Darkside Rainbow

For replay of the webcast you can either listen below or download the full MP3 (including musical interludes) here. If you’re easily offended by racial insensitivity, do yourself a favor and don’t click this one.

[Audio player under the cut. Chat log below the audio player. It's like leaving 3-year-olds alone for extended periods of time. With copious quantities of crack.]

Click to view full-size.

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…okay, that’s a teeny bit of a lie. It was a bit of laziness, as I was too jittery about the second DR Live Webcast yesterday to do any drawing before the broadcast, and felt too much like a wet noodle after. Brain-fried. Totally. While being lazy, though, it’s also a tiny homage to the 500 comments contest and the sheer insanity that went on there. That post is going to live on in infamy for the rest of this website’s days.

So if you missed it, last night was the second DR Live Webcast, and it was a mess. There’s quite a bit of sputtering, growling, and cursing right there on the webcast, because there was something majorly wrong with the broadcast and either my computer or my connection was being evil. It sounds like something out of White Noise or Fear Dot Com. It should still be understandable, though…I hope. I can’t stand the sound of my own voice, so I’m not listening to find out.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, though; the turnout was surprising. It was fun keeping up with you guys in the chat room afterwards (and Hikaru, thanks for keeping up with the log for me this time so we caught all of it).

I’m out of things to say, except to backtrack to something a bit more serious: April Gilford, the one who tipped me off to the CWA article about gay men and staph infections, has done her own post on the article over at Life as a Christian Woman. In it she covers a lot of facts about MRSA, dispelling much of the fear-mongering and myth that the CWA article tries to spread. It’s definitely an insightful read, and worth every word. Head on over there and have a look.

I’m out. Ciao.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, darkside rainbow live webcast, gay talk radio, christian news wire, homophobia, mrsa, staphylococcus aureus

For replay of the webcast you can either listen below or download the full MP3 (including musical interludes) here. [Side note: you are listening to a recording and not a live broadcast, so please do not IM me while listening to the recording. Unless I'm broadcasting live, I will not respond.] Sorry that the audio quality on this one isn’t that great; the mic and computer were doing something really odd and really annoying, so now it sounds like a broadcast on the radio band of the dead. I’d have edited out the pauses and the frequent rounds of cursing while trying to fiddle with it, but then the chat log wouldn’t make any sense, now would it? You can amuse yourselves laughing at my annoyed spluttering, at least.

[Sticking the player under the cut this time so it won't start to auto-load 37MB of audio every time you load the page. Chat log below the audio player.]

It’s Friday, which means it’s time to wind down, step off the pulpit, and end the week with a snort, a snicker, and some good ol’ schadenfreude.

Anti-Gay Ex-Congressman Charged With Terrorism - 365gay.com

(Washington) A GOP former member of Congress who attempted to pass anti-gay legislation is accused of working for an alleged terrorist fundraising ring that sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida supporter who has threatened U.S.

Mark Deli Siljander was charged Wednesday with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about being hired to lobby senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

Siljander was a Michigan Republican when he was in the House from 1981-1987. In 1987 he was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year.

As a member of Congress Siljander attempted to get legislation passed that would ban gay-themed books removed from public libraries. He also attempted to block a half-million dollar federal grant to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence claiming the group was run by “pro-abortion, pro-lesbian, anti-Reagan radical feminists.”

The 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying - money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Ahem.

So we’re the threat to world peace, are we?

[insert raucous, hysterical laughter here]

Let’s see: kissing a member of the same sex, wanting to be able to legally marry, demanding equal rights and discrimination protection in the workplace, asking to be acknowledged as worthwhile members of society, as normal as the Cleavers…that’s all wrong, and according to some (right here in Texas, too) should be punishable by hanging.

But lying, theft, money-laundering, funding people who have a fun little hobby of blowing things up in this grand ol’ nation of ours…hey, that’s okay, right? Right? Guys? Crickets?

No, there’s no imbalance there at all.

The largest issue here is that of the charity, and Siljander is only incidentally involved - but I can’t help a touch of smugness that someone so staunchly against the rights of others is now being called up to defend himself against these charges. It’s called karma, biotch.

What? I can’t always be literate in my insults.

The traditional meaning of “crying wolf” involves raising a false alarm just for the sake of attention. In politics, however, crying wolf often involves raising a false alarm for the sake of diverting attention - and he who cries loudest often has the most to hide. This incident could likely raise questions about the secrets and loyalties of every anti-gay Republican who preaches his or her message from on high, decrying the GBLTQ community with such hatred that you would think together we comprised the avatar of the AntiChrist. It’s almost easier to believe that they aren’t all so close-minded and hateful and ignorant; they’re more clever than they seem, and while they might be as homophobic as your next Jihad-lovin’ Mr. Death to America, they’re only publicly shouting it to cover their grander, more sweeping and catastrophic activities.

