For any of you who are at all familiar with Doonesbury and have not been reading it recently, I strongly suggest that you start here and read the next few strips.

Jesus. I spend at least several hours a week thinking about military and related policy issues and somehow I've let myself get dulled out. "Just a part of the human cost." "Nothing we can do but try to cut down this one and try to prevent the next one." "Caring about the individual soldiers is just an impediment to working to get them out."

Blah.
Blah.

Blah.

I've let myself let go of the emotional reality of what is happening over there. I've become yet one more deadened policy guy working to not think about what this shit means on the small scale.

And somehow I was more freaked by what just happened to a cartoon character then I have been by anything else since we first took Baghdad. Then, of all places, Get Fuzzy (couldn't figure out how to link to it, sorry) took on the same issue, with, in fact, a sharper political bite.

We all know that more and more of our people are dying over there. Most of us even know already that Shrub and his "people" (I use the term loosely) are trying to keep it quiet. Many of us even know about the current "stop loss" and reactivation and restaffing of draft boards.

We have a brutal path ahead and some horrible actions as a nation to atone for. And we don't even know how bad it gets from here.

But however bad it may be getting, let's not repeat one mistake of the Indochina wars and allow the returning vets to disappear into obscurity. They shouldered their burden. Increasingly, we will have to shoulder ours.

Rustin

Hey there. Sorry I'm not visiting other journals as much as I used to. Give me some time and I'll make up for it. Just shipped a few boxes off to Wisconsin. I'm continuing to pack more of them, as well as ones destined for Seattle. Wish I could figure out a good way to sell off much of what I've got here, with the big question being, do I or do I not keep most of my books? I may give away some of my most valuable furniture to friends rather then sell it. We'll see.

This past week I've mostly been blowing off work. Staying home, thinking about what to do now, working on the things that have been stalled while I got caught up in the various frantic crises of others. Took a few long walks. Caught up on some reading I've been meaning to do for years.

WARNING! SELF-INDULGENT RAGING, LOATHING, DISGUST, AND GENERAL MUCK AHEAD

(Skip ahead to the last two paragraphs for only useful content.)


The big news this week may turn out to be that my deeply sleazy mother is looking like she may be gearing up for another round of harassment. She sent me an email in her usual style, superficially friendly but greasy when you knew the underlying specifics. Stuff like complimenting me on my company "growing by leaps and bounds", which would be great if only it were true. Especially since she's claiming to base this on looking at my site, most of which is date-stamped all over from two years ago. Usually that means either that she has too much contempt for the situation to bother relating her compliments to reality or that she's intentionally bringing up nasty stuff, all with a "sweet" smile. Kinda like how she put a dedication in her first book to "Rustin, the creative one in the family" and then took me aside to specifically tell me that this was to remind me that she was getting a book out while I had still done nothing. This, keep in mind, when I was still in high school.

So I figure that after seven years of waiting her out, I'm going to write the bitch and set terms. I've been thinking about doing something like this for over a year now but with her turning up again, I figured that it was time to move beyond things like how long a period of dead time or what sorts of letters I was willing to put up with.
I started by having a friend with access to financial data check into her finances. What properties she owns, what she controls, things like the apartments she still owns but now under some name like "Valentine Properties". Cute, since her birthday is Valentine's Day.
Good to see that she has now sold off the apartment two blocks from mine. No longer need to endure the sense of anticipatory loathing every time I walk the direct route to Central Park.

Googled her name. After seven years I still assumed I'ld know pretty much what I'ld find. Nope, wrong again. No surprise that she got a political book published, nor various political refs for her and her pathetic communist husband. Fewer memberships/directorships/whatever then I expected. One picture with her looking terrible and giving a greasy little fake smile. I won't deny that I thought it was funny and enjoyable that her wig was obvious.
The thing I didn't expect to find was a "sceptic's guide to the paranormal". Very fuckin' funny. How oh-so-fucking amusing. Especially since I had a continuing succession of what folks call "paranormal experiences" when I was a kid and she could always be counted on to tell me that I was lying/delusional/worthless since I "couldn't distinguish fantasy from reality". She was real big on telling me I was a "dead loss" and how it all came back to my "fantasies". Yep, a solid round of support, understanding, and concern.

So now the repugnant creature has used the experiences she and I had when her fourth husband (my stepfather) died as the jumping off point for becoming some sort of authority. Gives talks, gets cited.

Let it be noted that in the thirteen years I continued to deal with her between my stepfather's death and my finally breaking off all communications, I never got any better then "oops, bummer, maybe I was wrong". Evidently when you discover that you have been regularly telling your son that he is mentally ill and/or a pathological liar for seven years about something where he turns out to have been correct all along, it's just a minor boo-boo.

I really wasn't up for reading all the shite Google turned up but one friend dug deep enough to discover that she has, for whatever reason, erased me from her own writing. Evidently in her paranormal book I go under the pseudonym "Keith", which I suspect is meant as an inside joke about my grandmother's tendency to name her sons with old Scottish names.
Whyever she did it, I'm sure glad of it. Having the bitch out there with something like eight pages of Google links is quite bad enough but if I were to discover that googling my name was sending folks to the grasping beast's work then I'ld have a whole new reason to loath the creature.

Anyway, I also found more of the same. As always, she's workin' the system. As far as I can tell she has progressed not an angstrom unit towards being an ethical or honorable human being. However she is all the fuck over the Oregon political scene, as is her weasel of a husband.

Great. Just fucking wonderful.

Only twice so far in my life has some chowderhead tried to point me to the communist dimwit's self-indulgent, anti-productive bullshit as a useful reference for work I was doing. Both times I have firmly but insistantly given a detailed and unrelenting overview of why his facts, concepts, morality, personal life, and political methods are all repulsive gatherings of counterproductive, puerile obstructions to real social progress.
I can see why she married him. He has the intellectual rigor of a petulant four year old and is thereby at no risk of ever being a threat to her household ascendency. Makes sense, given that he's been living on other people's money his entire life, that he would be so very in favor of everybody else giving theirs away After all, any one person having wealth when others are hungry is "unfair" and can be solved by just impoverishing everybody equally. He calls this "World Equity" and shows no willingness whatsover to grasp that wealth does actually come from somewhere. That it's not just dropped from magic people in the sky.

Leech.

It was satisfying to lay this out, chapter and verse, for the folks in the New York political scene who brought him up but would not be so if I had to do it every few days. (btw, in case you think that I am exaggerating, the dimwit is oh-so-proud of the way that he has rebuilt his entire parasitic life to match his "ethics" and yes, indeed he has been thorough. So by now everything from the clothes he wears to his speech patterns is an accurate representation of his disgusting "first principles".)

