After the bigger-they-are-harder-they-fall seizure of IndyMac by the FDIC this week, economic speculators are eagerly salivating over the next doomsday scenario; which banks will fail next? A few "likely candidates" often pored over in the media include my bank, WaMu, which took a bloodbath in mortgage foreclosures and has seen their stock plunge to a record low. The media is painting a picture of a bank on the verge of collapse; analysts and company officials are making the (valid and as far as I can tell, true) argument that the bank is well-backed in liquidity and will not fail - that this stock plunge is the lowest they'll go. They are desperate to reassure investors.

But the rumors have started churning and bouncing around. The Chiscos of the world are sending out text messages and emails urging account-holders to get our money out of there, while we still can. And the media is frothing at the mouth to scoop the story on who the next IndyMac will be.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new banking panic.

It's not that one shouldn't be concerned about their money, or that faith in our financial institutions is warranted, but seriously? Pulling all your money out of a bank en masse because of media hype will feed the cycle and cause a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you panic and take your money out because you think a bank is going to fail, the bank will fail. See, there's this little thing called the FDIC and it insures your deposits up to $100,000 - so unless you have a balance of more than $100,000 with any one bank, particularly one in danger of failing, you're not in terrible shape, really. The FDIC exists as a sort of insurance against bank panics, so that even if a bank fails, the federal government will step in and you'll still get at least a livable chunk of your money back.

Still, I can't help but wonder if everyone panicking about WaMu will lead the bank to collapse? If not, though, now's a great time to buy stock in the company - at $3 a share, if they recover, it's one to hold onto.

-Tommy

AKA "how Apple dicked me out of 14 hours of my life and refused to give me an iPhone."

I'm gonna open up by saying that I'm not the mellowest person in the world, but those of you who know me know well how Zen I can be. When things are beyond my control, when situations look bad, or when someone is denying me something I want, I empathize. And I am patient. And when all else fails, when all patience and empathy and reason in me are exhausted, and only then, do I tell people to fuck off.

The backstory: Six months ago, my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said "an iPhone... in six months." I have been holding out for 3G and GPS capabilities on that lovely little device since the original one hit stores and gave me a tech boner. It is a charming device, a phone that finally understands and caters to our generational thirst for constant access to networked information. And it does so with a sleek design and a friendly interface.

So when 3G dropped, I knew I'd be in line. I don't want this shitty Verizon phone a minute longer than contractually obligated, after all. Mom decided she wants one too, and wants to familyplan things to keep costs down. So we've decided we're going for it, I go so far as to stay the night at her house, and we head out to the AT&T store at 8am today.

And then things got ugly.

Long story short, by 8:30 AT&T was out of phones for the day. "Come back tomorrow," they said, "when we're in stock. Or you can order it and you'll receive your phone in 7-10 days... but you still have to wait in line to get into the store to do that."

So we decide to bite the bullet and go to the Apple Store. They have a limitless supply. They won't run out. Not on launch day. And they didn't run out. We just didn't get any.

See, Apple decided to do something completely retarded for this launch: they decided to launch the 3G product, with mandatory verification via the iTunes server, at the same time as the App Store, the 2.0 software for the original iPhone, and, oh yeah, a worldwide launch in more than 20 countries. This made Apple's servers crash. Hard. ALL DAY LONG. 2-hour lines and 20-minute activation procedures turned into 8-hour waits at the store, only to be told, at midnight (a full sixteen hours later) that the system was down, they were closing, and Fuck You. And, just to make sure you knew exactly where you stood, an edict from the corporate office: no rainchecks, no line vouchers. Under no circumstance is anyone who waited in an eight-hour line today spared the pain of doing so tomorrow, to get the product they already waited for.

If there's anything resembling a yuppie riot, you'd better believe I saw it tonight. I saw grown men hold back tears and apple zealots plead with store managers to treat them like human beings. I saw apple employees lose faith in the organization as their launch-day efforts of vitamin water and free iced tea devolved into angry mobs and personal insults. The manager wanted to do something--anything--but he couldn't. And finally, when all was said and done, I just told him "Take a bath. A long, hot one."

Of course, he was the nice manager; the not-so-nice one I bitched out, loudly, for using the excuse of "we don't have the resources to let you come back tomorrow without waiting in line." I raised my voice on that one, finally: "So you're telling us you lack the resources not to dick everyone in this room over? You lack paper and pens?" Because that's all it fucking takes.

