Good News, and More Zombies

You've seen this page before, but I thought after the Bigfoot model, you guys might enjoy a zombie model. (Page three of the haunted house diorama, called "Skeleton". He's clearly a zombie.)

There's also this page, which has a variety of way cool toys on it, including some little games, and a lot of nice spooky coffin boxes, and... a zombie mask. Well, okay, everybody knows that tigers won't attack you if they think you can see them. (I suspect this is wrong, but whatever.) So as everybody also knows, if you wear a mask backwards on your head, any tigers in the vicinity will conclude that you are looking at them and will leave you alone. (Again, this seems doubtful.)

Originally I had stuck a Futurama rubber Brain Slug on my head, facing backwards, but it falls off a lot, so I dug out the Ronald Reagan Halloween mask. If Zombie Reagan can't deter the Hallucinated Zombies, we've got more problems than I care to think about. Unfortunately, it creeped out my partner something awful, so I instead printed out the Ravensblight mask and assembled that. Seems to be working fine. Farther down the page there is a set of tiny zombie standees, if you want your own army.

On the excellent news front, and likely not entirely unrelated to the zombie bigfoot infestation, the housemate has gotten financial aid and will be moving out to go to grad school in September. And no, none of you can move in now that I have a spare room, okay? But I'd be glad to help you ScotchGuard your new box.

I Wasn't Done With Thursday Yet!

My partner is considering getting me a toolbelt to keep my zombie-poking spoon in.
"Hey, if you're going to invite Crazy in, you might as well let it sit down on the couch and offer it some lemonade."

In that spirit, today's random ten: Be What You Are, Even If That Happens To Be Crazy edition.


Crazy Mixed-Up Kid, The Smithereens. Album, Especially For You.
Yeah, yeah. I should have taken a mulligan, I suppose.
"I guess she's just a crazy mixed-up kid."

Tunnel of Lungs, The Minus 5. Album: I Don't Know Who I Am (Let The War Against Music Begin Volume 2).
I have to say, this song sounds like a migraine.
"It's not all right, it's never okay."

So Long, It's Been Good To Know You, Woody Guthrie. Album, in this case, a compilation called That's Why We're Marching, though I have it on others as well.
"I've sung this song but I'll sing it again."

Worthless, The Young Fresh Fellows. Album, Because We Hate You.
It's like this. There's a special place in my heart for Scott McCaughey, California-born but Seattle-famous songwriter with the world's worst case of ADHD. I'm convinced he's a shark, if he stops moving he'll die. But I own nearly everything he's ever done in various guises (and a lot of what people he's done stuff with have done with other people), and he's the guy behind The Minus 5 as well, including a vinyl more-or-less bootleg of the YFF doing a charming piano version of "Shake Your Love", I'm not making this up so stop looking at me like that. Anyway, few people turn a phrase as slyly as he does, and I love him for it. This is maybe not one of his better efforts, however.
"I don't know why I should try to explain a thing."

Whistling in the Dark, They Might be Giants. Album, Flood.
This might be some kind of euphemism. Or it might just mean what it says. Hard to tell, with them.
"Be what you're like, be like yourself."

Emergency, The Tragically Hip. Album, Day For Night.
Not my favorite song here.
"Things we say here stay here forever, amen."

Crazy Love, Volume 2, Paul Simon. Graceland.
This came up last week, too, I note.
"I have no opinion about this."

It's Only Me, Barenaked Ladies. Album, Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits.
"It's just natural, it's only me."

She's Got A Problem, Fountains of Wayne. Album, um, Fountains of Wayne.
My partner thinks this song is hilarious for some reason.
"She's gonna do something dumb."

All of a Sudden (It's Too Late), XTC. Album, English Settlement.
"Life's like a firework, you're only lit once, you must stand and radiate correctly."

You are cordially invited to leave your own in comments, or to just tell me ten songs you like, or anything else you want. I'm pretty easy.

My Dinner With Bigfoot

Okay, last week should have softened 'em up, and this week they will be more than willing to order pizza, as long as it looks as bad as what you did last week. I know they say, when creating garnishes, that the first bite is with the eye, but I've found that in reality, as opposed to in trendy four star restaurants, the first bite is with the horrified ear of the imagination.

