I didn’t know that there was any significance in the time of the Gay Pride marches until just now. I didn’t know that the reason we have a parade celebrating the vibrant culture, the strength of convictions and the freedom of openness at this point in the calendar is because the date is important. On the 27th June 1969, police in New York moved to storm a prominent gay bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn, on politically motivated grounds. The mayor wanted to display a crackdown on unlicensed bars in the city (of which the Stonewall Inn was one), cut down on crime and halt the ‘unruly’ displays going on at venues such as the Inn. Over the three days of rioting that ensued, sparked by any number of events, many people were injured, arrested and beaten by police while protestors also caused extensive property damage to the area and no doubt serious injury to police officers. The next year there was a march in NYC’s central park to commemorate the events. As a result of the original march, many cities around the world hold Gay Pride marches on the last Sunday in June. On the 27th June 1970, following the previous year’s Stonewall riots in New York City, a handful of people marched down Polk Street in South Central San Francisco. The next year the number was 50,000.
Until today I thought June was the time to march because it was hot, it was sexy and everyone could have some fun. Now I know, the reason to take to the streets in June is not just because it’s funny, not just because people can look raucous and not suffer hypothermia from the bad weather, but because we, as a cultural group, have a history to remember and to cherish. The only reason there is freedom and acceptance is because other social groups have understanding. Stonewall came about because up until that point the police only had tolerance, but tolerance wasn’t enough because tolerance relies on people holding back, on people being restrained. After Stonewall, there came understanding and ultimately, acceptance, which is a real achievement and remains something for all sectors of the community to be proud of.
I hope everyone had a great Pride this year.
Archive for June, 2005
A graphic designer called Mark Longmire from Tennessee has taken apart various romance-style paperback novels that permiate the trashy end of airport bookshops and ‘I’m a desperate over-50′ section of the larger bookstores. These are the romance novels as they ought to be, photoshopped into oblivion. The very best part of these images had to be the accompanying comments that sit aside the title, with lines such as “The Love Bum” by Elaine Barbieri, Author of SHUT UP AND GET ME A BEER, BEYOTCH!
Governments around the world are investigating the actions of the US Government’s Central Intelligence Agency, who’ve been accused of covertly removing their residents from sovereign soil and forcibly repatriating them to their home nations where laws on interrogation are less strict and where the local law-enforcement will participate. This stems from an Italian case where a man was repatriated from Milan two years ago to his home country of Egypt via a US airbase.
Earlier last week, an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 13 people said to be CIA operatives involved in Omar’s abduction. Another six people - all Americans - are also under investigation. It is the first time a foreign government has filed criminal charges against US citizens involved in counter-terrorism work abroad.
Other nations have also begun to oppose Washington’s forcible removal of terror suspects. Canada is holding hearings into the deportation of a Canadian to Syria for questioning about alleged ties to al-Qaeda. German prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into the suspected kidnapping of a German man who was flown to Afghanistan. In Stockholm, a parliamentary investigator has already concluded that CIA agents violated Swedish law by subjecting two Egyptian nationals to ‘degrading and inhuman treatment’ during a rendition in 2001.
I was looking at this site on a Windows XP machine with both Firefox and IE, and for some reason that I can’t quite understand, my Flickr images that appear when rendered with my Mac’s system don’t appear at all on this alternative setup. So, while I can’t quite get it sorted out in figuring how to get the images to show every time the page loads, I now present a bit of a show of some recent (and not so recent) Flickr additions. My apologies to anyone viewing this page on a Mac, but everything looks fantastic on a Mac, so I really don’t know what you’re complaining about. You get all the features and beauty and yet you still complain about a little repetition? Give me a break, it’s 3:45 in the morning, and this code really isn’t fun! Anyway, I’ve got a bit of a backlog of Flickr images to put up there, but more are coming eventually, and when that happens the world will be a happy place again. And Mac users, remember this: it doesn’t look this good anywhere else. Really, the borders are all funny, the edges of images look strange, images don’t rotate as beautifully as they ought; it’s a complete hodge-podge out there!
For the Calling Card group on Flickr, that requests members create an image using the Polaroid-o-nize website and create only one image tagged with such words. As a result this image will become a users form of calling-card that represents them on the Flickr site; it’s a symbol of ones style, ones interests and includes a bit of fun.
For years we’ve been seduced by low prices and artificially produced food like “Dark Tater, who’s now more chemical than vegetable” he is, of course, father of ‘Cuke Skywalker, that bushy blonde haired produce product.
The US Organic Trade Association has made a mock-up ‘Grocery Store Wars’ video where vegetables and fruits battle whilst teaching viewers the ‘Ways of the Farm’.
Of course, using puppets made from Ham “Ham Solo”, Beans “Tofu D2″, and vegetables “Chewbroccoli”, is a silly way of getting the point across that Organic is good and that our current food sources are not always actually as good for us as they could be. With all the hormones (milk) and waxes (fruit) and pesticides (fresh vegetables) in our diet, organics is really an obvious way to go.
My question is this; over the last few weeks we’ve seen a huge amount of debate over the EU budget, largely because of the British Rebate (we get back 2/3 of the amount we put into the fund that doesn’t return to us), and the Common Agricultural Policy reform. These have both create vast quantities of press coverage.
The total CAP budget of £30 billion (43bn euro) will remain in place until 2013 – that is a further decade of more subsidies. The largest farmers will continue to be given very large amounts of money and the basic shape of the CAP will remain grossly damaging to development.
The EU’s support for dairy farmers amounts to around £11 billion per year, which works out as about £1.40 per day for each cow. Put another way, the average EU cow now receives more than the income of half the world’s population.
