Bearcastle Blog. Cerebral Spectroscopy / Nullus pudor est ad meliora transire

Feingold on Marriage Equality

In bits and pieces, I continue to make the case that a political party looking for the support of the liberal majority of American, the Democrats, for example, need to do it not by trying to step carefully around "controversial" issues, hoping to appease everyone (but please no one); but, instead, by standing up and loudly proclaiming their staunch support for liberal principles, civil liberties, and equality for all.

The following is excerpted from a press release, dated 4 April 2006, from Senator Russ Feingold (WI). The release is called Feingold Opposes Discriminatory Amendment: Supports Marriage Equality. It nearly takes my breath away with its and avoidance of wishy-washiness direct, positive statements.

Washington, D.C. – Responding to a question posed at his Kenosha County listening session over the weekend, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold said he strongly opposed the proposed civil unions and marriage ban facing Wisconsin voters this November. He also expressed his support for the right of gays and lesbians to marry.
[…]
“As I said at the Kenosha County listening session, gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry and have access to the same rights, privileges and benefits that straight couples currently enjoy,” Feingold added. “Denying people this basic American right is the kind of discrimination that has no place in our laws, especially in a progressive state like Wisconsin. The time has come to end this discrimination and the politics of divisiveness that has become part of this issue.”

[First seen at Pam's House Blend.]

Posted on April 5, 2006 at 00.10 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All

Mystical Time

Not to harp on the innumeracy thing (although — plug time! — it is part of the mission of Ars Hermeneutica), but I'm a little irritated.

You see, I keep seeing people for the last few days pointing out, in e-mail and on their blogs*, that on 5 April something unusual is going to happen. Namely, the time and date at one moment in the wee hourse will be


01:02:03 04/05/06

"This will never happen again!" is trumpeted along with the observation.

Of course, this is incorrect for two contradictory reasons: 1) it isn't really happening in the first place; and 2) it will happen again.

Dispensing with #2 first, a moment's reflection quickly shows that because only the last two digits of the year are used in the mystical rendering, this "reading" will happen precisely every 100 years, give or take depending on leap seconds or other adjustments; we could say it will happen exactly every 100 nominal years.

Now, for #1. It should come as no surprise that I am always troubled by mystical malarky like this, but I find it more troubling when it is so arbitrary, depending as it does only on accidents of the way we count time and keep track of days.

For most Europeans, the revelation won't make any sense because they tend to write the day number before the month, 05/04/06, so clocks won't get all mystical for them until 4 May. But should the mystical power depend so critically on using only two digits for the date? Oh dear, but 04/05/2006# just doesn't do it, does it? All this without even mentioning the different calendars and years observed by different cultures (China, say, or Orthodox Christians or Jews). Also not to mention that it depends on the fact that we divide the day up into 24 hours, and each hour in 60 minutes of 60 seconds each — like that's natural and deeply meaningful!

I am not, however, totally immune to these accidental coincidences of digits. For instance, I find it useful — as a mnemonic — that Ars Hermeneutica's incorporation was recorded in the Maryland Department of State at 11:11 on 11 November. Surely that must mean something!

———-
* For example, Shakespeare's Sis mentions it here.

# Update added barely one hour before the mystical event here in the Central-Daylight-Time timezone: I just realized with some excitement that if only we more generally used a 24-hour clock and wrote our dates euro-style, we could look forward, in just a couple of months, to 20:06 20/06/2006, which is guaranteed never to happen again with our current Gregorian calendar.

Posted on April 4, 2006 at 19.10 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science

Beard of the Week

Among various blogging traditions one that I've never understood is "Friday Cat Blogging". Iit's not that its origins mystify me, I just don't see the attraction. This may be because I'm not a cat person. Still, the idea of a pointless periodic theme for posting has its attractions.

We're more dog people here at Björnslottet, and so one might leap at the idea of dog blogging. However, to be honest, our greyhounds are really interested in little more than cookies and furry, squeaky toys, so that would probably get old real fast. I could take my inspiration from John Arovosis (at AmericaBlog — see the links) with his Friday orchid blogging, but — alas — we don't have plants that are quite so photogenic, nor so alive.

