Author Archives: bluedepth

Accessing the Big Bag O’ Tangents

Posted on by
Reply

At work I got to talking about the climate and climate change. About how all the weird weather is just going to get worse and how stupid all of it is. From Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth that nobody much cared for because they just don’t like Al Gore is where a lot of the foolishness starts. I started to riff on a theme after that, noticing on the way that a lot of rich people seem to cluster around the water’s edge. I got to laughing as I considered what a pretty good rise in sea level would do. Say goodbye to New Yack, buh-bye Florida, and then there was this: “Oh yes, we have a house in the Hamptons… we’re so filthy rich and ohh-la-la.” … “We had a house in the Hamptons, but that’s all under the sea now.” I shifted gears and thought about a anthropomorphized mother nature beating the tar out of Florida. I don’t really care much for Florida, they have citrus, rain, oppressive heat, and really adorable under-the-sea-level-but-still-dry land contours. What happens when the sea rises? Florida will be covered with sea water. It’s going to be very hard to grow any citrus after an anthropomorphized mother nature is finished SALTING THE EARTH, after all, seawater is saltwater! Anyhow, I eventually returned to climate change and got to talking about how methane is a much worse gas than carbon dioxide when it comes to the greenhouse effect and that got me talking about how American stockyard animals all fart and release Methane.

Then I remembered the little bit of trivia that marsupials don’t host the bacteria that convert sugars into methane so animals like Kangaroo just don’t fart. Kangaroo Obviously I wasn’t done, and I needed to end it on a humorous note and I pulled down some points in the column of ‘obnoxious and obscene’ and posited that we should switch out cows, pigs, and chickens for their marsupial counterparts, like kangaroos and such and that would be better for the environment. It didn’t actually stop there, I got to thinking about how one dispatches chickens – you decapitate them and then them run about until they exsanguinate and stop moving, then you pick up the dead and dress it and you’re all set. Naturally I thought about what one could do in my fictional America where we’ve switched out to Kangaroos. What if you decapitated a Kangaroo and let it bound about? Kangaroos are big, lots of blood and energy and without a brain they’d probably take off bouncing along. Here’s the good part, imagine a new reality TV series where people bet online to see which Kangaroo, once properly beheaded gets as far as it can bounding off without a brain. Make it a national lottery, pack it with ads, boy, that would be a huge moneymaker.

There will be a full moon in two days. So, you know, that’s my excuse for all of this. People who know me shouldn’t even bat an eye at any of this. 🙂

Addressing Balance In The Force

Posted on by
Reply

You can’t really have a lot of negative things in your head just mobbing out all the good things that also have happened. To that end, today I have a particular real humor-based life preserver brought to me by the Apple Spotlight twitter account. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and this is worth a million billion bajillion lulz:

 

downgrade_discount

 

This pleases me.

 

Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond Of Each Other

Posted on by
Reply

I saw this news item from thinkprogress.org:

 

“Republican House Leader Vows To Use ‘Power Of Humiliation’ To Undermine LGBT Program”

My first reaction was a knee-jerk one of course. “What is it to you?” What is it about gay people that gets these particular people all worked up? I’ve always wanted to know that. My curiosity of course is somewhat rhetorical as it’s pretty much obvious that much of this comes straight (ouch, pun) out of the pulpit and is certainly reinforced by the mirror maze of political self-convincing talk.

What would these people do if they were faced with the reality of what they say? The subject of their ire is the Mental Health Services Administration’s book titled “Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Individuals.” So, what about this document? The title is really quite plain and explanatory and being a gay man, and knowing my particular niche culture gives me a unique viewpoint on this particular issue. Is it important? Do you think that people who are sick should be cared for, that people who are despondent and without hope should be helped? What are your thoughts on suicide? This gets right to the heart of it. I bet a lot of these people are upright god-fearing Christian types, they hail from Oklahoma and there is a stereotype, lets face it, about that region being rather salt-to-the-earth and quite red when it comes to politics. Sit back and let’s think for a moment about what your self-professed lord and savior, Jesus Christ, would think about “Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Individuals.” Your lord and savior wandered around healing the sick, he never asked anyone if they were gay, lesbian, or transgendered. It just didn’t matter to him. People who cared for the sick like he did, he said, would be favored in God’s sight because they cared. Care. That’s what it really gets down to, who cares and who does not? Who hides behind a carapace of bigoted ignorance and who really cares? For these people in this meeting, all of them who didn’t stand up, who didn’t stomp their foot on the ground and argue against this – all of them – how can you face your self-professed lord and savior who you see every Sunday, nailed to a crucifix? Yes, he died to absolve you on sin, but when he was alive, when he was teaching – what was that part? Did you all miss that part? In your haste to be absolved of your sins, perhaps you missed everything up until the climax and after it was all over, you just rolled over and fell asleep?

