caeron

I like Dolly. Stealing from a couple of internet sites to refresh my memory -When asked her opinion of gay marriage, Dolly said joking that 'gay people should have the right to be as miserable as married straight people are.' and she helped produce the academy award winning Common Threads documentary on the AIDS quilt "Above all, Dolly is honest. She is the first to say that, like many of us, the emergence of the AIDS pandemic was foreign to her. "As you probably know, I came from the country in East Tennessee, and I suppose I was as naive and ignorant as anyone," Dolly says. "When I went to Los Angeles, I became best friends with my manager, Sandy Gallin, who is gay. Many of Sandy’s associates, friends, and creative teams were gay people. They are some of the finest, most creative folks there are. "Because I became friends with many of them–like Steve Rubell of Studio 54…in New York–it wasn’t long before I learned firsthand of the devastating impact of AIDS," she says. "I have lost many dear friends from it…both gay and heterosexual. That’s when I really began to understand and get involved in the fight." And get involved she did, though, in characteristic Dolly fashion, she downplays her own good works. "My Sandollar Productions Company [named for both Sandy (Gallin) and Dolly] was responsible for the public awareness production of the Common Threads quilt program that traveled all over the nation," Dolly says. "I guess I could have been more prominently involved, but I helped. It was Howard Rosenman, Carol Baum, and Sandy that really led the project."

Furries I'd heard of. Clown fetish I've heard of. But Ballons and sneezes are new ones for me. But in the interest in keeping the thread going: http://www.doubleviking.com/bullet-points-...hes-6984-p.html Gut Flopping and Dinner Smashing both made me laugh.

But he sure doesn't! I think she's started to look like a goat as she's aged. I must get to Brazil this year.

I love the Frick. I think it's my favorite Museum in NYC. It's such a cool venue for a museum. It's in Henry Clay Frick's mansion for those who don't know.

I listen to NPR streaming at work, but have never tried this "make your own radio station" Sounds very intriguing, I'll have to try it. Thanks for the tip.

I loved Kate Winslet. She played a great character that was kind of twisted, that didn't ask for sympathy, but earned some understanding as the story went on. I thought Ralph Fiennes' character a bit inexplicable though. I didn't get his motivations from the trial on.

I have no personal animosity towards the other site. I was a member there for years. I just got tired of what I view as the sniping that goes on. Maybe this place will end up that way and I"ll get tired of it too. As some posters have said here, they enjoy the witty repartee. I posted why I didn't enjoy it. Different strokes. I wasn't on the receiving end of much of it, so I'm not invested over it. Perhaps other posters here who got into it more are. I don't think you can have that kind of conversation though, and then complain when some people develop hard feelings about it. If that's what you want, suck it up when people call you mean girls and the like.

I'm one of the people who said the other site was rude. I used to participate there, I don't any longer. I don't think there's anything rude in stating such an opinion. But perhaps you were referring to several of the posts that laid the blame on the moderator(s)?

I don't think he wants any protectionism, but some congress critters are trying to stuff things in there that require "buy american". While there's a noble sentiment there, it's the first step down a extremely slippery slope.

I wish I'd had either of you two as a guide last time I was in Dallas. I missed all the fun apparently.

He really looks like a pretty fag, doesn't he?

On that, I have no idea, since you can just sign up with any email address. It is odd that they can identify them. Perhaps because of the attorney generals they were capable of tracking back all the email addresses to their registrations.

For another look at the willy nilly stigmatization of sex offender registries, read this. http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail..._offender/6726/ There's an academic paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1100663 to quote from their results, which match my bias against large scale notification laws: our findings imply that a state should always employ a registry (the optimal size of the registry depends on the shape of the relationship between sex offense frequency and registry size). On the other hand, our results also suggest that notification laws are only attractive when the size of the registry is relatively small. We estimate that putting a notification law in place deters -1.07 yearly sex offenses per 10,000 people, but a notification law that covers 14.79 sex offenders per 10,000 people (the sample mean) leads to 1.3 additional recidivist sex offenses per 10,000 people. Basically, they're saying that offenders should be required to register with the police who can watch them, but that public notification about sex offenders INCREASES their recidivism, which makes perfect sense to me. If you turn these people into total pariahs, their lives are already fucked up, there isn't much upside to behaving. Sorry if this is a sidebar for people, but I think we need to be careful in our stigmatization of sex offenders. Not all of them are serious crimes and even for the serious crimes, if we give them no way out, then they are going to keep offending. If you care about this much, I suggest you skim the results and conclusion section of their paper, it's more nuanced than my pull quote. For instance some level of notification, while it increases recidivism among registered offenders, decreases reports of first time offenders.

I tend to agree with you about the protectionism. We could do the global economy a lot of sustained damage by starting down that road. I think cleaning up the bad debt is the key to this problem. I don't mind real infrastructure spending either, since I think we've neglected a lot over the years, but much of the rest just strikes me as pork which drives me nuts.

Hhaha. The image of Eliot Spitzer being a weasel about using condoms strikes me as very funny for some reason. Thanks for the update.

I don't think I've ever heard of anybody being sexually assaulted on the internet. The idea that sex offenders on myspace are more dangerous than ones anywhere else seems ridiculous to me. Never mind that many registered sex offenders are tagged for consensual teen relationships that break ill-considered age of consent laws. So, no, I don't find it horrifying that myspace has a lot of registered sex offenders. What I would find horrifying (well maybe just sad), is if parents fail to properly supervise their kids and let them get into trouble.

Well, apparently Kellogg's dropped their sponsorship of the olympic team in December already, so this might just be an excuse for them to cut what they were going to cut anyway.

I liked her performance in The Reader better, though they were both good.

I'm with you. I hate ticketmaster. If they can regulate the usury of payday loans, why can't they regulate this usury. The fees they add are ridiculous.

I don't know if it's getting worse or not. I don't think it is, but it could be that with the growing sexual freedom elsewhere, closeted priests are doing more than they would once. But I think the answer to this is not more shame and the "good old days". The answer to this is less shame about sexuality. People need healthy, sane, legal ways to express a fundamental part of their identity.

Surprise. Human sexuality wins again. These stories will stop when the sexual phobia that drives people to try to deny themselves stops. I'm not holding my breath.

If you're having a large group there, wouldn't you want to eat there first and make sure it doesn't suck? I guess for me, I like my food enough that I don't think pink with my dining dollars. I want a good restaurant first. As a consequence, I have no idea which are the gay restaurants in portland OR, but I can tell you the good ones :-)

I think the whole idea of idolizing celebrities is silly, so no I don't think they should be held to a higher standard.

I tend to agree that being a doctor doesn't make you necessarily a good choice, and dean is perceived as partisan. Still, so was Hillary. I guess dean just doesn't have the clout the clintons have. Either way, I'm glad Daschle is gone. Obama should have pulled the plug sooner.

I saw Revolutionary Road yesterday, and I enjoyed it, but I guess I wasn't as impressed. The acting was brilliant, but relatively early it was clear to me more or less how this was going to end, so most of the time I was just watching the train wreck unfold. I do recommend it though.