I was REALLY excited about the new iPhone, and I went through every possible hurdle today to get one - before work, after work, late night. I waited eight hours in three different lines. And at the end of the day, to see a heartbroken Apple store manager tell a crowd of 150 angry people, exhausted after 8 hours in line and ready to attack anyone with one of those baby-blue launch shirts, "we have enough phones in stock for all of you. We can't sell them to you because the system is down and corporate says it's not coming back up tonight." -- It's absolutely incensing. It's infuriating. It's absolutely insane. You're dealing with a huge corporation that specializes in innovation and identity branding and customer service, and they don't even have a voucher for you when the computer goes down and you've wasted your Friday waiting in line? The legendary computer manufacturer that bottles and sells innovation itself can't even handle a product launch without crashing on an epic, worldwide scale? And last but not least, they instruct employees to tell their most die-hard loyalists, their most devoted fans, and their easily most forgiving, excited, and evangelical marketing base, to fuck off and wait in line again tomorrow?

What the fuck is Apple doing? These are no-brainers: Don't fuck your system up on launch day, but if you do, MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY ANYWAY. I was out the door at 7:30 AM to get an iPhone, and I went home at 1AM without one, and with flat refusal to let me or anyone else come back the next day without having to wait in line for another 8 hours. Is the company really so deluded that they think it is a privilege for people to buy their shit?

-Tommy

ETA: Did I mention I spent the several dead hours in-store going phone to phone and navigating to this page? It was beautiful seeing the article show up in full color on all 10 of the in-store iPhones in a row. 0=) If only I had an iPhone that did that!

See y'alls next week! And if you're at AX, come visit the karaoke room and say hi. I will never leave.

Can you spot the irony in today's L.A. Times?:

THANKS, SUPREME COURT! Our nation's capital just wasn't dangerous enough.

You were really decent, in a business, a position, and a world where few are. =(

HEY KIDS, C'MON! Check out skademonx's rad Make Your Own Joo Dee contest and, you know, make your own Joo Dees!

Incidentally, anyone who wants make this into a flash app with a little painter, YOU ARE MORE THAN WELCOME TO. I personally think it'd be a good Facebook app.

Winner of the contest gets an all-expenses paid trip to Lake Laogai.

-Tommy

Because apparently all I do with my time is play with Google Maps, I made this:

Global Food Shortages in 2008

I'm sure I'm missing a few food riots, a few cause-and-effect things, but this is what I've seen in the news so far. Any additions I should try?

-Tommy

The updated CA HSR Site offers renderings, maps, and time and, my favorite part, time and cost estimates.

And we vote on it this November.

From Los Angeles?
...to San Francisco: 2:38, $55.
...to San Diego: 1:18, $30
...to San Jose: 2:09, $51
...to Sacramento: 2:17, $53
...to Fresno: 1:14, $38

-Tommy

California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban

While this doesn't mean Adam and Steve can go down to the courthouse today and pick up a license, analysts agree there are few provisions short of actual marriage that can result from today's ruling. As in Massachusetts, the likely outcome will be a legislative compliance.

The state has passed gay marriage twice, but Arnold vetoed it both times, passing the buck to the courts. Now he doesn't have that excuse. We'll see what happens.

Expect backlash. Constitutional amendment initiatives. New hate. New distractions from the real problems Americans and Californians face. New excuses not to treat other human beings as such.

Still, it's progress, and faster than I'd expected. I'll drink to that.

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY VAL AND GIOIA!

-Tommy

(P.S. Thanks, Gavin Newsom!)

West Virginia's primary results, in which race was an unusually overt factor, are a potent reminder of America's gruesome and persistent xenophobia. But I'm not talking about a landslide for the white candidate in a racist hick state today; rather, the state of immigrants awaiting deportation here in America.

To be really horrified by what's going on here in America, check out Careless Detention, a WaPo report on medical situations in immigrant prisons. Of the articles, one in particular stands out: the U.S. government's practice of involuntarily medicating deportees, which is unethical and illegal.

Why, why, why can't our government offer basic human treatment of prisoners, detainees, and deportees? Do we not hold ourselves, as a people, worthy of being an example to the countries we reprimand for similar human rights abuses?

-Tommy

In 7th grade I was really good friends with this girl through the summer. We talked on the phone every day, sent letters back and forth in summer camp, and generally became close and knowledgeable about the intimate details in each others' lives.

As 8th grade started to roll around, I realized I'd developed a schoolboy crush. Through a series of silly middle-school conversations, I eventually told her this, even though I knew she liked somebody else.
(The guy she liked, for the record, would later become a high school goth known for giving head in the boys' bathroom.)

At one point in that fateful conversation, she asked on the phone "So...what does this change?"
"Nothing," I said. I didn't see why it should, right?

