doubting thom

It’s really just a geek thing, and probably pretty meaningless to most of you, but I’ve generated a FOAF file (not sure what that is? here is some info) for myself (just like Matt and Meredith, for example). If you know me and have a FOAF, drop me a line and I’ll add you to mine.

Yesterday, I came across Dude, Check This Out!™, which enables sort of a cross between blogging and social networking (a la Friendster, LinkedIn, FOAF, etc.). You create your own blog on the service for saving links to interesting articles, sites, images, etc., and you’re encouraged to copy links from other Dude blogs; the site then uses its search engine technologies to suggest other links in which it thinks you would be interested (similar to the technology on Amazon that makes recommendations on other items you might like, based on the other items bought by other Amazon customers who selected the same item you did). It also allows you to make links directly to and with other Dude bloggers, creating social networks of shared interests.

I think I’ll continue to use this blog, elf-reflection, just as I always have, as my primary online venue for expressing my thoughts and feelings. However, I am going to play around with my Dude blog, “serendipity :: a journey of elf discovery,” for maintaining quick links to interesting links and resources.

Serendipity also has its own RSS feed, for use in syndication or within an aggregator.

[Admittedly, one problem with Dude…! is that it currently only works with IE on Windows.]

[Update 2004-01-17: As noted by commenter Randy, there is indeed a solution for Mozilla.]

I mentioned this in passing to Jeff the other day, and have been thinking about it off and on; I know it’s a subject I’ve seen discussed elsewhere, and it’s not even necessarily unique to gay and lesbian couples, though that’s the context in which I’ve most often considered it and seen it considered:

When you can’t (or choose not to) get married, how do you determine your anniversary date? Is it the first time you go out together, the first time you kiss, the first time you have sex (yes, I realize that these sometimes are all the same), the date you move in together, something else, or perhaps even something less specific and tangible?

From my own current relationship, for example, I have only a sense that we’ve “been together” about half a year, but not really a specific date from which to count. Frankly, because of the way we met and began spending time together, there’s not even a clear unequivocal first date. The first time we met in person was to go to see the Kinsey Sicks on June 22 last year [update: it was actually June 21, as Jeff gently corrects; the 22nd was when I blogged about it], and we even had coffee and dessert together afterwards, but I went home unsure if it really was a “date.” In fact, because Jeff was so quiet that evening, I came home wondering if he’d even had a good time with me, or whether he’d liked or disliked me.

Before that, we’d been commenting to each other’s journals, and afterwards turned to emailing, IMing and phoning, but even by our second outing on July 16 to Screen on the Green, to which I even packed a picnic supper (heh, I even bought the picnic basket especially for the occasion), I experienced Jeff still as either shy, reticent or aloof. Even the social goodbye peck on the cheek I attempted felt awkward.

By the time of my birthday just two weeks later, though, things definitely felt different. The weekend immediately prior we saw a frenzy of films in what was starting to feel very much like a series of dates. It also was around that same time that we started sleeping together. After a party the first weekend of August, in which some friends of mine asked about the nature of our relationship and we sort of looked at each other and shrugged, within a few days we were acknowledging the “boyfriends” word among the two of us and by the 11th we were both comfortable enough to post publicly that we were “dating.”

It’s not really clear precisely when Jeff moved in, either. It just happened gradually, first weekends, then a few nights a week, then pretty much going home only to get a change of clothes. He still has his apartment down town, though he hasn’t spent a night there in at least a few months.

So, until we have a more definitive marker, my gut says that we’ve been together since sometime in July, and that this month, then, is the half-year point. For wedding anniversaries, the traditional gift for one year is paper, while the modern gift allegedly is plastics (!). When next July rolls around, though, what’s the appropriate gift for our one-year relationship?

Vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, father of a lesbian daughter, in a 2000 debate with Senator Joe Lieberman:

The fact of the matter is, we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s really no one else’s business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard.

The next step, then… is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship. That matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that’s appropriate. I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy.

Fast-forward just a few years later as, during an interview with the Denver Post this past Friday, the now vice president made an about-face as he said he would support a presidential push to ban same-sex marriage.

What I said in 2000 was that the question of whether or not some sort of status, legal status or sanction ought to be granted in the case of a relationship between two individuals of the same sex was historically a matter the states had decided and resolved, and that is the way I preferred it.

