Asides | BlackGayBlogger.com

Asides #51: The Post-Election Edition

Posted on 11/08/08 @ 4:01 pm

As the son of a mother who marched from Selma to Montgomery, a grandson to a grandmother who was one of many brutally hurt during Bloody Sunday, and being just one generation removed from (yet still steeped in) the history and struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, Barack Obama’s rise to the highest office in the land fills me with an inimitable sense of pride. A Black man in the White house opens the door for so many minorities in the US to a new sense of identity and a renewed patriotic spirit. It is an amazing feeling which, I’m sure, many in this country don’t understand. And that’s OK. Those differences of opinion and the right to express them are what makes this country great. With that being said, let’s now all work together with our new President in keeping things great.
Gay people in California (and elsewhere) who are outraged over Proposition 8’s passing: stop blaming Black people. You have a right to be angry – justifiably so, I would say. As a Black gay man, it hurts me to know that one of the most progressive states in the union is vehemently adamant against same-sex marriages. But getting angry (and in some cases hurling racial slurs) at such a small portion of the electorate is misplaced and highly ignorant. It gets even worse when you have gay blowhards like Dan Savage championing this ire, when anyone with a high school education and a basic understanding of statistics could tell you that the percentage of Black voters in the state of California hardly makes up the majority of the state’s population. That is, unless the Black vote suddenly counted for more than other minority groups. Or if there was an influx of new Black voters before November 4, maybe doubling or tripling the state’s current percentage and thus making this seem like a more viable claim. If so, then maybe they made up the 51% of voters that voted for Proposition 8.

What? You mean those things didn’t happen? Well hog gravy and chitlins….
And as a corollary, let me say that seeing this kind of bold-faced racism from non-Black gays towards Blacks is nothing new. But best believe that calling us niggers and other racial slurs will do nothing to endear us to the cause (whether we’re gay or not). Also, while I think that gay rights and civil rights are comparable, a lot of Black people don’t, regardless of religion, upbringing, locality, age, etc. Using the same imagery from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s doesn’t evoke the support of Blacks, and making it seem like Blacks owe the gay community (‘we got your freedom, now give us yours,’ as one person told me) just creates further points of contention. Oppression isn’t a pissing contest, my fellow homos, so cut the shit out because IT LEADS NOWHERE! Oppression doesn’t create a united front; hell, look at all the Black folks that were NOT for Obama in the beginning. I really think another approach is needed if the gay community wants the support of the Black community, and it can start by working with those who are members of both. (FWIW, when I mean gay community, I mean the entire gay community, not just the majority White gays.)

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Asides #50

Posted on 10/22/08 @ 11:02 pm

God, I am so ready for this election season to be muthafucking over. I’m tired of McCain’s backpedaling, Palin’s hatemongering, Obama’s door-to-door/phone call/e-mail brigade, Biden’s gaffes, the media’s back and forth analysis and these long ass lines for early voting. Actually, I don’t much mind the long lines for early voting; turnout is going to be crazy huge this year, so that’s a good thing.

I’ve been dealing with a homophobic handyman. When he last came to fix my refrigerator (it stopped running cold), he discovered my poster-sized display for the cover to Scott Poulson-Bryant’s Hung. After that, he was supposed to come back and reverse the doors on the fridge since he had them on in the opposite direction; thing is, he told the apartment manager he wasn’t going to fix anything in a faggot’s apartment (ouch!), which is why it took a week until today when he came to reverse the doors, as well as fix a broken knob in the bathroom. Thing is, I took a wicked shit maybe 5 minutes before he showed up, so he had to work through that funk.

Serves his punk ass right.

On a lark, I’ve decided to take up the ukulele. It just came in the mail today.

For some bizarre reason, Flash completely craps out on me in both Firefox and Chrome after about five minutes and I have no idea why. I’ve uninstalled plugins, done fresh installs, and the problem still persists. It’s a real pain in the ass when I have 20+ tabs open with videos and can’t even listen to them without copying and pasting the addresses from one browser to the next. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

I’m still on the fence about going to Morehouse’s homecoming this weekend. Buffy and I missed the fashion show, and true to my alma mater’s form, both concerts passed without any announcement of who the fuck’s performing. Morehouse generally picks someone they can beat for Homecoming, but their record so far this year is pretty bad, so I’m not hopeful. If anything, we can go ogle boys, drink beer out of Solo cups, and score some free food.

Some days I want a boyfriend. But more lately, I’ve just wanted someone to come home to that will rub my feet. I'll settle for both; how 'bout that?

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Asides #49

Posted on 09/28/08 @ 12:37 pm

I hear Lil Wayne is blogging for ESPN. I guess if the king of autotune can sell a milli albums in a week, his social media game should be as successful. Sike! We all know he abandoned that Twitter account of his months ago. Good luck on the ghostwriting, son.