The next day she stopped speaking to me. When I called, she hung up. When I tried to talk to her, she'd look right through me. When I asked her what I did wrong, she wouldn't answer. When others did, she'd go "who?" I failed to exist.

I later found out that she'd (erroneously) assumed I told her crush she liked him. When I tried to explain that this wasn't the case, I was still completely ignored. When I interviewed her for the yearbook, she looked dead behind me, without saying a word. I was an unperson, to take a page from Orwell - not only did I not exist, I had never existed, and all memory or mention of me was strictly forbidden. That was how my first depression started.

On the last day of school, without any provocation, she came up to me, bubbly as ever, asking about my plans for summer and whatnot, as if we'd been friends all year. Months of frost, sadness, and teenage angst had been a drop in the bucket; she acted as if nothing had ever happened, as if nothing at all had changed in the eight months she had made my life a living hell by single-handedly destroying our friendship.

I never spoke to her again. I do not think she cared.


Since my ex got married last month, I've been thinking about this sort of thing, and this story in particular, a lot lately. (Not as in, "oh, what if..." but in a matter more akin to "what on earth shapes my personality, and why?") Ultimately, I think this was the single greatest communicative trauma I ever had. And I think it helps to explain why a direct and brazen and ultimately honest person such as myself freezes up and suffers whenever I have to speak from the heart. It also really underscores how traumatically I treat the idea of rejection, I guess, but that's almost a secondary compared to how damn hard it is to get anything out there.

I don't know what kind of conclusion one can reach from this: it falls as the most flagrant example of speaking honestly about my feelings and getting brutally penalized for it. (And for the record, I have never once had that go well.) Yet my resolve only strengthens to try and fight my problem with such hesitance.

And every time I do, I still get that nagging memory of what it cost me to be honest with my feelings. Even when things don't work out disastrously, the fear of losing that much again tempers my ability to express myself every time I need to.

-Tommy

The accidental discoverer of LSD, Albert Hofmann, died of a heart attack today at the age of 102. Regardless of your personal feelings towards the drug or drugs in general, it can be safely said that were it not for his discovery, the world today would be a very different place. We do, after all, owe many of the vast experimentations, visions, and developments in music, computers, and art from the 1960s on to the effects of this single ergot-derived hallucinogen. While LSD is hardly a miracle drug (nor is it free of dangers, consequences, and ruined lives), and while the immediate anti-hippie reaction prevents people from studying any possible legitimate medical uses, even LSD's most staunch opponents cannot deny the effect on history its discovery produced.

-Tommy

Ok, so here's a story that ends in heartbreak, and a decent call for similar experiences from anyone who's dealt with private pet-rescue organizations.

A few weeks ago mom heard some weird noises at the front door, like someone was trying to use a key or something to break in. Chisco heard some noises too a few days later, so they decided it would be nice to add a dog to the household - something small that would bark at possible do-badders. Mom is generally allergic to dogs, so she needs a small breed with no undercoat - poodles, various terriers, maltese, etc. Her house isn't big, either, and she has two good-natured cats that any potential dog needs to get along with.

She was looking at purebred puppies and dropping her jaw at the prices when I introduced her to the world of internet-based pet adoption, namely Petfinder, which regionalizes and indexes available pets in the area from shelters and private rescue groups. We searched by breed and found what seemed to be the perfect dog, a maltese/yorkie mix about a year old. "Loves other dogs as well as cats!" bragged the advert. So we filled out an application.

Anyone who hasn't ever filled out an application to adopt a pet would be surprised at what these rescue groups will throw at you. Current vet's phone number. Areas where you would allow the dog to run off-leash. Names and ages of people living in the house with you. Pictures of your house and yard. Consent to a home inspection. Do you rent or own? They're very thorough. They want to make sure the dog will have a loving home, and that's understandable. But here's where the folly of this system comes in: These people foster dogs. They are convinced they are better pet owners than you and probably better human beings. And they are more than willing to pass personal judgment based on their own internal prejudices about whether or not you are what they consider a person (namely, someone who lives only for dogs), or an unperson (someone who would dare to associate with non-dogs, including humans and cats).

I know, I'm being a little melodramatic. Rescue groups are generally staffed by all-volunteer corps of supermen and women who take needless stress and financial burden to save the lives of cats and dogs everywhere. They're generally doing a good thing. The only problem comes along when they think they have a right to be picky about who adopts their dogs (and with a private adoption fee of $200-400, you'd think they were weeding out the ne'erdowells right off the bat).