So you start by calling and instant messaging around on the pretext of finding out when people will be home, but in actuality you're just putting them on notice that You Will Be Cooking. Make sure you find out when they'll be home first, and then explain casually that you've got a very special meal planned. This hasn't been going on long enough in your home at least for people to know the range of bad, and they will most likely agree to come home anyway, just to see what you've got in mind now.

In my home, they already know how bad it can get, and while we are all creative occasionally, I am the undisputed master of sadistic cookery. But most of the time they get white rice and frozen pot stickers and random bottled sauce, or a fairly reasonable lasagna or citrus chicken I do, or just some random noodles out of a box with Spam stirred in, which believe it or not counts as a decent meal around here. I suppose I should note that most of the time it's nobody's night to cook, and we operate under Forage Rules, where you find something frozen and heat it up for yourself. (Forage Rules: Anybody who knows where the freezer and microwave are kept gets to eat. Anybody who doesn't know where they are or how to use them, doesn't. This is your fork, if you lose it you will not be issued another.)

So when I ask who's going to be home and when, it's not an automatic Spam And Cheez Whiz Quiche Red Alert, it might just be when should I start the rice cooker. I find this introduces an element of existential dread into the whole thing that people really appreciate. So fair warning doesn't necessarily mean they'll come up with an excuse to eat out, though it might mean they'll eat a burger on the way home and pretend they haven't, but for you, dear readers, odds are good their survival instincts haven't cut in yet and they're still stuck in the bemused curiosity phase.

In any event, tonight we'll be making something that smells good but looks awful, and yes, that means Spam. There's something distinctly unfoodlike about the color of Spam, even if you like the flavor, which is basically salty ham lunchmeat. We're out of leftover rice at the moment, and I could make some fresh, but why bother.

What I do have is a Gladware container full of leftover mashed potato fakes. They're Betty Crocker Potato Buds, regular flavor, made according to the package directions and the leftovers refrigerated fast. You can probably make some to start with, but they really need to be refrigerated for about eight hours after you cook them, so they clump up and get weird. (No, really, that's a good thing.)

We also have some leftover canned corn, so we'll be throwing that in if nobody ate it yet, and a can of pineapple tidbits.

My advice is to just cube the Spam. I tried it with a melon baller once, looking for a more festive way to serve it, but there was, really, a lot of wastage, so I don't bother anymore.

Our sauce tonight will be a bottled Sweet & Sour, but we're going to add a little red food coloring for that really nice laser red color.

So, heat up your wok, and dump the Spam in. You just want it browned for the moment, so keep stirring it. Then throw in your pineapple, and you can add some ginger if you like, give that two minutes or so. Next the mashed potatoes, breaking it into clumps about the size of cauliflower florets. So stir that all around till everything's nicely browned, by which time it should all be cooked through, and then throw in the corn, which won't take too long at all to heat up.

Pull it all off the heat and dump it into a bowl, add the sauce, toss gently to coat. You could garnish with parsley, but we don't do that much in my house because my partner, a Penn & Teller fan, and I have spent the last several years playing their Parsley Game, where you try to sneak yours onto their plate and to keep theirs off yours. So I'll probably go with thin slices of orange and maybe some extra pineapple tidbits in sort of a flower design. These thoughtful touches mean so much.

Once again, you'll need to thunk it onto the table, clatter the forks next to it, and yell "Are you guys gonna come eat or what?" By now they know the rules, and believe me, that sauce is a deeply disturbing red, especially contrasted with the Spam pink. So you might be able to get halfway through the dish-title-as-description before they're arguing over who's buying the pizza.

Enjoy that, you've earned it. But be aware that they're probably not ordering a ham-and-pineapple. And if you do find yourself eating Sweet & Sour Spam And Mashed Potatoes With Pineapple And Corn, relax, it's actually not bad. And that's not just me saying that because I'm crazy, the kitchen bigfoot agree.

Arts And Crafts Wednesday

I had, all weekend, the sort of headache you could break bottles over, so I forgot all about arts and crafts Monday. To apologize, may I offer you this link?