Instead, I think I will take my inspiration from Avedon Carol's Bra of the Week feature at The Sideshow (see the links). Given my proclivities, I considered weekly shots of beefcake in provocative underwear or tiny nylon or Spandex swimming suits, but I wasn't sure that it would appeal to all four of my regular readers.

Now, it's certainly no secret that I'm attracted to men and, as I've written about elsewhere and will likely write about again, I usually key in first on a man's face, and my attention is invariably drawn first to those men with facial hair of some sort. This has been true for me for as long as I can remember. Thus, it was a revelation for me to discover, in 1992, the gay subculture known as "bears", where beards and body hair are celebrated rather than disparaged. I am not at all upset that facial hair has become popular again in American culture at large.

Behold: the beard of the week! That's it, I thought: the perfect periodic theme for me! I am perennially fascinated by men with beards. Many, many people (particularly older women) seem to think that all men with beards look alike but, as a connoisseur, I recognize that beards come in infinite variety: all sort of growth patterns, colorings, textures, and densities, not to mention the uncountable ways that each wearer may choose to shape his beard. Vive la différence! The man who, in our opinion, does not look better with a beard is exceedingly rare, although it does happen.

I hope we enjoy exploring the beard æsthetic together.

Posted on April 3, 2006 at 15.44 by jns · Permalink · 3 Comments
In: All, Beard of the Week

Today's Word: Vaffanculo

As Radical Russ reminds us, with a lovely photo-montage featuring the images of Republican leaders, the Republicans are the Party of Fuck You ("PoFY"?), or — to use our new vocabularly word, taught to us by that black-robed man with gravitas: Justice Scalia — the Vaffanculo Party.

The name itself is redolent for its constant reminder of hypocrisy: the Vaffanculo Party is the one perennially worried about profanity on the airwaves, outbreaks of which they feel should be heavily fined by the FCC. Well, except when the "fuck you" is uttered by 1) the President when he thinks he's off camera; 2) the Vice-President during debate in a deliberative body (more gravitas); or 3) a Supreme Court Justice in church. In those cases, it's protected speech apparently. That, or else the FCC fines are meant as a "make me stop!" gesture.

I have a bit of a problem, though, with the "vaffanculo" thing, since I'm a gay man and all. It's the same sort of problem I have with calling people "ass hole", as though ass holes are somehow bad things, or with calling people "butt ugly" as a friend used to do, since I often find butts rather on the attractive side. Ah well.

Posted on March 31, 2006 at 14.48 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Splenetics

Progress in Washington [State]

File under "Occasional Progress Despite Lunatic Religious Extremists":

Transgender individuals will now enjoy the same civil-rights protections as other minorities under legislation passed by the Metropolitan King County Council Monday.

The council added gender identity to laws already prohibiting discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations based on sexual orientation, sex, race and religion.

The legislation will protect transsexuals, transvestites and any other individuals with a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth.

[Sharon Pian Chan, "Civil-rights protection OK'd for transgender individuals", Seattle Times, 28 March 2006.]

(First seen at Pam's House Blend.)

Posted on March 29, 2006 at 14.32 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Plus Ca Change...

Old Fartdom

So, I read about this poll about "profanity":

…the AP-Ipsos poll on attitudes about profanity. The results are taken from a poll of 1,001 adults…*

Not surprisingly,

Two-thirds said they think people use profanity more now than they did 20 years ago.

Of course, there's the relativity of what it is that people think is "profane" (which might explain why it is that certain groups reported hearing less "profanity" than others, if they don't think certain expressions are "profane").

Also, it's my contention that every generation, as it grows older, thinks that most everything is getting worse. It's fun to read, say, medieval accounts by middle-aged people (> 25 years old) who think that the lazy, useless younger generation will be the end of civilization.

So, since I know that it's a universal reaction, I try to avoid the instant thought about how the younger generation is taking civilization to hell in a handbasket (a phrase whose origins I still haven't tracked down), and observe their behavior for its interesting features.

