Totally sprung

I took that picture Monday evening from Bernal Heights, which we live at the foot of. Our house is one of the specks of white in the middle of the picture near the tree branches. It was rainy all morning and then it cleared up. When I got home I walked up the hill to the park and took this picture.

That's the news today. It's spring. Unless you want to hear about how I have to get $3500 worth of work on my car. Didn't think so.

technorati: Bernal Heights, San Francisco, skyline

Quiet days

I don't have much to say to the world lately. Did you want to know I went to the dentist, or that the cherry tree in our backyard is blooming? That it's raining and I got to stay home this afternoon? I didn't think so.

Almost as uninteresting is what I'm reading: "Catch-22," and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." Most people probably assume someone like me read the Chabon book long ago. Sorry, didn't get to it til now. I am so behind. I did manage to read Darcey Steinke's "Suicide Blonde" and most of her latest book "Milk," which is really beautifully written but which is, for some reason, hard for me to stick with.

And I wasted a lot of time over the last couple of months reading bits of stuff I didn't stick with and wasn't that interested in in the first place, including Harold Robbins' "79 Park Avenue," which I picked up mainly for the cover. I just donated it to Community Thrift, though, so if you want to see the cover (very early-60s Pocket Book) you'll have to go down there and snag it.

Finally, in literary news, they're shooting a movie of Richard Yates' fantastic early 60s book "Revolutionary Road," about the co-optation of a high-minded middle-brow young couple who decide to chuck their middle-class life and follow their dream and move to Paris -- but get waylaid along the way. It's a great book and now it is being made into a move with Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, their first pairing since "Titanic."

I don't know why that book isn't as famous as other anti-establishment youth-anthem books of the 60s -- "Little Big Man," "Catch-22," "The Graduate."

Onward in the 21st century: surveillance without end

Courtesy Mitch Radcliffe, a story on a new Republican effort to force ISPs to archive users' searches, supposedly to aid in the search for child pornographers and so on. As Radcliffe points out, we already have enough law to pursue child pornographers. So the real agenda is probably just the Republicans' crazed quest to increase the power of the executive branch -- in this case the Justice Dept. -- and chip away at people's civil rights.

Ironically, this news comes on the same day a federal judge struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, declaring it unconstitutionally broad and harmful to free speech. This was the case in which my friend Marilyn testified, reading into the record a couple of sentences from my pseudonymous porn novel Lesbian Camp Girls. See my previous post from Nov. 2006 when she testified and was interviewed, with her mother, by Nerve.com.

technorati: Republicans, civil rights, COPA

Rights of spring

I didn't want to miss pointing to this AP story headlined Christian Right at crossroads, about how the movement's founders (Robertson, Falwell, Dobson) are etting up there and how there are few figures standing up to take their place -- especially now that Ted Haggard has been neutralized. Also see my post from March 7 on the same topic.

Otherwise, Bush and his rapidly shrinking administration are officially beleaguered, even if the President himself can't spell that. But there are other things to worry about -- I found the interview on "Fresh Air" Monday with the author of a book on Blackwater USA completely chilling. The author's thesis is that Blackwater and the other "security contractors" hired to protect civilian and government interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots represent the outsourcing of the American military, with the object being to avoid Congressional oversight.

Never mind what the CIA and other security agencies are doing -- the Addingtons of the world are way ahead of you. Blackwater and its ilk can operate in complete privacy, ignore requests for information, ride roughshod over any notion of civil rights and the rule of law, with impunity. And author Jeremy Scahill's description of the secretive, powerful and far-right evangelical leaders of Blackwater is positively frightening. You really should listen to that "Fresh Air" segment -- if you're already depressed today, that is.

technorati: fascists, religious right, Cheney, David Addington, Blackwater, Fresh Air

Focus on the Fundies: Baptist suggests no right to life for 'gay' fetuses

An influential pastor of the arch-conservative Southern Baptist persuasion has wondered aloud whether if homosexuality is indeed found to be biological in origin, should his followers eliminate "gay" fetuses, perhaps by wearing some sort of patch that prevented their birth?

Here is where the line blurs between someone has the ability to be a real visionary, and someone whose shriveled, scorched-earth version of religion has instead caused him to be a raving paranoid. In fact, it's quite a leap in the first place for one of these foamers to even admit to the possibility that homosexuality could have a biological component, because that would imply -- to someone with a somewhat more expansive soul -- that God created some people gay and thus it might not be as bad as they've always thought it is. No, instead this thought leads him to wonder what "you could do about it" (emphasis mine) in order to keep the putative queer from sin.

In an interview on Friday, Mohler said that Christian couples "should be open" to the prospect of changing the course of nature -- if a biological marker for homosexuality were to be found. He would not support gene therapy but might back other treatments, such as a hormonal patch.

"I think any Christian couple would want their child to be whole and healthy," he said. "Knowing that that child is going to be a sinner, we would not want to make their personal challenges more difficult if they could be less difficult."

Actually, there is some foundation in Christian teaching for what I think this fellow is proposing. Jesus himself is quoted as saying "if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire." (Matt. 18:9). I think this is what Mohler is getting at: what's the difference between a roving eye and a putatively sinful fetus? Why not keep the fetus from existing in the first place?

So the amazing thing about this cluck is not merely that he is suggesting the possibility of a biological basis for homosexuality, but that he is envisioning something that could actually justify abortion. You know, I always wondered who the foamers hated worse, women or gays. Now we know. They'd rather see women have a right to abortion if it meant the elimination of homosexuality.

Then, low down in the article is the real reason the guy's upset:

Homosexuality is a "huge challenge" to Christianity, said Mohler, referring, in part, to the Rev. Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who was forced to step down last November because of a gay sex scandal. And the Rev. Lonnie Latham, a member of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, was embroiled in a gay sex scandal but was found not guilty of having solicited sex from another man.

