once again another valentine’s day rolls around and marriage equality is still a big issue in a lot of places. put aside your flowers, candy, romantic gestures, and dinners, the feast of st. valentine’s is about sacrifice. more specifically it’s about being willing to give your life for something you believe in, which i suppose is the ultimate sacrifice.
the version of st. valentine that i grew up with, and is most useful for this narrative, is he was priest in early rome who was beaten, stoned and eventually beheaded for disobeying claudius ii’s edict forbidding christian couples from marrying. i’m going to let that sink in – beaten (with clubs), stoned and eventually (when the beating and the stoning didn’t kill him) beheaded for marrying couples the state refused to recognise.
interesting how a single word can affect the legitimacy of your love. christian. interracial. gay.
take a moment on this manufactured (greeting card/candy makers), co-opted (lupercalia) holy day and make a small sacrifice of your time (write some, encourage your political leadership to recognise marriage equality) or money (donate to an organisation that supports marriage equality), there are people already losing their lives in ways quite similar that early roman priest over a word.
In late 2000, I asked a former employer and friend, Joey Clarke to write me a letter of recommendation. What follows is what he wrote. 12 Years later it still brings a smile to my face and is one of my fondest memories of my now deceased friend.
To whom it may concern,
If Keifel Agostini was half as good as he thinks he is, he would be better than anybody. As it is, however, thank God that art requires few straight lines, as he can’t draw them.
As a colleague, he beggars description. “Loud”, and “boisterous” may give you some idea, but they fail to do him justice. Think Attilla the Hun (the aggression, not the strategy), Machiavelli (the arrogance, not the literacy), and Dr. Williams (the deafness, not the dignity). Throw in a touch of Idi Amin (the looks, not the power), and you’ve got the idea.
Assuming you’re running an abattoir or a rugby team, you can probably find a place for him. Keep chains on hand, and lock up your daughters.
on wednesday i celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary. this is the longest single relationship in my entire life and the time has flown by. it’s not been a cakewalk, there have been many ups and downs but we’ve got through them and we’re going to keep going. when i first arrived in the US; two years after our actually wedding; i talked about how as much as it seemed like, our relationship was not going to be a fairytale.
i mean that in the most positive way, society seems to set this expectation that once your significant other woos you, sweeps you off your feet and nuptials are over, you live happily ever after. you can but you have to work at it. there is no short cut. there are going to be bad days, there are going to be worse days, and there will be arguments, this is to be expected. but there will be days that are so amazing, you will wonder what you’ve done to deserve something so spectacular. the key is to remember the balance. you have to work on this amazing relationship every day. don’t go to bed angry is good, but to wake up and remember why you fell in love is better.
my 30s have been my best decade to date and i think a lot of it has to do with my relationship. i’d like to think i’ve grown and gotten better as a person, i could also be delusional. i know i am happier and i’m finally comfortable saying it out loud. i’ve enjoyed the last 10 years – through the sickness, the health, the poorer, the richer, the sadness, the happiness and i’m looking forward to continuing to remember why i love this woman every day.
After close to a decade of disenfranchisement, I have the opportunity to vote in the 2012 US Presidential election and by my thinking my choices are severely limited.
Even when I lived in Trinidad I found it difficult to vote along party lines and in the last elections I had a chance to participate in, I ‘wasted’ my ballot with none of the above pencilled in. I long for a representative system that pays more than lip service to representation. I remember reading about a prefecture somewhere that appointed representatives in a jury duty type system – you get called up, you serve for two years, at the end of the term there is someone new. limited opportunities to get entrenched and greedy.
In what is fundamentally a two party system, both sides have become entrenched and greedy. I’ve observed previously that in order to get elected nationally you require a vast amount of money and in order to get that money you’re going to have to start compromising. Either in the beginning by whose money you accept or once the election is over, what is owed to your major contributors.
Currently the Republican party is attempting to find a candidate that they believe can beat Barrack Obama. Looking at the candidates that remain I’m yet to find one that appeals to my values as a voter or doesn’t completely scare me with their beliefs.
it’s been a while since the wife and i put together a mix but based on the success of the last one, we decided to put our own spin on a holiday collection.
