i gave my niece a joke book
she read the following joke upon opening the book

what does a farmer grow if he works all day and night?

tired.

then she put the book down, turned to me, rolled her eyes, and said, "this book is terrible. i LOVE it!"

i knew she and i were made for each other....

my niece is here!!!!!!

"Queer Eye for Hunt High"
"Gay Guys Know Everything"
(it's true....)

great signwork and advertising techniques! and such an adorable young Gay kid, good4him!

Wanna see our state's governor with long hair, bad lines, and in another crappy movie? Then click here and watch the preview (about mid-way through)...

Media Bias: War hero John Kerry is depicted in a suit and tie.
AWOL coward George Bush, who explicitly refused overseas duty and spent time playing all-day pool volleyball games with "ambitious secretaries" is depicted in military dress uniform.

Bush, the guy who was jerking around, partying, and skipping out on his guard duty, is portrayed clean-cut and in military dress, while Kerry, the guy who fought in Vietnam and was a decorated war hero, is portrayed in a suit and tie, looking like one of the kids on "That '70s Show."
...Bush's photo is in classic black and white -- it has a nostalgic, classy feel to it. And Bush is looking directly into the camera -- which, along with the uniform, gives him an air of authority and assertiveness.
Meanwhile, Kerry's photo is in antiquish browns -- it has a discolored feel to it, especially when juxtaposed with the Bush photo. And Kerry is looking off to the reader's left (!), and even has a slightly shifty look (again, especially when juxtaposed with Bush's slight grin).

So remember when I wrote on here about Army Chaplain James Yee last year? He's the guy that was staffed at Guantanamo amongst the internees and then was accused by the Army of being a terrorist himself and thrown into solitary confinement for two and a half months and threatened with the death penalty. And then, when I wrote about him back in November, suddenly all the charges were dropped because the government's case involved 'national security' or whatnot and then the government charged him with adultery and downloading porno. Well, here we are again. And the judge has ruled that those charges are over now too and he's not currently charged with anything, been sent to be with his family, has $100,000 worth of legal bills, and has been given an order from the military that he cannot talk about anything on the case with the media.

Well, now what? This poor guy has been run through the ringer, held in a solitary brig for around 75 days, had his personal life and career ruined publicly, had his own sense of decency destroyed publicly, has $100,000 in legal bills, has to keep quiet by order of the military, is to be put back on duty with the Army, and the government just says 'ooops, sorry.' Except that's the thing, the government isn't even saying 'sorry.' They're refusing to admit they made a mistake. And they don't want to talk about it or have him talk about it because it's a huge embarassment for them.

Where's the media on this story? Where's the interviews and follow-up and national outrage? Nowhere. Except in the Asian-American press. They are all over this, just like a few years ago with Dr. Wen Ho Lee and his similar destruction by our government. It once again raising the question for the Asian-American community of 'when are they seen are real Americans and not foreigners' no matter how much they live, breathe, work for, devote to, pay taxes to, give blood to, and love their country. And when will this racial profiling of Asian-Americans in the military and government service stop?

Just a terrible, terrible story to hear about and witness. The only positive note of all of it is that he is free and out of jail now and with his family.

John Waters fan?
...somehow I made a family thing, which is maybe the most perverse thing I've ever done in my career

while i am not at the national march for women's lives in washington, dc today, i am there in spirit and thinking of my sisters and brothers who are doing the good work and making a powerful noise today to keep our freedoms

Earlier this week I took in a documentary at the SF International Film Festival on the quixotic presidential bid of Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to seriously run for the White House. Fascinating historical piece with much resonance for today. Honestly, as much as I admire her and agree with much of her stances, from what I could glean from the movie which was actually more about the journey rather than the issues in-depth, I probably wouldn't have supported her back in '72 either for the simple reason that I am a much more practical liberal Democrat than reality allows. Doesn't mean I don't love what she was saying and representing, and it does make me wonder at what point in time will it be 'practical' for an African American woman to have a real shot to be president. Can we imagine an America where that's real?