Jamstec has a new addition to its line of deep sea critters. It appears to be an isopod, though I could be wrong. At Deep Sea News a while back, they pondered the critters and concluded eventually that they were a tripodfish, a crab, an angler, a manta ray, a snailfish, and a shovel nosed ray, in addition to the dumbo octopus.

As far as the migraine goes, I can actually hang onto one for weeks at a time, until I give up and head to the ER for a fun-filled evening of sitting in a waiting room watching Caillou. I haven't actually had one of those since we started the new meds, and I am grateful. They're why I'm still dealing with the zombie bigfeet instead of giving up and demanding we try something else. So when this migraine stuck around through the weekend in the old pattern, I was definitely worried. But as it turns out, somewhere last night the damned thing just... went away. Pretty much. I of course still have the headache, a point I like to make just so I can keep my headache record intact. (Eighteen years and counting! Woot!) But I'm still without migraine meds, and unless it's the Inderal, there's really no good reason for this.

So, if it's this and the bigfeet or even the zombies, or the two week migraines with vomiting and only my usual run of hallucinations, I think I'll be keeping the big guys around. Though I think they might be stealing my shoes, but I'm not a huge shoe person anyway, so what the hell. I'm pretty sure it's the zombies, for the record. Mine would never fit the bigfeet.

I Have No Taste

No, the zombies haven't complained. My taste in music, that is. So, just because everybody else gets to, here's a Friday Random Ten, "Losing It" Version, with lyrics.

King Of Bedside Manor, Barenaked Ladies. Album: Gordon.
"You know he was quite a singer, quite an actor, quite some time ago."

Days Of Wine And Booze, Minus 5. Album: Down With Wilco.
"Who will pick up when you call in?"

Standing By, Actual Tigers (Or Willis, depending on what album.) Album (in this case): Gravelled and Green.
"In the age of information it's so hard to be a saint."

Crazy Love Volume 2, Paul Simon. Album: Graceland.
"Well, I don't claim to be happy about this, boys."

We Want A Rock, They Might Be Giants. Album: Flood.
"Where was I? I forgot the point that I was making..."

Mister Blue, Charlie Chesterfield. Album: Studebakersfield.
"Sometimes I feel like some sad old goddamned song that everyone knows the words to but just won't sing along."

Lost Track Of Time, Young Fresh Fellows. Album: This One's For The Ladies.
"There's no way that I fit in the way I did before."

It Ends Tonight, The All-American Rejects. Album: Move Along.
"The walls start breathing..."

Bukowski, Modest Mouse. Album: Good News For People Who Love Bad News.
"Who would wanna be, who would wanna be such a control freak?"

Shop Vac, Jonathan Coulton. Album: Thing A Week I.
"If you need me, I'll be downstairs with the shop vac. You can call but I probably won't hear you because it's loud with the shop vac on."

I'm going to skip the bonus, you guys have put up with enough. If I had to pick one of those albums to tell you to go buy, I think it'd be Gravelled and Green, a choice which even surprises me because there's a lot of good stuff on that list. Of course, I say that as someone with no taste at all.

Display your own in the comments, or just mock mine.

Negotiable Sanity, Street Version

You guys sick of the zombie bigfeet yet?

My partner asked me, So how come you only see these things at home, never when we're out? And I thought, hell, that's actually a pretty good question from a sane person. So I looked a little more carefully, and unless the supermarket has a really aggressive diversity hiring program, I am seeing them while I'm not at home. I'm just not noticing because I don't look at people, being a confirmed misanthrope. So now I see them everywhere, and thanks for that, honey. Shopping has suddenly been transformed into an exciting personal version of Dead Rising except that I don't kill anyone and they don't seem to do much, just stand around. I suppose it's possible they've been hired as greeters, but to be honest they kind of suck at it, what with the not-talking and all.

Meanwhile, I still can't figure out why they all hang out in the kitchen, and worse, why that's not helping my diet. If they were actually doing something to scare me, maybe I'd stay the hell out of there, but they're not. They just stand around like the Burger King in those commercials. I haven't really even seen them running up behind me since that one night, certainly I haven't heard them doing anything, which comes as a relief since, as I've said, things that make noise are usually real.