"In our churches and in our families there are people struggling with homosexuality and for a long time this was kind of hidden," Mohler said in the interview. "It is no longer hidden, and the fact is we've got to be coming up with genuinely Christian responses to Christians who are in this struggle."

Yes, even Brother Mohler understands that Ted Haggard is lying when he says he emerged from his rehab "one hundred percent heterosexual." And it scares the crap out of him. If fine upstanding preachers like Ted and Lonnie can be queer, how can he risk closing his eyes during the next men's prayer meeting? Some cocksucker might be sneaking up on him.

technorati: fundies, Baptists, abortion, homosexuality, homophobia, crypto-fascists

Novel idea

Yesterday I wrote about the queue of ideas for novels that I and other writers have, some of which we can never hope to have the time or knowledge to actually write. Here's a news story that provides a perfect inspiration for a novel. I'll even give you a title: "The Extra Man."

The calamity of Asia's lost women

The killing of baby girls has led to a surplus of disaffected men who are a threat to stability

Will Hutton
Sunday March 18, 2007
The Observer

In the middle of the 19th century, an area the size of Germany located between Beijing and Shanghai in central China was run for more than 15 years by the Nian rebels, a 50,000-strong network of bandit groups who lived by pillage and rape. The inability of the Imperial armies to quell the rebellion for so long was a sign of the system's vulnerability that would eventually lead to its collapse.

Importantly, the Nian bandits were men without women, long understood in China as the principal stimulus to their rebellion and cause of their violence. They originated in a district in northern China -- Huai-pei -- where the killing of infant girls to conserve food for more economically valuable boys in response to famine had been particularly terrible.

By 1850, the official records show that there were 129 men to every 100 women, an astonishing imbalance in the ratio between the sexes. Lower-class Huai-pei peasants could not find wives; hungry, economically displaced and, in Chinese terms, 'bare branches' -- not proper men because they could not marry and father children -- they turned to banditry as providing meaning and sustenance alike.

Those womanless bandits cast a long shadow over not just today's China, but the whole of Asia. Asia is estimated to suffer from up to 100 million missing women -- aborted as fetuses or murdered in infancy because of their sex. Pakistan, erupting in protests last week against President Musharraf's anti-democratic high-handedness in suspending a senior judge, is a volatile tinderbox where the capacity for such insurrection to spread is everpresent.

Fanning the flames of injustice and Islamic fundamentalism is the country's sex imbalance. Dispossessed, displaced men with no prospect of ever finding a partner more readily take to the streets like Nian rebels; violence demonstrates masculine meaning.

In today's China, there are now 119 men for every 100 women. In some areas, the imbalance is greater than it was in Huai-pei in 1850. Earlier this year, an official Chinese report projected that by 2020, one in 10 men between 20 and 45 would be unable to find a wife. Professor Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University in the US estimates that by 2020, there will be 28 million surplus Chinese men and 31 million surplus Indian men.

More here. So, if I were going to write that novel, it would be about one guy, and his friends, in such a society. I might even put a gloss on whether it was China, India or some fictional place that mixed aspects of each. The novel would have certain comic aspects in the first half and become more and more bleak as it went along, ending with the protagonist deciding to join a terrorist group out of sheer desperation; he is quickly killed.

Free idea. Take it and run.

technorati: China, surplus men, unintended consequences, India

Novelists need large stoves

I was struck by this post by Alex Chee listing his various projects and ideas for novels. In passing he remarks that one of his ideas "has been on a slow simmer for 17 years." As someone with many possible projects for novels in various stages of cooking, I know just what he's talking about. While the project I'm working on now, a novel about an American office girl who gets sent to Bangalore to open up a customer call center, was started on the spur of the moment (and was intended to be finished within a year, though I've been working for almost two and a half years on it now), I have many other ideas and intentions for projects which are also "on a slow simmer."

Some of them I fully intend to do, like a novel about working in the software industry called Knock Yourself Out. Others are ideas which seem really attractive but which I doubt I have the means to do well, like a psychological mystery set in Japan or a series of novellas about a baseball pitcher (I have all the titles for the novellas, and even an epigram, but that's all).

Sometimes I think about all the projects I have in queue and the number of years I have left to live. I'm almost 51 years old, so if I manage to write a novel every four years or so that means I only have time to do four or five more in my life. Therefore I ought to choose my projects wisely, because I can't get time back.

technorati: Alex Chee, writing novels, novelists

Best friends in the world

Lots of action from friends of mine.

Sara Miles is promoting her new book Take This Bread, and yesterday she did a radio interview at Irvine's KUCI. I saw her this morning at morning prayer and she was handing out buttons that read: wtfwjd?

Painter Chris Carraher recently put up a new show of her work down in the art capital of the Mojave Desert, Twentynine Palms. (Don't believe it? Ask The New York Times.) Her recent post about performance artist Nao Bustamente, in which she confesses she is dumbstruck in the presence of the local genius, is lovely.

technorati: Chris Carraher, Nao Bustamante, Sara Miles

Life's too short to squint

It's amazing how having a highly paid tech job can enable you to clear out a few annoyances. The monitor they gave me was too small after I got used to working on a big one at my old job, so after struggling with it for a couple of weeks, I ordered a new, larger one from Dell, only $310. It arrived today and after I set it up I felt much more productive. Now all I have to do is explain to my co-workers that I haven't received special treatment from the manager. I got it because I have "eye problems." Yeah.

In the past I probably would have felt it was my duty to just work with the smaller monitor. But the heck with it, I'm not going to struggle if I don't have to.