RETURN TO REASONABLE DATA STARTS HERE.

So this journal entry, unfortunately, is in part meant to serve notice. At some point the bitch will turn up here and when that time comes I'll have to shut down commenting privileges for anybody not yet friended. I truly am far from happy about this but since her history of inserting herself where she is entirely aware she is unwanted (you would not believe the range of misleading stationary, postmarks, etc. she has used to try to get me to read her letters) is utterly consistent, this journal as an open forum now has a ticking clock. I'ld estimate that I've got about three or four more months.
Far less likely is that she will bully/bribe/or simply harass somebody into getting access but even so, she's pulled off such shit in the past. If I ever think that there is even a suspicion of that then I am utterly gone from here.

Sorry for subjecting you folks to yet another round of my bile. Gawd knows I'ld be better off letting go of all of this but it is mighty hard when the real world keeps serving up reminders.

I'm turning off comments for this JE. After all, there's not much to say in such a situation and you've all got enough problems of your own without having to waste time on mine (though I very much appreciate the knowledge that somewhere out there folks read this stuff).

Again, thanks for reading. I hope I'll be able to (somewhat) ameliorate this soon.

-Rustin

One of my clients is now vacating a three and a half story 1905 house in the Bronx. They got paid well and the house and adjoining lots are all being cleared to make way for ugly little condos.
So the mature hardwood trees (including one cherry) have been cut down and their trunks are sitting for whomever wants to take them.
Also several lengths (about eight feet each) of original tall wrought iron highly worked fencing are there for any blacksmiths out there looking for excellent quality (if kinda beatup) raw iron to rework.

Let me say this again. IT IS ALL FREE. All they want in return is a nice thank you note.

Oh, and so are several thousand plants. Since the wife is a botanist, she planted their sizable plot of land (for NYC, that is) with lilies, violets, forsythia, mayapples, tulips, and dozens of other varieties, all of which are now coming up. Oh, and plenty of ivy and holly and wisteria covering the walls. Again, you want, you take.

When? Anytime during daylight hours. If they ask, tell them that you're a slashdotter and that "Rustin sent you". Demolition starts on April 29th and the land is being interemittantly cleared so this is a now or never thing. Whatever is left will be chipped or dumpstered in not too many weeks. Where? 2549 Grand Avenue at the corner of 192nd, a few blocks south of Kingsbridge and east of University.

Lastly, if anybody can come and get all or most, there are also about fifteen shelves worth of books. Mostly hardbound, mostly fiction or political. Since the wife is the inheritor of the collections of a judge and two high-profile lawyers while the husband is a central european who was a partner in a demographics firm, this is good stuff. If I had the room, I'ld literally take every volume.
If you want it and can pick it up, then email me and we'll set up a time.

Other stuff? Sure
A turn of the century molding cutter, needs a new handle but otherwise intact. Weighs about fifty pounds.
Several (evidently) high-end oil-filled room heaters.
A collection of handmade brooms. Very Martha Stewart. Probably worth a few thousand bucks but we simply don't have the time to deal with them.
Some glass dry good containers.
Various pots and pans.

And so on.

Frankly, folks, these are financially secure people of excellent taste. None of this stuff is crap. You should see the stuff we did take the time to find homes for. It's just that I charge too much per hour* and they have no time and even more valuable stuff still needs our attention.

So come and get it.

* Yes, I am looking for a new assistant. Anybody want a flextime job? Varied work, underwhelming pay, interesting places, occasional skin-shredding deadlines? Drop me a line.

-Rustin

When I reached a nice round one hundred and twenty-eight entries, I figured that it was time that I posted an index. After all, the /. one is pretty doggone useless.

Here's the latest revised version. It still has a seventy-one entry gap, and contains only the first and most of the latest. There are also some more recent ones not yet put in. But I think that you may find it of use nonetheless.

1. Brains can suck-or-how NOT to be a successful consultant
Saturday - September 14, 2002 - 4:57AM
I bemoan the sad state of my life. IT was a failure, all my life I've been treated like some sort of freakish walking data appliance, and mainstream society has used me where it can and then dropped me like a hot rock. So I guess that I'm starting my own company.

2. What, exactly, am I *doing*? Hmmm. Good question.
Wednesday - September 18, 2002 - 2:32AM
I briefly explain my situation, provide a few links, and give a little more conceptual grounding about just what my company is about.


3. Open sourcing my information mgmt system
Wednesday - September 18, 2002 - 2:45AM
I mention the possibility of open sourcing my whole information management system. There is exactly no response.


4. smileys vs. characters
Friday - September 20, 2002 - 12:31AM
Is there an inherent and significant value to making a written system capable of both phonemes and representation? History seems to say "yes".


5. Military actions in the REAL WORLD
Friday - September 20, 2002 - 1:19PM
My take on what will happen when we invade Iraq. I predict a quick advance followed by our military suffering "death by a thousand cuts".


6. What do citizens really want?
Saturday - September 21, 2002 - 1:33AM
My willfully "ghetto" neighbors get me thinking about how so many Americans want to be hoodwinked, that "this is what gets people like Bush elected. Millions of Americans are deciding that they *prefer* to be ignorant, amoral, incompetent. That way it's all somebody else's problem. They'll just put on the WWF and have another burger."

7. Who need televison when you've got children?
Sunday - September 22, 2002 - 12:42AM
I visit an old friend for a party in a wealthy suburb and reflect on how comfy life can be once you make that choice to buckle down, close your eyes, and be a "good boy or girl".

8. Rest is GOOD
Tuesday - September 24, 2002 - 2:13PM
I take the day off. This is what an obsessive is like in his downtime.

9. Perspective
Thursday - September 26, 2002 - 1:09PM
I ramble about just what "luxury" means, bellus quies and I flirt and discuss painting, I go over ways to get good clothes very cheaply in NYC

10. Losing my treasured tunnel vison
Friday - September 27, 2002 - 1:59AM
Why I decided to become active on slashdot, how slashdot is changing my perspective and goals, a bit about my background to explain where those concerns and goals came from.

11. journal dynamics
Sunday - September 29, 2002 - 2:44AM
My ode to slashdot. A long and detailed view of why this place is not just a distraction from "more important things".
btw, I strongly suggest following the Vital Stats link.

12. Assassination attempts not reported
Monday - October 7, 2002 - 2:57AM
Our mainstream media is blowing it but good. These days they just ignore major news and who knows how they choose what they do cover. As a former Time, Inc. employee, I make a few comments.

