I’m popping in briefly as a break from my noveling to embed the video for the song that is headlining the soundtrack to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It happens to be my favorite book and I’m really, really, excited about the movie (possibly more than I was for Harry Potter 7, although I feel like I should not share that for some reason). Anyway, here it is:
Written: 11/07/2010
No person should ever have to justify their very existence. No one should be forced to apologize for living.
And believe me when I say it is hard to type those words.
I dealt with a lot of anti-gay bigotry at work and in college (and school before that). And yes, that comes with the territory I suppose.
But I’m done.
You have a choice. You can understand that I am a second class citizen. You can understand that I do not have equal rights, solely because of how I was born. You can understand I was forced to stay in the closet because I would have lost my job the moment I was honest. You can understand that I lived in a constant state of fear, that I made myself sick, that I could not have a normal life.
You can take that information and you can support me as I fight for equality.
Or you can get the fuck out of my life.
And when you get rid of your bigotry and hate, I’ll give you a huge hug and welcome you back.
But until then, I’m not dealing with any more hate from people who I choose to be around. I will choose to walk away, and I will make that decision in a heartbeat.
I’m not asking you to go to protests, leave your house or even talk about equality, but I am demanding your support. You cannot tell me you do not support marriage equality without me walking away. You would be telling me that you agree that I am, and deserve to be, a second class citizen.
And I’ve gotten to the point where I can write that I deserve better.
All my best,
The King of Spades
Happy Guy Fawkes Day!
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Hulloa boys, Hulloa boys, let the bells ring.
Hulloa boys, hulloa boys, God save the King!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!
Popping in quickly to post the newly-released video of “Raise Your Glass,” which is, as expected, awesome. Also, did you know Westinghouse created Rosie the Riveter? And that she was based on my grandmother?
Okay, that second part isn’t true, but we like to think it is.
“Raise Your Glass” will be making an appearance in my novel this month, which is titled “Hear Your Voices Sing Back Louder.” Off to a write-in tomorrow! Hopefully I’ll get my word count up to where it should be!
NaNoWriMo begins at midnight, once again I’ll be taking 30 days to write a novel. New this year, we’re collecting used books for charity, so if you have any gently used books, and would like to help support creative writing projects in schools, let me know.
The widget below is also over on the sidebar, so feel free to follow along as I try to reach 50,000 words.
Written: 10/24/2010
This has been floating in my head for almost as long as I’ve been thinking about things, but never knew quite how to write it. I’m going to try.
I’m sorry.
Once I figured things out for myself, I decided that I would not tell anyone until I my work situation changed.
Please believe me when I say it is not that I don’t love you. Quite the opposite in fact. I didn’t want anyone to have to lie for me. I wanted to protect you.* I did not want to put anyone in the awkward situation that might have arisen. It was not that I thought I would not be accepted, or that I would lose anyone’s blessing. In fact, I think the vast majority of people will be either indifferent (since I’m not in bed with them and it doesn’t matter) or happy for me.
But my life should not be a burden to anyone else.
So please accept this apology. Know that it was my decision, made out of love for you. I hope you can forgive me, and understand me a little better.
All my best,
The King of Spades
*And yes, that opens up a whole conversation about me trying to decide things for others, but we’ll put that aside for now (and for space concerns, I feel like I could go round and round for pages).
Hey everybody, couple big updates on the way, starting with this one. I’m going through a whole bunch of stuff, so some will be a bit old, but all still really cool! Hope you enjoy!
Did you know that you can use bacon to track the economy? Yeah, we might use bacon for too much at this point.
Are you concerned about genetically modified food? You shouldn’t be, we have blenders that will hep us test them! Slate explains.
Oh my god. Double windmill. What does it mean?
Want to make your own laundry detergent really cheap? Here’s a recipe. I’ve heard good things about this, but have yet to try it.
I’ve always says that the internet can (and usually is) a force for good. And 4chan proves me right once again:
This is old news, but good nonetheless, now it’s legal to “jailbreak” your phone. You know, the one that you own!
Once tablets get more and more popular, we’ll see this more often, which I’m sure would make it easier to keep menus updated, as well as save a lot of paper:
Need a primer on the whole Glen Beck is trying to swindle his viewers out of money out of greed and stupidity? Check it out here.
Pittsburgh City Paper has a cool list of historic dates at the Civic Arena. Check it out here. And follow it up by a collection of stories from the Igloo, all very touching. And they round out the hat trick with another nice piece, this one the history of the building from the start.
