sumbloke

Goodness! Well, thank you all. Sebastian and I were married in San Sebastian in Spain on August 29th after lots of confusion over legal stuff. It worked out because Seb has Spanish nationality - thank goodness. We decided after much heart searching not to take up a pacte de solidarite civil (civic union) in France. We both feel that it would be demeaning to accept second rate legal recognition. My whole family (I have something like seventy first cousins!) came to celebrate (and dozens of Hassidic Jews at a gay wedding caused quite a stir in San Sebastian). It was, quite simply, the best day of my life. I feel unbelievably blessed. I started University this month. We're living in Palavas, on the beach, a fifteen minute bus ride from the Uni. I'm having the time of my life so far! When I'm a bit more settled I hope I'll find time to blog again. At the moment I'm still attending all my lectures (I think I'm possibly the only student in the whole Uni to do that!) and Seb is taking up all my free time ;-) J

It's a loan translation from French "d

Thank you all of you very much and thank you Kurt especially. We will take a while to finalise the details but in out line our plan is to have a civil wedding in Spain and then a ceremony/celebration in France after that before we go to uni in September. It's still a bit of a shock - I had thought we'd wait until after Uni to do anything like this but now I've faced it I realise that you pass this way only once and I'm in love so...we're doing it. Thank you again and peace and loving kindness Jakob and Sebastian.

Baruch Dayan Emet Blessed be the True Judge May Chaz and all the rest of Green's family be comforted among all the mourners of Zion.

My deepest deepest sympathy. It's all down hill from here on. Happy Birthday Ben!

Never let the sun go down on your anger. best wishes, sumbloke

Welcome aboard Twolf! Now -- blog!

I didn't laugh when I read this! Honest! Wishing your superheroidentifying boyfriend a speedy recovery. sumbloke

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday! Hey, next year we should have a joint party

oops, responded by pm instead!

Thank You All! Thank you all for your birthday greetings. I'm sorry I didn't reply earlier but I was otherwise engaged with the beach, the desert, the souks and a certain shaggy blond. Of course there is some mistake - I can't be 18! Don't you have to pass a test or something? You guys make this one of the nicest places to hang out on the net and I also want to say as a new adult that I've always really appreciated the respect that gay teens get around here.

Dear Nick, May G-d comfort you among all the mourners of Zion. I'll be thinking of you and hoping that you find peace and loving kindness after your loss. sumbloke/Yak

Seb's family tradition is both names anyway - he uses both his parents' and so do they so that's the way we'll go. I like his name well enough though it's not easy to read the pronunciation correctly for lots of people. I would want to keep my name because it's culturally significant - it identifies me as Jewish which I'm proud of. Of course I do worry about saddling sprogs with an unpronounceable Basque-Jewish hybrid name! Still, that won't bother them - they'll be too busy living down their forenames: Moonbeam, Sunshine, Stardust...

Hey Kevin! I'm guessing from what you say about the Latin test that you don't just get translation exercises. They used to make us "construe" (explain grammatical points, label word endings etc) a lot but now it's almost entirely translation for tests - the grammar is expected to be automatic . Now, I prolly shouldn't mention this but, quite a few dictionaries give noun declension listings and verb morphology - Bantam New College for example. As to a Spanish course, friends of mine who started Spanish from scratch used a course called Digame! which I think was produced by the BBC - it's supposed to be excellent but I can only say that they all started speaking pretty good Spanish very quickly. I don't know how easy it would be to get in the US. One thing you need to decide is how important it is to you to learn Latin American or European Spanish - though of course they are the same language in the end! Good luck on your test. sumbloke

I know I'm supposed to celebrate and be pleased but...OK I am glad and excited and I have to say it's a very good thing when an authors knows when the story arc is over and lets his characters go...BUT I love Yankee: it's a superb story and even though I'm excited to be reading the final section I'm going to miss it. WRITE MORE STORIES RIGHT NOW! Or I shoot the puppy and it will be all your fault

No-no and Philip are driving me mad about this. Lesbian and Gay history month is coming up. And the puppies have decided to push it. Hard. LOL. The idea in general is to get schools to recognise it so they've come up with the following idea. They're going to take historical queers - people of whom it's accepted they were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender - and they are going to design postcards for each one with a picture and slogan on one side and a story about that person's historical contribution on the other. So, for example they wanna do Turing for Computer Science. On one side a portrait of Turing and accross it in bright text The Turing Machine - That's SO gay! then a short account of Turing's achievement on the back. Or Charlotte Bach (transgendered ethologist) - picture on one side and the slogan Charlotte Bach - Transgender? Transformer! and the story of what she did on the back. OK, I have decided they are so enthusiastic that I'm swallowing my cynicism. You can't sneer at this pair they just wear you down with enthusiasm. So you lot have to help me out here. We need to get a list of suitable historical queers pretty quick so that we can have them printed by february. I want you all to think of someone who made a difference and was gay and post their name at least here in my blog - if you have some bio detail or a link to some fine, if not the puppies will do the research. Also useful would be ideas for the slogans - I quite like their that's SO gay idea for the gay cards and Transgender? Transformer for the trans people but so far for lesbians they've only come up with Damn! Dykes! which I don't think will go down well and for bisexuals they're still totally stuck. So, you're a creative lot. Put your thinking caps on and help get this pair of puppies on a mission off my back! Just occured to me that we should definitely have Martina Navratilova down there for history of sport. sumbloke