See, here's what went down. We found this dog and emailed the lady about it on Saturday night. She replied Sunday with a few questions about the application. Mom gave her her cellphone number and some clarifications, said everyone wanted to meet the dog right away, and took pictures of the house and yard (which of course entailed cleaning up first) despite the fact that she has a huge concerto this weekend to practice for. On Sunday afternoon, the lady called, chatted with mom a bit, said, specifically, that she couldn't foster the dog til next Sunday (after the concerto), and mom replied that if that was the case, she was more than ready to take him ASAP if she liked him. So we arranged a meeting with the dog for the next day (Monday).

The meeting went fairly well, or so it seemed; we got along really well with the dog, Mom brought her digital camera and started to show some pictures of the house, and then the lady's expression changed a bit. Everyone fell in love with the dog - mom and Chisco agreed he would be a good addition, especially with his friendliness towards cats. He was the perfect size, breed, and temperment for mom. Everything up until this point, on the lady's part, has been with the implication that if we jived, we could take him home.

So mom goes, "Okay, so what do we do next?" Like, checkbook-out-and-ready-to-donate-to-this-private-non-profit-foster "what do we do next?"

Suddenly her tune changes. She doesn't like our fence. She thinks he might be able to dig under it. We have an iron gate-and-fence that came with the house, and the bars are too wide apart for a small dog, she thinks. We were planning on putting a lattice in anyway, but I volunteer to pick up some chicken wire and dog-proof it that afternoon. Then the bomb drops:

"Well, I do have another family coming to meet him tomorrow, and we have to be fair about it. So if you want to wait and see about the fence, that'd be fine too."

Mom thinks this is a test. We go to home depot and buy a 3-foot garden fence, securing it to the iron fence with zipties, and email her that night. She asks for pictures of the "fense" (sigh.) and we provide them that morning. She emails us back saying that unfortunately she has decided to give the dog away to the other family "because they have another small dog for him to play with and that seems like a perfect match." But of course, she will let us know if anything changes before the other family is ready to pick up the dog -- next Sunday, the date she told us she wouldn't hold him until.

So mom is offended, angry, and a little diminished about having been judged apparently unworthy by some stuttering, chubby lady who can only relate to creatures who can't speak to her. Mostly, though, she's heartbroken about not getting a dog she fell in love with, and was previously led to believe was entirely available, especially after bending over backwards to accommodate an increasingly unreasonable dog lady, while never offering anything less than a smile and compliance. The worst thing about it: She doesn't want to face that heartbreak again and is probably going to give up on dog rescue entirely.

Naturally, nothing like this is a sure thing from the get-go, and nobody ever wanted to get ahead of themselves, but there's a reasonable list of fucked-up shit to be indignant about:

1. Pet rescue is generally on a first-come, first-serve basis, and this agency says they will hold a dog for two days from your inquiry. We were there first, so shouldn't we get dibs?

2. Small dogs just need to be walked regularly for exercise, so a backyard fence, which we had planned to install anyway to let one run around, is technically a non-requirement.

3. We passed every test and addressed every concern, even going so far as to bend over backwards to install a new fence the same day. We were ready to take that dog home and make a donation to her group. We did not feel like we had a bad rapport with her, or with the dog. And she assured us that she thought we'd be "a great match."

4. The mysterious introduction of the "second family" to the situation, which was only mentioned after she saw pictures of our house and yard and as a response to "Well, can we take him home?" It's quite feasible that this second family is total bullshit, and if they weren't, she should have mentioned them before we went in there to meet the dog so we knew what the situation was. I do hope for the dog's sake there is an actual second family, but it will be interesting to see if his listing stays on Petfinder or not.

5. The decision to give the dog to this "second family" based on the criteria of... them having another dog. God forbid anyone on earth have only one dog, especially one described by this woman as "loves other dogs as well as cats, but his big deal is his human." Moreover, if the dog "loves cats," shouldn't that be a non-issue, as mom has two cats for him to play with?

6. Her supposed willingness to accommodate their request to pick the dog up this weekend, which she had told us she was unable to do.

7. Her co-worker at the Animal Hospital (which, jankily enough, currently has no DOCTORS on staff) expressed surprise that we weren't taking the dog home that day, as if, prior to our walking in, that had been the expectation.

8. Her delivering the bad news via e-mail rather than calling to discuss it.


There's a lot more pertaining to the specific interactions my mom had with her, but basically, nothing led our family to believe anything other than the assertion that this dog was friendly, available, and ready to go home with us. Mom offered nothing less than a loving home for life and worked her butt off to make her home a perfect place for the dog she fell in love with. This is the point at which the foster dropped the ball, choosing a latecomer arbitrarily or making up their existence entirely because she just plain didn't like something about our vibe. And that kind of non-communicative, passive-aggressive bullshit is the last kind of thing you want to associate with the joy of bringing a new animal into your family.