If the CAP is now used to subsidise dairy production and the delivery of unwanted foods, why shouldn’t we reform it to promote the production of organic food? By moving the money, 40% of the EU’s total budget, away from traditional farming to more sustainable methods we do a variety of things. Food is produced for a growing and popular market that is, at the moment, perceived as expensive because it is competing with subsidised food. Were the EU governments to shift from paying out to intensive farmers to organic farmers, the poor quality food would become more expensive than the organic food. At the same time as doing this we would reduce the number of additives in our raw and basic food staples like wheat and grains, fruit and vegetables, likely influencing the behavior of children in classrooms across the 25 member states and the 450 million living inside the EU. We would promote the growth or regrowth of a proper countryside untinged by the deaths of natural flora and fauna due to pesticide and fertilizer use.
The question here is really, why shouldn’t we do this? It would be hard on the traditional farmers at first because there would be a transition period in which farms couldn’t be certified as organic (it takes three years), but during that time subsidies could be phased out rather than directly cut, potentially mitigating some of the blow. In addition, the consumption of meats, especially cow meat, would decrease because we would be paying out less per cow. This is a much needed move because people in the west are eating too much meat, which with the fats associated with these foods can lead to heart disease and the clogging of arteries.
With fat come “diseases of affluence”. In the UK, 165,000 people a year die from heart disease - which, so one report suggests, would go down by 40,000 if everyone were vegetarian. Worldwide, 150 million are now diagnosed with adult-onset (type 2) diabetes. The World Health Organization says this will double by 2025. The world’s diabetics will exceed the total population of the US today.
Tell me, is this idea crazy, or is it just that there’s little political will from the European leaders to actually take on the status-quo and institute some real change to the system?
For the movie Wicker Park, the electronic-emo pairing The Postal Service have remixed the classic Phil Collins record Against All Odds. The film is about a young executive played by Josh Hartnett, who thinks he sees his long-lost love ‘Lisa’ who walked out on him without a word, emerging from the doors of a Chicago restaurant. From this point onwards his goal above all else is to track Lisa down and find her. The pairing of the Postal Service with a movie about loss, sadness and rememberance is perfect. Watch the video or just learn more. I can’t wait to see the film. I guess I missed the the first time around, because the film and soundtrack were released in August 2004!
so take a look at me now
there’s just an empty space
there’s nothing left here to remind me
just the memory of your face
well take a look at me now
there’s just an empty space
and you coming back to me is against the odds
and that’s what i’ve got to face
Rebellious counter-culture artist Banksy has been spotted at England’s Glastonbury music festival which takes place this weekend. It’s the meetingplace for the cool-crowd and all the hangers on who’d like to become part of the cool kids’ group. With around 100,000 people attending each year, and 1.2 million attempting to get tickets, it’s one of the most popular and famous festivals around. Some years it’s dry and dusty and people run the risk of dehydration; this year won’t be like that. Although the last week has seen a heatwave, rain poured down all across the UK and the masses of tents on the South Western festival’s site earlier this morning making a veritable quagmire of mud. Banksy has been making his mark on site by creating spray-paint notices on poignant and appropriate locations:
Any bands in search of a record deal who believe Banksy’s official-looking notice reading “Record label executive camping area” are in for a shock: behind the sign is one of the festival’s infamous long-drop toilets.
The Guardian: Banksy joins shambles…
From Flickr user SebFlyte: 
From Flickr user Phil*s:
I’m currently on the prowl for temping jobs at a menial, tedious, mindnumbing level: anything that pays. The agencies that one has to go to and talk to are the most tedious manifestation of this exercise. i-resign.com has a great analysis of the culture and approach one really should take when dealing with them, if only to protect ones own sanity and sanctity.
Always remember that no matter how much of an imbecile they’re treating you, they’re doing this on their own time, and you are getting paid for it. Once the introductions (if any) are over, you will be left to do what you are being paid to do. At this point it is worth remembering the temp worker’s motto “You can pay for my time, but my soul is mine”. I personally have an amendment to that, namely “You can pay for my time, but if you expect me to do a proper job, you’re sorely mistaken”. The level of gusto you inject into carrying out your temporary duties is a matter for your own conscience though. When the job starts to get to you (and it will, regardless of the Protestant - or any other - work ethic you may possess) learning defensive skills is vital.
Let’s say you have managed to secure a temp job in a call centre (this was becoming more and more common, until the suits discovered labour is cheaper in third world countries) and your mind is slowly but surely turning to jelly. What can you do? Well you can always play with the telephone. If you choose to work through lunch (and temps can) you’ll have access to the wonderful world of telephony. Never make telephone calls from your own phone (they will be logged) but what about the boss’s phone, the one sitting neglected in their office. Doesn’t it look lonely? You could always go and cheer it up.
I’d buy jeans, and many other things, from this man.
I follow up by using the words Graph, Evo, Sparky and Bronco. If you like their clothes you’ll know what I mean.
These are just about the gayest clothes I’ve ever seen, but somehow they remain above the level of slutty. They have a sexual allure that would make me afraid to wear them in the presence of anyone over the age of 40 for fear of giving them a coronary. And I’d be afraid to wear them in a club for fear of being severely taken advantage of in a most inappropriate way. Whether they’re really just aiming to market to the gay community or not, I’m glad they’re not afraid of showing skin. For girls looking at clothes online it’s acceptable to show the bodies of the models: that’s half of what you’re looking at and aspiring to. On guys, until very recently, it wasn’t seemingly approved to show anything but the most butt-ugly guys and if there were ever jeans they weren’t to show any body other than just the bare legs, because that’d be too risque. It’s good to see a bit more daring.
And when I say I would be scared to wear them into a club, I don’t mean to say I wouldn’t, I’d just have to dance with my back firmly to the wall until I was brazen enough to venture out. After that, everything’s up for grabs… so to speak.
