Category: Uncategorized

When Ben and I were pulling out of the carport to go to lunch yesterday, I noticed that something was “off” with Anderson’s clutch. At first I didn’t realize what it was, but as we drove out of the apartment complex, I realized there was no resistance as I pushed the pedal down. It was very odd. And while I could still shift gears, it required more force than usual.

I immediately pulled back into the complex and returned to my carport. Low clutch fluid? I thought the MINI had a hydraulic clutch, but I didn’t remember ever seeing a reservoir mentioned in the car’s documentation or seeing one anywhere in the engine compartment. Just to be sure, I popped the hood and looked around. Nope. Only the brake reservoir, and the fluid level in that was fine. (It turns out it’s a shared reservoir system.)

I waited as Ben went back inside to get his keys since he’d be the one driving us to lunch, and all sorts of horrible things started running through my head.  While it was hopefully something as simple as a broken linkage (or perhaps a leaking slave cylinder), what if it was something much, much worse? Anderson’s factory warranty ran out about 5,000 miles ago and visions of dumping all the money I’d put aside for the move to Denver into a very expensive car repair kept flashing before my eyes.  So much for it being a happy birthday.  Of course, on top of everything it was a holiday weekend, so I couldn’t even call the shop to make an appointment to bring it in.

When we got home I went online, and started searching for “MINI clutch pedal no resistance.” It didn’t help my anxiety level one bit. There were two schools of thought: one said bad slave cylinder (apparently they’re all plastic) or broken linkage (both relatively inexpensive to repair) and the other said complete clutch replacement (white knuckle panic attack).

I pulled up my auto insurance policy to verify that I at least had towing covered, so that wouldn’t be an out-of-pocket expense, and—praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster—discovered I had completely forgotten I was also carrying “mechanical breakdown” coverage.  I had added it to the policy a little over a year ago when I realized that Anderson’s factory warranty would be running out in short order and there was no way I was going to pay the outrageous amount quoted for an extended warranty.

I spoke with the insurance company today and I think can relax a bit. Supposedly no matter how bad it is, the most I will have to come up with is the $250 deductible. They said all I had to do was inform the shop I had the coverage, provide them with my insurance policy number and the direct phone line to claims and they’d take care of the rest.

So first thing tomorrow I’m calling for a tow and taking poor ol’ Anderson in to be looked over.

And in the overall scheme of things, it’s better that it happened now and not in two weeks, or—gods forbid—on the way to Denver.

1 comments

Nothing planned, other than the weekly grocery shopping and a bit more packing.  I hope to get Dad’s photo albums scanned so I can return them before we leave for Denver.

Ben and I agreed that because of the move, this year there will be no gifts, although he is insisting on taking me to lunch or dinner…if I can decide where I’d like to go.

6 comments

2 comments

I’ve been wanting to get a USB hub to use with my Mac while I’m at work.  It’s not something I absolutely needed, but between my cell modem, external hard drive, various thumb drives, and printer, I often ran out of available ports. About six weeks ago while trawling the interwebs I ran across this and had to get one. I got my order in the day before Apple sicced its lawyers on the manufacturer and since I never received a confirmation email I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to receive it. So imagine my surprise when it showed up in my mailbox last Friday.

It’s understandable while Apple went after the company. It looks (right down to the packaging) like something Apple would make—if they made stuff like this.  But despite the superficial resemblance to a genuine Apple product, once I got it out of the box it was obvious this was not made by Cupertino.

The fit and finish was a bit off. The small USB cable that came with it had bits of excess plastic still attached, and the light-up logo (while cute) was not evenly illuminated (even though it appears that way in photos) as you’d expect from a genuine Apple product.  On the whole, kind of cheesy.  But then, what do you expect from a company that produced not one, but two Steve Jobs action figures?

I was even more disappointed when I actually plugged it in and attempted to use my peripherals. Maybe it’s a problem endemic to non-externally powered USB hubs, but my modem wouldn’t work. It would show up on the Mac, but would stay stuck at “initializing.” My external hard drive wasn’t recognized. Hell, even the printer kept telling me it was offline. And it wasn’t like I tried to plug everything into it at once; this behavior was exhibited when only a single item was attached to it.