For those of you outside the Bay Area: It was v. warm all over California today -- about 75 in the city. Meanwhile I got email from a friend of mine in a small city in northern Japan: too cold and snowy to work outside today.

Focus on the Fundies: Dobson gives Gingrich a pass

In his continuing stealth campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich appeared on foamer James Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show yesterday, confessed his sins, which included committing adultery at the same time he was leading the congressional charge against Bill Clinton.

Jerry Falwell was quick to get in on the story, also obsolving Gingrich and inviting him to speak at Falwell's college.

That he chose Dobson's show for this odd forgiveness ritual -- odd because Dobson, for all his power in the religious right, is not even a minister but only a psychologist -- is a transparent attempt to appeal to the far religious right.

technorati: Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson

Focus on the Fundies: Latham found not guilty

Remember Oklahoma Baptist pastor Lonnie Latham, arrested in January 2006 for soliciting sex from a male undercover cop? Yes, that was a long time ago. Well, his case finally came to trial late last month and a jury found him not guilty, apparently convinced by his lawyer's argument that since homosexual sex is not illegal, then it shouldn't be illegal to talk about it or invite someone to a hotel room to do it. (Link courtesy Christianity Today weblog.)

The Tulsa newspaper did not manage to ask Latham the larger questions of whether he is gay or whether he regrets speaking out -- as he reportedly did when a pastor of a large Baptist church in Tulsa -- against gays and gay rights. Or even if he plans to resume his career as a minister.

Perhaps he will, like Ted Haggard, pursue a degree in psychology. Maybe they could even open up a practice together. I think there'd be plenty of business from others just like them.

technorati: Ted Haggard, Lonnie Latham, closet cases, religious right, hypocrites

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Special Alexis edition

Judging by her submission of an instance of Bad Behavior in this completely off-topic comment, my pal Alexis either has forgotten my email address, or just misses the Bad Behavior feature of this blog, which has languished since I got my new job three weeks ago.

Okay, kid, this one's for you: a 20-year-old off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested this week for sexually assaulting a sleeping passenger. And in other airlines news, two Delta employees were found to have used their employee status to smuggle guns and drugs on flights. Finally, a customer revolt has caused Air New Zealand to reconsider not giving out "biscuits" (which I think refers to what we call a cookie) on flights.

Of course, this week we had the flap over Ann Coulter's f-bomb. A SF Chronicle reporter compiled the condemnations, which included denunciations from Republican presidential candidates on the right and the not-quite-so-far right, and concludes that the reaction might represent a tipping point in favor of less tolerance for such language. Of course reporter Wyatt Buchanan is totally gay himself.

In Chicago, of all places, a columnist attempts to answer the question: Should you eat food that's been dropped on the floor? I know that is going to get a lot of hits, for even 80 years ago, T.S. Eliot was wondering, "Do I dare to eat a peach?" and many people have wondered about that line in "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock." The best explanation is, of course, that the narrator had dropped his peach on the floor.

Finally, best of all: the Westchester Co., New York dominatrix who was recently busted pleaded not guilty to prostitution charges, declaring:

I am fighting for the women of America.

technorati: Ann Coulter, dominatrix, Delta Airlines

Hateful Republicans love Coulter for talking shit

Very nice piece on Salon by Glenn Greenwald, talking about why Republicans love Ann Coulter and keep inviting her to speak at fundraisers and functions as she customarily drops bombs (like her recent "faggot" reference to John Edwards) -- she simply says what they're all thinking, namely that the Democratic party is mainly driven by gay people and that it's up to Republicans to protect the rest of the country.

technorati: Ann Coulter, Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald

Focus on the Fundies: Dismayed at GOP candidates

I almost missed this, but a Google-alert link to a Daily Texan editorial tipped me off. There's a far-right christianist group, tellingly called the Council for National Policy, which meets every year to attempt to unite behind certain right-wing candidates and causes. They provided early support to G.W. Bush, for example, when Karl Rove pushed him out there in 1999 to begin his presidential run.

Well, this year they met a couple weeks ago and couldn't decide whom to support in the prexy sweeps. They know McCain and Giuliani can't stand them, and even deeply conservative Christian candidates like Sam Brownback are suspicious. Brownback isn't tough enough on immigrants, and he supports the growing pro-environmental movement among evangelicals. As for Mitt Romney, the "council" has decided he has held too many liberal positions in the past, though he's now trying to claim the mantle of Family Values Candidate and Ann Coulter loves him. So the "council" is bereft of choices.

What's really happening is a generational change. The founders of the Council for National Policy -- people like Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Jerry LaHaye, are in their 70s. The new evangelicals are looking beyond the classic hot-button issues of gay rights and abortion to care for the environment -- even things that Jesus actually talked about, like feeding and housing the poor. They include people like Rick Warren, leader of one of the largest churches in the country and author of a book, "The Purpose Driven Life," which is hugely influential among fundies, Pentacostals and the suburbanites who pack the non-denominational megachurches, of which Warren's is one.

I have the feeling that power-hungry christianists like those in the "council" will figure out by the end of the year that they have to choose between Brownback (who could never win) and Romney (who is anonymous enough to squeak by under the radar, and besides, Ann Coulter...). Meanwhile I'm enjoying the notion that they're twisting in the wind.

And this just in: A Salon report on Republicans smearing each other in a primary state.

technorati: Fundamentalists, right-wing Christians, Council for National Policy

Adams' 'A Flowering Tree'

On Saturday night I went to see John Adams' newest opera, "A Flowering Tree," in a semi-staged version at the SF Symphony. The program was full of references to Richard Strauss; to me the music sounded more like Carmina Burana (most obviously the "Flores, flores" chorus). The New Yorker reviewer and others have compared it to "The Magic Flute." Perhaps the work is so confounding that its listeners tend to grasp for comparisons.

