Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Tonight as I was fiddling with my TV antenna, trying to get it in the perfect position to get the best reception, I had a brilliant idea: Body antennas.

Just think about it. The human body is like the best antenna there is. If you don't believe me, touch your TV antenna and see the difference. And what do we do with human bodies when we're done with them? We dump them in the ground. Why not put them to good use? I propose, therefore, that rather than letting dead bodies rot away in graveyards, we convert them into TV antennas.

Cable and satellite, your fifteen minutes of fame are done. Now begins the age of the body antenna.

Observations Upon Listening to the Radio For the First Time in Years

The Foxmobile has a CD player and an auxiliary outlet for plugging in MP3 players, so I never listen to the radio in the car. The moving truck, though, has no such extravagances, so today I listened to the radio for about five and a half hours. I observed the following:

• The rotation on Sacramento's top twenty station starts over after about an hour and a half. Which, if you think about it, makes sense--that's about how long it takes to play twenty songs. Maybe a little longer with commercials.
• Every third song on that station has Kanye West either rapping or singing on it. Now, Kanye West has made some music I enjoy (but of course I liked him before he was cool, because I'm way too cool to like things average people like), but he hasn't made much that I like in a couple albums. I'm especially not a fan of his singing--much as I give him props for experimenting with different musical styles. But still, he just can't sing. The autotune or whatever he uses to warp his voice doesn't make it any better (or maybe it does, but in that case his natural voice must be pretty horrible).
• I was able to get Sacramento stations almost all the way to Reno. This surprised me, as I'd imagined I wouldn't get anything in the mountains.
  
• After Reno, the selection slowly dies down. I listened to NPR for a while and wondered why I don't more often. When NPR went to a jazz show, which was nice sounding but not loud enough to keep me awake while driving, the best thing was a seventies rock station, which wasn't all that bad.
• By the time I got to Winnemucca, the only available station was country. I considered just turning the radio off, but decided to bear with it. Country is actually kind of entertaining, in small doses. I particularly enjoyed a song about a widow who was accused by the Hartford Junior High School PTA of being a bad mother because she wears short skirts and drinks too much. She then tells the PTA off by pointing out that they're all hipocrites, and then the shocking twist at the end (spoiler warning) is that the woman is... the singer's mother. Shocking!

Stay tuned to find out what entertaining observations I have to make about the second half of my trip tomorrow!*



*DISCLAIMER: I probably won't make observations about the second half of my trip, unless I hear something really incredible on the radio. I'm stretching the limits of reader generosity to expect you all to read just this one post.

Wha-HUH?

Seen on the interwebs this morning:

Kindle Thoughts

Having played with it for a couple weeks now, I can say definitively that the Kindle 2 is pretty darn cool. As far as the reading experience itself goes, I much prefer holding a lightweight device with a paper-like screen and flipping pages with the push of a button to holding a real book and flipping manually.

The really cool thing about the Kindle, though, is the infrastructure they've built up around it. With wireless service included in the cost of the device, it's incredibly easy to browse the online store, buy books, and read them without dealing with the hassle of downloading first to my computer and then synching files to the device via USB cable. I especially love that everything has free samples--the first chapter of books or the first two weeks of a magazine subscription--so I can get a better idea of what I'm spending my money on.

There are only two things that are holding me back from using the Kindle exclusively for all my reading. The first is that I'm not in the habit of buying books--generally I borrow from the library, and if I'm going to buy a book it's either that I can't get it at the library or that I like it so much that I think I'd like to lend it to friends in the future. Owning an electronic copy of a book negates the possibility of lending unless I want to lend out the whole Kindle, but for books I can't get at the library the Kindle is a great option. As it happens, I currently have a job that frequently gives me Amazon.com gift certificates, so getting in the habit of buying books is more economically feasible than it has been at other points in my life.

The second thing holding me back is that a good deal of my reading time is devoted to comic books, which are not largely available in Kindle format and even if they were, its black-and-white and just-a-little-too-small screen make the Kindle less than ideal for the medium. If Amazon or someone else were to produce a similar device with a larger screen in full color, though, I would love to see the world of monthly comic book publishing go digital. I likes me my new comics every Wednesday, but who needs boxes and boxes of old comics cluttering their house? If they were digital I'd always have them available, without the clutter.