To its credit, It did work fine with thumb drives, however, as well as powering and syncing my iPhone, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss. And I’m sure I could easily double what I spent for it by putting it up on eBay…

0 comments

While it is true that I’ve been wanting to refresh this blog for several months, it’s not entirely true that it was done just because we’re moving to Colorado.  It’s because I did something very stupid (proving I am not immune).  I sent off emails to a couple headhunters I’d been working with in Denver that had a link to this blog embedded in the signature line.

Oh shit.

While I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve posted here over the years, much of it was definitely NSFW and considering the amount of ranting I’ve done about work lately it probably wouldn’t make the best impression on someone trying to present me as a potential employee to one of their clients.

That led to the knee-jerk reaction of blasting away all my previous posts.

But as we all know, anything posted on the internet lives forever.  And anyone with the slightest bit of curiosity and know-how can find it. Some rather snarky comments I left on a discussion board nearly a decade ago about people stealing images for use in their eBay postings from a long-gone hi-fi website I used to run are still available just by Googling my name. Scary.

This made me realize that—for better or worse—Voenix Rising has become my brand and merely deleting a few years worth of blog posts is not going erase my presence from cyberspace. Not even close to it.

And you know, that’s okay.

If someone doesn’t want to represent me to a prospective employer because of my sexual orientation, political views, or the fact that I (like every other working person on the planet) occasionally bitch about my job, it’s better to know it up front.  Because for every headhunter out there who takes issue with these things, there will be another who will not.

I am reminded of an interview I had about a dozen years ago with a placement firm in Palo Alto for a position the company had been having trouble filling.  The headhunter really liked me and thought with my experience I’d be a great fit, but she had an issue with my pierced ear.  She said that the company she wanted to send me to was extremely conservative and I would be advised to remove the stud before the interview.  I looked at her and said, “Seriously? This is 1997, the Bay Area and you’re asking me to take out an earring? If they’re that uptight, why would I want to work there?”

Honesty—something decidedly lacking in public discourse these days—is always best.

And the blog really did need to be cleaned out…

1 comments

https://youtube.com/watch?v=i5FWusjctuc

I’ve thought about growing mine back out, but I fear it would be more ironic than iconic…

1 comments

In honor of our impending move to Denver, I thought it might be a good time to wipe everything away and start fresh.

I may also be taking the blog in a different…direction.  Stay tuned.

3 comments

When I read about Sarah Palin’s response to the Tucson shootings this morning, I was at first infuriated.  Then I realized that Sarah Palin was simply being Sarah Palin, doing what right wing media whores always do: twisting logic into a pretzel and playing the victim. Quelle suprise. The sun rises in the east. Dogs bark. The sky is blue.

I almost had to stifle a yawn after that.

And then while I was showering, an aspect of a nearly-forgotten personal philosophy came to me: Sarah Palin (and Beck and Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing noise machine) is nothing more than a jar of paprika in the kitchen.  I’m busy making a sweet tasty pie (my life) and paprika is just something that’s not called for in this recipe.  So while it may be physically present in the kitchen (the universe), there’s no need for it in my pie, and therefore no reason to focus on it, much less get angry at it.

When I realized that, I suddenly felt even better.

0 comments

The other day Ben suggested we go on a hike. Nothing too crazy, just as far up North Mountain as we could.

As I tweeted at the time, “Hiking North Mountain with @tallbubba. I think he’s trying to kill me, but the joke’s on him cuz he’s not on my insurance yet.”

Yeah, I’m out of shape, regardless of my health history of the past seven years. In another lifetime I was more than a little bit of a mountain goat, bounding half-naked (or more than half) over boulders at Reddington Pass or hiking up and down the oceanside trails at Black Sand and Golden Gate Bridge beaches. But it was obvious from our little outing earlier this week those days are long gone.

