Ordinarily I don’t like to just leave a link to a news article without really expanding on it by adding my own thoughts, but I don’t have much time right now and I really wanted to put these out there:

1) Totally Gay Happy Meals/It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go

A sharply-written (and delightfully snarky) article about how the Religious Right has lost its power over America because the public has been bored with them for some time now.

2) McCain’s Problem: Not Age, but Condition

An article by Alec Baldwin for the Huffington Post with a very rational and appropriate warning not to alienate our elders by labeling John McCain as simply “old.”

Read and discuss. I’ll be back. (Coming up next – probably – all about the most interesting rehearsal process I have ever experienced, and some shameless personal promotion for the play I’m acting in…)

Filed by Bil at 1:41 pm under Religion, Gay Agenda, GOP, Damn Hippies, Politics, Fightin' Words, Homophobia
1 Comment

Oh, Dennis Kucinich…bless that man’s heart.

(It gets interesting about 2 minutes in…)

Thirty-five (count ‘em, thirty-five!) Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush have been introduced to the House of Representatives by Mr. K, and, while I appreciate the gesture, the timing could not be much worse. Bush has barely half a year left in the white house; Impeachment proceedings, as I recall from the last decade, take much longer than that. Anyway, the Articles probably won’t go anywhere in the House. At this point — not to sound too cynical — it’s really just a statement, since the Democrats don’t really have the power right now to carry out an impeachment. And, being that we are now getting geared up for what will probably be a very ugly presidential campaign, the GOP will probably spin this statement into a “Democrats Hate America!” campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re good at.

And Kucinich tried to impeach Cheney last year (remember?) and even in 2007 it was too little too late. I don’t like feeling that way — I really would like to see this administration forcefully removed from office — but it’s hard to have faith in this process.

You know what else is kind of bugging me? There seems to be a prevailing mindset for this upcoming presidential season of “I was for the war/I was against the war when it all began,” and that mindset is a pretty distracting from the fact that the war is still in progress. We know the facts of the past, there is no point in repeating them. I want to hear what each candidate will do about the current state of things.

Note - if we are to take McCain at his word, we already know he will do nothing to stop the war. So what I really mean is I want to hear what Obama has planned.

Filed by Bil at 1:19 pm under GOP, Politics, Fightin' Words
1 Comment

I’ve discovered a fantastic blog called Lucid Movement (http://www.lucidmovement.com). It’s basically an archive of clips of things breaking, bouncing, exploding, wafting, etc. filmed with high-speed cameras. It’s excellent. Here is a taste of what you’ll get over there:

I can watch this stuff for hours.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 11:25 pm under Pop Culture, Politics, The Science
No Comments

Bil told me he has been waiting for me to respond to the court ruling legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians in California, so after a week, here I am. I certainly don’t wish my silence to be misconstrued as apathy toward the subject matter; rather, it’s difficult to articulate exactly what I’m feeling right now. But I’ll try.

Right. So about last Thursday. Half of the TVs where I work during the day are tuned to CNN, and when I saw the initial reports about gay marriage being legalized in a certain part of the world, the location was ambiguous (the sound is muted, so all I had to go on were the banners), so I assumed it was another European country that had made the ruling. In fact, I was in the middle of my usual speech about how California, while not explicitly legalizing gay marriage, has the most liberal domestic partnership laws in the nation, when it became clear that it was, in fact, my home state that had overturned the ban on gay marriage passed in 2000. But I didn’t cheer. Maybe I should have. Instead, I stood with my hand over my mouth and wondered why the hell I ever left to begin with.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 11:22 pm under Politics, Activism, Love
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California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban

The good news is piling up fast around here. Case in point: California courts declared that a ban on gay marriage is illegal. This post comes a couple days after the actual news, and I can’t really say anything poetic about it all, even though I want to, but you must understand that this makes me really happy. Super-happy. Not because I’m gay and unmarried (I am neither), but it’s kind of a point of shame for me that our country still thinks that gay folks are second-class citizens. Other countries have legalized it. We haven’t. In fact, in some of our states here in the USA, marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is constitutionally forbidden. That means permanently no-no. And while I am not a member of the oppressed party, the oppression appalls me.

So, when I heard that my home state has decided that discrimination of this sort is – yes – unconstitutional, I felt a massive surge of pride run through my veins. I felt the same pride about Massachusetts, because I lived there for one year. But one year does not compare to the 23 years I spent living in California. That’s 23 times more joy and relief and hopefulness for the future that I’m getting right now. Rock on, California!

Unfortunately, I also cannot help but remain somewhat cynical. I know our country pretty well, and I think there will be some trouble down the road because of this (this being an election year and all). And there has been a rather strong response from both sides of the debate. But I’m not going to bother with all that just yet. Fuck it all for now. For now, I’m just going to enjoy it. Hooray, progress!