November can't come soon enough.

why did the church smell so bad?


cuz it was pew-y

i'd post it on my page, but i'm sure i'd ruin the image, so i'll just give you the link:
http://photomatt.net/archives/2004/04/07/mosaic/
check it out and then click on it again to see it more clearly....

still haven't forgotten about my
this is my family, series
and i have more to post, but just been waiting for the right time. and here we go with another

This is my family, series
This is my cat

Crazy wonderful
Loves me like crazy
Hates everyone else
Tells them so
Hisses and growls and swats and attacks and scratches without care
Sometimes i have to close her off in the kitchen when guests are here
Took me a long time for her to stop scratching me
She still does every once in a while
Yeah, i know
But then there's the normal times when she loves
And protects
And purrs
And rolls over, shows her belly, and says she loves me
And she licks my head at night
Yeah, i know
But it's really adorable
She walks on my head in the middle of the night, purrs, and licks my head
Until i push her away
Because i'm sleeping and it's kinda strange
But she's strange and crazy
In a wonderful way
Covers up her food with a rug
Not sure why
Eats by putting her nose under the rug
And then covers the food up again
Not afraid of water and jumps into the bathwater before its drained
Sometimes drinks the dirty water
Yeah, i know
But what to do
Drinks the sink water sometimes too
She's crazy
Steals my computer chair all the time
Sometimes when i've only gotten up for a second
Drives me nuts
Constantly protects the house from the birds outside the windows
Got rid of my mouse problem quickly by killing 4 in a week
Ate one of the mice whole
Even the tail
Yeah, i know
Crunch, crunch went the bones at 3am
I tried to stop her, but what to do
She's a cat
I wonder if she was abused before i got her, or feral, because she doesn't like anyone at all and really shows it
But she's perfect for me and my own crazy psychotic life
She's like the bad boyfriend that all your friends hate and wonder why you're with but that only you see the quiet times where there's love and beauty and you try and tell your friends about but they never see it
Yeah, like that
Which is perfect for me because that's the type of boyfriends i usually attract
And that's not good for a boyfriend
But for a cat, it'll do
And she sleeps with me
Although sometimes she chooses the closet over me, but sometimes boyfriends do that too
Puts up with my loud times and my quiet times and my sporadic love moments
Gives me an excuse to talk to myself, as long as its in the form of talking to her
I named her "amaya" which means "night rain" in japanese
Come to think of it, "night rain" kinda fits this crazy cat pretty well actually
Runs from me
Comes to me
Rubs against me
Meows sadly when I'm leaving
Plays with me, always wants to play
Loves me, loves me, loves me
And i love her
This is my cat

Flag-draped coffins are secured inside a cargo plane on April 7 at Kuwait International Airport. Military and civilian crews take great care with the remains of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. Soldiers form an honor guard and say a prayer as, almost nightly, coffins are loaded for the trip home.... Since the 1991 Gulf War, photographs of coffins as they return to the United States have been tightly restricted. And few such photographs have been published during the conflict in Iraq.

oftentimes i just let the day take me
i don't know where exactly i'm going
i just follow the fates

yesterday, it was a most beautiful day
with a wonderful strong wind
i love wind
i really do
it's one of the reasons i love it here
anyway, i walked for a while, talking with my grandma
and then i saw just a slice of the bay down the street
and i knew i needed to head down there
and then, to show me that's what i should do
the bus came right then
and i rode it to the bay
and i got some coffee
and i sat on a park bench near the beach
and i enjoyed the view
and soaked up the wind
then i decided i'd ride the bus to the gym
and it came right away
and i rode the bus to the gym
and i worked out and showered and dressed
and then i rode another bus to the castro
because the bus was there
and then i meandered around
and decided i was hungry
and had a burrito
and meandered around
and spent a few hours in a cafe reading my various papers
when my paper reading was over, i meandered around some more
and a friend called
and i talked with him for a while
when suddenly another friend walked by
and i ended up hanging out with him for hours after

i had no idea any of that would happen upon waking that morning

today, i planned to head over to my sunday coffee shop
the one i go to on sundays because my usual coffeeshop is packed on the weekends
and i can get a really big cup of coffee to go with the large sunday paper that i buy from a newsstand near there
and i bought my paper
and then i was about to head into the sunday coffeeshop when i stopped
and then i heard the bus
and then i thought
how about heading down the street instead
and then i got on the bus
and i went to another cafe where they make great crepes and potatoes
and i sat there for hours reading and eating and having coffee
and then i thought i'd go to a movie or something
but then jessie called
and i ended up at another coffeeshop reading some more
and then i said to jessie
hey why don't we go play racquetball
and he said ok
and we did for a couple of hours
and then we went back to his place where chris was kind enough to make us dinner
and we watched television for a while
and then i made a late-night visit to the store
and headed home to my cat
who missed me

