Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Did you hear something?"
¤ Usage: *cats crash through the room engaged in noisy mortal combat*
Flux: "Did you hear something?"
Malaya: "Nope."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Notes: This one is a little game Malaya and I play where in one of the cats makes a loud or pathetic noise, and I ask if she heard it, and she says no.  Dusty used to be the cause of this, with his frequently yowling or noisy/clumsy TV-mounting attempts, but now that we have two cats who frequently chase each other around and make a lot of noise doing it, the saying is more all purpose.

Over the months it's become ritualized to the point that any time we hear any loud, interrupting noise, at home or elsewhere, I can say, "Did you..." and she'll immediately reply, "Nope." -- January 14, 2004

What I have instead is a variety of news items, and then some Valentine's Day stuff down below, personal and news-related.

Me, apparently, since I'm only posting one of the three he sent.  They were all captures of the text-intensive portions of the impossibly-catchy Kenya toon I posted a few days ago.  Yes, that one with the oh-so-cute dancing lions and tigers. 

The toon requires some speed reading on some of the larger pop ups, especially this one. The other two shots C sent are of the Kenya map and the Kenya metaphorically peeing on Norway, but I figure you can read those in the time the cartoon allots for them on your own.  And if not, it will be a valuable learning experience, the primary lesson of which is that you can't read very quickly.

¤ Here's a news item that's almost impossible to blog about, especially in my usual joking and sarcastic and cruel fashion, without sounding racist, homophobic, or both. So I'll just quote from the article, at least to start.

A sudden, surprising increase in HIV infections has been discovered among male black college students in North Carolina, and officials fear the same is probably happening across the South.

The upsurge is driven by young men having risky sexual encounters with other men. Typically they do not consider themselves to be gay or bisexual and may even have girlfriends, as well.

It might be just as common for white guys, brown guys, yellow guys, etc, but if so I've never heard about it. What I do hear about all the time in various articles about gay issues, or HIV issues, is that tons of black men engage in all sorts of gay sex, but don't consider themselves gay, and pretend that since they aren't gay and are still doing women, they don't need to wear protection when they're with another man.

I don't have much of a theory about this.  Neither about why black guys do this gay stuff and tell themselves that they're not gay, nor about why they don't at least use protection when they do.  And this article isn't about Jerry Springer/Maury Povich guests, the loser types with no job or future who don't have anything to brighten their days with other than alcohol, drugs, and sex.  These are college students, men with some income, some life stability, and bright futures.  How can they not know better?

I suppose part of the no-condom stuff is that it's no fun, but also that they feel like if they come prepared with a rubber, it's like maybe they really are gay, since they're thinking about it in advance.  They probably just do some sort of rationalization like, "I was drunk and horny and my girl was out of town and one thing led to another, but I ain't gay!" and that makes it all better.  Aside from the HIV they got with their hot beef injection.

Leone said HIV appears to have been recently introduced among black college students. People are much more likely than usual to pass on the virus through sex during their first weeks of infection, and this might explain why so many students have caught it.

This is the scary part to me. Lots of small communities think "Well, no one here has AIDS, so we can all fuck freely without worry."  Guess what; it just takes one person to go outside the community and bring a disease in, and everyone will get it before any symptoms show up.

When the students were questioned, three-quarters said they thought they were not at high risk of HIV, despite frequent anal intercourse without condoms with different male partners.

The denial these guys practice is not at all uncommon for young men/people either.  Denial about being gay, as well as denial about their high risk behavior. I did much the same thing around that age, as do most men in their teens and early twenties.  I'm just lucky that my idiocy was about driving way too fast and risking my life in a car, rather than fucking strangers out of boredom and loneliness. 

¤ Remember all of those Satanic panic stories from the 80s, when crazy psychiatrists convinced people that they had repressed memories, and that their children had been tortured and sold for Satanic sex, or abused for kiddy porn, or that vast conspiracies of Satan worshipers were ruling the world?  No?  I hardly do either, but a few court cases related to them are still going on.

Rush North Shore Medical Center psychiatrist Bennett Braun and psychologist Roberta Sachs paid a northwest suburban woman $7.5 million to settle her claim that they brainwashed her into believing she was a member of a cult and needed to be sterilized so she would not bear any more babies to be sacrificed for the cult.

The truth is that Elizabeth Gale, 52, never had any children. She was just a woman with mild depression who surrendered herself to the care of Braun in 1986.