But it doesn't always work. One way that I've confirmed that I'm definitely in old fatdom is when I'm stopped at a stoplight and I hear, loudly and through closed windows on both vehicles, some younger person's hip-hop radio playing a song whose lyric was something like (I paraphrase)

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fucking fucker fuck-fuck you!

I suppose I should have been repulsed by the profanity, or tried to understand how it was an eloquent cry of despair or something, but since there was no melody involved (old-fart clue #1) my only thought was that using the same word for noun, verb, adverbs, and whatever wasn't really quite so expressive as the creator might have thought (old-fart clue #2).

———-
* Why 1001 adults? See my discussion about "margin of error".

Posted on March 29, 2006 at 14.02 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Old Fartdom

Bill Moyers on Corruption

We are witnessing a marked turn of events for a nation whose DNA contains the inherent promise of an equal opportunity at “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We were not supposed to be a country where the winners take all. The great progressive struggles in our history were waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich, share in the benefits of a free society. Today, however, the majority of Americans may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a good education for every child, and clean air and water, but there’s no government “of, by, and for the people” to deliver on those aspirations. America is no longer working for all Americans.

How did this happen? By design. For a quarter of a century now a ferocious campaign has been conducted to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual, cultural, and religious frameworks that sustained America’s social contract. The corporate, political, and religious right converged in a movement that for a long time only they understood because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries.

Their economic strategy was to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe for even cheaper labor, and relieve investors of any responsibility for the cost of society. On the weekend before President Bush’s second inauguration, The New York Times described how his first round of tax cuts had already brought our tax code closer to a system under which income on wealth would not be taxed at all and public expenditures would be raised exclusively from salaries and wages.

Their political strategy was to neutralize the independent media, create their own propaganda machine with a partisan press, and flood their coffers with rivers of money from those who stand to benefit from the transfer of public resources to elite control. Along the way they would burden the nation with structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready to retire, systematically stripping government of its capacity, over time, to do little more than wage war and reward privilege.

Their religious strategy was to fuse ideology and theology into a worldview freed of the impurities of compromise, claim for America the status of God’s favored among nations (and therefore beyond political critique or challenge), and demonize their opponents as ungodly and immoral.

At the intersection of these three strategies was money: Big Money.

[excerpt from Bill Moyers, "A Time for Heresy", reproduced at TomPaine.com, 22 March 2006.]

Posted on March 28, 2006 at 14.17 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Common-Place Book

Bush: Being There

Suddenly I'm put in mind of Chauncy Gardener*, the main character in Jerzy Kosinksi's Being There:

Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done.

[Jane Smiley, "Notes for Converts", The Huffinton Post, 22 March 2006.]

—–
*For those who haven't read the book or seen the movie — and it's been years for me, so this isn't the most accurate description — "Gardener", who acquires this name because he was a gardener, was a sweet, docile man of very, very little intelligence, who because a famous and influential person of power entirely because other people projected their own desires and lust for power onto him, seeing in him only what they wanted to see.

Posted on March 22, 2006 at 14.32 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book

The Hysterical Fundamentalist Agenda

Some years back there used to be much more rhetoric from the fundamentalist reactionaries about the "homosexual agenda", a big part of which was that we (i.e., the perverts) were planning to take over the US government. How, I wondered at the, could anyone possibly believe that? After all, who would want the government, and for what conceivable use?*

Well, if only we'd known then what we know now: that the right-wing wackos were already speaking a kind of newspeak in which they projected all of their own nefarious desires onto others. Noticed how Bush always blames somebody of wanting to do something like bust the budget, or kill social security, or ruin senior-citizen health care when he's doing it himself? So, we can easily see that loud accusations that the militant homosexual lobby was trying to take over the government was really a cover for the pathological longings of the right-wing wackos to sieze power. Why? To recruit, of course! If they ran the government, then they could do wonderful things for their god like punish women for having sex and convert all the gays to carefree heterosexuality and make the US the Christian nation they've always believed it to be, so that we can tidy things up and get ready for Jesus, who's on his way.