It’s almost easier for me to believe, sure. But then I stop and realize that Republican political terrorist conspiracy theories make me sound like Dennis Kucinich waiting to be beamed up, sometimes the simplest answer is the right one, and yes, they really are just that backwards and idiotic.

Welcome to the sad state of America, folks, where people like this can gain a seat in Congress through the power of the popular vote.

One thing they’re right about: the terrorists are on our own shores.

They’re not foreigners. They’re our own people.

They’re not only people who want to expose America to jihadists. They’re people who want to regiment our lives on a daily basis, destroy our freedoms, take away our basic civil rights, and spread fear for the sake of making us pliant and submissive to increasingly invasive privacy laws that would make every personal detail and everything we owned property of the United States government.

We live in a world in which our government, by refusing to trust its people, proves itself unworthy of our trust.

Are we not meant to be the backbone of said government?

I’m out. Don’t forget that this Sunday, January 20th, is the second DR Live Webcast. I’ll be on the air and in the embedded chat room from 5:00-5:30p CST; if you miss it, an MP3 recording of the broadcast will be posted as soon as I can churn it out, as well as as much of the chat transcript as I can catch. If you have any questions you want me to answer on-air or any issues you want me to discuss on the broadcast, e-mail me at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net or use the contact form. There’ll be another prize giveaway during the show, so make sure you have your AIM open and ready if you’re listening. I’ll be available on IM during the broadcast, but I do want to reiterate one thing that I already said on the first broadcast:

Unless I am on air and live at the time that you’re listening, do not IM me. I’ve said it before and yet I still can’t log that screen name on for even five minutes without getting bombarded with IMs from various people and having to sign off or go invisible to finish a conversation with the person I logged on to contact in the first place. It’s not that I don’t like you guys; I do. You’re all my special little snowflakes. It’s mainly that I’m horribly busy and don’t have time to keep up with the volume of IMs that I get, and I’m not much of a conversationalist (read that as horribly awkward with people). So please, if you could keep any conversations to posts here on DR or e-mail, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

If you can’t make it Sunday, have a good weekend and I’ll see you Monday with a new No Style. Ciao.

former congressman mark deli siljander, islamic american relief agency, darkside rainbow live webcast, al qaeda, al qaida, karma, stick that in your juice box and suck it

I knew I’d forgotten to do something today. That’s what I get for sleeping until almost sunset.

Second DR Live Webcast

After the first webcast, I had my doubts about doing it again - possibly because I came quite close to fainting the first time through. However, general consensus seems to be that I should do a second…and frankly, if I can’t think of something to talk about for 30 minutes for just once a month, I should really be ashamed of myself.

So the tentative date and time for the next webcast is Sunday, January 20th, 2008 - from 5p-5:30p CST. If you missed it last time due to the time and want to tune in this time, let me know if there’s a conflict and if enough people have a problem, I’ll see what I can do. Also, if you tried to tune in and had any problems with the streaming plugin or the java chat room, please let me know what browser and OS you were using and I’ll see if I can tweak it any more.

Hopefully this time I can slow down and mellow out a little, rather than rattling on in sheer terror and sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk on speed.

1,500 Comments Contest Update

I’m not sure how you guys pulled it off, but we’re already at 1,415 comments. Just 85 left to go before someone’s taking home a pink monstrosity of an MP3 player. The next goal after that will be 2,500, and we’ll see what I can scrape up for a prize.

We may try something different for a little fun, though. After we hit the 1,500 mark, I think I’ll put up a post just for the sake of commenting and see how many comments we can get in 24 hours. The goal will be 100 comments to that one post in 24 hours, starting precisely at 12a CST on the appointed date. The person who posts the 100th comment to that post will get some prize or another. Probably another MP3 player, but…I have no idea. We’ll see when it happens. It’s just an idea. If we do it, I’ll clarify the rules in the post. Hopefully by then the Akismet filter problem will be fixed, so I don’t have to manually approve each comment.

And I’m just rambling, so I’m off now; I have a bit more novel-tweaking to do before sending it off to a publisher in the hopes that someone will bite, so I’d better get to work. Wish me luck.

Have a good weekend, and I’ll see you Monday with a quick comic.