again, i had no idea what i was going to do upon waking

i like following where the day takes you

and i love letting the roar of a bus make a decision for me sometimes too

i like frogs

what an idiot:
Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

"Bin Laden planning multiple operations"
"Bin Laden network's plans advancing"
"Bin Laden threats are real"
"Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US"

By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," [Bush and Cheney and Rice] had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions.

I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer... But it hasn't yet.
this is the leader of the 'free world'

taking war profiteering to a whole new level....

so i went to the monthly meeting of the GLBT Democratic Club where i'm now doing the newsletter. this was the first meeting after my second edition had come out, and more people had seen the first and second now, and more people had a sense of what i was doing with it, and, well, i got lots of kudos tonight. everyone was raving about it to me. it made me smile and have that 'aw, shucks' feeling one has. anyway, i'm enjoying the endeavor and finding it rather fun. feel free to see the first edition and the second edition (which is more in the direction of where i want to go with it) via those links now that they're on the web. (for those of you regular readers of mine, you're gonna see some things that are similar to stuff you've seen on here before, but i've always believed that if you're gonna plagiarize from someone it might as well be from yourself)

some years you wait til the last minute to do your taxes

and then, some years you wait til the last minute to do your taxes

but then there's those other years when you
wait til the last minute to do your taxes

this would be one of those other years
i can't believe i spent 4 hours on them today. so much time...

Had a dream about a wolf living in my family's basement. Should that mean something?

i happened to catch the beginning of that terribly new 'reality' show about 'ugly' women turning themselves into 'beauties' by allowing fox broadcasting to surgerize them. i couldn't watch more than a few minutes without screaming and ranting, but the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, was the way fox was trying to ameliorate themselves by providing therapists for each of the contestants. all the doctors and the host would sit around and think it was terribly sad how the women felt so bad about themselves, and how they needed to spend some time with the shrink so they could feel better about themselves, of course, only during breaks from major surgery, cardio & weight lifting, and dental surgeries, all of which are to help them not be the person who they are anymore because that's 'ugly.' sick, just sick. if it wasn't for television shows like this one and the media and the advertising industry and hollywood and the diet industry and our gluttonous culture and sexism towards women and on and on and on, well, people wouldn't feel so bad about being themselves in the first place! i hate that new show on fox. just disgusting.

It is hardly a coincidence that World War II had broad bipartisan support and the Iraq war didn't. The reason is that, unlike FDR, George Bush cynically began using 9/11 as a partisan cudgel almost from the very beginning. If, instead, he had genuinely reached out to his opponents and treated 9/11 as an opportunity to unite the entire nation, things today would be very different indeed. Treating 9/11 as just another way to hammer his political opponents was an act of unsurpassed callowness, the response of a man who is congenitally unable to view anything except in terms of smallminded partisan advantage. Instead of using 9/11 as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unite the nation, George Bush viewed it as a way to pick up a few seats in the House. It is this, more than any other single thing, that I most hold against him.

Ralph Nader once said that your best teacher is your last mistake. Too many of us learned the consequences of not standing together four years ago. This November, we can elect a president who fights for average Americans. But we can achieve this goal only if we join together — and don't repeat our last mistake.-- Governor Howard Dean

...it costs $16,800 a year to serve and house a kid in LEASE -- compared to $23,000 to put that same kid in a shelter, $60,000 to put him in jail, or $54,000 to put him in a hospital. "What better investment can you make for the future?"
this is my youth center that i volunteered with last summer. when i figure out my job/life situation again, i'll be back. they're a great group

you like me, you really like me...:
Gays and lesbians have experienced a dramatic rise in acceptance over the last two decades...
now, just one more thing:

give me my equal rights.