"At the time, Dr. Braun and his team were recognized national experts in multiple personality syndrome, recovery of repressed memories of childhood abuse, etc.," said Mary Ellen Busch, attorney for Rush, which denies the charges. "Over the last 10 years, the methods by which repressed memories were recovered have become very controversial."

So just what did they tell the woman she'd been doing?

Braun and Sachs "convinced Ms. Gale she had dozens of different personalities which had been created as a result of the horrific trauma they told her she suffered as a child," said her attorney, Todd Smith of Power Rogers & Smith. Smith takes over this summer as president of the American Trial Lawyers Association.

He said Braun and Sachs "convinced Ms. Gale she was a member of a worldwide secret ... satanic cult ... that Ms. Gale was a 'breeder' for the cult and that she had sacrificed her previous children, when she in fact had never had children," Smith said. Braun and Sachs "instructed Ms. Gale to undergo a tubal ligation to avoid further 'cult pregnancies.' She did so in May of 1991."

They persuaded Gale to abandon her family, change her name more than once, quit her job and sell all her possessions to stay a step ahead of the alleged "cult," Smith said.

Their strategy with Gale mirrored the approach they took with Patricia Burgus, with whom many of the same defendants settled for $10.6 million in 1997, Smith said. Braun had Burgus convinced she was "high priestess" of the alleged cult.

Neither Braun nor Sachs has ever been criminally charged for their actions with Gale, Burgess or other patients in their repressed memory therapy. A federal prosecutor in Houston filed fraud charges against a colleague of theirs in Texas but did not secure a conviction.

I think the most outrageous part is that not only didn't the "doctors" get sent to prison, they didn't even lose their medical licenses.  They got kicked out of the state, but both are still practicing in America.  Now there's a pair of shrinks to stay away from.

Go in depressed, come out insane.  That's not quite how it's supposed to work.

Last year I posted a bunch of amusing candy hearts with dirty messages on them, sort of inspired by the Bittersweets they peddle from Despair.com.  You see one of them here, but since I'd already done that joke, I wasn't motivated to do it again.  I also wrote a v-day story for the d2 site then, and used candy hearts as part of the main joke in it, which was what got me in the mood to make more of them for here.

Just looking at that update now, there's a link to this funny SFGate article about the origins of V-day, AKA Lupercalia, back before it was the cupid-infested, saccharine, Hallmark-safe holiday it's become in modern America.

Hot pagan sex and lustful gods and ancient wolf goddesses and potential marriage and more sex and more than a little crazed giddy divine animal blood sacrifice.

All followed by some nice light whippings administered by nearly naked grinning boy-men, casual flagellations by goat-skin, some joyful thrashing in the name of fertility and purity and, you know, sex. Ahh, Valentine's Day.

Last year's V-day blog was also interesting since I prepared it shortly after Malaya and I started talking regularly over ICQ, and it was a fun bonding exercise.  I was doing the hearts in photoshop when she got online that day, and she asked what I was doing, and we went from there.  Swapping potential messages, laughing at funny ones, etc.  This year we're doing something, but we're not sure what yet.  If I were a real man I'd have this all planned out and would take her out to a romantic dinner, have candies and flowers, etc.  But I'm not, so I don't. We're going to have dinner together, and hopefully do something together in the day, but we don't know what. Malaya is thinking about it, and she'll let me know in the morning afternoon when we get up.

I never really want to go do anything, (I don't mind going with her, but it never occurs to me to want to do something myself.  I'm happier being home with my computer and girlfriend and kitties.) so I don't really have a preference, but I usually enjoy doing stuff with her when she thinks of what she wants to do.  It's strange, but literally, I don't want to do anything.  I don't dislike it when we go see a movie or go shopping or whatever, but it never occurs to me to instigate it in the first place.  It's all just what she wants to do, or out of necessity.  And this sort of thing is why I never thought I'd be happy in a long term relationship with a woman, since I knew I didn't want to go out and do stuff, and I never thought I'd find a woman who was the same way.  My stereotype was that girls always wanted to go out to eat or shop or go dancing or other such stuff that I am fine doing once in a while, but that will drive me crazy if I do it regularly.  And I never saw the point in a relationship where we weren't doing things together (at home or when out) all the time, or where our interests didn't largely overlap.

I blogged about this issue some in last year's V-day update, though since I was not in a relationship back then, my opinions on it were somewhat different. 

And back in 2002?

