Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?

Lisa Leff of the Associated Press wrote up a news article on how Air New Zealand is creating a gay-theme flight, with a drag cabaret, pink cocktails and gay-friendly movies:

"The destination for the airline's one-time "Pink Flight," scheduled to depart San Francisco International Airport on Feb. 26, is the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, one of the world's most well-attended gay events, said Jodi Williams, an Air New Zealand marketing director."

The airline also plans to throw a "Get-Onboard-Girlfriend" going away party for its passengers.

Does anyone still call each other girl-friend?

Really?

Get the fuck out, I say. I can tell you that this "girlfriend" is not about to board a 20 year-old stereotype.

It's grim enough to cross an ocean with the regular number of rubes in the skies, let alone a bunch of middle-aged circuit party queens who still z-snap, use poppers while vogue-ing and think Will & Grace is groundbreaking entertainment.

I would appreciate Air New Zealsnd's efforts a whole lot more if they put their "gay friendly" dollars towards raising awareness of homophobia and persecutions of gay folk in the South Pacific. I think that well-heeled Castro queers already have plenty of "look at me, I'm gay and fabulous" opportunities to spend their money on.

Ready for the weekend...

I know, it's only Thursday night, but my brain is already located at 5:00 PM, Friday. I'm supposed to go into the big city this weekend to catch up with an old friend of mine from graduate school. We're in very different worlds, she's in an evangelical college and pretty devoted to her tradition and me, I'm a queer-ish former Catholic. Still, we have been able to stay in touch. She's one of the nicest and smartest people I've met, so I'm grateful to be able to see her again.

Otherwise, if you want to find me, I'll be down here (click on picture to make the SoCal experience come to your screen-you'll be grateful, I promise):

I would rather have a bourbon and coke...

According to Roger Yu of USA Today's Airport Checkin:

SANTA ANA, CALIF.

You can give blood on the fly

Passengers traveling at John Wayne Airport today will have an opportunity to donate blood. The Bloodmobile truck from the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross will be parked at the airport's Thomas F. Riley Terminal on the lower (arrival) level outside of Terminal A.

Is this really what passes as an airport diversion nowadays? It might be a good thing - if all those blood givers are woozy at high altitudes, then they'll be too weak to hog both arm-rests. I'll stick with my usual time-filler, sweet, delicious alcohol.

It's not a gay thing

All across America, there is a new wave of gay panic sweeping public spaces. I am sure that there are hundreds of restrooms crawling with tap-happy gay-bashing straight guys (and those who are really trying to prove they are straight). It is with some degree of Schadenfreude that I think of them whaling on each other. They are discovering that the subtleties of tea-room protocol might be a little more complex than their little brains can fathom.

Now, I know this is old news and that the blogosphere has been rife with the gnashings of teeth and long-winded analyses about the whole Senator Craig affair, but bear with me here, after all:

• I was away for a long weekend kanoodling with my sweetie,
• I have a real job, and
• I don't care so much about identity politics anymore, it's mostly a venue for middle class poseurs to appropriate the real suffering of others.

Sen Craig's big announcement after the scandal broke was that he is, in fact, not gay. You prolly saw the picture of him talking with his mid-westy Hausfrau standing awkwardly beside him in big-ass sunglasses. He also tried to back up his claim by pointing to his three kids - conveniently brought into the marriage, suspiciously the Senator has no known spawn. By the way, good on the kids (well one of them, anyways) for saying that it wouldn't matter to them if Larry was straight or gay.

At first I thought, "Fine, he's not gay." Who needs fuck-ups like him? It's not like the gay community has benefited from former NJ-governor McGreevey's or Lance Bass joining the ranks of "gay-Americans". It's easy to reject Craig, his self-loathing, his creepiness. Can you imagine your reaction to him peeping into your stall? I am not one to shriek, but I might utter a somewhat shrill noise at that point. My mind boggles, though, as to how he could smoke cock in bathrooms and then go off to the Senate to promote hateful legislation against the very people with whom he needed to have sex. Maybe it was therapeutic for him in some way. It might have been a means for him to assuage his self-loathing by lashing out at people who flagrantly display that which he hates about himself. Maybe it was a way for him to exercise power over those who he finds himself powerless.

Now, though, I think we should embrace Craig. Not in some goody-two-shoes, let's convert him, kind of a way. No, Larry Craig's sociopathic cowardice and his endemic participation in hate legislation are irredeemable. Rather, we should embrace the Senator at the point of his "I'm not gay!" announcement. His assertion that he is not gay sat perfectly well for me. After all, he's right, "gay" men don't find themselves soliciting each other for sexual gratification in anonymous stall bathroom sex for years at a time. That's what "straight" guys do when they are "curious" or "bored" or "drunk" or "just want to get off".

