Oh, and about Prop 8

If Facebook Status messages are an accurate barometer for the mood of the nation's youth more than 24 hours after the election (better than YouTube comments), then the mood among twentysomething liberals on this side of the United States (the ones on my Friends list, anyway) is a mixture of pride and anger: proud of America, pissed at California. How could a state help elect the first black Muslim socialist terrorist president while simultaneously denying gays the right of marriage?

Y'know what, though? The only thing that surprises me regarding the Prop. 8 results is that people are surprised it passed.

Look, the presidency of Barack Obama is going to change a lot of things about this country on a cultural level. One thing it won't change, however, is how America feels about homosexuality. When every major presidential candidate opposes redefining marriage as between something other than one man and one woman, that should give you an idea of where we are collectively on this issue. We have reached a certain level of tolerance -- most Americans today appreciate gay-themed television shows and movies, have gay associates, and hell, even support the notion of civil unions -- but have not crossed that crucial plateau of all civil rights movements, the one that separates mere tolerance from actual acceptance. Even as they shake hands with an openly gay friend, too many straight people still need the comfort of knowing that person is "the Other." And one of the last things heterosexuals have to give them that comfort is disallowing the redefinition of the word "marriage."

How, then, do we get over that bridge? Not sure. I do know we have placed a supposedly transformational figure in the White House, a figure who at this moment holds a lot of influence over the attitudes of the nation -- especially African Americans, 70 percent of whom in California supported Prop 8. Several articles have pointed out that number, and while I find it somewhat divisive to blame the increased amount of blacks and Latinos who voted for the passage of the proposition, it should be addressed by the gay community, as Andrew Sullivan has said, and Obama is the man in a position to make a signiciant difference regarding that demographic specifically. He has repeatedly voiced his opposition to any sort of national gay marriage amendment, saying it should be left up to the states and individual denominations, but has also pledged federal recognition of state-sanctioned civil unions. Believe it when you see it (which probably won't be until after 2012, if it happens). It is a start, though.

Of course, I'm sure the gay community is tired of being stuck in such a disheartening stasis. For every Massachusetts and Connecticut, there's a California, Arizona, Florida and 27 other states with same-sex marriage bans. It's tough. And I say that with no little empathy. Gay rights has been a huge issue with me since teenagehood. It was the first politically divisive subject I took a definitive stance on -- most likely because my aunt, who had known a lot of gay people acting in New York during the '80s (many of whom succumbed to AIDS), ground a forceful brand of tolerance into the heads of her nieces and nephews from a young age -- and remains the one position where there is zero grey area for me. The first article I ever had published (using that term loosely) was a debate in the Oxnard High School paper with my hyper-Christian (but otherwise hip -- again, loosely speaking) math teacher the last time California went through this. Prop 22 passed by a much large margin in 2000 than Prop 8 did two days ago. So the wall is chipping. But you can't submit to the shock, because historically speaking, it's not particularly shocking. You just have to keep hammering the wall.

And look on the bright side, California: At least you get the Super Train!

A Pearl of Wisdom from President Obama: "We can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house."

Every presidential election for the last twentysomething years, Newsweek conducts its Special Elections Project, in which its writers embed with the campaigns and provide a "behind-the-scenes" expose of the race, from start (the primaries) to finish, on the condition that the report not be released until after the final vote. Considering this particular election took roughly three decades and was filled with some of the wackiest characters in modern politics, their backstage look at the 2008 race should be a fucking doozy -- and in reading through the first three of seven chapters published on their Web site today, it's proving to be extremely fascinating already.

We get to see the chaos inside the Hillary camp as her hope for the nomination got completely sideswiped by Rocketship Obama. We see the beginning stages of McCain's transformation from Mr. Straight Talk to whatever kind of weird mumbling he was doing by the end there. We get to see Obama stacking his pick-up basketball teams with Duke and Princeton players and kicking ass against the Illinois state treasurer. We learn that some in the Clinton camp referred to the private plane of one of Bill's buddies as "Air Fuck One." And we get to hear Obama say this in regards to a primary debate question from Brian Williams:

"I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

(BTW, I love hearing Obama swear for some reason. It's the main reason I downloaded the audiobook of Dreams from My Father and listened to it on my drive from California to Portland. Yeah, it's touching and everything, but you haven't lived 'til you've heard our president elect say, in an impression of one of his high school friends, "You ain't my bitch, nigga.")

Newsweek also included a bulleted list of highlights from upcoming chapters, and let me just say, I can't wait for Palin to enter the picture, because -- as became clear with that "She's going rogue!" stuff that came out toward the end -- she sounds like a goddamn headache even for her own campaign:

- Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

- At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

- McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

There's also a note that Palin also spent way more than reported on her little shopping spree, and a pissed off aide gives us a classic line, referring to it as, "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast." Speaking of Palin, I really hope John McCain writes a book or gives an in-depth interview about this election before he's gone for good, because based on his concession speech and another Newsweek nugget stating that he truly did not want to go negative in this campaign, I do believe he is a man of some integrity who just got completely crushed by the modern electoral process and was pressured by the GOP to go with the Moose Hunter as a running mate. He just seemed like a broken man this last month, and there was more relief than sadness in his eyes last night that this whole damn circus was finally over. I'd love to hear him speak candidly about it.