Track Listing:
Ice – Shelleyan Orphan
That Was the Worst Christmas Ever! – Sufjan Stevens
Christmas Card from a Hooker In Minneapolis – Neko Case
The Christians And The Pagans – Dar Williams
The Rebel Jesus – The Chieftains
Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues
Father Christmas – The Kinks
A Christmas Duel – Cyndi Lauper, The Hives
Christmas Tree’s On Fire – Holly Golightly
Outsourcin’ Christmas (The Unemplyed Little Elf Song) – The Canadian Dollars
Christmas Reindeer – The Knife
St. Stephen’s Day Murders – The Chieftains
All I Want for Christmas – Timbuk 3
Merry Christmas From The Family – Jill Sobule
click here or on the image above to download, hope you enjoy.
My boss died today. And although there are numerous more eloquent eulogies out there, I thought I’d add one more to the growing pile of accolades.
The first time I experienced Steve Jobs change the world I was covering the Macworld Expo in NY and he announced with some fanfare the floppy was dead and introduced the very first iMac. Over the years, I was fortunate to be present for quite a few keynote speeches and one of my favorite ‘One more thing moments’ was the Boss conceding that hockey puck mouse was not the greatest design and surprising everyone sitting in the keynote at the Javitz Center the brand new trackball less mouse.
Steve Jobs officially became my boss in May 2005 and in the last six years, from part-time on the sales floor to full time tech support, I’ve participated in the launch of four iPhones, two iPads, three operating systems, the transition from PowerPC to Intel. I’ve introduced people to devices that have changed their lives, I’ve helped them get back on track when their favorite device doesn’t quite do what they expected it to and showed them how make the computer they’ve had last just a little bit longer. I’ve empathized over lost papers and saved the documenting of entire first year of life.
Thank you Steve Jobs, for giving me and tens of thousands of retail employees the power to help people in whatever way we could. You didn’t hire each of us individually but your vision created the space for us to exist and I’m honored to have had you as my fearless leader.
when your daily commute is done in a 10 year old car with close to 250,000 miles on it, you have to make decisions about maintenance and usage. with this is mind, we decided that our 2002 Madza Protoge 5 would be an in town car and an road trips would involve a rental of some sort.
This weekend during trips to Cincinnati and Chattanooga we managed to put a little over 1,000 miles on a Chrysler 200. With that amount of time in the car, I thought it would be a good idea to document the experience.
I have to start of by saying I don’t like the car. There are some great features but overall I don’t think I’d rent this car again, much less purchase one. The car is marketed by Hertz as a standard vehicle, other vehicles that I’ve rented from them that fall into that class include the Nissan Altima and Madza 6. By this standard and looking at the exterior of the car, I expected a much roomier vehicle.
My primary disappointment with the car in the interior space. I spent the first 10 minutes in the car adjusting the seat and steering wheel finding a comfortable position far enough away from the looming dashboard. It seemed no matter how far back or how high or low I adjusted the steering column I could not find an ideal position that didn’t feel like the steering wheel was in your lap or uncomfortably on my knees. Eventually I settled for the seat about 80% of the way back. This presented another problem, with the seat that far back there was almost no room for an average height adult to fit behind me. The problem was the same on the passenger side. After three days of multiple hour trips and constant adjustment to the seat, I still found myself getting out the car with hip and ankle discomfort. Sadly, this is not a family road trip car.
If I could ever get comfortable, I would have really enjoyed the minimal car noise, the quality of the sound system, the clever placement of the volume, mode and channel buttons behind the steering wheel and the voluminous trunk space. There were two other things that were mildly disappointing in this experience. First, the lack of indication when the cruise control was engaged. The word ‘cruise’ lights up on the dash when you enable it but there is no other indication when you’ve set a speed and the ‘manual’ gear shift is sluggish and almost useless on any kind of elevation change.
In terms of fuel efficiency, I managed to do 1069 miles of interstate and stop and go driving on 35 gallons of gas which works out to be approximately 31 mpg. The pickup on the car is not bad on the flat but on inclines it’s best to remain in the slow lane.
