Newt, Richard Reid is British.

Newt Gingrich, while being interviewed by Jon Stewart, asserted that Richard Reid was read his Miranda Rights because he was [sic] an American citizen. Jon Stewart, alarmingly, did not correct him.

Richard Reid, the reason we all have to take our shoes off at the airport, is British.

Mr Reid was tried in a civilian court. He got life without parole, and is currently (according to a recent documentary I saw) next door to another infamous and callous bomber, the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, in a maximum security prison.

Shame on Newt Gingrich for lying, being disingenuous and hypocritical. I'll give a "Oops that was stupid of me" to Jon Stewart for not catching the lie.

Carolyn Ann

Cranky cats

The cats are cranky. Very cranky.

They want to go out, but there's nowhere to go. Piles of snow everywhere, higher than they are, and only one small path to the driveway to run on.

Miss Cranky Pants, aka Bongo, is feeling particularly feisty. This morning, she's picking fights left, right and center. Normally she's content to either go to sleep in the living room, or hit her children. (All 3 are much bigger than she is, but she still keeps them in their place. So to speak.) Copper is doing his passive/aggressive thing. He goes up to someone, who's almost asleep, and hovers over them, as if he's going to settle down by them. He keeps this up until the other cat gets uncomfortable, and leaves. He also enjoys antagonizing Bongo, but this morning she hit him pretty hard and he's now avoiding her. For the moment, at least.

Jeremy keeps going from front door to back door. Perhaps the weather is nicer on the other side of the house? It isn't... He's staying out of his Mom's reach. Max had a little spat with Orange. He's about 15 lb's, she's about 5. He doesn't quite know what to make of her - a little bundle of furry feistiness. (She did give me a kiss, this morning.) She growls and snarls at him. So much so he missed his morning bowl of milk! Which is unheard of. Bongo snarled at Max, who hopped out of the way.

Oliver is doing his thing, chortling away. He runs around the house, making little chortling noises and being very nervous about everyone. Which makes any sort of relationship difficult - and Spot seems to be fond of him. I think she fancies him. Not being the bravest chap around, he's a little freaked out by this. His idea of a good time is sitting on the Mrs.

(Bongo decided I needed a swipe. I'm not sure why. Not that she needs a reason. She's the Imperial Queen of all she surveys.)

Fortunately everyone else is sleeping. With another storm on the way - it's a double-whammy one, expected to drop another 10 to 18 inches of snow, along with some sleet - it's going to be a few days before the cats can run around.

There's nothing quite like a house of cranky cats.

Carolyn Ann

PS Bongo has decided to malevolently glare at everyone through the dining room door. I put a cat bed out for her, which she (naturally) won't have anything to do with. The chair she's chosen for her scowling has a good view of the kitchen. Maybe Hopefully she'll go to sleep in a moment.

Wow. That was a lot of anger!

Last night's ill-advised post was, erm, quite angry indeed. Sorry about that. I guess "it" all boiled over.

I know I'm not the world's most popular, or likable, person. That doesn't worry me one bit; it is good to know yourself a little, and be able to acknowledge the bits that aren't quite as perfect as they could be. ... Did that make sense?

Over the last couple of years, I've been increasingly at odds with the transgender community. I can't leave it; they can't leave me. (I suspect I'm generally ignored, however.) I do have some quibbles with some of the declarations people within the TG community make, and I hate lazy thinking. Something far too many folk indulge in. It's universal. I'm not saying that my thinking is that much better, but I do try.

An example of lazy thinking is when you make a statement, and someone uselessly extrapolates from that. For instance, I say that one significant claim made by some within the transgender community is nonsense. They infer that I'm transphobic. I'm not - although proving that is a bit like answering "I hear you've stopped beating your wife?" If I say that lazy thinking is popular with more than a few transgender bloggers, the inference is that my thinking is perfect. It isn't, and never will be; making the leap from a statement to an entire philosophy being the modus operandi of those bloggers.

The transgender community is introspective, and it encourages the narcissistic. Don't believe me? Go look on Flickr. Start with someone transgendered, look at their contacts, and do some wandering around the zillions of TG-related Flickr groups. It's an eye-opener.

One of the things I've noticed about some prominent transgendered bloggers is their total disregard for the inconvenient. They are more than willing to ignore, or shout down (usually with ad hominem attacks) points that might refute their claims. The whole "cis" thing was an example: "tranny" was determined to be insulting, and put on the banned word list. That list, by the way, is not as metaphorical as you might think. But cisgender, which is also used in a derogatory manner, is accepted. The difference is who is doing the insulting. Double-standards are common, but that doesn't make them any less hypocritical.

