Tag Archives: Minnesota

Larry Craig and restroom etiquette

This week the ACLU decided to stick their oar in regarding the vexed question of whether Larry Craig should have been prosecuted for soliciting gay sex in a restroom stall in Minneapolis Airport. Their logic was interesting. There is apparently case law in Minnesota to say that one has an expectation of privacy when in a bathroom stall, even if the stall is in a public place.

Therefore, the ACLU argue, it is entirely legal to have gay sex in the stall of a public toilet in Minnesota, since you’re doing it in private. Therefore, they conclude, the police had no reason to charge Larry Craig with lewd conduct; he was merely expressing an interest in pursuing perfectly legal private toilet sex in a public restroom–or to use what I gather is the technical term preferred by enthusiasts, ‘cottaging’.

Now, I don’t know whether it will stand up in court (ho ho), but it seems to me that the expectation of privacy pretty much ends once you stick your hand under the partition and wave at the guy in the next stall. Larry Craig wasn’t being spied on; he drew attention to himself. The ACLU’s decision to support Craig seems strange; I can only assume that they are trying to be fairer than fair.

What I find more bizarre, though, is the claim from many right-wingers that liberals would all have been defending Larry Craig if he was a Democrat. Maybe I’m out of touch. Perhaps they’re right, and the ACLU are merely speaking for all liberals in defending the right to cottage.

Well, I’m going to leap out of the toilet stall here and now, and declare that as a liberal, I am not in favor of cottaging.

See, when I go to the bathroom, I have only one kind of job in mind. I just want to find a clean toilet, perform whatever regrettable business is required, wash my hands, and be out of there. I do not want to be solicited for sex by a politician, not even if it’s Barack Obama. In fact, if Dennis Kucinich’s wife snuck into the men’s room, I still wouldn’t be interested. When I’m looking out for Number One, or Number Two for that matter, I don’t want a conversation. I don’t to make eye contact, let alone any other kind of contact. In short, I do not want to know that the rest of humanity exists. I just want a quiet, private moment to myself.

And that’s under the best of circumstances; because if it’s an airport restroom, I’m not going to be feeling at my best. I am not going to be feeling sexy. Although I may be about to take a ride on a jumbo, I’m not going to be interested in yours. While I’m always excited to get a glimpse into a cockpit… You get the idea. In the airport, you can pretty much guarantee I’ll be tense, tired and irritable. Sex of any kind will be the last thing on my mind.

OK, so you’re a Republican and you want to pick up guys for anonymous sex? Go to a gay bar. If the lavatory stall thing is such big turn on, I’ve got a radical idea: hang around a lavatory stall at a gay bar. You’ll be far less likely to bother someone who doesn’t want to be bothered.

In fact, if there’s enough pent-up demand, someone will probably start an exclusive vacation resort that offers toilet stall bridal suites, perhaps with nice padded seats and a ventilation system that can dispense a range of exciting fragrances. But in the mean time, your local gay bar will have to do. Life is harsh.

See, it’s all about context. Things which are perhaps appropriate in one context, may not be appropriate in a different context. Just because it’s appropriate to lie naked in a harness and get fisted at a private S&M club, that doesn’t mean we have to consider it appropriate in other similarly exclusive venues, such as the NorthWest Airlines executive lounge in Lindbergh Terminal.

Context, OK?

Minnesota thoughts

It wasn’t too bad when the wind stopped–only about -3 to -6 Celsius. When we arrived in Minneapolis, it was actually slightly above freezing.

I managed to screw up my back somehow en route. I’m not sure how. I think it was a combination of nasty airplane seats, improvised pillows, five hours of journey, and cold gray weather.

We managed to rent a Prius. The logic was that although it isn’t 4 wheel drive, on icy roads it’s better to know exactly how the car will handle and how effective the brakes are.

I can’t help wishing that the in-laws lived in one of the pretty parts of Minnesota, like the north east. Down in the south east it’s basically flat and empty.

There are quite a few Mexican businesses. What must it be like to move from Mexico to Minnesota?

On Christmas Day I was laying on the sofa at sara’s grandmother’s house. In my head was “Nation” by Colourbox. I remembered buying the CD in London, sitting on the train at Baker Street and unwrapping it. It must have been 20 years ago. Why remember it now? I have no idea.

Memo to self re: Ecco

In Boston I bought a pair of Ecco shoes, only to have them fall apart in under a year.
Failing to learn the lesson, I bought some Ecco winter boots. They were fine when we left, only worn a few times, but after 8 days in Minnesota the soles have shredded away.
No more Ecco footwear for me. Sure, it’s light, but it’s expensive and it doesn’t last.

Holidays

Yesterday I found out what tamales are. I am another step on the way to being a Texan. (Hey, if George Bush can do it, so can I.)

Today I started packing for Minnesota. I am somewhat concerned about whether I will be able to pack sufficient warm clothing.

Interesting research

Scientific American, February:

Money is an incentive to work hard, but it also promotes selfish behavior. Those conclusions may not be surprising, but psychologists at the University of Minnesota recently found that merely thinking of money makes people less likely to give help to others.

