Author: Aaron Weber

Intelligent Discourse

I turned off comments because I kept getting spam posted, and it’s a real shame, not just because I like to get feedback from people who read the blog, but because it’s sometimes nice to read things like the following comment, a very recent reply to post from last April in which I made fun of the small portion of the anti-war movement which has dreadlocks and doesn’t bathe.

u r right war protesters r retarded, cuz they r fighting the wrong thing! everybody know that the war is a bad idea, even the foreign leader and they can’t do any thing about it cuz bush is doing all this within the laws. I think that protesters should protest the laws that let him do this! I think that the UN should make a law that says that all leader of countries should act on the best interest and safety of the people, not only their countries people but also the people in other countries too! This wouldn’t only end war but also it would end poverty and hunger. The laws are made 4 the best interest and safety of the people, they r not in my best interest if they promote war, hunger, poverty, and un-human treatment and I don’t think their in yours!
PS FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKK
WWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR

If it weren’t for people like this, I don’t know that I’d have much to laugh about. Except for maybe items in The Onion about gay marriage (“Isn’t that already legal? I mean, my sister’s married to a gay man and that’s no big deal…”)

Almond Joy

I got a galley copy of Steve Almond’s new book Candyfreak earlier this week; it’s due out in May and it’s genuinely excellent. I think what I like about him is that he’s smart and self-conscious and funny without being pretentious or annoying like Dave Eggers. Anyway, when it comes out I’m buying like three copies to give to friends.

It’s quite a good piece to pair with Fat Land, which is about how this country got so… well… fat. Fat Land isn’t as good as Candyfreak or Fast Food Nation, my other relatively recent food-related read. But read it in tandem with Candyfreak and you’ll see the parallels. Add in Schlosser’s other book, Reefer Madness, and Michael The Botany of Desire, and you’ve got quite a collection of books about the way we consume, live, and grow today.

And Gay Penguins

When I was in 10th grade I was required to take a religion class. At some point the teacher had this whole explanation about how there were two sources of rules for life, the written law (the bible) and the natural law (the world). And since homosexuality wasn’t in either, it was wrong.

At that point I raised my hand and tried to point out that there were gay monkeys, and he said, well, we can leave Aaron to talk about the sex lives of monkeys, and everyone laughed, and he went on to the next part of the class.

Well, fine. Let’s leave me to talk about gay penguins and how they successfully raised an adopted chick.

Also can I mention the Times’ URL naming conventions? Very sensible: date, section, and then a number and a word designating the topic: this article’s file name is 2004/02/07/arts/07GAY.html. Giggle.

Feedback

Today I got a call from someone who works in IT over at one of the tech companies in the area who said “hey, I found a lot of documentation errors in Evolution 1.4, and I printed out the manual and marked it up, can I bring it by for you?”

This means of course that I have a lot of work to do, and it’s annoying to find so many mistakes in something I’d thought was done. On the other hand, it’s deeply gratifying to know that someone out there actually cares.

Cares about me. Yes, Me.

Happy week of crappy chocolate advertising.

Lyrics

You’ll never hear me talk about one day gettin out
Why put a new address on the same old loneliness?
Everybody knows where that is,
we built that house of his,
and when he’s not home someone else we know always is
If Heaven’s really coming back
I hope it has a heart attack…

Songs: Ohia

Ongoing Wine Tastings

Negatives! We’ve had very good luck so far, but we have managed to find two wines we actually didn’t like:
Roccaducale Rosso di Montefalco 1999: Big, sort of, but mostly dusty and with a weird aftertaste. Not very good. Copertino something or other, thin and acidy and just not very good at all.

Tonight however, we’re drinking something completely marvellous and completely random: Moscato del Solo, from Bonny Doon’s Italian-style label, Ca del Solo. Hey, it’s Saturday night, instead of going out let’s open a sparkling dessert wine. This would be great for a Sunday breakfast– it’s relatively low in alcohol and bubbles, and heavy on fruit and sugar. My father would probably think it’s too sweet, but I love it.

Seriously now

I know this is an unaccustomed bit of sincerity here, but this is actually important.

If you had a gay child, would you love that child as much as a straight child? If you’re a decent human being you would. And you’d want that child to have the same rights and responsibilities as any other child. So if you live in Massachusetts call your legislator and demand that they do what the court says: grant equal rights to same-sex couples.

The Catholic church ’round here is fulminating against it, and I’m almost glad: the more they do, the more apparent it is that their objections are inherently religious, and therefore should be discounted by civil law.