~Adri

darkside rainbow live webcast, gay talk radio, comments contest

The Flash player won’t work with variable bitrate encoding (does some wonky stuff that makes me sound like one of the Chipmunks), so for replay of the webcast you can either listen below or download the full MP3 (including musical interludes) here. [Side note: you are listening to a recording and not a live broadcast, so please do not IM me while listening to the recording. Unless I'm broadcasting live, I will not respond.]

[The part of the post-broadcast chat log I managed to catch...because stupid freaking Parachat cut off the beginning and I didn't notice it until later. It's mostly idle chatter, hilarity, and a few death threats.]

Sorry I’m a little late in updating today. I stayed up too late last night, indulging in one of my secret guilty pleasures with one of my best friends: curling up on the couch and watching chick flicks until we cried and laughed all at once. Sometimes you just need a night of Smirnoff Ice, cigarettes (hush, Sihaya, I only had one; you know I don’t smoke anymore), and laughing over the fact that you can both still remember the lyrics to Brandy’s “Sittin’ Up in My Room” perfectly and you can’t help getting up to dance when you hear “so I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low”.

The funny part about that is that while I can get away with that without shame, just by being the type of guy who just does what he does without caring whether it’s considered masculine or feminine…he’s this big, butch bruiser who always has to be the manly-man. He’d be utterly humiliated if I mentioned him by name here, or if anyone knew that he actually watched a chick flick…and enjoyed it. Ha. He was crying thirty minutes into Waiting to Exhale; it took me at least an hour to start the waterworks. (I think the line that got me was “Someone felt that way about me, once…but he stopped.”) Still…as a result of our escapades, I went to bed rather late and overslept today. And here I am now, looking for something to talk about for today’s post before I head off to the post office to finally mail off a certain insufferable a**hole’s package.

Well, for starters, don’t forget that this Sunday, December 16th, at 5p Central Standard Time (if you don’t know when that is in your time zone, check here) marks the first (experimental) Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, in which I will try my damnedest to keep from tripping over my tongue for an hour of live interactive talk radio…even if I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to say and my stage fright is mounting more and more the closer we get to the date. I’ve worked out how to get the bloody thing to work in IE (sort of), so there shouldn’t be too many people barred from listening. If you miss it or if the live broadcast player doesn’t work from your OS or browser, I’ll be posting the chat transcript and an MP3 of the audio later, using the Flash player currently in use for the streaming radio.

Next, we’re already close to the halfway point on the 1,500 Comments Contest. We’d jumped off again at 1,000, with 500 comments to hit the goal. We’re currently at 1,205, in a surprisingly short period of time. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, check out the second half of this post with the rules and the prize (a 1GB MP3 player).

Moving on to more serious news: I’m a few days late on this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a valid point for discussion. Every time I start to think that we as a society have begun to make forward-thinking cultural progress, someone proves me wrong. It’s only a little more disturbing when that “someone” is a prominent political figure and presidential hopeful.

Huckabee refuses to retract ‘92 remarks on AIDS patients - CNN.com

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee refused to retract a statement he made in 1992 calling for the isolation of AIDS patients.

Surging in the polls, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee campaigns Saturday in Asheville, North Carolina.

Responding to an Associated Press questionnaire, Huckabee said steps should be taken to “isolate the carriers of this plague” during his failed run for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas 15 years ago.

He said he probably would not make the same statement today because of what is known about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted.

“I had simply made the point — and I still believe this today — that in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when we didn’t know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols that we would have acted,” Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 1985 that AIDS was not transmitted by casual contact. But Huckabee said at the time, “there were other concerns being voiced by public health officials.”

He disputed the characterization that he was calling for individuals infected with HIV to be quarantined.

“Now, would I say things a little differently in 2007? Probably so,” Huckabee told Fox News. “But I’m not going to recant or retract from the statement that I did make because, again, the point was not saying we ought to lock people up who have HIV/AIDS.”

Huckabee did not explain how individuals with HIV would have been isolated.

During his Senate run, Huckabee also told the AP in the questionnaire that he found homosexuality to be “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle.”

As always, I’ve got to play the Devil’s advocate first. It makes me feel better about turning around and calling someone an absolute arse.