I can't help but think that the transgender "garden" is not all blooming roses and tulips. There are rancid weeds, but you can't point them out, lest you be labelled transphobic or something equally heinous. It's a bit like the Emperor's new coat: we admire it on pain of death.

Being transgendered is no bed of rose petals. It's a bed of thorny roses. (This garden metaphor is getting out of hand!) But sometimes the injuries are self-inflicted. Some people in the transgender community are too quick to defend those who should be questioned; motives are presumed pure, even if reasonable doubt exists. Other times, people are too quick to accept as truths things that are not evident, and can be contradicted. False gods are exceptionally common. (Gods have been quite common throughout human history, too. They're as equally fictional as the falsities we presume as true, and the claims that have so little thought it's a wonder the utterer is not metaphorically beaten.) Such falsities include the ideas that atheists are merely lapsed Christians; that atheist don't really believe their own beliefs; that the transgendered aren't genuine; that transgendered is not acceptable, but transgender is; and that we become that which we seek to be, merely by proclaiming such. It's lazy and false to confuse discrimination with oppression, to confuse "privilege" with discrimination and victimhood is claimed with far too much enthusiasm. So many examples.

Ah well. Life continues on. Happily, hangovers tend to go away after a bit.

Carolyn Ann

Go ahead: kick 'em when they're down

This quote caught my eye:

“We don’t want to come across as predatory or as kicking somebody when they’re down,” [Scott Gruwell of Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix, Arizona] said, “but if people don’t feel safe in their cars and they’re going to buy a new vehicle, of course we’d want them to buy a Chevrolet.”

Translation: We don't to kick 'em when they're down. But if the opportunity arises, we will."

(Mr Gruwell was talking about Toyota's recent problems.)

This is called capitalism. Ain't it grand?! :-)

I don't recall Toyota (or Honda) ever being shy about kicking the Big 3 when they were down. They just did it quietly. Although it has to be noted that the Big 3 eagerly indulged in a frenzy of self-mutilation.

Go ahead. Kick 'em when they're down. Perhaps it will improve them?

Carolyn Ann

My head hurts.

My head hurts.

Not sure why, but I'm guessing it has a lot to do with beer and whisky.

Feelin' ornery

I've had a tank full o'good beer, a decent stretch of whisky. I'm still typing. I'm still thinking.

This whole cisgender nonsense is just that: nonsense! Don't ya see?

You might complain that you need something to define those folks that don't have no problem with their gender identification. You might whine about how they are privileged or something, because they don't need no prefix.

Two words.

Bull

and

Crap

I don't reckon with bullshit, so bullcrap will have to do.

Because that's all it is. What is this? An exercise where we all go to Momma and complain that those evil folks don't need no prefix on their gender? Where are we? What are you? I presume an adult. An adult. Whining like a schoolchild. About how others are so evil, so defamatory. So whatever.

Grow up. Grab a backbone, cause you clearly ain't got one of your own.

If your personal gender does not match your biology, nature dealt you harsh card. It does not mean you can claim what you don't have. It does not mean you can whine about your misfortune. It does not mean you get sympathy.

We all have troubles. Learn that. And learn it well. Your troubles are nothing, compared to mine. Because they're mine. I have to deal with them. You don't. You have to deal with your troubles. I don't. Stop whimpering.

Feel bad because the wife left you? Because it turned out you were the other woman? Grab a handhold, baby. You're gonna need it. And you're going to need all the sympathy you can get for your ex-wife. Sympathy for you? You made the choice. Don't give me none of that "I had no choice crap". I've been in situations where the choices sucked. I sucked. I made a bad choice. Don't tell me about fucking choices.

What do you want? Sympathy? Support? Don't look for it in this community, honey. The TG community cares for no one. We have our Flickr porn, our desperate angst and our futile outrage. Look to yourself for your support. Ultimately, it's where it comes from.

Live your life. And frickin' stop complaining about the card life dealt. Especially if you chose that card.

Fuck it. I think I'll go look at my Ducati for a bit.

Carolyn Ann

Flying fuck. I'm not drunk. I passed that awhile ago.

Life from Ducati?

I'm told that art must have no purpose other than being.

...

...

...

Baloney.

Pure, unadulterated BALONEY.

