doubting thom

Tonight we’re seeing the new traveling production of Sweeney Todd, in which the actors provide their own accompaniment, playing all the instruments onstage.

On the one hand, I do feel some Schadenfreude at the predicament of Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who pled guilty to “disorderly conduct” in an airport restroom, seemingly having been in the process of soliciting sex from a stranger in the next stall, who just happened to be an undercover cop there specifically to investigate reports of frequent sexual activity taking place therein. Despite persistent rumors about his own sexual orientation and/or activities, Craig has long been an opponent of gay rights, having voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, having supported a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and having voted against a bill prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. So yes, I feel a little bit of pleasure that such an odious man has been caught in a trap somewhat of his own, or at least his own party’s, making.

On the other hand, I’m really disturbed that the specific activities of which he was accused even are considered grounds for citation or arrest. Had he actually been having sex in the restroom, ok, I can understand why that might be deemed illegal. But merely indicating that he might wish to have sex, by tapping his foot on the floor, moving his foot over to touch another man’s foot, and waving his hand beneath the divider between stalls, not so much. Was his behavior unwise? Given his identity, his political affiliation, and his position, most definitely. Unseemly? Yes. Creepy? Yeah, a little, not to mention unsanitary. But should these actions really constitute something for which he should be charged with a crime? Had he even gone so far as to directly ask the other man “Would you like to have sex?”, I don’t believe that should be an illegal act in and of itself. One should use good judgment about where and when to make a sexual proposition–Craig didn’t use good judgment (as Tucker Carlson made clear in his juvenile and sickening description of the bashing he and his friend gave to a guy who propositioned him in a public restroom once, Craig might have been lucky that he just got a citation rather than a broken nose or neck; as an aside, who looks and acts more like a closet case than Carlson?)–but that still doesn’t mean that propositioning someone for sex should be illegal. Are we going to start arresting people at singles bars and high school proms?

And should we really be spending public dollars on having policemen staking out public restrooms–moreover, rudely monopolizing a stall in a crowded, busy restroom–for hours, just waiting for someone to proposition them? And the cop in this case even responded by tapping his own foot (in the sign he says is indicative of people wanting to engage in illicit sexual activity), thereby encouraging the senator to continue his actions. That feels really slimy to me, and a real waste of taxpayer dollars.

That said, Craig didn’t fight the charge, but pled guilty to it. And, while I can’t know for sure what he thinks, it’s probably a pretty safe bet that if asked before this incident took place, he would have said that he believed that others arrested for doing the same thing should indeed be charged. And he compounded the whole thing by potentially trying to use his position as a US senator to get preferential treatment.

I can understand the difficulty for someone of his generation, serving as a Republican official, to live openly and honestly, but my sympathy stops at the line at which he abuses the power he has gained through his willingness to stay in his own closet–and the harm that does to himself and his family–to deny other gay men and women the rights to live freely and happily. And even now Craig continues to imply that being gay is wrong, sinful and that the mere suspicion of such puts a “cloud over the state of Idaho.” Excuse me? It wasn’t the state of Idaho that pled guilty to disorderly conduct, or that was lying to its wife while trying to get a little man-on-man action in a public restroom.

So, in the end, I won’t be too sad to see a sorry old hypocrite like him ushered off the political stage.

Last night we had dinner with Rob and Espie. As earlier reported, we first met them last September, when we went to a talk Rob was giving, and later attended a book-launch party at their house. Since then, we’ve become friends, and regularly have been getting together with them, Richard (a fellow UCSF employee whom I first met at their party), and some other local pals and fellow mid-century enthusiasts. Along with some other friends of theirs, we even started bowling every month earlier this year (at the fabulous Sea Bowl down the coast in Pacifica), which gave Rob and me great opportunities to showcase our collections of hipster shoes and Hawaiian/club shirts. Earlier this summer, however, Espie left for a ten-week language/history/culture course in the Philippines, so the bowling’s been on hiatus since then. She returned this past week, but bowling will continue to wait a bit, as their weekends over the next two months are devoted to wedding planning activities. After nine years together they’re getting married in October.