13. Livin' in The Kuiper Belt
Monday - October 7, 2002 - 9:24PM
I lay out my plan for a real approach to settling the solar system. Yeah, Mars is cool. Yeah, warp drive would be nice. But in the real world we should be paying a hell of a lot more attention to the potential of all those billions of square miles of land out there at the edges of the solar system. I lay out some numbers and propose some steps doable today. memfree and I dispute the specifics.

14. We *have* ignition. Finally.
Tuesday - October 8, 2002 - 9:16AM
A minor comment on Atlantis launching. No heavy lifting in any sense.

15. Space.com - all the news, dumbed down for *you*!
Tuesday - October 8, 2002 - 9:49AM
I bitch about space.com and provide links to a few meatier options.

16. I'm NEVER getting out of New York
Tuesday - October 8, 2002 - 11:34PM
I get a chance to slide along the edge of deep coolness. Then bellus quies and Com2Kid and I discuss the relevance and coolness of encountering the famous while bellus and I flirt some more.

17. SAP: willful torture, or just bad design
Wednesday - October 9, 2002 - 11:49PM
Anybody out there got a sense of just how bad SAP is? Nobody responds. Maybe it's my pissy comments on slashdot's choices of subjects.

18. And *why* exactly do you call it WASTE?
Tuesday - October 15, 2002 - 10:00PM
So let me get this straight. We spend vast amounts of money to get every ounce up out of the gravity well and then we take anything requiring processing and just throw it away?! I lay out a less pathological approach.

19. OK, so we're pissed at Saddam; now what?
Wednesday - October 16, 2002 - 10:25AM
As the government prepares to invade Iraq, I suggest a less brute force approach. memfree and I get into an extended and very satisfying discussion of the positive and negative of "American" culture.

20. "American" Hegemony: I Think That It's Grand
Thursday - October 17, 2002 - 12:04PM
I lay out a few more aspects of what is right about this gumbo we call "western culture".

21. Soyuz go BOOM! 'nauts go nowhere.
Thursday - October 17, 2002 - 2:28PM
A brief rant about the screwed up nature of our space program.

22. As Rustin gets to see memfree's side of things
Friday - October 18, 2002 - 10:15PM
I get disgusted at the contents of our supermarkets and the system that causes them to be that way. A whole passel of folks (memfree, gmhowell, Com2Kid, and mekkab) wade in with good comments on "real food" versus the muck sold to the masses.

23. Jet packs: a dram of history
Saturday - October 19, 2002 - 2:11AM
A brief explanation of what really happened to the very real attempts to make jet packs back in the sixties and seventies.

24. I'm baaaack!
Friday - November 8, 2002 - 12:08AM
gmhowell and I talk about who (Yemen, Saudi Arabia) the Bush administration should be targeting if they really want to cut away at terrorism.

25. The Freedom Pack, what should it be?
Friday - November 08, 2002 - 9:39PM
With so many of us having talked about saner approaches to culture war in the Middle East, I ask, "okay, so what would you airdrop in to undermine somebody like Saddam?"

26. first post(er)
Thursday - November 14, 2002 - 12:02AM
A national wholesaler decides to carry my poster. I dribble anxiety bits all over my chance for celebration. Various folks pull me together and ask what the heck I'm rambling about.
(P.S. Since that day the retailer has reordered three times and now does their own custom version.)

27. "Normal" ain't never coming back. Get used to it.
Friday - November 15, 2002 - 6:09PM
I take a stroll through lower Manhattan. The continuing realities of the post-9/11 world make it clear that it's a whole new world.

28. Flames, flames, everywhere.
Sunday - November 17, 2002 - 5:48PM
After I talk about stress and flaming a bit, a bunch of folks take on the question, is there any good substitute out there for the phrase "bitch-slapped"?


29. rambling, nothing much more.
Tuesday November 19, 2002 - 9:20PM
I bitch and ramble about flaming and girlfriends. Mekkab adds a bit of perspective.


30. Homeland Security Bill is in, 90 to 9
Wednesday November 20, 2002 - 9:58AM
The official start date of our new proto-fascist world. I provide a point by point reality check.
As I write this summary, a year and a half later, I wonder how long it will take congresscritters to start repudiating this vote the way so many have long been trying to distance themselves from their votes in favor of our current Iraq insanity.


31. Clothing
Friday November 22, 2002 - 11:39AM
"A couple of my fellow male geeks have posted stuff recently about clothes and I admit that I am confused. [folks], clothes are language! This is hackable code and it lets you hack, in a small way, the behaviors of the people around you."
Com2Kid, bellus quies, and I go over the mechanics in detail of Clothes and the Modern Geek.



- Big Honkin' Gap of JEs To Be Filled In Later -
Yeah, I'm hoping to get to them sometime soon. Below, as promised, you can find the most recent stuff.

-

Here we go.


102. I'm asking YOU
Monday January 19, 2004 - 12:17PM
I ask, "So, let's say that somebody actually implements the kind of thing that we've talked about, where Americans really are sent out there to do good works in ways that are not just blatant extensions of our military and commercial interests. Would you be willing to go?"
This then result mostly in pages and pages of discussion trying to lay out the specs of how this could actually be done.


103. So ya wanna be a rocket scientist?
Wednesday January 21, 2004 - 1:16AM
Our collective detailed overview of what it would take to bypass all this government mahooey and just build some more Saturn Vs using the original basic spec and off-the-shelf modern technologies. Again, Ritchie2000 and others contribute at least as much as I do.
This one, btw, has just pages and pages of specifications. Someday some college kid will simply reformat this JE and hand it in as a paper.


104. Am I STILL Supposed To Pretend That I Consider Bush "Elected"?
Friday January 23, 2004 - 2:17AM
As the evidence of the deep criminality fundamental to the Bush Administration piles higher and higher (in this case, a great overview of the circumstances of the 2000 Florida "vote count" and GOP operatives breaking into computers to steal position papers) why am I supposed to pretend that these people constitute a legitimate government? And, more importantly, what can we do to counter their actions?

105. Sex Slaves: What Should We Be Doing?
Monday January 26, 2004 - 11:34AM
With all our technology and billions of dollars of law-enforcement apparatus, why do we still have a huge trade in human beings? And what should we be doing about it?

106. Here In NYC, Some Things Never Change
Thursday February 12, 2004 - 12:46PM
The winners of a major high school competition are plastered all over the news but just about any reference to winners from my alma mater is stripped out or simply not done. Media bias sucks.


107. Yes, I Reluctantly Concede That I Have Good News
Monday February 16, 2004 - 4:23AM
I meet yet another cute, smart, New York single woman and for once we hook up. After a few weeks of tentative dating and a sweet Valentine's Day dinner, I figure I should let you folks know. This turns out to be less then two weeks before she cryptically disappears, only later going into her reason on her blog.
*sigh*


108. NY Post Quotes Me on . . . Dumpster Diving?
Monday March 01, 2004 - 06:05PM
The Post does a story on dumpster diving that quotes (and misquotes) me extensively. I provide a link but also a copy of what I actually wrote to the journalist in question.
Since then, btw, this story has propagated and my name now turns up more in Google in copies of this article then in anything else. Hey, it's all good as long as they spell your name (W)right.