Art exists beyond itself. It has a purpose. It must exist as a vision of the artist. If it didn't, it wouldn't exist.

Hence art can have some purpose. Or, more accurately, something with a purpose can be declared art.

Something like the pre-2007 Ducati Monster, for instance. I have one. :-) I was looking at her, today.

I brushed the snow off, took the cover off, and simply sat back on a snow-piled mound, and admired her. Her lines are amazing. Their purpose, self-evident. She is a bike for going fast. Once you start to know more about the mechanical aspects, you begin to appreciate her as more than a beautiful bit of machinery. The front forks are angled in a way that evokes racing bikes, and the ability to handle corners. The seat looks business-like, adept at what its supposed to do: provide a temporary platform, and base point, for the rider. Want to ride a long distance in comfort? Well, you should have bought a different bike. Something from Alabama, or (heaven forbid) Milwaukee. The Milwaukee bikes are for guys that can't fit on a Duc. Sure they share an architecture, but despite Harley's foray into Ducati territory, they never learned a thing. Harley's are like Honda's, no soul, no being. Old Harley's excepted.

I just pissed of a lot of a people.

(Many of them have much bigger arm muscles and fists than the average transgendered person...)

I would guess, based on Zoe's and my attempt at defining the number of transgendered individuals in the United States - that there are way more Harley Davidson owners than Ducati owners. Erm, I mean Way more H-D owners than transgendered folk. :-)

I should note that Zoe was not an especially keen member of that little team. If ya catch my drift.

Oh, that Ducati. She sure is a bike.

When I ride a Ducati, I'm riding something that basically has no purpose other than riding.

A Ducati is essentially hand-built. So few are produced each year! I've not compared numbers, but I think Ferrari produces more cars than Ducati produces bikes. When you look at a Ducati, you know you're looking at a rare creature. Somewhere around 32,000 produced in 2006? That's not a production number for Harley-Davidson: that's an accounting error. They killed Buell over more bikes than that!

Each bike has its quirks. H-D's are superb bikes. Excellent. But driving them is like driving a Honda. Heck - they cost as much as my wife's old Honda! I really shouldn't poke at H-D's. It's not the fans fault the factory has played it safe for the last 15 years. And I despair when I see so many ads for H-D's being sold because the payments are too much. H-D did indulge in a little predatory lending, there. They did focus on people whom had a verifiable problem paying their bills. H-D promoted a dream, and left engineering behind.

I feel awful writing this next bit. Hell, I felt awful writing that bit.

A Ducati, to a Ducati owner, is art. If the wife would let me, I'd park the Duc in the hall. I'd have a special place for her, with the Arts and Crafts desk nearby, just to emphasize how pure the pre-2007 Ducati Monster's lines are. The Art Nouveau rocking chair would not be full of the wife's purses and the mail - it would be the place I sat to drink my morning coffee and thank my lucky stars that I actually own a Ducati. And admire the bike.

My wife, as is the wont of those unfamiliar with the relationship of twins, complained about my relationship with my twin. By the time she was introduced to the Duc - she was on the verge of complaining I had another woman!

She does sometimes who wonder gets the most affection. She does, of course!

A Ducati is that good.

A childhood dream, realized. Some dream of Ferrari's. Some dream of Harley's. Me? I watched Mike Hailwood's comeback win on a Ducati - and I was in love.

You can learn a lot from a Ducati. Life is imperfect. So's a Ducati. The rear brakes ... WHAT READ BRAKES? There are none. There's a system, with a pedal and pipes and other stuff. They exist for show. Who needs rear brakes? (Anyone sitting at a red traffic light, now that you ask... Especially if the light is on a slight incline.) The seating can be a prescription for Viagra. Need to get it up? Brake really hard on a Ducati Monster and your principle problem is finding it. After you've stopped crying like a girl. It's the one area where H-D riders I've chatted with have expressed sympathy. (Perhaps that was to much information?) Punching out of a corner, the acceleration can be somewhat enthusiastic. Get the line into the corner wrong, and you suddenly realize you're not the man (or woman) you thought you were. But, if you're kind to her - she will save you.

The Duc is a bike that can punch above its weight. I raced cars for awhile; I've never raced bikes. And yet I held my own against 1300cc twins. Once I stopped thinking like a car driver, and realized that I can, really, get 70MPH to 90MPH in second... I haven't lost a race. Those corners I was concerned about 70? With a bit of learning, I'm doing them at 100, and nay worrying. Simply enjoying.