And I noted that we’ve become friends. Apparently, pretty good friends. (Let’s even set aside Espie’s friendly suggestion a few months ago to Jeff and me–admittedly, after several strong cocktails, and in any case roundly rejected by Rob–that perhaps she should serve as a surrogate for us, since a baby with her and my genetic material would look most like a biological baby of Jeff’s and my own.) In fact, the two of them asked me if I would be willing to officiate at their wedding in October. Ham that I am, I agreed.

You see, in San Francisco (and some other California counties), a private citizen can be deputized for one day for the purpose of solemnizing a civil wedding. No religious wording is allowed, which obviously suits me just fine. I just had to promise Rob and Espie I wouldn’t wear Renaissance Faire garb or make any Star Trek or Tolkien references.

Espie brought Rob a barong back from the Philippines to wear for the ceremony, so I’ll probably wear mine as well.

I guess I’m not completely as sanguine about having gotten that ticket, as I’ve been continuing to brood on it a little this evening. I don’t mean to imply that I’m the paragon of driving virtue–I make occasional mistakes just like anyone else, but I’m not deliberately reckless–yet on a near constant basis I witness all kinds of appallingly bad and dangerous driving that seemingly goes unremarked and unpunished, and that then ends up being emulated by other drivers when they see there are apparently no consequences. It sometimes makes me feel like I’m a bit of a sucker, especially the times when it appears I’m the only person obeying a given traffic law: there’s a stretch of Fulton Street, for example, about a block and a half long, that I drive every day both going to and coming from work, where the speed limit briefly drops from 35 to 25 because there’s a senior center there. I always slow down when I reach that stretch, yet hardly anyone else ever does. In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to get dirty looks and sometimes even honked horns from the drivers who pass me, frustrated that I’ve slowed them down (unfailingly, of course, I catch up to them at the next traffic light, which does give me some perverse pleasure at least).

On the Great Highway on the way to work, as another example, there are a series of traffic lights every few blocks, even though there’s no actual cross traffic; the lights are designed, rather, to keep traffic on that route from moving too fast. On many occasions I’ve stopped at one of those lights, not only those that are turning yellow but some that already are red, only to have a driver behind me pull around and speed through the red light in the other lane. A few weeks ago the driver behind me didn’t even bother to slow down, apparently assuming I’d run the red light too, and nearly plowed into me when she finally slammed on her brakes at the last minute; I actually had to step on the accelerator and go halfway under the red light in order to keep from being rear-ended. If last night’s cop had been there, I’d probably have been the one ticketed for running the light.

Along those same lines, the car last night–the one I was allegedly following too closely–had been changing lanes without signaling, driving in the left lane five to ten miles below the posted speed limit, and even abruptly cut in front of me into the left-hand turn lane after having initially stayed in the through lane. Yet the cop singled me out for punishment.

OK, yes, life isn’t fair. But couldn’t it be at least a little more fair?

In thirty years of driving I’ve never had a traffic violation, never even been stopped for speeding (I was involved in a fender-bender a few years ago, but the circumstances were sufficiently murky that I wasn’t issued a citation for it). My streak ended last night, though, and not, I think, fairly.

I was returning home from dinner with Jeff and his mom, around 9:15; we’d come in separate cars, and since I knew it would take him a little extra time to drop her off at her house before returning home, I went to the bookstore for a few minutes before heading out.

On the way back, just about a mile from home, I passed a California Highway Patrol vehicle sitting on the right shoulder. I didn’t really think anything of it: I wasn’t speeding and I was, I thought, driving safely. After all, given that I’d seen the patrol car, if I were doing anything deliberately unlawful, I’d have stopped doing it; but I kept on driving along, blissfully unaware that he had pulled back onto the highway and was following me.

At the intersection where I turn off the highway onto the local streets, as I was sitting at the red light in the left turn lane with my turn signal flashing, the patrolman turned in behind me, turned on his car’s flashing lights, and announced over its loudspeaker, “Silver Prius, I want you to turn left here, then turn right into the parking lot and stop.”

I was stunned. I pulled in and parked the car, he pulled up behind me, and I sat and waited. I could only imagine that perhaps I had a tail-light out, or some similar mechanical problem. When he walked up and asked me if I knew why he’d stopped me, I admitted that I didn’t know. He said that I’d been following the car in front of me much too closely and could have caused an accident, and requested my driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance.