Problem is, labels are a messy thing, kids. While he can claim he's not gay, Craig certainly isn't straight. My hope is that Senator Craig's "I'm not gay!" pronouncement can lead to better things. It shows just how incredible fragile and artificial the boundaries between straight and gay are. Craig has shown that for him the difference between gay/straight was an issue of power -- might not be everyone's experience, but that is my point. Also, Craig's statement clearly demonstrates that we end up sleeping with who we want and need to, no matter what label we put on ourselves for others.

Now if everyone just embraced that thought, perhaps we could get on the with the very important business of working on our love and not on our labels.

Something simple

Things are good, dear readers. The cool breeze coming in off the Ballard Locks this early hour certainly has a bit of a bite to it, but I am taking a lot of pleasure in feeling the cold. I have a while to go before I feel the same chill down in SoCal. The sunrise is a bit murky and that is just fine, I am easily distracted by all the different bird sounds (gulls, ravens, sparrows). Visiting with my sweetie, who's having a bit of a lie-in, has been great. Admittedly, we have both had to work so far (I telecommute back and forth with the mothership and he rides off to Redmond), but today we will have to ourselves. The working doesn't matter so much, it is great just to have share those domestic moments with each other. Stuff like laughing at goofy faces while showering together or talking about all the condos replacing many of the old apartments during our walk through the neighborhood after dinner.

The best thing of all moments is the one where he gently takes my wrist, wraps my arm around him and we fall asleep with him holding our clasped hand against his chest. It's that small thing that is so huge it eclipses the daily annoyances and frets about what occurred weeks prior. It shatters the need to indulge in fairy-tale "happily ever after" rhetoric. Who cares about the end of time when we live in that moment?

Flying good times

I am always into aircraft 'incidents'. If you're a nervous flier, you probably won't like Air Disaster dot com. I personally like flying. Sit me in a window seat and I'll be amused for hours. For example, on my flight last night I watched the spectacular moon-rise over the California coastal mountains flying from SNA to SEA. It began as a huge bright orange globe that morphed into a smaller bone white disc once it broke away from the horizon of the desert peaks. It made the 45 minute delay worth it, just so I could catch those moments in the air. I take it as the universe's blessing of my trip to visit my sweetie here in Seattle.

Here's a quick loop of a plane in Japan being struck by lightening during take-off. Lightening is generally harmless to planes, but the bang is certain to cause a few bladders to release.

Thanks to Gizmodo for posting the link.

You think that Canadian are smiles, beer and hockey, eh?

Well you are wrong my friend.

Not only is the great northern menace trying to lay claim to the Canadian Arctic (buggers even named it after themselves) by planting flags and stranding Inuit peoples to starve on Canadian claimed territories, but they are now infiltrating the very foundations of American higher education.

Today in the Chronicle of Higher Education (that venerable rag), there was a story about how Canadian propagandists are reworking the primary source of knowledge for American high school and university students (and maybe a few professors as well). In the Wired Campus edition, it was noted that 11,000 -that's right, eleven thousand - entries of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, had been edited by Canadians. Not just any Canadians, rightfully-fearful readers, but Canadians with ip addresses that are tied to Canadian government computers.

No doubt, now-terrified readers, you are wondering how Canadian propagandists are changing the great forge of American knowledge from which so many of my students see as the only font of information around. Will Canadians be smugly changing entries so that American youth question the evils of socialized medicine, multilingualism and a reasonable immigration system?

It doesn't appear that that is the case just yet. As we read in the Chronicle article:

Despite Wikipedia’s monitoring, one user with an Internet-protocol address at the House of Commons repeatedly removed material from the encyclopedia’s entry on homosexuality, replacing it 24 times with terse statements like “Homosexuality is evil.”

Huh...

I admit I was a bit perplexed at this tact by the Canadian Politburo. At first I thought that this surely must be what Albertan patronage appointments must do in Ottawa for kicks; having neither the wherewithal to do anything useful with themselves, nor the ability to break through the neocolonial powers of central Canadian politics. But what I think is really going on is this: these edits in Wikipedia are part of a grand conspiracy of Canadian professional bureaucrats to further the right-wing agenda of the American social conservative movement, thereby leveraging Canada's warm and fuzzy reputation in the world as a bastion of weak-socialist liberalism. Upon successfully distracting/lulling the world, that's when they will spring forth in their black helicopters and begin the True North One World Government.

Very clever, vile canucks... very clever indeed.