Author: jamie

quick followups

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

earlier i wrote about a guy who thought an onion article on abortion was real, and wrote a scathing blog about it.

he’s interviewed on salon. it’s a great read.

also, i wrote a couple of days ago about the idiocy of the government’s terrorist target list. turns out that, as a further example of the nuttiness, times square is not on the government’s list of targets. read that in this week’s time magazine.

amazing.

now i’m just waiting for someone to pick up on the india/pakistan story. i have a feeling that, although this is being ignored by the media, it might still pop up to haunt us.

i hope i don’t have to follow up on that one.

world war iii?

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i may just be an alarmist. or a fatalist. or a pessimist. or whatever ist you prefer.

but this article about india and pakistan has me thinking.

the article quotes sources in india as saying that pakistani intelligence is responsible for the recent bombings in mumbai that killed over 200 people.

great. just what the world needs. another region of the world destabilized based on probable conflict between islam and non-islam, which is what this comes down to. there’s suddenly an awful lot of this type of thing going on in a lot of different places all at the same time.

was pakistan involved? is india setting up pakistan as a straw man? does it matter? it matters not. what matters is the perception on both sides, and trust me, if this accusation gains a foothold there’s going to be major friction involving islam in yet another area of the world.

to add to the current issues in iraq.

and israel.

and iran.

and any of a host of other areas of the world. throw north korea into the mix as an unrelated wild card, and i’m now suddenly more nervous about an unstable world than i have been in quite a while, and that’s really saying something.

and, to put it mildly, i’m less than confident in our current government’s ability to navigate the tricky waters that may be ahead.

and, to put it bluntly, i’m less than convinced that our government is not the wizard behind the curtain, pulling levers.

i may just be paranoid. it’s hard to tell anymore.

what’s your brazilname?

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

if you played football (soccer for the u.s. crowd) for brazil, what would your name be?

the brazilian football name generator will tell you.

mine is “howeiro”.

this is much easier than figuring out your drag name, which involves remembering your first pet’s name and the street you grew up on, facts that anyone interested in their drag name has long ago repressed.

with this, you just type in your name, which hopefully you remember and can spell, and voila. or, for the illiterates populating the internets, viola. oh how that “viola” business irritates me.

anyway, generate away.

summer of crap

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i used to read more. i used to accomplish more. i used to tinker more. i used to explore more. i used to move more.

now i just watch tv.

it’s an addiction, you know. and boy am i addicted. and, to be honest, i probably don’t watch any more tv than i ever did. in fact, i probably watch less than i did when i lived in florida, where the year-round heat encourages indoor living and the tv is always there. at least in new york, you are forced by circumstance of living to get out and about every now and then. and so, i think maybe i watch less overall television.

but less is still too much. i have the nagging feeling, whenever i watch tv, that i should be accomplishing something constructive.

but i think this feeling comes more in the summer, when there really is nothing on tv but crap. with the exception of baseball, of course–watching baseball is never a waste of time. but the rest of it? at least in the fall, winter, and spring the tv programs are somewhat well-written, entertaining, and intelligent. lost. 24. desperate housewives. you know, scripted television.

the summer, though, is unscripted. and so last night, thanks to the tivo pvr thingy from the cable company, when there was nothing to watch on the 1000 channels we have, kirk and i could have a mini-“cash cab” marathon. followed by an live episode of “so you think you can dance”. because, of course, there was no baseball game due to it being the all-star break.

now don’t get me wrong. i like spending time with kirk, and i like hanging around the house, and i (at least on some level) like the shows we watch or we wouldn’t be watching them.

maybe this has to do with getting older, and feeling your mortality. but time is starting to really fly by for me, and though i enjoy the relaxing time i spend watching tv, there’s still that nagging feeling that i should be spending my time better. and, because i am at heart a very frugal person, it bugs me that i’m paying outrageous sums of money for 1000 tv channels and there’s nothing on worth watching, and i end up watching the same 6 channels all the time, mostly network tv.

maybe i should just unplug the tv altogether. or maybe i should just get an hdtv with a tuner built in, and drop the cable, and get dsl internet access. we hooked kirk’s mom up to dsl, and if she can use it without incident, i know we can.

i’ll think about all this some more tonight, while i watch the “so you think you can dance” results show.