I have not watched all of this yet, but it’s the history of the Soviet Union, as told through Tetris:
I think I might have posted about this before, but I would change the title to “Going to Church: You’re doin’ it right“
I haven’t talked much about the mosque controversy in NYC, but I’ll chime in with these comments. That is all.
Want to get away? Teleport somewhere using Google Maps! Pretty cool!
Check these out, there are ten total, and I like this one a lot:
You want to see Star Wars as a silent movie? Okay, here you go:
Anachronisme
Uploaded by LesSingesHurlants. – Arts and animation videos.
Anne Rice isn’t a Christian anymore! I guess I would care if I ever read any of her stuff. But her reasoning is sound I suppose, but I would always say find a church that fits you. They’re out there.
I finally got the tote bag I was waiting for (I saw them, but they weren’t for sale yet), and it is a Leave No Trace bag (how fitting). Here’s a fun mockumentary about why plastic bags aren’t exactly great for us:
This police log is pretty awesome:
Overdressed for the occasion, a man who not only lacked the mandatory skanky hoodie but was all spiffed up in a white dress shirt and slacks made an extremely literal beer run at an Alliance Road stop ’n’ rob. That is, he snabbed an 18-pack of The King of Bland Beers and scurried out the door.
But then we find that sometimes they are written as limericks!
A car parked ’twixt striping of blue
Had nothing whatever to do
With handicapped access
Cops thought what it lacks is
A ticket, and also a clue.
That’s it for now, but I’ll try to be back later in the week with some more. Have a great one!
Today is blog action day! Blogs around the world (sorry, blogosphere) are writing about one topic, in hopes of starting a conversation, making people think and challenging what we think. This year’s topic is familiar, we all use water, more than we think, probably more than we realize if we were ever to sit down and try to calculate it.
The amount of water used is staggering. Think about just energy production alone. Power plants rely on a steady stream of water to cool parts, move wheels, even to heat or boil to move turbines, giving us power:
Plug your iPhone into the wall, and about half a liter of water must flow through kilometers of pipes, pumps, and the heat exchangers of a power plant. That’s a lot of money and machinery just so you can get a 6–watt-hour charge for your flashy little phone. Now, add up all the half-liters of water used to generate the roughly 17 billion megawatt-hours that the world will burn through this year. Trust us, it’s a lot of water. In the United States alone, on just one average day, more than 500 billion liters of freshwater travel through the country’s power plants—more than twice what flows through the Nile.
And water has an amazing affect on politics, much more than I ever realized.
Imagine for just a moment not having access to water. Not being able to drink, wash, brush your teeth, use a clean restroom. For many though, this is the reality. Potable water is scarce, much more so than I ever realized:
Recently, Slate ran an awesome article about the water cycle. The above graphic, as well as it opened my eyes a little bit. I was always saying the line “how is it possible to waste water when it’s constantly being recycled through evaporation and rain?” in my head, not realizing that there is more to it than that. Much, much more, as is explained. I think the analogy they use explains it very well:
Water shortages are really a problem of distribution. We may have enough freshwater on Earth to meet the global population’s current needs, but we can’t always make it available where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and in the quality in which it’s needed.
You can think of a community’s water supply as a bank balance: If the community takes out more than can be returned in a timely fashion, it may reach a point at which it doesn’t have enough water to grow crops, wash clothes, or flush toilets. Communities withdraw water from local surface waters (such as rivers, lakes, or reservoirs), groundwater aquifers, or both. Those sources do eventually get replenished by precipitation, but that can be a very long, slow process—with groundwater, for example, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years.
So what can we do? Well obviously conserve water. And for the love of everything, stop buying bottled water; tap water, or even filtered tap water is just great. Get a nice water bottle and fill it with some ice cubes and tap water. You won’t be able to tell the difference (unless of course you live in Highland Park). While conserving water here won’t necessarily fix it a world away, it certainly isn’t going to hurt. And that bottled water you’re not buying? That’s great for developing nations without reliable access to clean water. Anything we can do to help stop the 4,500 children that die each day from unsafe drinking water is good.
You can start by signing the petition below:
Or maybe kicking in a few bucks to help those working to bring potable water to those in need.
As always, more information is available at Blog Action Day. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something, and I hope you started your own conversation, even if it’s just with yourself.
Just another test post, this time with a picture…
This is a test post from my new phone. We will see if this works. And if it does, good gravy watch out!
Update: it worked! I’ll be adding a way to differentiating when I’m posting from my phone and I still have to play with photos, but this will be a lot of fun!
