Hurricane Gustav has sidestepped New Orleans. I'm so relieved and happy.

On other weather fronts, Evangelical/Republican-supported abstinence programs don't seem to be working out so well.

Many Birthday Wishes to danbearnyc!

The anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone. I didn't really pay much attention to all the goings-on, except that this year's date fell on a Tuesday, and I was keenly reminded of exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment the towers fell.

I'd like to thank the Jews of New York for the day off from work.

Christmas is not too far away. I usually don't buy novelty nutcrackers, but I couldn't pass up this purchase:


The Hilary Clinton Nutcracker

I know most New Yorkers are not familiar with Cheryl Spector, a DC activist and kinky dyke. She was not as well known outside of Washington, but was a major part of the city's queer life for more than 20 years. I knew her for almost that long, having met her when I was just out of college. She was one of the first totally out kinky dykes I ever met, but our friendship primarily blossomed around our activism, as she and I were among the original members of DC's ACT UP in the late 1980s.

It was easy to be friends with her and I saw her often. She knew how to sign fairly well. Her brother had been a sign language interpreter who committed suicide after he was diagnosed with AIDS, and it's probably for this reason that she spent the rest of her life trying to save every gay brother in our community. She was often the person who held their hands (literally) when they died. She was involved in just about every grassroots organization in DC at some point. She and my then-partner were instrumental in starting DC's first needle-exchange program. Many of us moved away or moved on at some point, but Cheryl never ceased her involvement.

Mostly I remember her as being full of contradictions. She was a soft-spoken yet vigorous activist. She had no interest in being a "star" but everyone knew her. She was a member of both MCC and Bet Mishpachah and didn't see any problem being a baptized Christian Jew. She had a larger social circle than anyone I knew, but was perpetually unlucky in love. (She referred to most of her relationships as "PTSD events" but fell in love easily nonetheless. Every woman was "the One" and there were quite a few Ones.) She even landed a job with the CIA, despite the fact that her name--of this I am sure--was probably in a lot of now-declassified security files. She took a particular delight in shocking prudish lesbians (there was never any shortage of them in the Beltway) and usually attended Dyke Marches and Pride Parades wearing nothing but a leather harness. When we made safe-sex kits to give out to lesbians at pride events--at a time when HIV was still the "gay disease"-- they often threw them back at us when they discovered condoms inside. Cheryl would just pick them up and hand them to someone else walking by.

She also had an enormous collection of historical material, far too much of which was lost in a fire in her home earlier this Summer. At some point she began filming many of the events she attended. When she came to NYC a few years ago to attend Dyke March, she marched behind me, and I was a bit peeved to discover that for several blocks she had been studiously filming my ass, panning from my behind to the crowd and back again. I have no idea what kind of video she was making but I'm sure it was good.

When she got sick, she called her cancer "a bump in the parade" which is fitting, as that's pretty much how she lived: proud and celebratory and always moving forward. I was very saddened to learn of her death earlier this week. She will be missed.

Edit: You can read her Washington Blade obit here

Grading: Done
Replies to Frantic Students Who Blew Off the Semester and Are Now Kissing My Copious Ass: Done
Apartment Cleaning: Done (mostly)

I'm on my way to see this Winter Solstice dance tonight at the Judson. Allessandra Belloni's Tarantati free themselves of sexual repression. With swords! My kind of women. To be followed by much (hopefully, free) vino. It's Southern Italian, but I can deal.


Oh, and henceforth, I shall be known as:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Entirely Miss Reverend Lady Katherine the Carnivorous of Lower Wombleshire Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Some days I feel like I'm not the right kind of anything.

What kind are you?

I really needed to work out today, preferably something involving heavy weight and grunting. I had hoped that a confluence of ambiguities would mean the Sol Goldman YWCA/YMCA would be open today. Alas, it was not.

A BIG Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Bear!!!

Back online, finally.

What'd I miss?

I'm sure we all remember that famous catfight on Dynasty. And then there's the scene between Daryl Hannah and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill v. 2. A little too bloody for my taste.


I really like this one, though.

Another break-in yesterday. This time, the person used a screwdriver and something heavy to break not only the lock but take out a very large chunk of the doorframe.

An attempt was made on my next-door neighbor's apartment as well, but the angle of their door made leverage difficult, so they were spared.

Not much to steal, since a lot of things are packed up in nondescript cardboard boxes, but whoever broke in did manage to find the digital camera I bought to replace the one that got stolen the LAST time this happened.

Fuckwad.

I CANNOT WAIT TO MOVE.

Because we all knew it was too good to be true......

Michigan Affirms Womyn-Born-Womyn Policy (again).

( Blah Blah Blah.... )

Deaf Wannabes

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deafwannabe/


It's a group devoted to deafness and hearing-aid fetish. Namely, hearing people who want to be deaf, and those who get erotic pleasure from hearing aids. I'm a bit perplexed, in a not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that sort of way.

From the list:
I just got my new behind the ear hearing aids and I quickly
discovered that I can not hear the phone through them. Is there
anything I can do to overcome this problem?

There's fetish. And then there's stupid.

After recently being reminded yet again how women are regarded as complicit in what happens to them because they don't stand up for themselves, all i can say is hmmmm. I think a steak knife is pushing things, but having experienced exactly this sort of harassing behavior on the street, the idea of responding with a good belt-whipping does make me feel a teensy bit ... satisfied.

Not that I'm advocating violent behavior when there are other alternatives, mind you.

Thanks to danbearnyc for the news.

Lesbian gang attacks and stabs man in New York City

A group of lesbians from Newark, N.J., attacked and stabbed a straight man in downtown New York City early Friday morning after the man apparently came on to one of the women. Wayne Buckle, 28, was allegedly whipped by belts and then stabbed with a steak knife by Patreese Johnson in retaliation for the unwanted advance, the New York Daily News reports.

According to a police source, one of the women yelled, "She's my girl, and no one hits on my girl!" during the incident. Later, at the police station house, where the seven suspects were charged with gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon, another woman told the Daily News that Buckle "called us [homophobic slur] and he said he was going to f--- us all." Said another: "He spit on us and threw a cigarette. This is a hate crime."

Buckle was recovering at a local hospital in critical but stable condition. (The Advocate)

Livejournal now lists my elementary school on its school directory list.

My preschool has not been added. Yet.

I am mired in a very stressful situation right now. More details later. Or not.

In the meantime, I need to laugh. Totally stolen from nyc_for_free:

N.H. woman bakes cookies on dashboard


Blistering heat was just what Sandi Fontaine needed to bake cookies for her co-workers — on the dash of her Toyota Rav4.

With temperatures soaring Wednesday, Fontaine placed two trays of cookie dough on the dashboard, shut the doors and retreated inside to her air conditioned office.

"My husband wanted me to run some errands this morning," said Fontaine, who works at Baldwin and Clarke Corporate Finance. "I said, 'I can't. I'm baking cookies.'"

Fontaine first tested her dashboard oven three years ago. She said anyone can do it; the only requirement is for the outside temperature to be at least 95 degrees, so it will rise to about 200 degrees in the car. Temperatures in the area reached the mid to upper 90s on Wednesday.

"Mrs. Fields has nothing on Sandi," co-worker Brian Champigny said of the cookie company.

Though Thursday was supposed to be cooler, Fontaine said she'll still enjoy the benefits of her culinary effort.

"When you open the door to that car," she said, "it's like, oh my God. It's a wonderful smell."

___

Information from: New Hampshire Union Leader, http://www.unionleader.com