I'm sitting in a coffeeshop blogging this from my phone. Reading the sunday paper. So many things to say and blog about today's news. There's a hippie white guy with long dreads rolled up in a bandana and a band and he's got a john kerry button on his tattered jean jacket. I can't help but think that 4 years ago he would've had a nader button on. And that makes me feel, and the news of today makes me feel, that we can really defeat bush this november. The left, and the democrats, and the progressives, and now even many in the middle are starting to band together in simple opposition to the destructive bush administration. And feeling this coalescence strengthens me and makes me smile.

Plenty of people in Washington had their "hair on fire" about the terror threat in the summer of 2001. But not Bush, apparently. On Aug. 4, he went off on a working vacation to his ranch in Texas.

George Bush and the Republicans in Washington today have run the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of this country-- Senator John Kerry

oh, and if i didn't have to worry about money, one of the things that i would do is ride around san francisco in this:

"Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States."
translated by rice and bush and the rest of the bush administration during August of 2001:

"Bin Laden Was Historically Determined to Attack Inside the United States, But Not Anymore and All His Operatives in the US Probably Went Home to Iraq. Go on Vacation Now, Mr. President."

... Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes...
the sad thing is that this doesn't seem as shocking as it should be. it reads like it's new news, but it feels like it's something we've always known.

which brings me to another point entirely: bush went to war with Iraq on the flimsiest (if existing at all) of evidence, but bush couldn't listen to real evidence and real warnings all around him, surrounding him and his administration, to prepare us for a real attack in our own country? seems like he was only paying attention to what he wanted to, and disregarded everything else.
much like everything else he's done the last four years....
he should be tried for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' and impeached. there, i said it. and at the very least, voted out of office. how many lives (from 9/11 to the inexcusable war on Iraq to what's next???) are dead on his watch? how many? unforgivable.

whoa, right out of a 70's television horror movie of the week
except of course for the 'killer' part....

When Rice arrived, the room fell nearly silent but for cameras clicking like crickets. She strode in erect and sure, wearing a tan suit, matching pumps and gold earrings.
Can someone tell me why the reporter is talking about her outfit? Reporters don't talk about the suits that men wear; this is an ongoing sexist tradition of taking women leaders and reducing them to how they look and I had thought we were passed this kind of sexist reporting in 2004, especially in the New York Times.

it's been a year now, since i made the decision and declared that i needed to quit my job. was it the right thing to do? yes. am i better off? yes. do have my money situation worked out yet? not at all. do i worry sometimes? yes. am i happier? yes. will i get my money situation worked out? yes. will i be happier in the long run? yes.
kinda weird to think it's been a year now.
(p.s. haven't had to sleep on Jessie/Chris's couch yet! but, um, who knows what the future brings...)

"Condi Lousy: Why Rice is a bad national security adviser":
taking "not my job" to a whole new level....

It is staggeringly clear that the administration has no effective plan to cope with the aftermath of the war and the functional collapse of Iraq

there's an old political saying that goes something like this

when your opposition is in the middle of imploding and/or destroying themselves, don't get in the way

that may be why i haven't had much to say about the whole 9/11 commission, rice testimony, bush declining approval ratings, the iraq war imploding/exploding/destroying/confounding, and general growing disapproval of bush

i mean, there's lots to say, but, well, what else is there to say about it all....

this isn't the end of it all, but it's the beginning of the end, and that's all there is to say about it all right now

Fighting stem cells, not terror cells
Weeks before 9/11, the president was "consumed" by a pressing policy matter -- but it wasn't al-Qaida.

update on my last post
when i said 'parties,' in my mind i was thinking of more like parties for a cause, like fundraisers, where i could afford to go and support a good cause or something, and that's something i would probably do, even though they usually bore me, but the idea of supporting causes makes me happy
and on that note, i know i would definitely spend more time volunteering at youth centers, for political and social causes, and maybe, just maybe i might find some type of art outlet (whatever that might be)

if you didn't have to worry about money, what would you do differently in life? not, what would you own... but what would you do differently in your life?

the nice thing, and kinda scary thing, for me is that i mostly would do what i do now. oh, sure, i might travel more, or maybe attend more 'parties' but i don't really like parties and i don't really like to fly (although first class would help the issue of that some), but i pretty much think that i would still live in san francisco, i would still wake up and have coffee and read the paper, and i would still kinda wonder what else there is to do. maybe i would do more, but it's hard to say....

