, but we are settling in. I am settling in being a student...yet a grad student (shocking)...., my other half, settling in with being out of school and miserable economy and much unemployment. We miss the west coast, but we will be back soon. We have trips and so on planned. Next trip Boston in three weeks to see the Pixies. Soon finish painting the apartment with another 75 bucks and we are done, and we will make it together through the winter, sping, summer and next fall.

I suppose that before I talk about last Saturday's trip, I should finish up the photos from the weekend before ... so here are some shots of my drive home from Lima back on Halloween afternoon.

( High mountain valley ... )



A great drive, and a fine way to end the day.

Ahhhh at last the weather warms more oft than not and the sun blears and the air thickens and gloms on to me and metaphoric ants squirm in one's metaphoric pants to frisk and frolic in the outside and flop and banter about in the greenery.

Yardwork and gardening beckon. As does some aggressive Indian-mynah-eradication plan. Must remember to track down this fellow in Sydney who's run a few eradication programs with local councils and sells his traps on the side. Kill kill kill, thrill thrill thrill; as the record sang which The Groovy Guru once played on Get Smart therewith foreby to subliminally disrupt Youth Society and collapse civilisation so KAOS could cash in.

But dead Mynahs? That would help Australian civilisation. Well, its ecosphere. Which Aussie civilisation hasn't been much help to for a lot.

As my sludgy hibernatory instincts fade I've been getting back to the gym a bit too - which simply has to stop. Maybe not utterly - but I need to finish my music project. One or two more songs & I think I'll have a batch enough to start spreading The Word and all that. Swallow my pride a& fear of failure & just treat it like a video game. Play play play. Toss it out and see what happens, jiggle the pieces like rounds in a simulation. Which really, it's all it is anyway.

Anyway, back to looking out my window at the pretty pretty world.

Yeah, I know I'm late today ... but I had a 6-man football game to go to!

Anyhow, here's today's poll -- a topic that I know will make a couple of you all excited. :)

Poll #1482323 The musical friends poll ...
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: Friends, participants: 62

Do you consider yourself to be a musical person?

How's your singing?

Ever sing in a school or church choir?

Did you take piano lessons as a kid?

Were you a band kid at school?

If you answered "yes" above, what was your instrument?

List any other instruments you might play:

What musical instrument is your favorite one to listen to?

And the absolute worst one to listen to is ...

As always, comments are encouraged. As for me, I took piano lessons off and on as a kid, but never took it seriously enough, and now I've forgotten most of it. I regret that in a way, but I also know that I'd be looking for all kinds of other things to do instead of practice the piano. :)

I was definitely a band kid, though, for six years ... all through Junior High and High School. It was great fun, and I loved it.

Oh, and I took violin lessons in elementary school for a couple of years, until my family moved and I changed schools. My regrets about not continuing that, I think, are stronger than for the piano ... and I still have a violin that belonged to my great-grandfather.

Recently, "Campus For Christ" (a conservative evangelical club on our university campus) announced that they would be holding a prayer vigil for "the homosexuality community." The announcement on their website and e-mail list-server read: "Let us pray in love for those who seek freedom from this bondage that they may find Jesus and turn away from temptation. Let us earnestly, get on our knees and fight a battle in prayer for their victory." (Bondage? Getting on our knees? Uh...no comment.) Somehow, this e-mail was forwarded to other groups, and the response from the campus queer community (and queer-positive organizations) was immediate and angry.

I am involved in one of those queer-positive campus left groups (which, incidentally, is a Christian club, but very different from Campus for Christ). The leader of our club saw the announcement as "hate speech," and felt that such a prayer service should not be tolerated. He decided to launch a formal complaint to the campus's Centre for Human Rights. I agreed with him that our club should respond to this event in some public way, but when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, I'm a libertarian. This includes the freedom to offend, and the freedom to perceive queers or non-Christians as sinners in need of salvation. Obviously, I felt that Campus for Christ was in error, but I didn't see it as "hate speech" (I mean, these folks are not Fred Phelps groupies), nor did I see it remotely as a human rights issue. (If anything, I think that the freedom to assemble and pray as one sees fit is a human right that trumps my freedom from having my feelings hurt.) Nonetheless, I helped the group leader to draft a formal complaint, which was sent to the Centre for Human Rights. In retrospect, I felt very conflicted about this. As I said, I wanted to make a public statement, but had no desire to censure another group. At least I was able to be a moderating influence, and keep some of the more loaded, intolerant rhetoric out of the letter. Still, I have regrets about signing the letter.

The following day, Campus for Christ issued an apology, which seemed pretty genuine to me. I see this as a golden opportunity to open up dialogue with more conservative Christian groups, and expose them to a "queer and Christian" position. I hope that we're able to open up channels of communication. Logic tells me that there are queer people in Campus for Christ who haven't come to terms with it. They need to hear that it IS possible to be queer and Christian without contradiction. They need somebody to provide a way out of the maze of guilt and self-condemnation. I know this because I was there once, and the "hope" that the evangelicals offer (i.e., reparative therapy ex-gay conversion) would just add to their guilt, self-doubt and self-condemnation.