I thought it was very nice, though not nearly the achievement of Adams' previous "Doctor Atomic," though that was a fully staged opera and it might not be fair to compare them. One thing that was confusing was the fact that the chorus parts are in Spanish, even though the work is based on a South Indian folk tale and it featured Indonesian dancers. Pan-asian is one thing, but why the Spanish? All I could think of is that Adams had the urge left over from "Doctor Atomic," which is set in New Mexico. But no: the New Yorker article informs us that "(Adams translated the choruses into Spanish, in recognition of the fact that the orchestra and the chorus performing at the premiere -- the Joven Camerata and the Schola Cantorum -- were from Venezuela."

Oh. Somehow I have the feeling that if this work survives to later generations, that point will be lost somehow. But anyway, it was a lovely concert.

technorati: San Francisco Symphony, John Adams, A FLowering Tree

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard's church in 12% staff layoff

New Life Church, the former fiefdom of Ted Haggard, has suffered such a drop in attendance and donations that it has been forced to lay off 44 staffers, about 12% of its 350-strong workforce.

Of course it's not just the drop in attendance and dough. They also paid at least $130,000 as go-away money to the formerly influental Republican fund-raiser and secret cock-sucking meth snorter. That could have paid for more than a few staffers, because I'll bet most of the minions at a place like that get paid pretty bad -- and are expected to tithe ten percent of it back to their employer, to boot.

In other news, a blogger asks, "Why is Ann Coulter the darling of the religious right?" That's a good question, as she ought to scare them nearly as much as she does blue-staters. But by calling John Edwards a faggot, she showed how much she has in common with foamers like Rod Parsley and Ken Blackwell.

In other news, there's a new book out called The Jesus Machine, about James Dobson and his ilk; its author was interviewed on Terry Gross today. Contrary to the book's subtitle ("How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War"), the interview was mainly about how the generation of Dobson and Jerry Falwell is about to pass from the scene and the Christianists have no one obvious to replace him with, especially now that Haggard is out.

technorati: Ted Haggard, James Dobson, Jesus Machine, New Life Church, John Edwards, Ann Coulter

Restructuing, layoffs at Haggard's former church

Staff layoffs are ahead for the former church of exposed Big Gay drugs user and hypocrite Ted Haggard, the Colo. Springs Gazette reported today; the layoffs amount to between 30 and 50 people, according to local TV station. Contributions are no doubt down at New Life CHurch, Haggard's former fief.

This gives me an irresistible opportuntiy to quote from Jeff Sharlett's 2005 profile of Haggard and New Life Church.

New Lifers, Pastor Ted writes with evident pride, "like the benefits, risks, and maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market society." They like the stimulation of a new brand. "Have you ever switched your toothpaste brand, just for the fun of it?" Pastor Ted asks. Admit it, he insists. All the way home, you felt a "secret little thrill," as excited questions ran through your mind: "Will it make my teeth whiter? My breath fresher?" This is the sensation Ted wants pastors to bring to the Christian experience.

Now that we know more about Pastor Ted's "secret little thrills," passages like that one are priceless.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church

Ann Coulter finally goes too far for some Republicans

Three Republican presidential candidates denounced Ann Coulter for calling former senator and Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards a faggot.

technorati: Ann Coulter, John Edwards

Rampant geekery

Min Jung Kim, one of the more luminous SF bloggers and definitely one of the most gorgeous, posted this week about having gotten engaged -- over instant messenger. While this will break the hearts of countless lurkers, stalkers, losers and twinkies, Ms. Kim has insisted for many years on her core geekery and it's only to be expected. Congrats, M.J. -- whom I've never met, but who saw me read once.

And I continue to be fascinated with the Radio Forum, an outpost of Bay Area radio geeks obsessed with format changes, announcers, programming and so on. In another life I would have been on of these guys -- and I'm sure they're all guys -- with jobs in and out of radio, and obsessing about it when I'm not working in it.

technorati: radio, Min Jung Kim, geeks

Saving daylight

Earlier this week I had to get up at 4:15 and be at work at 5:15 for a meeting -- the company is based on the east coast and the project manager there did not deign to take into account the fact that people out here in California are, like, sleeping then.

But not only did I survive this, I have got up at 4:30 twice more this week, including today, because there's no other time to do this contract work I got. And it's actually working for me. I can focus and concentrate. Already I'm done for today.

Now if only I can translate this into a habit and use the early morning time to work on my own writing. I do have a novel to finish.

Focus on the Fundies: radio net going to 'unfit' minister

Quite a story in the LA Times about an aging fundamentalist preacher who is preparing to surrender his extensive radio network to a protegé considered unfit due to allegations of sexual hijinks.

And in Rolling Stone, a nice piece on Rick Santorum and other "evangelicals in exile."

technorati: Chuck Smith, fundies, Mike Kestler

Sara's book launches

My friend Sara was interviewed on SFGate today, and the Chronicle also reviewed her book yesterday. Now if I hear she's appearing on "Fresh Air" I'll know the book is truly getting traction.

It's interesting what bloggers are saying (Technorati search) -- most seem to be focussing on the book's conversion theme. Even the tarot card reader identified.

technorati: Sara Miles, Take This Bread, Christian conversions

Music, quietude, rain, coffee

Yesterday evening I sang with my church choir. It sounds harmless enough but it meant standing for 100 minutes rehearsing, followed by a 20 minute break, then a concert lasting an hour and ten minutes. Exhausting. This was followed by the regular Sunday schedule of rehearsing at 9:00 a.m. this morning, followed by the service itself lasting until 12:30; but at least you get to sit down for much of that time.

