Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in tim1965's LiveJournal:

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Friday, July 10th, 2009
7:23 pm	No wonder insurance companies are going bankrupt in this country! My dad passed away in late February. We faxed a copy of his death certificate to his health insurance company, because they need proof of death in order to cancel the insurance without his permission. They acknowledge receipt. In fact, they had already (by the time he died) automatically withdrawn the March premium from his checking account. But they repaid that in May. This past week, they began taking money out of his account again. With such slipshod financial practices, no wonder companies like this are going bankrupt! Quite honestly, I have no inclination to save private insurance when it performs this abysmally. Oh, the company? Sterling Life. (I have no problem naming this jackass corporation!) (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
8:50 pm	I made the "Did You Know...?" section on the front page of Wikipedia today. ...that The 1940s House is a British historical reality television program about a modern family that tries to live as a typical middle-class family in London during The Blitz? (Comment on this)
4:41 pm	Is the movie Brüno homophobic? I find Sacha Baron Cohen's humor to be nothing more than attack-humor, which I find cruel. Tolerant people put up with his antics, and he mocks them for it. Intolerant people get furious at him, and he mocks them for it. Is there anything sincere in his humor? No. I also don't think he's a gay rights advocate. Plenty of apologists claim he is. (OUT magazine just put him on the cover, apologizing profusely for it.) But show me just one article in which Cohen says, "I'm really a gay rights advocate. I think what happens to gays is appalling. My movie is a massive attack on homophobia, and should be seen as that." But he never does. Instead, homophobes get to guffaw at the "the faggot" on screen, while confused gay people try to reclaim the movie as somehow a stab at homophobia. Let's say I were a racist but also thought the KKK was a bunch of wackos. I could show up at a KKK rally and mock them. Would my performance be anti-racist? No. In order for Brüno to be seen as anti-homophobia, Cohen has to come out massively in favor of gay rights. He has not. That makes him, in my mind, homophobic for playing gay stereotypes to the hilt. Notice something else: If anyone -- and I mean anyone -- played the same stereotypes for anti-gay humor, the GLBTQ community would be up in arms. Cohen never claims to be skewering homophobia, but the gay community assumes he is. And he gets away with the most appalling anti-gay behavior.... If the Wayans Bros. did a movie in which a guy appears in blackface, would it be seen as self-loathing or skewering racism? Interestingly, A.O. Scott in the New York Times thinks Brüno is homophobic: An early sequence that graphically shows Brüno and his lover exerting themselves in various positions and with the assistance of, among other things, a Champagne bottle, a fire extinguisher and a specially modified exercise machine, derives its humor less from the extremity of their practices than from the assumption that sex between men is inherently weird, gross and comical. The same sequence with a man and a woman -- or for that matter, two women -- would play, most likely on the Internet rather than in the multiplex, as inventive, moderately kinky pornography rather than as icky, gasp-inducing farce. ... In America as seen by Brüno there are, oddly enough, no openly gay people... Isn't it amazing? The same gay magazines that prominently feature straight people on their covers month after month, and which promote straight-identified gay porn stars month after month, see nothing wrong with a movie which defames gay people and removes gay people from society. How interesting. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
1:22 pm	A major new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; the world's largest scientific organization) has found massive disconnects between what scientists know to be true and what the public believes is true. The poll surveyed 2,000 members of the public and 2,500 scientists. Among the shocking findings: Nearly a third of the public believes that human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time. Only 2 percent of the scientists agree. A third of all Americans believes there is lively scientific debate on the issue. Almost no scientists believe that. Only half the public believes human beings have caused climate change, and 11 percent thinks there isn't any global warming at all. But 84 percent of scientists agree that human beings have caused global warming. More than half the public did not know that the Bush administration had imposed a gag-order on scientists employed by the federal government, so that these scientists could not report research findings that conflicted with Bush's political beliefs. When told that this was so, only a quarter of the public believed the statement. Meanwhile, 85 percent of scientists had heard this claim, and 77 percent said the claim was true. Just 17 percent of the public believed that U.S. science was the best in the world. But 49 percent of scientists believed it. (A third of the public believes American science is only "average" or "below-average, compared to just 6 percent of scientists.) Fewer members of the public believe scientific advances rank among the nation's most important achievements: In 1999, 50 percent of all Americans believed this. But only 27 percent believe it today. Meanwhile, 45 percent of scientists rank scientific achievements as among the nation's most important advances. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