Between my out of shape 50 year old body and Ben’s mangled 27 year old knees, we didn’t make it all that far. But this was the view we got…

(click to embiggen)

0 comments

Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

Absolutely.  And not only do I believe it exists, but I believe the universe is teeming with it.  I would even go so far as to say that life is not only a by-product of the universe, but even moreso a requirement of it.  Do I believe we’ve been visited by extraterrestrials?  As much as I’d like to say yes, now I have to say probably not.

I love a good UFO/alien abduction tale as much as the next guy, but while it’s not impossible, considering the distances involved and the technology required for interstellar flight it’s all very, very unlikely. And on top of that, after spending the last 50 or so years observing humanity on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that if extraterrestrials are anything like us, as soon as they start taking their first tentative steps out of the nest, 99.9% of them either self-destruct over cultural differences and god-myths, or are wiped out by natural forces beyond their control.  The threat posed by rogue asteroids, comets, gamma ray bursts, catastrophic climatic change, super volcanoes and tectonic shifts certainly are not unique to the Earth, but ultimately I believe the risk of them wreaking planet-wide destruction is miniscule compared to the amount of havoc that can be unleashed by a civilization upon itself, either intentionally or through blind stupidity.

And what of the 0.1% of technological civilizations that do survive and achieve interstellar spaceflight?  I think they would be so different from us as to be virtually unrecognizable, and totally uninterested in Homo sapiens in any capacity, having seen the path we’re heading down play itself out thousands of times before.

0 comments

I don’t care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time—and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones—I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don’t worry about other people so much.” ~ Bette White, in an interview with Parade Magazine.

0 comments

I have a little—and let me stress a little—new Mac envy right now.  Like many other people, the new MacBook Air has captured my imagination.

I went over to the local Apple Store today and played with the 13-inch model (the 11-inch is just too friggin’ small as far as I’m concerned).  My initial list of the two things that need to change before I would buy one remain: more storage and a backlit keyboard, but damn…it is still one sexy beast.  And despite its older processor, it’s fast! Applications opened almost instantaneously—or at least notably faster than on my MBP.

I’ve only had my MBP for a year and still love it to death, so I’m obviously not in the market for a new laptop right now, but when it comes time to retire The Precious (and assuming the two items on my Airbook wish list have been put into production) I’ll definitely be looking at the Air line when the time comes.

While I was there, I had the opportunity to check out Office 2011 as well.  I was not impressed; at least not impressed enough to want to upgrade.  One of the biggest hurdles I had to get over when switching from Windows to Mac was the loss of Outlook, and while I was glad to hear that Microsoft was bringing it back in this release, I don’t even need it any more, having happily moved on to Postbox.

0 comments

Watching spoiled, clueless people on television selecting and buying property after supposedly being given only three arbitrary choices is one of my guilty pleasures.  Fortunately, on Saturday and Sunday, HomoGayTeeVee Home & Garden Television is more than happy to oblige me.

House Hunters International is especially amusing (or infuriating, depending on your viewpoint). Obviously there are exceptions, but overall the common thread running through the shows seem to be some pampered, obviously monied douchebags are looking for “vacation property” in locations the rest of us would gladly give up our left testicles for the opportunity of living in full time.  And as if to prove that in addition to being douchebags they’re also (whether or not they actually hail from the U.S.) stereotypically ugly Americans, none of them seem willing to fully adapt or embrace living in a foreign country.  It’s almost as if they’re blinded by the romantic idea of living abroad, but insist on bringing their mediocre suburban attitudes and expectations with them.  In a nutshell, most of them simply want to find homes equal to their current South Florida McMansions in the locale of their choice and are put off when faced with the reality of not having sixteen bedrooms, brand new fully-equipped kitchens with stainless steel appliances, and a host of other amenities immediately available to them in a 200 year old farmhouse in the south of France.