Filed by Bil at 8:58 pm under Social Issues, Gay Agenda, Politics, Activism, Love
No Comments

Yeah, yeah, yeah, more politics crap. I know.

Listen up, though, young folks. This particular speech by presidential candidate Barack Obama may very well go down as one the great speeches in our nation’s history. Or it might be forgotten by next week, you never really know. But if you’ve got forty minutes to spare, check this video out. Even if you’re not an Obama fan, it might be good to be able to talk knowingly about this speech some day.

Filed by Bil at 12:24 pm under The Media, Politics, Racism
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As you may or may not have heard five billion times by now, New York Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer is in some hot water because he hired a pricey hooker after a career of prosecuting powerful men who hire pricey hookers. We have all seen this before, and if there’s one thing that we as a nation should be able to agree upon by now (but for some reason aren’t), it’s that political party really has nothing to do with the fact that some politicians are just plain old douche bags.

Okay, sure, perhaps Eliot Spitzer should resign, perhaps not. Honestly, as a resident of a state that is NOT New York, I don’t think I could make a valid argument either way. I don’t know what their funny laws are. Is prostitution illegal up there? Isn’t it illegal in every state but Nevada?

NY Repbulican threaten to impeach Spitzer

Let’s just slow down a little bit though. Who said anything about impeach?
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 5:27 pm under GOP, Pop Culture, Politics
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Tim Wise, anti-racism activist and author of one of my favorite and oft-recommended books, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son , has written some essays recently on Obama voters and the myth of reverse racism. I’m keeping up with them because he is my MySpace friend (the only person listed as both a friend and a person I’d like to meet), proving that MySpace CAN be used for good as well as evil.

I won’t quote his most recent article extensively here, because I want you to read it. But here’s a little taste:

In other words, if voting for a white person because of their race is racism, then so too must be voting for a black person because of theirs. So see, those black Obama boosters are every bit as racist as we are, maybe more so, because they’re breaking his way by about eighty-five percent, while whites are splitting between Obama and Clinton by about fifty-fifty. So if anything, the e-mailer said, it was blacks who were more racist and whites whose voting behavior portended open-mindedness.

Such an argument–which is really the political equivalent of “Why can’t we have white history month, I mean, we have black history month?”–suggests how far we have to go in this nation simply to have a productive dialogue about race, let alone to really conquer racism.

Check out the full article here: http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/Obama2.html and give yourself a pat on the back for keeping up with political critique. Even if you (I) do it on MySpace.

Filed by Chelsea at 9:48 am under General, Social Issues, Politics, Racism
1 Comment

Recently, Devon and I acquired a new vehicle. It was a tough choice between a Scion xD and a Honda Fit; ultimately, the xD won the prize. The choice was unusually hard – a car is not something you want to buy now and regret later. And it’s not like you can just get another car if the first one doesn’t work out. We’re very happy with our little Scion, especially considering that we drove the shopping carpool this afternoon making trips to PetSmart, CostCo, and Trader Joe’s (three people and three cats will be fed for many weeks to come) and we were able to cram all our groceries into the car with no problems.

The timing could have been better – the day we drove it off the lot was the start of a week of snowfall. But aside from that, it’s really the ideal car for us – it’s a hatchback, meaning it’s bigger on the inside than the outside would let on. This is good if you have a ton of groceries or a ton of theatre props. I can’t imagine we’ll ever get a plain old sedan ever again. Also, it gets great gas mileage. It’s not a hybrid, unfortunately, but we’ll still be able to stay away from gas stations more than we were able to before. So, again – we’re both really, really pleased with the car we got.

The decision to get the car was easy enough; without it, Devon would be taking a series of busses to get to Skokie for work. But the decision on which car to get did not come lightly. It was the result of roughly one week of intensive online research (conducted by Devon) into what cars had the best mileage, safety, interior space, warranty, MSRP, etc., etc., etc., followed by about two weeks of searching the ad websites like cars.com, Vehix, and AutoTrader, test driving cars, phone calls to dealerships (conducted by me), and – finally – about a week and a half of waiting for the dealer to search a five-state radius and find us a Scion xD that wasn’t silver or white.

This is about the same length of time it took me to decide on which albums to purchase with an iTunes gift card I had received for Christmas.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 9:39 pm under Social Issues, Pop Culture, The Arts, Politics
8 Comments

Apparently, topping the list of most memorable quotes of 2007 (and thus defining this year in history) is the phrase, “Don’t tase me, bro!”

This angers me, because I never even heard it before today. The fact that the most popular, most year-defining moment came while I wasn’t even looking, and the fact that I completely missed its fifteen minutes of fame, makes me think that all that other stuff I paid attention to was all for naught.

Anyway, the year isn’t over yet. That list doesn’t even include anything (or everything) that George W. Bush said this year.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 1:28 pm under Pop Culture, Damn Hippies, Politics
2 Comments