The Dooryard

What to call the holiday?

What do you call the holiday that we're coming up on here in the U.S.? Most Americans refer to it simply as "The Fourth of July." That has bugged me for a long time. Well, "bugged" is a bit strong. I just don't like it as much as "Independence Day." There is no inherent meaning behind "The Fourth of July." Inherently, it's just another one of the 365 (or 366) days of the year.

Independence Day, on the other hand, stands for something - independence. It's why we celebrate the day. I would guess that most of America never really thinks about why we're lighting off fireworks and parading down Main Street America on this day every year. My guess is they're more interested in making sure their burgers are barbecued "well done" than why the Declaration of Independence actually says.

I wonder how many Americans could not articulate what the holiday actually means and why we celebrate it.

Me, though, I'll be thinking long and hard about independece and freedom, and what those mean to my life. They mean a lot.

Queer Eye for the Football Guy

For those of you who didn't catch it, my football league and I were featured on Queer Eye last night, with one of our members getting the Queer Eye make-over. Yes, they make-over even gay guys now - notice they've dropped the "for the Straight Guy" from their title.

I actually got featured more than I had anticipated. It was kinda cool. And let me tell you - those five guys seem very sweet. And Carson (left) is hysterical! I have to believe that 90% of the great moments they come up with on that show are Carson's brainchild. I saw him at the mayor's pride party last week, and he is actually quite dashing and so friendly and charming. It's no surprise he's the break-out hit from that show.

BTW, they cut my best line - when Thom said, "red team, you suck," I offered the predictable, "and blue team, you swallow." I got lots of laughs when I said it! You had to be there.

And, a little FYI - we LET him catch that pass. So, when the dad said Jeff said we weren't very good, that's why the bitch in me came out. The play before, our defender intercepted a pass to him. I told him to go easy on him. So, he let Jeff run right by him and Jeff caught the ball. Jeff is a good player, though. You can see he was a top scorer in our league last season.

If you didn't catch the episode and would like to, it's airing about 100 times this week - schedule.

Oh, and you gotta love the blatherings of Americablog, of course defending the New York Times and calling the Republican reaction McCarthyism. Bwahahaha! You gotta wonder if this guy knows how funny the stuff he prints is.

And BTW, you gotta love the thinking of the New York Times: They leaked the information about the bank surveillance because the public needed to know; and now that people are pissed, they're saying everyone already knew. Bwahahaha.

Is The New York Times Treasonous?

Please excuse me for harping so much lately on the liberal media bias. But, Ann Coulter's Slander has me all worked up about it.

Last night I watched two programs: Fox's O'Reilly Factor and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 (left). O'Reilly spent about a third of his program on the New York Times' leaking of sensitive LEGAL surveillance information, and how it undermined America's war on terror.

I could only stomach the first hour of Anderson Cooper; but he did not make any mention of the leak. Instead, he spent about an hour trying to make the case that the Pentagon was following the lead of the Democrats in devising a plan to pull out of Iraq.

News is supposed to be news. That is, it's supposed to be the hottest, latest topic that is of public interest. O'Reilly spent time talking about the Times' leak. And, for those of you who continue to insist that Fox News isn't balanced, he had four guests talking about it: A Republican Congressman against what the Times did, a Democrat Congressman for what the Times did, a conservative political analyst and a liberal political analyst.

Anderson Cooper harped on an ongoing issue that had no real development since last week, ignoring the topic that painted his liberal bedfellows badly.

What's my take on the NYT issue? They shouldn't have done it; every subscriber should cancel their subscription; I'll never buy the paper again (unless I forget that I made this promise); and the government should absolutely investigate the issue, though I'd stop short of prosecution unless they found something egregious.

Study: Want a gay son? Have more boys

This from the blodder of the totally ridiculous and complete waste of research money and time. There's a new study that says having several older brothers increases the likelihood of a boy being gay. This comes from a "study" of 944 Canadian men.

The researcher says that about 3% of people are gay (I think it's higher, but we'll just accept his assumption). When someone has three or four older brothers, that percentage may be as high as 5%! That's one in 20. That means that in his study of 944 Canadian men, a whopping 28 were likely gay; and maybe even 47 if they ALL had three to four older brothers. How in heavens name is that a sample worth reporting on?

Beyond that, while the focus is on this magical 5%, how about the 95% in the same situation that still AREN'T born gay? Now, Web sites are running stories with headlines like, "Men with older brothers more likely to be gay". No, they're more likely to be STRAIGHT!! I never thought the media would start trying to say that 5 is greater than 95; but, I guess we've come to that.

What I WOULD buy is saying that someone with fraternity brothers is more likely to be gay. That's a proven fact.

As I've said before, I don't think homosexuality has much to do with biology. I think we're all born with the capacity for preferring sex with the same sex; and something tips each of us one way or the other. I think it's society that forces us to choose between the two (few people are "allowed" by society to be bisexual), and that social forces drive 95% of the people to be straight (and no, I'm not saying orientation is a choice).

