some thoughts...

This is a little post that came up in response to an Open Forum question over at Queers United about whether "any press is good press." I think that (brace yourselves) it depends. Yeah, it's that balance thing again. In some times, and for some groups, negative press is better than none. For most of the various groups under the big queer umbrella these days, I don't think that's necessarily true.

We don't need truly bad publicity in the sense of news stories covering queer people misbehaving. We had that all along, really, and it never worked to desensitize people. In fact, for many years the only time the word homosexual appeared in the press was if it came up in the course of a criminal investigation. That's what the coming out movement was meant to address. We created the first positive media images for ourselves by acting like our normal selves and making it public that we happened to be gay.

I think that the big queer umbrella gets as much negative publicity from the radical acts at Pride as the Christians get from real nutcases like Fred Phelps & Family. Most people are going to laugh that off as the work of a few extremists, and maybe take steps to distance or protect themselves from the crazy venom. People who are extremists themselves are going to use it against us as evidence that we're all flagrantly immoral. Just like the extremists among queers use Phelps as evidence that all Christians are ignorant bigots.

I don't think we can expect the news media to do their job as documentarians while simultaneously expecting them to be our PR spinmeisters. It's a conflict of interest. Let the media do its job of showing what's out there. They will always seize upon the extreme because people find the extremes interesting, and thus, pay money to consume media about them. If we want our press to be mostly good, then we have to make sure that we take it upon ourselves to do good things and make sure there's a local reporter covering it when we do.

Then there are the gray areas... publicity in the sense of mass entertainment media. Do we have to demand only "good" representations in fictional media, or should we allow "bad" ones on the grounds that any publicity is good? I think 10 or 20 years ago, that might've been valid. It was so rare to see gay characters on TV or in movies that I was grateful for any depiction, be it the most caricatured negative stereotype possible. These days, with Logo TV and "The L Word" and "Queer As Folk" and many other media outlets showing gay people in realistic settings, I think the standards need to go up.

quickie

I have about five minutes to write this while some stuff i'm doing for work makes a long, tortuous slog from Texas to Quebec and back, by way of Pennsylvania. It's going on the intarweb, so it ought to be reasonably fast, but i imagine all the firewalls, VPNs, routers, and Snuffleupaguses between here and there are going to slow it enough for me to peck out a few words today.

I'm getting married Saturday (in Canada). Officially, technically, it doesn't "mean anything" since Texas doesn't recognize gay marriage in any way, and the US in general doesn't, either. Even if they did, my understanding is that two American citizens living in the US cannot go abroad to marry and transfer that home. However, the closer I get to the date, the more it settles in my heart exactly how much this really does "mean". I started down this path because I thought it was important for my family to see me get married. I know exactly what my relationship to Rose is, what it means, how serious and good and committed it is. But until I marry her, my family doesn't know that. I don't talk about my feelings very much at all, and unless someone asks a direct question, I don't volunteer. Even if I could single out every person in my family and friend network and tell them exactly what Rose means to me -- and I didn't die of an emotional hemorrhage from talking about my feelings that much -- even then I'm quite sure it would not have the same impact that simply getting married has. Culturally, the act of getting married says something to people that I doubt I could put into words.

Does it matter what other people think? On one level, of course it does not. I know in my heart, mind and soul exactly how I feel, think, and relate. None of those things changes because I've promised out loud in front of witnesses to continue to do so. But on another level, it does. My life is not lived in a vacuum, it's carried on in the mesh of my entire community of family and friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and strangers. Saying "I'm married" makes it immediately obvious to people how they should relate to me, where my significant other fits into my life, and how they should relate to her if and when they meet. It's cultural shorthand, and I like shorthand, especially when it comes to discussing my emotions. That's it! I'm getting married so I won't have to talk about my feelings so much! heh. Okay, maybe not...

In the sense that I'll be able to utilize that cultural shorthand in explaining that piece of my life, going through with this ritual does indeed mean something. In the sense that it will make it easier for my extended family to take in and deal with the immediate family I'm starting, it also "means something". That's probably not sufficient reason to do all the things involved in getting married. Heck, it's probably not even a sufficient reason to stuff myself into a strapless dress. For someone with my dating record and my legendary fear of commitment, proving that I'm willing to marry may be more important than actually doing it.

I also can't deny that the political act of marrying, knowing that it won't be recognized at home, and marrying anyway, will make a difference in the legal recognition of gay marriage in the US. I hope that as more gay couples make these public commitments to each other, more people will understand that this is no threat to their lives. I'm not getting married so I can swing a bayonet at anyone's marriage or family. I'm not going to force anyone else to get married. Conversely, I'm darn sure not going to go away or quit being gay because I'm denied civil equality. I'm just trying to give my life a little balance in my little corner of the world.

The Road Goes On Forever...