For the time being I mainly use my Kindle for reading the two magazines I've subscribed to: The New Yorker and Narrative. I enjoy The New Yorker primarily for its fiction and Narrative is actually an online literary journal I could read for free on the web, but it's worth the three bucks a month to be able to read short stories when I'm, for example, watching my kids play on the playground, whereas I would never ever sit down at the computer to read those stories because I spend all day at a computer and when I have non-work-related computer time it's for writing my own fiction, thank you very much. Considering that what I write is prose and until a few weeks ago all I was reading was comics, I think it's a very good thing that the Kindle has got me reading prose again. And fairly good stuff, at that, as literary writing goes.

One of the things that excites me most about the Kindle is that I can load my own documents onto it. This means that when writer friends send me their novels to read, I can do so on my couch instead of at the computer, and that when, for example, I finish my current book and want Edgy to read it, I can send it to him electronically, he can make comments on it on his Kindle, then send it back and I can read those comments on mine. Trees around the world rejoice.

Barack Obama Endorses the Fobcave

Here's how it happened:

Barack read my post about McCain almost winning me over by being a Lauryn Hill fan and he was all like, "Whoa, I need to do something to win Mr. Fob back, and fast." And he heard that will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas was making this little music video thing for him, so he called up will and he was like, "Dude, you totally need to get Lauryn Hill in that video" but will was like, "Dude, Lauryn Hill is a few tracks short of an album lately, if you know what I mean. Are you sure you want to be connected to her?" and Barack was like, "Ooh, good point. Maybe we could find out who Mr. Fob's second-favorite rapper is?" So will did some asking around, then called up Common and explained the situation and Common was like, "Well, I do like Obama, but I was kind of thinking of swinging over to the Huckabee side... Okay, I guess I'll do it for Mr. Fob."

And you know what? It worked. Who cares about the issues? I'm voting for the guy my favorite performing artists support.

(In case you are Common-illiterate, he's the bald guy with a goatee that shows up about 25 seconds in, then again closer to the end.)

Did you know

that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, she'll be the country's first female president? And Barack Obama would be the first black president?

Silly me, I wouldn't have made the connection, if not for the fact that EVERY SINGLE news article that barely mentions either of them feels a need to point it out. Because, you know, this is news.

Funny Headlines About Things That Aren't Funny

Man critical after being shot by Mill Creek police officer

Well, I'd be critical too, if it happened to me.

Why I [heart] Dora

I was first exposed to Dora the Explorer when my niece was about three and in love with her. FoxyJ and I were new parents at the time and therefore even more self-righteous about parenting than we are now, so of course it appalled us that parents would ever let their children lay an eye on a television screen. Add to that the fact that Dora talks loudly in a sort of annoying voice and the plot of each episode is about as formulaic as you can get, and you get a rather disgusted Mr. Fob.

Fast-forward a couple years and now you have a Mr. Fob and FoxyJ who, through the course of parenting a real life child, have been forced to lower our standards a bit (but don't worry; we still sneer appropriately at those parents whose standards are even lower). We've learned that it is good for the sanity of the parents for the child to absorb the soporific radiation of the television god for an hour or two a day, and it so happens that S-Boogie's drug of choice is Dora the Explorer. And you know what? It's precisely that formulaic plot and loud, annoying voice that make the show appeal to kids her age. Duh, they're kids. I would feel worse about so willfully not recognizing this earlier if not for the fact that, if I'm to believe the end credits on each episode, it took about thirty people with PhDs to figure it out.

Apart from the fact that Dora does an excellent job of exposing children to Hispanic culture and the Spanish language in a very natural way, I love her because she is a strong, relatively gender-neutral female character. There's an interesting conversation happening on a blog I read about gender in children's toys. It seems most toys marketed to boys are relatively gender-neutral, made in simple primary colors with few frills, while toys marketed to girls are all pink and sparkly. The message most girl toys seem to send is that you can aspire to be either a princess, waiting for your Prince Charming to come rescue you, or a teenage sexbot.

Dora, on the other hand, is a little girl who has adventures exploring the world, presumably inspired by her mother, an archaeologist. Even the episode "Dora's Fairytale Adventure," which is an obvious sellout to the Disney princess phenomenon, has Dora complete certain tasks in order to become a princess, which she does in order to save her friend Boots the Monkey. In this loose retelling of Sleeping Beauty, the male monkey is the passive "damsel in distress" and the girl is the active "knight in shining armor."

