Despite the many issues facing the American People, it’s heartwarming to know that the GOP candidates for president can still take time out of their schedules to hate me and all the other members of the LBGT community. Did I say heartwarming? I meant sickening.

Since the bible is obviously so important to these people, I would like to know if they support denying farm subsidies to anyone planting different crops side by side. No? This is just about the family? Fine then. Let’s see a Constitutional amendment banning marriage between straight couples who cannot biologically reproduce. They can adopt you say, and children should have one father and one mother? Okey dokey, then what about Divorce? The bible has way more to say about Divorce than it does homosexuality, and it would by definition lead to single parent households. As they have established the concept that only Leave-It-To-Beaver style two straight parent households are acceptable to them, and this is all obviously their business for some reason, then outlawing divorce would be the logical next step right? Oh. Newt has been married how many times? So I guess he wouldn’t go for that.

OH and of course DADT must come back. Without it, our military will be forced to wear pink, and will be easier to shoot at. Or something. Who cares if they are qualified? Gays are not Americans to these people. And Americans can’t fight in the military. We are a Christian army, after all, and the Lord would surely smite us for our diversity.

These people make me ill. I must now go take a silk-wood shower.

And just like that, things get way more interesting, by which I of course mean more absurd. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, or as I like to call her, Ron Paul without education, has just announced in the middle of the Republican presidential debate taking place now in New Hampshire, that she has filed papers to run for President of the United states. Some thoughts:

• This has to be the first time that a candidate has declared during a presidential debate. One wonders what she was doing in that room before the announcement.
• She is insane. Let’s not forget that.
• I bet Rick Santourm would love to claw her eyes out about right now. I think he had his heart set on being the nuttiest person in the race. Poor guy. Maybe a little man on dog love would cheer him up.

That’s it for now, but watch this woman. She will set the tone for how far right the other candidates will need to go to win over the tea party. Hope Mitt Romney brought it tinfoil hat.

The best way to learn of new posts to brainpanonline.com is to follow me on twitter @egon2020! Be the first on your block to read the latest from BPO! Because that is important. Believe me.

To clear, Tracy Morgan should be ashamed of himself. He allowed his ignorance to get the better of him, and allowed it to consume his act. Beyond being a fine example of the bullshit gay people must endure on a daily basis, it is bad, amateurish comedy and speaks to a lack of craftsmanship on his part. We have enough crap to deal with, without having to spend time on this sort of stupidity.

As a gay man in a long term same sex relationship, I follow news pertinent to my community with great interest. The LGBT community is constantly under attack, and has been for as long as there have been LGBT people. I am also a passionate and longtime fan of stand-up comedy. My childhood was filled with countless hours of watching The Comedy Channel, the superior precursor to the modern entity known as Comedy Central. These passions intersect from time to time, almost always with embarrassing results. When straight comedians try to address gay issues, a certain lack of understanding is to be expected. Sometimes that lack of understanding is profound. Sam Kinison comes to mind. A great comedian, one I respect, but also one who managed to say some unbelievably hurtful and ignorant things about homosexuals. Even as I try to put his comments into context, allowing for the vastly different social attitudes and political climate at the time he was performing, they still manage to sting, despite my best efforts to look at them academically. And that is just one example.

Homophobic comments still pepper the acts of several successful stand-up comics, and in each case I make the same effort to put their comments into the proper perspective. If stand-up is in any way about truth, then the road to that truth frequently leads through questionable and tasteless areas, as it should. I try to have faith that good comedians will eventually get there, and I try to force myself to remember that for those who don’t, homophobia is the least of their problems. Comedians work their material like sculptors, painstakingly carving something out of nothing, and while sculptors have the luxury of working in private, comedians must do the ugliest of their work on stage, in front of people. I’m sure if you walked into Michelangelo’s studio and saw “David” as a work in progress, it probably wouldn’t look like much either.

Then again, Tracy Morgan is no Michelangelo.