I got an e-mail the other day for donations from some folks trying to name a species of monkey after the blogosphere. Now I've asked about the whole "monkey" meaning before — and in the tech sphere, "monkey" usually doesn't have a very favorable meaning either (see code monkey, for example). So I have to ask…why a monkey for this project? How about a spider? Or a gopher? Or you know, an animal that has a name which relates more closely to the web than a monkey.

Oh, now that I have technology on the brain, I should mention that I'll be at the 2008 Webmaster Jam Session next weekend. I do hope to see both minorities and females represented well as attendees (it is in Atlanta, after all), but we'll see if that's the case. Which reminds me…I need to get some cards made! I've already been caught assed out with no business cards at two conferences this year. Third time's the charm…or the last strike.

In less than 24 hours, I seem to have misplaced both my social security card AND my birth certificate. I probably stashed them somewhere in my apartment, but they're not in my files (nor are the high-res PDFs I thought I made). This is going to put a kink in my current job search streak since, y'know, they tend to ask for copies of that stuff. Replacing the social security card will be free, but the birth certificate will be $27. One dollar for each year! Lucky me.

I bought "Sex and the City - The Movie" from Amazon; they let you download it to your PC, mobile device, and/or TiVo. As soon as I bought it, it would not download to my TiVo, did not download to my PC, and I couldn't get my money back for a faulty download. Thanks Amazon…I'm getting it illegally now. Go electronic media distribution!

Buffy has been twisting my arm about trying to start another young Black gay male social group thingie. "We don't have anything to do here except go to the club and have sex." Now there are plenty of things to do here besides those two, but perhaps they aren't as explicitly Black and gay. Maybe that's where the problem lies. Atlanta is a huge city with a vibrant social atmosphere, but are singles (Black, gay and/or otherwise) limiting themselves socially by marginalizing their options to such a narrow scope?

That evening, after Buffy and I went to Piedmont Park to scope out the drunk, uncoordinated kickball league and the non-score taking, might-be-gay flag football league, I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with the bloggers behind The Excitable Bore, Forever I Love Atlanta, and From The Desk of Pimusique. I had a great time meeting them, even though I was sleepy and trying to avoid the big-tittied butch queen behind me from blowing smoke into my hair.

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Asides #48

Posted on 06/09/08 @ 3:31 pm

Hillary's out, Obama's in, and the GOP is gunning for him. I mean, just look at their website — little to no mention of McCain at all. Can we just get to November already? I've already got my Airtran ticket to DC and I want to be at Obama's inauguration. Please believe it.

So I went on a date yesterday with this guy I met online. For the most part, I wasn’t really into the guy since he withheld a lot of information about himself…namely, his grody fucking yellow nasty teeth. Dude had like a crusty layer of plaque on his upper gumline that was just wrong. When he leaned in for a kiss, I instinctively leaned back, which of course pissed him off. Can you believe that? Dude was a walking case of tartar buildup and he had the nerve to get pissy with me for not wanting a taste. Please.

He also lied about his age (said he was 30, was actually 38), but the plaque thing was much worse.

Speaking of dates, I have another date on Saturday before I leave town for vacation. It's actually a double date — Goofball and Milk-Chan with yours truly and their friend, Dr. T. I actually met him back in October of last year at a dinner party. The four of us are heading to a drag show in East Point (groan) for a local pet preservation charity. Granted, Milk-Chan and I will probably be the only people of color there, so this could be a toss-up as to how much of a good time I'll have. We'll see.

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Asides #44

Posted on 02/09/08 @ 10:31 am

Jesus, 2008 so far has turned out to be crazy as hell. Between the start-up, a new job and a new beau, I feel like a year's already passed even though we're just in February. Way too much time has passed and way to many things have happened, so I will probably end up doing a blogcast on it soon. Yes, you heard that right…a blogcast.

Actually, as I'm typing this, I'm sitting in the back of an auditorium at Kennesaw State University for SoCon '08, an annual social media conference. This is my second time here, and I hope it's a lot less entreprenueur-oriented than it was last year (last year, there was mainly a bunch of talk about angel investors and the like).

For those of you who don't know — or don't want to wait until the podcast — I'm back at Big Company, Inc. This is a positive thing in many ways. It's a better commute, the hours are more flexible, and a lot of things have changed since the last time I was here, so I can leverage some opportunities better (mainly programming and logistics behind the Black Weblog Awards).

Has anyone else been following this crazy ass political season? Obama, Clinton, Huckabee, McCain…I am intensely interested and invested in how this year's political climate has changed in this country. Obama really seems to be the Democratic wunderkind, but Hillary's not going down without a fight, and certainly isn't afraid to take it there. McCain reminds me of a turtle. Huckabee, while charismatic, just doesn't do it for me. And his wife kinda looks like she could be his sister. I mean, he is from Arkansas….

Mike and Janet Huckabee…separated at birth?

I'm still starting to come around back to blogging. Once I do the blogcast, I think that'll be a huge stepping stone to getting back to regular updates and such. Just bear with me, y'all.

Technorati Tags: blogcast, socon08, work, politics, super tuesday

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