On laptop: OS: Suse Linux 10 WP, spreadsheet, presentation: OpenOffice Text: emacs pdf: pdfWriter browswer: firefox or opera e-mail, diary: Agenda programming: php - so just emacs for writing code images: gimp formats: usually xml or opendoc formats if it's sensible or .txt or proprietary including .doc, .xls etc for ineroperability On desktops and at school: Windows, Office, Dreamweaver, Homesite, VisualStudio, photoshop elements.

protein bars blow chunks. as sharon says there's good sources of protein for your veggie days. try: rice with any pulse - so rice and peas, rice and lentils, rice and beans of any kind the combination of grain and pulse is a richer source of protein than almost anything. tofu: ok, it's bland to the nth degree as it comes but if you get going with the spices and garlic and stuff it's pretty good. falafal with hummous in pitta bread: protein overload. All vegetables (but not the non-vegetables mushrooms etc afaik) are good sources of fibre and most are good sources of vitamins. I have to say there is just one tiny down side to my diet - vegetarian and no processed food, very little dairy - i have to leave the room a lot...not only am i regular but erm well frankly on very beany days it gets windy around here! Oh and...for good nutrition if you can help it - get used to brown rice. I still have to have white rice sometimes brown rice really is just so much work to eat!

I answered this but it was difficult. I mean, yellow is definitely what first comes to mind but then so do red - for the stamens themselves, and purple - for the crocus itself. So I voted but...that's my real answer I think of three colours.

Keep talking. Don't go - I know that I don't have any claim on you but even so I'm asking. And I'm sure there are people who do have a claim on you who don't want you to do this thing. I'm sorry that you haven't been able to reconcile yourself with your faith, your family, your friends YET. But please, the YET is important - there will be no reconciliation unless you give yourself and them a chance. I don't recall what your faith is - but if I think seriously, I know that my answer to the question What would Buddha (or Jesus or Moses...) do? doesn't come out as "he'd end his life". Can you reconcile your death at your own hand with your family, your faith, your friends? James is right that we need you in a wider sense - after all we've lost so many. I'm sorry to lay this on you in such a personal way but I want to ask you something: if you were faced with a 14 year old boy - gay, maybe Christian, alientated form his family and afraid of his friends - would you recommend suicide to him? Or would you want to encourage him to believe that he had the power to live a life full of love and happiness if he could find the strength to endure? I'm not asking this to manipulate you but because Kant said something important: only act in such a way that you can wish it were a universal law. The most pressing course of action I urge on you it is to find some gay friends - not in bars or night clubs but somewhere supportive where you can begin to talk about your feelings and problems. It's too easy to see your identity as just a painful problem if you don't meet people who have similar problems and see how you can help them and they can help you. Against all the reasons you think you have to end your life you have to count off the reasons to live it, not least among them the possibility of love and the chance to make a difference to the world. Your biggest enemy is resignation in the face of difficulty but don't let yourself off the hook - you know you can survive this and much worse because you know that millions of people have found the hope and perseverance to do so in much much darker circumstances. Stay with us. Keep on keeping on. Survive and you keep alive the hope of thriving. peace and loving kindness, sumbloke

[sarcasm] social constructivism: society made me do it essentialism: nature made me do it personal trajectory: I did it but so what it don't make me queer missed out in the original... performativity theory: drag queens made me do it [/sarcasm] Social constructivism: identities are constructed in the context of and by means of social interactions. They have no foundation other than social context. (In extreme versions it's not even all social interaction, just "discourse" - don't ask) Essentialism: identities exist and are formed independantly of social context. They constitute part of us as natural beings. What we are determines what we do and become. Personal trajectory: who the hell knows! I don't want to be cynical but it's really a reflection of the lack of wider coherence in both politics and sociology as a discipline. Lacking the ideological foundation to assert either constructivist or essentialist accounts of identity, researchers pursue specificity to the point of impressionistic empiricism (note to self: should that be empiricist impressionism? Remember to ask Aunt Julia K next time you see her). Since the only validity there is is individual authenticity (there are no grandes narratives to oppress us anymore) if teenagers say "I'm not gay I just have sex with guys" then we all nod approvingly rather than pointing out that having sex with members of the same sex is more or less the definition of homosexuality! It's almost like a reaction to labelling - "don't pigeon hole me!". It sounds plausible until you notice that teenagers have always looked for ways to dilute their queer identity - I'm not gay I'm bi, etc.

Hmmm...so the hypothesis is true: Buddhist boys are cuter! (OK - that was bad: I'll chant later). I don't know hanzi but the hanyu pinyin "fu" (without the tone anyway...) could also refer to: fu dogs (rui shi?) the lion dogs. Or happiness, or husband (!) or mastery (in the phrase gong fu (kung fu)). The other tattoo David has between the shoulder blades is Sanskrit - sunishcitam aashcaryavat! Anyway, welcome David. The totally awesome scholastic record will fit right in with all the other brains around here - the rest of us are just (almost) decorative. sumbloke

Oh Cheez! Not another old hippy on gayauthors! I mean, James and his Doors and Yes is bad enough but now we got another one?

Let her sing. I mean, if she's enjoying herself be happy - you can listen to the song later. I dunno, young kids today.