"The Revolution": TV at its best

My favorite show on television right now was written over 220 years ago. It's the History Channel's "The Revolution," which tells the story of the American Revolution in 11 exciting episodes. While most people connect the boredom they felt in seventh-grade American history class when considering the subject, the story here is instead told with all the excitement and bravado of an NFL Films presentation of the greatest football games every played.

Not only have I learned some things that I didn't know about the Revolution, but it is being presented in a wonderfully visual, memorable way. I'll never forget how Washington's colonial army slipped off of Long Island in the cover of fog when it looked as though the revolution would end before it began. Wonderful stuff.

What liberal media bias????

I'll show you. This was the lead sentence of an AP story on Yahoo about today's Senate vote on the withdrawal from Iraq:

"The GOP-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected Democratic calls to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by years' end, as the two parties sought to define their election-year positions on a war that has grown increasingly unpopular."

Seems fair, right? Wrong. The writer erroneously created a distinction between the Republicans, who "control" the Senate, and the Democrat party that is trying to save our troops from an "increasingly unpopular" war. Why the need for the party distinctions in the lead sentence? Is it germane to the story? No - it's deceitful and misleading.

It isn't until three paragraphs later that you find out the vote that defeated the proposal was 86-13. That means that MOST Democrats, by over a 5-to-2 margin, voted with the "GOP-controlled Senate" and voted against the bill. A lesser proposal was defeated by mostly (but not entirely) Republicans, 60-39.

So, why did the writer interject the false impression that the Republicans were beating down the peace-loving Democrats? I'm assuming it was to mislead the reader.

But it gets better. A similar story was posted on ABCNews. The second paragraph reads:

"Democrats demanded that the U.S. begin withdrawing troops from Iraq this year, while Republicans echoed President Bush's call to stay the course ahead of Senate votes on Thursday that illustrate the choice facing voters in midterm elections this fall."

In that three-page story, the actual vote wasn't listed ANYWHERE.

Good Things: Mister Softee

I'm not sure how far from New York City this incredible brand stretches, but Mister Softee gets my $2 two or three times during the week in the summer. Mister Softee is a soft-serve ice cream company, and their trucks can be found within five blocks just about anywhere in Midtown and Downtown Manhattan during the summer. One is parked just outside my office at 28th & Broadway every day it doesn't rain.

I used to only go for the vanilla cone with the rainbow sprinkles. But lately I've been diving into the chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. Both are a delight. Especially on a hot afternoon, just getting out of work, and I haven't eaten anything in three hours.

I worked at a Dairy Queen for four years through high school and college, and I don't remember the ice cream being as good as it is at the Mister Softee truck.

Or maybe I just like saying, "Mister Softee." Nah.

I'm not dumb and I love being gay

I figured I'd better put this out there, as I continue reading more and more conservative literature, agree more and more with it, and start espousing more of it here. The liberals, especially the gay liberals, who find this blog are going to want to call me names. So, let me give you some guidance as to which names to call me.

For the record, I'm not dumb. I'm not stupid. I'm not uneducated. In 1991, I graduated from Harwich High School in Massachusetts number three in my class with a 4.0 GPA.
In 1995, I graduated from Stanford University with a 3.3 GPA. I might not be the absolute smartest person in the world (I think my junior-year roommate, Garheng Kong, is that person). But, I'm not stupid or dumb. So, to all of you liberals who may come on here and want to call me "stupid," please know that that isn't going to fly.

I'm also not a self-hater. That's one that liberals love to call gay conservatives. I'm super happy being gay. And if I had to choose between being gay and being straight, I'd keep my "friend of Dorothy" card. So, no calling me a self-hater.

That certainly leaves "crazy" up for grabs. "Insane" is in the game, too. So, I supposed you can call me those things. God knows, when you stumble across this blog, you're going to want to call me names. So stick to those that question my potential chemical imbalance; and stay away from my intelligence. Thanks!

An Inconvenient Truth

It is really irrelevant that An Inconvenient Truth is a bad movie, as far as movies go. It doesn't try to be a movie. It is a filmed lecture, given by former Vice-President Al Gore, about the dangers of CO2 emissions and the effects they're having on our world.

I'm a conservationist at heart. Always have been. So, what he had to say really did hit home. I don't think for a secont that everything he said was entirely truthful. But, his general ideas about conservation of energy and improving the environment of the world we live in all made sense to me.

Since I saw the movie last Friday, I've taken the stairs instead of the elevator 10 times (and I live on the sixth floor and work on the ninth). I've turned lights off more often. I've taken a train or walked instead of taking a cab, which I usually would have done, twice. I'm doing my part in this, and I will continue to do so. Because whether or not everything in that movie was 100 percent accurate, I see no bad coming from reducing the amount of energy I use and getting a little more exercise. I hope more people will do the same.