Peter's Place

I just posted this comment on The Malcontent web site, about a little spiff that they're having with a certain very famous person's ("VFP") legal team, because this certain VFP's legal counsel doesn't think it's a good idea for people to be writing about this certain VFP, especially when such writings aren't in the most favourable light. What were some of those sayings about bad publicity ? There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary. Brendan Behan , Irish author & dramatist (1923 - 1964) The only bad publicity is NO publicity. P.T. Barnum. Here's my post: Given this kind of behavior, I think you should remove all references to the person in question, and whenever you write about her, just refer to her as "the person in question." Don't display her name on your site, and definitely don't link to any of her web sites. Why give her the free publicity? This sort of 19th century thinking is exactly why the ...

OK, I'm with Kathy Griffin on this one. I mean, what with Oprah Winfrey's BFF relationship with Gayle King, and all of their reported travelling and expeditions together ... mmmm-kay. The blogosphere , of course, isn't buying it, either: No real woman who has a man totes her "best girlfriend" to every darn thing, to EVERY very special event, etc. - TMZ.com Headline of the Week: "Oprah: Gayle And I Are Friends, Not Lesbian Lovers" - Perezhilton.com (considering why Perez Hilton chose this as the headline of the week, I think it's pretty obvious what he really thinks of her statement....) What do you mean there isn't a definition? Hello, it's called BFFs with benefits . - Jossip More to come .... Oprah Says She's Not Gay

I received this from a friend via e-mail: Donald Rumsfeld was giving the president his daily briefing. He concluded by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed." "OH NO!" the President exclaimed. "That's terrible!" His staff sat stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sat, head in hands. Finally, the President looked up and asked, "How many is a brazillion?" (This is what happens when we elect a President who was able to garner only a 'C' average at Yale....)

This is a letter that I sent to my Congressional Representative, U.S. Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey , regarding my position on the proposed constitutional amendment seeking to ban same-sex marriage, which is up for a vote tomorrow: [17 July, 2006] Dear Congresswoman Lowey: I understand that a vote is upcoming tomorrow on an amendment to the United States Constitution that would define marriage as existing only between one man and one woman. As one of your constituents, I strongly urge you to vote against this hateful amendment, as love, and families, are found in many different forms other than the quote-unquote traditional one-man-one-woman relationship. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of, inter alia, sex and religion. Prohibiting marriage (which is a fundamental right, ( Loving v. Virginia , 388 U.S. 1 , 1967)) because both couples seeking marriage are of the same sex violates this provision, and a Constitutional Amendment prohibitin...

"Decide? Some things in life you don't get to decide. Some things ... just happen ." --Ida Perkins , 1988 (character played by actress Herta Ware on the 80s hit sit-com The Golden Girls in the " Brother Can You Spare That Jacket? " episode) Other things that Ida said during the episode (paraphrased -- I can't remember them exactly, if anyone else can, please leave a comment!): I didn't know that growing old would be such a curse. Nobody told me that it takes money to grow old. Given my life over the past year, and over the past five years or so, it's no wonder I identify so strongly with Ida Perkins. I didn't get to decide to become homeless. I was kicked out of my home by my Uncle. Of course, nevermind the fact that my home is owned by my grandfather, not my Uncle (who lives in Wilmington, MA). But my Uncle supposed is a certified psychiatric nurse in the state of Massachusetts and has convinced my grandfather that it is for the best. Never m...

My grandmother died four years ago, today. I miss her. I doubt very much that I would be in the predicament that I'm current in were she still alive, today. She died while I was in the hospital, so I never got to see her or say goodbye. She had fallen down in the house and broken some bones. She went to Greenwich Hospital , even though I had begged her to come to Westchester Medical Center , where I was (I was in for my depression/suicide, but at least I would have been able to see her). So Greenwich sent her to a nursing home for rehab, and they sent her to King Street Nursing Home . She had an aneurysm early in the morning, after a nurse came in and gave her her medications. I really miss her, and wish I could be with her right now.