These are valid questions that I would love answers to. I would dearly enjoy facing these people after we all march through the stations of the cross together. Jesus healing the lepers, Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus and the children. Then turn to me, turn to a younger me, turn to any gay man, lesbian, or transgendered person and spit out that vitriol about the “Gay Agenda”.

Ma’am, yes, we do have a Gay Agenda. You caught us red-handed. Our agenda is simple. We are in pursuit of ending suffering of the people who are like us. The kids who grow up bullied and turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of being mocked for being different. Not the color of our skin, not anything patently obvious like that, but mocked for who we love. You mock us over love. How can you face Jesus Christ when you mock people for loving? Wasn’t Jesus all about Love? Isn’t that what he preached? Love each other, be good to each other, and for the love of god, stop killing each other! So, where’s the love? That’s what the agenda is. We want to save ourselves and people like us. We want to reduce the suffering, we want to catch the sad and hold them tight and tell them that they are not alone. We want to rescue people who are so alone and unhappy that all they want to do is hang, shoot themselves, or drink or take drugs until they die.

So, is this document that the Mental Health Services Administration is providing a good thing or a bad thing? What are your feelings on dead children? How about young men and women dying at their own hands? What about that? How does that stand up to your fear of some undefined pink menace coming for you and yours?

Jesus Christ My Ass.

 

An Open Letter to State Senator Tonya Schuitmaker

Posted on by
Reply

State Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker votes for bill to exempt Michigan-made guns from federal regulations | MLive.com.

Dear State Senator Schuitmaker,

I read the article above and I understand the political drive that stands behind your decision to pursue this action but as a concerned citizen of Kalamazoo Michigan I beg you to reconsider your actions. Regulating guns is actually part of the directive from the Second Amendment, an amendment that I know you hold very near and dear to your heart. The text of it contains this phrase “A well-regulated militia” and so, in that context we both can agree.  The state has a well-regulated militia, represented primarily by the National Guard, and all the state, county, town, and township Police. What makes Michigan-made guns so special? Do you think that somehow exempting Michigan from these regulations, which you know would never work anyways, would somehow bring jobs, money, or praise to our beleaguered state? The answer Senator is not more guns, but well-regulated militias. Well regulated militias with well-regulated guns.

Let us put talk about politics aside just briefly and discuss what I am really getting at here. How many people must be killed before guns lose their allure to you? How many perforated children must lie dead at your feet for you to consider that perhaps stricter controls on guns, and yes, gun manufacturing may be a good idea? I and the rest of the citizenry would really quite like to know. If you have not seen the news recently we have two epidemics sweeping the land. One is influenza, and the other is gun crimes. While there is little to nothing that a legislator can do about influenza, you can do something about access to guns for these criminals. Let us speak plainly here, people are broken. Your citizenry are sick. Many people have untreated and undiagnosed mental disorders which interfere with rational cognition yet these people have no problem acquiring guns and ammunition and killing other people. These are criminals, and the law does not prevent them from accessing guns.