I have to hand it to the real estate agents on these shows; they should be nominated for sainthood by the simple virtue of not murdering their clients, much less being able to find them property…

0 comments

Russ Alvarez
20 August 1960-25 August 2010

Russ and I both emigrated from Arizona to arrive in—and subsequently depart from—San Francisco at approximately the same time, yet didn’t actually meet until we both ended up working for the same company in the same department after our respective returns to Phoenix. Witty, intelligent and possessing a wicked sense of humor, Russ was one of the few people I trusted enough to call up and vent with, knowing full well that anything I told him would not go any further.  The sharing of our similar, yet amazingly different histories in San Francisco was always a source of wonderful stories and—despite those differences—continual amazement that our paths had never crossed [in some alley or sex club]. He shall be sorely missed.

0 comments

Anyone remember Tom Hulce (Amadeus)? I had the worst crush on him back in the day.

Tom in 1985

Tom in 2010

I’d still do ‘im.

0 comments

And welcome to my first post of twenty-ten, not two-thousand and ten. Goddamn language Nazi…

While it’s not officially the beginning of a new decade, (much like 2000 was not the beginning of the new millennium) people are still feeling relief that the “aughts” (or is that naughts?) are finally over. There is no other way to describe it: the past ten years have been horrific. Yesterday on Twitter, someone hash-tagged the phrase “ten years ago,” and that got me thinking about what was going on in my life back in 1999:

I was still living in San Francisco. I was working for PG&E Energy Services, a long-defunct subsidiary of Pacific Gas and Electric that was created in response to the energy trading frenzy whose unbridled greed eventually brought down Enron and the rest of the industry. I still had a perfectly functioning voice. There was no one special in my life, but I was surrounded by good friends. The beginning of the George Bush nightmare was still a year away. Looking back now, while I can’t say in all honesty I was happy, I was at least contented.

Then along came the decade from hell: Bush/Cheney, war, scandal, unemployment, leaving San Francisco, cancer, religious nutjobs, a rapidly receding hairline, and a general rise of teh st00pid in public discourse. Not exactly what I had envisioned the first 10 years of the 21st century looking like. It’s no wonder “good riddance” was on my lips as often as “Happy New Year” last night…

But without all those horrific things having happened, I wouldn’t be where I am now and would never have made the long-overdue re-examination and refocusing of my life me that ultimately brought me here; a place where I am now truly at peace with myself and yes, even honestly, happy.

◆ ◆ ◆

While 2009 in particular was one annoyingly big steaming pile of crap for the U.S. and most of the rest of the world, for me personally it wasn’t really all that bad.

Yeah, I lost my mom last April, but in so many ways her passing was a blessing. None of us wanted to see Alzheimer’s rob her of her memories of us, and thankfully she was gone before it had a chance to. Ben and I marked our one year anniversary together in September. Last February I bought new living room furniture (a very big deal for me) and Ben and I had the opportunity to see the Chihuly glass exhibition at the Desert Botanical Garden. In March I finally joined the 21st century by purchasing a flat screen television. Throughout the year Ben and I took several road trips: Flagstaff, Sedona, the Rim Country (no jokes, that’s what it’s called), Tucson, and White Sands New Mexico. In July I drove cross-country to inter Mom’s ashes in Wisconsin. In September I was transferred from the hospital where I’d worked since 2004 to our insurance company—a move I’d initially dreaded but one that has turned out to be the best thing that’s happened to me since I’ve been with this company. After being a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user for over twenty years, last October I made the switch and instead of upgrading to Windows 7, went out and bought a Mac. It the best thing I ever did.

I’m hoping that (except for the people dying part) when I sit down here to write here a year from now 2010 will have provided me just as rich a year to document.

Here’s to a great new year!

0 comments

Found at Proud Atheists:

Many Americans today claim that the United States is a Christian nation. “In God We Trust” is on our money and the phrase “under God” was inserted into our Pledge of Allegiance. Even the the Declaration of Independence refers to “nature’s God” and “Creator” in a very deistic sense and only in the first two paragraphs.

