Well since the topic is fresh and on my mind, I just attended a panel on "Gay Marriage: What's At Stake" for extra credit in my government class. At first glance, I thought this would be explaining what is culturally at stake by letting gays into marriage, but I quickly realized my instructor (right or wrong, named to be oppressively ideologically liberal by YCT) would not be sponsoring such an event. It was in fact a panel of 6 people in favor of "gay marriage" of one form or another who each got up and presented their perspective. Some were interesting and strange, so I present the bulleted list here (sans bullets).
- The Classical Government Professor: "Well, in terms of the Classical Liberalism that is the foundation of the American democracy, there is no reason why marriage should be institutionalized in the government. Indeed, it would be completely consistent with these tenets to recognize a governmental 'civil union' (don't get confused, this isn't the same thing as the currently used term) and allow extra-legal marriages to be decided in the various religions. In this way, all current marriages would be converted into 'civil unions' and then gays would be allowed to have these."
- The Feminist Professor: "When I first heard gays were trying to get into this marriage thing I was really confused, because I've been involved for decades in the movement that believes that this is an inherently sexist and undesirable practice. But for reasons brought to my attention over the last few months I've become sympathetic to their point of view and agree marriage should be open to gays."
- The Black Professor: "Um, I was invited here to talk about how the concepts from the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. speak to the issues here. In some ways it's different, in some ways it's similar, and you can simply lump them together. What I am really curious is if these people want us to sign off in support of their movement, which is hard for many religious blacks to justify, will they in turn help actively promote the status of African-Americans in this country."
- The Inflammatory Gay Professor: "Santorum is an idiot, as is anyone who supports legislation such as the Defense of Marriage Act. As someone who adores our system of government I've learned to love the sinner (the Congress) and hate the sin (DoMA). If the people who support DoMA think gays are going to destroy the institution of marriage, what about Britney Spears' 55-hour marriage and 'Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?'"
- The Local GLBT Organization Representative (White Male): "These are the states that currently have laws pertaining to gay marriage. In order to see things change in Texas you need to let your representative know you won't vote him out if he votes in favor of gay marriages. Vote."
- The Law Professor: "The arguments against gay marriage are not tenable without resorting to the arguments that a) these are sacreligious or b) homosexuals do not have the same basic needs as heterosexuals, and neither of these arguments is acceptable in this form of democracy. There will soon be many legal peculiarities that arise from state-by-state gay marriage laws. And also, if the current notion of civil unions becomes a reality that will introduce other strange legal problems such as straight couples wanting to get a "marriage lite" instead of the standard full marriage. DoMA will not pass."
Okay, so there were no panelists opposed to gay marriage. Well that was a little one sided, but still informative and thought-provoking. One earnest young fellow in the audience was "outed" by his professor (the flamboyant one) as being a Republican. Afterward I asked him if he was planning on voting for Bush, and he said yes, but I also couldn't get him to say if he was in favor of gay marriage or not (from his questioning, he sounded like he is). To me, gay marriage is pretty much a reality, and it seems to be working pretty well, though I'd like to see some actual sociological statistics to back up the claims that it is as successful or moreso than heterosexual marriages on average, though we may have to wait a while for those numbers to start rolling in. In conclusion, let's have a word from an imaginary 7th panelist.
Jon Stewart - "There's been a tremendous discussion in this country about gay marriage, and I'm a little nervous about it, quite frankly, and I can tell you why. And I don't know if this is really the issue or not, but are they going to make us marry gay? Because I don't . . . my wife would not like that. And I think that it's going to be mandatory, because otherwise, why would anyone really care?"
. . . a lesbian mullet. If you're lucky you've never seen one of these, but this weekend I saw a whole pack of women, who otherwise appeared to be lesbians, sporting this most awful of hairstyles. Now I'm aware of the various cults that find mullets very entertaining, funny, or even consider them as some sort of naturally occuring energy, but you people really need to wise up. A mullet is nothing special: it's just hair.
