Troy King's Wide Stance

Well, it looks like our notoriously prudish state attorney general may be less of a prude than we had believed. Rumors are swirling that Troy King, he of the sex toy ban and the anti-gay rhetoric, has been booted out of his home after his wife found him canoodling...with another gentleman. This is still merely a rumor, and so for the moment Mr. King is assumed to be as stalwartly hetero as John Wayne and Hitler, but should it turn out to be true, then it's another data point supporting my theory that cognitive dissonance is a necessary precursor to success as a right-wing politician. I mean, this is the guy who wrote this hateful screed to the student newspaper while in law school:

The time has come for the majority to rise from its figurative slumber. The picture on the front page of Monday's issue of The Crimson White looked like the front page of Sodom and Gomorrah News the day before those cities were destroyed. I and a majority of the students were appalled not that these students would pose for this picture, for we have seen that the homosexuals in America will do anything to grab a headline but rather I am furious that this paper would sacrifice its journalistic integrity for a tabloid-esque reporting! It is indeed sad that America has fallen to the point where she will condone any type of deviant, immoral activity in which a group desires to participate. However, perhaps even more compelling evidence of the perversion of America is evidenced not only by the fact that this story was published in the newspaper but rather that it was graphically depicted on the front page.

The existence of the Gay/Lesbian alliance on this campus is an affront to the state of Alabama, its citizenry, this diversity and its students. However, it is also an outrage to compel those students with both moral and religious objections to the activities and ideas espoused by this organization to contribute money, via student fees, to subsidize these activities.

One has but to look at the forces which the controversy has united--from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Organization of Women to the Queer Nation just to name a few--to clearly see how corrupt a cause this truly is.

The argument can often be heard that what goes on in the bedroom is private. However, it is flawed reasoning to attempt to justify the gay movement in America today on this basis, for they have taken sex from the confines of the bedroom into the streets, the evening news, and now even the front page of the newspaper.

Boy, it would suck to be so filled with denial and self-loathing. I imagine Troy King is thinking, "I'm not queer! I just like having sex with men!" If the rumor is true, that is. I have to admit to a frisson of anticipation at watching this sordid story unfold.

Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.

Sexist Radiohead T-Shirts

At the Radiohead show in Atlanta Thursday night I was standing at the T-shirt booth and wondering just what kind of idiot would pay $40 for a t-shirt. Then my phone rang, and it was my friend Terry asking me to buy him a t-shirt.

"They're 40 bucks, dude," I said.
"I don't care. I want a Radiohead t-shirt."
"They're not all that great. They have slogans written on them. They don't even say they're Radiohead tour t-shirts."
"What do they say?"

I read a few of them to him. They were the kind of cryptic dyspeptic grumbling beloved by Radiohead fans. One, though, stood out. On a plain black t-shirt, in a font that mimicked the electronic CRT displays of the 80s, was printed: "I am trapped in my body and cannot escape."

"That's the one I want," Terry said. I should mention at this point that Terry is trapped in his body and cannot escape. He has inherited spastic paraparesis which has locked his muscles, stiffened his jaw, and left him nearly blind. For him to wear that t-shirt would be a truly blackly humorous form of performance art.

So I told the woman running the kiosk that that was the shirt I wanted.

"It's a baby tee," she said. "A girl's shirt."

"There's not one with that slogan on it in a men's size?"

"Nope. That one's for women," she said.

Wow. So the assumption there is that only women are trapped in their bodies. I understand that body image is a problem that disproportionately affects young women, but still. Also, it's a baby tee. One size: curvy and small. No fat chicks need apply. BBW who are trapped in their bodies will hafta choose a different shirt.

That's kinda sexist, Radiohead.

So I got Terry one that read: "You used to be all right. What happened?"

A Second-Hand Anecdote

A friend of mine is a project manager for a software design firm, and regaled me with this story. This is as told, with only identifying details changed to protect corporate and individual identities:

So we're taking a tour of the data center at a financial institution that's contracted us to do some coding. As we're walking through their server room, the guy giving the tour gestures to a tall black box along one wall. "That's Big Bertha," he said. "We're not sure what it does or why it's here. And the last guy who knew the password died three years ago." We all laughed, but the guy was serious. "It was installed in the late 1980s, we know that much. And we kinda know what it does, because we've checked the data going in against the data coming out. But we're not sure that that's ALL it does, or even how it's doing it. We've lost all the documentation, and there's no one here left who was around when it was installed. Every bit of our data runs through it. When that box goes down, we're fucked. We keep a full bottle of whiskey in the break room so that when that box dies, we can all get drunk before they fire us."

Boy, talk about your "legacy systems". Did I mention that this is a financial institution whose job is keeping track of millions of transactions, all of which seem to get routed through the Mystery Box? I hope it runs for a while longer, because eventually people will start lighting candles before it and worshipping it like a god.

Birmingham OLPC: LULZ FUXXORED D00DZ

Aaaaaaaand we're off, with the national tech media beginning to pick up on the story of Birmingham's new mayor and city council managing to make epic fail from technology designed specifically for

the world's poorest children living in its most remote environments

That's from the OLPC website, which appears borked ATM, perhaps due to some recent troubles. Irony? You're soaking in it.

Triumph Of The Motherfuckin' Will, Bitches

Don't Drink Don't Smoke, What Do You Do? Oh, Yeah, Fuck Like Rabbits

Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis in Mobile County are TWICE as high as in Washington, DC and THREE TIMES as high as in that latter-day Sodom, New York City. According to public health officials, that means that 1 in every 87 people in Mobile County have one of these STDs.

How's that abstinence-based sex ed workin' out down there, y'all? Itchy, ain't it?

Condoms in schools aren't a moral issue, people! They're a matter of public health.

I wonder if our state legislators practice fiscal abstinence when confronted with a sexy, willing spending bill? Or do they just fuck the shit out of it and feel guilty afterwards?

Drunks Against Mad Mothers Gets New Member

Cincinnati cop & recipient of MADD award ticketing for DUI.

Heh.