Sadly, that was when I was blogging, but before I actually had the site online and working (I started doing semi-daily updates before I had the design all set and everything online since I knew I wanted a motivation to do some writing every day.)  So there's no update on V-day, with the previous update on February 12, and the next one on the 17th, and neither of them have any mention of Valentine's Day.  I can assure you that I paid it approximately zero attention, since I was not dating or looking to date at that time, and like most men, I regarded that sort of "buy your girlfriend nice things" holiday with about the same affection I felt towards a dirty diaper on a crying infant.

This year I'm a bit more interested in the holiday, since I'd like an excuse to do some fun stuff with my love, but I still see the endless commercials with diamonds and lingerie and chocolates and hearts and flowers as an annoying commercial force feeding; like they're telling me I must do this and this and this, or else I'm not a good boyfriend and I don't really love my girlfriend. It's like, "Fuck you, Hallmark. And Kay's Jewelers. And my local florist."

Or perhaps I'm just defensive since I feel more love for my sweetie than any of the phony actors in their overproduced commercials could ever hope to portray, and I realize that I don't do a good enough job of showing it on a regular basis, and this sort of ritualized, semi-official day just drives that point home like an birch steak through the heart.  Also, I feel cramped by my lack of income/financial resources, since I'd like to buy her flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals, a diamond necklace, a new metallic blue Prius, etc, but I can't really afford to do so, and even if I did, she'd like it, but feel half guilty about me spending the money on something as sweet, silly, and short-lived as red roses. or a box of those shiny, but painfully overpriced Godiva chocolates.

Basically, I want enough money that I could waste it on impulse "love you" purchases without feeling any sting from the price, and I want to have enough money so that Malaya wouldn't give a pleasure-sapping thought to what my gift cost in the first place.  Perhaps next year?

And now for some Valentine's Day news stuff.  Funny, weird, painful, and other.

¤ A couple of days ago, the San Francisco mayor got sick of the whole "It's not bigotry or discrimination, it's um... tradition.  Or something." debate over gay marriage (my blog take on the subject), and presided over the marriage of a pair of lesbians who had been together for over 50 years. Figuring once wasn't enough, they really got to it on Friday, and started marrying all comers.

Gay and lesbian couples planned to celebrate Valentine's Day with weddings at City Hall as officials continued to defy state law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex partners. The nationally unprecedented wedding march began Thursday morning and by late Friday, 665 same-sex couples had been wed.

The weddings were expected to continue throughout President's Day weekend as city officials try to accommodate couples that have come from all over the country to be married.

The marble passageways inside City Hall resembled a Las Vegas wedding chapel as much as a seat of government, as a steady stream of couples took their vows. City supervisors, a school board member and clerks from other offices were pressed into duty as deputy marriage commissioners to keep up with the demand.

Couples toasted each other with sparkling apple cider and left under canopies of rice tossed by cheering onlookers.

Just one thing here.  Notice the number: 665 of them?  Was that intentional, or a counting issue, or just a weird accident?  I ask since the number 666 has superstitious Satanic significance to the sort of people who oppose gay marriage, and you know they're going to have to pick up on the fact that 665 of them have gone down thus far.  Or does no one want to be #666, so they're stopping short, and then skipping it like the 13th floor in a skyscraper?

There was one quote from the article that I found touching.

"We've been together for 21 years, so waiting this long is nothing," said Albert Weaver, 51, as he and his partner, Alfred Entizne, 48, waited for their turn to wed after spending three hours in line to obtain the license.

I'm not much on sentiment, and my first reaction is that this isn't a big deal.  I mean sure, it's the first chance to be (sort of) officially marred in the US, for tens or hundreds of thousands of gay couples. But so?  It seems inevitable that it'll be legalized in the next decade or two, and you can get a civil union in lots of states, or Canada, etc.

Yet think about that?  If you're like me and not gay, it's not really touching you personally.  But what if there were laws that you couldn't get married to the person you loved (assuming you had someone you wanted to marry) because you had different blood types?  Or different eye colors?  Or something else arbitrary and genetic that you had no control over?  How fucked up would that be? How would that make you feel? I can certainly imagine it being 100 years ago, and people giving me shit or denying me the right to be with the woman I love, just because she's Asian and I'm White.

And if some progressive city somewhere in the country suddenly started offering marriage to you, when you'd never before had that option... you'd probably give serious consideration to flying the hell out there over the Valentine's Day weekend and getting hitched, eh?