I love music and singing but I'm not very good, and in addition there is a shortage of tenors so I have to sing tenor, when I'm really a baritone. That means singing in an uncomfortably high range. But I'm not complaining; I get to sing. Perhaps the listeners are complaining. The other tenor might complain about my singing, but he's paid, so he has nothing to complain about either. (Seriously, he's a very nice guy who does 80% of the heavy lifting, while I just sort of provide a little blended cover so it doesn't sound like he's singing by himself.)

For the rest of the day I hung around the house; Cris and I wrangled the files in the file cabinet a little. And I dug in the basement until I found issue 5 of Frighten the Horses so I could photocopy an article we published about the Street Patrol. Then it was off to Golden Gate Park to feed the feral cats.

All in all a peaceful weekend. I am not dead or sick, just taking a bit of a break from the media-obsessed blogging I have been doing for a few years, I guess.

Inflate, inflate!

Man, since I got my new job two weeks ago the air really went out of this blog. (Update: I just noticed that Badger recently blogged about this very phenomenon.) Let me explain. At my old job I would surf the web from time to time during the day, and post. At my new job I can't do that, not least because the company blocks access to many internet sites. So, sorry about that.

Last night I went to a book party for my friend Sara's book and took some pretty mediocre photographs. People cringe when they see me coming with a camera.

You can come to the big public party for Sara's book on Sunday.

I like TWiki

I recently left a job where we looked at several different "collaboration platforms" (in other words, wikis) before finally deciding upon TWiki. And the company I just moved to also uses it -- very extensively.

As a user I really like it. Its default styles produce good clean layout, and it isn't difficult to learn whatever proprietary markup they use. For people who don't want to learn markup, there's a WYSIWYG editing mode. I don't know what it's like to install and administer, so I'm not speaking to that at all. But as a user, I think it's great.

Got little else to say about my new job, but I sure am enjoying the 80% shorter commute!

technorati: TWiki, wikis

This is a test

Technorati Profile

Buy my friend's new book

One of my best friends, Sara Miles, has a new book out, Take This Bread, a memoir about her conversion to Christianity and starting a food pantry for poor people in one of San Francisco's richest Episcopal churches. An excerpt from the book was published on Salon Saturday (I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that this excerpt happens to mention me personally -- not that embarassed, of course, since like everyone else on the internet I am a total egotist, but that's not why I'm pushing her book; I'm pushing it because it's a great piece of writing) and has attracted over 250 letters to the editors so far.

There will be a book party this Sunday at the church where, more than five years later, the food pantry is still going strong.

Read Sara's other articles on Salon:
- Habeas Corpus and the Bush administration's attacks on it
- How bans on gay marriage affect children
- Bush's wiretapping frenzy
- Rome's latest witch hunt for gays

technorati: Take This Bread, Sara Miles, Episcopalians, food pantries

End of the Haggard era: 'Overseers' give report

The committee of "overseers" of Ted Haggard's church -- a group of evangelical pastor-CEOs hired to hash out the hypocrite's exit from their ranks and "restore" him to blessed (though secular) heterosexuality -- today gave a report to Haggard's former congregation. Among the interesting revelations:

• They found "numerous individuals who reported to us firsthand
  knowledge of everything from sordid conversation to overt suggestions to improper activities to improper relationships."
• The three-year relationship with gay prostitute Mike Jones was only the "culmination" of this "pattern of behavior."
• They consider Jones' outing of Haggard not a betrayal but "a matter of grace" that allowed Haggard's perfidy to be exposed. It was "not only warranted, but also merciful to him and to the church.
• Haggard's "enormous personality" is the main reason he had to leave not only his own church but, apparently, the whole state.
• The church "will continue to support Haggard and his family through 2007." (It should be noted that the sale of the very large Haggard mansion, which was his property, should net over a million dollars, and it will be much cheaper to live where he said he would move to, Iowa or Missouri, so Haggard was hardly in need of this golden parachute.) They also paid for the three weeks of "counseling" that Haggard bragged had been equal to three years of therapy.
• Their "investigation is not complete;" indeed, they say they are still tracking down "rumors."

What fun for them. There's something of the Puritanical zeal of Kenneth Starr in these overseers. I think their whole thing has developed into some kind of parable for the evangelicals. What happened to Haggard -- disgrace and magnanimous forgiveness -- is, no doubt, what they hoped to do to Bill Clinton.

Here's the main story from the local paper on the scene at Haggard's former church. Among the added details is that Haggard's former salary was $130,000 and that this amount is roughly equal to the cash La Familie Haggard will receive as "support," called by some commentators hush money or a payoff.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church, fundamentalists

Unfortunately, making good records is even harder than having a nervous breakdown in public

She was also said to be mumbling incoherently, but who isn't these days?

technorati: Britney Spears

Boehner: Iraqi insurgents are just like puppies

If we leave now, they'll just follow us home.

That's Rep. John Boehner, who is something important in the House Republican leadership -- they're not in power now and they can't do anything, so who cares -- speaking on the non-binding resolution to oppose President Bush's troop escalation.

See, what you do, Boehner, is bring along a little ground beef, and when you see an insurgent, throw it on the ground and wait til he starts eating it. Then while he's distracted, run away.

technorati: Iraq war, Boehner, puppies

Every party needs a pooper

Headline says it all: Nader says he may run in 2008, especially if Hillary gets nomination.

What is wrong with this man? His first run in 2000 may have ushered in the Bush II era, but it may have been excused as quixotic but sincere. When he ran in 2004, much more ineffectually (but with the same result), it was embarrassing -- it was like your grandpa insisting he could still handle playing shortstop, when you knew he could hardly bend over. Now as we rev up for 2008, Nader's threat -- it can only be called that -- to run seems simply insane. Whatever credibility he once had has been squandered in these idiotic bids for attention.