At the end of our last installment, the intrepid motorcyclists were in Virginia, having braved the glorious and terrifying Blue Ridge Parkway in both rain and sunshine. Finding themselves in Virginia, and needing to be in Texas, Thalassa and Rose hie themselves home. Again, you can't really ride a straight line anywhere here. So we pointed ourselves in the general direction of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and wriggled on down to its delightfully tortuous bounding road, the Tail of the Dragon. We had planned this quite carefully, actually, so that we could do it on a weekday. I don't know if there are any humans who actually enjoy densely packed, crowded situations, but for some reason we all tend to jam ourselves into attractive places together on weekends. I can't imagine a more miserable riding experience than one in which I was being hampered from the front by a slow bike while crowded from behind by a fast bike on a road that doesn't even try to lend itself to safe passing zones. Weekends are reported to be crowded out there, so Friday was our preferred approach. Even with the Honda Hoot motorcycle rally in nearby Knoxville, TN we had a fairly clear road to ride. We didn't see any accidents or even any really silly behavior. Generally, everyone was polite and responsible - which is bad for my writing, but good for my health. I include this fact only because some of you readers actually know me in real life and care whether I get off the bike with the same number of limbs I had when I clambered on it.

We ordered our ride pictures from Killboy as I promised. All the other photography (except as noted) is Rose's because she's good at it, and I'm not. The road was really a blast! It IS all it's cracked up to be... I can't begin to imagine what riding it was like back when the speed limit was 55 mph. These days the limit is 30, and while I recognize that's artificially low in honor of the road's notoriety and the crowds there, I still felt like 30 was awfully fast in some of the corners -- maybe I'm just a nervous nelly. Then again, if you look at the chicken strips on my Valk, they're damn narrow. I know I've never been out to the edge of the tire, but I'm certainly not riding it upright through those mountains, either. Whichever, once we'd ridden the Tail of the Dragon, bought our t-shirts and tchotchkes, jawed with some bikers and gawked at some of the bikes in the parking area, we rolled on down to our next destination road, the Cherohala Skyway. It was actually prettier and more fun to ride this one than Tail of the Dragon, simply because it's a much more open road and has some nice passing zones built right into the mix! (as the old Duncan Hines commercials would say) Rose reports that it is her FAVORITE ROAD EVAR!eleventy!

We leaned and wriggled and swerved our way on down to the end of the Cherohala Skyway and pulled over to powwow about dinner. There at the scenic overlook, with a background babble from the beautiful mountain river that I swear was a wee stream just a few miles up the hill, we met a delightful guy who was just the picture of every "retired Jewish Yankee winters in Florida" joke you've ever heard. I swear, visiting with him was like talking to a cartoon or a sitcom character. He had the accent, the attitude, the face... Ultimately, of course, he was a real person with questions about how two girls could pack for two weeks in those tiny saddlebags and what was the fastest way back to Knoxville, and whether we'd really ridden all the way from Texas by ourselves, and whether he'd make it back in time for dinner. We used our GPS to give him some directions and we rolled off to meet up with some old friends in Athens, TN.

Have you ever wondered what your preacher was like before he was a preacher? I've often wondered that, myself. Unless you get a chance to sit down with said preacher's mother, though, you don't usually get the answer to that question. Well, in this case, our old friend has just become a preacher. I've only known him a couple of years, but Rose and he were coworkers back in the day. Apparently, the two of them were running buddies in their misspent youth. Of course, they've both matured and taken on responsibility as it's come careering at them, but every once in a while you see that glint in their eyes... you know they could still go back to being hellions, if only for a weekend. We had a wonderful dinner and tour of the new house and new church that our friend is going to be leading, and then we settled in for a good night's rest while visions of hairpin turns and sweet sweeping mountain vistas danced in our heads. (These two shots are from Moonshine Photo)

muppet patriots sing it proudly...

happy 4th of july!



I'm going to spend my 4th of July on the Frio river -- floating in the cool, cool water and being a lazy bum and recuperating. For someone who wants to spend more time at home and less time traveling, I seem to travel a lot, no? I have declared August to be "Thalassa stays home" month. We'll see how that works out.

In the meantime, I'll be making homemade vanilla ice cream and roasting marshmallows far away from home. Envy my ice cream! It was my grandma's fantastic no-cook recipe and it always brings back wonderful, sweet, sticky memories of running around the backyard at her house. We had to dodge around the pomegranates that had fallen from the trees because they would trip up small children, they were so big. And we had to jump over the French drain my grandfather had installed smack across the yard for reasons none of us could ascertain at the time. It was just a speed bump to us. And we weren't allowed to repeat any of the more interesting words my grandparents used.

But we had ice cream, and inflatable swimming pools, and tree swings, and my grandma poured whole bottles of bubble soap into cookie sheets so everybody could get their bubble wand into the stuff at once. We didn't have to crowd all 6 of us around the tiny neck of a bottle to make bubbles in her yard, no! She made the most delightful cobbler, grew the sweetest strawberries, and -naturally- froze the best ice cream on the planet. My grandfather would pour the salt into the ice and pretend to be grumpy when we stole the salty hunks of ice out of the bucket and grouse about how much better that ice cream would taste if he made us kids turn a crank handle for it instead of using electricity. It's what love feels like, to me. So I make sure to share it every 4th of July and any time in the summer that I can get more than three people to stand still around a whining bucket of ice.

Blue Ridge Parkway? or Heaven? You be the judge...