To be fair, Huckabee refused to retract his words not because he’s still just as uneducated about HIV/AIDS, but because he’s trying to point out that at the time he made that statement, he was speaking with the more limited knowledge that he had available and making a statement based on what he thought was his best judgment and in the interests of public safety. (Although really, Huckabee was still pretty far behind, considering he made that statement in 1992 when the transmission methods for AIDS were known by 1985, but I’m trying to be a little lenient here.) I’m not saying that I think his judgment was right, but I do think the media are putting a more sensationalist spin on his intentions by making it sound as if he’s still actively advocating sequestering HIV/AIDS sufferers. He admits that with the information available about HIV/AIDS today, his judgment would likely follow a different slant. That should be enough; a retraction really isn’t necessary, though a more clearly stated, honest admission of his ignorance would be nice.

But the media are using his statement about HIV/AIDS to cast an even uglier light on his already-reprehensible stance towards gays, because there’s an instinctive association between the two subjects. If he was talking today about isolating people with some new, viciously fatal disease whose methods of transmission were unknown but that wasn’t in any way related to a divisive political and personal issue, people would say that he was acting in the interests of public health and safety by making sure that the disease couldn’t become an epidemic while we endeavored to understand more about how it’s communicated.

Ech. That almost makes me sound like I support the arse’s foot-in-mouth syndrome; really, I just can’t stand media sensationalism even when it’s turned on those I oppose. But without further ado and fairness aside…

I refuse to listen to rhetoric about sin from a man who had a role in pardoning a convicted rapist. Follow your own damned dogma; aren’t those who scream about the sin of homosexuality also the ones who advocate “let he who hath no sin cast the first stone”? I’m really getting sick of religious ideals being used to sway people’s political choices; how many times have I ranted about separation of church and state? How many times have I snarled about people trying to force their personal ideals on others through manipulation of the law? How many times have I said that one’s sexuality should be one’s own business and not a matter that concerns either church or state?

You know, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some kind of fear underlying people’s religious endorsement of their viciously antipathetic reactions to homosexuality. No, I don’t mean the cliched argument of “you’re afraid of homosexuality because you’re denying your own homosexuality”, although at times that has been the case.

I mean fear of admitting one’s own subjectivity, and owning one’s own biases and flaws without looking for excuses to make them acceptable. I’ve yet to find anyone who could explain a logical reason for their vituperative condemnation beyond that it’s “sinful”, “unnatural”, and “against God”. I just want one person to say “God’s got nothing to do with it; homosexuality just personally grosses me out”. I’d think it was a bit immature, but it would be refreshingly honest, and founded in someone’s personal feelings (kind of like me saying bananas gross me out, frigging fruit of the devil) rather than using a smokescreen of faith to make themselves feel justified in acting on a base dislike with no rhyme or reason.

Hiding behind faith ensures that people aren’t exposed for enacting such gross hatreds towards other human beings based on irrational gut feelings alone, and possibly judged by others for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were truly afraid of admitting such, when really it would do everyone a lot of good if homophobes could approach it from the simple perspective of likes vs. dislikes rather than looking for a torch to wave as an excuse to force their opinions and their dislike on others. It would sure as hell make a lot more sense.

After all, I don’t try to make everyone stop eating bananas, do I?

waiting to exhale, chick flicks, boys’ girly night in, darkside rainbow live webcast, comments contest, hiv, aids, mike huckabee, foot in mouth syndrome

Before I forget:

1,000-Comments Contest Winner, New Contest

If you haven’t read the comments to today’s comic, Kujo Hikaru won the 1,000-comments contest. Technically I was number 1,000; since I don’t count, Hikaru won with comment #1,001. He’ll be getting a 1GB USB flash drive and a cameo spot in one of the upcoming No Style comics. (He also needs to e-mail me to tell me where to send the flash drive and at least give me a vague idea of how he wants to be drawn.)

The next goal will be 1500 comments. I don’t know what the prize will be yet; we’ll see what kind of nifty little thing I can afford to buy. Maybe an MP3 player or something like that.

Tentative Date for the First DR Radio Live/Interactive Broadcast

Looking at the calendar, right now I’m tentatively scheduling the first live talk radio broadcast for Sunday, December 16th, from 5:00-6:00p CST. I’d wanted to do it on a weeknight, but on weeknights I’m generally not available until after 8:00p and I think that may be more inconvenient for most than an earlier Sunday.

That gives me a little over two weeks to get over my stage fright.

Fun.

I still have no idea what I’ll ramble about. I was half-tempted to do a comparison between gay romance novels/erotica written by men vs. those written by women, as honestly 9/10 women are just better at it, but I don’t know how 451 Press would feel about me reading that aloud on their site.

That, and I couldn’t do it and keep a straight face.