There was a car in front of me, but I honestly don’t believe I was following too closely. There were no other cars on the road around us, so I had plenty of room to maneuver in case of a sudden stop. And, as I pointed out, I was even driving five miles below the speed limit the entire time. He said that he’d noticed that, but suspected I was only doing so either because I’d seen him, or because I was intent on tailgating the car in front of me, suggesting that I was doing so deliberately rather than inadvertently (if at all).

What bothered me perhaps most of all about the incident, though, even more than actually getting a citation, was that the patrolman seemed to go out of his way to be condescending, high-handed and accusatory, even though I remained respectful. It started with the directive to “turn left” when I was already in the left turn lane and signaling my turn, and continued when he suggested that I didn’t “seem to be from around here.” I told him that I lived just four or five blocks away, in fact, and was on my way home, and he said, “Well, I saw that you have a GPS in there, so I thought maybe you were looking at it instead of watching the road.” (In fact, I didn’t even have my radio on, and hadn’t hooked up the iPod, so I didn’t have any distractions while I was heading home.) As I was getting the registration from the glovebox, he saw that I had my Virginia registrations in there as well, and started questioning me about whether the car was legally registered in the state, or if I might have illegally put California plates on an out-of-state car. At that point, though, I showed him the California registration and, apparently satisfied that my papers were in fact legit, he went back to his car with my information, returning about 15 minutes later with a citation.

He told me that he was issuing me a ticket, because he “didn’t ever want to see me doing that again.” I mentioned at that point that I’d never before gotten a citation, or even been stopped for speeding (I think I’ve received at most three parking tickets in my entire life). He said, in his most understanding moment of the encounter, “in that case, you’ll want to take the traffic school option when they offer it, so that you won’t get the point on your driving record.” When I thanked him, and said that I really hadn’t thought that I’d been driving unsafely, he retorted, “Well, when you have a beer or two right before getting into the car, this is what’s likely to happen.” I clearly was sober, so that comment seemed particularly unwarranted. Then, as he turned to leave, he said “Now I’m parked right behind you, so make sure that you let me pull out before you try to leave, so that you don’t hit me.” With the searchlight from his car window shining directly into my side mirror and reflecting into my face, that fact was pretty apparent to me, but I merely thanked him again, put away my license, registration and other papers while he drove off, and then drove the remaining few blocks home where Jeff was waiting with the garage door open, wondering what had happened to me.

Now I wait for the letter to arrive telling me what the fine is, and decide if I want to try to contest the ticket. Given how “following too closely” has no clear legal definition, though, it would be my word against his, no matter how clean my driving record is, so it’s probably easier just to pay the fine and spend the eight hours in traffic school (which, apparently, tend to be run by stand-up comics, so maybe it won’t even be all bad–though depending on the level and quality of the humor, that could make it worse). It feels, though, almost like I’d been chosen at random for some perverse reason–my boss said, “Maybe he just doesn’t like people who drive Priuses”–or to fill a daily quota; and “driving too closely” sure seems a conveniently subjective infraction to level against someone when you can’t charge them with anything else.

I was pretty upset last night after I got home, but I guess I’ve reached a shrugged-shoulder, “ah well, that’s life” mental accommodation since then. And in the end–given his disrespectful, insulting and authoritarian behavior towards me, with no provocation on my part–I’m pretty sure I’m the better man.

Today Google released the latest version of the free Google Earth application, which turns the program into a virtual planetarium. Google Earth 4.2 incorporates an awesome new feature known as “Google Sky,” an astronomical component that mashes up millions of photographs of the universe with information on planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae and other astronomical features, to show the skies as seen from any location on earth (and with the ability to zoom in, as with the Earth portion of the program, for greater detail). I played around with it a bit at lunch today, and found it really cool.

Today’s New York Times also has a brief story.

This version of Google Earth also includes a new terrestrial layer called Gigapxl, which has very high-resolution photos of particular places or buildings, some allowing the user to “fly into” and scroll around panoramas or three-dimensional walk-throughs.

