doubting thom

gay.com has an article about the “Ten great gay cars for 2003”.

Yep, my Saab 9-3 is there. Author Steve Siler writes:

Saabs are ready matches for the gay community. Not only do they dare to be different, but Saab was validating and accessing our community through charity sponsorships and advertising in gay and lesbian publications before it was cool to do so.

OK, New Beetle Cabrio. Check. Jeep Wrangler. Check. Mazda Miata. Like, duh.

But really, now, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Subaru Outback, and the Ford Mustang and Ranger?

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And speaking of cars, this news, which Roger heard on the radio on Tuesday but which I forgot to post about, makes me very sad. I really loved the look of the new T-bird though, to be honest, if I were going to spend $40K again on a car (which I’m not planning to and besides, all I could find in my area were the removable hard-top version instead of the soft-top I really want <grin>), it would probably have to be on something other than a two-seater. But oh, what a gorgeously sexy retro little two-seater it is.

Columnist Jerry Flint says:

I remember when they killed the first two-passenger Bird. I thought that the car was beautiful. A Ford executive back then said, “Beauty is a good 10-day sales report.” The original Thunderbird reminded people that Ford could build a beautiful car. Ditto for the short-lived new Thunderbird.

The news about its demise is ugly indeed.

Amen to that.

Here’s what Bruce Springsteen had to say about the absurd backlash against The Dixie Chicks–who have faced property damage and death threats for exercising their constitutional right to free speech–for their anti-war, anti-Dubya comments:

The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they’re terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American.

The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about–namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.

I don’t know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.

Go Dixie Chicks. Go Boss.

When I left Tucson from my visit to see Roger and Raymond a few weeks ago, I left behind a little gift Roger had gotten for me, a tiny shoe carved out of ironwood–to him, it looked like an “elf shoe,” which made him think of me. To me, it looks like a clown’s shoe–bulbously rounded toe rather than sharply pointed–but it’s the thought that counts, and Roger’s very thoughtful. I only left it behind because it had been batted off the coffee table and under the sofa by one of the cats, and I didn’t realize this when I picked up all my other graft from the table to put in my luggage.
After I got back home and discovered I didn’t have it, Roger looked for it and found it where Benny had left it after playing with it. He told me he’d send it to me. Earlier this week he told me he’d put the box in the mail–along with my “CD” (which confused me at the time)–and that I’d have it by Thursday or Friday.
Today when I got home from work, the package was waiting for me… a larger package than I expected. When I opened it, I found inside a DVD of Some Like It Hot, which he and I had been discussing based on a photo he took of the Hotel del Coronado, and which he was surprised to learn I’d never seen all the way through. Additionally, there were three bags of (yummy, ’cause I’ve already eaten one) ginger snaps, one of my two favorite kinds of homemade cookies, and a woven wooden basket with the shoe inside.
What a treat! And what a surprise to get all these other little gifts besides just the shoe. What a sweetheart.
Oh, and he just told me in IM that when he saw the basket, it said “Elf Picnic Basket” to him, so he had to get it.

Last night Craig hosted a wine and cheese get-together at his apartment. The invitation was for 6, and I was working late to finish a presentation that I had to deliver today, so it was 6:30 when I left the office (yes, that’s late for me these days… I’m making 50% of what I was as a dot-com CTO, but then I generally get to leave at 5pm, rather than 9, 10, 11 or even later–a trade-off I consider perfectly comfortable).
Even so, when I arrived, only Craig, his girlfriend Laura, and her roommates Nicole and Amy were there. Eventually the party got hopping, and there were a smattering of people I knew (mostly only vaguely, though) and some new people to meet; a good mix. I had a very nice time, and the wine was really great.
Craig had enlisted Terry, a guy I dated for a year back in 2000-2001, and who sells wine, to pick out the vintages. He also invited Terry to show up at the party. Terry and I parted on reasonably good terms–we had said we were just taking a “break,” and I thought we probably would get back together, but a month later he met someone else, and a month after that they moved in together. They’re still together, and seemingly well-suited, and I’m happy for them. I even got together with both of them a couple of times. But the last time Terry and I saw each other or spoke was just about a year ago, one day that he’d invited me over to a wine tasting at their place.
I’d left sad, which he thought was because of his new relationship, but which was due more to a combination of things going on at the time–primarily my unemployment and my dad’s very poor health–and neither of us contacted the other again.
It was really nice to see him last night, and we enjoyed catching up. We’ve agreed to talk again within a week.
I left feeling pretty good: the reunion with Terry had been sweet and positive, the conversation at the party had been interesting, I hadn’t felt out of place or wallflowery all night and, in fact, felt very comfortable socializing the entire four and a half to five hours I was there.
Once home, though, I crashed. I went into a dive, and became very despondent, and then scarfed down a whole pint of ice cream. Several of the people at the party work at the place from which I was laid off in 2001 and, though the fact that I was laid off wasn’t due to any gap in my own performance, or any flaw in my character, and wasn’t personal (although there were certainly ways in which the CEO was a complete bastard through it all and, apparently, has even gotten worse in his treatment of the employees), I still sometimes find myself slipping into a sense of having failed, in some way, when I’m around a group of people from there. Combined with a sense of having failed in the relationship with Terry as well, and having consumed at least six or seven glasses of wine, I was ripe for a tailspin.
Fortunately, Matt called and didn’t give up when I didn’t answer the phone the first time around, and he cheered me up considerably. Additionally, the wine was starting to make me too sleepy to be too self-indulgent or self-destructive, so I drank my water, took my aspirin, and fell into bed. Today/this evening I feel fine: I had a good, productive day at work, I did a great job on my presentation, and I don’t feel like a failure.