This woman led my family on. She led us on, and then she dogblocked us.

-Tommy

Seriously. Vote for Obama today. He's the only person in this race who has any integrity left.

No, really. Trust me: He'd answer the phone at 3 a.m. He loves America well beyond any lack of jingoistic symbolism might suggest. He's not an anarchist bomb-thrower from a radical church. He's not a Secret Muslim™. And he has just as much "experience" as two-term Senator Clinton. He also doesn't run exploitative shit like this to play on fear and misery in America.

(No, really, Hils - Osama bin Laden, Pearl Harbor, and Hurricane Katrina? Very classy.)

Obama is also the only one of the three remaining candidates who has not made some sort of pledge (or song) to "bomb" or "obliterate" Iran.

-T

(Part one of a three-part series on sexual identity):

There are some days when one can look at our country or the world and see an evolution in progress in the human condition: the recognition and increasing approval of a practice or lifestyle all but buried in the Western world until the mid-twentieth century, under backroom quiet and harsh penalties. Day by day, more and more homosexuals and bisexuals seem to be around us, and younger generations are expanding and experimenting with their sexualities still. In America, gone are the days when a person can be jailed for sodomy; in Canada and many European countries, full domestic marriage rights exist for same-sex couples; the long worldwide march of recognition and tolerance seems to march on in the face of systematic worldwide oppression. And then there are the days that make you realize we're nowhere near accomplishing as a species that level of tolerance or understanding.

I am often critical of the GLBT communities for their frequent and constant monosexism, tacit endorsement of hedonistic and immature lifestyles, and their systematic erasure and ostracizing of the "B" within their own anagram. I don't self-identify as gay, nor do I use the more all-encompassing "Queer" label set out for me, but rather as bisexual, with a complicated and genuine grid of affection, attraction, and sexual arousal that better serves the complicated web that is human sexuality. (This topic, incidentally, will be the subject of Part Two.)

All the same, it's more than important to remember that the global GLBT community - the one that encourages and adheres to a series of sexual stereotypes and encourages others to do the same - exists for a very good, very profound, and easy to forget reason: there are millions of people, living all over the world, who would like nothing more than to deny people housing, employment, various freedoms, or their own lives because those people are of an alternative sexuality. And within that group, there are plenty of people who would love to kill me for it.

In other words, I am lucky to have the luxury of pondering the meaning and depth of human sexuality and being who I am without being put in prison, beaten or lynched by angry mobs, or executed. I'm reminded that for all the progress made, for all the shallow and superficial problems I have the luxury of having with the LGBT community at large, and for the march of public opinion that continues to humanize such love, no matter how tainted it may still be to some, anyone at any time who is openly gay, or is found to be gay, or just plain looks or acts gay, is as vulnerable to random acts of hate and harassment as ever. It is, after all, a sad statement about the world when homosexuals are safer in North Korea than they are in Jamaica.

And random acts of violence. Meet the Matthew Shepards of 2008:

---

In Sacramento, a sizable per-capita gay scene is clashing with the large community of late-and-post-Soviet right-wing slavic evangelicals that flocked to the area in the 80s and 90s. Make no mistake from the "religious refugees" moniker - these guys are right-wing, evangelical fundamentalists and their churches preach and practice fairly unadulterated hatred. Sacramento's gays are routinely outed, picketed, harassed, and attacked by these dogmatic, radical Christians.

An openly gay man in a Sacramento suburb, Satenger Singh was celebrating a promotion with a group of friends in the park. The friends in question were all heterosexual and married; three couples plus one young man. The group ate, drank, and danced to music at their picnic table.

A Russian by the name of Andrey Vusik was at the park, too, with his friends and family, for a post-Church picnic. He found all that dancing really offensive, at least when the gay man at the table next to him was doing it. So he did what any reasonable person would do - demand an apology from a flamboyant stranger for doing absolutely nothing beyond minding his own business in a public park.

Insults were traded throughout the afternoon, tensions escalated, and Vusik and his friends demanded another apology. Singh again refused, so Vusik did the only reasonable thing - he punched Singh so hard into the sidewalk it killed him. Then he fled back to Russia, which refuses to extradite Russian citizens for crimes committed abroad.

The legal question being pondered here - "is it indeed a hate crime when someone starts a fight motivated by sexual orientation that ends in manslaughter?" - would perhaps be more convincing if Singh had thrown a punch.