The researchers got people to think about money by showing them words related to money, having them handle play money, or revealing a poster with pictures of money on it. They then got the subjects to perform tasks which had nothing to do with money, but assessed social behavior. The result: people who think about money are less helpful and also less likely to seek help from others.

Science, November 17. [Link]

Oww, my head

The house has returned to normal Minnesotan levels. Our guests have left me with a cold, so I’m probably going to spend most of the day in bed.

Hamburg introduction

I have to admit that Hamburg had never made it to my shortlist of places I wanted to visit. Apparently I’m not alone in that respect, because research soon revealed that there weren’t any English-language guidebooks about Hamburg in print. I started assembling what information I could from online sources, while rothko purchased 2 German guidebooks and started reading those.

The reason for our choice of destination was simple: both sides of rothko’s family can be traced back to Hamburg. It was to be a visit to the ancestral homeland, and a chance to do some genealogical research. We would be staying with some distant relatives who had visited Minnesota many years before.

The shortest air journey from Austin to Hamburg is two hops via Continental. Unfortunately, the timing is less than ideal; the first flight leaves Austin at 06:30, and on arrival in Newark there’s a 6 hour gap before the connecting flight to Hamburg. Factoring in the recommendation that you arrive 2 hours prior to departure, drive time to the aiport, parking, shuttle buses and so on, I realized I was going to have to wake up around 04:00 at the latest.

Continue reading →

End of year wrap-up

So, it’s the end of 2004, and once again my life has changed in major ways. In less than a year I’ve:

  • sold my flat in the UK,
  • learned to drive,
  • packed up my worldly possessions and put them in storage,
  • bought a car,
  • gone on a road trip half way across America,
  • moved to Texas, and
  • made an offer on a house.

The house thing is still stalled, however. Right now the critical path bottleneck is that the people buying the house next door feel that they need to get the property lines re-drawn. The way things were built, the property line ran across one corner of the shared garage, which meant that we would also have property rights over it. The neighbors aren’t happy with this; they want to have the entire garage on their property, and have us use it via an easement.

That’s fine by me; it’ll mean they have to deal with maintenance, and there’s parking out the front of the house if necessary. However, it should obviously impact the price of the property, so our bid is effectively stalled until we can at least see what we’re now buying.

On a more positive note, I sent off affidavits and documentation to two of the credit reference agencies, the collection agency, and the LA police department. Sure, you can try and talk to collection agencies and Trans Union by phone, fill out forms, and so on—but I wasn’t in the mood to screw around. Instead, I got a sample legal affidavit from the FTC web site, wrote everything up in exhaustive detail, attached insurance documents and other info proving I was nowhere near LA ever, signed it with a witness, and sent copies off in a big envelope. As a result, the collection agency has agreed that the guy in LA who used my name to run up a $5,000 phone bill wasn’t actually me. They say they’ve asked the credit agencies to remove all the bad stuff from my credit reports.

Hopefully that’ll make the bank happier. The latest from them is that they are suspicious that I’m buying the house as a vacation property or an investment, and don’t believe I’m really living in Texas. That’s a response I’ve had from a quite a few people now. I’ve sent a photocopy of my Texas driver’s license and the HMO card that proves that even IBM knows I’m living in Texas.

Minnesota was bitterly cold, very flat, and covered in snow—just the way my beloved spouse likes it. Today in Austin, on the other hand, it’s up around 25 celsius, warm and sunny T-shirt weather.

What with car repairs, a new Palm, air fares and Christmas shopping, December was a bit of a financial disaster. Since we’re planning on going to the UK for my cousin’s wedding in the spring, it’s time for some austerity. Fortunately, you can go out and get breakfast for two for $10 in Austin, so austerity doesn’t necessarily mean misery. Still, if anyone has a spare McArthur Genius Grant or something, I’d be very happy to transition to being an independently wealthy author of free GPL software and documentation. In the mean time, a visit to the Skunk Show gets put off for another year.

I’m off to Vegas again in January, another IBM conference. I’m working a pedestal and helping at the info booths, which means long hours and not much opportunity for expensive vices. Plus, my only real vice is Krispy Kreme. There’s one of those located in the Venetian, allegedly the hotel I’m staying at.

Work is…well, the project I’ve been working on is now being transitioned to an officially supported server run by IBM Global Services. If you’ve worked with IGS as a customer, you can probably imagine what it’s like to work with them when you have no choice and they can set whatever price and define whatever working practices they like.

Hooray for science

Nature reports that scientists at the University of Minnesota have experimentally verified that it’s just as easy to swim in a pool full of syrup as it is to swim in a pool full of water.

Cussler and Gettelfinger took more than 300 kilograms of guar gum, an edible thickening agent found in salad dressings, ice cream and shampoo, and dumped it into a 25-metre swimming pool, creating a gloopy liquid twice as thick as water. “It looked like snot,” says Cussler.

The pair then asked 16 volunteers, a mix of both competitive and recreational swimmers, to swim in a regular pool and in the guar syrup. Whatever strokes they used, the swimmers’ times differed by no more than 4%, with neither water nor syrup producing consistently faster times, the researchers report in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.

The most troublesome part of the experiment was getting permission to do it in the first place.

Coming soon: the science behind nude mud wrestling!