However, the U.S. Constitution does not mention God, Jesus, the Bible and Christianity within its texts. Many of the “founding fathers” may have had Christian backgrounds, but they dared not insert their personal faiths or even their choice of deity…into our nation’s legal foundation. This document was created with the intention of secular governance.

The authors of the Constitution had the forethought that others of different faiths will sooner or later enter this nation, and should be allowed to do so without the fear of legal discrimination and bigotry. This is the foundation of our great country, not God.

Nor is there any requirement in the Constitution to adhere to, be a member of any specified religion or even be a believer in any god. Freedom from religion is just as important to some individuals as the freedom of religion.

The First Amendment reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Second Amendment affords us the “right to bear arms”, but in no way does it require any type of firearms ownership…nor is gun ownership a requirement to run for public office.

Our Constitution was written and tailored to afford us personal freedoms, not requirements to submit under peer pressure to conform to religious views and laws.

0 comments

The spaces between your fingers were created so that another’s could fill them in.” – Spotted on the Interwebs

0 comments

…how I’m getting on with the new Mac, having left the Wonderful World o’ Windows behind last Friday night.

In a word, fabulously!

In all honesty, it was a little touchy “the morning after.” I had a brief, “My God what have I done?” moment Saturday afternoon while attempting to do something that was rote, second nature to me on my Windows box and it was causing me no end of frustration. Ben, sensing my mounting aggravation, suggested we go to Borders and see what kind of books might be available to help ease me through the transition.

I picked up Switching to the Mac, and it has been incredibly helpful in navigating the familiar, yet strangely back-assward-to-what-I’m-used-to way of life on the new machine.  I know I have to be patient with myself; I’ve been on Windows for the last 20 years; I’ve been on the Mac only 4 days.

But I have to say, now that I’ve calmed down and have a decent reference book at my fingertips (so I’m not constantly bothering Ben with “How do I…” questions) I’m back to totally loving it. I’m using Entourage for email, and while it was a bit of a pain to bring all my data over from Outlook and its feature set is nowhere near as rich, last night I was doing something on it and caught myself thinking, “Why doesn’t Outlook do this? (Microsoft is supposedly returning Outlook to the Mac platform in their 2010 Office for Mac release.  Go figger.)

It was also a very rude awakening on Monday when i went back to work and had to deal with Dell again. For the first time in my life their construction (which had always impressed me, especially in relation to other manufacturers and the slew of home-brew clones I’d lived with over the last two decades) now really seemed flimsy and hacked together.

Last night I found a free VNC server application for Mac, and while I haven’t had a chance to test it from the office, I have used it successfully on my local home network, so if I can verify that it will allow me to connect to home from work, my old Dell Inspiron can be retired and given a much needed rest. (I’m not going to get rid of it; I bought it from Ben about a year ago and it does have a certain amount of sentimental value.)

The only thing I had been outright missing from my Windows box until this evening was ThumbsPlus, an incredibly full-featured graphics cataloging/editing program that I’ve been using for at least the dozen or so years.  But Adobe’s Bridge comes close, and since I just learned how to change the default image viewer from Photoshop to the built-in Mac Previewer in Bridge, this may not even be an issue any more.

0 comments

All great truths begin as blasphemies.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

0 comments

No, I’m not becoming a Republican.

Last night, after nearly twenty years of supporting Windows on the PC platform, I finally had a come-to-Jesus moment and bought a Mac: a sleek, sexy MacBook Pro to be exact.

What caused this paradigm shift in my computing universe? To be honest, it was a combination of things. Until about a month or so ago I was extremely excited about the new version of Windows that officially went on sale a few days ago. I’d been running various iterations of it on my Dell Inspiron laptop since the first public beta was available, and my initial reaction was that Microsoft had finally gotten it right. But one Sunday afternoon, all of a sudden it simply stopped displaying my chosen wallpaper. An admittedly small issue, but it was nonetheless profoundly annoying. After extensive troubleshooting and finding no answers through the Google, I wiped the drive, pulled out the RC-1 installation CD and began reinstalling. Immediately after typing in my license number (taken directly from my email from Microsoft) it refused to proceed. “Invalid Registration Key” or some crap. I double-checked the number and typed it in again. Same thing.