extremely dangerous amish popcorn

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

apparently we don’t need to worry about protecting assets like “major business and finance operations or critical national telecommunications hubs” from terrorists.

we do, however need to protect old macdonald’s petting zoo, the sweetwater flea market, the mule day parade in columbia, tennessee and the amish country popcorn factory.

sorry. no link to the amish country popcorn site. for some strange reason, the amish country popcorn people have no website.

anyway, the new york times has a great article about this today (free registration required). apparently, the government keeps a list of possible terror targets.

a list on which the government bases homeland security funding for each city and state.

a list which has, for example, 8,591 possible terror targets for indiana, 50% more than new york’s 5,687. which is why new york’s homeland security funds were cut by more than 40% this year, while hotbeds of terrorist activity like louisville and omaha saw their funding increase dramatically.

the times article quotes the department’s deputy press secretary jarrod agen thusly: “we don’t find it embarrassing. The list is a valuable tool.”

odd statement, jarrod agen, given that you apparently are a valueless tool.

how in the world does the government get away with turning the defense of our country into a pork-barrel feeding frenzy for “1,305 casinos, 163 water parks, 159 cruise ships, 244 jails, 3,773 malls, 718 mortuaries and 571 nursing homes”?

infuriating.

national (league) disgrace

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honestly, i think i’m giving up on watching the all-star game. probably not really. i’m sure i’ll watch next year. but right now, i can’t imagine watching it.

it’s an exercise in frustration.

if you missed last night’s game, the american league won 3-2. the national league had a 2-1 lead, in the ninth inning, with two outs and two strikes on the last hitter. and trevor frigging hoffmann, the vaunted san diego closer, couldn’t get the third strike.

he instead gave up a two-run triple to blow the save and lose the game.

there are multiple issues to discuss here. the first, i guess, is that the issue is less that trevor hoffmann blew the save than phil garner (the national league coach) sent in a closer who relies not on powerful fastballs but on offspeed pitches, and then didn’t send in defensive specialists to back him up. miguel cabrera misplayed what should have been the third out. if scott rolen had been in, like he should have been, the game is over and the national league wins.

next up is the inherent stupidity of giving the winner of the all-star game world series home field advantage. the american league, because it doesn’t play real baseball and instead fields the abomination known as the designated hitter, has a built-in advantage because they have a bigger pool of offensive stars from which to pull. i understand that you can’t have the pitchers hitting in the alternate-year national league-based all-star games–the game is for all of the fans and god forbid a yankees fan should be made to watch a pitcher actually play the game as god intended.

but, given that, the american league is always going to have an advantage, and that is unfair. so give world series home field advantage to the team with the best record.

duh.

finally, i’d like to point out to everyone that, but for the mets players on the national league team, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. they provided nearly all of the offense and all of the scoring for the national league. david wright’s home run, and carlos beltran’s double, followed by stealing third, followed by scoring on a wild pitch. and beltran got into scoring position on second base in the bottom of the ninth, against mariano rivera no less, and no one could bring him, the tying run, home.

either wright or beltran would have been the all-star mvp.

should have been.

two outs. two strikes. top of the ninth. one run lead.

aaaaaargh. i’m still fuming.

march together for life

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the onion is a satirical newspaper whose goal is to present satirical content in a straightforward manner, so much so that their articles can be mistaken for real.

mistaken for real, that is, if you are a total idiot who has no concept of what satire is.

which, apparently, is the case with pete, the fellow running “march together for life”, a blog that espouses an anti-abortion perspective. good for him, as long as he isn’t publishing the home addresses of abortion doctors. everyone has an opinion, and with appropriate time-and-place restrictions, everyone should be able to voice their opinions in the forum of their choice.

i’m pro-choice that way, too. blog away, pete.

but realize, too, that the world really will beat a path to your door if you reveal yourself to be a monumental fool. pete, in this case, found an article at the onion site from 1999 entitled “i’m totally psyched about having this abortion”.

and raged about it in his blog, not realizing that the article was satire.

and then tried to justify the lunacy in his follow-up piece.

read the comments. they are priceless. here’s my personal favorite:

