Wait, I think this is a spoof...

But it did take me a minute to realize this isn't the blog of the Prime Minister of Australia.

This was the tip off:

Australia is like the place to be seen now. Like, not only is the President of the world George Bush coming here, so is the President of China, Hu Jintao. They have heaps in common, like they're both Presidents and neither were actually elected. So I rang up George to tell him, and I'm all, "Dude, Hu is coming here!" And he's all, "I give up, who's comin'?" And I'm all, "No, HU is coming!" and he goes, "I said I don't know, who's comin'?" And I go "Hu!" And he goes, "Yeah, I said I don't know, who?" And I go, "Hu's coming!" And he goes, "What? Who is coming? Ya'll gonna tell me?" And I go, "Hu Jintao, the President of China!" And he goes, "Who?"

George is such a kidder. Smart AND a sense of humor. He's so dreamy.

Lord of the Rings Fans Take Heed

I've been slacking on my blog lately due to Real Life Stress, but I always have time for LoTR Gay Slash Art, and LoTR characters' Very Secret Diaries, including that of Ringwraith Number 5, who saeth therein:

Day 1,001,107

V. close to nabbing Ringbearer tonight, but head Nazgul suffered attack of giggles while observing excessive cuddliness of Ringbearer and his three “companions.”

The Global Development Briefing Summary on Bam

IRAN: The oil-rich Gulf states Dec. 29 earmarked $400 million in aid for victims of Iran's earthquake, hours after the United Nations appealed for more money as it began assessing the damage. In Riyadh, Kuwaiti Finance Minister Mahmud Abdel Khaleq al-Nuri said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states had agreed to send the aid. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has pledged to rebuild the historic city of Bam, devastated by an earthquake Dec. 26, reports BBC online. The ayatollah visited the Silk Route city to tell people the Iranian leadership shared their sorrow at the deaths of some 22,000 people. Iranian authorities say tens of thousands of people are desperately in need of food, water and shelter after the most lethal quake in more than a decade. Up to 40,000 people may have been killed, 30,000 injured and 100,000 left homeless, according to a preliminary assessment. Up to 90 percent of all buildings in the city were significantly or totally damaged, a joint U.N. assessment team in Bam on Dec. 27 reported. With temperatures in the area falling below freezing at night, donations of tents and blankets were seen as essential to provide immediate relief.

Click here for the gritty details on the relief efforts from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) is the place to send your donations. E-mail bamdonate@rcs.ir for more information on donating to the work of the IRCS in Bam.

Stalking (and Swilling) Absinthe

I'm typing with some difficulty because of cuts on my fingers from driving my car after the driver's side windows had been broken in (the second break-in within as many months)-- glass and the perp's blood were all over the inside of the car, ew-- but also I'm typing with trouble because of...

Absinthe Distillee "Un Emile" from Pontarlier, France
68% alc. by vol., plus distilled wormwood and green anise.

Here are the descriptions from Absinthe Online:

Plain "Emile 68"-- "Emile Pernot 68 is a premium 68% abv absinthe traditionally made to a 19th century recipe by steeping Grand wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), green anise, fennel and other plants in alcohol and distilling the macerated charge in an absinthe still. "

Sapin-- (slightly greener/ more opaque than the plain) "As with Un Emile 68, this absinthe is made traditionally by steeping Grand wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), green anise, fennel and other plants in alcohol and distilling the macerated charge in an absinthe still. The colour is achieved naturally by soaking plants in the distillate. No oils or artificial colouring have been used and no star anise has been used to enhance the louche."

La Blanche-- "Un Emile 68 'La Blanche' is a clear absinthe made in the style of a Swiss La Bleue. La Bleue is highly sought after and is produced in clandestine stills throughout the Neuchatel region of Switzerland. Unfortunately, because of the illicit nature of the product, the quality and consistency cannot be guaranteed. Un Emile 68 'La Blanche' is the first la Bleue to be made commercially available."

Read "Drinkboy's" article on absinthe, with a link to an article on the history of the drink.