I will not rehash his comments. They are well known, and if you have read this far, I expect you know them too. But how to judge them? They were, as has been often repeated over the last few days, said in the context of his stand-up act. I allow nearly endless forgiveness for the hard hat area that is an act-in-progress. Comics require that space to be effective. On the other hand, his comments were wildly ignorant, irresponsible and hurtful, in any context. Stand-up comedians can’t just say whatever they want without any fear of criticism. If they could, then their acts would have no meaning. The best comedy comes from line crossing, but if you choose to cross that line and are not funny once you get to the other side, then you have earned the reactions you get. The ability to walk that tightrope is part of what separates good comics from bad ones. Otherwise you are simply being a jerk-off in order to obtain a cheap laugh.

I expect part of the reason his comments hit so close to home for me, and many other members of my community, is that these are the precise opinions held by the worst of our tormentors. Stand-up acts are works of fiction. The problems we face are quite real, and the consequences are often life and death. We are not inclined to find his ignorant comments very funny when not provided alongside some greater insight. Maybe he hadn’t worked out the insight part yet. If not, I suggest that perhaps his gay chunk wasn’t quite ready for the stage.

We cannot know the true feelings Tracy Morgan has for the gay community. Unfortunately, his act is the only word we have from him on the subject. I would suggest he clear this up in some meaningful way. Or not. Whatever. Until then, I’m not feeling particularly inclined to give him much more thought. Bad comics don’t deserve much detailed consideration.

And to Tracy Morgan: Get better at your job, and I’ll be happy to give you another look. But seriously, bad first impression. Do better.

Also, a quick word about freedom of speech. This Tracy Morgan business has nothing to do with freedom of speech, which is among the most misunderstood aspects of American government. Aside from how unfortunate Mr. Morgan’s comments are, my big takeaway from reading internet comments and reactions to his deplorable rant is that people have a drastically inaccurate perception of what the notion of “Freedom of Speech” means. Tracy Morgan was not arrested by the government for his comments. If he had been, that would be a clear violation of his first amendment rights. As this did not occur, and as he has suffered no governmental sanction of any kind regarding his statements, no violation of those rights has occurred. Period. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism. It’s a little sad that we have to take time to explain that, but it’s something that every American should understand. I also find it deeply ironic that this specious “What about his freedom of speech” argument is being used to try to rebut this criticism. It truly shows the degree to which the first amendment is misinterpreted, usually by people who share Mr. Morgan’s sentiments. Agree or disagree with him regarding his content, but the question of his allegedly molested freedom of speech rights is not up for debate.

A vote is scheduled for Saturday on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Joe Lieberman has this to say:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the chamber’s top advocate for repeal, predicted the final tally this weekend would surpass the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a Republican filibuster. GOP opposition, led by Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, has blocked two previous attempts to overturn the policy in recent months.

“We have refused to accept defeat. No matter what happened, we just kept going. …” Lieberman told reporters. “And if I may borrow from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve had you might say our own legislative surge over the last week.”

We seem to have the votes. Cross your fingers everybody.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Passes the House

Alright Senate, I know you have a lot to do, and I hate it when I leave all my work for the last minute too, but let’s just get this done, OK?

You’ll feel much better when it’s over, and then you can all go play in the snow!

UPDATE:

According to TPM it looks like this is one vote away in the Senate. Olympia Snowe is a yes. Despite myself, my hopes are starting to rise.

Did you hear? THEY CURED AIDS!

It’s over, everybody! Bring on the risky and unprotected sex! The worlds supply of condoms will now have to be repurposed and used for candle snifters, or tiny handbags. The world is saved! Brilliant German scientists have brought an end to the world wide plague that is HIV!

Except they didn’t.

Here is the story via MSNBC:

In 2007, the man received a bone marrow transplant to treat his leukemia. The transplant — which treats leukemia by essentially rebooting the body’s immune system and creating new white blood cells —also had the benefit of wiping out the HIV infection. Now, three and a half years later, the patient remains HIV-free, which suggests he is cured of the disease, the researchers said.

OK. We have to be really careful here. One of the things that I am annoyingly earnest about is science education, and skeptical inquiry. I feel like an appreciation for the scientific method, and a firm and critical eye for what is and isn’t true are the most important tools you can have at your disposal when trying to make sense of the world. Part of this is being comfortable with not having clear answers. Science is very, very slow. Things are often not clearly known, and even less understood. The bar is much higher in the scientific community for what is and is not fact. Tests must be done, and then redone. Experiments must provide reliable, quantifiable results, over and over again, and must be throughly peer reviewed. Then again, results are in and of themselves substantial, and when something works, that’s hard to argue with. But we have to be careful using words like “cure”.