You also have to wonder about the people who work for him. What could they be thinking? It's like the worst kind of enabling.

technorati: Ralph Nader, 2008 presidential election, TOTHER

Indian film stars demonstrate as farmers cook in road

In continuing demonstrations over a water rights lawsuit, local (not Bollywood) film industry folks in the Indian state of Karnataka -- where Bangalore is located -- took over the city's streets. Outside town, farmers also blocked roads, in one case cooking food in the middle of the road. What all this has to do with water rights, I have no idea.

technorati: Cauvery, Bangalore, demonstrations

New job, and I'm already planning for my vacation

I started a new job today, but as usual I will do very little blogging about work. I usually take care to blog very little about my day jobs. And in this new one, I'll probably do even less, as they have a strict internet policy. You can access the internet, but if you do it too much, you get some kind of warning. The little web surfing I did today already hit some kind of limit, so most of my posting will be in the early mornings, the evenings, or occasionally at noon from whatever nearby wireless hotspot I can find.

The other thing I did today, coincidentally, was buy a ticket to go to Bangalore in April. I've been holding off on this for nearly a year, but I'm finally ready to go. (I was going to go this month, between jobs, but Cris had some knee surgery and I stuck around to give her a hand.)

Also coincidentally, there was a general strike (or "bandh") in Bangalore today, and when one call center tried to keep going with a skeleton staff, it was attacked by zealous strike enforcers. The strike was, ostensibly, a protest over the verdict in a long-running dispute over which state in India is entitled to the waters of a River Cauvery. But like most political actions, it seems like it had more to do with the exercise of political power and control, as state and local authorities -- presumably the ones to whom the stoppage was addressed -- have nothing to do with allocating the water, which is a national decision.

One of those stories led me to another story on the same website: Hindu groups too preoccupied to protest Valentine's Day. It seems that right-wing Hindu parties commonly stage protests against the holiday "because it was a Western phenomenon which destroyed Indian culture." How strange.

technorati: Cauvery, Bangalore,, Valentine's Day, call centers

Posting lite

Hi there. I'll be posting on a lite basis for a few days as I get the hang of a new job. I'm happy because my commute has been reduced from 30 to 6 miles one way. Also more money. And I'm working for a friend, yo.

It's all material

Casting around for a subject for your next novel set in the near future? Look no farther than this BBC News article: Wifeless future for China's men:

"There are more than a hundred men aged between 18 to 40 who are unmarried in our village," he says. "Nearby villages are all like us. How can we get married? I don't know what to do or where to start finding a wife. I'm stuck -- unless God can help me."

The brothers eat lunch by themselves.

Outside the village shop, men and teenagers hang about.

They keep an eye on the main road -- in case any eligible women wander by. But the road is empty.

In years to come, for the single men of China, things will only get worse.

technorati: China, results of gender selection, writers ideas

Cat in the garden

Just for the heck of it, here's the cat in our garden a few days ago. The flowers had just started to appear the week before.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- It Depends edition

It's going to be hard -- very hard -- to top the whole psycho astronaut love triangle story. That has got to be in the finals for Bad Behavior story of the year. But we'll try.

A Colorado Springs TV station has revealed that Ted Haggard's former church is paying him to shut up about his indiscretions with a male prostitute and everything else (courtesy Street Prophets). The "agreement" also calls for Haggard to leave town. This explains his announcement earlier in the week that he would be relocating to Iowa or Missouri.

Take my advice, Ted. Pick Missouri. The people there are stupider, and they'll definitely buy your online "psychology" degree.

A teacher in Brooklyn pocketed $6000 for home-schooling a student who was dead.

High schoolers in California are fighting short-tempered teachers by posting videos of their blow-ups on YouTube.

Finally, conservatives attacked presidential candidate John Edwards for hiring irreverent, scatalogical blogger Amanda Marcotte. Edwards said he disagreed with some of Marcotte's more hard-edged posts of the past, but wasn't firing her. An example quoted by the conservatives:

On the crucifixion, Miss Marcotte says this:"The paradox was this.How can anybody look at the figure of Christ on the cross and think that's anything but a condemnation of torture? For the thinking person, it clearly is. But for the fundamentalist, that image creates anxiety about death and makes them cling to their hierarchical values even more."

Hmm, provocative but hardly off the wall. What about this:

Some of her ramblings on Pandagon, like this example on Catholics and the Plan B pill, "Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? A: You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology." are truly disgusting. In another instance, she glibly remarks that religious conservatives should "keep your nose of out of our britches, our beds and our families."

Okay, the bit about God's come is pretty much over the top. But is the quote that immediately follows it equal in some way? Seems like the conservatives don't really have their shit together on this one. Stay tuned.

And finally, guess who's sponsoring the premiere of the musical "Urinetown" in Omaha, Neb.? The Urogology Center of Omaha, which will serve "dessert -- something yellow -- in specimen cups."

technorati: amandamarcotte, JohnEdwards, tedhaggard

Haggard's hooker doubts '100% heterosexual' claim

Mike Jones, the rent boy who exposed Ted Haggard and recently visited Haggard's former church, said he doubts Haggard's claim that he emerged from a counseling program "completely heterosexual." Quoth Jones:

Give me a break. He's been performing oral sex on me for three years. You don't change that in three weeks.... I know him well enough by now, and you know what he's doing when those letters come out? He's playing the sympathy card. He's saying, 'Please feel sorry for me.'

Jones went on to display some of the insight into human psychology that Haggard claims he wants to learn: "Until he's honest with himself, he'll never be happy."

