I just about died when a classmate pointed me to this bush/kerry slash piece in The New Yorker. It is so brilliant in every way. It is slash, published in a mainstream publication. So at least one good thing came out of this horrific election season.

Took the train from Newark to Providence today, which meant passing through Penn Station. Lots of cops on the train, which is atypical. Amtrak usually has all of zero security, beyond actually making you sign your ticket if you buy it with a credit card. I'd left my bag up at the front of the car, and one officer held it up and I had to identify it as mine. What struck me, though, was that he certainly wasn't doing this for every bag. All the ones up in the overhead rack might or might not have belonged to the people sitting beneath them. It seemed like the biggest hurdle to leaving, like, a duffel bag on the train with a bomb in it and having it go off under the Garden was that we were running 20 min. behind schedule. Hi Ashcroft, you can bug my apartment now. There was a dog on at one point, though, presumably sniffing for bombs. Phew.

When I got to Providence, an airplane was flying in circles with a banner advertising Dunkin' Donuts(tm) iced lattes(tm) streaming behind it. You know how in every town there's one store or company that seems to virtually own it. Like in NYC it's Duane Reade, and in Philly it's WaWa I guess. Well here it's Dunkin' Donuts (note the 15 DDs w/in 3 miles of my zip code and the Dunkin' Donuts Center). What I was actually thinking was: what a cool job, flying a plane around in circles all day.

According to the New York Times, Brown is instituting gender-neutral housing to accommodate the needs of transgender (and like-minded) students. This got me thinking about Swarthmore's co-ed housing option, which was instituted in 2001 because of dedicated advocacy by some of my friends. So I asked google for an update. Now, Brown already has co-ed housing, so what's making news here is transgender-specific housing options, particularly for incoming freshman (who don't get to pick their own roommates in the lottery). Times are a changin'.

Meanwhile, the debate on gay marriage rages on. Like a good queer, I find the institution of marriage incredibly problematic, and certainly don't want to be associated with it in any way. But I was converted to the cause by this article, which all good queers should read.

The reactionary backlash shows its lighthearted side on Comedy Central's new show "Straight Plan for the Gay Man," a parody of phenomenon "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" which is just as offensive as I feared. For all Queer Eye's problems (e.g. sanitizing gayness into a matter of consumer practice not sexual politics), it does explore and intervene in gender norms in interesting, productive, and downright entertaining ways. Straight Plan reverses this trend in the following ways (judging from the one episode I watched tonight):

You may have heard some of the hype about the groundbreaking online voting process that is available for the Michigan Democratic primary. Well, I'm fully in favor of online voting -- provided it works. I registered (which you also do online) once in early January. Nothing ever came in the mail (you are supposed to get a ballot with instructions). Then, my mom registered me again a couple weeks ago. Her ballot and my brother's came, but no word on mine. Today, I finally got around to calling the party. There is no way to track individual registrations, they said, hence no way to say why I never got a ballot or to provide me with one at this point. I'd have to go to the caucus in person to vote, which obviously I can't do. So ironically (or perhaps this is evidence of a conspiracy?), after all my hoopla for Dean, I don't get to vote. I am not amused. On the bright side, though, my mom and my brother have sympathetically agreed to vote for Dean "for" me. Mom was for Kerry until she read my rant (posted here). Michael (according to her) didn't really care. So that's two sympathy votes for Dean instead of my one legitimate vote.