109. Ah, Makes Me Feel Young Again (Aw, Sh*t!)
Thursday - March 4, 2004 - 11:32AM
A front page thred on an announcement of Phillips brings back harsh memories of working on a related invention back in the mid-eighties.

110. A Quick Note on Saddam's Capture
Saturday - March 6, 2004 - 12:20PM
I attempt to clear up a misconception and correct a previous mis-statement of mine.

111. Law Vs. Ethics Vs. Religion Is IN THE HOUSE!!!
Monday - March 8, 2004 - 2:41PM
Nothing more or less then a link to the serious, energetic, and broad debate on sexuality-related issues going on in gmhowell's journal.

112. Losing My Patience with Liars
Tuesday - March 09, 2004 - 2:52PM
The structural and inherent dishonesty of some of the anti-gay debaters finally spends the last of my tolerance. They are predictably defensive and miffed.

113. Let's Have Some Sympathy for the Homophobes
Wednesday - March 10, 2004 - 11:34AM
After a period of enraged and widespread debate on the issues related to homosexuality and the law, I remind folks trhat none of us are Simon pure in all of this.

114. A Look at "Anti-Terrorism" Policy
Thursday - March 11, 2004 - 4:57PM
I reprint and expand upon an article laying out the appaling realities behind the Bush Adminsitrations claims to have reduced the risk of terrorism. Billions spent, our privacies violated, and we'ld probably have been better off not doing most of it.

115. Hello, goodbye.
Thursday - March 11, 2004 - 9:14PM
Since my billables are a disaster and sleep is a distant memory, I warn slashdot that I won't be around as much for a while. (And we've alll seen how that worked out.)

116. There is Do. There is Not Do. There is No Try
Sunday - March 14, 2004 - 5:16PM
After doing another Caustic debate I positively dance with vituperative glee.

117. Gay Marriage @ NYC City Hall Today:You're Invited
Thursday - March 18, 2004 - 9:46AM
What it says.

118. Hooking Up On The City Hall Steps
Thursday - March 18, 2004 - 10:05PM
Three gay couples get married on the City Hall steps. Since I was there, I give my blithely subjective impressions. Links to articles in more mainstream outlets are provided.

119. Context
A sequence that caught my attention. What do *you* think?
Friday - March 19, 2004 - 9:42AM

120. Stepping A Little Further Out of "Society"
Sunday - March 21, 2004 - 11:27PM
With blls far beyond "due" and clients not paying, I get dropped yet further into financial and emotional hell as my broadband connection dies and Time/Warner brings "tech support" to a new low standard. All of which stiffens my resolve to scale up and go off-grid.

121. Our Kids Can Tell Us
Wednesday - March 24, 2004 - 11:27AM
A bunch of us wade into the problem of jargon and obstructive language in textbooks and American culture.

122. Jo Miller explains the UK to YOU!!
A former Oxbridge resident provides a, urm, helpful guide for Americans in Britain.
Wednesday - March 24, 2004 - 11:17PM

123. Hate
The bilious and discouraged shriek of a bitter and miserable day.
Tuesday - March 30, 2004 - 1:53PM

124. A Few Thoughts on Mel's "The Passion"
A local minister's letter on shortcomings in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ(sic) and my comments on that.
Thursday - April 01, 2004 - 3:46AM

125. Speaking of Saucer Cults . . .
Comments on the state of uncertainty and paranoia that we now endure as the litany of Bush-related media distortions grows.
Friday - April 2, 2004 - 2:18AM

126. Well, I *guess* I should be happy about this.
I bitch, mostly with little justification, about editorial choices regarding a published article of mine.
Wednesday - April 07, 2004 - 2:17PM

127. A Different Kind of Sound
An evening in Williamsburg with the Squeezebox Orchestra.
Saturday - April 10, 2004 - 12:14PM

128. Just to be Sure That I've Offended Everybody . . .
I speculate on a link between the history of Arab regional economies and a cultural lack of acceptance of personal responsibility.
Tuesday - April 13, 2004 - 2:19PM

129. Free Stuff for Blacksmiths & Carpenters (& . . . )
A posting to let everybody know about copious quantities of wood, plants, and other stuff free for the taking. Nobody responded, or at least nobody here. My posts elsewhere resulted in dozens of people coming and taking about a small truckload or two of various cool things.
Friday - April 16, 2004 - 10:53 AM

130. Serving Fair Warning
Thursday April 22, 2004 - 2:15PM
As my deeply fucked up family re-emerges from the muck, I serve notice that if and when this journal is interfered with it will be first of all made friend-only and if that doesn't work, shut down and moved to a location I can better control.
Mostly I spew rage and bile venting my frustration that I'm having to waste my time on this shit at the age of thirty-seven.

135. Umbrellas Should Be For COLLECTING Rain
Thursday May 6, 2004 - 8:46PM
Plans laid out for a low-entry cost way to collect rainwater. A robust discussion gives a pretty decent set of critiques as well as discussion of typical water usage, toxicities, and other related concerns.

137. "Patent it"
Monday May 10, 2004 - 10:54AM
In case there was any ambiguity left at all, let me make it clear right here, everything on this journal is copylefted for non-commercial purposes. Though documentation of use would be nice.

138. Management Consulting and Abu Ghraib
Monday May 10, @11:50AM
Yup, wouldn't ya just know that the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib was, in her civilian life, a "business consultant" from Hilton Head?

139. Military Service - A Veteran Speaks
Monday May 10, 2004 @3:31PM
An extended quote on the dehumanizing and undermining nature of military service from Alexander Kuprin, novelist and veteran officer of the Tsar's Imperial Army.

140. Physics Is Your Phriend
Wednesday May 12, @11:11AM
A useful household tip for cleaning rust off with dilute acid.


All for now,
Rustin

Just did yet another rant about being a geek and a comment by an AC reminded me of what I was thinking about last night and this morning.
I just reread much of the Tales of Shaherizade and I was struck by the common thread of valuable goods coming from elsewhere.
Each story has the logic of a child. The protaganist endures, at worst, briefly described and fantastic hardships brought on by nothing and endling arbitrarily. This hardship is usually unrelated to the final rewards, serving only to prove the "worthiness" of the hero. At best a brief bout of cleverness, a well spoken lie or swift twist of the situation frees him. Then the local ruler instantly see the "natural nobility" of the protaganist, weighs him down with jewels, and invites him to join the family.
Sometimes a period of trading is mentioned for a sentence or two. It is never the plot. Nobody breaks a sweat at anything but combat, hunting, or being stranded somewhere waiting for the next plot twist.
Inventors, doctors, and magicians are evil, untrustworthy. Usually foreign, sometimes Jewish. They can be tortured, imprisoned or killed at will since they inevitably "deserve it" anyway, freeing up their creation(s) into the hands of the "noble" idle rich.

