friend of the built environment

It’s only started to occur to me very recently how I deal with pain, loss and grief. Every time I say goodbye to someone or someplace which means a lot to me, I die a little inside, and it erodes a bit of what makes me who I am. As antisocial as I am in [...]

The Economist, not your average liberal rag, has been coming out fairly scathingly critical of President Bush and perversely supportive of candidate Kerry these days… Which gives me some semblance of hope that the divisiveness of the past few years is turning from the usual religious- or wealth-based dichotomies to something more akin to stupidity [...]

The fever of Olympiana has once again consumed the world. Every few years, the governments of the world, both autocratic and democratic, rally their minions to their flags to support an institution which purports to enshrine values which every human should supposely appreciate: national pride, athleticism, cameraderie, etc.
All the while, we never seem to question [...]

Anyone who knows me well knows I care very little for sports. Aside from occasionally fetishizing the body of a stocky jock, I could not care less about what happened to which team yesterday. Along those lines, I’m also not a fan of the Olympics. I don’t find many differences between your everyday sporting business [...]

I started listening to The Cure when I was 10 years old. My sister had bought a few tapes by them, and within a few months I had approriated them and they were on endless rotation in my little cassette player. I was in love. Robert Smith was my hero. The Cure saved me from a possible [...]

“Jesus died for our sins. That sacrifice should not have been in vain. Thus, let us all go forth and sin as much as we possibly can.”
- “Anonymous” post at InTheFaith.com

From LiliBat:
I will miss SF, but I rarely go out. Most of what I do is come home and play games and the way things are now I can’t afford a lot of games OR going out. The cost of livivng here is so high I can’t afford to live so what’s the point?

The Big City means high-end urban areas such as NY, SF, LA, Philly and Chicago. Places where owning a single-family detatched dwelling is not feasible for the vast majority of residents. This rules out up-and-coming cities with rational real estate such as Charlotte, Raleigh, Austin and Denver. It also rules out most of the rust [...]

I’ve become especially sensitive lately with the way every public medium and social institution today seems to be less concerned with its own specialized role and more dedicated to a sort of “catalogue” response to the world. This spans everything from social clubs to political candidates, public issues to editorial stances. I’ve written about it [...]

Fall is the best time of year. Not only is the California fall mildly cool and predictable (an important factor when you live in the Bay Area, where “climate control” is considered insulting to the environment), but Starbucks starts rolling out seasonal latte flavors. It starts slow with such things as the Pumpkin Spice latte and culminates [...]

To show how “up” I am on Queer Current EventsTM, I had no idea it was the anniversary of Matthew Shepherd’s death. But I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t find it all that dreadfully important a date to contemplate…

An interesting external perspective on the divisiveness of Decision 2004TM. I would say I agree with much of it, based upon my own rants about the “values gap” in America today.
True, the most ubiquitous moral conflict in the American democratic process today seems to be the requirement that we all decide whether to vote for a party/politician that most [...]

About 25 years ago, Leonard Peikoff wrote a book called “The Ominous Parallels”. Those of us who read it and love and value our lives, have always concentrated our efforts and nerves into ensuring that that work was not destined to be prophetic. Are our efforts in vain?
From Chisparoja:
As with Germany in the 1930s it [...]

Mmmm… Rain. Rain makes a MurderingMouth happy.
I’ve lived in California all my life, and yet each year I’m taken totally by surprise at the drama surrounding Californians’ reactions to the arrival of Rain. California tends to get rain from roughly November to April only, and only about one major storm per month. Californians don’t even [...]

 
Some thoughts surfacing from the current joust I’m having with a fellow cartoon fan:
I find South Park funny. I like poking fun at easy targets (as well as socially taboo targets). But I don’t really hold any high intellectual or social esteem for the show’s creators. They’re a cute queer couple, even if they’re totally closeted. [...]

So I have this suggestion for campaign finance reform that I believe would end the corruption, pork-barrel and maybe even the 2-party system as we know it in America. It would even work well in any other country with a good legal democratic system. It involves three specific rules for all campaign contributions:

Outlaw direct campaign [...]

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to the 6-billion-odd people I fucked over 4 years ago by voting for George W. Bush. It will not be happening again. However, I would also like to announce that I will not be voting for John Kerry either. Nor anyone else. Full explanation follows.

I try to tell myself that the divisiveness of the “values” campaign has not got to me… I try to tell myself that, ultimately, my life is, actually, better now than it was in 2000…
But like many others, I’m still feeling a bit sick and scared. What will my world look like after four more years of [...]

MurderingMouth is going on a Road Trip. Feel free to contact us to arrange for coffee or dinner if our paths will be crossing. Be warned that the tight time-table will not leave much room for extensive chit-chat, but it is always nice to put a face to a domain name…
19 Nov: SFO to Charlotte
20 Nov: Charlotte
21 [...]

Today at Starbucks, we played “How many badly dressed, loud-mouthed annoying faggots does it take to make MurderingMouth resort to homicide?”
My tolerance must be artificailly generous right now due to the impending vacation. As I left, they all still had what brains they possessed tucked safely inside their brittle skulls.
In other news, if you love your [...]

No profound Thanksgiving messages here. Just a note that our plans have changed. New York had to be removed from the itinerary for the sake of our (my) sanity. Our remaining stops include Baltimore, Albany, Buffalo and Pittsburg…

My thesis today: liberty is dying in America not because so many Americans are Right-wing fascists, but because those who support liberty tend to be wishy-washy about it to the point of aiding the enemy.
A leader in The Economist a few weeks back noted that the word “liberal” has lost much of its meaning today. [...]

Vacation over. Back to “reality” (eg, back to the crappy city with the crappy rip-off prices, the crappy cramped apartment, the crappy job and the crappy car). Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like a home away from here…

With the end of our vacation and a snap back to reality, the desire to move on is getting ever more pressing. The current planned destination is likely to be an affordable urban island within a red state, with the potential for future intraregional relocations as the years progress and we recover from the draining effects of [...]

From Leex:
“… Next time someone who knows someone who might one day turn out to be queer considers voting conservative, this is what they’d be voting for. And no, their tax bracket is not a good counterargument.”

And to those libertarian-rightists who doubt how someone can be pro-trade and anti-conservative, I offer you the endorsement of Kerry for President published by The Economist on 28 October. Not your usual liberal rag, the Economist is thought by many on the authoritarian left to be a rather vile and despicable mouthpiece for corporate swine.
All [...]

Siouxsie is my hero.