Points of interest.
Passing out for a while…really didn’t make me feel any better, unfortunately. I’m really not feeling up to one of my usual dissertations today, so I’m just going to leave you guys with some links to a few points of interest for the day. Sorry, guys. Hopefully a weekend’s rest will fix everything.
Song Links Saggy Pants to Being Gay: Although this is horribly homophobic and of course assumes that being identified as gay because your arse is hanging out (and apparently on offer), this still cracks me up. It’s part of a citywide campaign to stop “saggin’”, a fashion faux paus that’s been around for years: wearing your pants practically around your knees. The whole thing’s just ridiculous, honestly - that anyone would wear their pants that way, and that anyone would use slurs on sexuality to try to get them to stop.
Florida Prison Guards Disciplined for Allowing “Gay Wedding”: Officiate a fake lesbian inmate wedding that is in no way legally binding, and lose your job. No, I’m serious. Just because two lesbian inmates staged a fake wedding, the guards who allowed and witnessed it were either fired, resigned, or suspended. Not only that, but the women were separated, with one sent to another facility. Am I the only one who thinks that’s a little much? It’s not like they staged a riot, and prisons put on various inmate performances all the time, such as plays and talent shows (and reenactments of Thriller…). If they wanted, they could look at this as another inmate group activity, rather than flipping their sh*t and punishing people so broadly for something that basically has no effect anyway and didn’t place those gathered at any more risk than other group activities. Last I checked, few prison guards had the power of ordained priests anyway.
Gay Baby Creates Controversy in Italy: This one is my favorite out of the lot for today. I don’t know if you remember when Sihaya sent in an Ask Adri question regarding shock advertising and some interesting ad campaigns shown in Europe, but this is the latest in one such campaign: a newborn child with “HOMOSEXUAL” stamped on its wristband instead of the usual birth information. The poster was widely circulated in Tuscany, Italy as an effort to promote activism and awareness of discrimination. Personally, I love it. I think it’s striking, compelling, and gets a very clear point across. The people of Tuscany…not so impressed. Even gay activists there think it’s over the top. What do you think?
More Toddlers Infected With HIV In Kyrgyzstan Scandal: On a more serious front…the latest in the mess in Kyrgyzstan involving hospital staff accidentally infecting people with HIV has gone so far as to affect 2-and-3-year-old children with the disease, by transfusing them with tainted blood or injecting them with tainted needles. People have been fired over this, but that’s not going to fix anything for those children. Maybe they can be among the first to receive ready treatment from the latest HIV miracle therapy…but they’ll still be on medication for the rest of their lives.
Update on the comments contest
We are currently at 757 out 1,000 comments, leaving 243 to go. C’mon, guys, you can do better than that. (Or did I just offer crappy prizes? Maybe I should do another survey; that gets you guys talking…)
Oogh. Okay, sitting upright is getting to be problematic; I think it’s time to go curl up in bed with the rest of the day’s workload for my other job, try to plow through that, and then read my new book (hush, it’s a recaptured piece of my childhood) until I fall asleep. I’ll see you guys with a new comic on Monday; have a good weekend.
Ciao,
~Adri
October 26th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Feel better, Adrien!
And that’s not to boost comment numbers, it’s sincere.
October 27th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
You know, it’s really hard to keep a straight face while reading about toddlers infected with the modern worlds’ super bug when you can’t stop laughing at the thriller link. Which, of course, makes me feel like an a##. It also makes me feel that we could learn something from the guards at that prison. Yes, being goofy and getting to dance is fun and at least its not the cell they’ve been sticking you in, but to keep THAT many inmates from doing SOMETHING they shouldn’t leaves me in awe. Maybe if we knew their secret we wouldn’t have our prison guards (or rather their superiors) freak out and overreact over much less threatening situations.
I also hope that our government doesn’t get any bad ideas from that advertisement. The way the U.S. has been backsliding on civil rights lately, our elected officials don’t need anymore stupid ideas.
October 27th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I saw people protesting about that homosexual baby thing while I was in Italy yesterday, actually. Although I didn’t know what it was about at the time. Nor do I know what their problem with it was exactly, either, since I can’t speak Italian. Something about life and no to gay babies. And a man with a megaphone.
…the thing about the prison marriage is bizarre. What’s wrong with pretending to get married? Kids do it in the playground all the time and they aren’t sent of to seperate schools, nor are their teachers fired.
This is not really a revelation, but it does show how much weirder (more backward?) the US is about religion and homosexuality than the UK. I actually feel faintly privileged.
October 27th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
P.S. and I hope you feel better soon.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:52 am
Poor baby. Well, I think this campaign is better than the one here… I get queasy from the needles… At least this is just a tag. I understand the uproar, though. Italians are fiercely protective of their children, so to ‘violate’ this baby this way, by putting something other than its health and safety first, is horrible to them. That and because of the Vatican squat in the middle of their capital they’re still a little conservative about this kind of issue.
Adri: maybe I sent you my bugs over the internet =O Get well soon!
October 28th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I think the gay baby wristband is cool. I still have mine, don’t know what all the fuss is about …
Get well!
October 29th, 2007 at 3:48 am
[...] more here [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 1:01 am
[...] the tables. by Adrien-Luc Sanders Some time ago, I said that I didn’t quite understand the outrage in Tuscany over an anti-discrimination ad featuring a phot…. I thought the ad was clever, to the point, and extremely effective. I didn’t once stop to [...]