And having the voice in my head that sounds like Rod Serling tell me what's real has turned out to be not very effective at all. He seems to take long lunch breaks, and he's late for work, and to be honest there were a couple of days there where I think he just talked the voice in my head that sounds exactly like Bob Bakker to clock in for him while he stayed home on the couch watching game shows. And that voice is practically useless on the subject of zombies, I don't think he sees any of them at all.

So instead I'm just wandering around with a wooden spoon and poking it at them. If it meets resistance, that probably means there really is something there. So far it hasn't.

The housemate thinks this is all exceptionally stupid, and I'm having a hard time disagreeing with that, but what the hell. I think I'm probably doing okay with the whole thing, but I may be inherently better set up to deal with hallucinations than most people. It's often easier for me to sort out the rules of non-reality and apply logic to how things are rather than to keep insisting on the logic that would pertain if reality was how it's supposed to be. At that point, you stop yelling at the zombies not to sneak up behind you which is, after all, their job, and instead just start telling them just to stay out of dark rooms, and then you stop turning around with breakable objects in your hands because that startle reflex will have you cleaning up a lot of glass otherwise.

So, this is what rationality looks like when it's cobbled together out of small bits of dysfunctional logic. I can't say it hasn't been interesting, but I may have gone long enough without so many of the migraines that I'm willing to go back to that for a while. Of course, there's no guarantee that the hallucinations will go away now anyway now that my screwed-up psyche is used to them, and for that matter may well be using them in the same way people who, you know, sleep use dreams.

And of course there's no good reason for me to be explaining all of this to anyone except that if I'm going to have to put up with it, I'm by god going to get some decent funny stories out of it. What really sucks is that if I didn't still have this stupid headache all the time, I might actually be able to concentrate well enough to get some decent fiction out of it, too. Because, really, all of this would be hilarious if it was happening to someone who wasn't real.

So, Who's Hungry?

It's my night to cook, which seems like as good a reason as any to inflict a recipe on you. You are invited to play along at home, but keep that pizza delivery number on hand.

Tonight, we'll be doing the old standby Fish Stick Stir Fry. Most of my cooking skills were learned from geeks, and this is no exception. There's a thing they used to call Stir Fried Random that basically is just that: you stir fry whatever the hell you have on hand and call it good.

Fish Stick Stir Fry uses that same technology, but requires a bit more prep work or a bit more leftovers than most. Fish sticks, frozen, and tater tots, frozen, should be cooked according to package directions. You can do this as part of a different meal and use the leftovers in stir fry, or you can just cook them before you start. Break the sticks into bite sized pieces and set them aside. You'll also need leftover white rice, preferably sticky. If you have leftover veggies or something, you can throw that in too, and I like coarsely chopped cilantro, but I would caution you against pineapple and against mixing meats--save the Spam for another night.

Tater tots and white rice make a very versatile base for a stir fry, you can do hot dog stir fry, Spam stir fry, chicken nugget stir fry, pizza roll stir fry, whatever. The biggest difference between edible and non is simply the sauce you choose.

For fish sticks, we're going to go with a thinned tartar sauce, which is basically just a tartar sauce in a jar with some water added. Don't use milk. It's bad. Believe me. Just use a little water. You ideally want something the consistency of homemade vegetable soup. Well, my homemade vegetable soup, anyway. It might be best if we don't talk about that.

Since stir-frying is fast, you need to make sure this is all set up ahead of time.

Anyway, heat your skillet or wok, and add a little vegetable oil. I don't advise olive oil, apparently it gets too hot or something, but possibly more relevant it gives it a sort of weird taste. (Yes, I did actually just say that.) A nonstick pan is best, not Teflon, or you can just use a little more oil, you don't want nuggets or tots or sticks to get stuck to the pan or you'll break them into tiny shreds.

If you've got garlic you want to throw in, now's the time, but I've never been that happy with garlic in fish sticks. Start with the tater tots, they're going to need three to four minutes. Rice is next, don't stir too much, it's nice still a little clumpy. Give them a minute. If you've got veggies, you can throw them in at this point, I'd suggest celery or even water chestnuts but tonight we're not doing any. Fish sticks next, they'll need a couple minutes to heat through. Then the cilantro goes in just for thirty seconds or so, enough to wilt.