This repeats in many variations but the message stays the same.

I have long maintained that a, if not the fatal flaw in Arab culture is that it in general and the cultures of Mecca and the coastal city-states in specific are those of people who obtained their wealth by mooching off the creativity and labor of others. The message of the stories I just read is that all valuable things are magically and arbitrarily created by others Not Like Us. Whether one is talking about a roc's egg in a classic tale or silks, gold, gems, and perfumes in the real historical Arab world, there is nowhere near enough of a tradition of creating value only of stealing or bullying it from others.

The golden age of Baghdad was from when they squatted across the Silk Route and could demand payment from the people passing from Somewhere Else to some other Somewhere Else. They called themselves "traders" and indeed they were that, but they got an awful lot of their wealth by collecting "tolls" from people who got no value in return beyond access to a right of way and a miserly doling out of natural resources like water or figs.

Kinda like oil wealth, ya think?

Look at the true great civilizations and they built. They created value. From China to England, they invented, cleared forests, built factories, raised crops, and earned value with the sweat of their brows and the rigor of their minds. Since the days of the ancients, the wealthy and powerful regions have gotten that way, at least in good measure, through having made fabrics, pottery, machines, or other things of created value.

I ask you, what have the Arabs built?

I do not question that, at least for a while, they were a place of great learning. I do not question their level of accomplishment in the arts.
But that is not enough.

A key part of an ethical structure is becoming mature enough to see the world as a place where things of value are created by People Like Me and to take on the ethical and practical loads that this understanding demands. Anything less is a sort of overskilled childhood, a parasitic bombast that can exist only as long as we who do bear that load agree to be the adults for them.

Of course the Kuwaitis are, by and large, a mass of childish, spoiled cowards. Of course the Saudi family retreats into a self-justifying opposition to the modern world. Of course the Arab states keep falling into the hands of a succession of loudmouthed tyrants, proxy stern fathers ready to take on the role of "the responsible adult". Of course Arab men are famous for idly spending their days sitting around swapping stories, bragging of their prowess and denigrating everybody outside their circle of friends.
One can expect no better of a region of overgrown children.

Am I wrong? Prove it.

Rustin

Last night I went off to Williamsburg for a performance that I really now wish I could have gotten on tape. The Squeezebox Orchestra. Eighteen women playing accordians.

Let me rephrase that. Eighteen pigtailed alternachicks moonlighting from their postproduction jobs, punk bands, and thesis revisions to get together under the leadership of a middle-aged German accordian repairman fighting to bring the squeezebox to its deserved (!?) glory.

Yes, pretty much all of us had had at least one drink. No, this was not a deep and subtle experience. But my oh my did we have fun. I recommend it highly. You will never hear funk quite the same way again after you have seen a five foot seven asian woman in pigtails do an accordian-backed rendition of "It's A Man's World" with callouts from other orchestra members. All, by the way, in a perfectly credible deep alto growl with a down and dirty tone.

I love the modern world.

Rustin

So, after all these weeks, The L Magazine has finally posted my screed on not seceding.
Of course first they buried three layers deep with no permalink (Home->Features->Caustic), then they used a photo that makes me look, well, I don't know like what but whatever it is, it's awful, then they put a pathetic headline on it, then they edit it into a combination of what I liked least about each of the different versions, leaving it bland and sloppy.

You think writers are neurotic because they are "creative types"? Yeah, right, it's just the natural result of the frustrations of dealing with editors and never knowing what or when will result from that passionate session of "sitting at the keyboard until blood drips from your forehead".

Grrrr. Arrrgh.

Good things I've got my own damned site and my own damned publishing company.

Goddamned editors, goddamned pandering, hipster, middlebrow, short attention span, 300 word thinker, grumble, mumble mbgdbbblbl . . .

-Rustin

These days I feel more and more like I'm living with Soviet-based mass media. Am I the only one who feels like we can no longer assume that the stuff in the paper has any real connection to the stuff happening out in the world?

As the news gets ever more random, I find it harder and harder to keep track of what is reality versus what is paranoid fantasy. For example, most of my friends by now have talked about what we expect to happen when the Republican Convention comes to town. Will the feds enforce martial law? Will some Al Quada faction hit the city? Will the protesters suffer mass arrests?
But anybody reading the news would have no idea at all. A friend came over for dinner, we started talking about the risk of a terrorist attack on New York, and we decided to Google it. Nothing. Not a doggone thing at all from any major media source.

Now personally, I've already resolved my equivalent of Pascal's wager and I intend to be at least a hundred miles away with a significant percentage of my possessions in several other states.

But it seems like fewer and fewer of the things I and the people around me know or suspect have anything to do with what gets reported and no, I do not consider the ranting of places like Indymedia to be reporting.

- Was the 9/11 Pennsylvania plane crash a result of passenger action or was it shot down?
- Whatever happened to all those other planes that were supposedly diverted, some of which were supposedly reported at the time to contain terrorists?
- Wasn't a partial breakup of parts of Microsoft supposed to be happening by now?
- What countries are we in combat in and to what extent? Who the hell were the people who just died in Uzbekistan and what got seized Tuesday in the Philippines and England?
- What was the BBC's involvement in assessments of WMD data?
- Who *did* spread all that anthrax? What about the recent Ricin incident?
- What really happened with all those biowarfare experts who all died/got killed in the same week?
- Are we supposed to not be upset that Kerry and Bush are both Skull&Bones members while Dean has enough S&B connections to put him well inside the suspect range? How about Dubya's recent refusal to discuss the issue?
- Is there anything Halliburton *hasn't* got a corrupt contract for these days?
- Anybody got a clear answer on the gruesome effects on the creators of "Fortunate Son"? Was there a coke conviction or not? And while we're on the subject, was an explanation ever given for why the accuser against Quayle, recorded as a model prisoner, was put into solitary and left there for months at a time?
- How the hell many people are we holding in custody without charges or other legal rights? Seized when? On what grounds?
- Is there going to be any apology or other recompense for Chaplain Lee or will the U.S. military get away scot free yet again since, after all, he had "pornography" on his computer and may have committed adultery, which we all know is just the same a terrorism?
- Are there or are there not FEMA-run camps in mothballs being "repurposed" to hold protesters and other "social elements" in the event of the nation being subject to a new terrorist attack?
- Are there or are there not rules of engagement for all those machinegun toting fellas I see around the city these days?
- What exactly were the "secret concerns" determining response at the WTC site on and after 9/11? Was there gold bullion and if so, how much? Whose offices were getting special protection? And what effects did the Guiliani "emergency center bunker" insanity play in the bungled emergency response?