We’ll see what I come up with. Like I said, I’d welcome any ideas from you guys. If you’re going to suffer through listening to it, you might as well have a hand in shaping the instrument used to torture you.

darkside rainbow streaming radio, darkside rainbow live webcast, no style, gay comic, webcomic, comments contest

Kids, this is going to have to count for your update for today. I am, at the moment, sulking and not ashamed to admit it - and since today’s a day off of work, I’m going to take advantage of it despite my sentiment towards the holiday. Not in the way I’d hoped - which is why I’m sulking - but if I can’t at least get a little tipsy and relax (thanks to cheap, flimsy plastic bags, a broken bottle of merlot, 12a alcohol sale cutoff times, and an absolutely disgusted mood that guarantees I won’t be venturing back out at 7a to buy another), I’ll compensate by being a lazy bum about writing anything of substance. You may want to read through this anyway, as I’ll need your feedback on something.

Changes to the DR Streaming Radio

It may or may not be live by the time you read this (that sidebar box only updates changes once every four hours), but I’ve replaced the streaming radio that was coming from my hard drive via a Microsoft Media Server stream and playing by a buggy WMP plugin. Instead I’ve loaded the files as separate MP3s into a Flash player called JW Player, which everyone should be able to use. If that slow-as-molasses sidebar still hasn’t updated yet, you can try it out below:

 
It doesn’t autostart (my preference) and streams everything from my personal domain, putting less strain on my laptop’s CPU. (It also avoids giving my ISP a heart attack over a streaming upload of 403MB of uncompressed media cycling 24/7, but I’m sure my web host will compensate by popping a blood vessel or two over bandwidth usage.)

It’s much nicer to use and look at, lets you switch between tracks, shuffles on default but lists alphabetically to make it easy to scroll to your favorite tracks, and organizes the track info in a painstakingly compiled playlist (that I probably made a typo on somewhere, knowing me). Since it’s Flash, it should work in pretty much any browser on any OS.

I had a reason for screwing with the live media broadcast, though, and that little WMP plugin isn’t gone for good.

Darkside Rainbow Live Interactive Webcast

You read that right, a live interactive webcast. That’s why I was experimenting with MMS streams coming live from my computer, and with Windows Media Encoder. One evening in December - I haven’t decided which yet, depends on the feedback I get from you guys - I’ll be hosting a live, one-hour radio talk show. You’ll be able to tune in via your web browser and the WMP plugin (by the way, I figured out why it wasn’t working in IE, so that will be less of a problem) or your default streaming media player; there’ll also be a live chat room that you can join to talk to others listening to the webcast and talk to me while I’m on-air. If you miss the webcast or it doesn’t work in your browser or OS, I’ll be posting an MP3 recording of it after the fact along with a transcript from the chat room.

Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that every once in a while I’d post pre-recorded rants to the old site. This…this is going to be very different, and possibly very awkward and embarrassing, but I’m game to give it a shot at least once to see how it works out. On the recordings I could work out what I wanted to say ahead of time, read it off, practice, and re-record if I flubbed. Live and responding on the fly to the chat room…oh, man. That has the potential for hilarious disaster. It might be worth it to tune in just to listen to me fall flat on my face. Some days I sound like a Oxford scholar, and some days I’m so amazingly inarticulate that I can’t even pronounce my own name.

…and some days I can say “low-density polyethylene compound” or “deoxyribonucleic acid” at top speed without missing a beat, but will get tongue-tied on “hello”.

Let me know if you’d be interested in listening in, and if you have any ideas for anything you want to hear me rant about, as right now I have no idea what I’ll talk about for an hour…though in the interests of staying on-topic, it really ought to be GBLTQ-related, hm? I can also do Q/A sessions on the webcast, or answer Ask Adri questions, so e-mail those in or send ‘em using the contact form if you want to get yours answered on air. Try to keep them brief, though, so I’m not spending twenty minutes just reading your letter out loud. Hell, if you want me to do shoutouts to your friends or something like that, I won’t mind.

If you want to tell me around what times would be best for you (and your local time zone), that’ll help me determine a date and hour to do this, as well. If I can nerve myself to. I get the feeling this is a catastrophe waiting to happen - but at least if I go down, I’ll go down flaming proudly (no pun intended).

And hey, if it turns out all right and moves smoothly, we might make a weekly or monthly thing out of it. Why the hell not.

I’m out of here, now. Happy…that day. Yeah, that day.

Seriously, though, I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves. Ciao, until tomorrow. I and my lack of wine are going to go sulk with a new DVD.

~Adri

darkside rainbow streaming radio, darkside rainbow live webcast, thanksgiving, f***ing cheap plastic bags, ask adri, gay advice column