Telling of Dora's success in avoiding gender stereotypes is the fact that boys like her as much as girls do. Now, the existence of the spinoff show about Dora's cousin, Diego, says that marketers did see the need to create a boy character to appeal to boys, but within my social circle at least I know of several little boys who are as obsessed with Dora as S-Boogie is.

And the little boys who think Dora is a "girl show" obviously have parents who are not as stellar in teaching egalitarianism as FoxyJ and I are. Thank goodness for parents like us.

Gay Mormons on YouTube

I saw references to these YouTube interviews with gay Mormon Clark Johnsen a few weeks ago, but didn't feel a strong desire to go see them. Yesterday Ron Schow suggested I watch them for a perspective on the whole gay men courting straight women issue, and I'm glad he did. I don't actively advocate gay people dating and marrying heterosexually (nor do I get the sense that Johnsen does), but if you're going to do it, this seems like the most honest way to go about it--Johnsen told her before asking her out the first time.

While I was popping around on YouTube, I also came across this interview with Lester and Barbara Leavitt, a couple I've heard of before but never looked into too deeply. They are former Mormons and he came out as gay a few years ago, after they'd been married for more than twenty years. I'm not entirely clear on their current marital status--I get the feeling that the video was made during a transitional stage in their relationship, but it appears they've now separated to pursue other paths while remaining friends. Apart from some overgeneralizing they've done in making statements about "the Church" when referring to stupid things local church authorities and members have done or said, what strikes me most about the video is the love they have for each other. Their strong relationship shows in how they talk about each other and how they interact. They seem like good folk to me.

Oh, and did you know I'm on YouTube? I am. It's nothing new--just last year's Fox13 interview with me and FoxyJ. It's nice to know it's on YouTube now so more people can make mean comments about us. It's okay, though--ignorant criticism is much easier to take than educated criticism.

In the news...

Lest he be outdone by this morning's Fob sighting, Theric has directed my attention to this rather disturbing one on a Florida news program.

Breaking News: Prostitute Found Dead Outside Fobcave

The naked dead body of a prostitute was found this evening outside the Fobcave, home to local celebrities Mr. Fob and FoxyJ. The as-yet-unidentified young woman was discovered by Fob, who then notified authorities. "I think she must have picked the wrong trick, you know," said Fob. "This is a pretty rough neighborhood. There are all sorts of sickos around."

"We don't know she's a prostitute," said J.

Witnesses were quick to point out the resemblance between the body and Fob family member Gril Fob (pictured to the right next to sister S-Boogie). If Gril knows anything about this pale-skinned lookalike, though, she's keeping it to herself--she has not yet said a word in response to police questioning.

If you have any information that might help identify the victim pictured below or otherwise aid in the investigation of this heinous crime, please contact the Seattle Police Department.

Reasons Why It's Petty and Ridiculous of Me to Feel My Thunder Has Been Stolen

• Daniel and Jay are cool guys. They are way more articulate than I would be on film, and they are way more involved in gay Mormon issues. I know it's important to them to get people thinking and talking about what it means to be gay and Mormon, and hopefully them being on Nightline will forward that cause.
• Even though I'm sure that when Nightline initially expressed interest in interviewing me and Foxy J, they thought it would be a great idea to interview a real life "Brokeback marriage" (an inaccurate term in several ways), in reality we wouldn't have been very interesting. It would have gone something like this:
• Nightline: What's it like being gay, Mormon, and married?
• Master Fob: Hm. It's, well, it's pretty much like being straight, Mormon, and married. Not much is different about our lives. We're happy. No one persecutes us, no one hates us, no one tells us we're doing the wrong thing. Despite my paranoia, I've never experienced any judging from gays or Mormons. People are pretty happy to let us be. I mean, sure, I'm annoyed by some of the Church's policies and actions toward homosexuals, but it's not like any of that really affects me.
• Foxy J: I like Fobby. We're happy.
• Master Fob: Isn't our baby cute?
• Crickets: Chirp.
• Daniel and Jay are much more representative than Foxy and I, I think, of the conflict of being gay and Mormon.
• What if, while they were interviewing us, Foxy's placenta had ruptured? That would have been embarrassing.

Still, though, they could have used some of the footage from FHEfamily with me and Streetguy whispering rudely in the back. Oh well. At least Streetguy's grandparents won't see him on national television at a gay issues group.