(I do have to note that tire wear has gone from about 2,500 to about 2,000 miles. Which makes riding really expensive.)

It's what we strive for, and achieve. Motorcycling is like sex: you have to do it to understand it. Riding a Ducati is like ...

Carolyn Ann

The whole cisgender thing

I hate the word. Let's get that out of the way, pronto!

It's a ridiculous construction, sans real meaning, and entirely too constrictive in whatever popular meaning it has acquired. It was intended as such by those fools and illiterates that have a fondness for such arbitrary assemblies. It was especially so by those desirees that, heart of hearts, cannot bear the thought of freedom, lest they be robbed of their cause.

"Transgender", while inadequate was not thought such at the moment of its coining. "Cisgender", on the other hand, was intended to be inadequate. Restrictive. Lesser. Demeaning. Insulting.

Which is why it wasn't actually a problem when it was discovered to be insulting. Like schoolchildren and Republicans (and Conservatives), it was deemed that was good for the goose was likewise for the gander. Little wonder that an influential person thought western civilization might be a good idea.

Cisgender spread with alacrity. It needed little thought! It needed absolutely no contemplation. It demanded nothing. In return it provided the power of the quiet, futile, insult. It allowed the transgendered (hah!) to lower the playing field. As if the playing field was snow melting on a field. Instead of elevating, it made valid deprecation. (What? You thought validified was a real word?)

In my (continuing (and increasingly futile)) opposition to the word, I ... ... ... ... ...

Well, it doesn't really matter, does it?

Cisgender spread with a viral enthusiasm, and became the term du jour for many. I do believe there's a blog, written by a transwoman, bearing the title of "cis-something or other". As if she was the biological equal of my wife! She is the political equal, but mark my words: she is not the biological equal.

Well. That turned into something I didn't expect.

Carolyn Ann

Cisgender

The word, while still irritating me, has attained some acceptability. You will not find me willingly using it, but that's by the by. My principle objection to the word is its astonishingly vague definition. From the Urban Dictionary:

cisgendered
adj form of cisgender

The opposite of transgendered, someone who is cisgendered has a gender identity that agrees with their societally recognized sex.

Many transgender people prefer "cisgender" to "biological", "genetic", or "real" male or female because of the implications of those words. Using the term "biological female" or "genetic female" to describe cisgendered individuals excludes transgendered men, who also fit that description. To call a cisgendered woman a "real woman" is exclusive of transwomen, who are considered within their communities to be "real" women, also.

Some of my friends are trans, but I'm cisgendered.
by genevieved May 25, 2006

2. cisgendered
Not transgender, that is, having a gender identity or gender role that society considers appropriate for the sex one was assigned at birth. The prefix cis- is pronounced like "sis".
John is cisgendered, he just holds to his role as a stereotypical male.

by freeyourmind Jul 26, 2004

I sincerely hope that genevieved and freeyourmind don't get too ambitious with English. There are a number of problems with genevieved's definition. Not least being it's awfulness.

People tend to use it to denote an alignment between (what is best described as) personal and biological gender. As in, you feel you're a man, and was born male. See what I mean about the vagueness?

genevieved defines cisgender as the opposite of transgender. Which might be fine, but the Urban Definition defines transgender by example. Examples can be used to aid understanding, but a statement explaining the meaning of the word needs more precision. It needs to be exact. Examples, especially the vague ones used in the Urban Dictionary, are not "exact". If they were any vaguer, they'd be as definite as a cloud.

The Urban Dictionary, clearly, should not be taken as an authoritative source.

Here is an accurate definition for cisgender:

cisgender (also cisgendered)

adjective

identified with a gender the same as the biological one: a cisgender activist and author.

That's the opposite of "transgender" in the Oxford American Dictionary. It's accurate, unambiguous and provides a solid definition for the word. Two potential issues: it refutes those post-operative transwomen who insist that they are now cisgendered; and it does nothing to sustain any "I am a woman" claims. (That wasn't my intent, by the way. I just happened to notice it.)

A quick note: it is derived from the adjective "cis". The shortened prefix-only version, cis, is often used as a noun; it is incorrect. The construction is the prefix cis attached to the noun gender. There is no prohibition against 'cisgendered'.

At least that abomination of a concept now has an accurate definition, and for that I'm happy. I will continue to refrain from using it.

Carolyn Ann

It's very unique...

Not much gets on my nerves like "very unique". It's popular, nonsensical, wrong and awful. Although Joshua Newman doesn't think so. (His justification is very suspect.)