I begin to feel like a modified Will Rogers: I wish I could say I was making all this stuff up, but all I can do is read the headlines.

All of these skirmishes in the name of morality and against rationalism that have been going on probably for my entire lifetime but which are painfully evident now for what they are, tie together and flow from this same source. We'd like to think — and are often led to think — that they are isolated and separated from each other, so that the women don't rush to the aid of the jews who don't rush to the aid of the blacks who don't rush to the aid of the gays who…, but that's just a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Shakespeare's Sister is understandably irked by those (to use a Bush straw-man construction) who keep demanding more "civil dialogue" in their attempts to proclaim homosexuality an egregious sin to be punished with death. Some of us feel that such hysterical proclamations already go a bit beyond "civil dialogue". And, she sees the connection between the anti-gay actions and the anti-science actions.

I am, as ever, irritated by the subtle implications that this debate [over the "homosexual lifestyle"] comes down to the morality firmly rooted in religion versus immorality rooted in religion’s void. Religion is not the singular source of morality, and so it should not be given special dispensation for its insertion into public debates, as if leaving out religion leaves out morality altogether. Civil dialogue would indeed be great, but in reality, it simply cannot include allowing students to parade around in “Day of Truth” t-shirts, handing out literature about the homosexual agenda, or giving “diversity week” speeches about how the Roman Catholic church thinks homosexuality is wrong. There’s nothing “civil” about any of those things, no matter how politely the shit is shoveled.

Perhaps what bothers me most, however, about this whole thing is the notion that has reared its ugly head in the evolution v. intelligent design fight, too—that religion has just as much place in public schools as science. Religion—and religion only—tells us that homosexuality is an immoral choice. Science tells us that homosexuality is natural and immutable. Public schools are meant to be interested in science, not religion. And as science does not accommodate this debate, neither should our public schools.

—–
*Apparently we needed to take over the government to implement our nefarious plans to recruit children to the homosexual lifestyle: as everyone knows, since we can't reproduce we must recruit!

Posted on March 22, 2006 at 14.06 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Reflections, The Art of Conversation

New Hampshire Still Sane

Pockets of sanity still exist in the midst of fundamentalist hysteria:

CONCORD, N.H. –The New Hampshire House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday against a proposed amendment to the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

The late afternoon vote was 207-125.

[Associated Press, "House votes down proposed amendment to ban gay marriage", Boston Globe, 21 March 2006.]

Posted on March 22, 2006 at 13.37 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Splenetics

Four Treasure Frog

Although the english-language descriptions of the menu selections at our favorite Chinese restaurant (that would be Grace's Fortune, in gracious downtown Bowie, Maryland, USA) are generally idomatic and non-poetic in the way that some creatively translated menus can be, it does have it's moments. Our favorite describes a unique and delicious dish called "Tibetan Lamb", described as lamb with "killer pecans in a saviour mustard sauce." The implication is that it tastes "heavenly", one presumes.

Anyway, all of this is by way of noting a web page*, "May I Take Your Order", that offers up an all-you-can-eat buffet of poetically described dishes from oriental menus. What the food might actually taste like is anybody's guess.

I think I'll have the "Cowboy Leg" with the "Rurality Salad", please, with "Salty Egg Vegetable Sponge Liver Pig Soup" to start. To drink? "Ginger Bumping Milk (hot)" — that is a drink, isn't it?

P.S. I can say from experience: do not attempt to read this page while drinking a carbonated beverage.

—–
*I thank S.W. Anderson for bringing it to my attention.

Posted on March 20, 2006 at 17.13 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Food Stuff, Laughing Matters

Feeling Green

Ahh, St. Patrick's Day, when everyone is Irish — except, of coure, gay people.

Fortunately, the Hibernians have kept the annual St. Pat's Day Parade in New York City pure and safe for straight-only Irish people. Phew. Could have been trouble, too, since, as the parade chairman pointed out, gays are just as dangerous as neo-Nazis and the KKK.