[But] at this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes. [The president has, of course, said that he will support a constitutional amendment, if necessary, whatever that latter qualification means.]

What I find even more amazing is the response of Ted Halaby, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, who has stated that the vice president’s message has been misunderstood: “They are looking at it as an anti-gay position, but it is not.” According to a later article in the Post, “Halaby explained that Cheney, in the past, has said that states–not the federal government–should decide the legality of gay marriage. [Halaby] said Cheney’s position has evolved…” (so the evolution of the Republican Party is towards the abrogation of states’ rights?)

Halaby went on to say that Cheney’s new position is a policy decision, not a stance for or against homosexuality, one, in fact, that should be appreciated in the context of Republican diversity. “We respect a diversity of opinion in the Republican Party,” Halaby said. “The Republican Party is the party of inclusion.”

Even when the diversity of opinion is in the form of inherently contradictory positions held by the vice president.

Evolution. Diversity. Inclusion. I obviously need a new dictionary, because these words seem to have been redefined in the past four years.

Jeff and I have been planning to take a long Valentine’s weekend (which turns out to be President’s Day weekend as well, a Monday holiday for me) trip to Manhattan, and today we finally got around to doing more than talking about it.

Jeff already had tickets to see the Rufus Wainwright concert that weekend, and even now he’s plotting out the other shows we hope to see while there: Avenue Q definitely, and probably one or two others from among Wicked (the cast recording to which I downloaded this evening from iTunes, and we’re listening to it right now), The Boy From Oz and Rent. I had really wanted to see Take Me Out, but it seems to have closed its run at the Walter Kerr Theater.

For now, I’ve made reservations for us at the Roger Williams, just so we’ll be sure to have a place to stay that holiday weekend. We may try to stay at either the Inn on 23rd or the Abingdon Guest House, more in the heart of things in Chelsea and the West Village, respectively, but unlike hotels these bed and breakfasts require a four-night minimum advance reservation. Since we’re only planning to stay three nights, we’ll have to wait until closer to the date to see if they still have rooms available and would be willing to accommodate a shorter stay.

We’re also hoping to meet some of the New York bloggers for a drink (like Tin Man, Matt and Mike, such the cuties), though since both Faustus and I now have boyfriends (his and mine), I suppose I’ll be foregoing the free sex offered in exchange for the donation I made to the Generator Theatre last July. Just as well, since the 26-year-old keeps me pretty worn out anyway.

Earlier today, Jeff and I went to see Big Fish at Shirlington. This magical, enchanting story of a young man trying to come to terms with his relationship with his estranged, dying father, and to understand the truth of his father’s life, seemingly hidden behind–or within–a series of tall tales, has entered my personal list of the best movies of all time. It certainly had the strongest emotional impact upon me of any movie I can recall in quite some time, magnified, perhaps, by its coming so close upon the heels of my own father’s death, to the extent that several times I was worried that audible, choking sobs were going to join the flood of tears streaming down my cheeks; I managed to avoid making too much noise, though I was visibly trembling and clutching Jeff’s hand for support. Even as the final credits finished, I was still so emotionally overcome that I almost was unable to leave the theater, and was still continuing to break into tears as we made our way to dinner just up the street.

[Apropos of nothing, this is my 400th entry.]

The list of DC metro area gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, etc. blogs and journals has been updated; in the past two weeks I’ve identified another few couple dozen or so entries, for a current total of 75 76 93 94, and this evening I also added links to the XML/RSS feeds for the more than two-thirds for which I could locate them.

P.S. And if you don’t yet have an RSS feed, you should, if possible. All LiveJournal users automatically have an RSS feed at http://www.livejournal.com/users/username/data/rss and it’s incredibly easy to generate one for Movable Type as well by just creating a new index file (and you can just cut and paste the RSS 2.0 template available on the Movable Type site after you choose “Create new index template” from your Movable Type “Templates” tab).

For my own part, these days I follow so many blogs that I find it much easier to use an RSS aggregator to keep up with them (my favorite right now is Bloglines, which runs in the web browser, so doesn’t require a separate executable to be installed, which means I can even use it at work on my government computer); for blogs without RSS feeds that I can’t readily follow in the aggregator, I often don’t get around to them for days at a time, if at all.

By the way, Scriptygoddess has a nice primer (from early last year, so not all the included links work, but the underlying information is still valid) on How to’s: What is XML? And What is RSS? Why Do I Want It Anyways?

