AatomBomb

The steam rising from the lower portion of Rock Center is a bit frightening at first.  It's a reminder that skyscrapers are microcosms with their own man-made environments.

St.Valentine'sDay

I hope everyone truly enjoys the "Hallmark" holiday this year, I know it will have special significance for me in light of this kind of medieval shit.

TheBlizzardOf'06

Cars were buried so deep on my road that people had to scrape off parts of random cars to find their own.  The neighborhood boys enjoyed a snowball fight, and I was stuck at home with cabin fever.

But the city was beautiful after the storm cleared.

A decade and a half after the disastrous "This is your brain on drugs...", DrugWar, Inc. finally gets the message right with "Above The Influence".

Aatom unmasked.

Breaking News: Some Catholic priests may be gay.

ViolenceIsTheEnemy

The chilling saga of the 18 year old boy who walked into a gay bar in New Bedford, Mass. and attacked 3 gay men with a gun and a machete has come to a tragic end.  Making a run for it in Arkansas with a female companion, police stopped him for some other reason and then got into a high speed chase when he attempted to flee.  After crashing the car, he shot his companion point blank in the head and then opened fire on the police.  They killed him, but only after he took down one of their men. 

A note that warned of "something violent" led police to hunt him down with urgency.  A makeshift poster with anti-semitic scribbling on it and a homemade coffin greeted investigators in his bedroom, as well as the note. 

Despite the deeply disturbing events described here, you probably won't be surprised to find that Ted Kennedy is using the whole thing as a political tool, pounding the drum for hate crimes legislation once more.  This incident has been officially classified as a hate crime in Mass.  Hate crimes feel good to us, because it appears that society is highlighting the particular injustice of homophobia (or whatever brand of hate we are dealing with at the time.)  I can understand the impulse to want to shine a bright light on something that is so deeply personal and disturbing to us as a group of people.  But chalking this type of thing up to "intolerance" merely whitewashes the complex and chaotic nature of what has happened here.  Hate crime delineation seeks to divine the true motives of a violent criminal, beyond the necessary distinctions of premeditation and the physical extent of the violence itself.  That sets up a layer of bureaucracy specifically concerned with policing our thoughts.  Why this doesn't disturb gay people has always been a complete mystery to me.

Incidents like this, and the Shepard case, are always much more confusing when you know more about them than the latest fundraising letter you just received would have you believe.  The roots of violence are particularly important to understand right now, as Muslims take to the streets chanting for the extermination of everything that doesn't fit narrowly into their harsh perspective.  Limiting our own perspective to the tired, well-worn talking points of gay victimhood doesn't get us any closer to understanding why so many young men around the world think that destruction is the only way to fix their problems. 

Rami says everything that needs to be said about the uproar over the Danish Muslim cartoons.

TheF-Bomb

This story is way too absurd to not be real.  I suppose if your last name means shit anyway, the name change wouldn't bother you. (Thanks to the reliably offensive Rocco for this)

Out of curiousity, I started to wonder what the etymology of the word 'faggot' as a gay slur was.  I knew that the term meant 'bundle of sticks', but had no idea how disturbing the connection was:

In the inquisition of Europe, when witches were being burned, among those sought out for burning were gay people. They were required to gather the very "bundles of sticks" (the real meaning of a faggot) with which they would be burnt. When the faggots (sticks) were running out, gay men were thrown on the fire to keep it going for the witches.

That's right, kids, we were only good enough to keep the flames going for the witches.  I suppose that might have something to do with the idea that we are 'flaming' as well, right?  Get it?  Because they used us as firewood!!  Rimshot!

Anyway, there's your depressing word lesson for the day.  Kind of makes the story above less funny.

Wait, no it doesn't.

BREAKING NEWS: Average Gay Joe points out that my source seems to be peddling a gay urban legend (perhaps looking at more than one Google find would be useful for me in the future.)  It seems unlikely that the gays as kindling story has any legs.  According to Wikipedia, the probable root of the slur is equally as interesting, though (and not so surprising):

It is more likely this use of faggot was originally a derogatory term for street prostitutes, female and male, because they were associated with "the gutter", where "faggot-ends" of meat were thrown by butchers. The term "faggot girls" for prostitutes is attested from the late 19th century. Often perceived still as gender traitors, homosexual men are still often spoken of as "girls," and there were probably a number of male prostitutes at the same time refered to as "faggot boys". In either case, it would be a short leap from "faggot girl" meaning "prostitute" to "faggot" meaning "sodomite"—probably starting with male prostitutes who tend to serve primarily or exclusively male customers.

This doesn't strike me as anything to be particularly ashamed of (a girl's gotta work), so maybe we should reappropriate the term after all.  It also feeds very well into the great conversation I am having with Jack Malebranche over at The Conjecturer about gender identity and homosexuality.