The true face of American fundamentalism

A new law is being discussed in Uganda. It doesn’t just criminalize homosexuality.

The bill proposes that anyone who advocates on behalf of queer people serve 7 years of prison; if you are convicted of gay sex, you can be incarcerated for life; if you know about an instance of homosexuality but don’t report it, you too can go to prison for three years.Finally if you are also HIV positive, you can be convicted of “aggravated homosexulity,” and executed.

This is beyond horrifying.

What’s even more terrifying and the reason for the title of the post is that this law didn’t spawn out of nowhere.

Sharlet also revealed that the sponsor of the notorious proposed, Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act, David Bahati’s is a member of The Family, as are other leading advocates, as well as President Museveni.  There is a growing international effort to stop the bill.

Read this post for some more information on the connection.

Words fail me. This is the true and loathsome face of the American “Family” organization, which is the Family referenced in the quote above.

Risotto

So, you are hungry and want some rice. Have you thought of making a risotto?

This what I did tonight. I was about to make the traditional Rice and Tomatoes dish here. On a whim I decided to make a risotto. Even though I didn’t have the recommended type of rice, nor white wine, I was still able to make an acceptable dish. So how does one make it? Read below the fold.

Happy T-day

To all my American readers and all my other readers who celebrate tomorrow’s holiday, Happy T-day, where T stands for Turkey, Tofurkey,Thanksgiving, or a number of things of your choice.

I’m thankful that, despite the vast distance between us, Max and I are still together.

 

Fucked up…

…in a good way.

I discovered this group featured on a friend of mine’s blog(some NSFW stuff on the blog). The group’s called Fucked Up (this is their blog), and they are a punk band. Apparently the lead singer is a shirtless bear who sometimes sings in his underwear and puts suction cups on his belly. Now that’s a concert I’d like to go to. I didn’t hear much music in the clip, but neither did I at a Sleater Kinney concert I once went to. Here’s the youtube clip.

This and that

Ubuntu 9.04 is running well. Everything seems to be in order.

The weather has been great here. I can’t believe it’s almost the end of November. The high today, I was told was sunny and 19C= 66.2F. Around 3pm, I was walking around in short sleeves. Tomorrow, the forecast is similar: sunny with a high of 16C = 60.8F. I don’t think I remember such a gorgeous fall in Burgas. Falls and winters are typically mild, but this is unseasonal. I can’t say I’m complaining. It’s great to take a walk outside in such weather.

Finally, yesterday I watched the latest Dr. Who episode, The Waters of Mars. There was a very brief, minor moment which pleased me tremendously. One of the characters was talking about his brother and how his husband. It was a kind of funny story about a family, which happened to comprise two men. What was really cool, I thought, was about how casually this was mentioned, as if there was nothing unusual to it. And it’s exactly the way I hope we can one day talk about gay marriage: as just another type of marraige.

Geeking

Recently, I’ve reinstalled windows. It was easier than I expected. So, now I’ve been busy re-downloading and re-installing some of the software.

Something else that I’ve been trying to do is run Ubuntu, a Linux operating system. First, I installed the latest version, Ubuntu 9.10, but I couldn’t get it to talk to my wireless card. I spent several hours this afternoon getting increasingly frustrated with it and nothing worked. I kept finding many comments on various forums (fora?) about this issue, none of which were helpful.

Finally, I posted on Facebook and soon enough my friend Nick came back with a very helpful suggestion to try an earlier version of Ubuntu. Apparently the new one has some issues. I did and now I’m writing  this post in Ubuntu.

Next on the list: get the right kind of flash player so I can play Facebook games, like Farmville. Also, figure out why it seems so slow. I wonder if it’s the dual install that I have. My computer’s running both Windows Vista (ugh!) and Ubuntu. I need to ask.

And because every Linux text must have it:

Shrouded in mist

Once again, this morning my city was shrouded in dense fog. It’s quite common here, but this time I took some pics with my phone. Here they are:

Posting this reminded me of one of my first attempts at translation. In my German textbook of years long gone by, while I was at the English Language School in Burgas, there was a poem by Hermann Hesse titled “Im Nebel.” I decided to translate it into English so that I could practice both languages. I don’t have the translation any more; I remember I was proud of it at the time and even showed it to my German teacher, whose English unfortunately wasn’t good enough to critique it. I’m impressed that, bar one or two words, I could still understand the German in the poem. Well, I admit it’s not very hard German; the longest word is unentrinnbar of only 13 letters. I’ve put the poem after the break. The poem itself still speaks to me in wistful tones and an affecting lilting rhythm.

Incidentally, the poem comprises the libretto of the 5th movement of Penderecki’s Symphony 8, as Wikipedia helpfully informs.

Incidentally squared, the same German textbook also acquainted me with Peter Handke. I read a fascinating extract of his play Kaspar about Kaspar Hauser. It took me several years of looking, until I finally found a used copy of some Handke’s works in Powell’s. Such was my dedication. They were well worth the efforts.

Bulgarian feminist literature

Petia from openlyfeminist has posted a very interesting post about the work of Prof. Milena Kirova. Prof. Kirova has just published a new book discussing the paucity of women writers included in the canon of Bulgarian literature.