After our rotten and rainy Saturday on the BRP (Blue Ridge Parkway) we awoke in Boone, NC with bright and sunny skies. Seriously, it was like a whole other country. First, we backtracked a short way to visit Grandfather Mountain. They actually make motorcyclists read a half-page "Hazards Warning" upon entering the park that basically explains that this is a Mountain with twisties and possibly even SWITCHBACKS on it and that you should neither take these things too fast nor too slow, lest you fly off or fall down. This, of course, made me grin from ear to ear with gleeful anticipation. So we took off (at a reasonable pace) and cruised up to the first building on the mountain, which was the Nature Museum. They had some really fantastic displays there. My favorite was the dendrochronology. They had used a tree cross-section as a timeline and marked rings on the tree with historical events that took place in the year the ring formed. Informative and aesthetically pleasing! Also, based on their displays of native plants, I'm fairly certain that I have strawberries growing in my flowerpots out front. They were supposed to be asters, I think. That's what I get for using my compost as fertilizer.

The Nature Museum also included a number of live critters on display. We saw the otters, but they were asleep in the shade and not out being cute for our benefit. How rude! They had some zoo-like animals and others that were quite plainly rescued animals that were unable to survive in the wild. Like this majestic guy, a bald eagle who was maimed by a gunshot wound. Our favorite, however, were the genial black bears. The bears were quite interactive, at least as long as someone on our side of the wall had a packet of treats in hand. Yes, at Grandfather Mountain you are encouraged to feed the bears! This seasoned pro was working the crowd of tourists quite handily. There were kids competing with each other to see who could toss their food closest to her mouth, because if it was close enough she'd snatch it out of the air. Too far away, and she'd let it roll off, to be licked up later, when she got around to it... We sat down in a shady spot and considered our options at that point. We could:

1) Eat a bear and hope nobody noticed
2) Gnaw each other's arms off
3) Go back to town for lunch

We, quite reasonably I think, pointed our headlights down the mountain. We stopped for a quick photo, where you'll notice the pointy bits sticking out of the mountain behind us. Those are, apparently, the nose and beard of the Grandfather. If you look at the mountain from the right vantage, it's supposed to look like an old man in profile, complete with bushy beard. Who makes this stuff up, anyway? We rolled back into Boone, NC for lunch at Tupelo World Cafe where I had Roasted Yam Jalapeno Soup. It tasted as fascinating as it sounds. The menu looked startlingly similar to, but more diverse than, the one at Coyote Kitchen, and it turned out that's because Tupelo's owners were the founders of the Coyote Kitchen. They know good food, that's for certain.

Thence, it was ON WITH THE CURVES, ALREADY!!! We didn't get too many more pictures that day, because we were "burdened" with riding mile after mile after relaxing mile of sweeping curves through mountains, glens, passes, and meadows. After the 13-hour slog from Dallas to Atlanta on the previous Saturday, and the treacherous rainy riding the day before, the BRP on a Sunday was exactly what I needed. I got into my groove. I even have an iTunes playlist especially for this mood, appropriately titled "Sunday Morning". I jammed, I rolled around curves and over hills, past waterfalls and cabins, wineries and horse pastures. It really was heavenly.
Oh, and the forest? The rain from the day before had given everything a clean glow, a little lift. It smelled fresh and fertile and green. How I can describe a smell as green after making fun of someone for seeing a Grandfather in a mountain is surely one of the Great Mysteries of the Internet. We whiled the hours away cruising through some of the prettiest territory in North Carolina. We did get some scenic overlook shots that day, and there was some mighty nice scenery to look over.

There's really no way to photograph it and ride it at the same time, but we had the distinct pleasure of riding the Linn Cove Viaduct that day. I will leave it to your trusty Googling skills to find more photos of it, if you're interested. It made my enginerd senses tingle because the construction of that particular bridge was used as an example of first rate work in some of my engineering classes back in the old school days. It made Rose's biker senses tingle when she recognized, halfway down the viaduct, that her desktop wallpaper for a darn long time had been a publicity shot of her motorcycle riding that same stretch of bridge. This would be the geek equivalent of waking up in a closet full of stuffed animals plus one wrinkly alien and realizing that you were IN THE POSTER with E.T.

It was getting to be arm-gnawing time again, so we grabbed one more scenic overlook shot and scooted on across the border into Virginia, where we both worked for the week. How mundane!

All the road that's fit to ride...

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Atlanta for work, and then the following week I had to be in Abingdon, Va. For those of you who motorcycle, you probably know what turf is between Atlanta and western Virginia. For those of you who don't, it's quite seriously where angels would go to ride a motorcycle, if they had to choose something within the Continental US. Here's a graphic to make it clear:

You should notice two things about that picture. First, that no matter how you route yourself, you end up skirting or crossing Great Smoky Mountain National Park (green blob at map center); and second, you can't draw a straight line from Atlanta to Abingdon because the roads are all bendy. Given that the Smokies are round-ish green mountains with lovely vistas and moderate temperatures that are a human's best friend and that non-straight roads are a motorcycle's best friend, this is then teh perfect place to ride. Ask any angel you meet.

Really, I can't say enough about how fabulous and fun the ride was, IN GENERAL. However, our first day out was rainy, and I assure you that while our rainsuits kept us dry, there was no love lost on the clouds (aka: fog as thick and soft as cotton bolls) we stumbled through when we ATTEMPTED to ride up on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Notice, if you will, the fact that although this photograph was taken at a scenic overlook, there is no scenery to overlook. The background closely resembles a cotton boll. After a little bit of that, we gave up and visited Linville Falls instead. A very short and pleasant hike through easy territory yielded us this neat little vista point:
Rose liked the flowers along the way. They call these "Mountain Laurel" but they look nothing like the Mountain Laurel I know here in Texas, and most disappointingly, they don't smell like my Mountain Laurel. *le sigh* I guess the angels got busy arranging the roads and forgot to perfume the flowers. Then again, it could have been the cotton boll fog just absorbing the smells. We only hiked out to the first waterfall because we were in serious danger of gnawing
each other's arms off at that point. Dark was falling and we had yet to reach a town that would do for dinner and hotel as we'd been ambling along the Parkway and other back roads in South and North Carolina which are known for their scenery but not their plentiful commercial services. Probably because the two are generally mutually exclusive. At a rest stop on our way up to the Parkway Rose found a plant with leaves bigger than her own head. Given that we couldn't see much further away than 100 feet because of the rain and cotton bolls fog, this was a choice bit of scenery for that day. We decided to take a tip from Mad Maps and go for dinner at a place called the Coyote Kitchen. This was a serious leap of faith for me because I've eaten at enough Tex/Ari/Cali/New-Mex style southwest eateries actually located in the Southwestern United States that I'm pretty much a connoisseur by default at this point. I don't enjoy the misguided attempts of yankees trying to make Southwest-Mex food and getting it wrong. Frankly, if I think the place is going to bill itself as a Southwest-Mex eatery, I'm only going to eat there if it is:

1. south of I-30
2. if I see actual Hispanic people in the kitchen preparing the food* or
3. it comes highly recommended.

Furthermore, the I-30 border is a stretch. I used to say I-20, but I found a good TexMex place in Fort Worth that's just south of I-30 so I moved it north just for them.

Blessedly, and under clause 3 above, the Coyote Kitchen was fantastic. They were veggie/vegan friendly, the staff were friendly and attentive and above all, everything tasted fantastic. They had a number of different Caribbean-style salsas, and while I only ate the Mango Lime and Cranberry Chipotle myself, I would say based on these two that all the salsa in there was good enough to feed the angels. Seriously, it was so good I bought the t-shirt. Now I can say, when hyping this place up to random strangers on the street, that I have Been There, Done That, and Bought the T-shirt.

We drifted off that night with happy tummies and thoughts of waterfalls dancing in our heads...
And we woke up the next day to glorious sunny skies and perfect riding weather. But that's for another post...

*Yes, I am aware this is a blatant racial stereotype. I'm willing to accept the potential consequences to my immortal soul so as to avoid eating things like burritos topped with marinara.

GO LOOK AT THE MOON!!!

NASA advises you to go take a look at the moon tonight. It'll look large and lovely as a result of an optical illusion that nobody understands, just like microwaves and non-dairy creamer. There are a few theories on why the moon looks so large when it comes up on the horizon, and there are great explanations of them on that link.

I've experienced that myself... the most glorious moonrise I ever saw actually looked like a massive grassfire in the mesas of New Mexico. It spread thick and red and wavy across the horizon, getting larger and larger as I drove toward it, cursing the fact that I had no cell phone reception and the nearest land line was 14 miles TOWARD the fire. For a while, I honestly wondered if I'd have to ditch the truck in an arroyo and hope the flames passed overhead. Then, suddenly the upper edge of the moon popped out crisp and clear into the cooler layers of air. The atmosphere stopped playing mirage tricks and the orange moon rose splendidly over the mesas and canyons.

It's a terrific memory and one that I hold out any time someone says they don't get what the big deal is about light pollution. Happy memories and good moongazing tonight, internet!

Strict Scrutiny...

Recently, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case of a Maj. Witt of the US Air Force (USAF). She was a combat nurse, highly decorated, 18 years into her service. She had literally been an Air Force poster child, her image used in recruiting materials over the years. Until, in 2004, someone snitched on her and informed one of her superiors that she had 'the gay' - it's a disease, you see, something like 'the plague' or 'the I'm about to be expensive.' She was investigated and ultimately given an honorable discharge, all just one year before her eligibility for a lifetime pension.

Because I'm a nerd, I read up the review of the case at Law.com and found out some really interesting things which I'm about to share with those of you who are lazy, link-averse readers. For instance, a lot of folks I've heard criticizing those discharged under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy dismiss the issue with an argument along these lines: "She knew the rules, she broke 'em, she got discharged, and now she's whining about it? Shut up, already."

The thing is, Maj. Witt DID NOT break the rules. She did have a civilian partner, but she didn't talk about it, didn't write about it, didn't protest about it. In fact, her partner lived 250 miles from base, so she didn't flaunt the fact at the occasional grocery-store run-in with fellow servicemembers. She was abiding solidly by the rules laid out in the policy.

Now, what's nerdy and interesting about this decision of the 9th Circuit, and the reason that it made the news at all, is that in light of the decision handed down by the Supreme Court in Lawrence & Garner v. Texas in 2003 the appeals court has required a higher standard of proof from the military that the discharge was justified. That is, there has long been what the legal profession calls the "rational basis" test to determine whether laws like this are reasonable. Basically, the court asks the government why it must discriminate against some of its citizens. The government then says that it had a rational basis for enacting the law or policy in question, and from there the court has simply ruled on whether it was implemented fairly.

Since Lawrence, however, the court is looking more closely at the rational basis itself, not just the application of it. (In Lawrence, the Supreme Court said that the state of Texas had no rational basis for regulating private sexual behavior between consenting adults, even if they have the gay.) The Lawrence decision gets into a legal doctrine called "strict scrutiny" which the 9th Circuit declined to require of the military in this case. Instead, they've required some middle ground between rational basis and strict scrutiny, probably because applying strict scrutiny would effectively destroy DADT outright. The Supreme Court would be very likely to overturn a ruling like that, so the circuit court walked a line here between making an eloquent point and howling at the moon.

So, the rational basis for DADT has always been that keeping servicemembers closeted was necessary to promote unit cohesion, individual morale, good order and discipline, and readiness among the troops. All laudable goals, assuredly, but quite vague. HOW EXACTLY, the 9th Circuit has asked, did Maj. Witt (remember all those medals and commendations?) threaten good order and discipline? If the protests of her co-workers, superiors, subordinates, and patients are any indication, the only thing about her that damaged morale was her ouster. The only possible way she could have been perceived as a threat to readiness is if someone thought they could use her pension dollars for something else and had to get her out of the way to do it.

This will be VERY interesting to watch. Kinda like watching someone work their jaw in futility when you ask them how, exactly, my impending gay wedding threatens or damages their straight marriage in any way.

proud of these girls!

These are some friends and family of mine who just ran a 5k for Breaast Cancer Research fundraising. I'm proud of "Team Treasured Chests" for their hard work and commitment. That shirt on my sister (on the far right) is from an organization called Save the Ta-tas that donates part of their proceeds to breast cancer research. The slogans and shirts are fun to wear ("If loving ta-tas is wrong, I don't wanna be right!") and the money goes to a good cause. If you have ta-tas or you know someone who does, and you'd like to keep it that way, go browse their catalog.

I am so proud of you ladies!

Carlsbad, NM - redux

Rose and I just got back from Carlsbad, NM. We went there last year on our road trip, but on that visit it was merely a waypoint. This time, we met up with friends from the Dykes on Bikes e-mail list and the whole point was to visit the caverns and the surrounding countryside, like Roswell. Here we are, a small group of Dykes on Bikes, ready to go into the caverns. Your friendly, neighborhood giant amazon is easy to spot. In fact, this theme was so pronounced that our friend Chelli took a picture of a cavern formation to exemplify it. Here: See? That's me on the right. Now, ordinarily, I'd do a whole cool ride report on how fabby the roads were and all the great places that we ate and all the sorts of things I get excited about. In the case of this trip, however, we were in the unenviable position of having to ride from the edge of the Texas Black Prairie across the Western Plains to the edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. The operative words there are Prairie and Plains. The chief difference between them is their aridness, and they're not much to look at beyond that. They do make for some outstanding sunsets and sunrises with the wide open spaces in front of you. Unfortunately, that only occupies about 2 hours of your day, and then you still have the other 22 in which to contend with the pancake-ocity of it all. So: flat, pancake-ocity, and the tumblin' tumbleweeds. What makes the tumbleweeds tumble, you may wonder? Well, I'll tell you - it ain't the sheer joy of skipping over the thrilling landscape. It's the plain desire to look at something OTHER than the plains. That, or the blistering wind. :)

Our chief form of entertainment on this ride, after we'd seen the caverns, was to ride across the prairie/plains taking pictures of each other.





We had ourselves some fun up in Roswell. The Harley dealership out there has a couple of big bikes on display with an alien and an MP, respectively, riding them. We took some silly photos of ourselves hugging the aliens and whatnot before settling in to a nice light lunch of BBQ ribs, sausage, and all the trimmings.




Oh, Cavern highlights, lest I forget: we walked through it with a Ranger who just happened to be starting his route about the same time as us. He showed us all sorts of neat things about the cave that you'd never find without a guide and a flashlight. There are places right along the path where you can see bat bones being fossilized right into the drip-formed stalagmites, and rock formations that glow if you give them a good dose of light. They even have a cave ghost that you can see in photographs... He's a natural rock formation that doesn't look like anything special until you use the flash on your camera. Then those eyes pop out of the darkness at you! The low wall that keeps tourists on the trail and off the stalagmites is full of fascinating little 'easter eggs' if you know what to look for. Our ranger guide showed us a rubber high bounce ball, a glow-in-the-dark gecko, a keepsake penny, a Pennsylvania quarter, an American flag, and a few other neat little peeks and pokes that probably go unnoticed by 99.9% of the cavern visitors. Finally, a fossil that was dug up from the cave and put out on display to illustrate why it's occasionally good for things in the cavern to break:
So, that was Carlsbad. Well, there was the bit about the largest North American Colony of Mexican Freetail Bats flying out of the cave and right over our heads at sunset and then the thrilling ride back down the mountain in the cool night air with the full moon rising. But honestly, you had to be there for that... so I hope to see you out on the road next time.

Fraaaaank says, "I plaaan zis parfet wadding vur yew!"

My dear friend, Brad, has decided to help Rose and I out a little by advising us on our "something old/something new/something borrowed/something blue" wedding traditions. He's a doll, and a good sport when I do something dykey and don't quite reach the FABulous mark. Rose is always thoroughly fabulous, but she has an alter-ego to help her with that. I have to muddle through with neither a gay man's sensibility for fabulousness nor a straight woman's aplomb for aesthetics. So, basically, I'm a dude.

Anyway, in his spirit of helpfulness, Brad photochopped us all into a scene from Father of the Bride to help us all get into character. Anyone remember that movie? I'm afraid it may have set unreasonably high expectations in my parents' minds for what their daughters' weddings would be like. One out of three ain't bad? (My apologies to Mr. Meatloaf...)

P.S.: Mom & Dad, if you read this, I'm kidding about the movie.

she of the abnormally long legs...

Rose and I went by the local army surplus store this week to pick up extra camo pants for our upcoming roadtrip. I used to be in the Air Force, and I fell in love with the camo uniforms while I was there. I found them to be the sexiest uniform item, like, EVAR!!!1!

Ok, not really, but they're so damn functional I forgive them for being unsexy. If you're looking for sexy, you might think about flight suits. I know they don't look like much at first glance, but they're a short zipper away from being silk boxers and combat boots - silk scarf optional. What's not to love?

So these camo pants have giant pockets, the fabric breathes WAY better than denim, and they're reinforced through the butt and the knees, should you ever find yourself in contact with the ground. Hopefully you won't, but even if you did, the cargo pockets are so big you could probably store a trauma team in them to get you back on the road before the next day's breakfast. Why the next day's breakfast? Well, most bikers seem to have this crazed 'kickstands up at first light' philosophy that, had I known about it ahead of time, might've kept me from pursuing the pastime. See ANY of my posts tagged coffee for an explanation.

In short, they make perfect riding pants. We had ordered some extra-long pants for me because the merely long pants were, as you can see below, about three inches shy of being long enough, even when i wore the waist around my hips (which actually does a lot to improve the sex appeal of the pants). I was walking out of the dressing room holding the special order pair of extra-longs when the manager spied me for the first time and said, "You must be the Extra-Long Pants I ordered!" Yep, that's me, Giant Amazon!




Unfortunately, the Extra-Long pants were only available in a waist size that is... skinnier than your resident Giant Amazon. So the next time I post some decadent food item that I've cooked or eaten, feel free to leave me a comment reminding me to go jog that off. Until then, I'll be wearing slightly short, but hip-skimmingly sexy pants in the larger waist size. Maybe I could stuff a personal trainer in one of those cargo pockets?

CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME!!!

... okay, maybe i'm not going to california. but i really like that song lyric and i bellow it at the top of my lungs whenever i can. making it a nice big, bold post topic counts as bellowing. you can blame my mother, who taught me that if i couldn't sing it well or remember all the words, i should make up for it by singing the parts i knew VERY LOUDLY.

so, california legalized gay marriage today! great news. when you get the press release from Equality Texas (which is where the above clicky takes you) you also get the following interesting factoids...

According to a January, 2008 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, approximately 50,000 same-sex couples were living in Texas in 2005. About 20% of these couples are raising an estimated 17,444 children. They deserve the same opportunity to legally protect their family relationships as all California couples now have.



Equality Texas will continue its ongoing efforts to help build strong Texas families, including those with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender family members.

I had no idea there were so many. Some days, it feels like Rose and I are the only ones. Of course, percentagewise, that's only about 0.5% of the state population, but it doesn't take into account the unattached ones. To look at it another way, it's half the population of the city of Plano - which is 9th in the state, for those of you not familiar with the outliers of the DFW metroplex. That's quite a lot of people.

*crosses fingers* someday, right?

it is good to be my dog.

This is my dog, in the pose colloquially known as 'tits up'. She will sleep like this for hours on end. Shortly after we took this picture, she went to the vet and got her rabies vaccination, where she proceeded to pretend she was shy. Then we went to the park, where she and her cousin-dog went swimming, and she proved what a liar she'd been at the vet's by making friends with every human being and waterfowl within a 3 mile radius. Even the ducklings and cygnets like my dog. What is up with that?

Here's the thing that's weird about taking my dogs swimming at the park: we attract a LOT of attention. I have labs. They swim -- this is elementary. All the dogs I've owned in recent memory have been swimmers, actually. Even my reluctant rottweiler, Duchess, was a swimmer once she figured out how to not imitate a rock. I don't understand why dogs swimming are so fascinating to people at the park, but by all evidence, they are. People stop what they are doing, bring their children over, pull out cameras and gawk for 15 minutes or more. Oh, yeah, they also talk to me.

I've said this before: I'm slightly unapproachable. Nobody stops me in the grocery store to ask directions (which, honestly, is in their own best interest. i hate shopping and i'm grumpy and bewildered when i do it.) or approaches me for anything other than the classic panhandle. I know that conventional wisdom says dogs are supposed to make you more approachable, but kids who would RUN THE OTHER WAY if I said "hi" because OHMYGAWD A STRANGER TALKED TO ME! will stand next to me while I play with the dogs and tell me their life stories. Today, for example, I learned all about some kid's Pekingese, how he taught it to stand up, and how a cat bit him once just for eating French Fries, and ... well, I'll stop before you get bored. Kids have short lives, but that doesn't mean their life stories are short. They can be incredibly detailed.

So here's to my dog(s) and their incredibly short but intensely good lives. Maybe their willingness to get this vulnerable is what lets people around them do the same?

scramble

rose's grandma just passed away. i think the technical reason was respiratory distress secondary to a lung infection, but she was 94 and had been in declining health for a while - so it's no surprise. we got the phone call a little before 1. now there's a mad scramble to buy an airline ticket, pack suitcases, fill out FMLA paperwork, and get her dad to the airport before the 3:30 PM flight to newark. because if he misses that 3:30 flight, he won't make the 10:50 overseas flight, and if he misses that, the next flight leaving for israel is at 4 tomorrow afternoon. and if he leaves that late, he'll miss the funeral. those crazy jews - 24 hours from moment of death to moment of burial. that's the max. i understand, historically speaking, the reasons for it. they believe in the resurrection of the body so they don't embalm (incidentally, that's why you can't tattoo yourself, and if you lose a body part you're supposed to preserve it and bury it with the rest of yourself) and that means that you have a very short window to get the buryin done. sucks for rose's dad. he was just there for passover and has only been home about a week. the silver lining in all this is that he did get to see her and say goodbye while she was lucid. i know that occasionally jews delay funerals for family members who must travel long distances, but rose's aunt ester is a SUPAH-STRICT orthodox jew who didn't come to her mother's bedside when she was hospitalized recently (we heard it was for "water on the brain" but it turned out to be "fluid in her lungs") because she had to stay home and prepare her kitchen for passover. ester does not bend the rules, even in situations when it is allowed by the tradition.

so, in honor of rose's grandma - sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, concentration camp survivor, a romanian jew who settled outside of tel aviv after the horror of ww2 was over - זיכרונה לברכה (may her memory be a blessing).

[ed. note: 2:39 pm and p just called me as she was leaving the airport. they got it all done, and dad will make his flight. so i'm glad that p's dad got on that plane.]

things

things which are underneath the driver's seat of my truck:

• cds of bands that a certain guitarist i know used to be in
• paperback novel by andrew greeley
• audiobook by maya angelou
• softball bat
• sun shade to go in the windshield on those hot texas days
• dog hair
• a bag of scooper bags to remove the waste of aforementioned dogs from public property
• a diaper (not from my nieces, so i don't know where it came from!)
• clip-on sunglasses for my girlfriend's prescription eyeglasses
• mapsco book for the dfw metroplex
• bungee cords
• air fresheners (the reasons for which should be obvious by now)

things which are not under the driver's seat of my truck:

• my cell phone
• a sackful of $100 bills
• jimmy hoffa
• the cheat codes for guitar hero 3
• any cell phones at all, for that matter...
  

ridin' the spyder...

rose had to drop her bike off today to get new tires, and a 40k service. the woman has had her bike only 3 years; she rides a LOT. i hopped in the truck wearing cut-offs and flip-flops, loaded up my dogs and followed her to the dealership... where they were having a "test-drive the spyder" event for anyone in closed-toed shoes and long pants. *le sigh* rose immediately signed up, of course. i hemmed and hawed and stalled and held her helmet while she filled out paperwork and watched the familiarization video, but i realized that i'd spend the rest of the year kicking myself if i passed up the opportunity try one of the little beasts. i blazed home and got geared up to ride and guiltily tossed my dogs a couple of kongs stuffed with milkbones to keep them entertained.

the video was full of french canadians with very sexy accents talking about how much fun it was to design and build a 3-wheeled sport vehicle that was not quite a motorcycle, not quite an ATV, and not anything like a car. they kept talking about the "paradigm shift" involved and how the whole time they were developing it they weren't sure whether they were the triumphant inventors or the crackpot mad scientists, but either way, they were having fun.

then was the familiarization briefing. i'll give you the highlights:

• like a motorcycle, except you can get it with automatic transmission
• like the beetle, it has a trunk in front
• unlike the beetle, the trunk can double as an ice chest
• unlike either a motorcycle or a beetle, it has... um... THREE wheels

then there was the closed course. if you didn't have a motorcycle endorsement on your driver's license, this was all you could do on the vehicle. it was just a circle of cones with a couple of stop signs. still, it was nice to get to tool around in a parking lot and get a feel for it before the road ride.

then there was the road ride!!!! they let rose join our group because it was small, so she got TWO road rides on the spyder today. (jealous!) ummm... first off, it's ZIPPY. that's very common for a v-twin, they're very torque-y engines, generally. i'm used to great torque on my valk, but this was crazy. the acceleration on this thing was HAWT. like pull your arms out of their sockets and leave your helmet a block behind you hawt. even, (dare i say it?) like a bacon bikini hawt.

also, it was stable. this isn't terribly surprising, since it has (i may have mentioned this) THREE wheels. but 3-wheelers can be tipped, especially in corners, especially if you're going fast. the beauty of the Y-arrangement on the spyder is that the drive wheel is the single back wheel, so it's much harder to flip than a 3-wheel ATV. there's a lengthy explanation of the stability control system available on the website, but the basics are that it's monitoring all the wheels all the time and adjusts traction by occasionally braking one or more of the wheels so as to keep them all on the pavement. it's also smart enough to know if you have a passenger on back, and adjusts differently for that than when you're riding solo.

it's a neato machine and was very fun to ride. i think it'd be a helluva lot better in nasty traffic than a motorcycle, simply because you don't have to keep putting your feet down to stay vertical. of course, if i had the huevos to try lane-sharing in texas, a motorcycle would be better. with that wide-front stance the spyder is just as wide as a small car and you definitely could NOT lane-split with it. you could still get two into a single parking space, though, especially if you parked them yin-and-yang style. rose and i are thinking about getting one if either of us ends up in a work-from-the-office job anytime in the near future. for now... it's not in the cards, but it was fun to have it in my hands for half an hour!

looking for the mouse...

HERE is a neat article by author Clay Shirky on the topic of where our society, as consumers of media, are going. His theories are fascinating, and I particularly like the way he makes parallels between modern sitcoms and gin pushcarts from the early industrial revolution. here's a snippet of one of his punchier points, for the link averse:

So [watching less television is] the answer to the question, "Where do they find the time?" Or, rather, that's the numerical answer. But beneath that question was another thought, this one not a question but an observation. In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves."


At least they're doing something.


Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

the title refers to the fact that a friend of his has a 4-year old who sprung up in the middle of a dvd to root around in the cables behind their entertainment center to "look for the mouse". because children today think that if their entertainment isn't interactive, it's probably not worth sitting through. as someone who hasn't sat down to watch tv on anything approaching a regular basis in three years, i heartily agree with the kid.

GUM. BO.

yesterday dawned uncharacteristically cloudy and cold for a texas spring. from a low of 50 to a high of 65? this is our winter weather, not our april weather! so, i did the only thing a right-thinking person could do to console herself in such cold temperatures. i made gumbo. i made yummy, dark brown roux, added andouille sausage (because bratwurst does not a good gumbo make!), peppers, onions, okra, mushrooms, and - at the very last possible minute - sweet texas gulf shrimp. yum!!!

the last time i did this, i left it all in my big soup pot and heated the whole mess up whenever i wanted leftovers. this had the unfortunate consequence of overcooking the delicate okra and shrimp and so it was a bit ... mushy ... after a few days. this time, i packed it up in small tubs and froze it. of course, we ate it for dinner last night, but as anyone who's made stew or casserole or sauce knows, the best time to eat it is the day after cooking. after all those lovely ingredients have had time to really SOCIALIZE, get to know each other, converse, buy each other a drink, make out, mingle themselves inextricably, smoke a cigarette... the next morning when they're all putting their socks back on and promising to call each other is really when you should be setting out your bowl and spoon. i'm looking forward to dinner tonight in ways i'm afraid i cannot put into words. forgive me if i drool.

thanks to rose for the lovely suggestion... and for shopping for all the bits with me ... and for not murdering me when i interjected, "crap! i have no celery!" while standing before a nearly-done roux at the stove last night.

hairdos

i got my hair cut today. i love my stylist; he's an atrociously cute gay boy who can give me a men's business cut or a modern girly cut with equal aplomb. today his hair was EXACTLY the same color as his skin, only about three shades darker. it gave him a weirdly monochromatic look, so he said he was going to get some lowlights to break it up and make it more interesting. he sorta looked like a ken doll, really, but after "don't ask. don't tell." was repealed and ken could just come on out of the closet and tell barbie how badly she needed that lip wax all along.

now, last week, i had an amusing conversation with a fairly buttoned-down and well-groomed sort of lesbian i am acquainted with. she and i were with a group of friends at a play in phoenix. the play is a whole other post in itself, but i'll summarize it with the blurb they used in the publicity "lesbian erotic fiction dramatized and set to music." now, i ask you, aware readers - do you think any lesbian story EVER needs to be dramatized? i mean, further than it already is by virtue of the fact that it's a lesbian story, whether fiction or non-fiction? anyway, we were sitting in our seats waiting for the show to start, and the two rows in front of us were reserved. just a few minutes before the show, a gaggle of fashionably mussed and well-dressed lesbians came in and filled up those reserved seats. and the lady next to me leaned over and whispered, "doesn't anybody comb their hair anymore?" she had a point. these ladies were pushing the bed-head look to its fashionable limits. being the straight-shooter i am, i leaned over and whispered back that they had stopped issuing combs to lesbians born after 1980, because of the budget cuts. of course, by the time that had wended its way telephone-game-style down the row of friends, it came out something like "they stopped making combs in the 80s because of the petroleum crisis." whatever.

then i walked out of my hair appointment looking like one of those uncombed gals from the play last week... my stylist gave me a modern girly cut today, and bless his heart if he didn't try to iron it flat so it would lay down against my noggin. curls just don't do that, but if he pastes 'em down with gel and i put my motorcycle helmet on right afterward while the gel sets, i can kinda make 'em behave for a few hours. i can't wait to see what the wedding planner and the photographer have to say about that...