Since the prevailing "logic" by people who oppose gay marriage is that it will weaken heterosexual marriage (no it doesn't make any sense to me either), I suppose we can expect a skyrocketing divorce rate in the weeks to come, now that thousands of gays are getting hitched.  Good time to start specializing in divorce law, eh?

Of course this turn of events isn't seen as good news by everyone.  Here are a few opponents of marriage equality demonstrating against it.  And remember, people oppose gay marriage because they think it denigrates traditional male/female marriage, or will weaken society. It certainly has nothing to do with them hating gay people, or anything so vile and slanderous as that.

Charles Lee, (C), the Grand Dragon of a faction of the Ku Klux Klan, was one of a handful of verbal protesters who screamed at gay couples as they gathered outside the Harris County clerk's office in Houston, February 13, 2004. About 30 gay couples paraded into the clerk's office to request marriage licenses to protest the Defense of Marriage Act which prevents Texas from legally recognizing same-sex unions. The couples were denied. REUTERS/Carlos Sanchez

¤ In other Valentine's Day news, here's an article about Christian Porn Addicts.  I live for this sort of thing.

Almost 18 percent of people who called themselves born-again Christians admitted visiting Internet porn sites, according to a 2000 survey of 1,031 adults by the evangelical group Focus on the Family. In a 2002 Pastors.com survey, more than 50 percent of responding pastors reported viewing pornography in the previous year.

"It's definitely the church's dirty little secret," said Mike Foster, co-founder of the anti-porn site XXXChurch.com, which hosts online support groups for Christians trying to kick the habit.

Imagine that, hypocrisy among the self-professed devoutly religious? 

Bernie Anderson, a pastor at Seventh-Day Adventist churches in the Dallas area, said an addiction to sexually explicit images threatened his marriage and his ministry.

"It was like a double life," said Anderson, 33.

For 20 years, he found himself drawn to pornographic Web sites, movies and magazines, he said. He would get up at night, telling his wife he needed to study, and would surf the Internet for porn. Later, he would spend hours accessing porn sites from the computer in his church office.

"You go take a shower, clean up and say you'll never do it again. Yet the next day, you fall right back into it," he said.

Not to kick these idiots while they're down, but is there any thought that perhaps being hard core Christians, with all of the guilt and self-hatred for normal human sexual impulses that implies, is what's cause these guys their real problems?  Normal people (okay, men) look at porn from time to time, perhaps whack off, and then get on with their day.  There's no obsession or loss of control about it; it's just naked pictures or dirty stories.  I mean really, how long can you stay horny, and how much interest does anyone have in watching the dreadful shit that passes for porn once you've gotten off?

The problem for these guys is that they wrap sex up in so much baggage and weirdness that they can't just get their rocks off and move on.  It haunts them and they can't stop, since they feel so guilty about it.

If I had the money and wanted to fuck with these people enough, I'd fund a study to get a bunch of porn addicted born agains counseling and treatment to get over their sexual hang ups and guilt, so that they could have healthy sex lives and so that porn would no longer be so important and forbidden in their minds.

Sort of hard to manage the control group in that sort of study though.  And people with a need to belong to such a cult-like religious affiliation have numerous other psychological issues that would probably throw monkey wrenches into any sort of psychological healing.

But hey, it would be fun anyway, just for the publicity and media coverage.

Anyway, here's a picture of the billboards they're putting up around Dallas this year.

¤ Elsewhere, hard line Hindus are on the attack over the pernicious, Satanic, soul-devouring Western evil of... Valentine's Day?

LUCKNOW, India - Hindu nationalists who claim they are fighting against Western cultural influence have threatened to shave young lovers' heads and beat them if they exchange Valentine's Day cards and gifts. Valentine's Day, which falls on Saturday, has in recent years gained popularity in India — a predominantly Hindu nation whose constitution guarantee freedom of religion.

In the past, Hindu nationalists have accosted young couples and vandalized shops selling Valentine cards and gifts in Indian cities, while police have stood by taking no action. Traditional Indian society does not approve of public displays of affection between the sexes, including hand-holding, and police often interrupt couples strolling or sitting together in public.

Weird the things that people will choose to object to or be offended by, when stirred up by one religion or another.

I'm sure adherents of this culture would say that by never being affectionate in public they heighten their love for each other at home, just as some Islamics defend their burkas and other female-covering clothing as a way to keep the private beauty of their women just for their husbands and families.  And yeah, that's one way to look at it/justify it.  Just not a way the rest of us are much interested in embracing.

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