This sort of ties in to thoughts I've recently been having on the current states of gender roles in our country. We've expanded into at least four genders by my estimation: straight man and woman, and gay man and woman. Gay men have somehow taken on the role of being the best of both worlds: they are men so they are still preferred in the business/political sphere, but they also have a wicked sense of culture and are sweet and sensitive and nuturing like a woman. Lesbians however have gotten the shaft: they are women so they are not favored in the public sphere, and they are somehow perceived as lacking in fashion and culture because they must not have good taste since they're attracted to other women instead of men. Unfortunately, some lesbians buy into these gender roles and think they can get away with letting their hair grow long in the back in defiance of all that is pure and good. And I guess they can do that if they really want to, but I don't like it.
So I've gone meatless/vegetarian for Lent, and so I've been experimenting with various practices that actual vegetarians often partake in. Like all experimentation, some avenues lead to new knowledge and better understanding, while other paths are ultimately fruitless. And when it comes to experimenting with food, the results of research can mean great physical discomfort.
A company called Silk produces what is supposedly high quality soy milk which you can buy at a reasonable price at most grocery stores. I decided to do a feasibility study on replacing my standard 2% milk with this product, insofar as I use real milk in cereal. I returned home and mixed about a cup of Silk with some Fruity Pebbles, which I then began to consume at a rapid rate. I was quite happy with the results, and wolfed down the entire bowl in record time. Two seconds later my entire digestive tract all the way up to my epiglottis swelled up causing me great pain and restricting my ability to swallow. However, I decided the best course of action would be to wash the bad stuff down with good stuff: a bowl of Cheerios and milk. This was not such a bad idea, but it got to the point where I could not force anything else down the swollen passage. I then resorted to water, which probably was less painful than swallowing a jar of thumb tacks. Luckily there was some fascinating programming on TV, and thus I was able to entertain myself with Richard Clarke on Charlie Rose, which was just enough to keep my mind off the daggers. Actually that was a very interesting video, and I for one believe this guy is telling the truth. By the time that was over I was starting to feel better instead of getting worse, but I had lost a couple of hours and was worthless to study for the exam I had the next day. So I have Silk to thank for the studying I couldn't get done and for feeling like a bomb went of somewhere in my small intestine. I'm apparently the opposite of most Asians.
Another exciting chapter in the saga of Trent and Two Guy Trio when I attended my first performance last night at The Vibe for a mere $5. The first shocker came when I stepped inside and a rock band with an African-American male lead singer was playing some 90's influenced rock. I was trying to decipher who their influences might be, and both lyrically and musically I'd have to say the closest match is Live, though perhaps some Pumpkinseque guitar. This band was not so good, but plenty of fun to watch.
After that band finished their show I was then subjected to the crappiest of current rock played over the speaker system, which included that Limp Bizkit cover of a Who song. I was completely caught off guard as I've never before been to a venue with such horrible taste in music, and the aural violation continued song after song until Two Guy Trio finally came on stage. Their first two songs were pretty bland, which is not necessarily good practice for performing a live show, but then they launched into one of the best covers I've ever heard. I think it is essential for a good cover to be performed by a band different enough from the original artist, or else the cover tends to just be a re-hash of the original. Lisa Loeb's "Stay" was brilliantly reproduced by this quasi-emo, psuedo-nerd-rock, whore-to-the-audience pop-rock band. A couple of songs later they paid tribute to a band that is certainly a major influence when they played Weezer's "El Scorcho." In general, I would not approve of a band so obviously descended from Weezer doing a Weezer cover, but they did an extremely accurate rendition of a song that is probably pretty hard to pull off (as opposed to doing something like "Say It Ain't So" perfectly, which, even though that's perhaps my favorite Weezer song, they would have received negative points for). The Weezer cover and other songs also showed one of the band's strong points: the harmony vocal abilities of the guitarist. All in all, I was convinced that these guys make some great pop songs, and though they're maybe not as lyrically satisfying as others, they can rock. The encore performance of "God Gave Rock and Roll to You," a song which hit the #1 spot on Trent's Billboard round about the time the Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey soundtrack came out, made for an emotionally charged conclusion to the show. But then the horrible, horrible rock music returned on the speaker system, and I got out of the club as fast as I possibly could.