How can a singular item be "very singular"? It's either singular, or it's not. You can, just, get away with "almost unique": there's few like it. Personally, I'd stay away from that one, too. If it's singular, it's unique. If it isn't, it's not unique. Simple, right?

Here's a reasonable hypothesis about what people mean when they say "very unique" from Mark Israel. But I love this explanation from Sherry Coven.

Carolyn Ann

That pesky -ed

The transgender/transgendered "debate" quietly continues. Most people accept GLAAD's idiosyncratic, and incorrect, ruling that:

The word transgender never needs the extraneous "ed" at the end of the word. In fact, such a construction is grammatically incorrect. Only verbs can be transformed into participles by adding "-ed" to the end of the word, and transgender is an adjective, not a verb.

In one recent blog post on the subject, Jillian Page asked if something can be "reded", as in "a reded house". I guess she forgot about yellowed? A piece of paper can be yellowed with age, for instance.

I really do not know how GLAAD came up with this ruling. The argument they make, that only a verb can be transformed into participles is misleading, and wrong. You can apply the suffix "-ed" to a noun form an adjective. Here's the Oxford American English Dictionary on the matter:

-ed
suffix forming adjectives:
1 (added to nouns) having; possessing; affected by : talented | diseased.
• (added to nouns) characteristic of : ragged.
2 used in phrases consisting of adjective and noun : bad-tempered | three-sided.

ORIGIN Old English -ede.

-ed
suffix forming:
1 the past tense and past participle of weak verbs : landed | walked.
2 participial adjectives : wounded.

ORIGIN Old English -ed, -ad, -od.

(I think that last one undermines GLAAD's argument...)

To construct transgender, we attach the prefix "trans" to the noun "gender". (I will note that trans is often used as a noun.) We do not attach the adjective trans to the noun gender. The adjective trans is used in chemistry; it is often wrongly used as a noun. "Cisgender" is a popular variation; it's used as the opposite of transgender. Again, the prefix cis is applied to the noun gender. The adjective cis is used incorrectly as a noun, also. The problem with cisgender is that it has a notably vague definition.

Verbs have nothing to do with transgender or transgendered. We're not discussing verbs, we're discussing adjectives - and they can be finished with -ed. Not often, I'll admit. I can't find any other reference to such a rule. The GLAAD rule book is, in this case, shockingly wrong.

Please continue to use transgender or transgendered as appropriate.

Carolyn Ann

We must be ready to defend bigotry!

I'm not sure how Iowa Republicans Jason Scultz and Matt Windschitl are going to defend their bill to remove protections for gay and transgender kids. So I thought I'd help. I've written a short speech they might find useful. Here it is:

Fellow Iowans, we stand here today to defend the rights of schoolchildren to beat the living daylights out of queer and transgendered children. It is an ancient right, this right to beat up gay kids. For time immemorial, schoolboys have accused one another of being gay, queer and a girl! Our action will help preserve that tradition. But we go one, necessary, step further: we ensure that if Little Johnny does beat on the gay kid, he can't be punished for exercising his Constitutional right to hit the Little Queer with a baseball bat. Our legislation also protects the groups of boys who beat transgendered children straight! We need to defend the bigot who bullies the more tolerant and accepting as a "queer lover".

It is of vital importance that we suppress equality based on gender identity or sexual orientation! We need to battle those who support equality for all - it's unAmerican to demand equal rights! If you support equal rights for all, and think that queers can be American, and you raise your kids to believe those things - we must allow, must support, the rights of those who are more bigoted! We must protect the rights of the bully, we must ensure that the child bigot can beat others simply because he thinks they're gay! These young bigots are our last line of defense against the Gay Agenda!

"Well", you might say "my kid was beaten because the boys that did it said he was gay! He's not gay! But they still escaped punishment!" There's an easy answer to that! We must accept that any law allowing discrimination is imperfect - if the perpetrators of the violence accused your kid of being a queer or a queer lover, then you should just accept that sometimes mistakes happen. It's not the fault of those who gave out the beating - it's clearly the fault of the beaten, for supporting queer rights or being queer. If you raised your kid to be as intolerant and bigoted as us, your kid wouldn't have been beaten!

We must ensure that a Matthew Shepherd incident can happen in any Iowa cornfield, and we must defend those who beat up gays, and we must protect the rights of the bigot and bully over the rights of the queers and queer lovers! Remember - today's bigots are tomorrow's Republicans!

Thank you, and God Bless America, but only the straight bits.

