Nic
So I admit I was also wrapped up in Sesame Street turning 40 last week (as were a couple dozen people on my facebook). But people we missed something crucial the week before! Someone else had their 40th birthday and is not only not showing age (although they are getting more obscure and pervy every year), but seems to be shedding years off as we speak. It may be botox, it may be Just For Men (or L’oreal, is it male or female????), but let’s all give a round of applause, for every single one of our’s friend (Homorazzi would not exist without it), THE INTERNET!
That’s right. On October 29, 1969 at around 10:30 pm, this little nugget came screaming into the world. Well maybe not screaming, but maybe laughing. See the first message ever sent was supposed to be “LOGIN”, but it decided to give up the gusto and crash at “LO” which, IMHO, seems to be nearly the first “LOL”.
Although the World Wide Web wasn’t actually created until 20 years later, and the first actual web BROWSER wasn’t hatched until 1990, the internet, originally called ARPANet, was hiding in the attic like a redheaded stepchild. The first ever message was sent from and to California (UCLA to SRI) by researchers. Of course, this was all happening in and around the Cold War, and the U.S. government was supposedly funding this so that communications and information could survive during a nuclear war. This is strange no? I’ve been thinking about this. Civilization, and, hell, the world, could cease to exist, but armageddon couldn’t destroy the internet and every loogie of information we’ve given it. It’d just be floating around there in nothingness until the world rebuilt itself and, tada! A recipe for peppercorn pork roast with vermouth pan sauce, and a sex tape of Verne Troyer. Hrm.
I guess it’s the classic, no-you-can’t-bring-your-same-sex-partner-to-prom kind of story, but not only does this one seem unnecessarily harsh as you’ll see, but it still gets me that bigots can’t still be the head of schools, EVEN IN THE SOUTH.
Cynthia Stewart is 17 and graduating this year. She’s part of the prom committee, has raised money on her own for the event, has helped choose the theme for the prom, is clearly active in and proud of her school, but her school’s not proud of her sexuality. Cynthia decided to be respectful to the authority in her school, living in Alabama and all. As I can only imagine she’s still apprehensive about her sexuality considering her surroundings, so she asked her Principal (let’s call him Sargeant Fascist Prick), if she could bring her girlfriend to the prom, and obviously, SFP said no. THEN The Sargeant told her to, get this, remove a sticker that said “I Am A Lesbian” and says to her, GET THIS!, “You don’t have that much freedom at school”.
My head is still swimming from the story at this point, mouth gaping, fly’s flying in, I don’t care, still in shock ya know. Then I read this part. Ahem.
Looks like a battle of wills between two great organizations.
Equality California apparently wants to bide their time and wait until 2012 before attempting to repeal Prop 8 again, while The Courage Campaign has made quite clear that it’s their full intention to go full force right away in 2010. Interesting non?
Apparently both put together some individual poll style statistics and found out that that support for gay marriage is up to 51% in the state of California. That’s a 3% increase to the 48% of voters who previously voted no. So good news. Unfortunately, even though a larger amount of voters are gung ho for I-do equality, 60% of those want to lay low until 2012. Further polling showed that it was the older voters (ah the patience of age) that wanted to hold off while the younger voters (ah the impatience of youth) wanted some change here and now.
As everyone knows I am a huge advocate and supporter of The Food Network. Religion really. I worship at the altar of Rachel, Nigella, and Michael. The latter saint, Michael Smith has peaked my interest on something lately that I’ve only briefly looked into before, and that is the concept of the fifth taste.
I was re-familiarized with the concept of taste receptors in my WSET class for wine when we all identified the parts of the tongue that gave us the sensations of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Michael Smith now though, on two separate shows has mentioned Umami. See, Umami (a.k.a. savoury) is a concept that other cultures in the world have freely accepted, but something that we don’t hear a lot here. I mean sure, we hear about savoury food as in the opposite of sweet am I wrong? Not as in, our body’s innate need for protein. Huh?
I grew up as a sort of only child even though I had two olders sisters. My sisters are quite a BIT older than me (yeah i was the accident SO DON’T WRITE THAT IN THE COMMENTS!), so I didn’t spend much time with them growing up until I was a teenager. And although we’re all kick ass and get along pretty kick ass (most of the time) now, and having all of us in the room is like having three mouth pieces like mine surrounding you (hell I know, I’m aware), I always wondered what it would be like to have a brother.
I had a couple friends in adolescence that were older than me. I wasn’t one for making younger friends generally. I considered my friend Stephen quite a bit like an older brother to me. I would be in some sort of trouble, or there would be a problem, and he would always pick me up and take me to the beach and we’d just walk back and forth along the shore line in the dark with some Timmies, and talk (no Stephen wasn’t gay SO DON’T WRITE THAT IN THE COMMENTS!). His carpeted floor was available, the side door in the garage at his parents place was always open, and his parents were very understanding of me not knocking cause they knew I was a sort of kid in need at the time. Great people. Although me and Stephen are more distant than we used to be, he still to this day is one of those people that make me believe in the concept of soul mates. Just outstanding human being.
GODDESS!!!!!
Okay I’ve gotten that out of my system. Roisin Murphy has been hands down my favorite artist of all time for 3 years running now. I was a fan of Moloko in highschool, but she never captured my heart until she went solo. I was listening to her first album tonight at work, and like every time I hear it, felt like I was listening to it for the first time.
My favourite album ever is Ruby Blue. Roisin’s first album was released in 2006, 3 years after splitting from Moloko. Ruby Blue captured my imagination in a way that music hadn’t before, combining an element of acid jazz, crooning, soft rock, and edgy electronic. The title track was used in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and other tracks, “Ramalama (Bang Bang)” and “Night of the Dancing Flame” were used on So You Think You Can Dance. Her classically creative and dreamy videos accompanied the genius.
Sometimes people shouldn’t reproduce. It’s just a fact. I’m really thinking of buying myself a pair of vasectomy scissors and a black ski mask as an early Christmas present as a favour to the world. I’ll take the hit. It’s cool. As long as people like Randy Thomasson stop spreading hate.
So Randy Thomasson is President of a website called savecalifornia.com. This “saving” is, yes, “saving” from the gays *insert melodramtic and shakespearean OOOOOH*. Another insane Christian with a website I know, but awareness and education is the first step to knowing who we’re fighting right? We’re fighting this guy, trust me. This is the kind of guy that thinks that the Byrd-Shepard Hate Crimes Bill “attacks religious freedom”. Yeah. That kind of guy. Deep breath.
More Food, Less Wine, Make Vancouver Go…Something Something
Author: Nic
Date: Nov 2, 2009
In: Nic, Politics & Issues
Okay that Simpson’s reference had nothing to do with anything besides the fact it was on the Halloween special I just caught on the boob. Down to business.
New liquor by-law for our already liquor by-law saturated city. Did you know Vancouver is known as the no fun city? Oh yeah. In comparison to the rest of the world, our bars close early, our party restrictions are suffocating, we have the second highest liquor taxes in the ENTIRE WORLD in the little province of BC (117% if I’m not mistaken), and now the City of Vancouver is making sure that when you dine in an establishment, you’re eating more than you’re drinking.
Apparently undercover-liquor-brothers have been stealthing restaurants and finding out that not everyone wants to eat, and they don’t like this. Aimed at restaurants with upscale wine lists, the new law says that a restaurant must have greater food than liquor sales in any given 8 hour period. That means that a server in the near future could be saying to you, “Sorry Sir, I’m going to have to get you to order a LESS expensive bottle of wine”, if it means it puts the restaurant over their limit for the serving period. Sounds like a joke doesn’t it?