Pull the whole thing off the heat and dump it into a bowl. Add your sauce, enough to coat, and mix it up gently. Garnish with very thin lemon slices. Then drop the bowl on the table, making sure it thunks loudly--remember, presentation is a big part of your job. Drop a pile of forks onto the table with a clatter, put your hands on your hips, and yell "Soup's on!" When people arrive, they will ask what this is. It is essential at this point not to become offended.

Give them a straight, emotionless recitation of the ingredients-as-name, and if you can pronounce those capital letters, go for it. If anyone tries to back out of the room, you are more than welcome to give them a challenging glare.

Is this your first attempt at Sadistic Cookery? You'll probably be eating Fish Stick And Tater Tot Stir Fry With White Rice And Tartar Sauce, then. But think of tonight as Rules Night. This is your opportunity to make your housemates aware of the rules:

1) If it's edible separately, it's edible together.
2) I am always eager to learn from my mistakes and try this again next week.
3) There's dessert, and I didn't make it/I cooked it according to the directions on the box. Dessert is eaten after dinner, thank you.
4) I was thinking about adding [cocktail weenies/butterscotch pudding/canned sardines/mustard/fried eggs/leftover pizza/pine nuts] but didn't, because I thought you might not like it.
5) First person to refuse to eat this pays for the pizza.

Extra tip: After everybody's had their first few bites is an ideal time to ask who's cooking tomorrow.

FWIW

For whatever it's worth, there's a possibility that my mother's reading this. She tells me she's read some of my comments in various places, which is a little like finding out she went to see you at the peepshow and is critiquing your performance, though certainly she's read other stuff I've written that's probably even less mother-approved. I don't really care if she wants to read it, but I'd as soon not know, and I'm not going to explain anything I've said. We're all entitled to pretend our asides aren't being heard by the other players. I'm not even going to confirm or deny which of the various D. Sidhe that pop up in assorted places are me. Ultimately it doesn't matter. I know who and what I am, and that's all I'm responsible for.

To my mother, my sister, or anyone else out there who knows me in real life, if you want to read along, you are free to do so, of course. But it would be a good idea to remember that there are things I might say that you'll wish you didn't know, and that once that cat's out of the bag, it's very hard to put it back in.

To anyone who's read this far, my advice is to pretend nobody's out there, or failing that, to populate the imaginary blog bleachers with the audience you want to be listening to you, and go with that. It's what I do.

Please don't feel that you need to watch what you say. The commenters I am fortunate enough to have attracted somehow are profound and profane in equal measure, and whether they are Respectable, in that grand old outdated term, I respect them.

So say it like you mean it. Or say it like you don't give a fuck. I'm good either way.

I Got Nothing, But Fortunately That's Just Me

Over at The Phil Nugent Experience, Phil, if I may call him Phil, has got some stuff to say, and he's thought-provoking and eloquent and stuff. He's not getting quite the careful reading out of me that he deserves, mostly because I have the sort of headache that makes thinking like reading an eye chart in a heavy fog.

My advice is to go read it yourself (Not the eye chart.), starting here, where he ponders the credulously paranoid bent in humanity, and moving onto here, where he takes up the matter of crimes and misdemeanors and ethical lapses, and going on to here, where he offers some extremely timely advice for the eukaryotes among us, and then, I dunno, just keep reading till you've finished everything in the archives. Also, his heds are worth it just for themselves.

Phil's one of those people I'm amazed doesn't seem to have a bigger audience, though I admit that's not a short list by any means. But he's also one of those people who doesn't seem to care all that much. Which is something I'd probably spend some time here attempting to sort out if I didn't have the aforementioned cotton-balls-in-my-brain headache. Instead, I'll just send over whatever I can in the way of my highly perceptive and articulate commenters who, and I realize this is the limiting factor, don't already read his blog.

Meanwhile, I'm going to do some more research into Atenolol, because my partner has banned sex until I get the zombie thing sorted out. Apparently, it can really throw off your timing if your partner is yelling at people you can't see. I am sympathetic, but of a mind to be ungracious about it.

Zombie Update, Part 2

Ladies and gentlemen, we have stubble! (After just a week of me yelling at the more assertive ones that I'm gonna turn them into that damned fabric softener bear if they don't get the hell back into the closet.) At this rate, by Christmas we should have zombies with comb-overs.