Four white Ikea bookcases line the walls of the media room, three more form a white wall facing the bed in the bedroom down the hall, while yet another in the entry greets me at the front door; on their shelves books lie on top of the standing rows. In the gaps between the cases, piles of other books begin to lean like tiny Towers of Pisa, while in the corners of the bedroom and on tables and desks throughout the condo stacked books stand almost like paper furniture. In the kitchen a row of cookbooks two high line the wall atop one cabinet next to the stove, while others hide behind the door of the microwave stand. And, in the hall and bedroom closet, boxes contain dozens and dozens more–including several in Russian that I probably can no longer even read–while only yards away up the hallway outside my entry door is the condo’s library, so full of books that a sign went up two days ago asking residents not to donate any more. There’s not an empty shelf in the place for Jeff, who in the meantime has started his own corner stack of books and row of magazine files for his New Yorker subscription and a smattering of GQ, Vanity Fair and Cond

I‘ve just added a new item to my Amazon Wish List, thanks to an entry in Boing Boing today: Barbie and Ken as Arwen and Aragorn.

I’m serious. I have to have this. I’m no Waylon Smithers with his “Malibu Stacy” obsession, but I do own a few Barbies: specifically, Barbie and Ken as unnamed Star Trek (the original series) crewmen, with Barbie looking sort of like Yeoman Janice Rand; Barbie and Ken as The X-Files‘s Scully and Mulder; Barbie and Ken as Morgan LeFay and Merlin; and the Barbie Fairy of the Forest and Fairy of the Garden (for my fairy and elf collection).

Funniest, though, is the reaction of one of the reviewers on Amazon’s site, “lotr_gurl”:

For shame mattel. You’ve taken one of the greatest epics in history and made it into a brabie doll!! Don’t you even care that barbie stands for a materialistic snob and that Aragorn is no pampered “Ken”? Arwen may be a princess, but she is loyal to her man and Aragorn may be a king, but it is he unique qualities as a friend and ranger that make him so great. If I was ever given this set as a gift, I would personally burn it and dispose of the ashes. Lord of the Rings is no barbie doll matter. It is that of friendship, loyalty, strength, and honesty. For shame.

Wonder what lotr_gurl thinks about the Gollum plushie, the Pubs of Middle Earth shot glasses or the entire line of, *gasp*, Lord of the Rings Bobbleheads?

Continuing the tale of our shopping trip on Saturday evening, after our Gap spree we moved on to Filene’s Basement, where I found a very nice Kenneth Cole watch in a polished silver finish with a black polyurethane band; I have a brown and gold Armani I wear most often, but I was looking for a black and/or gray watch to better coordinate when I wear black, gray or blue clothing. The new watch is much more attractive in real life than in any of the photos I was able to find, especially the silvery white face; metal finishes seem to photograph badly, making shopping for any kind of jewelry online risky.

I really love watches, but have had some bad luck with them over the years. When I was living in Boston, for example, I had a collection of a dozen or so, all of which were stolen when my apartment was broken into just two weeks before I was scheduled to leave to come to DC. (The thing that made me most upset about the break-in was not the stuff that was taken but that the thieves smoked cigarettes and ground out the butts on my floor and rummaged in my refrigerator, drinking a couple of beers and eating a piece of my leftover birthday cake!) Additionally, when I was younger the battery-powered watches I owned often would stop running within a few days and seemed to drain quickly (my mom, though, had an even odder problem in that early battery-powered watches used to start running backwards when she would wear them); with quartz movements, though, I don’t seem to have that problem.

In probably unrelated matters, though for some reason this discussion reminds me, my normal body temperature is closer to 96.8° than 98.6°, and I also seem to exude some kind of corrosive enzyme; the doorknobs in the house where I grew up are pitted and scarred, especially the one I used most, on the inside of my bedroom door, and my mother says she could always tell when I’d been the last person to drive the car before her because the steering wheel would be slightly tacky as though it had been melted. What a lousy, low-level superpower, though, not much better than Meg’s fingernails in the “Super Griffins” segment of the Family Guy “Viewer Mail #1” episode.

Chris: “We demand obedience!”
Meg: “Or else!” Her fingernails grow.
Guy: “Is that all you can do?”
Meg scratches him on the arm.
Guy: “Ow! That kinda hurt! Is that bleeding? Well, I guess it’s all right, ouch though!”