Day: June 25, 2006

Variety Makes Us Stronger: Atlanta Pride Parade 2006

This isn’t my Atlanta Pride picture, but I love it. Click to picture for Far Left’s story behind the shot.

It was a year-ago this weekend that my wife and I visited Atlanta for the first time, and searched Mid-Town for apartments. Our building manager apologized for the parking situation, it was Pride Weekend 2005 and parking was at a premium. We loved the neighborhood and building. Now this year, we walked to Pride, and got rained out in the process. But we did get to see Dykes on Bikes start the parade off as well as good chunk of the other people in the event. And then we walked a few short blocks home, happy to be this close to the parade route.

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There’s a bit of a brouhaha over gay pride and culture between Duane and ATL Malcontent . I have a couple of of gay friends who have relocated from San Francisco to LA. Both academic professional, both have either had strained family relationships or have been completely disowned because of being gay. Like ATL Malcontent, they don’t identify with pride parades, flaming queers and in-your-face activism.

To me this argument would be almost like being told I was a self-loathing straight guy because I didn’t embrace the sex-and-spectacle event that was Spring Break in Daytona Beach. Having participated in one while in college, if that wasn’t Straight Pride Week, then I don’t know what was. When I told people that spring break was a miserable time, I got asked how I couldn’t have had a great time with all the titty and beer. Because, it was retarded, full of drunk driving and watching people fuck in the parking lot of our hotel just didn’t hold the same appeal for me as my roommates at the time. And yet I don’t feel lesser for it.

Back to Duane, ATL Mal. and everyone else who has a stake in this conversation. My point is the sand box is big enough for everybody, be it Mary Cheney and log-cabin Conservatives, leather-loving bears to twinkle-fairy club kids, and every degree and moderation between. Variety, difference and dissension are all good things. And that holds true for every persuasion, orientation, social movement, religion and ethnic group.

And that’s my 2 cents.

I Am What I Surf: or… If I Can't Remember It, Did It Really Matter?

I was surfing my usual websites, which include: Memeorandum, Arts & Letters Daily, Boing Boing, Drawn!, BibliOdyssey, and Largehearted Boy, amongst my many daily diversions.

My wife will peer curiously at me, relentlessly combing the Internet and ask with both curiosity and skepticism, “What are you looking at?” How to answer? These and many other sites offer daily introductions to things artistic, musical and technological. But what am I looking at? Many are blogs, or sites composed of contributing users that post their personal musings.

What….?

Hipster Intelligentsia,
trendy pursuits,
internet-enabled groupthink.

All these things capture the main attractions of my favorite sites. It like panning for gold, trying to tease little nuggets of goodness that I can bookmark, google, explore and put into a growing category of “Interesting Things.” And the like-minded community of online enthusiast are more then able to provide a collection of intriguing leads. To a degree, these site do turn into an echo chamber, where each on has been turned on to the same thing at the same time, and reducing the actual amount of new things to read about.

Truth be told, if I was forced to slow down and was quizzed, I’d be often hard pressed to tell you what I actually read. Many times, I would only be able to tell you is that I felt like I worked hard and it was really enjoyable. If all the new tech news, trendy designs, cool mp3s, rediscovered Victorian prints, etc don’t take hold in my memory, what was their worth.

I love me the internet and I spend so much time with it. Just trying to figure if a majority of that time is well spent.

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In the mean time….

I like
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Gizmodo
Daily Rotten
Copy, Right?
Fluxblog