Snap! Jones also said that Haggard's communiques just gave him more material for the book he's writing: "Every time he opens his mouth, I have to add another chapter."

technorati: Ted Haggard, Mike Jones, New Life Church

Quick deal for psycho astronaut book

An author of true crime books, Diane Fanning, got a deal for a book about the astronaut who snapped:

Novelist and true crime author Diane Fanning tackles the bizarre case of Lisa Nowak, the astronaut accused of attempting to murder a fellow astronaut's girlfriend because of her obession with her colleague, to Charles Spicer at St. Martin's.

Courtesy Publisher's Marketplace. Here's a good piece with a lot of background on Nowak, in case you can't wait for the book.

technorati: dianefanning, lisanowak, astronaut

New Blogger

Finally got pushed to the "new Blogger," and I'm also going to add labels. So kudos to The RubeTube for advice on how to make the printout of labels smaller.

technorati: blogger

Feminist action in Bangalore

The Blank Noise Project is a non-violent action group in Bangalore and other Indian cities combatting the prominent crime of sexual harrassment -- or "Eve teasing" as it is sometimes called there. The harrassment comes in many forms, but staring and groping on the street is the subject of many common complaints.

I've mentioned this group before, but I think it's worth another shout-out, because of the very striking photographs accompanying their posting about their latest action.

technorati: blanknoiseproject, feministgroups, nonviolence

I'm tired, tired of playing the game

I'm really tired, so I'm just going to throw these up here.

Courtesy Violet Blue (best post title of the day!): Haggard pronounced 'completely heterosexual' (best use of ironic quotes in a headline!) which points to an original Denver Post story with a slightly less cogent headline.

My new favorite blog is SpyChips, about the insidious threat of RFID.

The threat of more civil unrest in Bangalore has led: "several buildings with glass facades sported the red and yellow 'Kannada flags' besides hastily procured pictures and printouts of Kannada poets and the late thespian Rajkumar" -- the latter personage a local hero. So did you get that? The buildings are trying to keep people from throwing rocks at them by posting images they think the rioters will honor!

Speaking of Bangalore, I think I pissed off a co-worker today. He was saying that when he went to Bangalore a few weeks ago, when coincidentally there was another episode of rioting, "half the city was blacked out." I said, "So how did you know something was wrong?" He totally didn't get it.

Excellent wrapup on Moominite T(h)reat

Before they slip into the collective unconscious until they are briefly resurrected by MTV on a show called "I Love The 00's... 2007!" here is an excellent wrapup (courtesy Boston Metroblog) on the little blinky advertising signs that threw the Boston Police Dept. (if not the city itself) into a panic last week.

Among the revelations are a detailed description of the open-source origin of the devices as tools for underground graffitistas, their co-optation by marketers, the recruitment of the hapless pair of Bostonians who were paid $300 each to put them up, and how the marketing firm ordered them to place the devices in "Train stations, over passes (sic), hip and trendy areas..." But best of all:

Is there now any doubt that advertising has become the vandalism of the Fortune 500? Each week it becomes more clear in the media that advertising is using illegal methods, yet the fines and arrests remain disproportionately on graffiti writers and activists. We hope more people will see the hypocrisy of arresting, jailing, and fining individual expression of people like BORF, countless street artists, RNC protesters, and cyclists from critical mass, when there has still been zero jail time for CEOs of advertising and marketing firms that knowingly and repeatedly break the law promoting corporate products.

Mooninites, marketing, co-optation

As Haggards flee Colorado, locals say good riddance

After being scooped by a local TV station, the Colorado Springs Gazette ran their story on Ted Haggard's decision to leave Colorado Springs. There's little new in the story, but just read the comments! The the usual spipes from haters and bigots are one thing, but the hostility from Colorado Springs people saying "Get lost" is overwhelming.

Ted Haggard, Colorado Springs

Keeping up with the Haggards

Hmm, and I was just wondering what Ted Haggard was up to, now that he has graduated from rehab and is back in Colorado Springs. The answer is, he is booking out of there to pursue "a degree in psychology." Let's wish him well, and hope his studies give him a little better understanding of the field than he obviously does now, since in his statement he mentioned that his rehab program was "a three-week psychological intensive that gave us three years worth of analysis and treatment."

Man, that's some program! If they all worked that well, I know plenty of psychologists who would be out of a job. Perhaps for that reason, Haggard anticipates some openings in the field. Or maybe he has some other career in mind for him and his wife:

We are both planning on getting our masters in Psychology so we can work together serving others the rest of our lives. Since we are taking our classes on-line, we can live anywhere that's affordable. Then we'll travel to location for short in-class requirements.

Ah... an on-line Master's in Psychology. Okay. Finally, he explains:

For the last three months, I've not been communicative because I've been paralyzed by shame.

And here I thought it was because he was on lock-down. That just shows how much I know.

More information, of a kind, about the process Haggard went through is here. And for a generic treatment of the psychological condition that has become almost synonymous with Haggard's name, consider this blogger's essay:

Hypocrisy is a traditional American value, which is why liberals are opposed to it. Although my father smoked and drank, he always made it clear that smoking and drinking were wrong and that he had higher standards for me. I can still feel the sting of his slap when I pointed out that he smoked after he caught me with a cigarette. I have passed on these very same values to my own children. When my kids catch me sneaking a cigarette or smell alcohol on my breath, I repeat the words my father said to me, which his father said to him, "Do what Daddy says, not what Daddy does." And someday my children will instill these same values in their children.

I think he's kidding.