Fuck me.

This was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I turned to Ben and said, “This is bullshit. I’ve had enough. I’m getting a Mac!”

“Yay,” he said! “My first convert!” (He’s had a Macbook since 2008.)

My first impulse was to get an iMac to replace my rapidly aging Dell GX270 desktop unit, and after playing with a one of them at the Mac Store, I fell in love. (In the interest of complete disclosure, we were actually in the Mac Store because Ben had to take his MacBook for service because of a power problem.) But as the days drew on, the more I realized how foolish buying a desktop unit would be. 90% of my computing time was now happening wirelessly in the living room, and if I got a Mac desktop unit I’d be glued to it (and away from my Bubba) way more than I think either of us would like. So deciding on a laptop was a no-brainer.

I’m still getting rid of the GX270. It’s way beyond its expiration date, and my laptop is a much better unit to keep around until I can figure out how to remote desktop from my work PC to the new Mac.

So what do I think of the new machine?

Love it. I know that Macs are not trouble-free, and when they crash they tend to crash spectacularly, but it’s worth living with that risk for the sheer joy that has returned to my online life. It’s sort of like how I viewed living in San Francisco near the major fault line in the United States for 16 years. The earth could shake at any moment, but until that time…damn what a ride.

0 comments

Wanita, Francesca, and Carlotta, August 1997

(These were my housemate’s dogs, the most amazing and entertaining creatures I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.)

0 comments

0 comments

I was going to try and write something profound, but for some reason words are eluding me this afternoon.  All I can say is that I am reminded of what I wrote a year ago, “Yes, 2008 is definitely looking up, and I can only hope it’s filled with as many pleasant surprises as 2007!” and think of the phrase, “Be careful of what you ask for, because you will get it.”

2008 began with a new apartment, and ended with a new relationship, neither of which were even on my radar screen a year ago, and now I look ahead with nervous anticipation at what 2009 may have waiting in the wings.  (All of it good, but no doubt a lot of it also completely unexpected.)

All I can say for certain on this last afternoon of 2008 is that one year from now I will be changed—and changed for the better—from whom I am today.  I look forward to the wonderful new chapter in my life that meeting Ben and beginning our journey together has brought, and eagerly anticipate to the changes that will be brought about in our country by a having new President in the White House.

(Unlike some of my fellow bloggers, I’m still willing to cut Obama some slack; he’s a newbie and is bound to make some horrific errors as he gets his footing as our elected leader.  If, however, two years from now he’s still making the sorts of mistakes that have some of my copatriots up in arms, I will have to reconsider.  But for now…I’m willing to just wait and see how it all plays out.)

So with that thought, I sincerely wish all of you a Happy New Year, and hope the next twelve months will be as good to you as the last twelve months have been to me!

0 comments

From Thomas L. Friedman:

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train—with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out—that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money—rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors—as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure—without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society—in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

0 comments

New Year’s Eve has never been a night of raucous partying for me. More than anything else, it’s that time when I look back and quietly take stock of the preceding year and give thanks for the blessings it’s conferred.

2007 has been an interesting year. Leaving the deteriorating state of our country out of the equation (because it’s such a mood killer), it really wasn’t a half bad year for me personally.

A year ago I knew Marc only through his blog; since meeting him in February he’s become one of my best friends in Arizona. Likewise I never would’ve expected to meet Adam, or that I would actually drive to Wyoming to meet Knottyboy. One year ago tonight if you’d told me that I’d be buying a new car—and a MINI at that—just three months later, I would’ve laughed uncontrollably.

On the other hand, I had been expecting the continual good reports on my throat that came through, if not the unexpected surgery in November to clear away some cobwebs. And while the satisfaction level with my job dropped almost to the point of forcing me to look for another position late last summer, even that returned to normalcy and this coming April I’ll be celebrating a four year anniversary with the company.

