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Here’s how to “amplify the signal” from your car remote in order to locate your car from afar. (Thanks, Aaron!)

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows
that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery
first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the
windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and
things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it.
It is stripped off–the paper–in great patches all around the
head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place
on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse
paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every
artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following,
pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and
when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance
they suddenly commit suicide–plunge off at outrageous angles,
destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering
unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly
sulphur tint in others.

from “The Yellow Wall-paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892

I just noticed that 10 Downing Street has its own YouTube Channel… for instance this video is T.Blair posting to YouTube like millions of high school kids.

Maybe our next president will be this hip.

Marc Adams tells it best.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN
(or, Thanks Jerry Falwell for Helping Me To Found HeartStrong and Become a
Unitarian Universalist)

by Marc Adams, co-founder & volunteer executive director, HeartStrong, Inc.

Twenty years after I watched friend after friend outed and expelled from
Liberty University for being gay or lesbian, I feel hope. Twenty-two years
after watching my friend Denise doubled over and dissolved in tears after
being kicked out of Liberty University for getting pregnant, I feel peace.
Twenty-three years after watching my Old Testament Survey professor
committing adultery with his sister-in-law on more than one occasion and
virtually getting away with it, I feel honest.

Most people knew Jerry Falwell only by what they saw of him in the media.
Most thinking people viewed him as a radical fundamentalist Baptist who
spewed biblical venom for anything he perceived his god perceived as sin.
Including, but of course, not limited to, women’s rights, women’s role in
the church, homosexuality, gambling, drug abuse, alcohol consumption,
secular pop/rock music, homosexuality and a horde of other no-no’s.

First, he wasn’t that radical. While many people identifying as Christians
don’t see things the way he did, millions more do. In fact, the basis of
his religious beliefs and theology are embraced by the majority of people
who identify as Christian. (i.e., the Virgin birth, the Trinity, the
physical resurrection of Jesus, his imminent return and the inerrancy of
scripture)

Second, he wasn’t a fundamentalist, he was a neo-evangelical. Which is why
people like my parents and true fundamentalists like Fred Phelps viewed
him and people like him as left wing liberals.

I spent three and a half years as a student and employee at Jerry’s
university. I left during the middle of my senior year, not necessarily
because I was gay, but mostly because I had begun my personal journey to
wholeness and peace by challenging my fundamentalist Baptist Christian
beliefs.

Over and over again, I found myself in pain for my friends. So many people
that I knew struggled to survive in an environment that taught women they
were to be submissive to men and gay and lesbian people that they were
giving the devil pleasure by thinking about self-acceptance instead of
self-hatred.

Bisexual and transgender issues were never discussed since most
evangelicals do not see them as actual issues. This is mostly because they
see the Bible from a male/female point of view. However, this certainly
doesn’t mean that bisexual and transgender people are not attending these
schools.

After a few years of seeing friends and others devastated by the theology
of Jerry’s Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University, I began to
question the things that I was taught as truth. Too many tears, broken
spirits and lives forced me to choose my path. I could choose to continue
the legacy of hatred, intimidation and shame laid out for me or I could
choose to break the chains. In doing so, I could help provide healing to
those devastated not just by Jerry Falwell, but by the millions who
perpetrate the same physical and emotional life-ending message of
self-hatred.

I chose the latter.

And my life has never been the same.

For the first time in my life, I found personal peace which gave me the
courage, in 1996, to begin the work of HeartStrong. Out of respect for my
friends who committed physical and emotional suicide and out of hope for
my friends still stuck in restorative therapy, I founded HeartStrong
(http://www.heartstrong.org) as a way to provide hope and help to the
countless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students persecuted at
religious educational institutions in the United States and around the
world.

Jerry acknowledged that in a room full of people, a homosexual can pick
out the other homosexual in the room. I had never heard of gaydar before
but as soon as he said that, I knew I had always had it. It was one of the
things that eventually helped me in my self-acceptance process.

Had I not grown up in the ridiculous home I grew up in and had I not
attended Jerry’s university and worked for him, I doubt I would care at
all about my GLBT brothers and sisters struggling to survive in these
schools. Jerry’s hatred for what he calls the sin of homosexuality
provided me with the inspiration and the ongoing energy needed to continue
to provide hope and help to those injured by his former belief system
through my work with HeartStrong.

His evangelical university and church was also a stepping stone for me to
escape my self-hatred brought on by my fundamentalist Baptist Christian
beliefs and eventually find true personal peace as a Unitarian.