These days I feel like I'm living in a Robert Anton Wilson story except that it's nowhere near funny enough. We're expected to go along with things like a Resident in Chief who utterly falsified his military serivce records (what, not a single human being can be found who EVER saw Dubya in his East Coast posting?) and White House advisors who do things like publish economic estimates based on assumptions that haven't been valid in two hundred years.

If this is still a republic, it seems like a mighty queer one to me. If this is a police state, well, they sure did a quiet and tidy job of sneaking it in.

Too late for me to underground,

Rustin

A few weeks ago a minister who travels in circles that overlap mine wrote a very crisply coherent piece on Mel Gibson's "passion". He agreed to let me reproduce it here for our comments.
You folks know that organized religion is not, by and large, my favorite thing to support but I figure that he deserves to have his letter posted unedited.

- - - - - -piece starts here - - - - -

March 12, 2004

Dear friends,

Mel Gibson has written his own gospel. So should you.

"Gospel" is the Old English word used for "proclaim good news" in the Jewish and Christian versions of the Bible. A gospel depicted what was good and new and inspiring.

Gibson's good news is a gore-soaked Jesus who absorbs more punishment than humanly possible. He stares down a thuggish Roman in a mano y mano scene straight out of Hemingway, motivating the soldier to upgrade from cane to flesh-eating cat o' nine tails. A crowd of Jews appears to welcome the bloodshed, though it would have made them ritually unclean during Passover, and a conflicted Roman Governor, Pilate, tells the Jewish leaders (impossibly) to take care of the crucifixion themselves.

Gibson's Jesus is not easily found in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, the gospels considered primary source material. Their Jesus is deliberate but wily in his resistance to the Romans. He holds his own people to the high ethical standards of Judaism. And he provokes the extreme response of the Jerusalem authorities, Jewish and Roman, by his radical teachings and actions.

The four gospels have the weight of tradition, but 33 were written about Jesus. Each has its own perspective. The Gospel of Thomas contains 114 sayings, perhaps the earliest material attributable to Jesus. The Gospel of Mary from the 2nd Century legitimated women in leadership. The Infancy Gospel describes the so-called "lost years" before Jesus' public ministry.

Whether yours is the 34th or 94th gospel, what matters is how your life conforms to the proclamation. Is it good news?

So turned on were Jesus' early followers that they started a social revolution. They upset the hierarchical structure of the ancient world by fellowshipping with all kinds of people, regardless of gender or class, slave or free. Wealth and possessions were redistributed to care for the poor. They acted as though the enduring limits to human enterprise, disease and death, had been transcended.

The Gibson gospel does not tell this story. That's why it's important your gospel does. What limit is your life transcending? How are you redrawing boundaries to expand community? What actions toward justice and peace do you take?

I invite you to refine your gospel and its spiritual wellspring at Tribeca Spiritual Center Sunday, March 21st, 11-12:30 pm at The Hallmark, 455 North End Avenue @ Chambers Street, 1 block west of West Street (any train to Chambers, walk west).

With love,

William Grant, pastor
Tribeca Spiritual Center
For all faiths, backgrounds and ages
Every Life Needs a Center
www.tribecaspiritualcenter.org
info@tribecaspiritualcenter.org
917/887-4816

- - - - - -piece ends here - - - - -

Kinda puts it in perspective. I've always wanted to see a good movie made about the life of Jesus but this certainly isn't it.

I've already given my quickie impressions of the Passion hoopla in the comments here.

At some point I'm hoping to arrange a trifecta with some friends. We're going to see if we can sit through Last Temptation, then Passion (illegally purchased street copy, of course), and then Life of Brian. Since several people I know speak varying degrees of Greek, Latin, and even a few words of Aramaic, it should be quite a show. If, that is, I can get them all to sit down in one room together.
If my friends were all as obsessive as I am and were willing to make it a two day affair, I'ld prefer to start with Gladiator, then Spartacus, then Masada, then Temptation and put The Mission in as a last day finisher.

Someday, someday . . .

-Rustin

So, my court date is tomorrow at 9:30 AM. My landlord never actually served me with papers so I'm guessing here but I *think* that I need to have about twenty-five hundred dollars or face immediate eviction. So, as of this moment, I have four hundred in the bank, four hundred and fifty in cash, and not a fucking thing more.

Oh, but, you see, it's a bit more complicated then that. I got handed a check by a client yesterday. Hair over a thousand bucks. Only problem, as I discovered when I went to deposit it about midnight, is that she wrote the check to the wrong name. Reed & Wright, rather then my name. Since there is no business account, I'm SOL. Oh, and no, I can't just drop by. She's old, sick and very busy.

Oh, and did I mention that another client was supposed to pay me a bit over eight hundred on Monday morning? But, ya see, she cancelled. Too busy, evidently. I won't see her until nine PM Thursday night, when I'm I'm supposed to go over and do some work.

Oh, right, and then there is the two hundred or so that should be waiting in my rented mailbox by now. But, oh by the way, the rent is overdue and if I don't come up with four hundred for them by tomorrow I lose my box and everything mailed to it since the end of February.

Oh, and I'm getting paid about three or four hundred by another client on Saturday. And haven't even billed another one yet but she's impossible to track down so God knows what that will end up as.


I'll fucking manage the next few days. Somehow I always do. I'll grovel and beg and look pathetic and lick the lawyer's ass 'til shit chunks have filled my beard thicker then the rust on a city bridge. I'll finagle and hustle and scrimp and renegotiate and somehow get through another week.

BUT I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF LIVING LIKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Somehow, no matter what I do, I never ever manage to catch my breath. I never get a fucking rest.

How the fuck am I supposed to get up in the morning?



Addendum: Next day, post-court date.
I borrowed three hundred bucks from my friend Kim. I paid a hundred and fifty to get access to my mailbox and discovered that neither check had been sent. On the other hand, my bank actually cleared the check made out to Reed&Wright (yeah, CommerceBank!). I blew a few bucks on getting ready for *more* client concerns.