11:08 pm	So I saw this movie about this guy who was a soldier. Forced to work with slaves at the front, he doesn't treat them like slaves but puts them in uniform, arms them, and turns them into a crack fighting outfit. But he gets kidnapped by the enemy, and is shipped off to some Arctic prison. He escapes en route, goes home, and rises to the rank of general. But the enemy sponsors a coup in his homeland, and he's tried for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. While on death row, he's forced to do hard labor. He's released when an uprising of the people leads to his freedom. Gaunt, ill, weak, he escapes from the hospital and turns a rag-tag mob of students, blue-collar workers, and bookish dissidents into another crack fighting outfit in just weeks. But the bad guys invade his country, crushing the rebellion. Fleeing for the border, he blows up an ammo dump to hide his last-second escape to freedom. There, he lived the next 40 years quietly, writing and teaching. When the enemy finally left his homeland (by now, he was 87), he went home, got elected to the national legislature for four years, and then retired. What movie? Okay, I lied: It wasn't a movie. It is the true life story of Bela K. Kiraly -- the man who led the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He died Saturday at the age of 97. ( But there is more...and it involves hot men ) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
9:04 pm	I love this guy's face. It's the eyes, at first, which grab me. Heavily lidded, set a little deep into the head, a little sleepy-looking. And then it's the brows, which frame those eyes, darken them, make them sultry. And then it's the mouth....that full, red, luscious, wonderful mouth. If you look at him long enough, you realize he's got a big, fleshy, oddly un-handsome nose. But that's what's so incredibly wonderful about this guy's face: It's not perfect. He's not so amazingly that you would never think of approaching him. He's flawed. He's human. He's sexy because he is human. He's not a fantasy, he's real. And, if you look at the rest of his body, it's a stunner. ( Human is sexy ) (Comment on this)
8:42 pm	TVLand.com is screening (for the next three days) my two favorite 3rd Rock From the Sun episodes: "Nightmare on Dick Street, Part 1" and "Nightmare on Dick Street, Part 2." The sheer surreality of the two episodes is just amazing. They are creative, inventive, and funny. You know, I really think that Kristen Johnston is a superb comic actress. She has excellent timing, and is able to restrain her strong feminine presence so that it doesn't overpower the other performers. Yet, when she needs to express it, she can let it out. Not many actors can do that; if they restrain themselves, they find it hard to let go again. Not Johnston. I do think that she has made some bad choices, though. I saw her in the stage revival of The Women, and didn't think she was very good at all. The role was very unsuited for her. Yet, in other projects, she's been nothing short of astounding. I wish she'd do more work. Johnston won two Emmys as Best Supporting Actress in a Comedic Role. Rhea Pearlman and Doris Roberts both won it four times -- more than anyone else in history. Valerie Harper and Laurie Metcalf won it three times. Johnston ranks up there with Ann B. Davis, Loretta Swit, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Mullaly, and Betty White as a two-time winner. Not bad company at all. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:35 pm	The venerable Trover Book Shop on Pennsylvania Avenue SE is closing after 51 years. Joe Shuman opened the original Trover Shop in 1958. The Shuman family once owned five Trover Book Shops in town. Now they will own only one -- the Trover Shop at 13th and F Streets NW -- which will sell cards and gifts, but no books. A 2008 fire at Capitol Lounge, a bar three doors down, caused $500,000 in damage to Trover Card Shop. The card shop closed and was combined with Trover Books. But now the bookstore is closing, and only the cards and gewgaws remain. What's so sad is: This is National Independent Bookseller's Week. (Comment on this)
9:10 am	Ah, spam. You turn into poetic absurdity so easily: You have been sent boobs from journals. Look at these new brand ones! Look at what's announced! One for me, one for you. Jackson is still alive! Where is the remote? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