Besides, green isn't really our color, is it? Consider the case of the "Equity Ride" bus, which has been taking a group around to various "Christian" campuses, like Liberty University in Lynchburg, or Lee University in Cleveland. The Equity Riders visit the campuses and talk to students there about gay and lesbian issues. Well, they try to talk, but more often than not the fearless "Christian" leaders — like the Tinky-Winky-fearing Jerry Falwell — keep the students on campus safely away while the Equity Riders are arrested for … well, for something really serious, like worrying people as much as the KKK or neo-Nazis. Pam Spaulding has a nice picture of the phrase "Fags-Mobile" spray-painted in pink on the bus. Much prettier than green.

But — hey! — it's not just neo-Nazis and KKKers and Fags who are dangerous. Speaking of Pam, you might be interested in how the wacky Don Wildmon at the American Family Association is keeping America safe from "Jewish words" — "chutzpah" was the one that got his undies in a bundle.

I can't decide, though, whether all these outcroppings of visible hate* are symptoms or causes; which comes first: inflaming political hate-speech or underground bubblings of fear and hatred in the politicians' constituency?

Either way, I don't feel encouraged when Joe in DC quotes the Great Leader as saying:

"I can stand up here and tell you that we have delivered results for the American people, and we've got an agenda to continue to do so," Bush said.

———-
*A decade or more ago, in times that seemed calmer in comparison to today, outbreaks of anti-gay hysteria were frequently greeted by some in the community with the rationalization that it's better to have the haters out in the open where we can see them rather than hidden away in the dark corners. Presumably these people are feeling today like they're rolling in clover.

Posted on March 17, 2006 at 19.14 by jns · Permalink · 2 Comments
In: All, Splenetics

Garrison Keillor on Liberal Conservatism

The Republican Revolution has gone the way of all flesh. It took over Congress and the White House, horns blew, church bells rang, sailors kissed each other, and what happened? The Republicans led us into a reckless foreign war and steered the economy toward receivership and wielded power as if there were no rules. Democrats are accused of having no new ideas, but Republicans are making some of the old ideas look awfully good, such as constitutional checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, and the notion of realism in foreign affairs and taking actions that serve the national interest. What one might call "conservatism."

[Garrison Keillor, "Day of reckoning for the Current Occupant". Chicago Tribune, 15 March 2006.]

Posted on March 16, 2006 at 14.43 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Common-Place Book

Odd Job Descriptions

Slightly related to the posting a few back about the unusual job title, this tale concerns me and an odd job description.

I don't usually toy with job recruiters — at least not intentionally — but sometimes it comes out that way, although I don't talk to them all that frequently these days. More often than not, rather than being the answer to their dreams, I end up explaining their job descriptions to them with brief and entertaining lectures about engineering disciplines or sub-fields in physics, or just clarifying some vocabulary so they can realize what they are really looking for and not waste their time with candidates who have nothing to do with matching the recruiter's needs. At least I feel like I've helped out even if I didn't get the interview. Alas, none have ever indicated a desire to hire me as a technical-understanding consultant.

Anyway, once I had a recruiter ask me "what would be your perfect job?" Whew! Usually I feel like there are too many "perfect jobs" for me to pin it down to just one, but in a fit of inspiration I said "One that requires a knowledge of partial-differential equations."

You can bet the silence that greeted that response was deafening, and that our conversation didn't last much longer. Of course I was being flippant and a bit impish, but it also is a very precise summary in very few words that captures a good part of my experience as a working physicist. I spent a good number of years doing research in thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, and light-scattering spectroscopy — all fields (if some of you will pardon the pun) governed by partial-differential equations (or "PDEs", as they're often called familiarly).

Sometimes is strikes me as odd because, although I can remember having learned calculus because I remember taking the courses, I cannot remember what it felt like not to know calculus. Althoiugh I can pinpoint the time in my life before which I had no idea what a differential equation was — let along a partial-differential equation — I can't even imagine what it was like not to know. All the concepts have soaked in too deeply. I wonder whether I've lost the empathy that would make it possible to teach calculus to someone else.