Well, okay. If this doesn't work out, I have formulated a Plan B: persuade the voice in my head which sounds exactly like Rod Serling to tell me when something isn't there.

What, no? You guys are all still grappling with Stage Two: Zombies, But It's Not Personal, and I've moved on to Stage Four: Ask The Imaginary Friends What's Real. All I can say is, the crazy moves fast in here. Keep your lifejackets on at all times.

Edited to ask: Would you guys like me to try to set up an RSS feed so you can know I Got Nothin' without the hassle of clicking over here?

Second Best

Over at World O'Crap, there's a discussion going on prompted by a post made by Ace of Spades, and I'm not linking there because I don't actually give the faintest fuck about him. It's the discussion at Wo'C that's got my interest, in particular the comments by Hysterical Woman and by Bill S., who has been an extraordinary voice in the wilderness on this issue for as long as I've known him.

In essence, California is now allowing conjugal visitation for prisoners who are gay. This seems like only common sense, to me. Regardless of what their system is, it should be applied to everyone.

This has prompted Ace of Spades to remark, in an incredibly callous manner:

"Eh, why not? They’ve been allowing involuntary shower-room gay conjugal visits for hundreds of years."

followed by the cute little joke,

They should stop calling it "prison" and start calling it "The Most Wonderful Place In The World."

Blogger Scott at Wo'C, and the commenters there, are justly appalled by this. Rape jokes are comprehensively revolting to begin with, but most people either understand that, or at least accept that other people will regard them as creeps for making them and keep it to themselves.

There are, it seems to me, a couple of distinct attitudes underlying a comment like Ace's. The obvious one is that people deserve what they get. This is a pretty standard view among conservatives and libertarians. If you're poor, it's because you haven't worked hard enough, rather than outsourcing or disability. If you're in prison, it's because you're guilty, nothing to do with selective enforcement of laws or a justice system that favors the wealthy. If the bologna you gave your family caused food poisoning, it's your fault for not cooking it first. The general assumption there is that luck plays very little role in how your life unfolds, or at least that you can overcome bad luck well enough to achieve as much success as those who started out with better circumstances.

So if you're in prison being raped, it's because you deserve it, and I'm not in prison being raped because I don't deserve it. So there's really no need for empathy, and no basis for it. I don't have to wonder what it would be like to be that person, because that person is fundamentally different from me. There is no circumstance under which I would need to be defended against this, so there's no need for me to defend anyone else from it. They're getting what they deserve, and I'm getting what I deserve, and why should anyone interfere with that?

Well, perhaps we should because people don't go to prison exclusively because they are guilty. There is no legitimate way to dispute the fact that innocent people go to prison, and even guilty people go to prison for crimes that are greater than those they actually committed. But that's easy--up until about six years ago, it wouldn't really have occurred to me that a significant portion of my fellow citizens would feel anything other than outrage for a wrongly-imprisoned innocent person. Now, of course, I know that a lot of my fellow citizens think it's perfectly acceptable to torture the innocent, but in general it takes a certain level of cruelty to feel no compassion for the wrongfully imprisoned.

What's harder is the notion that even the guilty, and even those guilty of truly vicious crimes, even those guilty of, for example, child rape and murder, have not been handed a sentence of rape, torture, and possible eventual death by disease. For whatever reason, this isn't a sentence we hand out, and it seems like we have an obligation, therefore, to make sure it doesn't happen. Even people who absolutely do deserve to be imprisoned are at the mercy of the society holding them captive, and when people are at your mercy there are rules about how it is acceptable to treat them. Rape as a routine feature of imprisonment is a human rights violation, and it is so for a reason.

As with torture, it's something we do not, or should not, sanction because of what it says about us, what it does to us, even more than what it does to our victims. I've been raped. I have no empathy for rapists. I don't even have much in the way of empathy for rapists who have been raped. There are some people I like to believe I could cheerfully kill, and over whose death and suffering I do not grieve. But to say, as some people do, that rapists deserve what's coming to them in prison, strikes me as a way of doing to them what they did to us, even if only by proxy. And having been a rape victim, I am not willing to be a rapist, even in a technical way.