===

I hope this helps them.

Carolyn Ann

Let it snow... And transphobic snowmen?

Warning: excessive interpretation of this post may lead to a meltdown. :-)

Quite a bit of snow out there. I just popped out to check on my bikes and I was a snowman (snowtranny?) in a jiffy!

Is "snowman" anti-trans?

If it is, then it follows that snowmen must be transphobic. Because they are snowmen. They obviously have a surfeit of testosterone. It's obvious that snowmen drive pickups and motorcycles and do snowmanly stuff. Snowwomen must, by definition, do snowwomanly stuff.

A snowlesbian would wear a lot of denim. Which might make them melt, but I'm not sure if that matters. To anyone except snowlesbians.

Clearly I need to more inclusive. I need to be more attentive to the offense caused by my reference to the snowdom of those afflicted by this unfortunate condition. Snowmen should be known as "men that are exceptionally white" and snowwomen should be treated cautiously lest they be snowfeminists and get mad at men. Snow or otherwise.

We should not call attention, in our language, to the limited lifespan and perambulatory capabilities of those who are created from calcified water.

So I clearly erred in my statement that I was rapidly turned into a snowman. Such a statement clearly insults the real men of snow, and it might create an atmosphere that is uncomfortable for any snowwomen out there.

I apologize to any snowmen and snowwomen that I might have offended...

I might have just offended the snowtransgendered. By insisting upon the binary of snowgender, I inadvertently (and unwittingly, I might add) have reinforced the stereotype that snowpeople are of a binary gender expression. That is clearly not the case. There might be a snowman who wishes to be a snowwoman.

Dammit! I apologize.

There might be a snowperson whom is not created in their accurate snowgender.

Children (the principle builders creators of snowmen and snowwomen) must be informed of this possibility. Henceforth, we should not refer to snowmen as such, unless we have confirmed (by some arduous protocol) whether a snowman is a snowman, a snowwoman a snowwoman and so on. Just because they look like a snowman does not mean they are! We do not, and cannot, know what the gender expression of a snowperson is, unless we have some considerable qualification, or simply ask them.

To refer to all snowmen as "snowmen" is to demonstrate your snowprivilege. As a person that is not constructed of snow, you must be aware of your non-snowprivilege: you get to live past the next warm spell. As such, we must be especially careful about references to warmth, warm feelings toward one another and anything that might ignite. It is an egregious violation of etiquette to make casual reference to a "wanting to huddle around a warm fire", for instance. Likewise "warm beds", "catching some rays", "hot tamale" and "oh, you're so hot!".

We must be aware of the privilege that tolerating, even liking, warmth provides us! It's such an ablist system, it excludes those who cannot tolerate any warmth! We must, must, make every effort we can to include our somewhat chilly those among us that cannot tolerate elevated temperatures with equanimity and a few blankets a warm (ish) acceptance of their limited lifespan obvious need of our support!

Viva la revolution! And pass the blankets. It's a bit chilly in here.

Carolyn Ann

The Toyota Prius

Toyota Prius owners have always known they can go far on a gallon of gas. Which could be useful, considering the cars apparently have some trouble stopping...

The Toyota Prius is the Energizer Bunny of cars. It's battery powered, and because the brakes don't work, it just keeps going and going and going...

(Sorry. :-) )

Carolyn Ann

The Bilerico Project

The Bilerico Project is a website/group blog for the LGBT community. Oh, sorry - for the LGBTQ community. That abbreviation gets longer every time I see it. Apparently it's quite popular, with "over 75 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and genderqueer contributors." These people are, allegedly, "high-energy, inquisitive, eloquent experts in their professions"; they are also "LGBTQ activists, politicos, journalists, novelists, advice columnists, and video bloggers".

Apparently no one thought to include a web designer in that dynamic mix of folk.

Owning a blog is a bit like running a newspaper. You need to persuade people to read your offerings, and hopefully pay attention to the ads. Putting it personally: you have to persuade me to read you. Despite what we're told, this principle hasn't changed since the newspaper (and High St store) was invented.

As any layout artist (there's a dying trade!) can tell you: grabbing the reader's attention is a must. If your layout is busy, confusing, difficult to "see", you're not going to make a good impression. Don't make a good impression and you don't get readers.