LA Times Article: Sacramento Gays fear an influx of hate

---

But Sacramento isn't the only recent scene of violent anti-gay homicide. Last month the coastal Ventura County city of Oxnard was rocked by a brutal school shooting in a junior high school.

14-year-old Brandon McInery was one of the "cool" kids that taunted 15-year-old Lawrence King for his sexuality, for his audacity to wear makeup and girls' boots with his school uniform, for his sense of identity and struggles with school and home life. McInery, also from a troubled background, sought discipline and respect in the Young Marines. He bullied King along with many others - King was living in a county foster facility and was teased constantly for being gay. He fought back by flirting with the jocks and cool kids that bullied him systematically, perpetuating the cycle. Teachers looked the other way as this cycle continued.

Someone brought a gun to school. Was it the kid that was constantly bullied, with the troubled home life, who felt alone in the world? Nope. It was McInery, the cool kid, the bully who King had made all queer at. At 8:30 in the morning, in a computer lab crowded with students, Brandon McInery pulled out a gun from home and shot Lawrence King twice at point-blank in the back of the head, execution style.

I often see a lot of promise in the younger generations of today - kids are coming out, being open about who they are, and often live free of the stigma and pain the older generations have felt. On the other hand, a society as a whole can only evolve this way in steps. Brandon McInery is being charged as an adult with hate crime and  premeditated murder - his crime, his anger, and his solution are every bit as adult, after all, as the attitudes towards gays and lesbians that America still has yet to shed.

LA Times Article: A deadly clash of emotions before Oxnard shooting

---

Lastly, we see the case of Mehdi Kazemi, a 19 year old from Iran currently making headlines for seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. His request was originally denied and he was to be deported to Iran, which has systematically executed homosexuals on a regular basis since the 1979 Revolution. Media attention has caused the case to be reopened, sparing him for now.

Kazemi originally went to the UK to study English with plans to return to Iran - at least until he learned that his boyfriend had been executed. Before his execution, however, his boyfriend had been forced to name and denounce him publicly, virtually assuring that if Kazemi returns to Iran he will be killed. That almost certainly meets the acceptable conditions for granting political asylum, yet he was already almost deported once by the UK, directly into the hands of people who have promised to kill him the way they killed his boyfriend (usually public hanging, but sometimes stoning or beheading).

Kazemi applied for asylum in the Netherlands, but was rejected because he had already applied in the UK. If the United Kingdom does not decide to grant him asylum upon review, he will be deported back to Iran and executed, at 19, for the capital offense of loving someone else who happened to have a penis.

While things look hopeful for Mehdi Kazemi, Iran's countless other homosexuals face public shame and death, and other deportées have not been so lucky. More than 4,000 people, mostly men, have been executed for homosexual behavior in Iran since 1979.

BBC Article: Gay Iranian deportation reviewed

---

Beyond violence, beyond systematic oppression, even in more "enlightened" countries there is still a lot of work to be done. At the heart of it all, however, is not simple homophobia, but the complicated social and psychological issues associated with it en masse. In America, we expect our gay boys to flame, and we put them on pedestals for doing it, then kick them off for doing it too much.

Conversely, we label people, especially men, fags and queers if they don't fit the proper gender stereotype. It comes out in small ways: Simon Cowell passes on or brutally pans the high-voiced guys because they aren't marketable; straight guys get beaten down for looking gay; well-meaning friends, family, and teachers tell a young boy it's OK for him to be gay or tease him for it, regardless of whether he is or not. All of these events are destructive to society, too - reliance on traditional gender roles and on the binary of straight and gay categorizes our men as either "men" or "the other" and stigmatizes male self-expression, sensitivity, or extroversion. It also ignores the vastly complicated gray area that exists between the two extremes.

However, in Jamaica or Iran or Saudi Arabia, that gray area does not exist; your ass gets hard labor, a hundred lashes, or brutally killed. And if anyone has any question as to the empirical and anecdotal evidence suggesting that those who identify as 100% unchangeably homosexual from birth (a sexual identity I do not share) can somehow change, hide, or choose their sexual orientation, ask yourselves this: Who on earth would choose to be gay in a society that promotes open hostility, mob violence, and brutal state-sponsored executions for anyone guilty of the "crime" of same-sex attraction?

-Tommy

Let's talk a little bit about Hillary, and why I don't like her.
Here's the deal with Hillary Clinton - I liked her once. If she'd run in 2004, I would've been so psyched, so eager, so thrilled to see someone stepping up for the left when the country needed them the most. But she ran for her comfortable Senate seat that year, preferring to wait out Bush's war, a war she helped create. By the time she got around to running, someone better for America, someone more eloquent and dignified and capable of repairing this tattered country had stepped up for the same party.

