Archive for April, 2007This is hatred. Set someone apart. Make them “other.” Make them less than human. This is where it leads. This is what it looks like.
This is a lynching. This is a hate crime. Warning: The images and video below the fold are disturbing and violent. Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, jamaica, puppy, violence 
Apr
30
2007
 
Bush’s Brain, an Unbeliever?Posted by: terrance in bush, current events, politics, religionAfter last week’s three part series, I’m a tad exhausted. I thought I’d take a break from blogging today, but then I saw a few items that I couldn’t let pass. The first is the news, via The Scientific Activist, is that Karl Rove is an “unbeliever.” At least that’s what Christopher Hitchens — who’s book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is hitting book stores — revealed in a New York Magazine interview. Karl Rove is an atheist.
It gets better.
Technorati Tags: bush, current events, gay, karl rove, politics, religion Crossposted from my EchoDitto blog. I don’t have a lot experience with video, but in the past month I’ve used video on my blog a few times, in a few different ways, and saw a leap in my traffic when people discovered my videos and linked to them. Not bad for a guy who doesn’t know much about video, which means if I can do it anyone can. You just have to know what to use. Here’s what I did. Technorati Tags: blogs, bush, video It’s been a long week, and I’ve done a lot of writing. So, you’ll pardon me if I’m a bit lazy on that front today. But I’m still on a video kick, so I thought I’d share some videos I found via YouTube while researching some posts from earlier this week. Enjoy.
Technorati Tags: culture, gender, masculinity, politics I've signed up for a new blog reader survey, because I'd like to know more about who's reading here. So please take my blog reader survey!
Apr
27
2007
This Week’s ReadingPosted by: terrance in blogs, current events, movies, politics, raceIt’s been quite a week for blogging here. At the start of the week, I didn’t expect to be writing about any of the stuff I actually did. Somewhere in the midst of all that writing, I managed to do some reading too, and Here’s some of the best stuff I read. Bruce at Crablaw has post about how fascism starts, which covers an event I read about and had intended to blog about, but didn’t get a chance to.
Technorati Tags: blogs, current events, gender, hip-hop, music, homophobia, race, va tech, video, violence I'm overdue for another blogroll update, what with so much happening in the news, and three or four more posts rattling around in my head. But, here are some new additions to the blogroll. Go check them out! The Independent Bloggers Alliance Technorati Tags: blogs
[This is the last of the series. See parts one and two for background.] Returning to Kimmel’s essay for a moment, there’s a statement near the middle of it that came to mind when I started thinking about the triangulation that’s become the theme of this series of posts: not queer, too queer, and not queer enough. Did we really need a study to tell us that intelligence has nothing to do with wealth? Haven't the last seven years been enough to prove that? You can get rich if you're smart, lucky, and work hard to earn your wealth. Maybe. On the other hand, you can be as dumb as dirt and end up as rich as Croesus if you're lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family. If you can manage that, you can fuck up ever job you get and still become president. And you can fuck that up too, and still be rich. I guess I must be on something of a video kick lately. While doing research for the last two posts, I stumbled upon The Columbine Navigator, which contains all kinds of information on Columbine gathered by author/journalist Dave Cullen, who researched and covered Columbine extensively. So,when he had this to say about a documentary called Zero Day, I decided to check it out.
A quick trip to Google, and I found the movie on YouTube, in 10 parts. I’d just discovered the new video mix tool on Lycos, which will import videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video and MySpace, and allow you to make a compilation or “mix.” So I created a mix of Zero Day.
Technorati Tags: columbine, crime, culture, current events, video, violence
Apr
25
2007
The Queer Thing About School Shooters, Pt. 1Posted by: terrance in current events, education, gay rights, politicsIt may have been suggested by an earlier post, but every since the earliest school shootings were reported, I’ve been interested in the stories and people behind them; in particular, the shooters. Every time another one happens, I find myself pouring over articles about the latest shootings and past shootings. This time was no different. I now have a folder in my RSS reader for the VA Tech shootings, which is starting to fill up with articles and posts. But a couple of nights ago, I came across something I hadn’t thought about until now. I’d written earlier about the anti-gay bullying and harassment I’d experienced in school, and how as result I identified to some degree with the anger the school shooters obviously felt and some expressed. But it wasn’t until I stumbled across a website that suggested I had more in common with these guys than I thought.
Apr
24
2007
The Queer Thing About School Shooters, Pt. 2Posted by: terrance in current events, education, gay rights, politicsAs I read, and wrote, all of the above, I kept going back to an essay by Michael Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia.” So I wasn’t surprised to see Kimmel quoted in an old Washington Blade article, “‘Boy Code’ a factor in fatal school shootings?”. Kimmel’s focus is perhaps too specific, as masculinity is just one of many factors in these stories, but his remarks resonate with every story above.
Of course, the stories of boys like Harris, Klebold, and Woodham, get a lot more attention than a story like what happened to Josh Belluardo.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was actually kind of encouraged when I viewed the slideshow that accompanied this New York Times article about the the VA Tech shootings and the life of gunman Cho Seung-Hui, and saw the photo above with the following caption.
After my previous posts on the different ways we can choose to view this tragic event, that someone at VA Tech or in Blacksburg actually thought to include Cho in the memorial — actually took the time and effort to bring the stone to the memorial and place it where it was, to write his name, and leave flowers — was maybe a sign that at least some people were reaching beyond simply labeling Cho “evil” and separating him from the rest of humanity (safe in the knowledge that “he” is not “us” not is he of “us” or from “us”). Alas, I was wrong. The stone was later removed.
Technorati Tags: crime, culture, current events, va tech |
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