There's no moral to this story, really, except perhaps to suggest that if you do run across a job requiring a knowledge of partial-differential equations, you might give me a shout.

Posted on March 16, 2006 at 14.35 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Reflections

Noir Politics

It's been awhile* since I've managed to read Deb Price's column in the Detroit News; shame on me. This latest piece, "Dems treat gays to 'Throwback Mountain' " (Detroit News, 13 March 2006) is a useful reminder of one of those things we know but sometimes forget in the heat of the political campaigns: that most Democrats are happy to take the homos' money but more than a tad uneasy with talking about equality for this group of Americans. We hardly even get the lip service that we used to get, in the Democrats' rush to avoid alienating the hate-filled, fundamentalist minorty that so many assume are the key to winning elections these days. "Can't win unless we win the election first!" is their uncertain and tiresome battle cry.

She goes through the tip of the sell-0ut iceberg: Virgina governor Kaine, who touts his opposition to marriage equality for gays and lesbians; Tennessee's representative Ford, so proud about supporting the constitutional amendment to "protect marriage"; Hillary Clinton, vocal supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act. There're more, of course, since courting the evangelical-reactionary-moral vote is such a hot ticket.

A decade ago, the Democrats had no qualms about driving straight over those of us who're gay when they thought hurting us might help them win votes. Apparently, times haven't really changed — or at least the backward mindset of many political strategists hasn't.

Today's "Throwback Mountain" maneuvering is a sobering reminder that defeating hostile Republicans like Santorum and shifting control to the Democrats wouldn't necessarily usher in a new era of enlightenment.

We've had false dawns before. I swooned when Bill Clinton told gay Americans, "I have a vision, and you are part of it." Then he turned around and signed the military ban and DOMA ["Defense of Marriage" Act].

Heart-breaking betrayals, cold calculations, whispered promises. It's another film noir political year. I've been scolded for revealing that Jack and Ennis didn't ride into the Brokeback sunset together, so I won't give away the ending of this year's real-life thriller — but only because I don't know it.

I do know the national Democratic Party is still taking millions upon millions of gay and gay-friendly voters for granted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: most Americans are most attracted to voting for candidates they see as confident and filled with conviction even if the candidate is wrong — witness the current President — versus candidates they see as spineless, waffling wimps.

Just imagine what a potent combination confidence, conviction, and right could be!
———-
*Wow. Not since "We're Single. Really." almost a year ago.

Posted on March 15, 2006 at 16.54 by jns · Permalink · 4 Comments
In: All, Plus Ca Change..., Splenetics

Unusual Job Titles

Today I saw a job announcement for a position with the following job title:

Malicious Logic Specialist

There are times when I feel fully qualified for such a position.

Posted on March 15, 2006 at 14.10 by jns · Permalink · 2 Comments
In: All, Laughing Matters

Uphold Which?

Then Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, testified [on 1 March 2006, at hearings in the state legislature of Maryland] as to why the amendment [denying marriage equality to gays and lesbians in Maryland] should not be passed.

At the end of his testimony, one of Maryland's most insane ultra-far-rightwingers, republican Senator Nancy Jacobs, stood up and shouted: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"

To which Mr. Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

[reported by Gene Stone, "A Rare Moment of Sense", The Huffington Post, 15 March 2006.]

Happily, the amendment was defeated.

Posted on March 15, 2006 at 13.45 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Common-Place Book

P.D. James on European Legal Philosophy

I found this exchange in P.D. Jame's The Lighthouse (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2005) amusing as well as a useful summary of European legal philosophy.

Miss Holcombe is about to be questioned by the police at her cottage. She and her butler, Roughtwood, are just finishing their Saturday-morning Scrabble game. She has a surfeit of vowels, but feels certain that there is a seven-letter word to be found in her letters.

[Detective Sergeant] Benton-Smith said quietly, "MIOSIS, madam. The third line from the top on the right."