End result? I walked into court with a thousand dollar bank check and seven hundred and fifty in cash. My landlord seems to have done weird things with their records (again) and the lawyer they sent couldn't figure out some of the charges anyway. Since the lawyer was a really nice guy (and since I had *overpaid* in the previous payment due) he declared me only needing to pay a little over two thousand. So I owe them a bit over three hundred by the end of April (and, of course, my rent), I owe three hundred and thirty to Kim (she graciously agreed to let me pay interest which I find far more restful then wondering how much I owe somebody in "favor points") and I'm basically on track.

As of this moment, despite losing almost a month and a half in earnings so far this year (flu, etc.) I'm now only about fifteen hundred behind where I had wanted to be by now as of September of last year.

I've also decided to dump my most annoying clients, including the one who canceled on me last week and again this one, still owing me (so far) eight hundred bucks. I never wanted this business and it's managing to leave me utterly wrecked and without the time I need for building my publishing company.
Nonetheless, I did get a smidgeon of billable time in yesterday and today and have reestablished contact with a client who is *comparatively* painless and should be good for about twenty or thirty hours of billable time even if I do a very efficient job of getting her up and running.

Thanks to all of you who sat through this rant. Keying it in and uploading it played a real role in venting enough to get through the muck.
Enormous thanks to Richie2000 for sending me some heartening tech news and a "chin up" message.

Maybe someday I'll actually have money in the bank again with nobody baying for it.

Keeping the greenback banshees at bay,

-Rustin

I just discovered this guide for Americans visiting the U.K.
OH MY GOD!, I don't know if we should consider this woman a national treasure or potential weapon of mass destruction.

Either way, I'm glad that I'll probably get a chance to meet her on Friday.

I love my job.

Rustin

That this is part of what's still wrong with our educational system. Math especially. I periodically get the chance to look at textbooks and I never cease to be appalled at how consistently they contain more jargon then a high end stereo magazine crossed with a DoD* internal briefing.

The first thought that comes to mind is, "so, all the more reason to support home schooling and alternative educational materials"

Which, in my case, leads to the happy second thought: "cool, I'm gonna make money".

I'm going for a new edition of the poster by June 1 and a new timeline by august. More immediately, I'm hoping to have my for-sale biodiesel guide ready by Earth Day.

Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it.

* DoD = Department of Defense, i.e. the USian vast complex of military departments and those that just pretend to be military.

Rustin

I'm in the middle of a really hairy cash crisis at the moment. Not only have I gotten a Marshal's Notice already but I got it almost a week ago and haven't gotten to court yet to dispute it.[1] So when I tried to schedule a day with a client today to get paid the money she owes me (over a third of what it will take to get me in dutch with my various creditors) and get in what was supposed to be four to seven billable hours, I was kinda eager to have it work out.

Well, this client is a bit, well, let's say sensitive about social interaction and when I say that in this case email was the best way to be in touch and figure out options, trust me, this is no lightly reached conclusion.

So, I'm supposed to check my email at 7:30 to see if we're on. I'm also hoping to check some small but potentially helpful things (for this job, for example, some up to the minute weather data could *really* help me out). But my connection is USELESS!

In short, I'm underprepared when she calls, lose the day of billable time and won't get paid, at best, for another week and am pretty much screwed.
So I decide that, this being Sunday, I'm just gonna stay on Time/Warner's ass unitl this gets fixed.

I'll spare you the details. You've all been there. They leave me on hold for, added up, over two hours, drop me back to Level One support, lose the account log, promise to call back, don't, and so on. Throughout this, at the requests of their blockheaded "technician"s, I engage in much plugging and unplugging of cables, restarting of CPUs, etc.
At 8:30 this evening they finally reach a conclusion. My cable modem is dead and needs to be replaced. This requires that I stay home on a weekday (Wednesday is the soonest slot available), which means another lost day of billable time since my only assistant reasonably available on weekdays just quit two days ago.

So I finally go off, have a snack, and decide to at least reconfigure my setup to its normal state with hub in place so that I can print those tiny little bills that are snailmailable (thirty dollars here, a hundred and seventy there) and at least increase the trickle of dollars my way.

Well, guess what? Once no longer following the instructions of the yahoos of tech support, it took me about ten minutes to get my web connection back. Just flushed ALL my settings (TCP/IP, Appletalk, etc.), rebooted, and I was up. No reason to believe that it wouldn't have worked hours before, I had simply had so many times that my connection could only be restored by a modem reset from T/W that I had foolishly not tried every option before calling. I had restarted the modem, reset it, reset my IP address, and a few other things and had then been stupid enough to think that they would be anything but a last resort.

So, what does this all mean?

Aside from "panic and lack of sleep are the most dangerous enemies of judgement"?

I will be dropping my T/W service and replacing it with something that includes static IP. And I have now concluded that eventually I'm going to have to make the leap that more and more of you have and step up to hosting my own site, connecting to something closer to a trunk, and generally pass as far and fast as I can out of the class of "consumer" because these days to be a member of the general population is to exist to be screwed over by the handful of megacorps who hold the average citizen firmly by the short and curlies.

These days, you've gotta scale up, opt out or some combination of the two and today has just pushed me a little further down that road.

-Rustin

[1] In the future I should be able to avoid this kind of foolishness. I'm adding three hours per round, two rounds a month to have my best assistant take over all billing work and start regularizing the whole process. Gawd knows I'm close enough to the needed income levels that I shouldn't be having such troubles. But billing has been my biggest weakness for over ten years and these cash crises are pretty damn absurd for a thirty-seven year old.
Yep, it's the classic lament of the small businessman. "I've got the receivables, I just need to get the cash from their pockets to mine!"

So I'm on the train, standing and hanging on to a pole, talking to this tall Ben Affleck type and his hip Euro-looking girlfriend. We're talking about religion and belief and I'm saying that the only way to appreciate Tom Robbins movies [TOM, not TIM, dammit] is to see them together. "You gotta do a marathon. Man, it's the only way. Maybe you guys could come over and we could do an all day thing".

We come into a station and since we're on an elevated line and it's a bright sunny day we can see that it's under construction so it makes sense that the train isn't stopping. This leaves me a bit pissed, though it's nice to see the pretty new cast concrete forms looking all seventies modern. But even cooler are all the pieces of computer equipment lined up on the platform. In fact, most of them are Imagewriter IIs held closed with thick bands of scarlet red duct tape.

Just as I lean forward and delightedly yell, "Imagewriters!" the alarm goes off and I wake up.


Discuss.


Rustin

So, that was fun.

I ran into some Episcopalians (one a minister formerly at the Cathedral of St. John) in the subway on the way down. We'ld taken the subway together to the February 15th peace march last year so they were familiar faces. I discovered from them that the real start time was 1:30 and most of us had been given an earlier time to ensure that we wouldn't be late.

Ah, they know us so well.