The article goes on to point this out:

So exactly why the patient doesn’t have any detectable HIV in his body remains a mystery. It’s possible that through the entire course of treatment, both types of HIV were eliminated from the body, Zack said.

However, “We don’t know if it would always happen, or whether there’s still some of that virus somewhere in the body that hasn’t been sampled,” Zack said.

Ultimately, the results would need to be reproduced before researchers could know whether this was an  option for treating HIV, Zack said. And, practically, finding donors would be a challenge — only one percent of Northern Europeans are known to have this particular mutation, Zack said.

What we have here is information. A specific set of circumstances produced a specific result in one documented case. It is, to be sure, a great big piece of information, but it is not proof of any effective method all by its encouraging little self. Information is always good. But, the only thing information gives us is the need for more information.

This is good news though. But let’s keep it together out there, OK?

Oh, and this guy had Leukemia, and HIV? Damn. That sucks. But he got cured of both. This guy’s life is bipolar.

I have been a Weezer fan since The Blue Album came out back when I was in high school, and let me tell you, it’s not been easy. Their recent work has been uneven, and Rivers Cuomo, the genius behind the band, tends to take an almost scientifically superstitious approach to song writing that seems to have been counterproductive. He keeps this crazy binder in which he breaks down Kurt Cobain and Green Day songs in this really analytical way to try to figure out the formula behind their genius, and thereby, find what I can only describe as the unified field theory for pop music. It eluded Einstien, so I don’t know how he intends to crack it, but whatever. Therefore, when he writes music, he winds up with several different versions of all of his songs.

Relax. This is not a huge rant about Weezer. I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

What I want to talk about is a song called Perfect Situation. I just love this song. I got Make Believe when it came out, and while much of the album is a little shaky, that one song is brilliant. It moved immediately to my iPod, and has lived there ever since.  When I recently signed up for a subscription music service, (a brilliant idea that I can’t believe I didn’t do sooner), Perfect Situation was one of the first songs I sought out.

So imagine my surprise when I played it, and found it totally changed.  The melody in the chorus had changed. There were backing vocals that hadn’t been there before. All the changes had been, in my opinion, poor ones. It was so hard to hear . What the hell was going on? I looked all over, but couldn’t find “my” version.

The reason? It had been replaced. To be clear, the older version had been completely removed from iTunes, and the streaming services, and the new, weaker version was substituted. An explination, vie Weezerpedia:

When Make Believe was first released, the version of “Perfect Situation” on the album featured one of two different melodies Cuomo originally wrote for the chorus. During the summer 2005 tour, when the band prompted the crowd to sing along, the fans, oddly enough, invariably sang the other original melody Cuomo had written. Cuomo stated in an interview during the band’s 2005 performance at the AOL Sessions, “Well, if these ten thousand people think it should go this way, maybe we should go back and re-record it.”

The remix includes re-recorded chorus vocals with the other melody, a synth track added to the first chorus (the original version only has it on the second chorus), and added backup vocals of “perfect situation” over the outro. The radio edit of this remix, served to radio and featured in the video, is eight seconds shorter than the album version, due to a shortening of the intro guitar solo.

Right.  So the other, older version, the one that had become among my favorite songs, had been deleted from existance because Weezer fans can’t sing it correctly.

I find this a little disturbing. Perhaps is the pre-internet fuddy-duddy¹ in me, but I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with the public informing art in this way. A world where paintings get repainted due to feedback on facebook.

Then again, movies have been doing this for years. Final cuts get put before Focus groups, and the results become reflected in the film that gets shown on opening weekend. There is a lifelessness in this approach. But Devo, another of my favorite bands, released an album this year, Fresh, in which all manner of aspects were decided via focus groups and song studies. And the album was excellent.