She turned towards him. Taking her interrogatory lift of the eyebrows as an invitation, he moved over to study the board. "If you place it so that the second S is on the double over LACK, you get another twenty-two points for SLACK. Then the M is on the double-letter square for six, and the seven-letter word is also on a double."

Miss Holcombe made the calculations with surprising speed. "Ninety-six in total, plus my two hundred and fifty-three." She turned to Roughtwood. "I think that puts the result beyond cavil. You take the score for your four away, Roughtwood, and what does that leave you with?"

"Two hundred and thirty-nine, madam, but I register an objection. We have never said that help is permissible."

"We've never said it isn't. We play by our own rules. Whatever is not forbidden is allowable. That is in accordance with the sound principle of English law that everything is permissible unless legally prohibited, compared with the practice in mainland Europe, where nothing is permitted unless legally sanctioned."

"In my view, madam, the sergeant has no status in the game. No one asked him to interfere."

Miss Holcombe obviously recognised that the conversation was veering towards an uncomfortable confrontration. Beginning to gather up the tiles an dreplace them in the bag, she said, "All right, we'll take the last score. That still leaves me the winner."

"I'd prefer, madam, for the game to be declared null and void and not recorded in the monthly total."

"All right, since you're being diffiuclt. You don't seem to consider whether I might not very well have found the word myself if the sergeant hadn't interfered. I was close to it."

Roughtwood's silence was eloquent.

Posted on March 9, 2006 at 12.20 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Books, The Art of Conversation

Absurd Theatre

For some reason I don't remember, someone* pointed out this column, "Which Theatre Is the Absurd One?", written by Edward Albee and published in the New York Times on 25 February 1962.

The column is apparently a defense of the creativity and vitality of the modern "avant-garde theatre", but it wanders and never quite makes its point, which is beside my point anyway.

I was fascinated to read this '62 biography of Albee at the bottom of the piece:

Edward Albee is a 33-year-old playwright with several plays to his credit, perhaps the best- known of which is "The Zoo Story." He is at present working on a new play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" for fall production.

What a moment of potential is captured in that paragraph.
———-
*I think it was Arianna Huffington at The Huffington Post.

Posted on March 8, 2006 at 16.50 by jns · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: All, Writing

You've Mistaken Me for a Bigot

Isaac and I, when we're out [if you'll pardon the expression] in public, obviously miss some of the best, cross-cultural moments, probably because you can tell that we're two men together just by looking at us. People assume what they assume and it's mostly true, although no one can tell by looking "who's the woman" in our relationship.*

Although we do sometimes get reactions to our existance, like wives gripping their oblivious husbands' arms even tighther as we pass by, perhaps muttering some sotto voce incantation aimed at preventing instant recruitment of the husbands to the homosexual agenda, we are rarely mistaken for a white and Republican [mixed-gender] couple. Phew.

However, I shouldn't be too hasty. It could be good fun on occasion, as Shakespeare's Sister describes, in reaction to an anecdote that she relates in the same post: "Stumbling into the Twilight Zone at the Home and Patio Show":

It's always interesting living in a conservative area and being part of a straight, white couple who doesn't hate gay people, or people of color, or, you know, liberals. It never ceases to amaze how willingly people who assume you're just like them will put their bigotry on public display. Mr. Shakes and I are regularly assumed to be Christian, Bush-loving bigots who just can't wait to make babies, instead of the godless, deliberately childless, progressive traitors we actually are. Even his Scottish accent, tagging him as being one of those nasty Yur-oh-pee-ans, doesn't seem to cause pause, although that might be because, as we've learned from various comments, people think he's from Texas and that Scotland is part of America.

I think it tells us all we need to know about these people that they would mistake Mr. Shakes' Scottish accent for a Texas accent — the Scottish accent is much, much sexier, although I may simply have imprinted that way because of a crush I once had on a red-headed Scotsman.

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*Just a bit of gay humor for those who don't recognize this as the classification for a whole file cabinet filled with clueless comments and stereotypes.

Posted on March 7, 2006 at 17.44 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Reflections