The crowd in front of City Hall was small (about thirty of us and not a single opponent) when we got there and they started letting us in in groups of ten to pass through the now obligatory security check. Most of the cops were polite and helpful so it all went fast.

In front of the steps it was amiable chaos as the various officiants (reverends, priests, rabbis, etc.) said their hellos and everybody tried to get ready. One great moment was a big, bluff silver haired minister making his way through the crowd yelling "Episcopalians!" while he waved copies of their joint statement for them all to review.

We were all (even most of the press) feeling mellow and happy, it was bright, warm, and sunny, and most of us knew other folks there and were busy saying "hey, glad you could make it! Whatcha doing after? How's that [fill in the project] going?". These things are always a bit of a kaffee klatch and this was, even more then most, all in the family.

The crowd was like a portrait of the progressive left. Racially mixed, mostly either kinda pudgy or relentlessly fit, bits of ikat and tie die but mostly very Patagonia and Lands' End. A few of us, like me, were in full corporate regalia, with our tailored sport jackets and trench coats. The ministers and such pretty much the same except that each had their signature cloth stole draped over their shoulders, mostly richly embroidered or brightly appliceed. The word had gone out to refrain from partisan displays, so the political stuff was mostly limited to the occasional button like the small green one that said "the Patriot Act is soooo 1984". We were mostly thirties through fifties with a few clusters of mostly crophaired "dykey" twenty-somethings and a few little kids brought by their moms.

In short, other then the priestly regalia and the clusters of press and television cameras, we looked like a mixed reunion of a small liberal arts college or a suburban Unitarian congregation. Completing the picture were the tags many people were wearing, clearly printed on somebody's inkjet that morning and in little clear plastic "my name is" style holders. They had, IIRC, a red cross in a blue shield with one filled quadrant, a quote from some "very reverend" eminence about "our church believes in the open doors of belief" (I'm paraphrasing), and the name of some church.

The press looked and acted pleasant enough and not as rushed as they usually are at small political events. They were desperate for "visuals" and created a fun-to-watch cluster all taking shots of one four year old boy in an outfit that matched what I assume was his father's as another adult pinned roses to the lapels of their navy blue blazers. Sure, it was cute, but did it really merit fifteen or twenty professional photographers?

So for a while we all drifted around, chatted, got loosely into place, and gave the stragglers time to arrive. Meanwhile the officiants drifted towards the steps, the folks with the heavy duty cameras got their tripods into an ever more orderly row, and, oh, by the way, almost anonymous in the midst of us, two couples made their way towards the front.

What did they look like? The two guys were all in black and, other then a slight nervousness and an occasional flicker of a smile, looked like a couple of prosperous Chelsea residents going out for dinner and drinks. Except for an almost wistful amusement in their eyes and a little something in their manner, I wouldn't have guessed that this was anything but a typical day for them.
The two women, a couple of five-fourish, heavyset light-skinned, black women looked much more like a couple about to get married. One was in a Chinese silk, deep blue, embroidered sheath dress that shimmered in the light, with her hair full and thick, her partner in an impeccable tux, with about an eight of an inch of hair and a happy but protective look as the woman in the sheath dress leaned into her a bit nervously, pulling a bit away from the crowd.
Yeah, they looked a bit nervous, yeah, the woman in the dress was crying a bit, and yeah, they looked really damn good.

I didn't even see the third couple, only glimpsing bits of head or shoulder under the chuppa later that day.

Meanwhile, with the working press long since in place, the "vacuous baritones" and "bubble blondes" of the major stations bullied their way through, having just arrived but pushing to prime positions by sheer force of ratings dominance.

The ceremony? Well, first, of course, came the politics, as a rabbi of New York's rather high profile gay- and lesbian-oriented Temple Simchat Torah stepped up to the mikes and gave a passable but pedestrian speech. I'm sorry, but when I hear a rabbi, I expect somebody who can project, doggone it. Of course, pathetic horndog that I am, I was nonetheless aware that, like quite a few of the women there, she was really cute. (Yeah, I'm hopeless.)
Then a cluster of the ministers gave a joint statement, they took a few questions, and FINALLY asked the first couple forward.

Aw, c'mon folks, don't ask me to get all mushy here. Yeah, it was *really* sweet. A Hispanic minister and Rabbi Ellen (NOT from Simchat Torah but one of my homegirls from Cholot H'aienu (sp?)) gave a kickbutt speech about the obligation of leaders of communities of belief to move beyond laws that conflict with their ethics, declared that the couples were each married in the eyes of God, and generally kicked ass and took names.

Oh, who am I kidding? At least a quarter of the people cried, we all had smiles that stretched past our ears, and it was to the point, loving, and amazing. I'm just always impressed with Rabbi Ellen.

Various officiants found their ways to participate, like the minister who said that he had never been to a wedding with so many wedding photographers (even some of the press laughed). Several of the usual elected officials showed up though they were invisible until near the end and took no part in the speeches or organizing. Tom Duane waded in with his congrats, my neighborhood better-than-nothing-but-not-by-much assemblyman Phil Reed put in an appearance. And so on. I did not see Deborah Glick or Margarita Lopez.

In other words, with a few exceptions, even the openly gay politicians moistly seem to have sat this one out, which, given how much fun we had and how positive most of the press seemed, was just fine (This excepting one asshole from one of the Big Three who asked one couple "are you criminals or married?" Prick.)

But mostly it was gentle, collaborative, and welcoming. Most of the folks with cameras seemed content to snap shots of signs and all those photogenic and professionally charismatic officiants in their big, smiling clusters. The microphones swung here and there and just about anybody was prone to get asked to provide a sound bite or two.

So it all spun down and we started to drift off. I joined up with the friend who had called me and we meandered off in search of lunch, stopping first to chat with a very Irish, very gay, just "retired" subway motorman who liked our signs and wanted to chat.

Now, of course, since then and lunch I have been working, in transit, or writing this so I have no idea of what the media coverage or the political reactions were. Given what the officiants said, they are each at some small but real risk of arrest or other penalties.

But from what I saw, this was a real success. No anti-demonstrators, no hostile cops, no trouble from the various obvious right wingers who had to get past us on the way into or out of City Hall.

The ceremonies went by without a hitch, we had a blast, and the event was well coordinated, well covered, and well attended.
Personally, I would have been happier of there had been at least one officiant who was neither Christian or Jewish but I'll accept fighting one battle at a time. I had a good chat later that day with the reverend of a multifaith center in lower Manhattan, so for today I'm feeling no pain on that front.


I'm sure I missed a lot but chances are you can find all the pictures you want and plenty of more formal coverage out there somewhere. If any of you see a picture of a pudgy, bearded guy with a red-lined beige trench coat and a big green sign, then let me know.

Happy days,

Rustin