It is clear to me now that when I get home I must move the coat hanger from my picture rail. I find it difficult to countenance my own cruelty in this matter. I am making people unhappy by not doing it/ I’m really sorry, Firda. I will open my psychic floodgates and let you in. [related thought: psychic AIM buddy-lists?]
With a general election fast approaching, it is time to start thinking about how to cast your vote. In previous years, there has always been the threat of another Conservative victory to force you out of your comfortable sofa and out onto the street. This year, that seems rather unlikely, but complacency will result in that horrid little troll as Prime Minister. You know who I mean. In order to facillitate the voting process, I suggest that you go immediately and find out the track record of your local MP at UpMyStreet.com, and then go to tacticalvoter.net to see how you might make your vote count more than normal, without compromising your values and beliefs. The latter site is a must see. [PS Issues of political bias are addressed in the source code.]
Game of the day is Celebrity Battles, the only online arena where battling celebrities can fight to the death. Complete with instantly updated charts showing you who you wouldn’t like to be trapped in a deathmatch with. Currently beating the crap out of all contenders under a purple sky in a dark alien arena is the almighty Patrick Stewart. Let’s get ready to rumble!
I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Readers. Readers, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a TOM 9000 computer.
Revisions and expansions to plasticbag.org, and in direct response to Heather Cirmo (see previous post), I’ve added a section ‘articles‘ in which I plan to place the few pieces I’ve written, including a piece on homophobic bullying in schools. The visibility of gay characters on television may be compromising Christian right-wing morality, but I can say with my hand on my heart that it is averting the suicide of gay teenagers. This is something worth fighting for.
Heather Cirmo works for the ‘Family Research Council’, which is unfortunately another pseudo-scientific organisation that purports to know what’s best for individuals while backing it up with an assortment of near-science that almost continually says something rather different to the message that they want to give out. The latest piece of ridiculous nonsense that they’ve come out with concerns Jack’s kiss on Dawson’s Creek.
And I quote, “Science is inconclusive as to whether youíre born homosexual or whether it’s environmental. But the thousands upon thousands of people whoíve left the homosexual lifestyle demonstrate that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice rather than an inborn characteristic.”
One of the wonderful aspects of this kind of argument is that it only trusts the opinions of those who say that they have ‘changed’ from being gay, while completely ignoring the many hundreds of thousands of other gay people who haven’t. It doesn’t ask what the differences between the two groups of people might be in terms of pressure and or upbringing. It doesn’t have any basis for measuring whether someone is or isn’t gay other than self-declaration. It is, in a word, facetious and insulting to those of us who have battled to carve ourselves out a life under the near continuous snotty glare of those who would continually tell us that our lives are ‘corrupt’, ‘substandard’ or ‘immoral’.
I’m unbelievably flattered that ARC23 should link to me in the ‘good stuff’ section of their site. I suppose that must mean to an extent that I’m doing something right with this bloody site.
I’ve spend some of this afternoon fixing some odds and ends around the shop. For one, there is now a pop-up webcam link above that will give you endless access into my tedious kingdom (on those two or three occasions a year I have it on). Also, I have fixed the Barbelith Recent Posts section at the end of the page – so now the links actually go somewhere on the new board (and its revolting new colours).
The amazing Barbelith colour scheme experiment. So the problem is that I can’t think of a decent colour scheme for the Underground that sums up the aesthetic of fast-paced media-savvy intelligent subversion. And in the process of attempting to change it, I accidentally overwrote the original colour scheme, leaving the site with a decidedly plasticbag.org-ish look and feel. So the question begins: mail me your colour schemes. [Discuss / Requirements]
I was talking to Evil Michael last night about the necessary self-censoring that goes on in weblogs – why I can’t be completely open about Mr Big for one, why I can’t really vent about Max and Peter for two, why I can’t talk about what goes on at work for three. He cut fairly close to home when he said that honesty and freedom to express oneself had to be the aim nonetheless – even if that had to be compromised occasionally.
An occasional flash back to first principles cannot help but be a good thing – it makes you remember the core of the enterprise – which for me has always been to have a place to put stuff down, to empty my head. I found it profoundly useful to be able to do this on screen rather than in real life. To an extent, I’ve lost that ability steadily over the last year and a half. So I’m working on a graduated privacy scheme for plasticbag.org as we speak, whereby I can open it up to certain people and keep it very private from others.