Speaking of anniversaries, at the same time I’m celebrating the four year employment anniversary, I’ll be celebrating that all important five-year mark of being cancer free.

Yes, 2008 is definitely looking up, and I can only hope it’s filled with as many pleasant surprises as 2007!

Something else that was expected was Mom going into assisted living. Both my sister and I said a year ago that because of her advancing Alzheimer’s, one year hence she would no longer be living on her own. We’re actually going a bit over one year on that prediction, but it’s come to fruition nonetheless. The coming year should also only be good for her, as she moves into an environment that can provide the increasing amount of care and attention that she will need as the disease progresses.

And just think…in only 385 more days, we’ll have a new president and our long national nightmare will finally be over!

Hopefully.

0 comments

I’m taking a week off later this month. I put in the request at work quite a while ago, without any real idea of how I was going to spend it. I had considered driving up to San Francisco, but despite the fact it’s been five years since I set foot in The City and I miss my remaining friends there terribly, the thought of actually going was a complete turn off. I don’t want to return as a visitor, having been a resident for so long. It just wouldn’t feel right. (Sentiments that are amazingly echoed by a coworker who lived in SF the same time I did.)

Not wanting to stick around town either (I did that last year, and it felt like I had no vacation at all), and with Anderson itchin’ to get out on the open road, I was trying to come up with some alternative. Then it hit me: New Mexico! Many years ago, while still living in the City, I took a week off and drove down to Roswell. (I’d never been there, and it was shortly after the 50th anniversary of the supposed crash, so my curiosity had been piqued.) Roswell was fun—and not at all what I was expecting—but it was the rest of the state that blew me away with its beauty and some of the best Mexican food I’ve had evah. I was especially impressed with White Sands, vowing that I would return one day.

This time, it won’t just be a quick jaunt to Roswell. I want to see more of the state than before. So my plan is to first enjoy a bit of Northern Arizona and head to Flagstaff to see the Lowell Observatory (yes, I am a geek), followed by a visit to Sunset Crater and then a stop at Meteor Crater. I’ll cross over into New Mexico on I-40 and overnight in Gallup, and the next morning head to the Petroglyph National Monument and Albuquerque in time for a late lunch in Old Town. That afternoon I’ll drive to Roswell and visit the UFO Museum. I’ll overnight in Roswell and the next morning take one of the bus tours out to the crash site (something I didn’t do last time). Or maybe I’ll forgo that and just get back on the road and head to White Sands.

As I remember, that portion of the drive—through Carizozo and Alamagordo—is quite scenic with plenty of photographic opportunities presenting themselves along the way. I’ll plan on a late lunch at hopefully the same great place I stopped at last time, and then spend a few hours at White Sands. I’ll overnight in Deming, and then head to Tucson the following morning.

I’ll should arrive in Tucson shortly after lunch, so I’ll plan on having dinner and celebrating my birthday with the ex and friends there, and then head home.

Nothing is set in stone, so if anything interesting catches my eye along the way, detours may occur.

0 comments

I think your “investigative journalists” need to go work for an organization where their talents can best be utilized. I was thinking perhaps the Weekly World News. I swear that if your stories don’t involve sex, children or animals (hopefully all three, because you will have hit pay dirt that you can milk for days) it isn’t news.

How about paying attention to the fact that Bush is thumbing his nose at the will of Congress and the American people? Or maybe that our civil liberties are being eroded on a daily basis in the name of the “war on terrah”?

That would be too hard, I know. It’s much easier to take a hidden camera into an adult bookstore to film all those nasty ol’ queers having sex under a screaming headling of “Protect your Family!”

And I know that reporting on actual NEWS that might question the edicts of Beloved Leader would be too much to ask, since it’s obvious from simply WATCHING your programming that your network is nothing but a shill for the White House.