The classic republican design for guns is rooted not in lawful behavior but actually in mutually assured destruction. Republicans would quite enjoy it if every person was armed, because then the notion of gun violence, in the republican way of thinking, would evaporate. This design may work and I admit there may be something to it worth at least thinking about, but there is one problem to this design. Some citizens are mentally ill. Would you hand a mentally ill person a weapon and expect them to rationally consider mutually assured destruction? What if they are plagued by voices or have rage control problems? What does the republican model say in that situation? It devolves into a mexican standoff, moments before a blood bath. The Republican Party has a choice. You can go either way forward from the fork of gun control or addressing the mental health crisis in America. You can’t have it both ways. Either everyone gets guns and the mentally ill are cared for or there are strict gun controls and the mentally ill are left as they are.

So, Senator Schuitmaker, as a concerned voter in Kalamazoo I ask that you please reconsider this position. You can think of any part of your constituency when you make these decisions. The potential victims, men, women, and children and the various mentally ill people who mingle amongst us. We don’t ask for gun bans, but we do ask for gun regulations and I am willing to trade damaging the economics of gun manufacturers in this state so that we do not have to endure any more headlines about a field of dead children.

Vectors Hidden In Plain Sight

Posted on by
1

virus cells
While walking back from the bathroom and sitting down in my office I looked around and noticed all the devices that I touch. We are currently witnessing a epidemic of influenza and because it’s a clear and present danger to our health I’m spending more and more time considering ways to avoid it. Obviously there are all the classic things one can do, frequent hand-washing, sanitization, Vitamin C (Placebo anyone?), Tea (Paging Dr. Placebo), supplements (Will Dr. Placebo PLEASE ANSWER THE PHONE!) and as I was sitting back considering all the ways you could acquire an active influenza virus it struck me. Much like wondering how invading Aliens were jaunting past the razorwire like it wasn’t there only to find out they were skittering along in the drop ceiling – a hidden vector of infection: Touch Devices.

Ever since Apple (and others, of course) developed tablet and phone technology in the modern sense, mostly iPads, iPhones, Nook HD’s and MacBooks people have been touching these things and not really paying much attention to what all that touching means. If you wash your hands then your hands are clean until you touch an object, then you have doubt. Did that surface that I touched harbor a virus or bacteria that could make me sick? You don’t know. Obviously life goes on merrily and has ever since these devices have been in our grubby little clutches, but still, just to think about it gave me pause. I was using the bathroom, washing my hands, then touching my iPad. Dirty, clean… dirty? I don’t know. It’s the doubt that grips me.

There is one chemical that I know will disinfect non-porous surfaces and most likely will not damage those surfaces and that’s isopropyl alcohol. So at work I have asked my S3 to follow a new protocol during these months when these viruses are on the loose and we’re in the trenches when it comes to being vectors ourselves because we touch a lot of things that others touch. So now, at work, whenever we see an iPad, an iPhone, or a MacBook we grab a microfiber cloth, wet it with alcohol and wipe down the entire surface. Each time. It’s a lot of wiping and a lot of alcohol, but what if we kill a virus that otherwise would have made the epidemic worse? Isn’t it worth the little bit of time and effort to kill a bad thing early on than have to suffer its effects once we’ve succumbed? I think so.

If you have non-porous surfaces that you touch very frequently, like we do, I strongly recommend wiping things with a rag soaked in alcohol. You may very well perform one action which could stem the tide and spare you and the people around you the danger and inconvenience of this particularly nasty influenza virus.

We’re Lousy With Superheroes

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote this post of Facebook just now and sometimes when I get to writing something that I really find appealing comes out while I write and it surprises me. This was a comment about Katie Couric interviewing Matthew Shepard’s mother:

 I hate that helpless feeling. Knowing that there are these crimes and that kids are killing themselves because they feel so alone and without hope. It’s the agony that sits at the center of things like the Trevor Project and “It Gets Better” project. If more people were honest about themselves and gays were more visible then maybe these kids in crisis would notice us and reach out and we could catch them and prove to them that life does get better. 

There are more people that love you and those people may not be your family, or they may be. But there are people out there who do care, all that keeps them quiet is that they don’t know they are needed. The country is full of superheroes, but they are all saddled with one tragic flaw, that they aren’t clairvoyant.