I ended up talking with a handful of campus left folks about this issue, and I was very uncomfortable with their intolerance. I.e., "Sure we acknowledge the right of conservative evangelical clubs to believe whatever they want, but they shouldn't state it so publicly." (Is posting something on your campus club's website really considered to be 'public'?) This bugs me for several reasons. First of all, it's counter-productive. If you try and censure an evangelical, you'll only validate his/her sense of righteousness, because conservative Christians thrive on persecution (or on the perception of themselves as a persecuted minority). And if you force them to retract, you'll only make them more subtle about their homophobia, or their misogyny, or whatever. They'll learn to talk in code. Sorry, but I'd rather deal with open, direct ignorance than cloaked, evasive ignorance. The only way to dialogue with these people is to allow for freedom of speech. And there is a deeper issue here too: protecting your right to say that "two plus two is five" will protect my right to say that "two plus two is four."

There ARE reasonable limits to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly in a university. For example, if there is genuine hate speech -- inciting violence towards a particular minority -- then it should not be tolerated. But the limits on free speech should only be those that are necessary and reasonable within a democratic society. And those boundaries, in my libertarian views, are VERY broad. As Voltaire said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Bruce

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

-Lorca

Hi everyone,

Today I found out that the movie will be released on December 18th on amazon.de. Woohoo!

here's the link

a body bleeding dreams
a soul dreaming blood

So it's been a busy week, and I've fallen behind again. Yesterday I spent half the morning at a coffeehouse talking with a local architect, whose firm's design I'd kind of torn apart at a recent Design Review Board meeting. And last night was my Board's annual Preservation Awards ceremony. It went well ... everyone had a good time, I had some interesting conversations, and I got to spend an inordinate amount of the evening hanging out by the buffet table. :)

Anyhow, since the weekend's almost here I realized I needed to catch up with some more photos from last Saturday ... so here you go:

( Photo-heavy post ... )

a sobering reminder of what we are up against in terms of fund raising when gay marriage is put on the ballot:

Financial transaction listing for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine for spending on the election this past Tuesday (thank goodness for campaign finance laws making organizations disclose this stuff!)

Note all the money coming in from various other Dioceses around the country that is then spent on multiple contributions to StandForMarriageMaine.com

According to Wikipedia, Maine has around 1,300,000 people, and is ranked 40th in the US in terms of population, so we are talking about a lot of money that was spent in a very small state.

Financial transaction listing for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine from Maine.gov (thank goodness for campaign finance laws making organizations disclose this stuff!)

Note all the money coming in from various other Dioceses around the country that is then spent on multiple contributions to StandForMarriageMaine.com

According to Wikipedia, Maine has around 1,300,000 people, so several hundred thousand dollars from one group focused on one ballot question is a pretty serious amount of money.

I'm going to Niagara Falls, Ontario on Saturday ( tomorrow ) to meet up with gregoid and rogonandi while they are on their cross country moving van adventure from
i have no clue, Maine to Edmonton Alberta.

I am still working on how I am going to get there but yes I will be going :P

In Soc of Family today we discussed how there is strong agreement in US society that divorce should be harder to get but the lip service doesn't bear out in actual practice.

There is almost universal agreement (>90%) that divorce is a serious national problem.
Somewhere between 1/2-2/3 agree society would be better off if divorce were harder to get.
A supermajority (about 2/3) agree that long waiting periods help people get over anger and work through problems, and that couples should be required to wait a year after filing before the divorce is granted.
About the same disagree that any spouse should be able to divorce at any time for any reason.
An overwhelming majority (about 80%) agree it is at least somewhat important that couples have counseling before the wedding, and about 50% agree it should be required by law.
Very close to universal agreement (about 90%) that it is at least somewhat important that couples seek counseling if they are unable to resolve problems in their marriage.
Put those all together and you've basically got covenant marriage. About 30-40% "support" covenant marriage, 45-50% have "mixed" feelings about it, and about 10-20% "oppose" covenant marriage.

In 49 states no-fault divorce (any spouse, any time, any reason) is allowed. In one other state mutual consent no-fault is allowed.
29 states have no waiting period.
10 states (including DC) have a waiting period of 7 months or less.
7 states have a waiting period of 6 months or less under certain circumstances (consent, no children, etc).
5 states have a waiting period of at least a year even with consent.
Half of states have reconciliation counseling laws but they are pretty much unenforced/optional.
No state requires all couples to receive premarital counseling.
3 states - AR, AZ, & LA - allow covenant marriages as an option (required counseling prep; mutual disclosure of financial info and such; limited divorce grounds such as abuse, adultery, addiction, felony imprisonment, or separation for 2 years; marital counseling for problems threatening marriage).
Only 2% of marriages in LA are covenant and only 1/2% of marriages in AR & AZ are covenant.

This week has been a nightmare. What was supposed to be a "replace the tiles in the bathroom and kitchen and replace the vanity" has turned into a week long, home reno catastrophe.

First the floorboards of the bathroom were rotting due to leaks no one fixed before. Then there were structural problems (original renovators sawing through floor joists to install toilet) and then everything had to be re-plumbed. My poor friend, Mason, who is doing the work has been there until midnight or later trying to get things done. I haven't had a proper shower in three days, having only been able to sponge bath in the pile of debris that is my kitchen right now. 

I was supposed to have a playdate tonight with a super cuddly fella I know, but I had to cancel because of the mess and my uncleansed state.

And I haven't been sleeping properly and waking too early. And there have been work pressures. Phooey.

It will be great when it's done, but the process is so difficult to go through.

On the upside, I have found torrents for the original Bionic Woman from the seventies. Have the first season downloaded and the other two should be done in about a week or so ;)   But will be worth the wait, since the PTB won't release them in North America due to "rights issues"

And I started watching Burn Notice last night, which is freakin' great!

Have to figure out how to do laundry this weekend. Or whether I have enough to get me through until Satan's Reno is over.