Your Agony

I know this is probably a really well-intentioned person-- and by the looks of his links list probably a refugee from the Islamic World working on getting sexual orientation-based asylum in Canada-- but you just can't imagine the restraint it is taking not to submit some wise-ass question on his "agony form."

Please go here and click on the link to YOUR AGONY (and the ever-lovin' graphic he attached to that thought). Let's see how YOUR self-restraint holds up.

He also has a "Gay & lesbian form" which I'm restraining myself from using.

On a Lighter Note

Reading Dave Barry's blog has many rewards, including a bad poetry conspiracy he launched before his 2003 summer vacation:

the Freemont poetry scheme begins, and


Poetry.com responds.

Bam, Gone

I am grateful to the earthquake that took 20,000 lives and 70,000 homeless only for this: my dear friend M. had already left Bam, two and a half weeks ago. He told me that the place he stayed when he visited Bam was highly recommended on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree message board, because the proprieter Akbar always took people into his guest house as though they were part of his family.

His guest house was destroyed, he lost his son, and reportedly 18 other members of his family. One British tourist died in the guest house. The Bam citadel, carefully restored over the last thirty years, whose tourists were the basis of the local economy, is gone. This rural city, the first inside the border with Pakistan in a wide expanse of desert, has to rebuild from the dust.

Here is Lonely Planet's "The Thorn Tree" news about Akbar in Bam.

The Slacker Stalker Review of "Cowboy Bebop" (2003 theater release)

Well, my late night hours watching Adult Swim and the advice of a slacker friend has led to the renting of "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" on DVD. Here are my thoughts:

Subtitles versus Overdub
I was advised-- on good authority-- to watch it with the English subtitles. At one point in the movie two characters tell the same story in two different conversations, alternating. In overdubbing, the one guy telling the story has a Middle Eastern accent. This is completely lost with the two (to me monotone and almost identical) Japanese voices telling the story, and the subtitles do not convey this artistic device at all-- they totally lost me. There are other places where the subtitles are sketchy, and even one place where I'm convinced they made a mistake, mixing up the names of two characters (Vincent for Spike, i.e. the antagonist and protagonist, a little confusing, yes?). So I'm forced to endorse the low-brow alternative to subtitles: the overdubbing not only gives you more plot information, but the jokes are culturally fine-tuned to actually be a little bit funny. And they deleted the villain's hokey Shakespeare misquote ("to die perchance to dream"), thank god.

Now, the usual breakdown:

The Lesbian Movie Standard (LMS)
Well, sadly, Electra and Faye, the sexy babes in the movie, don't have a scene together. They don't actually even MEET. But the wonderful androgyne hacker girl Edward has a few scenes with Faye where they are discussing (well, as much as Edward can "discuss" in her insane chirp-sing-talk) the facts of the case. This movie exceeds the minimum for the LMS: at least one conversation between two female characters about something other than a man-- a minimum that most US blockbuster movies (ahem, Lord of the Rings, ahem) don't even come close to meeting. This movie is definitely lesbian-friendly. And this lesbionic type can't stop wondering what the hell is holding up Faye's short-shorts-- are those suspenders? And if so, what are they attached to on top? Her nipples?

The Jesus Figure
Of course, Spike Spiegel, the protagonist. But interestingly, also our chaotic ex-army girl Electra! Spike has his near-death experience in the river and some confusing non-plot-promoting pseudo-Native-American weirdness is clearly supposed to be a spiritual enlightenment redemption thingy, making him want to live to be a better person or something. He then seems to "owe a favor" to the antagonist (he repays that favor... by trying to kill him later--?). So that's our one Jesus. But at the climax, Electra is prepared to sacrifice her life to save the world from the dastardliness that is the anti-hero Vincent, and he spares her. She is redeemed. He remembers loving her and says that their time together was the only time he was alive. We have our two Jesuses.

The moral of the story is revealed by Vincent: reality is subjective, and only love makes life real, really really real. Wasn't this the moral of The Matrix too? Oh well, at least the characters are original. OK, Edward is original. Ein, the intelligent (but thankfully NON-TALKING) Welsh Corgi is also original. I love Ein.

OK, this leads us to... (drumroll)...

