New personals ad

Seeking: dorky gay guy. Must be articulate, supportive, and intellectually inclined, some competitiveness okay. Gentleness and sensitivity strongly preferred. Ambition and environmental consciousness desired. Endearing awkardness a plus. Fondness for scifi, comic books, strategy and/or roleplaying games (board, tabletop, and/or computer), On again/off again or more frequent gym habit, familiarity with computers, particularly open source, also pluses.

C’mon a guy can dream, right? If you know such a person, in chicago, minneapolis, or possibly le bay area (assuming I get offered a job with gao, and swing a transfer), please, do arrange to introduce us.

[ETA: in retrospect I’m thinking the “musts” could use a “must be able to handle complex syntax with grace, see below”.]


This poll has been brought to you by the letters S, C, and U. Please, do not attempt to take it seriously, do not operate heavy machinery afterwards, consult your PCP if vomitting persists.

Latter Days

I’ve been wanting to see Latter Days for awhile now. I could swear I remember recommending it. Or maybe disrecommending it… Anyway what better time to watch it, then when I’m flying so that I can distract myself from irrational anxieties? I think the movie rocks. It may even be in the lower echelon of my favorite 10. Probably not the top ten best movies ever, but I had a number of themes I found very appealing. The skin factor gave me a moment or two of discomfort playing it on the plane next to a mother whose son was sitting just on the other side of her, but oh well.

Latter Days is the story of a mormon missionary and a gay waiter tramp. boy meets boy, and… *spoilers*

Batman Begins and Fantastic Four

I saw Batman Begins almost two weeks ago with and . Aside from some (major) physics beefs, mostly related to the doomsday device, it was a good movie. And it had a philosophical notion or two buried in there. “It’s not who you are on the inside, it’s what you do that matters.” The theme of redemption is another big one. Not bad on the skin, better for those into bruises. The special effects eye candy was good.

Friday night I saw Fantastic Four with Mitch (the roomie), Tom (friend of mitch, from nebraska, 2nd generation japanese immigrant), and Adam and Troy (gay couple, formerly downstairs, no sex relationship). Troy was doing the driving. Some lively political discussion ensued. Troy voted for Bush, probably as a ‘moral values’ thing, and is somewhat upset with how things have been going. I pity the boy. He has a few places of not-broken-ness. I noted the gas prices on the way to the theater and was appalled that they were in the $2.50 range. The speed of their ascent worries me.

As for the movie itself, total fan service. And, ya know, I’m okay with that. Chris Evans (with a nice hairy chest, thank you) naked in a pool of hot water in the snow? Jessica Alba in her skivies in public? A movie centered around showing off their powers? The science here is enough to make me cry, so I just ignore it. The plot that shows up for the first 15 minutes and the last 25 minutes hangs together well enough. Total explosions, skin, superpowers fluff. And I liked it. I expected Miss Alba to be totally implausible as science chica based on the previews and one review. She doesn’t exactly make the most credible scientist, most of the female science types I know are not going to crack a gasket over people using words like the noun “variable” in the discussion of interpersonal relationships, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Thing’s story is told with some depth and sensitivity, he pretty much makes the show, as much as any of them do.

Yes, I’m complaining about comic book movie ‘science’. That’s like two giant steps away from anything resembling reality, and I weep for the future, but so it goes. =)

Character Concept

The character concept as it currently stands is a lycanthrope/undead hunter, bastard child of an illicit affair between two aristocratic merchant houses. In his adolescence he develops a mark with magical powers from his father’s house. He hides the mark, runs away from home, and lives in the wild for a time, where he is picked up and trained by a forest warden. He enjoys the work, but finds the life too solitary, so he wanders again, this time to larger places, and finds his place in the Church of the Silver Flame. Here he thrives and grows into his purpose.

Years pass.

Tailing a werewolf in a farflung jungle, he follows her into a set of overgrown ruins, and stepping through a moss covered stone arch, he finds himself in a park on the edge of an enormous, interplanar metropolis. After a few days, he finds himself lost, hungry, and with no obvious way back home, his target nowhere to be found. He finds a few adherents of his church in a community, but no authority figure guiding them. As they teach him about his new home, he begins to take on a leadership role within the community. Protecting them and finding a way back home are key goals for *insert name here*.

Human, male, 32yo Ranger 2/Paladin 4
str 16 dex 6 con 12 int 12 wis 12 cha 14 + 2-5 points (first two: con, next two: wis, last one: cha)

skills concentrated in survival (for tracking), search, riding, maybe knowledge religion, & nature, concentration.

feats: least and lesser dragonmark of passage (expeditious retreat 2/day and dimension door 1/day), knight training (can freely take levels of ranger without mucking up his ability to progress as a paladin), and something else.

Ranger fighting style will probably be two-weapon, but irrelevant (he’ll typically be in heavy armor, though if he’s tracking people through a jungle, I suppose full plate might be sub-optimal). Favored enemy will be lycanthropes.

baiting the tiger: HIV revisited, what constitutes sufficient evidence

Sorry, can’t resist.

So, I ask you, and and anyone else who is convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS: what would constitute sufficient evidence that HIV _is_ the cause of AIDS?

And I ask those of us who believe that HIV does cause AIDS: what would constitute sufficient proof to convince us that it does not?

I’ll start

Since he asked so nicely

invited me to list 5 of my idiosyncracies…

This is harder than it sounds. I feel like I’m made of idiosyncracies, but when I try to come up with them, identities or other not-really-idiosyncracies come to mind. For instance, veganism doesn’t count. That’s more identity politics. But I digress. My list…

  1. I like living in a unit with several people, but must have my own bedroom. If I have a single or an efficiency, I will spend extraordinary amounts of time with friends who have more populous homes.
  2. I put pillows on my head and wear them as hats. Also laundry baskets, pots, bowls, and other such non-hat items.
  3. When flying, I generally cross my arms on my knees, lay my head on my arms, and nap that way. Typically I wake up with one of my arms asleep, in 10-15 minutes.
  4. I think A1 is the best condiment for fries
  5. I bounce. When I’m bored, hyper, meeting new people, hanging out with old friends, by myself, whatever. I bounce.