This could be a fundamental change in the way art is produced. Or, perhaps Rivers Cuomo should just stop over thinking his songwriting. But remember, Greedo shot first, and despite what crimes George Lucas chooses to perpetrate on his movies, there are people who will never forget that fact. And the rest of the planet could care less.

¹ That’s Right Gang, fuddy-duddy.

Who knew that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal would find it’s tireless champion in Joseph Lieberman? True to his word, he and Susan Collins have indeed introduced a stand alone bill to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

The Hill has a nice overview of what is going down:

At this point the standalone repeal bill is a last-ditch effort. The strategy has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is on standby to facilitate a successful vote in the House. Pelosi is part of the negotiations with the Senate to try to figure out the best and easiest way to pass repeal in the face of Republican opposition and a very crowded last week in session.

So this isn’t looking good. It goes on to lay out the intense logistical battle involved with actually getting this to where an actual vote could happen, and the process seems daunting to say the least.

And why is this so hard? Let me bring you some of the more charming entries from the comment section associated with the post:

The economy is in the tank, unemployment will be over 10% by January, and all the U.S. Congress is doing is concerning itself with making gay people happy. You can’t make this stuff up!

BY BALONEY GUY

Or how about this one:

Let us pray that our nation is spared this shame.

BY GEORGE

Or this delightful bit of nastiness:

I want the Army contract to supply stain remover to all the bases. There will be some serious crap stains to remove from sheets and cargo pants… big $

BY BUSHY

Awesome. As a gay person, these types of things are always alarming to read. But you can look in the comment section of any article regarding gay rights, and read basically the same types of things. In the opinion of these thoughtful posters, not only should gay people stop complaining about such trival matters as our civil rights, but we are also shameful, and will endanger the cleanliness of our nation’s linens with our sinful behavior at the slightest provocation.  And these types of messages are tame. The comments can become downright vile.

Regardless, the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell issue is a no-brainer, politically. It enjoys wide public support, and repeal is now the official recommendation of the military. The public is coming to accept the reality that gay people exist, and that it’s no big deal, and that demonizing us, and depriving us of our rights is probably not the right thing to do. In short, the public has become bored with this, and is ready to let this issue go.

This, I think, is the primary motivation for the current resistance. The prospect that it may become no longer acceptable to publicly hate gay people is a terrifying thought to many people, and that sort of fear breeds a very nasty brand of hate.

For example. When you hear people say that they don’t want homosexuality taught in schools, what they are really saying is “We don’t want our children to think that being gay is OK”, and when you hear opponents of DADT contrive one reason after another for why they oppose homosexual acceptance in the military, I feel like they are essentially trying to say the same thing. The argument comes down to “If we let them do respectable things like be in the military, then it will be so much harder to alienate them and say nasty things about them in public.” And it will. The future is breathing down the necks of those who have dedicated themselves to anti-homosexual bigotry, and they aren’t taking it very well.

And so it comes down to Joe Lieberman, and the ability of the congress to get it’s job done. An encouraging thought indeed.

This week marks the relaunch of brainpanonline.com. Brain Pan has been around in some limping form or another since 2004. I have always been a writer, without any real place to write anything, and Brain Pan was an attempt to solve that problem. Over time, it also became a way for me to work on my Web Development skills, a pursuit that eventually evolved into how I make my living. It also was part of the beginning of Fat Robot Radio, and everything that came of that. Even though this site as been up till now a sorry and pathetic mess, it was part of reason why my world looks the way it does today. It is embarrassing to think back to how bad the site was back when I started. And I assumed that what with the fliud and ever changing nature of the internet, these old sins would have been long wiped away.

But I forgot: But the internet is forever.

Thanks to the Way Back Machine, I was able to uncover that first site. Before I bought the domain brainpanonline.com, I ran the site for almost a year using free web hosting. I assumed that sites like this went back through and deleted old, inactive accounts, but this one apparently does not. No, readers, it is out there, just as I left it over 5 years ago.

This is fascinating to me. Our culture is leaving behind unintentional traces of itself in the dead parts of the web. Old profiles on dead social media sites, comments in long dead blogs, images uploaded to god knows where and left abandoned; all these things are still out there. They exist as weird little snapshots of where we were at a given time. And they will be out there, of interest to no one, telling the world about who we used to be.