10:47 pm	Sometimes I wish I lived in Los Angeles. I don't think I could handle the unchanging seasons. But I could handle this: The LA County Museum of Art is hosting a film series, "Young and Evil." The seven films examine sexuality on film, from high art to.....uh, less than high art. They screen on July 14 at 7 p.m. The title of the program is taken from a 1930s novel about the New York City homosexual scene. The films include: Rodney Werden's 1975 film about male prostitution, Call Roger Curt McDowell's 1972 short film Ronnie, about male prostitution Kenneth Anger's groundbreaking 1947 film Fireworks Anna Halperin's 1974 short, Parades and Changes, about strippers Barbara Rubin's short film Christmas on Earth, a montage of color, body parts, and orgy sounds. Stuart Comer, curator of film for the Tate Modern museum in London, and a panel of contemporary film and video artists chose the films. Comer and LA-based filmmaker William E. Jones will discuss how technology and influences pornographic imagery and vice versa after the screening. I could stand to go to something like that. Notice that D.C. would never, ever host anything like this here. One In Ten/reel Affirmations certainly would never touch it with a ten-foot pole, and not a single museum in the area would permit porn to be shown on its screens. The ancient Greek poet once said, "Stay far hence, far hence, you prudes!" I agree. By the way, The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume 1, was released on January 23, 2007. The set includes Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbit's Moon (1950), Eaux D'Artifice (1953), and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954). It also includes a 48-page book about Kenneth Anger written by Martin Scorsese. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:53 pm	The incomparable Mollie Sugden died over the weekend. "...and if I don't get home promptly at 6 o'clock, my pussy goes mad!" (Comment on this)
9:16 pm	Yes, Allan, here is another of that beautiful brunette with the uncut cock. Great nipples, too. Amazing nipples. I can't even conceive of what those nipples must feel like under one's tongue. . ( Great eyes, too ) (Comment on this)
7:36 pm	So much for the Bush administration's vaunted ability to make America safer: A General Accountability Office (GAO) study has shown that bomb-making materials, explosives, and even chemical detonators can be easily smuggled into federal office building. In the past year, investigators successfully smuggled bomb-making materials into 10 high-security federal buildings, including the offices of a U.S. Senator and House member as well as offices for the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State. GAO investigators actually constructed bombs on-site, and then walked around the buildings undetected -- despite billions of dollars of spending on bomb-sniffing equipment, metal detectors, ununionized security personnel, and high-tech video equipment. A report two years ago said the federal agency assigned the task of maintaining security at all federal buildings was so under-staffed, it had actuall increased the risk of successful terrorist attack on federal buildings. (Comment on this)
12:06 am	Drown in My Own Tears The Smithereens There's a light in the window that tells me you're home As in the rear view mirror that I call my own There's a time I remember when I called you mine Memories of your kisses much sweeter than wine Maybe I won't be afraid to love somebody new Maybe I can open up my heart Then I won't drown in my own tears Drown in my own tears There's a place where we used to meet every day And a time when we used to love every way All that's left is the pieces of a broken heart And a house full emptiness since we're apart Maybe I won't be afraid to love somebody new Maybe I can open up my heart Then I won't drown in my own tears Drown in my own tears There's a light in the window that tells me you're home As in the rear view mirror that I call my own There's a time I remember when I called you mine Memories of your kisses much sweeter than wine Maybe I won't be afraid to love somebody new Maybe I can open up my heart Then I won't drown in my own tears Drown in my own tears Drown in my own tears Drown in my own tears Drown in my own tears (Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
9:47 pm	Bea Lillie is so enchantingly fey, she can do anything. I should love to perform Lillie's signature song, "There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden," but I don't dare. It might come out "There Are Fairies in the Garden of My Bottom." - Nöel Coward Nöel Coward and I were in Paris once. Adjoining rooms, of course. One night I felt mischievous, so I knocked on Nöel's door, and he asked, "Who is it?" I lowered my voice and said, "Hotel detective. Have you got a gentleman in your room?" He answered, "Just a minute, I'll ask him." - Beatrice Lillie (Comment on this)
