The Life and Times of Elliot Pike

I’m guessing I fit in with the “majority” out there when I say I’ve been sick of the iPhone obsession for a long time now. Frankly as a computer geek and a Mac fan, I was miffed when Steve Jobs spent the entire January Keynote talking about this phone and the only computer-related item was that the company was taking the word “Computer” out of its name. (Then I waited for the June WWDC Keynote, hoping he would make up for it with some cool Mac/OS X stuff and found myself again completely disappointed.)

Now the darned iPhone is out, and I grant you there is a lot about the device that looks cool. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t seen one in person, but I’ve read more than I care to about it.) Since I have a blog (and haven’t used it much) I figured I would write my initial reactions to what I believe the device is like.
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I suspect most everyone who isn’t a political junkie like myself is so sick of the strange “Attorney General Alberto Gonzolas and the Prosecutor Firings” ongoing news story as to have stopped paying attention altogether. And indeed, as most news pundits acknowledge, the actual firings aren’t as surprising as the Justice Department’s (and specifically Gonzolas’s) complete bungling of the issue.

For those of you who have already tuned out (or never tuned-in) the Senate is eating Gonzolas for lunch, Republican and Democrat alike. Why? Because all his testimonies and responses to our legislative branch have been full of sloppy lies and inconsistencies. In other words, they are responding to the sheer and utter contempt that the Bush Administration has had for the legislative branch since Day One.

For the first four years, the Bush Administration behaved with what I always perceived as complete disdain for the legislative (and judicial) branches of our government, but while the Republicans were in charge, they were far more concerned with keeping their own political party in power than sticking up for themselves. I was constantly sickened by their utter lack of self-respect or backbone—they are after all the sole voice of the people in the Federal Government.

So now Republican lawmakers are finally showing resentment, chagrin, backbone… whatever. It should come as no surprise. After all they’ve probably been secretly swallowing a steady diet of bile for the last six years, and now that there’s no Republican Majority to protect, they can stand behind the Democrats (who are finally doing the job) with tacit support.

In a way I pity them: it must really be lousy living life with no balls.

I’ve never written many “gay” posts before. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s easier to write about politics or computers or something similarly heady. Maybe it’s also because in ways it’s so much more personal. That said, I just (re)-rented a “gay movie” on Netflix that I thought was really top-notch, and it got me in a writing mood.

Gay Cinema is a funny thing, at least I’ve always thought it was. Ten years ago I first moved out to New York City. It was 1997, not all that terribly long ago in my book, but in some ways totally different. There were only one or two token gay characters on any television show; come to think of it, I only remember one on Melrose Place. Nothing remotely resembling Will & Grace existed. There were two types of movies: obscure films with limited release that delivered depressing drama about AIDS (Philadelphia, Longtime Companion, And the Band Played On, etc.) or very-very obscure low budget movies that only made the film festival circuit that all too often had bad writing, bad acting, and/or bad production value. Both categories were destined to fill the obscure “Gay Cinema” corner in any video rental store.
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Ack! Spending so much time doing computer work my spirit’s bungie-cord in snapping back and my artistic side is screaming for attention. I woke this morning from a dream where an old friend (who I haven’t spoken to in about fifteen years) was singing a sad, Cheryl Crow style song about motherhood and childbirth and regrets.

No, I’m aware that’s not typical subject matter for my inner psyche, but that’s dreamland for you. (Actually, I’d just seen a rerun of the Sci Fi program Farscape and one of the main characters was newly “with child” so the theme isn’t quite so random.) I woke up remembering only a few of the words (which weren’t enough to really write down) and a fragment of the melody (which is hard to “write down” per se) and within a couple minutes it was lost.

Then I remembered another dream I’d had last night where I was composing a parody of Gilbert & Sullivan’s song “Modern Major-General” start started “I am the Very Model of a Presidential Candidate” and went on to joke about the 2008 Presidential primary season. (The only other line I can recall is “…anecdotal stories crafted for a sample audience.”) Come to think of it, I know where my subconscious dug that one up: the second episode of the NBC show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. (lyrics, video clip)
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I wrote my first WordPress plugin yesterday as a bit of a diversion. There was something I wanted to do to enhance this website, and I discovered that nobody had implemented a good solution yet (which shocked me a bit) so I set to playing around and wrote a plugin in PHP.
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