About a month ago I spilled milk on my keyboard. This caused some minor problems for a while, but eventually I was convinced that the screwy signals the keyboard was sending to the computer must be responsible for its strange behavior. But alas, by hoojing up a normal keyboard finally I have discovered my computer is truly sick and will not stay on for more than 5 minutes.
This is the reason for my long absence and horrible finance charges on my credit cards for lack of payment that I usually do online. Anyway, all is back to normal as I am now back in Austin and have little to do. I must now decide between UCLA and Hawaii for grad school.
It's always sad this time of year, after all the excitement has been building up for so many weeks all for this one day. Then by March 15 it's all over. I had a prety good Pi Day. I awoke in this posh house in Pasadena that my friend's friend is housesitting at, and I took a shower in the nicest shower I've ever seen. Then I hung out with my good and dear friend Dagny Looper, but the dark clouds of her take-home finals loomed over every moment we spent together: wasted moments with respect to her need to study. But then my aunt came and picked me up and thus the dinner party in her North hollywood home began. It was smaller than I expected; only 3 guests besides the family (my aunts, my grandmother and me): some woman my grandmother used to work with, my aunt's best friend Ira and his wife. Ira's wife kepting looking at me in the oddest way; it felt just like when a girl is "making eyes." After she started talking about how much she loves Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, I had to restrain myself from correcting her on the name of one of the Queer Eye guys (she called Carson Cameron). For some reason I felt that by proving my true fanhood I would become as uncomfortable as she was making me feel by looking at me all weird all the time (which was only worse because she was kind of attractive). To top off the weirdness, I watched the Sopranos with my aunts and grandmother after everyone went home.
So all in all it was a decently long day, I was fed superb food all day (thanks to Dagny for choosing Rubio's, I'd never been), I got to see my family, and I get to sleep on another super-comfortable sofa. A good pi day, even if my aunt and grandmother grilled me on girls; my aunt even discussed things one on one before she indirectly revealed she was actually an informant to my father. At least they don't think I'm gay or something.
So I haven't used the word "gay" as an adjective for some time now to describe anything that doesn't directly pertain to homosexuality. This is a good thing, and the title of this post in no way contradicts this policy.
While I was in Madison, I made a point to go on a little shopping spree of my own down State Street (the main drag between campus and the capitol) on my last day there. I made a couple of steals: finding a book for one of my classes for $3 and also finding a bunch of Gap overstock boxers at the thrift store Ragstock for $2. Amongst these boxers were a pair that were perhaps the find of a life time: the motif for these undergarments was math. My mind instantly went to the thought of buying these as a gift, but for whom? I couldn't think of any math friends whose birthday was coming up I could buy them for. Then I realized my good friend Cameron Siler (not math but still science: herpetology) was having a birthday party that weekend, and that I could get him this pair. Of course, I realize that a male giving another male underwear is not a normal thing to do and in fact the only case this would ordinarily happen would be if someone were to give boxers to his/her boyfriend. But these were math boxers, people, and I think anyone would understand the gifting of underwear as a manifestation of the love of science.
I have it on good authority that homosexuals are often wont to wear luminous clothing, and the plot thickened the other night when I discovered a whole other characteristic of these special boxers. Oh, perhaps I failed to mention that I had to buy myself a pair of these, so that Cameron and I now have matching underwear (which we will of course try to use to freak people out in the future). Anyway, as I was going to bed here in L.A. (more grad school visiting) I turned off the light only to find little numbers floating around my general pelvic region shining out through the pitch black room. Yes, these boxers are glow-in-the-dark. Talk about a find of a lifetime.
Today I actually took time to investigate a mystery that has been on the back of my mind for some time. Almost a month ago, I made an entry about the Travis concert I recently attended. I may have made a slightly disparaging comment about a local band that I actually kind of like and would happily go see live, Two Guy Trio. A lot of people get annoyed with the chalk campaigns their fans initiate once a month or so, but I have no problem with this as it is much better to have chalk about good local music than lame frat parties as I've seen on some campuses.
Anyway, a week after this post, out of no where, a girl named Layla posted in defense of Two Guy Trio, and she used an email address that appears to be fake. However, she apparently didn't feel like she needed to shield so much information about herself that would prevent me from finding out more about her after a little messing around with Google. Frankly, I didn't expect to find anything, but it turns out that she is a Math senior here at Texas. She may even be in the same building as I write this entry (being that math, physics, and astronomy all share one large building).