Oh cool. I wrote a note to Neil Gaiman yesterday, about the synchronicity I chronicled in my journal, and today I discovered that he’d included my comments in his daily journal entry.
And, about the reference I sent him, he said “How useful! Thanks…”
Heh. Love the Internet.

Meant to write about this yesterday. It’s been a somewhat fertile period recently for connecting with old friends and acquaintances and making new ones.
Sheldon and Lisa, the friends with whom I’d lived for about four years back in the early 90s, have been transferred from Anchorage, where they’ve been the past three years after six years in Belgium before that, to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, about 2-1/2 hours from here. I got email from Sheldon yesterday telling me that they’d be attending a Magic tournament in Baltimore on Saturday, May 3, and would like to see me and stay over with me the previous night and possibly come back and stay that night as well before returning home on Sunday.
So I called last night and talked to Lisa for about an hour; it was so nice to hear her voice and to be back in touch with them again. I’ve been thinking about them a lot just in the past month, as various things have brought them to mind: Craig’s been wanting to plan a trip to Virginia Beach, which is near where they’re living now; the trainer on my staff and I just recently discovered that we both are gamers, and she’s a huge Magic fan; even my restarting my journal last month was spurred by an email from someone I met ten years ago through Sheldon and Lisa; Jay, my ex and our fourth roommate back then, came down to help me out with Alex; etc. I’ve been nostalgic about those days, as I think those were the happiest of my adult life.
Sheldon was entertaining visitors–their new neighbors–when I called, so I didn’t get to talk to him, but we’ve been exchanging emails, and will hash out the details of getting together weekend after next. I’m so looking forward to it.
Shortly after I got off the phone with Lisa, Matt–one of my newest friends, and my current online crush–made a surprise call, and we talked for at least an hour, and then ended up online in Yahoo, where we explored the voice chat and shared doodling environments. Yesterday was my best day, emotionally, in a while: work went very well, I accomplished a lot, and my communication with old and new friends (also including Roger, via Yahoo) was supportive and engaging.

Oh, I love this.
Regarding Santorum’s comments about consensual gay sex being equivalent to incest or adultery, the Washington Post now reports that his “spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said the quote was accurate ‘only in the context related specifically to the right to privacy in the Supreme Court case.’ The senator, she said, ‘has no problem with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals.'”
So, he has no problem with us… just as long as we keep the sex out of our own bedrooms.
Um… whuuuuh? Did he hire this spokeswoman from Bizarro World? Did she get her PR degree from the same school as Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf? Is this statement even supposed to be accepted as a cogent explanation, much less a retraction or apology?

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The Associated Press (by way of washingtonpost.com) has reported that Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) today, in an interview with the AP in which he discussed the expected decision later this summer from the Supreme Court on a case involving consensual homosexual sex in a private home in Texas, compared consensual gay sex in the home to incest and adultery, and went on to say that he believes there is no constitutional right to privacy:

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything… All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that’s sort of where we are in today’s world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution.”

