Category: Other People

I was kinda hoping that Straight Plan for the Queer Man would turn out to be well-dressed straight men helping gay slobs dress like sophisticated adults. But no, it’s about teaching femme boys to act all tough and slovenly.

Hate to surprise anyone here, but most gay men, and in fact most straight men who are in any way different from the masculine ideal represented in the show (stubbly, barbequing, workbooted, messy-homed, sweatshirt-loving) know how to do this. It’s called “surviving high school.”

I’m always amazed at the way that discourse in this country is dumbed down. People don’t understand the difference between sex and gender, and they don’t understand the difference between sociocultural affiliation and race. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is fun because you get to see people make snarky comments about men with poor grooming habits, and then at the end they get lots of pretty things and you get to imagine how your life would be if you had ten grand to blow on a new living room set and a year’s worth of back waxing. The gayness isn’t really the appeal– it’s the word people attach to the appeal, I guess. But “What Not to Wear” started the whole thing, and they’re not explicitly gay.

A special hello to my readers in Provo– apparently you’re almost 10% of my traffic this month.

Best Week Ever is a weekly (haha, get it?) show on VH1 that covers the week’s pop-culture ephemeral non-news. And it has a blog. Lurvely waste of time.

Tech support work is often described as hellish. It’s not all as bad as this guy describes it, of course. If you’re one of the premium customers, you get premium support, and that means real answers and real time spent helping you. At least, a little. Not like we’re going to kill ourselves for you or anything, as some particular customers seem to think (you know who you are, mister– calling the support manager at home does NOT endear you to the other two members of the support team.)

In the grand tradition of What Badgers Eat comes Badger Badger Badger, a flash-heavy song about badgers, mushrooms, and snakes. But mostly badgers.

The Journal of Murketing reminds us that “markets have no time for culture wars. Oppressing a minority group is one thing, but in the long run, everybody knows you can’t keep a valuable demographic down.” Yes, that’s right, it’s time for the Gay Life and Wedding Expo!

OK, I watched the last episode of Sex and the City. No surprises: tear-jerking and loose-end tying. TV’s Illest Minority Moments on VH1, on the other hand, is funny, surprising, and thought-provoking.

Neat little article about how class, gender, and blindness coincide to screw the little guy. And why gay rights are good for everyone: because unmarried het coupledom is also something we should recognize and take care of. Half this battle, of course, is just about health insurance. If we had decent universal health care, there wouldn’t be nearly the same push for gay marriage.

On a whim, I invited Brad DeLong, former Clinton appointee and current Berkeley Econ prof, to be my friend on Orkut. I didn’t imagine that he’d accept, but he did! Now I can list myself as a fan!

It’s a strange day in this country when we have more than one celebrity economist. It’s a good day, I think. I mean, where are our priorities? Paris Hilton, Paul Krugman, Kobe Bryant, Brad Delong, Arianna Huffington… it’s good to know that there are at least a few public intellectuals out there.

Someone unearthed an old and somewhat embarrassing picture of Mike Wolf, Ximian/Novell sysadmin and pal, and I turned it into a Planet GNOME icon:

My uncle’s been in the hospital again, and spent a couple days more or less unconscious. When he came to my mother was sitting in the hospital with him, and he looks over at her and says, without any warning, “So, what happened to Kerry?”
My mom says “Carrie?”
“Did he win in Virginia? How about Tennessee?”
“Oh! That Kerry, yes, he’s really out in front now. I haven’t really been paying attention for the past couple of days, but there’s an article here if you want me to read it to you…”

So she ends up reading him the New Yorker profile of Kerry, and an in-depth article about military privatization and Halliburton, and so forth, for the better part of the afternoon. Later, he had to tell my grandmother (again) how to print email from his computer to bring in to him, and he was feeling well enough to be annoyed at her. Theoretically he’s got under a week to go. I’m betting more because he’s as stubborn as my grandmother is.

My dear Bookdwarf has gotten her own domain now, via the hoster with the moster, Sharp Hosting.

I was kind of waiting for him to post about it, but my buddy Dave told me this dream he had, where he Howard Dean was hanging out with him and his friends. Dean had just lost some primaries, and was just being generally annoying, and they couldn’t figure out a polite way to ask him to leave. Hmmmm.

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…”)