i was standing at the counter of kinko's tonight, waiting for the copy-guy to finish folding my newsletter (the one i mentioned where i'm the editor for the Gay Democratic group here in san francisco) and i suddenly had a flashback

it was 1990, i had just formed the new group on campus, the Gay & Lesbian Student Alliance (GLSA) at UMKC. i had gone to the university copy-shop and asked to have some copies made. the woman behind the counter looked at the flyer, looked at me, and then said she wouldn't make the copies because she was a 'christian.'


whoa.

she eventually made our copies, and from then on did so as well, because we complained and her bosses made her do her job. and that's all we wanted-- copies. pretty simple. copies. and yet i was initially denied copies because of whatever she seemed to think about me as a person.

flash back to today. i'm standing at the counter at kinko's in san francisco, an openly gay man in an openly gay town, and realizing how far i'd come and we'd come.
but then again, i live in san francisco because i don't have to think about this kind of crap as much anymore

but i definitely will remember

can someone please explain to me why/how Bush gets away with tarnishing Kerry with the 'flip/flop' label (whatever the label means anyway) and no one calls him on his own issues of 'flip/flopping'?
...Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief

well, so, i finally go this match.com test to work (it took me three tries because it kept kicking me out! i think it was trying to tell me something about the fact that i have no hope with men...) anyway, here's the results it gave me for the guy that is "my type":
my only problem with this guy coming out in the test as the guy who is 'my type' is that he looks half-asleep. wake up and smile and enjoy the day!
here's the guy they told me was "my unique":
my problem with this is that i don't think i ever picked him. but he is kinda cute and i'd date him.

and here's the guy they told me was "my maybe" (which isn't a maybe for me at all, i think he's totally HOT, but this was a 'maybe' in the sense that i didn't think would be attracted to me):
my problem with the 'maybe' term was that it made it sound like I wasn't sure. i'm definitely sure he's hot.
anyway, they got it sorta right. i tended to pick the guys of african-american or asian-american backgrounds. although i leaned towards other african-american guys than the one in my 'unique' category-- like these guys i thought were particularly cute:

and these were a couple other asian-american guys i thought were really cute:
and for those of you wondering, i did pick many a white guy, but i guess i just mostly like darker features is all. for instance, i thought this white guy was very cute (it's the same guy, right? they all look alike to me):
but whatever, these guys were just the samples in the test and don't mean they are exactly who i would go for. they don't know everything. it's only a test.
and the good news is of the "10,000 men in your age group who have taken the test, about 27% are attracted to the same types you are" with only 6% of that very much so. less competition for me then!

many of you, my regular readers, will remember my post on February 20th regarding my great concern and sadness related to Senator Barbara Boxer's choice of words on same-sex marriage

well, i am pleased to report that she has changed her stance and is back in support of full gay equality. below is her statement, released this week:

"I support full equality for all couples, regardless of the gender of the individuals. I believe that both different sex and same-sex couples should have the same rights, protections, and benefits as well as the same responsibilities under state and federal law. I understand that current California law does not provide the full equality I initially thought it did."-- Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat-California)

wonderful, supportive language, and i take personal pride in that i helped get her to say this. there were many involved in getting her to restate her position, many more powerful and vocal than i, but i did have my own conversations with her office over the last month, many in-depth conversations explaining the hurt and anger she had caused with her initial statements, and i feel great that in the end she came around and is now saying the right things. so, in relation to my post a month ago about taking the boxer button of my bag, well it's back on now. and we gotta work harder than ever to re-elect her this november to the u.s. senate! she is definitely on our side. :-)

reason #2045 on why i can't watch most television any more:
Whenever a reality television series is so repulsive in its premise or execution that normally wise people believe that we, as a society, have hit bottom, there's only one thing to say in response if you know anything at all about television: Wait for it. Something far worse is around the corner.... the lure of reality gone ever uglier is even greater. So don't be quick to claim that we've hit bottom. Because television has a penchant for free-falling past your lowest expectations.

Thoughts from my daily calendar, "Moving Forward, Keeping Still: The Gateway to Eastern Wisdom":

"The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words? He is the one I would like to talk to."-- Chuang Tzu