Either that, or just watch him and Hillary "[down] shots together," as Newsweek reports they did.

Election Night: Portland Shits Its Collective Uncle Sam Pants

From WWire:



I was in that throng.

Lakers: 2-0 Your Favorite Team: Scared

Well, unless you favorite team happens to be the Celtics. But until we get that to that Finals rematch, the rest of the league is shaking, I'm sure.

BTW, I never realized how fun it'd be to be the only Lakers fan in a rival city's sports bar as the hometown team is getting nuked and their center goes out scoreless with yet another injury after missing the entirety of what was supposed to be his rookie season. This being Portland, no one got in my face.

Who in Ventura hates gays the most? The answer may surprise you...

As per the L.A. Times' Proposition 8 donor tracker, the city's biggest homophobe is: Lassen's Health Food! Apparently, the proceeds from all those free-range cantaloupes and all-natural wood chips (or whatever the hell they sell there) have gone toward making sure no queers threaten the sanctity of Mr. Lassen's marriage -- $27,500 of it, anyway.

Hope your clean colons were worth it, hippies.

Other big-time pro-Prop 8 contributors in my beloved ex-hometown, where even the organic grocers draw the line at gays tying the knot:

- CHERYL WILDE (WIFE OF COMMUNITY MEMORIAL HEALTH SYSTEM CEO GARY WILDE), $27,500
- BOHL, NIXON & SCHONEMAN, $2,000
- KARL HARER (HARER & MORTENSEN CHIROPRACTIC), $1,500
- LORI HOOKE, $1,200
- BRYCE JOHNSON, $1,000
- JOAN BEEM, $1,000
- JOHN JONES DDS, $1,000
- MARTHA SUTTNER, $1,000
- MARY HUXLEY, $1,000
- RIDGWAY POPE, $1,000
- TED COOK, $1,000
- TERRI KUMP, $1,000
- VENTURA PEST CONTROL, $1,000

Where are my leggings?!

Couple seeks live-in girlfriend to share everything (Gresham (near MHCC))
Reply to: hous-893351326@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-10-25, 1:42PM PDT


We are a young, attractive, straight, professional, childless couple with a nice new 3-bedroom house in Gresham, and we are seeking a young and attractive girl to come live with us on "girlfriend" type basis. Expectation from you would be for cooking, cleaning, shopping, sexual relations, and also just having fun with us doing everyday things and some weekend travel too. Like a 3-way couple kind of thing. In return we can offer fun, laughter, companionship, safety, security, comfort, room and board and comfort in our clean, newer, 3-bedroom 1500 sq ft house near Mt Hood Community College. No money will be exchanged since this will be a lifestyle relationship. Probably have questions, right? Contact us! Let's discuss.

Considering that I do not, as of yet, have a permanent place to stay here in Portland -- as I expected to by this time -- I may soon have to consider pulling some shenanigans to get into a place like this. I smell a wacky sitcom premise -- Three's Company meets Tootsie in a bathhouse.

A Douchey Halloween

In the cumulative 16 hour drive between Oxnard and Portland, I had a lot of time to ponder my Halloween costume. It's been a while since I've dressed up for the holiday (which, fun fact, was supposed to be my birthday; I popped out two days late, unfortunately) -- the last time I recall was either my senior or junior year of high school, in which I combined a blue thrift store snow suit, a ripped Hulk Hogan T-shirt, multiple ties and a stylishly mussed hairdo into a costume I deemed "New Millennium Sex Symbol." Since this'll be my first Halloween away from home and in a major city, it sounds like a decent idea to get back into the spirit. I considered being a "hipster," but figured it'd be too much work, and I don't think I have enough time to find the "Vote" McCain shirt from The Colbert Report, which was my initial inspiration.

So I decided to leap to the opposite end of the cultural spectrum: douchebag.

Now, as with so-called "hipsters," there are several different species of douche out there: frat douches, club douches, rocker douches, even hipster douches. But I think I'm going to go with the prototypical douche: the guido douche. Being 50 percent guido myself, I feel like I can get away with it. All I need is hair product, a striped shirt, some kind of stupid-ass gold chain, designer jeans and, of course, bronzer.

In scouring the Internet for a quintessential douche to model my costume after, there were a lot to choose from. I sort of had Joey from the last season of The Real World in my head, but I'm afraid I'll give myself a stroke if I go around trying to act like him all night. Of course I studied the Web's definite douchebag archive, hotchickswithdouchebags.com, but the choices there are too overwhelming. A quick Google Image search brought up this pic, and I think this gives the general idea of what I'm going for:



This could turn into an interesting sociological experiment, too. I anticipate a bunch of actual douchebags -- dressed as pimps, most likely -- coming up to me asking, "Aye, where's your costume, boss?"

Of course, I'm hoping there's a party or something worth going to on Halloween. Otherwise, I'll just end up sitting around at home like a douchebag.