Fortunately, even the Log Cabin Republicans are taking a big step back and calling him on the carpet for this one:

“There is nothing conservative about allowing law enforcement officials to enter the home of any American and arrest them for simply being gay,” said Log Cabin Republican Executive Director Patrick Guerriero. “I am deeply troubled that Sen. Santorum would divide America in a time of war. Mainstream America is embracing tolerance and inclusion. I am appalled that a member of the United States Senate leadership would advocate dividing Americans with ugly, hate-filled rhetoric.”

This is the same Santorum, a self-described “compassionate conservative” and as the head of the Republican Conference the third highest ranking Senate Republican, who was quoted as saying to the Washington Post last November that he supports a provision that would allow faith-based groups that receive federal funding for community service programs to discriminate against gays and lesbians in hiring–even in cases where local and state non-discrimination laws are already in place. “I will make that stand,” said Santorum. (from a news release from the Human Rights Campaign, November 25, 2002.)

In January of this year, the Philadelphia CityPaper ran an opinion piece entitled “A Friend to the End: Rick Santorum’s Questionable Defense of Trent Lott,” in which the author noted:

Our senator [Santorum] went on national television and claimed that Lott was “a man of tremendous integrity, a deep faith, [and] someone who believes all men are created equal.” He added that the furor would subside when his colleagues “reflect and put things in better context,” a dubious statement given the context of Lott’s terrible civil rights record.

As the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Santorum originally opposed even calling a meeting of Senate Republicans to discuss Lott’s remarks and potential replacement, telling NBC’s Tim Russert, “It’s not under our rules to allow me to do that.” A few days later, under pressure from his more moderate colleagues, Santorum reversed himself by calling a meeting for Jan. 6. But Santorum continued to defend Lott, even as more evidence of Lott’s poor civil rights record came out, telling reporters on Dec. 18, “I’m more and more convinced that Senator Lott should stay.”

Santorum didn’t stop at defending Lott. He told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “he personally never viewed Thurmond, who just retired as the Senate’s longest serving member, as a segregationist.”

No wonder, since the three of them seem cut from the same cloth.

This guy is really scary, though at least we know where he stands and that he’s not our friend.

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I don’t think I’ve written about this in my journal or even noted it on my site, but I’m really interested in the phenomena of coincidence and synchronicity.

At dinner recently, I’ve been reading a few pages each day of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, by John Clute and John Grant. Last night, I left off two-thirds of the way through the page that begins with EMBLETON, RON(ALD SYDNEY).

This evening, just before dinner, I was catching up with Neil Gaiman’s journal, which I hadn’t looked at since Friday. Over the weekend, he had responded to a note that linked a Honda ad, Caractacus Potts’s breakfast-making machine in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the children’s game Mouse Trap, to Rube Goldberg, by responding that the English had their equivalent of Goldberg in William Heath Robinson, of whom I’d never before heard.

A short while later, at the dinner table, I started in on the next unread entry in the Encyclopedia–EMMET, ROWLAND–another unknown to me. Here are the first two paragraphs:

UK artist and inventor. A fine cartoonist, he was also a draughtsman and engineer. He became known for his succession of large, incredibly intricate “Gothic-Kinetic” inventions. Unlike William Heath ROBINSON [emphasis mine], who merely drew his eccentric contraptions, RE regularly created three-dimensional working models.

The amazing success of his Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway at the Festival of Britain in 1951 led to many more commissions, including permanent constructions like “The Rhythmical Time Fountain” at Nottingham, UK, and models built for CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG [emphasis again mine] (1968)…

Last Wednesday, I wrote about having received email from a former boyfriend, from whom I hadn’t heard in over ten years, last December and then again on Tuesday, most recently asking if I were going to be around Easter weekend, since he was unexpectedly going to be in the area. After I’d replied to his first email in December, I never received a response until Tuesday. Because of this, and my suspicions about the level of his commitment to renewing the friendship, I did something I never do: when I replied on Tuesday night that I would be around, and giving him my contact information, I requested a Read Receipt.
Early Wednesday morning, I got the acknowledgement. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday all came and went, and, unsurprisingly at this point, I didn’t hear from him.
My friends had been concerned about my agreeing to be available to meet with him, and Matt even had admitted to being a little jealous. They needn’t have worried, though their love and concern are really wonderful.
At this point, I’m leaning towards deleting unread any future emails from him to spare myself what little angst he still makes me feel, though the odds are that I won’t hear from him again anyway.

