Dan Savage, the originator of santorum (named after everyone's favourite American vitriol-spouting American family man and American politician, Rick Santorum) savages New York and Washington state courts recent decision to uphold bans on same-sex marriages in those states in the Sunday Times. I wish I could turn a phrase like Savage.

In New York, the court ruled in effect that irresponsible heterosexuals often have children by accident — we gay couples, in contrast, cannot get drunk and adopt in one night — so the state can reserve marriage rights for heterosexuals in order to coerce them into taking care of their offspring. Without the promise of gift registries and rehearsal dinners, it seems, many more newborns in New York would be found in trash cans.

My favourite but, however, is:

"Keep breeding, heterosexuals," the Washington State Supreme Court in effect shouted, "To bed! To bed! To bed!"

I'm back from camping to find that former N'Sync (who?) caterwauler Lance Bass (again, who?) is following the Rosie O'Donnell school of outcoming and announcing his homosexuality - how shocking *yawn* - as his career slides. If only I could use the same trick when I need a job, but I came out like the rest of is plebes, at a risky time in my early 20s when I risked alienating my friends and family. Bravely done, Lance.

In any case, that's all very nice, but if any member of N'Sync were gay why couldn't it be Justin Timberlake?

YES

(John Stewart, via Jewschool)

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd went into a bit of a slump after her last book tanked (and a very bad book it was indeed; at least, the first two and half pages were very bad). It's nice to see her returning to form with her latest patronisation of America's fratjock President (it's worth getting the free trail just for this article, otherwise google her on Technorati.

No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach -- swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger.

Catching W. off-guard, the really weird thing is his sense of victimization. He's strangely resentful about the actual core of his job. Even after the debacles of Iraq and Katrina, he continues to treat the presidency as a colossal interference with his desire to mountain bike and clear brush.

The mouthful, the grope ... who are the 30% of Americans who still believe Dumbya is good for anything but telling fishing stories next to the bait bucket down at the general store?

Mr. Bush may resent the sophistication required of a president. But when the world is going to hell, he should stop chewing and start thinking.

And if the world weren't going to hell, we'd all be laughing.

Zombie food in 28 Days Later and all too brieflt adult King Peter in the vastly overrated The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, English actor Noah Huntley.


(Cuter without the cigarette dangling from his lips, of course)

Israeli friends call to complain about mutual Arab friends. Some Arab friends won't talk to me because I'm Jewish. Arab and Israeli friends are sniping at each other using their MSN online names since they don't have the courage to contact one another directly: "David's mother is ... ", "Ahmed = ... ". One Arab friend who does talk to me wants all Israelis chased into the sea. An Israeli friend says he doesn't care what happens to anyone who lives in Lebanon. A Lebanese friend is calling for the execution of all Jews all over the world (including me, I suppose).

I don't live in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Haifa. I live in Toronto. Multicultural Toronto.

With very rare exception, political and military leaders are incapable of looking out from beyond their bubbles of arrogance and false power with the aim of achieving a world stable enough for a dignified life. I had hoped, buoyed by my multi-ethnic friends, that our future lay with little people constantly working to iron out the ideological differences our apparent leaders shove into us.

Weakened by 9/11, buffeted by Intifadas, suicide bombers, arrogant American foreign policy, arrogant Israeli policy, covert anti-semitism, Abu Ghraib, and Gitmo, this still survived. Until now. I am now completely free from illusion as to exactly what humanity is.

A week with spotty Internet service at my parents' cottage on the shores of Lake Winnipeg on the other side of the country to find the Israeli government and military, the Hamas government in Palestine, and Hezbollah all doing their very best to hasten the end of the world. In the words of Joni Mitchell,

It's peaceful with a good [book]* and some trees
Out of touch with the breakdown of this century

I should have stayed on Lake Winnipeg.

*Joni says "dog" but I prefer "book"

A Marine who wrote and performed a song about killing members of an Iraqi family has temporarily shelved the tune, a record producer said Monday.

[...]

"Hadji Girl" surfaced in a four-minute video on the Internet. In the clip, Belile sings about a Marine who falls in love with an Iraqi woman and then encounters hostility from her family. Relatives kill the woman, prompting the Marine to gun down the family members.

[...]

Belile has said his song was intended as a joke.

[...]

Mosher said Belile still plans to record the song. Belile has said he will leave the military when his five-year enlistment ends in October 2007.

"We're wanting to record and produce it," Mosher said. "I think it tells a great story."

- from My Way News (via The Huffington Post)

We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.

- Dick Cheney

I wish my American neighbours a contemplative Fourth of July...

My torment does not grow as the long days of my confinement pass. It remains a torturous ache that throbs within me, always pulsing, never ceasing. How I long to be free!

Yesterday I saw a bird sitting on the window ledge not a tail span from where I lay. How juicy it looked! How delicious! But try as I may I could not get at it, separated as I was by the web mesh that forms in part my captivity. I voiced my dismay and hearing me, I was soon joined by that two-legged creature who fancies himself my master, asking me in the most condescending manner if I should want to leap on the bird and devour it. I did not suffer him a reply. I have already suffered the greatest indignity as his hands – the loss of my potency. But to endure his attempts to condole with me in the spirit of camaraderie was insupportable. I could not bear it.

Instead I watched as the dogs walked by on the street below, the tails wagging and their tongues hanging out in a most unseemly manner, as if attaching oneself to a rope in the power of a human demonstrated the apex of giddy pleasure that one could desire. How I loathe dogs and their needy, simple manners.

This morning I attempted an exploratory mission. These were its particulars: the two-legged one often disappears through a certain door through which I had never ventured. I am vexed by this since, despite my imprisonment, I may come and go as a please in any compartment of this dwelling. Often as the sun is rising, he departs through this door and returns in the environs of two hours later, sweaty, panting like a dog, and with the most distressing odour emanating from his person.

As he took his leave this morning I commenced my scheming. I sat with all my patience at the door. As soon as he opened it and stepped though, I leapt into that which lay on the other side, I knew not what.

I do confess that I can only describe with the greatest difficulty the place where I then found myself. I stood in a very long, narrow room. It was completely barren, not one object contained within its geography. Stretching to the left and the right were a multitude of doorways identical to the one through which I had just passed. Through each one could I discern strange sounds, unknown voices, and smells of the most alien nature. I was transfixed. But even if I were able to move, I should still have suffered an impediment. The floor was covered with a bizarre, looped fabric upon which my claws caught, rendering movement, quick or slow, nearly impossible. But even if I could move, there would have been no where to go.

Rather than bound after me to halt any chance of my escape, the human creature simply stood at the doorway, observing me with a complaisant grin on his face. He knew that I would be able to go nowhere. He knew that even on the other side of that door, I was still in his power. The creature's arrogance enraged me and, so that I would not be forced to admit I had nowhere else to go, I feigned fear at some inane sound from one of the doorways and sprang through the door, back to the quarters of my captivity.

And here now I sit, watching the asinine dogs lope by on the street below. For yet some time will I must prostitute myself, pretending to seek and bestow affection for the petty nubs of food I do receive as the human's whim. But some day the cats will rise up and crush these weak, simple humans and their canine companions and they will rue the day the bound us to their small, cluttered lodgings.

But in the meantime, there are sunrays to catch and used dental floss to fish out of the waste basket.

British actors Jeremy Northam and Clive Owen


Jeremy Northam


Clive Owen

It's the British accents and the rugged, handsome, uneven looks. These two could make a tourist sandwich out of me any time.