I've noticed that Hillary tends to do poorly once people get to know her in areas she's campaigning in. Basically, until she lets people see what she stands for, she's the front-runner. I supported and still support Obama, as I find him to be the more dignified, eloquent, and human candidate, and I find the prospect of 20 years of political dynasty a destructive and disheartening one.

But all of this notwithstanding, Hillary Clinton has something almost ghoulish about her personality, something hard for me to pin down besides a general feeling of ick, at least until last night's debate. What, you ask, could have happened in that debate that helps me articulate my dissatisfaction with her - cheap pot-shots at Obama, or bitter sniping of a SNL joke, or her increasingly desperate jabs, or what?

Nope. The truest and darkest thing about Hillary Clinton's personality was revealed last night, almost as an afterthought, and certainly glossed over by most news outlets and even bloggers. This revelation came in a discussion about Obama and Clinton's health care plans, in which she crowed this snippet:

"About 20% of the people who are uninsured have the means to buy insurance. They're often young people who think they're immortal."

At first, the comment doesn't seem that offensive, a fairly tame statistical observation, perhaps with a snipey attempt at humor one might expect from a candidate with an extremely low turnout rate among "the young people," as she calls us. But I've bolded most of it, at least what I consider the indicative parts, to get to the core of what exactly is wrong with Hillary Clinton: She thinks in the same absolutes as the people on the far-right who have made life so difficult for the poor, who have chipped away at the middle class over the years with corporate giveaways and a stagnant economy.

I truly believe Hillary wants to help the middle class. But here's the problem: until she realizes that a sizable number of young people in this country - (I'd even wager, on pure hypothesis, that the number has gone up) - are shit-eatingly poor, she will never "get it" when it comes to health care.

I'll use myself as a poster child for my generation for a moment, if you will indulge me. We, the young people of America:
- work shitty service-sector jobs for salaries that are wholly incapable of keeping up with inflation and a stagnant economy,
- deal with an outdated minimum wage and little to no job security,
- pay three times what our rent should be on inflated one-room studios in the semi-ghetto because home ownership in any major urban area is considered an unreasonable dream for my entire generation,
- get our educations only to find a crowded field and very little actual employment,
- all while begging Sallie Mae not to break our knees or our credit ratings (thanks to Bill Clinton's dismantling of the federal student loan program, might I add).
And we have no health insurance.
WE DON'T LIVE LIKE THAT BY CHOICE.

And just because we have our iPods and our hi-tech gadgets and our indulgent parents, that doesn't mean that ANYONE of my generation is actually capable of living the American Dream through the standard channels - hard work and education. That American Dream has dwindled and died through the 80s and 90s, and now, outside of a very specific few parts of the country with specialized economies, the majority of jobs available to anyone under 30 are low-paying retail gigs with no health insurance.

The primary misconception of conservatives, one that drives me up the wall and generally makes me detest them, is that poor people, or the uninsured, or the unfortunate, are there because they are stupid or lazy or otherwise incapable, and thus deserving of being where they are on the economic ladder; that poverty and social problems can be wholly solved by personal responsibility, and that those who are unfortunate enough to live on the wrong side of the spectrum are there because it's their own fault. I can't stand this trait of conservatism, and believe me, there are few things I believe in more firmly than the concept of personal responsibility.

And yet, here is Hillary Clinton, running for President in the Democratic Primary, espousing the same sort of garbage as proof that the uninsured young are deserving of their fates, doing it by choice. I don't have the means to feed myself, pay my rent, pay my student loans, OR pay my health insurance (and believe me, I'm expected to pay about $300 every month for COBRA if I don't want to lose coverage - I make $400 a month). Most people of my generation - even the ones who are doing much better than me (aka all of you) still live paycheck to paycheck and bill to bill. Until Hillary understands that, she'll never understand why young people hate her.

Here's a hint, Hil: We don't go uninsured for kicks, and you're not exactly showing compassion by suggesting that we do.

-Tom;

Time for a new icon! I have sadly retired the Aqua Teen Hunger Force/Boston terrorism "never forget" icon. I guess we forgot after all.
behold! catty remark suggested by magaliiiii

sadly, I had a longer one, with like 12 images, but livejournal is totally stingy with gif file size (40k? what the fuck?)

say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but that woman takes amazing photographs.