Indeed, I remember almost no female writers discussed in school, up to high school that is. There’s a poet named Elisaveta Bagryana; one or two of her poems were included in textbooks, although I don’t remember a deep discussion of them. I remember a few children’s stories by a writer named Dora Gabe. However, we never talked about children’s tales as serious literature. (What is the so-called serious literature, anyway?). It was years later when I discovered Dora Gabe’s excellent poetry. It’s ironic that this happened while I was in Madison, checking out a book of her poems from a foreign library.

The comments on Petia’s blog led me to consider some other aspects of the issue. I was wondering about the merits of  sexist authors’ writing. Can a truly sexist author be great and to what extent. Obviously there’s a time issue here. Societal norms were very different before the advent of feminism, and authors are products of their environment. What about modern writers, however. Is a writer’s sexism always detectable in his/her writing? (Women can also hold sexist views, I believe.) If so, how much would it mar our enjoyment of the work?

For instance, this summer I finished “The Turn of the Screw” and “The Aspern Papers” by Henry James. Truly, his prose is good. However, I often felt nonplussed by his female characters. They seemed so hidebound following such patriarchal and class norms that it was hard for me to relate to them. It was quite baffling to me, as a reader, to comprehend their passivity and timidity. In the “The Turn” the governess wouldn’t simply confront her charge, a boy, no older than 15, it seems, but would instead try and with “female intuition” (ha!) attempt to surmise it. All of this, it seems stems from her acute perception of herself as subordinate to him. He is her master; she is ultimately at his disposal.  So the portrayals of the women in the novella I found puzzling and, consequently, my enjoyment of James’s writing was spoiled.

Perhaps we also need to see a feminist reading of the works in the Bulgarian literary canon, one that isn’t only available as a specialist course in college, but is also to high school students. Most of the classics taught in schools here are steeped in our own patriarchal tradition. I think it would be both fascinating and instructive to examine this through a feminist glasses. Too often, teachers present these works as portrayals of timeless Bulgarian values, as tidy tableaux of characters we should all imitate. Does that mean that patriarchy is an intrinsically, hence timeless, Bulgarian value? What should schoolgirls aspire to? To become a man’s satellite? (In Bulgaria a women are often called спътници (sputnitsi) of men, a word which means both “co-traveler” and “satellite”. Men are very rarely women’s sputnitsi.)

While we are talking about representation, I haven’t noticed any major literary works including any mention of queer characters, be it negative or positive, nor are there many queer authors. I’ve only heard of two gay poets. One lived during the first half of the 20th century and is now almost forgotten. Тhe other one’s Nikolay Atanosov, a young Bulgarian poet. Perhaps, I’ve read other gay poets, but had no idea of their sexuality. This only proves my point about the effacement of the queer from Bulgarian literature. For example, Atanosov alludes to Nikolay Liliev’s sexuality, him being a well-respect Bulgarian poet. I’d really like to see a more open discussion of these issues.

So these are my thoughts. If you know Bulgarian, go read Petia’s post. Actually, just read her blogs. They are worth it.

Sozopol pictures

Here are some pictures of Sozopol. To minimize loading time, I’ve put them all after the break. As you can see I was fascinated by the limpid sea water. Perfect for bathing, except for the temperature.

Sozopol Service

Last Saturday was one of those crisp and sunny fall days that you just have to be outside. Zlatina, her boyfriend, Kevin, and I were in Sozopol, a quaint coastal village half an hour south of Burgas. We were enjoying a lazy stroll, when we got hungry. Zlatina and I wanted to indulge our sweet teeth, so we persuaded Kevin to stop by a cafe and get some coffee and baklava or some other kind of pastry.

There we were, looking at the cakes and pastries in the display case. True to my nature, I first looked at the gelatos. However, I noticed that most of the gelato had crusted over, the way it gets when you thaw it and then refreeze it, completely unappetizing. I wasn’t that desperate for gelato, so I moved to the display case with cakes. They looked fresh; there were five or six chocolate ones. I was trying to decide which of them , when I saw the server putting a new kind in. Here’s a translation of our conversation.

Oberonbg (excitedly pointing to the cake): Ohh, what is this?

Server: Which one?

Oberonbg: What you just put in.

Server (looking supremely uninterested): A cake.

Oberonbg (a bit annoyed): Well, yes, yes. But what kind?

Server: A chocolate one.

Oberonbg: Yes, I can see that. But what kind of chocolate cake? What is it called?

Server (righteously indignant): Well, I don’t know! It might be Vienna or not.

By this point I had become thoroughly nonplussed, almost as though I were stuck in an ersatz Abbott and Costello skit.  Zlatina wanted to be helpful and stepped in.

Zlatina: So, if we want to order some, what do we call it?

Even after this helpful explication of my questions, the server continued to regard us with a sour disposition. However, she did proffer the following “answer”:

Server: Well, I’ve only been here a week and don’t yet the names.

Zlatina and I: ?! ….?!

Server (with a tone one reserves for addressing 7-year olds): Well, in any case, you have to order here at the display case, so you can just point.

We did not eat there.  Instead we went to a joint right on the promenade, overlooking the sea, where we were the only customers, not because it wasn’t good, but because such is Sozopol in the winter–halfway to a ghost town. I had a delicious fish soup, delicately flavored with lovage. The waiter was attentive and seemed more comfortable with English than the average Bulgarian. I think our food was better than what we would’ve got from the sour server, who couldn’t be bothered to learn the names of a few cakes.