Staying abreast of the world of legal stimulants

If coffee is like mother's milk to you, you should be happy about a new trend in the Seattle area: drive-in coffee booths staffed by busty chicks in their underwear. Finally somone has managed to capture the allure of Taiwan's betel nut girls -- who sit in glassy roadside booths or storefronts dispensing the legal recreational stimulant -- to American culture. (I'm not the first person to draw this comparison.)

It's Ambiguity Sunday™!

In Nepal, government bureaucrats agreed to classify a transexual's gender as both. According to the story, there is a tiny but recognizable minority of transexuals in Nepal.

Is Barry Bonds signed for the 2007 season yet? It is not possible to say either way.

A cosmopolitan Muslim scholar is either a "Muslim Martin Luther," an advocate for Black Power in Europe, or an anti-Semite who is laying the foundations for an anti-Western jihad. (Come to think of it, Martin Luther was also anti-Semitic.)

We are the champions, we are the champions

Even if you care nothing for football, this strange little feature about the shirts and hats prepared for championship teams has charm. Its main revelation is that "Super Bowl Winner" gear is prepared for the players and coaches on both teams in the big game, and the stuff with the losers' name on it is carefully hidden away, trucked to a charity warehouse, and flown to a remote African village where it is given away to people who have never heard of either football or eBay.

There's something obsessive about the lengths to which they have organized something as trivial as presenting "Super Bowl Winner" gear to the winning team. It reminds me of a New Yorker story I read many years ago, about the cutting down of a hardwood forest in the Amazon. Every detail of the political, social, economic, ecological and cultural circumstances of how the forest came to be cut down and sawn up into lumber was meticulously documented -- who profited, what happened to the indiginous people who used to live in the forest, and so on. At the very end of the story, the journalist wrote about what actually became of the wood itself. It changed hands many times as it was bought by jobbers and wholesalers and exporters and so on. Finally most of it made its way to Hong Kong and Japan. By the time it actually ended its journey at a lumber yard in Tokyo, all its value had somehow been extracted, and it wound up, not as the raw material for an executive's desk or the rich wood for a musical instrument, but as scrap lumber, hastily slapped into place on the walls of a construction elevator at a skyscraper building site, protecting the metal of the elevator from workmen's tools. The "losing" Super Bowl shirts follow the reverse path, from first world to fifth world, but their obscure fate strikes me as somehow similar.

Focus on the Fundies™: catching up on Santorum

What of Rick Santorum, namesake of the frothy mess that symbolizes the defeat of the Republican Guard in the November elections? Most people are dimly aware that he joined a conservative think tank, but here's The World magazine -- an "independent" conservative Christian magazine -- with the details on Santorum's redoubt:

Santorum announced a new position at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), where he will direct a new program on "America's Enemies." As a senior fellow at EPPC, Santorum joins Roman Catholic theologian and author George Weigel, National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz, and current president M. Edward Whelan III, a former Justice Department official and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. At EPPC Santorum plans to raise public awareness about emerging national security threats: "Islamic fascists" in Iran, he said, communists in North Korea, socialists in Venezuela, radical leftists in Russia.

The imperative to "confront" Iran appears forcefully and frequently among Santorum's security policy objectives, a message that echoes his campaign-trail rhetoric. A series of stump speeches became the text of his Senate farewell address titled "The Gathering Storm of the 21st Century," an explicit reference to Winston Churchill's account of the path leading to World War II.

"I certainly believe that there are parallels between what is going on here and what happened in World War II," Santorum said of the threat posed by Iran. "I've talked about them. I'll continue to talk about them."

Hmm, it takes a proto-fascist to know a fascist, I'd say.

Previously:
Santorum's swan song
How the mighty have fallen: Rick Santorum
Gay aides to Dornan and Santorum were Just following orders

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- lesbian wedding edition

A very strange entry on Wired's "Table of Malcontents" blog: a man posts his dream about attending a lesbian wedding. At the end of it, his girlfriend skips off to join the lesbians, and he is sad. There's something hilariously pathetic about this. It's not the usual mayhem I post on Bad Behavior Friday™! but somehow grasps the whole spirit of imaginative stupidity that characterizes many of the crimes and fuckups.

Right, then. On to the mayhem.

I'm sure you've read of the panic in Boston over the little advertising gizmos and the dadaist approach to the press conference by the two mooks who stuck them up. In New York and all the other cities they were placed -- not by the same guys, but by others hired by an advertising agency -- people yawned. Everyone else said "God, another stupid advertisement." And there's no need even to lump all of Boston into the panicked category -- most likely it was just one hysterical person saying THERE'S A BOMB ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE BRIDGE AND IT'S GIVING ME THE FINGER!!

So my question is: What is wrong with that person?

Kudos to John Brownlee -- the same fellow who had that lesbian wedding dream -- for finding the term "infernal device" in the law the mooks are charged with breaking.

Close to home, the administration of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome has had a Very Bad Week. First it came out that the mayor's press secretary, Peter Ragone, had been posting comments defending the mayor on people's blogs using other names. The SFist blog broke the story. Then things got much worse: When it came out that the mayor himself had had an affair with his campaign manager's wife, the campaign manager quit and Newsom had to go on camera yesterday (priceless photo in the Chronic) and say sorry.

Damn San Francisco values!

Also in SF, someone discovered that the Indian Consulate improperly disposed of visa applications from thousands of people across 11 western US states. There are some great quotes there from consulate officials who really Just Don't Get It.

All right. On to the mayhem. Really.

In Seattle, a woman and her nephew are accused of kidnapping her husband in a comical, bumbling plot.

And in Kansas City, two cops were suspended after they ignored the pleas of a woman who was having a miscarriage.

In Houston, an enterprise combined money laundering, check cashing, prostitution and "modeling" all in one business. Sounds like someone has the American spirit! They just need to go to work for Halliburton.