-Tommy

What is it about spring that makes the concerts so good?
(Bolds are ones I can't miss, natch)
3/13 (Thursday) - the pillows / noodles / The Outline @ the El Rey, Los Angeles [tix]
3/17 (Monday) - the pillows / noodles / The Outline @ Slim's, San Francisco
3/23 (Sunday) - JAPAN NITE @ the Knitting Factory, Los Angeles [tix]
5/27 (Tuesday) - Ladytron @ the Fillmore, San Francisco
5/29 (Thu) and 5/30 (Fri) - Ladytron @ the Henry Fonda, Los Angeles

Any more in the neighborhood?

I'm psyched, really, about the pillows, noodles, and the Outline - THREE bands I love - on the same concert.

And Japan Nite? Last year it offered six amazing bands, incl. GO!GO!7188, Oreskaband, and Asakusa Jinta, at once. This year, the lineup isn't anyone I've heard of before, but from their MySpace samples and band profiles it promises to be an awesome and eclectic indie evening. It's always a fun concert. ;)

-Tommy

AOD was fun this year, always a joy to staff, although it wasn't my best one - it's hard to come to a con when you're getting over a sickness, or spend half the weekend feeling queasy and exhausted. And lately, I totally have been queasy and exhausted all the damn time.

However, it was a fantastic weekend full of good adventures. I was still a little sad, though, at how quickly it seemed to go by. Today was a nice day of relaxing, recuperating, and coming down off a weekend, but now that my house and car are empty I heave a little sigh.

I've also been, like, so ...heterosexual lately, I notice. What a curious novelty: boys x girls!

I am totally interested in the <a href="http://www.emotiv.com/">Emotiv</a> and finding a way to exploit it to make some sort of noise.

Whenever I've spent time surrounded by people, or on some amazing adventure or whatever, I'm always reminded of exactly how much I need and miss human contact when I get back home and all the fanfare dies down.

For now, at least, having a cat curl up on my stomach is a nice alternative. For now.

-T

Real nice, California. You get a chance to vote early and you blow it by picking a soulless harpythis year's John Kerry.

More on that after work, though. For now:

The real question to be answered isn't "did Obama win the state" but "how many delegates did Obama win in this state?" The formula for calculating delegates allocated is needlessly complex, with 370 delegates at stake in California being divided up proportionally by congressional district. On the basis of the popular vote, Obama might be getting about 40-45% of the state's delegates, but this total could be lower or higher depending on the congressional districts. I haven't been able to find a reasonable source on exactly how this is going down, so we'll have to wait for CNN to figure it out. In the meantime, below are the districts won by Obama. I can't find a map of this by gerrymandered congressional district, but there is a county map here and Wikipedia has maps of the districts themselves, which I will link to.

1st District (Northwest coast, Arcata hippietown)
5th District (Suckramento)
6th District (Marin County-North SF Bay)
8th District (City and County of San Francisco, excluding lower west side)
9th District (East Bay - Berkeley and Oakland)
14th District (lower San Francisco Peninsula, incl. most of San Mateo county)
23rd District (coastal stretch from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo)
33rd District (Baldwin Hills & Culver City)
35th District (Westchester, Hawthorne, Inglewood)
37th District (Long Beach, Compton, & Signal Hill)

Obama didn't win anything south of Long Beach, though it was virtually a 50-50 split in the 52nd district, which includes most of (yuppie, loft-living, trendy) downtown and coastal San Diego.

The demographics are complex and involved, but a few trends emerge - race and class are big, BIG factors here. If Obama had made inroads with the Latino community, most of whom happen to be working-class supporters of the Democratic Party machine, he could've won both the state and a handful of congressional districts which overwhelmingly went for Clinton. Blue-collar and rural areas (Fresno, mid-city LA, lower east SF bay) backed Clinton by heavy margins, while more affluent or liberal voters (Santa Barbara, SF, Berkeley) supported Obama. However, this trend was skewed in the southern portion of the state, where black voters (obviously) backed Obama and Latino voters backed Clinton.

A handful of districts, however, were decided by California's substantial Asian vote - North San Diego County, Monterey Park, Torrance/Palos Verdes, Rowland Heights/Walnut, Orange County, and the South and East SF Bay (all in separate congressional districts) went overwhelmingly for Clinton, as did vast swaths of the San Gabriel Valley. The most overlooked story here is probably that Asians made as much of a difference in the election as the Latino vote, at least as far as congressional districts are concerned.

San Francisco's 8th District, which includes most of the city-at-large as well as the Castro, is the only example of the  "Gay Vote" that is measurable, though results by city (if we can find them) might give us an interesting peek at these demographics in West Hollywood. This isn't entirely a reliable sampling of that vote, but Obama did win the 8th district by ten percentage points.

Coming up later: Baseless personal attacks directed at "Hitlery Cunton" to invalidate the reasonable nature of this demographical analysis.

-Tommy