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The Yard, Reviewed

I think it was on a page I removed at some point over the years, but I once mentioned how annoying I found San Franciscans who had a pre-programmed political response to even the most innocuous statements, like “it’s nice outside today” or whatever.

If you mentioned the nice weather, these folks would inevitably launch into a tirade about global warming or the rainforest or corporate-controlled weather media. If you said you were hungry and thinking about lunch, you’d hear all about some famine in sub-Saharan Africa. If you said you were feeling particularly good (or bad) that day, you’d get an unsolicited lecture about disease control in Thailand or the pain of suffering farm animals in Bolivia.

I got one of those responses today, following my relatively benign comments the other day about how I don’t like yard work. I was pretty much informed in no uncertain terms that lawns (and presumably Mark and I, by association) are “evil” and that the very act of our having a landscaped patch of land at all was somehow the precursor to a catastrophe of global proportions.

It pretty much made me want to go out and plant a flowerbed full of non-native plants and then spray at least one can of every aerosol pesticide I could find all over them. If nothing else, it made me appreciate the yard (and my hubby’s work in it) just that much more.

He So Crazy

I don’t really like to do “entertainment news” per se, but I’m wondering if the ADA could be invoked in this case, since Tom Cruise is so clearly suffering from a severe mental handicap.

It’s Just a Number

It strikes me that I’ve been a day behind for the past two or three days. It also strikes me that it’s not worth fixing. Historical accuracy be damned…

Pot. Kettle. Black.

That was kinda funny. I left the TV on in my office and came back into the room a half hour later, just in time to hear Pat Robertson refer to someone else as a “religious fanatic”.

Plants and Interviews

This pair arrived just as I was being interviewed by a reporter from Supermarket News this morning. I wonder if our cohabitation anniversary will be mentioned in the article. Probably not, huh?

Come on. Admit it. This is probably the only website you’ll read all week that’s run by someone who’s been interviewed by Supermarket News. You know it’s true.

By the way, my apologies to anyone who’s tried to use my email form the past week or so. I took it offline temporariliy to thwart a robotic spammer and then forgot to put it back.

Formidable Power

Quoth Rich Tramontozzi, president of the Bears of San Francisco:

“..it’s more of a, ‘We’re here to stay, and we’re only going to get stronger in our cohesion and in our ability to be a formidable power within the gay community.”

This is absolutely the stupidest thing I’ve read all day.

Please don’t assume that I’m slighting da’ bears here. No, my slight is much more universal and is directed at anyone who can speak without irony about becoming — or even wanting to become — “a formidable power within the gay community.”

What a ridiculous notion.

Just what does one do when one is “a formidable power within the gay community?” I envision warring fetishist factions slugging it out in some student council chamber, trying to decide what this year’s uniforms will look like and who gets to be (pardon the expression) the prom queen.

Seriously, against whom would one wield “a formidable power within the gay community?” The editors of The Advocate? The publishers of PlanetOut or Gay.com? The bouncer at the queer bar? Some guy who won’t “friend” you on MySpace?

It all sounds a bit like an episode of “The Young and the Restless” to me. In other words, who the hell cares?

S&M, Boys to Men, Etc.

Unearthed on a photo expedition over the weekend: the tattered remains of Winston-Salem’s first leather bar.

OK, maybe not. But it was found just three blocks from this building, which, ummm, separates the men from the boys:

Downtown Winston-Salem. Your home for unintentional architectural homoeroticism. Or stupid jokes. You be the judge.