Since the creationism/intelligent design set has its own museum devoted to fantasy and myth, the Brotherhood of Fantasy Creatures (BFC) now, understandably, wants to get in on the action, and has established the (virtual) Unicorn Museum to help spread the word of the “Biblical Truth of unicorns, a creature mentioned nine times in the KJV Bible.”

The organization’s current goal is to place a billboard, advertising the Unicorn Museum, next to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

In May, Jeff and I took a two-week vacation in the Philippines; he writes briefly about it here and here; I’ll post more about it from my perspective in a separate post.

The low point of the vacation, though–and of this calendar year, really–came just before our return when we learned that while we’d been away, Alex, our cat (he’d been with me for the past ten years), had gotten out of the house a week after we’d left and hadn’t returned or been found since. For at least the next month we visited the local shelter every three days, hoping we’d find him there, but to no avail. It’s now been three months, and there’s been no sign of him; even though we’ve heard dramatic stories of cats finding their way back home weeks and months later, it’s hard to retain hope. Though active enough to make people think he was only three or four years old, Alex actually was fourteen, indoors-only, unfamiliar with the neighborhood, and had one bad eye. On the other hand, he was a gorgeous cat, extremely social and friendly with people, so a part of me hopes that maybe he lucked out and someone found him and took him in. I’d rather he’d not been lost at all, of course, but all things considered I’d prefer to think of him as comfortably ensconced in a safe, loving home somewhere.

And I can’t help but feel a little guilty; I hadn’t spent two weeks away at one time since I adopted him (I hadn’t taken a two-week vacation since 1996, in fact, and before that not since 1986). Even with a house- and catsitter, it must have been very confusing for him for us to have gone away. And with Jeff working from the house, he’d been used to having someone there nearly every day. He was always very curious about the outdoors, though, so when his sitter left for work that Monday and the door didn’t latch all the way behind her, apparently blowing open on its chain sometime before she came home, I’m not surprised that he went exploring. But if we’d been around that week, maybe he wouldn’t have strayed so far or gotten lost or scared, or whatever happened. Of course, maybe it all still would have gone just as it did. It’s the uncertainty that’s sometimes so difficult to accept.

Now, though, after three months, we’re also thinking about adopting another cat–or maybe even two. There’s a Maine Coon rescue organization in Oakland and San Jose we want to check out, and the San Mateo shelter with which we’re now very familiar. And, if Alex, somehow, still were to return, our hearts–and the house–are big enough for one more, I think.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, why are nearly all brands of men’s underwear sold in the following sizes (in inches): S(28-30), M(32-34), L(36-38), and so on (another alternative I’ve seen recently, possibly reflecting the obesification of American, is for the 28-30 range to be called XS, 30-32 S, 34-36 M, etc., but the ranges–and the problem–remain the same)? What are you supposed to do if your waist measures between 30 and 32 inches, or between 34 and 36? For someone whose waistline has expanded from 30 to 31 inches, for example, small underwear would be too tight and constricting, but medium underwear too baggy and loose.

I’m beginning to think I may have to start going commando.

Jeff beat me to the announcement about having updated to the new 4.0 version of Movable Type as a blogging platform. In fact, I actually updated my blog to the first release candidate of the new version even before he updated Rebel Prince. To be fair, though, my having beat him to the punch this time was purely an accidental consequence of finally deciding to revisit the blog after not really having posted (independent of my del.icio.us and flickr posts) since last fall, and having missed several incremental version changes in the interim.

Many of the biggest changes are behind the scenes, but (for those few of you who actually visit the blog on the web as opposed to subscribing to the RSS or email feeds) clearly there’s a new look; this is one of the built-in, adopted-from-Vox templates, and over time I’ll try to personalize it if not swap it out for something of my own design. There’s also obviously a new name–I never really liked the “light refresh-mints” title I adopted after I scrapped the original elfwood, elf-reflection framework; I’ll detail the significance of the new name in a future post–and now resides primarily at the thomwatson.com domain (though elfintech.com will continue to point here as well).

And probably most apparent (though that assumes there’s still anyone subscribed or visiting after my last long hiatus), I’m writing again (no promises, though). I’ll post some catch-up entries about what’s been going on since last fall.