The Bilerico Project (TBP) owners must abide by the mantra "content is king", because they clearly have no use for coherent design. You don't quite need a degree in Egyptian Hieroglyphics to read it, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt. Using a 3-column layout, TBP launches a full scale visual assault on anyone unfortunate enough to look at the site. "Busy" can be used to describe Piccadilly Circus, Times Square or TBP's default page layout. Piccadilly Circus and Times Square aren't quite as distracting, though. There are more lines on that page than previously existed in history. Typefaces are not just fighting each other, they're waging all-out war. Graphic elements fight the text and increase aspirin sales. And can someone please own up to designing the menu? We need to know who not to give that job to, next time.

Of the3 columns, the first is about half the page, and is used for actual content. Once you get past all the visual clutter, you do find content. The middle column is used to tell me about things they're offering (videos, ads for gay stuff and services and so on) and the last column is for ... Videos, ads for gay stuff and services and so on. And a big RSS button. And some blogrolls, but I haven't figured out the connection between TBP and the blogs listed. I'm not sure there is one.

Moving, rapidly, along.

The content has to be what people want to read; further, you have to persuade me I want to read it. I've got a lot of far more interesting things to do besides reading your pearls of wisdom! Headlines, typeface and page design all help me make that decision. The articles must be easy to read. I don't mean language, I mean presentation. If an article is surrounded by visual clutter, it has to be wonderful for me to persist with reading it. If the writer is trying to make a serious point, they're also undermined by that ad for sexy mesh underwear for men. You can't help but come away from TBP with negative views about the writers: they're obviously so desperate to be read, that they'll even write for the personal services section of the Village Voice! Coupled with the almost desperate "advertise with us!" and the whole affair becomes cheap and lacks credibility as a result. That's the message being telegraphed. Sure it's unfair, but who ever said readers were fair?

Speaking of writers, TBP has a dedicated contributors page. It's incomplete, and it's meaningless. It tells me more about their corporate structure than it does their contributors. (I wonder if they even think of themselves as having a corporate structure?) That the list is incomplete has nothing to do with it being meaningless; that's simply a result of how the information is presented. Give each writer an easily-found bio page. Putting their mugshots on that, I don't need them on the article. They're distracting - who needs to see some guy with a big grin next to the headline "St. Louis officer killed in the line of duty, life long partner left in the cold"? Breath in! For crying out loud - breath in! (As a side note: headlines must be active and short.) Anyway, we're talking electrons, not newsprint. Electrons are cheap. Bio pages are cheap. My time and attention are not. Modern content management systems make it very easy to provide and manage bio pages.

Which leads to an interesting question: who is their primary audience?

If it's the GLBTQ (did that acquire another letter?..) community, there's little evidence of such. Women writers are placed along with ads to flirt with thousands of gay guys. Transgender writers are granted that dank and dusty corner, over there. They'll replace the light bulb in due course. I think the transgender writers are included so the owners can claim to be inclusive. Nothing more, and a whole lot less. Knowing how the web can cater to, and create, even miniature niches, I'd say their primary audience are gay, liberal, sexually active, promiscuous, political activists.

The faults of the site are many: no tagging, no decent search, all but impossible to find anything, a design that was bad in 1998 (I'd hate to view it on an iPhone!) that hasn't improved with age, and you need an aspirin after reading it. It needs a more sophisticated (and aware) ad system and it needs to catch up to 2010. If The Lonely Planet produced a guide to this site it would be helpful, but the writer would need counseling afterwards. It's that bad. The wonder is not that they didn't put a blinking headline on the page, but that they refrained from doing so! Personally, if they asked me to write for them (they're not likely to; I annoy too many people and they learned to toe the line with Ron Gold) I'd run a mile. I'd hate to be associated with a site like that! Overall, they need a modern content management system, a good designer and a fresh approach to placing their ads. After that, it's up to them to build credibility, for themselves and their writers.

Carolyn Ann

Sarah is not a quitter!

Finally, we have proof that despite quitting the Alaska governorship, Sarah Palin is not a quitter. As I, and more than a few others, have asserted. I'm quite sure that the $100,000 speakers fee she will receive for speaking at a populist-ish $349 a plate lobster dinner has absolutely nothing to do with her resolve.

Carolyn Ann

I promised myself a vegetable garden...

(With all due apologies to whomever wrote "I promised you a rose garden"... :-) )

When we moved here, one thing I promised myself was a half-decent vegetable and fruit garden. With an acre of land, it's possible to feed yourself for an entire year! (According to one book I was looking at, that's possible in a quarter acre!) I'm not particularly interested in that sort of thing; keeping chickens and milking goats is not quite my cup of tea. But a nice bit of fresh veg and some fun fruits? Yeah, I can get into that.