“I’m pro life, but sweet Jesus you’re an idiot. For your next post, how about a passionate speech on the need to immediately free Prince Albert from the can?
Boo | 07.08.06 – 12:24 am | # “

when you become so vitriolic and so committed to a cause that you lose your sense of humor when discussing your cause, you run the risk of falling over the precipice of reason into complete illogic and public ridicule. i’ve seen people like this when i worked with animal rights groups.

believe me, idiots like this are on both sides of the political spectrum.

it’s good to bring passion and fervor to your cause.

just don’t forget to bring the humor, perspective, and humility as well.

update: apparently the author removed the comments from the page. they are archived here.

extensive site changes

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i just finished a massive set of changes to the site’s appearance. much better, huh?

what, you don’t notice the changes? wondering what they are?

well, maybe that’s because after implementing them, i decided i didn’t like them and changed things back to the way they were previously. so, unless you happened to visit in the 5 minutes they were live on the site, you’ll never know the difference.

and, anyway, they weren’t so massive. i just added the orange rounded-box bar thingy that’s on the right to the navigation links on the left. but that precipitated other numerous tweaks to get everything looking just right.

and then i decided i didn’t like the orange box on the left, so i changed it back, which didn’t take nearly as long, since i remembered how it was before.

it’s my site. it’s my prerogative.

if you have any constructive criticism of the site, feel free to leave it in the comments. keep in mind my design ethic, which is text-based, dial-up friendly (i try to stay away from slow-loading massive graphics files) and optimized for visually-impaired users.

i love to hear from you. yes, you.

kiki and herb are back!

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

and i have tickets.

in my inbox this morning–an email with a link to discount preview tickets for kiki and herb‘s one month broadway run.

of course i jumped all over it. third row aisle for the performance just before opening night. god am i excited.

i’ve seen kiki and herb perform every show they’ve done since i came to new york, starting (i think i’m remembering correctly) with fez. and we saw their off-broadway gig a number of times, because it was just so damn good. i think kirk may have seen them in other places before that, though. he’ll correct me in the comments if necessary, i hope.

and i had tickets to the infamous sold-out farewell performance at carnegie hall but, in one of the most bone-headed moves i’ve ever committed, i forgot to go.

you can’t imagine how mad at myself i was. i still have my unripped pair of tickets, though. maybe someday i’ll ebay one of them.

kiki and herb are technically a drag cabaret act, though calling them that is like calling frank sinatra a crooner, or calling babe ruth a former big-league pitcher. it completely understates the brilliance of what they do, which transcends drag and is politically, sexually, and psychologically charged. their invented history, which kiki recounts on stage between wildly inappropriate songs and frequent sips on the canadian club, is at once hysterically funny, brilliantly poignant, and morbidly tragic. it’s one of the best performances you’ll ever see, and you should not miss it.

i can hardly wait for this one, which thanks to my google calendar i will not miss.

will not miss.

will not miss.

a fecking bloody mess, it is

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

the lieutenant of inishmore, that is. the play what i saw last night, at the theater i last attended when i saw the play what i wrote.

oh. my. god.

it’s an excellent play, a brilliant play, perhaps even a great play, in the true sense of the word “great”. but it definitely gives fresh meaning to grand guignol.

the plot? a former ira member who is forming a splinter group entrusts his cat to his father’s care. the cat dies. a coverup, and gruesome hilarity, ensues.

but hilarity with a point. it’s a cogent commentary on terrorism, but it’s not a connection you really think about actively until the end of the play, because the play is so well written and so darkly comic that you are wrapped up in the plot and the comedy.

it’s dark, though. really dark. and incredibly bloody, and gory, and shocking, and startling. leave the kids and your squeamish friends at home, or bring them along for added entertainment. i loved every minute. and toward the end of the play is the best line with the most impeccable delivery i’ve seen in a theater in ages. the line, which will mean little or nothing out of context, is “when will it all end?” i laughed so hard i nearly peed a little, and then stopped and saw the other meanings of the phrase, and immediately got the brilliance of the play.

by the end of the play you, like the characters, are completely inured to the violence you have witnessed, and it’s not pretty to recognize that in yourself. but it’s certainly instructive.

this is a farce that joe orton would have killed to have written. well, maybe that’s not the best way to put it. but you get the idea.

i can’t imagine that this season’s best play tony award winner, “the history boys”, is better than this.

but it certainly must have been a safer pick for voters than this.