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I did hear from my parents Saturday evening, who called to report that my dad’s oldest sister had been hospitalized on Friday night and was in intensive care. The family had seen her throughout the week, and she seemed fine, but on Friday she called her daughter–my cousin–to report that she couldn’t breathe. My cousin called an ambulance and went over to my aunt’s house; she had a great amount of fluid on her lungs, and I’m told she coded at least once in the emergency room.
They had her on a ventilator Friday night and Saturday, but by Sunday morning she was awake and had removed the ventilator and was breathing on her own. Apparently she was experiencing a wide range of hallucinations, including seeing beings in the air and she reported that both “Timmy and Hoe” had been to see her (“Hoe” being a childhood nickname of Timmy, my dad). She had no recollection of anything after she called my cousin on Friday.
Her son and his wife flew in from San Francisco Saturday. Fortunately, though, my aunt was doing better by Sunday, and was more lucid; they’re still analyzing the test results to determine if she had a heart attack, or precisely what happened otherwise.

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Personally, even before the news about my aunt, I was anxious and depressed much of the weekend, to the point of even being somewhat hypochondriacal. Friday night I was feeling exhausted, and went to bed really pretty early for me, but on Saturday morning I just could not fully wake up, or get out of bed. I did get up around 8:30 long enough to open a pouch of cat food for Alex, but immediately fell back into bed and didn’t get up until noon. I’ve been having bad headaches more frequently, and had a very bad one on Saturday; I also felt extremely fatigued, achy, slightly warm and was suffering what I think was probably just my first allergy attack of the season (and the pollen is pretty thick on the table on my balcony; it looks like a copper table top with a verdigris patina rather than glass).
But I started worrying that I’d contracted the Lyme Disease bacterium from a tick bite, from my geocaching exploration in the woods behind my office last Wednesday. I hadn’t actually seen any ticks on me in the interim, mind you, nor have I yet evidenced the most common symptom of infection, the erythema migrans. I spent a big chunk of Saturday crusing Internet sites about the disease and looking at the growing number of incidents reported from my (urban) county over the preceding few years.
Intellectually, of course, I realized I was being silly. But I went to bed early on Saturday, and didn’t get up again on Sunday until noon, having slept right through the morning sex-ed class for which I’m one of the teachers. The headache wasn’t as bad on Sunday, but I still felt fatigued, stuffy and a little achy, and didn’t do much of anything. I sat around in sweats all day, and didn’t even socialize with Roger or Lee in Yahoo or There during the day: I kept to myself, and played a little SimCity but mostly just slept on the futon in the computer room.
By Sunday night, I wasn’t even theorizing about the Lyme Disease possibility any more. But as I was preparing for bed, I was petting Alex and, as I rubbed under his chin, I felt a very tiny bump there I hadn’t felt before. He’s very skittish about it, so I wasn’t able to really determine what it is, but from my quick glimpses at it through his long fur and his attempts to fight me, it does look like a tick. I wasn’t able to remove it last night–though I’m covered with scratches from the attempt–so tonight I’m going to ask a friend to come down to help hold him while I try to see what this is, and to remove it, if it is a tick. Otherwise, I’ll have to take him to the vet to have it done there.
And even if it is a tick, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything… it might have just been on my clothes when I came in the house and gotten right onto him, rather than having been on me first: an infected tick needs to remained attached for about 24-36 hours before it can transmit the bacteria.
So, if it is a tick, I’ll have to talk to my doctor and my vet to see if they think it merits starting the four- to six-week treatment of antibiotics for me (and whatever they do to treat pets), given that I haven’t exhibited the rash but only the other symptoms, which are so common (headaches, muscle aches, fatigue and fever) as to be almost anything.
The problem, I guess, is that it’s relatively easy to treat Lyme in the early stages, whereas down the road it becomes much harder and riskier, and the bacteria can cause some very serious things (from arthritis to cardiac arrhythmias to renal failure) but on the other hand doctors don’t like to just give long courses of antibiotics “just in case” (and which has its own side effects and risks involved). And apparently the blood tests available these days for the bacteria aren’t very reliable.
On the other hand, making an appointment with my doctor about a potential physical ailment might finally be the impetus to get me to talk to her about my increasingly troublesome mental issues.
After fighting with Alex and my own anxiety and insecurities, I had a horrible night’s sleep. I tossed and turned, woke up multiple times, and had really vivid dreams, one of which I remember featured a somewhat larger, tiger-like Alex lunging at me and tearing at my arm and neck like you see in police dog videos. I wish cats could understand when you’re trying to help them; after four years of feeding, loving and caring for him, you’d think there’d be a little more trust that I’m not trying to hurt him now.