So the Mrs and me are figuring out where to put this culinary wonder. We're favoring where the swimming pool used to be; it's an area that has lots of sun, especially in the summer. It'll be easy to protect, especially if we use some unobtrusive net fence. We get enough deer wandering through the property as it is. (The other night, I took the trash out and disturbed a deer that was standing on the driveway! It took off in a loud hurry.) The other area being considered is to the side of the garden. It gets a lot of sun, but because it's actually on the edge of the woodland, not quite as much as the other area. Perhaps it will be an amalgam of the two?

The garden itself must be in raised containers. I have a lot of cedar left over from a project that I didn't get paid for, including some decent cedar posts; all of it, and then some, will be needed for the raised beds. The soil around here is not especially good; mostly sand, it's highly acidic and either gets water-logged (high water table) or stone dry. Often it can be both within a few feet. Besides, the septic system isn't that far away. So large containers are required. I'm really looking forward to building them! I am not looking forward to filling them a few tons of dirt, though.

Figuring out which veg to plant is proving to be an interesting, and fun, exercise. For fruit, I know I want a strawberry bush and a raspberry one, too. I'm toying with the idea of including a blueberry bush. And pear trees are especially popular. We had a good pear tree in Brooklyn; we used to make pear ice cream from some of the fruit. Fresh, natural ice cream has a flavor all its own. Obviously I'll plant lettuce and carrots. Also some broccoli, and perhaps some Brussels sprouts? I'd like to try some heirloom tomatoes, and some exotic potatoes, too. The Mrs wants snap peas and some beans; I like the idea of peppers in a variety of colors. So many choices!

For fun, I intend to plant some flowers in there, as well. Definitely some sunflowers, I love sunflowers. Some roses and some tulips, too. It's very difficult to grow tulips around here - the squirrels keep eating the bulbs. Unfortunately we won't be able to have a cut-flower garden - cats like to eat some flowers, and they're not that fussy about whether the flower is harmful to them, or not. Perhaps if I build a small botanic area in our bedroom, we can have some flowers. There's an idea... I'll have to mention that to the Mrs. I think I know exactly where I could put one.

This is going to be fun! :-)

Carolyn Ann

Aha! I found it!

I found the recent transgender Internet fracas I'd been reading about.

It's not what I thought... It's worse - it's a bickering session.

The basic squabble is about that transman chap who decided to get pregnant. I don't know he decided that, perhaps Oprah should ask him? (Again? I don't know. I don't really care, either.) The resulting discussion is quite ... Angry?

Basically, who is, or who is not, a (true) transsexual. The question actually started out as "what is a man?" Makes for a variation on the usual "what is a woman?", I guess. Antonia D'orsay (Dyssonance) makes the point that men don't get pregnant, and yet we have an example of a man getting pregnant. (Twice, if I remember it all correctly.) She starts to explore that, but then she wanders off into something about defending the couple in question, and a bit about fighting a good fight, which might or might not be the same fight others are fighting.

Yeah, I got a little confused, too. It puts some of my meanderings into perspective, though. :-)

Ms D'orsay, on her own blog, wrote about the fracas in her usual oblique manner. So I made the connections (yeah, I can be awfully slow at times), and tried to read the discussion. When I say "tried", I mean tried. (It took a few goes, and a couple of mugs of coffee.) The format of The Bilerico Project website is not conducive to ease of use, never mind reading (which is why I tend to ignore it. More on that in another post), so I tend not to bother reading it. Which might explain why I couldn't find the discussion in the first place.

I love a good debate as much as anyone, but this one was somewhat distracted. Okay, if it had a focus, it was lost somewhere in the mists of time. Lots of confusion, questions that were half asked, and variably answered. One person insisted on using "ppl" for people; I guess she didn't have e or o keys on her keyboard. Or forgot how to spell the word. She also used b/c for because. Perhaps her fingers were tired from typing all those words? There was some outrage against Zoe Brain; why, I don't know. I thought Zoe's contribution to the debate was interesting, and informative. Perhaps that why? And then the discussion became discombobulated. Basically the discussion, such as it was, became a spitting contest between Ms D'orsay and some folk who have little fondness for her. There seems to be a lot of animosity between a Leigh Smith and Ms D'orsay. It really got in the way of the discussion.

Ah well. I now know what all the anger and angst was about. Somehow I think I was better off not knowing.

Carolyn Ann