Overall the car, looks OK from the outside but requires some fundamental changes to the interior, like trimming about six inches off the dash and back seat bench, to compete in the family sedan market.
As an expat, I was trying to avoid making a public comment on the state of emergency in Trinidad. I’m not there, haven’t been there for a while, so I have no real concept of what’s going on a daily basis.
And here comes the ‘but’
One of the things I’ve always been proud of is good or ill you can say your piece and they’re always people who would. You don’t have to like them or what they were saying but they could and often times did.
In 2003 Trinidad was tied for 5th with Denmark in the World Press Freedom index and it was moment of true pride for me. Since then we’ve consistently slid down the ladder and in the 2010 index, we lay sandwiched between Latvia and Poland in 30th.
To compile this index, Reporters Without Borders prepared a questionnaire with 43 criteria that assess the state of press freedom in each country. It includes every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). And it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations.
Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2010
How the index was compiled
I thought I would be content to keep my mouth closed and let the state of emergency pass and for the government to realise what an abject failure that particular exercise was until this showed up in my news feed. Really, we’re keeping company with Egypt and China? For all the wrong reasons no less? Drafting legislation to deal with the regulation and monitoring of social media? Have these people been paying attention? What kind of backward, ignorant, clueless thinking is that? Oh wait, it’s the same kind of thinking that brought the state of emergency into play in the first place.
I recently had an opportunity to spend a couple of days in DC and visit the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art museums. As a designer I have a hateful relationship with modern art. I believe a lot of it horrendous and benefits from inflammatory press releases, gallery/museum curators looking to make a name for themselves and slow news cycles.
i don’t need three paragraphs to tell what i should see in a piece of art. it should be able to stand on it’s own, make me pause and think. maybe it’s an underlying societal problem, everything has to be given to us, we can no longer think for ourselves and art as a reflection of society is heading down that path.
Hockey intro at American Art Museum
Someone pointed out to me that I should say I dislike museums/galleries as opposed to modern art itself because they choose what is presented. But conversely if all they have to present is crap then what are they supposed to do?
But based on my experience I think a lot of what passes for modern art is lazy. There’s a lot of slap this together and get it out the door and make it controversial, make attract attention and we’ll be rich/famous in our lifetime. While at the museum, I came across a sign. Now aside from the video installations none of the other pieces in the museum had this kind of preamble associated with it and unsurprisingly it was by far the worst piece in the place.
I’ve had an opportunity to experience both the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern. The former left me with a feeling of awe and inspiration, while I departed the latter before I was removed for running commentary. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve been to either and while I can’t tell you about any of the trite shit that Tate should have just kept in storage, I do remember coming around the corner to see Joseph Wright’s The Blacksmith. I’d post a photo but you can’t get the feeling of warmth that almost emanates off the original painting. That painting didn’t a press release or explanation, it stops you and draws you in.
As the old adage goes, I may not know art, but I know what I like. I’ve included a gallery of stuff that I saw and liked at the American Art Museum.
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- Hockey intro at American Art Museum
today is my ninth wedding anniversary and there’s something that i wrote when i was just getting ready to move in with vic that has remained true almost seven years later:
vic and i are not living in a fairy tale and we know that. things are not going to be peachy and perfect all the time. we both have our off days, luckily we seem to have them when we can provide the most support to each other.
we’re both strong willed people and we’re both accustomed to doing things a certain way, we’re sure it’s going to take some getting used to.
what we have going for us, is our ability to talk about anything without discomfort or contention. we expect there will be problems, but we also think we can sit and talk about them and work them out. there are going to be external forces to deal with as well, but we will try and work those out in the safest possible manner for us.
we’re going to try and deal with each day as it comes. we have shared long term goals that we’ll be working towards when i get settled. in the interim, it’s about learning to live with each other and getting comfortable sharing a physical space.
i know it’s not going to be perfect all the time but i think if we abide the rule to not go to bed angry, i think we can face whatever challenges come up, together.
we’ve had our ups and downs in the time since i wrote this. and i would say the last year has probably been one of our most trying but we made it through and here’s looking forward to our 10th anniversary and beyond.