Jerry Falwell taught me that the greatest thing a Christian could do to
show god how much you loved him, was to die for what you believe. (Where
else do we hear this theology?) Well, now that Jerry has died, perhaps
others can learn how unimportant the things are that he thought were so
important and how important the things are that he never was able to
experience.

So, thanks Jerry, for the inspiration. It was your persecution of me,
people like me and every girl I ever knew at your schools that empowers
HeartStrong to help heal the scars from the wounds you inflicted.

In honor of Jerry Falwell’s legacy of being the ultimate anti-GLBT
fundraiser, please consider what you can do to help HeartStrong provide
hope and help to our students. Your donation helps HeartStrong continue
this important work and helps heal some of the damage caused by the
message of self-hatred. heartstrong.org

HEARTSTRONG MISSION STATEMENT
HeartStrong is a non sectarian organization established to provide
outreach to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and other persons
adversely affected by the influence of all denominations of religious
educational institutions.

HeartStrong is also committed to educating the public about the
persecution of GLBT’s and others at religious educational institutions.

Meet Marc Adams
Heartstrong.org

Kathe Koja has a blog! And a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering!

So I’ve had my DVD player since late 2002, which makes it about 4 & 1/2 years old… I’m not sure how long these things are supposed to last, but I’ve noticed some odd behavior lately: skipping even on brand new dvds, and tonight—vertical flipping and a green line across the bottom of the screen.

I checked the connections, tried a different disc, restarted it, and nothing would solve the problem. Finally I remembered what we used to do when the TV flipped like that, back in the olden days of analog terrestrial broadcast television… smack it, and it’ll stop.

Apparently, even in the high-def digital age that still works.

Whilst searching for something on google I ran across this great article from 2002 about Tim LaHaye and the shitty books he hacked together with Jerry Jenkins. It was interesting to read as a sequel book in the series debuted last month. Apparently they hadn’t made enough money from the original properties so they had to pollute our culture even more.

Failing to win popular support for his strange ideas through politics, LaHaye has merely repackaged his religio-political agenda and is peddling it with far more success through fiction. “Left Behind” has given LaHaye a vehicle to spread views that, in any other form, would be dismissed out of hand by most Americans.

What is LaHaye’s worldview? In a recent non-fiction book titled Mind Siege (coauthored with David Noebel), LaHaye outlines his model society – a Religious Right utopia where there is no separation of church and state. Abortion is outlawed and homosexuality is lumped in with pedophilia and prostitution as “perverse sexual practices” that are “universally viewed as immoral and would be shunned.” Censorship is rampant as the “Christian and pro-moral community” use the federal government to promulgate “decency” codes….

For years LaHaye labored through various Religious Right groups to persuade Americans to adopt his views and win support from politicians. Having made only limited progress, he now uses fiction to achieve what he could not get through politics.

I remember some folks I used to work with having a conversation about these books—they all hoped that perhaps they’d be raptured before the conclusion of the series.

I hoped they would mysteriously vanish one day, too.

I found this delightfully reasonable clip of Militant Atheist Richard Dawkins on CSPAN’s BookTV on YouTube.

He has a great quote right out of the gate (“There is no such thing as a Christian child, there is only a child of Christian parents. Whenever you hear the phrase Christian child or Muslim child or Protestant child or Catholic child, the phrase should grate like fingernails on a blackboard…”) and then goes on to talk about the familial and social implications of leaving the religion of your family/social group. Ostensibly Dawkins advocates atheism over any kind of theism but you can get the point of the difficulty in leaving that familiar path in favor or another.

also, link to Dawkins on National Pinko Radio’s Fresh Air with Liberal Dominatrix Terry Gross.

ps i heart u terry

As an aside to the previous post, this might possibly be the strangest photograph hosted on wikimedia commons.

Isn’t anyone paying attention to this shit?

So I saw this toothpaste on the clearance shelves at work today and I couldn’t help but notice it bore a particularly suspicious resemblance to an object intended for use in a different orifice. (More images below, for comparison.) I don’t know if the similarity had anything to do with the fact it was on clearance or because perhaps no one wanted to buy “lemon sage” flavored toothpaste. Dubious flavor aside, it’s truly a dual-use product: fun for both ends!

It’s called Fructodent Gourmet Toothpaste. It also comes in mint & chocolate, green apple, mint & strawberry, orange & lemon, and vanilla. I’m assuming one would only use the vanilla flavor to brush one’s teeth, of course.

You can’t ban a number. You just can’t.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0