The Gay Figure
The winner is: Jet! The big-burly-partly-synthetic henchman type who lives in the Bebop, makes sure everyone is fed, and tries to impart wifely/motherly wisdom to Spike (whom he clearly loves - um- like Samwise loves Frodo, if you know what I mean). He is so gay. Gay gay gay. His only action scene (after the opening convenience store heist) is when he yells at Ein for moving a chess piece. Ein whines a little and lowers his head: Jet pets him gently, showing deep remorse for scaring his cute little dog. Gay! The scenes with Jet and Ein and Edward are my favorites.

Except for that neat little bondage sequence with Faye... while she rolls around I could almost see whence those suspenders and what they suspend... but the movie has an R rating and not an NC-17 rating-- the tiny yellow shirt miraculously clings like butter where it touches her skin, and not one suspender button is revealed.

Oh, and a special mention for the opening credits sequence of cityscapes: that could be its own movie, it is so exquisitely rendered and set to music.


Read more about "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" at Metacritic.

More from Dave Barry's Blog

I can't believe this is real, it is so fabulous.

"Barbie would ... be tired of Microsoft's licensing bullshit."

A Light at the End of the Tunnel: Dave Barry Has a Blog

And you can read it HERE. He is also a Blogspot/ Blogger patron, like me.

I am finding this a comfort after a couple of difficult weeks, being continuously sick with a cold I picked up at the end of November, and now treating myself to a $4 Marie Callender's turkey/ cranberry frozen dinner, only to discover that it really is "cranberry," as in ONE CRANBERRY, sliced into thirds, with a lot of instant potatoes and some turkey.

I look forward to taking out my aggressions on wrapping presents tonight.

Haven't You Ever Wondered Who Invented Clumping Cat Litter?

I have. I thought to myself: "this invention has improved my and my cat's life immeasurably, and I think it has been invented in my lifetime!" And I was right, since it was invented in 1976.

So who invented it? William Mallow, about whom I found the following tidbit:

2002 Honorary Unsubscribe Recipients: "4 August 2002's honorary unsubscribe went to William A. Mallow. A polymer chemist at the Southwest Research Institute, Mallow enjoyed working on practical problems. He showed M&M-Mars how to keep peanut butter from gunking up the molds at M&M candy factories. He helped Bette Nesmith Graham (mother of 'The Monkees' guitarist Michael Nesmith) perfect the formula for her invention, 'Liquid Paper'. He consulted on projects from Space Shuttle protective tiles to fake dinosaur skin -- and invented clumping cat litter. Mallow retired from SwRI in 1998, but continued to dabble in materials: most recently, he worked on the 'Mobility Denial System' -- a slippery spray that could be used to disable enemy troops without injuries or deaths. He died July 30 in San Antonio from leukemia. He was 72. "

I, for one, would love to see the videotapes of the practice sessions with the "Mobility Denial System."

According to the CBS News obit the "Mobility Denial" gel spray was due for introduction into use by the US military this year. Why don't we see this kind of footage on CNN? Is the enemy laughing too hard in those shots, as US tanks spin out on their own anti-mobility gel?

All This And Newsom Too

Well, I am almost back to health, and my cat is starting to express her affection in a less clingy way. That's the good news. The bad news is that Gavin Newsom is now mayor of San Francisco, the organization where I work is falling apart (3 people left of the 15 or so we had a year ago), I'm still horribly jetlagged from the two week gallop through the Balkans, I've had about $1500 in unexpected expenses on my car in the last few weeks (a parking ticket, a break-in, a brake & CV joint job), the vacuum cleaner's motor belt broke, and did I mention that Gavin Newsom won the mayorship of the city where I spend most of my time? San Francisco is in for a doozy of a time. That slick, two-faced Republocrat is going to make Willie Brown look like a regular mayor-of-by-for-the-people.

Meanwhile, I have read that the Greeks have the opinion that Macedonians are "violent, boorish, and great drinkers." I had SUCH a bad time with the Greeks, who were at LEAST boorish, while the Macedonians I met were all perfectly reasonable. They have a very, very wrecked economy, and everyone apparently carries guns because the country is so unsafe, but I *STILL* felt Macedonia was more friendly than Greece, to me. Something happened to the Greeks. I think it was the Turks.