RIP: Diceros bicornis longipes Humankind is pretty fucked up. Let's hunt species after species to extinction . In this case, it's the Diceros bicornis longipes (West African black rhino), and the reason they've been hunted to extinction? Because their horns can be ground into a powder that's used, among other things, as a fucking aphrodisiac . Real fucking brainiacs (tm) are we humans. West African black rhino 'is extinct' - World - Times Online

One of the features that I like about using Blogger as a blogging service is the profile feature. And one of the really cool hacks within the profile feature is that it turns the words you put into your profile into keywords of a sort, and you can click on any of the words in one's profile and retrieve a bunch of different profiles that contain the same keyword. I happened to do this with one of my favourite books: Beloved by Toni Morrison . I happened to come across the profile of noe Ron Buckmire. I liked his picture, so I clicked on a link to his profiel, which then had a link to his home page (yes, he's old school -- he still maintains a " home page " on the 'net). On his home page , I found out that he is the creator of one of the first web sites that I went to on a regular basis, the Queer Resource Directory (QRD). I'm feeling very nostalgic right now, as well as elated, as I never really knew who put up the QRD, or why. And now, I know. Not to ment...

I found this quote, by a friend/user on a BBS , to be particularly relevant today, because I was just noticing that today is July 4 -- Independence Day in the good ol' USA -- which means that about half of the year has gone by already, and I truly have no idea where it went or how it went by so quickly. "Age is like toilet paper. The closer you get to the end the faster it seems to go." --the wizard of aahz , a user on Uncensored BBS . They were having a whole discussion on the aging process, and the time/aging relationship. Here's a selection of what other users from Uncensored had to say about the topic: Yup. It's what I call an inverse ratio. The speed at which time seems to go by is inversely proportional to the amount of life, in years, that you've already lived. Or somehing like that. ( harry ) For each day hat you experience, you compare the rest of your past against it. As the days add up, the proportion of days in your life cause you to feel as if ea...

CIO Magazine has an article about a new tool from the folks at Google for the Firefox web browser (created by the Mozilla Foundation ) that synchronizes all of your personal information contained within the browser across different computers. For instance, say that you have a desktop computer at home, and a notebook (laptop) computer that you take with you when you travel. You run Firefox on both computers. For most people, the options/settings that would be on the desktop computer wouldn't be the same as the options/settings on the notebook, especially when you're talking about a web browsing application such as Firefox. With Google's new Firefox Extension , the version of Firefox on the desktop computer will have the same settings ( bookmarks , history, cookies , etc.) as the version on the notebook computer. While there have been other attempts at creating an extension that will synchronize a user's personal data within Firefox, those extensions relied on th...

OK, so I'm back on-line. I've found a somewhat more stable living environment. This very kind person (we'll call him " D ") has allowed me to crash in his living room for the outrageous fee of helping him learn more about computers. He's kind, caring, and we have a lot in common. He has a computer but, at the moment, because he's just moving into his apartment, he has only dial-up access. Actually, the dial-up access is something that my friend, Cody , provided for me, through his AOL account (Cody works for AOL Wireless ). So anyway, now that I'm online again, hopefully I'll be updating my blog a bit more frequently. Just as I logged in to work tonight and went to my personalized Google home page, I came across this story , about how some companies (like GM ) do get the " new media " (online media), and how other companies (like the New York Times ) just plain don't get it. I'm back -- at least, for the time being. More tech,...

I took some more pics of my car today. I'll probably need them for the insurance company. Thex won't be getting back to me until tuesday, due to the memorial day weekend holiday. From bad, to worse. I'll fill in some captions later. I've got to run now. A pic from afar. The lenses in camera phones aren't really that great, and you can see here that the sunshine kind of blurred the image a bit. A close-up of the branch/tree that remained lying across the hood of my car, which smashed my windshield. A forward-looking view of the same branch/tree that lies on the hood of my car, showing how it probably hit the front, made a nice hole in the front passenger fender, and damaged the light assembly, before rolling on the hood (denting the hood, of couse) and smashing the windshield. A close-up of the damage to the front passenger side of the car. You can see leaves and branches from the tree/branch that hit my car surronding the car in this area. Finally, a side shot, wher...