the evening began with a return visit (for me) and a first visit (for kirk) to rene pujol–fantastic french food that’s not inexpensive but is a great value. i had saucisse chaud avec lentilles (warm garlic sausage with lentil salad) followed by a lightly breaded grouper with saffron risotto; both were excellent. kirk had a smoked salmon salad followed by pork tenderloin with cooked greens and mashed potatoes. i thought the pork tenderloin was the best dish of the evening–perfectly cooked and juicy and tender.

it wasn’t fussy food–it was quality ingredients prepared with expert attention to detail.

it was a great new york night–i just wished it didn’t have to end.

fun touristy saturday

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i know it’s wednesday, but i want to tell you about my day last saturday, because it was so much fun.

i spent most of the day with one of my former students, kim, and her husband glenn and her son matthew. kim was my first yearbook editor when i first took over as adviser, so as you can imagine we have quite a history and i have quite a soft spot for her.

hers was the only book i ever put out the old-fashioned way, on paper with hand-drawn layouts for the printer. the very next year, we switched to pagemaker on the mac, and put out one of the first all-desktop-published yearbooks in the country.

but i’m bragging now, and digressing as well.

kim and her family visited new york last saturday, so i met them and i had a bang-up time, doing all the stuff that resident new yorkers never do. like riding the staten island ferry, eating a coal-fired-oven-baked pizza at john’s, hanging out at toys r us and the hershey store, and just walking around times square, which i normally avoid like the plague.

and though i am so not a “kid person”, her son matthew was cool as all hell. all big wide eyes and questions. and he loved the thin-crust new york pizza, so you know he has good taste. i’d have taken him home, but he was spoken for already.

so now i can not go on the staten island ferry, and not go to times square and such for a few more years. but i’m glad i went last saturday.

i had a blast. who knew. must have been the company.

superman returns

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saw the new superman flick at the imax theater at 67th and broadway. i’m not a huge comic book fan–never was. although i liked me some richie rich and scrooge mcduck when i was very young. but in general, i never got into comic books. so the current fad of making comic books into movies is a bit lost on me. i don’t have a ready-made, built-in love of the characters, so when i go see these movies i’m watching them on their own merits, and judging them accordingly.

kirk told me that the the script was extremely clever with lots of very intelligent throwaway lines (Lois Lane introducing Superman to her new boyfriend: “Richard. Clark. He’s an expert on international affairs.”)

frankly that one went sailing past me. but all the quasi-religious themes i got right away–maybe because that’s where my head is at these days. I wasn’t expecting much and was pleasantly surprised by how good everything was. the movie did a great job with all the Superman mythology–at least, the parts i’m aware of.

all of the movie was in imax, but some of the movie was 3d as well. The 3D was irritating as all hell though. It wasn’t 20 consecutive minutes of 3D–it was 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there. So you were on-with-the-glasses, off-with-the-glasses whenever they flashed icons on the screen. That made it hard to get lost in the movie. the 3D had the same slight double-image problem that they all do for me, and the parts that they chose to make 3d were kind of fast moving, so there was a lot of blur. I’d have preferred all or nothing on the 3d. But the movie looked incredible on the IMAX screen.

the movie did well but did not have outrageously record breaking business over the weekend, but i have a feeling that this movie is going to be around for a while. people all over new york (i noticed after the movie) are wearing superman-logo clothing. i mean tons of people. it’s a bit weird. and the same geeky guys that bring their light sabres to the star wars movies were out in force last night–lots of superman-themed people at the movie. it’s going to build buzz, i think. and have legs, as they say in the business.

If you are a Superman fan (which I’m really not), or even if you just like well-paced, intelligent, fun movies (which I do), this is a must-see in my opinion.

i do not look like anita mui

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whoever the hell she is.

myheritage.com is a cool-ish new (new to me, anyway) geneaology website that has face-recognition software that, i suppose, is supposed to be useful in tracking down just who the hell that person in the back of that old photo is, or something.

but to attract mass amounts of users of the interweb, they let you upload a picture and they compare it to a database of celebrities, so that you know which famous person you resemble.

hypothetically speaking.

here are my results.

i do not look like anita mui. but, having read the title of this blog entry, you already know that.