Greetings from Sarajevo

I'm sick and really not wanting to be sick. In Sarajevo. The person sitting next to me on the bus was a survivor of the war and told me in Serbian (of which I understood 50%, thankfully not more, it was gruesome) about what she went through. Pointed out where Srebrenica is, where other towns were destroyed (now being rebuilt). I saw some evidence of the destruction still around... bullet holes in house masonry for example. Other than the artillery marks left in the landscape the shape of plain old poverty and war is pretty much the same.

The bus trip took 9 hours instead of the usual 4 1/2 because we rearended a little car and took out its rear windshield just that side of the Serb/ B&H border. It was a long boring event, really.

The bombing mess left by NATO is still untouched/ unreconstructed in Belgrade. It is unnerving to see buildings looking almost as fucked-up as the WTC but fucked up by our bombs and our allies' bombs. One bomb landed near the house I stayed in last night. However, when it fell my friend wasn't awoken. But the Chinese embassy bombing further away woke him. Apparently the Chinese didn't move anything out of the old building into their new building, rumor has it because of the bad feng shui. Accidental bombing-- that's some bad feng shui! They REALLY shouldn't have gotten that extra carp tank.

I leave on a madcap funpacked road trip in a stick shift sedan with four other people down the Montenegrin coast and over to Macedonia via Kosova in two days. Send your SlackerStalker all the safe travel energy you have, stalksters!

Oh, and Slovenija is still a place I will stalk. I ran up to it and gave it a kiss on the cheek this time-- going night swimming at the Portoroz Adriatic seawater spa and sleeping in gorgeous little architectural jewel Piran for one night. The Slovenes are the well-adjusted Slavs. Just imagine it. They are happy people and they are Slavs. If Slav nations were dogs, Slovenes would all be Border Collies. The taxi driver (apparently straight, on his way home to his wife and kids) who took me from the airport in Ljubljana volunteered right after I said I love Slovenija and want to move there that "Slovenija isn't nationalistic or homophobic like other nations." That out-tha-blue comment alone was worth the $35 he charged me for the ride.

OK, off to try and steam this cold out of my head where it got firmly and painfully jammed by the steep mountain ascent I endured today.

The Anal Sandpaper That is a Dissolving Company

So I have been remiss in posting because I've been cramming for the GRE (710 verbal, 630 math, not bad), trying to get ready to be laid off (job fairs, applying for positions, etc.), preparing for this gonzo work-related two-week tour of the Balkans that I'm leaving for in a few hours (Prague, Portoroz/ Piran, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje, Athens), and watching my co-workers one by one get laid off unceremoniously.

I had a strong intuition slap me over the head that my horrible boss will lay off the rest of our office for Christmas, despite her pledge to keep us on until March, because she doesn't want to pay our (mandatory, by personnel policy) time-off between Christmas and New Year's, pay that doesn't come out of earned vacation or personal time. A former boss realized we tended not to take vacations as a staff, so she forced a short vacation every year at the winter holidays. This boss will lay us off rather than pay for three people to rest for four days. She just laid off a friend and co-worker earlier than she had said because she wanted to avoid him earning an extra vacation day in his last few weeks.

So, amidst this painful situation, I have to now go abroad to tout my organization's virtues. Which are mostly the people on staff who are mostly all gone now.

While I'm on the road to these seven different nations I will be checking my blog a little.

Here are some things I might need while I'm racing through the Balkan peninsula:

The Universal Currency Converter
Today the dollar is worth:

26.7 (CZK) koruny in the Czech Republic
198.75 (SIT) tolars in Slovenija
6.444 (HRK) kuna in Croatia
57.607 (YUM)new dinars in Serbia and Montenegro
1.64 (BAM) in convertible marka Bosnia and Hercegovina
51.20 (MKD) denar in Macedonia
and, speaking of anal sandpaper...
0.839 (EUR) Euros in Greece

The Weather Underground/ Wunderground EU Map

The Meeting Planner at Timeanddate.com
(Pacific Time is 9 hours behind Central European Time, although CET TV stations are only now playing Xena reruns that we saw two years ago on Oxygen)

The CNN regional country summary for Bosnia-Hercegovina (with drop-down menu to other local countries)
You remember that war they had there? You should read this summary and see if YOU can figure out how they make any decisions. Conservatives, some whose campaigns were funded by US Republicans, are making gains all over the former republics of Yugoslavija. Pfeah.