I am now mainly curious how Layla found my post in the first place, and also if she would like to take me to a Two Guy Trio show. When she first made her comment on my post, I developed this picture in my head of millions of Two Guy Trio fans constantly searching the Internet for anything relating to their favorite band and then defending the boys if they were being attacked somewhere. I found that by searching '"two guy trio" austin' on Google, my blog entry actually does show up in the top ten. I now suspect however that Layla is probably dating one of the members of the band and that's how she knew they were at the Travis show. Hm, well one person can answer all these questions; if you don't know how to reach me beside commenting here just search for Trent Dupuy on the UT directory.
No one liked the Mexican restaurant the grad students took the prospectives out to; no one but me. And I happen to think I have high standards on Mexican food. Maybe it was what I ordered: spinach enchiladas. Maybe it was the margarita pitcher that I had more than my fair share of. Anyway, all of the grad students and one post-doc didn't have compliments for this high end Mexican food, but not a single one was from the South.
This is another issue that bothered me when I visited Wisconsin. Not a single person there came from a place where snow is an uncommon occurence. One guy was from VA, but that's not really very Southern anymore. I mean, I think I could handle living up there, but data showing that no one else from the South live there implies some sort of causation.
After this first breathtaking account of Tales from Madison, I'm sure you're all thinking: ya know, this is nice, but I'd really like to see some pictures from these events. Well you're in luck because I have for you here two pictures encompassing half the dinner table, including the other two prospective grad students.
Frida's w/ Scottish Boozer, Pros. Candace, Married Grad, and a little of one of the many red heads
Firda's w/ Pros. Jon and Girl Whose Grandmother May Have Died the Next Day
First, I apologize to anyone who has been looking to me for content over the last week. How embarrassing it was to have a blank page for so long.
I will begin to relate to you the multitude of adventures occurring north of the Mason-Dixon that I have been having over this time of online inactivity. The story begins here in Texas however on last Monday and Tuesday when I came up to the computer lab to work on my first of three lab reports of the semester. I couldn't work on this report at home even if I wanted to because I had previously spilled milk on my keyboard and only this week did it resume partially functioning (I still can't use the shift key, and a "\" is placed in front of any "s" I type). Anyway, by last Wednesday (the day before I left for Wisconsin), I had typed about two paragraphs of a 10 page report. Needless to say, I spent that night working hard, and at 6:30am I had to go home because the parking spot I was in was about to turn into a faculty spot. While at home, I decided to make some of my famous jambalaya-from-a-box (a favorite from my Flagstaff days), but immediately after putting it on the stove on low heat to simmer for 25 minutes I lay down in bed intending to get up when the rice is done. I fell asleep without an alarm clock: h-core. Four hours later I awoke at 11:30am, leaving me only four more hours until I have to catch my bus to the airport on campus, but in the meantime a pot of burning rice has appeared on my stove. The smell from this burning rice was not only wrecthed, but it also penetrated everything in my multi-room apartment. As I hurriedly bathed and started to pack for my 5-day trip I was driven to great speed in order to escape my apartement which had begun to feel like I was living in the armpit of an Asian grad student with bad hygiene and a weakness for rice dishes. I finally was off to school to finish my report, leavign the burnt rice on the counter but with a fan going and window open, and as I got off the bus at campus I could still smell it on my clothes: burning rice.
As I worked in the computer lab, the smell was still with me, and I consumed a large orange which also served to mostly overpower the dirty Asian odor. For the three hours I was there, it was enough. Within that period of time I completed the report I had begun in earnest only 18 hours before: h-core.
I finished the report by my own 3:30 deadline, and went out to wait for the bus to the airport; my flight was at 5:05. It finally came at 4:00, and by 4:30 we were still going in circles downtown. Everytime there was one of those "airport that way" signs he'd go the wrong way. Somehow we made it to the airport by 4:40 or so, and I late checked my bag and leisurely strode to the gate: h-core. On the plane, I had a seat with no seat in front of my own, so I had all the leg room in the world.
Next time: Tales from Madison, WI