I thought it was so neat that it should go in my blog…

Blog Spam

Posted on by
1

I hate spam. I really hate it. I don’t want anything to do with Casinos, cheating lovers, or SEO bullshit. In fact, I’ve developed a very acute loathing for the phrase “SEO”. I’ve started to mentally connect “SEO Specalists” with “Used Car Salesmen”. If you are one, keep it to yourself. Don’t come and talk to me about SEO. It’s just gaming the system and it’s both corrupt and dishonest.

To that end, I went back to look at Askimet and realized that the API token that I thought was for-pay only turns out that it’s free for personal blogs. What a surprise! So I installed the Akismet plugin (I had earlier deleted it because I thought it was pay-only) and applied my API token and so far, although it’s only been a few moments, my blog is blessedly spam free.

The comments are the source of the spam. There was a post in the WordPress Community Pool regarding Twitter that got me thinking about how my readership engages with my blog. People don’t really engage in Twitter much anymore and they don’t engage in WordPress comments either. All the engagement seems to be focused on Facebook. I’m not against any of this, but I find it very fascinating. This leads me to the topic of this post, which is that blog spam in the comments on my WordPress.org system is even more damnable. Nobody uses the comment system but I’m loathe to disable it. So, Akismet, at least so far, is riding to the rescue.

With that, I have a great Monty Python skit to share with you all on YouTube. Enjoy!

 

Gravity Winery 1/19/2013

Posted on by
Reply

– Pinot Gris • cheddar and pear on the nose. Vanilla and spice with a surprising weight in the midpalate. Paired with cheese accentuates the notes on the nose and integrates well with the waiting heaviness.
– Shiraz • chlorine on the nose with very weak lingonberries. Quite acidic with a lean neediness in the aft-palate. The Colby jack is a good pair as it buoys the neediness letting the hidden spice shine with just a touch of raspberry/boysenberry.
– Irresistible Red • bubble gum on the nose with a ghost of strawberries. The taste is quite surprising, a definite soft licorice note paired with plums, cloves, and cinnamon. Paired with milk chocolate toffee pushes the sweetness forward and mutes the complex flavors that develop in the midpalate.
– Lemberger • chalkboard, slate, tomato paste in the nose. The taste is sharp and acidic with a conservative tannic structure that yields to plums and the bite of pepperoni. The pairing of dark chocolate cranberry pecan blasts out the finer flavors of the wine, accentuating the bitterness of the dark chocolate.

All in all, the Irresistible Red was the winner, the Shiraz was second, the Pinot Gris next and the Lemberger at the end.

Round Barn Tasting 1/19/2013

Posted on by
Reply

– Vineyard Red • quite warm and loose. Flabby and generous. High 80’s
– Cabernet Sauvignon • nose of pickles and pool water under strawberries and plums with a hint of pepperoni. Nice acid and tannic bite with a complex mouthfeel. High 90’s
– Merlot Reserve • warm vanilla and chocolate notes in the nose with strawberries. Softer tannins waddle through with an exceptional creaminess. High 80’s.
– Noir Nouveau • more standup, notes of grenadine in the nose. Cherries and well-rounded currant notes. High 80’s
– Weekend Red • hot pavement on the nose, taste of sugared dark chocolate and raspberries with the slightest touch of freshly cut grass.

Unexpected Side Effects

Posted on by
Reply

One thing I wasn’t really expecting but that I’m getting in a rather steady stream are spam comments. There seems to be several species of spam floating about. Amongst these are the link droppers, the foreign language gobbledygook, the ‘cheaters’ messages and the random attaboy messages that are possibly authentic but utterly meaningless.

But then there is another class of commentary. There is a whole argument chain about the Wheel of Time that has been marching along. It seems like real comments from real people, as the commentary has a real argumentative structure but I haven’t written any critical posts about WOT.

I’ve been deleting the spammy comments, all of them, and eventually I think I’ll have to create an email filter to organize them into batches or turn off email notification altogether. At least the WordPress app allows me to deal with comments like the mail app allows me to deal with multiple emails. Highlight batches and delete.

It’s not that I don’t want comments. I do! But I want real comments from real people. One thing I will state, if a comment is obnoxious I will kill it without remorse. If you have an unquenchable opinion, start your own blog.