See you in December!

Transgender Youths Dress Up Like Prostitutes and Pretend to Be Undercover Vice Cops... Makes Me Almost Love the US Again

"You couldn't put this in a book -- nobody would
believe it."

--New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Nov. 7 after
five transgender students from the Harvey Milk gay
high school were arrested for impersonating undercover
vice cops dressed as female prostitutes and demanding
money, credit cards, ATM cards and PIN codes to let
their victims go free.

(From Rex Wockner's "Quote / Unquote" column)

I'm recovering from my fear of a frozen death-by-mini-ice-age and/or the decline of literacy due to global warming. Now I'm back to just fearing the president.

The ambassador and the general were briefing me
on the—the vast majority of Iraqis want to live
in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people
and we will bring them to justice.

George W. Bush Oct. 27, 2003

You want to know where you can read this quote in its original context-- online? The goddamn US State Department website's transcript of the speech "Progress in Iraq." Read it now before the infamous Bush transcript doctors get to it.

I found it in the sig file of my friend Mamaliz and she's a reliable source. But the State Department had the balls to post the quote, as spoken, and that's extra special.

As Though We Needed Something Else to Worry About

It's been brought to my attention that, although inevitably the earth will be consumed by the sun, and in the meantime lots of crazy space debris is lined up to hit us and cause catastrophic climate change, we have something else to worry about: the sun losing its freckles and giving us an ice age.

Mini though it was, the mini-ice-age from 1645 to 1715 did occur (coinciding with a time when there were hardly any sunspots), and the English Channel did apparently freeze over.

Read more about the Little Ice Age (LIA) known also as (or - for the skeptics- merely coinciding with) the Maunder Minimum, the name given to that period with almost no sunspots. Volcanos also might have been awarded part of the blame, for the ice age, not the missing sun spots. I would prefer to worry about something we have no way of predicting, i.e. the disappearance of sunspots. It's just that much more goth.

I would love to know how the Little Ice Age influenced the emergence of popular English literature in the 18th century. And that, my friends, is why I'm studying for the GRE to go get a practical degree in policy analysis, a degree to keep me off the streets where I would be stalking rare books on the correlation between rare deadly environmental phenomena and social trends, menacing small children with my theories relating the decline of culture and global warming.

Bangkok Beauty

I love the Global Development Briefing, if only for its occasionally priceless quotes.

"We recognize that there are some difficult decisions that have to be made in hosting a conference of this type."

— An unidentified U.S. official, speaking to The Washington Post on measures taken by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to cleanup and secure Bangkok ahead of its hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which started Oct. 21. The government barred thousands of street vendors from the central city, shipped 10,000 homeless people to army camps and banned more than 500 human rights activists from entering the country. About 600 Cambodian beggars, mostly women and children, were rounded up and airlifted back home on C-130 Hercules military aircraft. About 3,000 stray dogs were caught and shipped to the countryside. And a banner four stories high and a quarter-mile long, displaying an image of the Grand Palace royal compound, was erected to conceal a slum.

(Bolds and italics mine.)

So You Think You're Articulate

Try saying "I was born on a pirate ship."

Now hold your tounge while saying it.

Ponder with me now how many sheets a sheet slitter could slit if a sheet slitter could slit sheets at the world's largest multilingual collection of tongue-twisters.

A Break in the Struggle to Understand California

...to marvel at the authors of the City of Oakland website.

"What do I do about rundown and abandoned property?" asks the official City of Oakland website, to which it answers itself with a more specific subcategory of problems:

Code Violations, Lack of Maintenance,
Weeds and Overgrown Vegetarian

...about which I am shocked there is not more concern. I had no idea vegetarians were getting out of control in Oakland. Isn't Berkeley big enough for these people?