8:40 pm	I can't believe this run of bad luck! I have a leaking AC unit, and my living room floor is sopping wet. While waiting for the repair and wet-vac crew, I ended up watching some more bad daytime TV. At least in part. I also watched Mel Brooks' 1981 movie, History of the World, Part I. A deeply flawed comedy, it has it moments. Three are below. "The Ten Commandments" "Don't be saucy with me, Bernaise" "The Spanish Inquisition" (lyrics to sing along with are below!) The Inquisition The Inquistion -- let's begin The Inquistion -- look out sin We have a mission to convert the Jews (Je-je-je-je-je-je-Jews!) We're gonna teach them wrong from right We're gonna help them see the light And make an offer that they can't refuse (That the Jews just can't refuse!) Confess (confess, confess) Don't be boring Say yes (say yes, say yes) Don't be dull A fact You're ignoring: It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull Oy oy gevalt! The Inquistion -- what a show! The Inquistion -- here we go! We know you're wishing That we'd go away But the Inquistion's here and it's here to stay The Inquistion -- oh boy! The Inquistion -- what a joy! The Inquistion -- oy oy! I was sitting in a temple I was minding my own business I was listening to a lovely Hebrew mass Then these papist persons plunge in, And they throw me in a dungeon, And they shove a red hot poker up my ass! Is that considerate? Is that polite? And not a tube of Preparation H in sight! I'm sitting plicking chickens And I'm looking through the pickings And suddenly these guys bring down my balls I didn't even know them And they grabbed me by the scrotum And they started playing ping pong with my balls! Oy, the agony! Oh, the shame! To make my privates public for a game! The Inquistion -- what a show! The Inquistion -- here we go! We know you're wishing That we'd go away But the Inquistion's here and it's here to - Hey, Torquemada, whaddaya say? I just got back from the auto-da-fé Auto-da-fé, what's an auto-da-fé? It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway! Skit skat voodely vat tootin de day! Will you convert? No, no, no, no Will you confess? No, no, no, no Will you revert? No, no, no, no Will you say yes? No, no, no, no Now I ask in a nice way, I said pretty please I bent their ears, now I'll work on their knees! Hey, Torquemada, walk this way We got a little game that you might wanna play So pull that handle, try your luck Who knows, Torq, you might win a buck! Alright! (whispered) Put it in the car How we doing? Any converts today? Not a one, nay, nay, nay We've flattened their fingers We branded their buns Nothing is working Send in the nuns! The Inquistion -- what a show! The Inquistion -- here we go! We know you're wishing That we'd go away So, c'mon you Moslems and you Jews We got big news for all of yous You better change your point of views today 'Cause the Inquistion's here and it's here to stay! (Comment on this)
6:43 pm	This is the very handsome, cute British cycling star Mark Cavendish -- probably the best British cyclist in half a century. He's a star in my book, too, for obvious reasons. (God, to be his bicycle seat...woof!) (Comment on this)
6:26 pm	France will spend about 75 percent of its stimulus money this calendar year. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has planned to push the majority of its stimulus funding into 2010 -- and even then, the majority of it might not get spent in that calendar year. That's a recipe for a fucking goddamn disaster. (Comment on this)
3:59 pm	I like brunettes and foreskin. This is why. . ( Nothing short of heartbreaking ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
3:25 pm	Robert S. McNamara died today at the age of 93 of natural causes. Born in Oakland, Calif., in 1916, he was an Eagle Scout and grew up in nearby Piedmont. His father was a shoe salesman. He graduated in 1937 from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree economics. He earned a varsity letter in rowing, and joined Army ROTC. He earned an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1939. After a year as an accountant, he returned to Harvard as the youngest Assistant Professor ever. He taught statistics, accounting, and business planning to Army Air Corps officers. He married his college sweetheart, Margaret Craig, the year he first started teaching at Harvard. She created Reading Is Fundamental, a literacy program for poor children. They had a son and two daughters; Margaret died in 1981. (McNamara married Diana Masieri Byfield in 2004.) He enlisted in 1943, and was commissioned a captain in the Army Air Corps. He worked in the Office of Statistical Control, analyzing bombers' efficiency and effectiveness. He had played a supporting role in the firebombing of Japanese cities during World War II, running statistical analysis for Air Force Gen. Curtis E. LeMay. "We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo -- men, women and children," Mr. McNamara recalled in Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. (More than 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all.) "LeMay said, 'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He -- and I'd say I -- were behaving as war criminals. What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" he asked. He found the question impossible to answer. ( A terrible, terrible mistake ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)