0 comments

Seems to me the Repubs are in a bit of trouble. 70% of the country, give or take, is just bitterly opposed to everything the party has done for the last six years—but that other 30% are the people who are going to show up at primaries and pick a candidate. So the candidates have to play to the radical nut cases, which is great, because whichever old white guy wins, everything he says now while trying to appeal to the 30 percenters is going to be repeated over and over and over and over on YouTube and The Daily Show and all over the Internet during the actual campaign.

So go ahead, old white guys. Spin your fantasies about banning abortion, and science, and Muslims. Spew all the sewage you want about how we’re going to bomb and shoot people until they agree to live in suburban houses with white picket fences and 2.4 children and an adorable dog, the way God—our God, the REAL one—tended people to live. Tell us all about how you’re going to roll the clock back to the Eisenhower administration. Every word along those lines that oozes out of your mouth is one more voter in the primary, and 100 less in the general election. It’s music to our ears, over here on the left.”— LegalCat at Huffington Post

0 comments

From Violet Blue, special to SF Gate:

It probably started out like any other serene, sunny, safely heterosexual day in the Bentonville Public Library. But the lives of some Bentonville, Ark., residents changed forever on that fateful day, after a wrong turn down the dark back alley of a card catalog led to a nefarious lesbian sex guide that would steal their innocence, stain them with the gay agenda and probably totally show them where the G-spot was. We can only begin to imagine the harrowing ordeal Earl Adams and his 14- and 16-year-old sons, Kyle and Ryan, went through after the boys discovered “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book” — an ordeal fraught with anatomical drawings and lesbian relationship advice at the hands, nay, lubed fists, of local lesbian author Felice Newman. Unfortunately, it’s an ordeal that resulted in the book’s removal and a threatened lawsuit for obscenity.

Two weeks ago, “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book” was removed from the Bentonville library shelves at the e-mail request of Earl Adams, after his sons allegedly had found the sex guide while browsing for “military academy” reading materials. It no doubt took the boys hours of page-turning trauma in the stacks to fully register their horror — and we can only guess that once they learned about female ejaculation, the damage was done.

Being a concerned father who would in no way want his adolescent sons exposed to any shred of accurate sex information outside of the abstinence curriculum in public schools, or examples of lesbianism that conflict with what his sons will later pay to see in strip clubs across town, Adams initially e-mailed a complaint to Library Director Cindy Suter. She responded by relocating the book to a less accessible spot, perhaps in the football-field-size NSFC (Not Safe for Christians) section.

But for Adams, the threat posed by the safer-sex sections in “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book” evidently plagued him night and day. When he tucked his sons in at night, visions of happy lesbians with strap-ons danced in their heads, he was sure of it. Adams sent a deliciously retro letter and fax to Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin, threatening a lawsuit if the book were not removed, a book Adams said was “patently offensive and lacks any artistic, literary or scientific value” (neatly copying and pasting from the Wikipedia entry on the Miller test, minus the inconvenient “political value” part).

For some inexplicable reason, Adams could not stop thinking about the lesbian sex book and the deep personal tension it caused him — release, he knew, could only be found with total elimination of the book. Oh, and a $10,000 settlement per child, the maximum allowed under the Arkansas obscenity law.

Adams had stated in a previous complaint e-mail to McCaslin, “My sons were greatly disturbed by viewing this material and this matter has caused many sleepless nights in our house.” After the Library Advisory Board voted unanimously April 3 to remove the book from circulation, Adams stated, “God was speaking to my heart that day and helped me find the words that proved successful in removing this book from the shelf.”

One could argue that shelving “Whole Lesbian” in the West Point section could happen to anyone. Or that separating the sex and military shelves with a couple of copies of Boys’ Life might give someone the wrong idea. And that anything that makes young men fantasize about lesbian sex is surely a threat to the very fabric of society. Of course, no one would know these things better than Felice Newman, author of “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book,” co-founder of local, quarter-century-old, woman-run, human sexuality/gender studies/human rights publisher Cleis Press, and Bay Area resident. I got a minute to get her comments about the lawsuit and whether trading her handsome flattop for a flowery dress might get her book back in the good graces of Bentonville’s heterosexual agenda.

0 comments