I could say they deserve it, but I won't. Because all rapists think their victims deserve it, and will come up with any necessary justification to make it not their fault but that of their victims. And sanctioning prison rape as some sort of "Well, they should have known not to go there in the first place" bonus deterrent is not in any significant way different from "Well, she should have known not to go there in the first place".

The other underlying attitude I sense in Ace's comment is a view that homosexuality is not about love, or that rape is. I'm not going to guess at which one is in play there, and people far smarter than I have spent a lot of words trying to deal with the attitude that rape is a compliment paid by someone who finds you sexually attractive.

But there are an awful lot of otherwise well-meaning people, not to mention a lot of assholes, who don't seem able to understand that a sexual relationship they don't find appealing is, consent being present, equal to their own. There's a tendency to dehumanize anything that is not a straight relationship. A tendency to believe that since you could not personally be attracted to a specific type of person, nobody normal could.

So gay relationships are linked in the public mind with pedophilia, or bestiality, or when the Freepers really get going on the subject, chair-fucking. The conclusion there seems to be that at least one of the participants is not a real person, and that there couldn't possibly be any sort of genuine love there, but only a mental disorder that results in a pathological sexual attraction to dogs, or to children, or to teddy bears.

Needless to say, this is a horribly offensive thing to say to anyone about the people they love. Not just offensive to say that you are a pervert for loving them, but that they are not, somehow, fully human. Personally, I'd rather people called me a pervert than suggested my partner was the moral equivalent of a blow-up doll, but these statements inextricably do both, and are all the more cruel for it.

It is, nonetheless, a very common attitude. Gay sex isn't love. It's just a mental disorder. And therefore, is there really any difference between gay love and gay rape? You might think I'm going too far with that interpretation, but at least one of the "ex-gay" organizations explicitly makes the point that gay sex is mutual rape, and nothing to do with love even if the participants are delusional enough to think they love each other.

So as far as I can tell, that's what Ace is saying here. Not just "Ha! Suffering is funny!" but also "Rape, sex, what's the difference to a pervert anyway?" And I'd like to contend that in a world less founded on a complete lack of empathy towards other humans, that either of those views would not be acceptable.

Arts and Crafts Monday

It is Monday, right? Okay, here you go. This is Boooon! City, a Japanese site with a bunch of adorable free downloadable easy car models. The various vehicles have a little personal backstory which you can see if you can find a translator, I would advise this link. Paste the url for Booon! into the big box at the top, check the button on the right under that, and hit the button outlined in orange. But be aware that you cannot click the pdf files from within the Excite interface, you have to do it at the direct site page.

It's probably not worth bothering, really, except that you'll learn that the pink sports car is not a girlcar but instead the other sports car's little brother, and that the bus seems to have road rage. So you might as well skip that and just mouse over the links till you find a pdf, click, and away you go.

As always, you'll need Adobe Reader, which you can get free here or even here. You'll also need a printer, but I can't help with that.

Bigfoot!

My Bigfoot army is finally within my grasp! This little guy is paper, but not imaginary. Also, he's adorable. And free. (Scroll down.)

Model by Paul Shih, hat tip to the blog Paper Forest.


My partner and I were recently watching my Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law DVDs, and Mentok the Mind-Taker shouted "Zombie guards! Seize him! Tell me that's not fun to say."

We cracked up. It was suggested I keep the zombies and turn them into minions. It seems a bit overdone to me, really, and nowhere near as cool as the Sasquatch Militia.

Stealing Riley's Gig

Well, because he makes it look like so damned much fun. And it's monogamy over here at the moment, anyway.



So last night I decided to take a shower, and announced to any and all zombie bigfeet that anyone who tried to sneak up on me while I was doing so was going to end up with a rubber ducky right in the face. My partner overheard this, and the following conversation ensued:

"Is this the schizophrenia acting up again?"
"No," I say. "This is a psychotic episode. I'm just talking to the zombies. The schizophrenia is when I talk to myself."
"But you do that all the time."
"Well, only because I started the conversation and it seems rude to ignore me."

I suspect someone is pricing the traditional canvas jacket with the extra-long sleeves for my birthday. One size fits all, honey, and I like green best.