i also do not look like dolph lundgren. or mustafa sandal, or kareena kapoor, if you ask me.

but i didn’t ask me. i asked myheritage.com–which is, if you ask me, sorely in need of an upgrade to their facial recognition software.

i guess the theory is that, as people upload and compare pictures, the software learns and gets better or something. i certainly hope, though, that some poor schlub doesn’t get told that he looks like jamie howard, queerspace.com’s famous webmaster.

nice try, myheritage. but no cigar from me.

music, back in the day

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

ever wonder why, in your memory, music on vinyl records seemed to sound better than digital cds do today?

assuming, of course, that you are old enough to remember what vinyl sounded like.

as it turns out, you haven’t lost your mind.

it’s not old-fogeyism creeping in, although i find myself saying things like “back when i was young” far too often anymore. there’s a technical reason for it, in addition to the ones you may already know about the wonders of analog and rattle-and-hum.

in an effort to make digital music louder, which is what uninformed consumers who can’t control a volume knob and an equalizer apparently want, labels are mastering music in a way that boosts volume but clips out the highs and lows of the music.

where the detail is. there are physical limitations to all this, and sound detail is lost in the process. there’s an amazing graphic at the linked story which compares the waveforms of a red hot chili peppers song on cd and on vinyl, and that image tells it all.

and, (who knew), some of those crazy younguns like vinyl better anyway.

i may have to go home and listen to my original master recording of pink floyd’s “dark side of the moon”, if i still have it.

pretty cool that vinyl records are on the cutting edge, technologically and socially.

good for the supremes

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the supreme court has blocked president bush from ordering military war crimes trials for detainees at guantanamo bay in cuba. it’s a major blow to his so-called “war on terror” which thus far has caused more worldwide terror than it has stopped, if you ask me.

and the result was 5-3, meaning that even though chief justice roberts sat out the case, his vote either way would not have changed the outcome. too bad justice scalia doesn’t have the same set of ethics as does roberts–scalia, as he’s proven time and again, would never have recused himself even if he should have.

and as i’ve said so many times, the supreme court ends up being an independent institution, no matter how much effort presidents put into stacking the deck in their favor.

those people are independent cusses, and, if you think about their decisions impartially, they get it right nearly all the time.

good for scotus. go scotus.

not colorblind

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well, i am colorblind in that i do not care about the color of the skin of my fellow man/woman and all that politically correct happiness and light.

but i am not colorblind in the physical sense. you can go here and see if you are. i can see all the numbers in the dotty circle things, so i guess i’m ok. and i have better than 20/20 vision, uncorrected. there should be a job for me there somewhere, with my perfect eyesight.

anyway, today i ran across a fascinating link to a reverse colorblindness test. there are pictures there that test the color perception of people without colorblindness. if you are colorblind, you see the “hidden” image right away.

if you aren’t colorblind to some degree, you won’t see the image at all. i didn’t.

i like things like this–things that give you a different perspective on the “normal” take on things. i like that there’s a test that makes the “normal” person understand how a colorblind person feels.

here’s another cool link along those lines–a colorblind webpage filter. you can put in a url and a type of colorblindness, and the site will render the page to show you what that page would look like to a colorblind person.

the internets are a wonderful place, aren’t they?

the national priorities project

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here’s a page that will get you fired up and cranky for sure. at least it got me fired up and cranky.

it’s the national priorities project. there you can, for instance, find out how your tax dollars could be better spent, either nationally or in your area. ever wondered how many cops could get put on the street in your state if bush didn’t waste so much money on “star wars” missile defenses? if so, this is your place.

maybe you are completely happy with the way that the government is collecting and spending your tax dollars. if you are, then don’t bother clicking. but i have a feeling that, no matter what your political persuasion is, you’d be happier if your money was spent more wisely.

and anyway, who the hell is happy with the government? certainly no one i know, republican, democrat, or otherwise.

nothing new at apple

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

the online apple store was closed for an hour or so earlier today.

sending mac fans everywhere into paroxysms of delight. usually this means there’s a new product being sold. was it a new ipod? the video ipod? upgraded computer hardware? something no one had guessed as yet?

unfortunately for them (and me, by proxy) it seems to be nothing more than routine maintenance.

we’re a sad lot sometimes, apple fans are. but when the products are usually so good, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype.