Two parties on the 4th

First one at mine. Bunch of lovely friends, HAMAZING stars and stripes apple pie (from Mary), barbecue (when I finally went and bought one), rain (30 seconds after I'd bought the barbecue), no ice.. none! What the hell, Horbury? Singstar, charcoal accidents, a bullwhip, Becky's enormous rack (of ribs), and finally fireworks. Wonderful music, several near-death experiences involving fire, lots of amazing food.

Then we all piled into a pile of cars, and headed off to Dr Steph's for a circus themed party. Got there about midnight. Was alright, but way too crowded and hot, and because of a dispute with neighbours we couldn't hang out in the garden. Plus the more time I spend with strangers the more I like my friends, so we went and hung out over the road under a flowering rose bush and talked and got stoned.

OK. Mary and I got stoned. Nick had a toke, and everyone else looked at us like.. big stoners I guess.

Came back in eventually, sang unchained melody, which made the entire houseful of people crowd into the front room. Stopped a fight by singing. That was nice.

Finally got back to Becky's about 5:00am, and played with the kittens a bit before falling asleep.

Woke up before my alarm at 9:30, went up to Steph's to pick up the car, and find one of my hats, before going home to maybe have a shower and a powernap.

No nap, but spent 30 minutes sitting in the shower with a cup of tea in a sippy cup, before heading over to Lisa's to pick up her and Jenny, then took Jenny home to get changed, picked up the charming Miss Alex, and then off to the seaside!

It. Was. Ace.


( Cut for Pictures )

Haven't been in ages. We went to Scarby first (Al had never been), walked along the south bay promenade, ate cockles and oysters and icecream, Lisa bought a wolf t-shirt, we rode the funicular, and did stupid trashy seaside stuff, then piled back into the Mini and headed off to Robin Hood's Bay.


Much squealing (from the switchback roads), and Ooooh's and aaah's (from seeing Bay for the first time), and then we arrived. We wandered around the tiny streets, peered in windows, saw a lost seagull chick, got a bit lost (quite impressive in a town that's about 4 yards square) then sat by the slipway and drank cocktails in the sun, made each other laugh, and looked at Lisa's bruises from last Saturday.

We left there about 6 because we were getting hungry again, and headed over to Whitby. The Abbey was closed and it wasn't foggy enough to sneak in, so we took a few photos and wandered around up on the headland, then went and parked down by the Esk and walked through the old town, peered in weird shops, visited a ship, then walked down to the Magpie, where we had spectacular fish and chips, and walked back along the harbour to the car.

Drove home, and Lisa put a couple of her CDs in, and somewhere around Malton The Cars "Just What I Needed" came on. Such an amazing song. I pulled off onto a layby in a cloud of dust, and we all scrambled out of the car and, car doors open, headlights on, danced in the dusk by the side of the road.

Everything else about the day was great, but that was just perfect.

Finally got home about 11, dropped Jen and Al off, had a cuppa and a redbull at Lisa's to recharge, then went home knackered and happy.

More photos to follow when everyone's uploaded them.

Gav: So how was your weekend?
Me: Alright. Family party on Sunday, saw my cousin who I haven't seen in 20 years or so. Village fete too.
Gav: Sounds good
Me: Well, yeah, except for my uncles and aunts trying to fix me up, and  except for the church bandstand. If I ever hear another village fete cover band perform "Obladi Oblada" I'll end them. Is there like an approved list of cover songs permissible for village fete church bandstand cover bands? They covered Police, Joe Jackson..
Gav: Oh I like a bit of Joe Jackson
Me: Me too. I just don't like church bandstand cover bands doing Joe Jackson
Gav: Actually I bet Joe Jackson wouldn't like that too
Me: No. He'd take 'em out with an axe. Chunks of bloody flesh splattered all over the jam stands. At least they didn't do any Black Lace
Gav: No, even church bandstand bands have limits. And Black Lace were shit. No one covers them
Me: Well, except Black Lace. There're no original members now. One killed in a bus crash, one in hiding for kiddy fiddling. They just cover their own songs. They're like a tribute band to themselves.
Gav: That reminds me. We used to have the guy from Jive Bunny call us at Sound Control all the time
Me: Did you call him a talentless twat?
Gav: He really had no idea about anything. He said "I just got all my records, like, and just sort o' threw 'em together, like"
Gav: And I'd say "Yeah mate, it shows."

Did you know that there are signs on trains in japan warning of random frottageurs? Clearly it's a national sport.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Chikan-(body-contact)

This is a specific warning at a bicycle rack where apparently pervs wait until someone bends over to lock their bike, and then rushes in for a fast grope.

That has to be the single most specific kink i have ever heard of "likes to grope men and/or women bending over to lock their bikes"

http://www.jlist.com/SEARCH/SHIRT-CHIKAN

T-shirt with the train warning sign

This has been another episode of Martin Explains Why People Are Messed Up. Brought to you by our sponsor, Dial Soap "The Best Soap for Compulsively Scrubbing while weeping in the shower for an hour after reading something Martin wrote!"

So I haven't been sleeping very consistently lately, but I'm not posting to whine about it, but about it's unexpected upside

I live in a pretty nice village. I sometimes get complacent about that, but was recently reminded by annakey's reaction when she came to the village for the first time, and by things like the last few mornings.

It's a small village, fairly rural and surrounded by meadows and paddocks and full of trees, which means the birds are everywhere, and they like to tell you. If you keep your eyes closed and the window open when you wake up, the chorus of them is like you're waking up in the woods. Every fifteen minutes the bells at the church go and get them even more worked up.

Except there are no bells in the woods, obviously. Analogy fail. But the bells are wonderful as well. Even the bellringers, who used to drive me mad, I'm coming to appreciate. It's a bit like living in a 1950s technicolour movie about an idealised version of England, only without any Americans faking English accents in the lead roles. Except me, of course.

Anyway I digress. I listened to the birds for a while, then I went outside and watched the remnants of the sunrise, with huge pink and orange clouds floating over the valley towards the wooded ridge at Thornhill edge, and took a few photos, and listened to the milkman rattle around, and watched the old chap who I swear grows pot in his greenhouse potter around in the flower garden beneath the balcony, following his progress by the line of pipe smoke drifting up from between the rows of green.

At night it's wonderful as well. Standing on my balcony smoking last night I could hear the owls that live in the stand of trees behind my place, and that's one of my favourite sounds in the world.

It reminds me of nothing more than holidays spent in cottages as a kid. I used to dread the idea. The prospect of a week in the country as a child held no particular attraction. Nothing, to my childish mind, except the promise of boredom. And cows. I didn't like cows much. Looking back though, I remember how amazing I found it waking up in a peaceful place, without the roar of traffic or the yells of neighbours or drunks.

It's like I live in a holiday cottage full time.

Maybe I should keep it as a holiday cottage. I've been planning on moving back into the city.. for the social life, and to have my friends closer, but I know I'll miss this place terribly. I'm not going to rent it out, and if I miss it too much I'll have it to spend the weekend in.

Ok, so some background.

There's a conversation going on, in the supreme court topic in the politics conference on the Well, about sexual harassment (it started with the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill thing)

I'm not supposed to repost anyone else's words from their without permission (it's a closed, private conferencing system, and very old), but I'm just reposting mine, with the names of people I refer to replaced.

The basics are

1. We've got an old construction contractor saying "But they're nice guys! When they wolf whistle it's a compliment! They'd protect you if you felt threatened... they work hard and are just letting off steam! Ii f you felt afraid, those guys would stick up for you! I compliment people all the time!"

Yeah, this is a logical fallacy (special pleading) and is the easiest one to deal with, but included for completeness.

2. We've got one person stating that sexual harassment is not about sex, but about power. We have a counter argument that no, what if the guy just really likes the girl and asks her out and is too dumb to read the "no" properly. That's harassment, but it's about sex, not power

2a as a sub-argument to that, there's some chatter about how sometimes people do that because they want to get dates. In Quebec, apparently this is alleged to be how you meet girls.

3. Complimenting strangers is rude, even if it's well intended. They don't know you, they don't want your opinion

4. But everyone In the South, everyone flirts with everyone all the time! Why can't it be like that?

5. They're not innocent compliments. If a guy on the street says "Smile" to you and you don't, sometimes abuse follows.

Ok, all up to date? (please note, the above are not *my* points or arguments. I'm late to the thread, just paraphrasing what has gone before)

And we have this going on for 200 posts. Epic thread. Everyone talking past each other, not getting anything, and so on. The same old years long thrash. Bear in mind we've been arguing with each other for going on 20 years now. (only 10 years for me, I'm still a newbie)

So, in an uncharacteristically conciliatory move for me, I tried to get both sides to see the other's point of view. I don't know, call it boredom

I dunno. Maybe I'm some kind of freak, but the idea of wanting to date someone just because they looked attractive seems a bit.. well.. dumb.

But say that's the case. How stupid does one have to be to think that yelling from across the street "You look HOT!" is more likely to contribute to that goal then walking down and saying "Hi, look, I know this is a bit weird, and please feel free to tell me to fuck off and I will gladly, but I find you remarkably attractive and while that's a terribly shallow thing to say, if you're single, could I buy you coffee.. or.. um.. you buy me coffee?"

Personally I wouldn't do either, but my sense is, it's a lot harder to interpret the latter as harassment or threatening, (provided you take the likely knockback in good grace), and it would, you know, be a shitload more likely to work, inasmuch as 1% is considerably higher than 0%

And, it's a compliment? I wonder how many guys wolf whistle at, say, bank tellers at the counter. Oh wait, they're not in a gang, and there's a chance that the woman might have them escorted from the bank.

Social context does matter. In some cultures, complimenting strangers politely is fine, and goes both ways, and in that context, no it's not harassment.

Note: that's culture dependent, and *polite*, and gender reciprocal.

Wolf whistles are *never* polite, and in cultures where that is not common, (good rule of thumb, where a female is just as likely to compliment a strange guy as vice versa) then just .. don't be such a dick.

I never found those rules particularly hard to navigate, nor to understand, nor to explain.

That we've had a couple hundred posts of people not getting it is just.. I dunno. I don't get *that*.

And <personA> and <personB> butting heads. Am I going to get myself in trouble here?

Even if the original motive is not power, as <personB> makes a good case for, the dynamic does involve a power imbalance, given the assumptions about women prevalent in our culture. Granted the guy may be unaware of it, but like it or not, or acknowledge it or not, that interaction, even if it's from ignorance, involves a power imbalance, and leverages it.

There's no way for sexual harassment *not* to have that component. It's like trying to have fire without oxygen. Even if the guy is an innocent dumb fuck.

My worry is I'm just throwing fuel on the fire, rather than resolving things. Any body have any suggestions about how I could make these points better?

Backstory: Japanese scientists plan to crash-land a moon orbiter to see what debris it kicks up. Berkeley astrologer takes exception to this.

Original article here

Orbiter crashing into the moon
------------------------------

There is a Japanese lunar orbiter named Kaguya that is scheduled to crash into the moon today at about 2:30 pm ET. Scientists hope to learn something about the moon's composition by observing the debris that is kicked up.

In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine. It is the yin, the intuitive, the emotions. Women are connected to the moon by their menstrual cycles while they are fertile, and all beings, including the earth herself, are affected by the pull of the tides.

Purposefully crashing something into the moon just to watch what happens is akin to a schoolboy cutting up a live frog to see what makes it jump. It is an example of the domination of the left-brained rational scientific approach over the intuitive.

Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?

When we are connected into the web of life, we know that what we do to one part is what we do to all. Gaining knowledge by destruction is an empty victory.

We're supposed to ask the moon? I can picture it now.

"Hello..um.. Ms. Moon.. do you mind if we crash an orbiter into you?"
"..."
*whispered* "Hmm.. she's not talking to us."
"Maybe she's asleep?"
"Maybe she's ignoring us?"
"What have we done to piss her off lately? We haven't landed on her in ages! Jesus we can't win with this moon!"
"What if she's on the rag?"

I don't speak Spanish, so I'm not really sure what Polizon a Bordo means.

Maybe "Holy fuck, that dude has a pig's head!"

So, I know I rear up in my hind legs and start talking like a real person from time to time. I try and avoid it, but today's one of those days. Please skip this if you are easily bored or wanted a video of a headbanging parrot.

Scraps pointed me to an interesting article at fivethirtyeight.com about how we frame the question of gay marriage.

Back when I used to do high school debate, there were all sorts of esoteric arguments related to the notion of positive and negative rights. The distinction, to simplify the matter greatly, is that a positive right is something that permits you to act a certain way -- something granted to you -- whereas a negative right is a claim to noninterference -- something that precludes action from being taken against you, either by government or by other people. You'll most commonly hear the distinction in association with libertarianism, as libertarians tend to regard positive rights as impure manifestations of government fiat power, whereas negative rights exist intrinsically outside of government, which in turn has a duty to protect them.

I never found this framing terribly satisfying as a matter of moral philosophy -- there are too many things which fall somewhere in between the two poles. But as a political matter, the distinction is potentially quite interesting.

Take for example the issue of gay marriage. When gay marriage is polled, it is almost always framed as a positive right, as in: "should the government permit Adam and Steve to get married?". I wouldn't necessarily say I find this framing biased -- since gay marriage is only permitted in six out of the 50 states and only came about in those states very recently, it is probably the more natural, plain-English way to ask the question.

But there is a different way to frame the question that is no less fair, and flips the issue on its head. Namely: "should the government be allowed to prohibit Adam and Steve from getting married?". This is closer to the logic embodied by the court decisions in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, and other states. Those courts didn't create gay marriage; they argued, rather, that it was already protected by their respective state constitutions.

As an example. A negative right is a right not to be arrested or imprisoned unless you commit a crime. No-one has to do anything to give you that right. It takes no special effort *not* to arrest you. It imposes no obligation on others.

A positive right is the right to, for example, an education. Someone else has to do some work to give you that right. It imposes an obligation on others.

Negative rights are inherent rights. You just have them. It doesn't take any outside agency to grant you them.

Positive rights on the other hand require outside help, and to grant them to all equally either requires universal consent (yeah right), or a government, which as an agent with the ability to legally exercise force, makes people live up to those obligations, and imposes penalties when they fail to.

Now, I'm not going to get into the whole argument about whether positive rights are good or bad or whatever. I'm just pointing out that  whenever we have a positive right, the government has to get involed, and that's important to the argument in a little while.


What I am going to do is take Nate's argument a step further.

One of the problems with getting gay marriage recognized is that marriage confers privileges on the married that are unavailable to the unmarried.

Preferential tax rates
Immigration benefits
Community property
Joint custody, joint adoption, joint fostering
Joint insurance policies

So on and so forth.

In the US the general accounting office listed around 1,100 benefits available to married couples not available to the single.

Some of them are redundant in the context of being single. Who needs a joint insurance policy when there's no-one else you want to insure.

But some are not - preferential tax rates, etc.

So here's a different approach.

How about having marriage be a purely negative right. No benefits accrue to a married person that do not accrue to a single person. Getting a state sanctioned marriage does not impose a duty on anyone else to do something for you.

Anyone can declare anyone else next of kin. Anyone can get a joint policy with anyone else living at the same address. All people are taxed equally.

I'm not proposing taking any rights away from anyone: on the contrary, I'm proposing that all people should be granted those rights. People should be treated equally, whether they are married or single, by the state.

Not because I'm some rabid singlehood rights activists. Not because I feel especially hard done to because I can't get a married person's discount on car insurance.

But simply because this discriminatory approach, giving marriage a special legal status that confers positive rights unavailable to the unmarried, has given government a stake, a foothold, a rationale for interfering in something it has no place in. It has made marriage a positive right, because being married gives benefits and imposes obligations on others to labor to grant those benefits.

It's allowed the question to become

"Should gay people be allowed to gain the benefits of marriage"

When really the question is

"Should the government have the right to prohibit two people engaging in marriage"

I am not anti-government. Quite the contrary. I'm simply anti-government in the matter of relationships and sex, since the government is a tool of the people, and for the most part, people are tools.

Even when people can be relied upon to do the right thing, as long as it doesn't make them uncomfortable - ensure equality of opportunity, protect the weak, provide support when it's needed so a crisis for one person doesn't destroy everyone around them, when it comes to shagging, they fall apart.

They have this bizarre idea that their morals, and standards, about the most private things that harm no-one, are applicable to everyone, and if they can't be persuaded it's perfectly acceptable to use the force of the law to make people behave according to their standards of what's acceptable to do in the bedroom.

And prohibiting gay marriage is about nothing more than that. It's not about protecting an institution. When gay marriages happened in Massachusetts, there wasn't a posse of queers roaming kentucky destroying straight marriages. "Oh hell Edna, them gays married another couple and our marriage came up in the lottery to be destroyed. I need to start packing. It's been nice being married to you!"

It's just about being squicked out by gay sex and not really being able to  think straight. People have a hard time thinking straight about the sex they like anyway. Thinking about sex they don't approve of completely breaks them.

I mean, seriously. Do they think gay marriage will lead to more gay sex? If they weren't so weirded out they'd know INSTANTLY it would lead to far, far less!

So, I could go on but I won't. To sum up

People are weird about sex.
Letting people make decisions about other people's sex lives is therefore a shitty idea
Granting priviliges to marriage makes it the domain of the government
The people control the government, thus letting them sublimate their desire to control other peoples sex lives into the ability to fuck with their marriages.
Thus having government have any say in marriage is bad.

So, Friday May 22nd was Stag and Dagger. Various people were spread out all over Leeds at different venues, and I wasn't so much bothered about seeing bands as seeing people, so decide to split my night between The Brudenell and the Library. ( Read more... )

So I saw Synecdoche New York with a bunch of friends last night. It's Charlie Kaufman's latest work, and his directorial debut (he also did Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malkovich).

It. Was. Amazing.

I can't even begin to write about it until a couple of other people who read this have seen it (spoilers!), and I'm not sure how I would start even then.

It was harrowing and stunning.

Lol was angry with it, but I think she'll forgive me for loving it.

From Failblog

Friday: drove to stoke. Dozed on couch with Jo lying on my chest listening to Elliott Smith
Saturday: drove from Stoke to Leeds, via Wigan (accidentally). Jo fed me sweets and we talked and got lost.
Sunday: lazed around Hyde Park, smooched, laughed, ate icecream while a dog did handstands for us.

All 3 days: bloody perfect.

So I was rambling around hypemachine yesterday and followed a Death Cab For Cutie link to a site where I discovered that Ra Ra Riot were going to be supporting Death Cab on a bunch of US dates.

I only recently got into Ra Ra Riot, to my regret. My friend Mary had raved to me about them but being a muppet I hadn't really followed up until hopeymcchange  put a track on a mix he made for a seaside trip, Ghost Under Rocks, and I instantly fell in love. Must have listened to it 30 times in a row.

Of course this was after their UK dates had passed so I'd missed the chance to see them.

Then I find this web page and I seriously think "well, £200 quid for a ticket to New York, I could stay with Joey and Mattie for free, why the hell not?"

I chewed over it last night while playing squash with Nick, and his reaction was "yeah, actually, that's not so mad an idea", so today I decide to go for it.

Only they're not playing in New York

These are the tour dates where Ra Ra Riot are supporting. Nowhere near anyone I know or could stay with, and so now it means a hotel, a flight, probably a car rental, and there are a lot more things I could spend £500 quid on. And there are a ton of things I want to do and people I want to see on those dates anyway. Do I really want to miss Bee's birthday, or Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or put off going to Alton Towers with triplescience  and annakey  and mintlaugh ?

Like hell I do.

So, much as the idea of hopping on a flight, getting drunk in a bar in Philly and going to see a show then flying right back sounds like something I'd like to do, and last year I would have been already in a taxi to the airport, in reality, no, rather hang out with friends in England these days.

Not sure if I'm putting down roots or just getting old, but happy with it either way.

A twitter conversation

# Richard_Kadrey A friend told me that the music in Watchmen was annoying. She was right. No more All Along the Watchtower for a while, okay?



# ninjacodemonkey @richard_kadrey I think the music was fine in the historical montage, giving a sense of time & place, but in the rest of the film, too much



# Richard_Kadrey @ninjacodemonkey That was pretty much my feeling. The montage worked better than I expected. Much of the remaining music was dumb.



# ninjacodemonkey @richard_kadrey i'd love to get it into an editing suite. it's sad. there're the bones of a decent movie there, just assembled so badly



# ninjacodemonkey @richard_kadrey different soundtrack, less slow-mo, less cack-handed editing and about half an hour of the stuff that breaks the pacing cut



# Richard_Kadrey @ninjacodemonkey I think my expectations of Watchmen was so low that the fact it didn't make me crap my pants made me like it.



# ninjacodemonkey @richard_kadrey Good approach. Lauren and I went in expecting spontaneous orgasms. Would have been a bad scene on reflection.



# ninjacodemonkey @richard_kadrey an entire cinema drenched in the nerdy man batter of their neighbours. geek bukkake holocaust



# Richard_Kadrey @ninjacodemonkey I hope "geek bukkake holocaust" is a bonus film on the Watchmen dvd

Reposted from The WeLL (creaky old BBS in San Francisco. I am riffraff there)

( Read more... )

I'm not going to transcribe the whole card Lauren made for me, since I think she'd be embarrassed if anyone except a couple of people on here saw it, but I will say I was weeping on her bed after reading it the other night.

I can't think of a way to say this that will actually make sense, but really it comes down to the fact that since I've been friends with Lauren I have been who I want to be. It's my best self. Not changed. Just all the best bits float to the top. The bits I like best about myself.

Ugh, so emo.

Lauren Palmer, thank you for an amazing Birthday. The day I met you was the best day of my life and I will be viciously loyal to you for the rest of it.

So I generally mentally space past the adverts at the top of my gmail inbox. They're a single line of text, and are thus easy to ignore, but I'm drunk having been playing catchup since I got home and apparently my brain is unable to filter them out quite so easily when soused.

They're allegedly based on non-specific unretained info found in your mail stream.. basically gmail looks for keywords in your mail, selects from that info an ad it thinks is relevant to your interests, then presents it to you, and immediately forgets what it knew.

Here I present to you a short list of the subjects Google thinks occupy the part of my brain that lusts after goods and services

www.NationalDeedPollServices.org.uk - How to Change your Child's Name Apply Online
Cat Toilet Houses - Free delivery on orders £29 & over Now new customers get 10% off!
Argos Pet Insurance from £3.99 p/m
Crocs.co.uk/Crocs_Shoes - See All Comfortable Crocs Shoes Now at the Official Crocs Webstore!
How To Keep A Man In Love - secrets to catch and keep a man forever

Okay.

Google apparently thinks I'm a woman, that I have a child, that I own a shitty accident prone cat and that I have fucking awful taste in shoes.

Everyone worries that Google knows too much about us. I'm here to tell you that Google is a moron and you have nothing to fear. Just don't ever use Google for medical advice or you may end up with the world's most unnecessary smear test.