freakin’ out

short update: we’re all moved into our new apartment! it’s the most fantastic place i’ve ever paid rent for, hands down. be on the look out for an official housewarming party!

another short update: my birthday is soon. 24 already?

long update: a couple weeks ago was Underground Sound, the country’s best electronic music camp festival, where thousands of electronic music (and all of it’s numerous subgenres) fans gather to get away from civilization and camp out in the woods. the festival is put on by Catalytic Souls and TomFoolery, big electronic scene names here in St. Louis, and this year they changed venues from what was colloquially known as “the Cave” in Murphysboro, IL to Camp Zoe in Salem, MO.

camp zoe and this year’s Underground Sound stomped the previous years into the ground. i was impressed at the cleanliness of the campground–despite the presence of thousands of campers–but it was so much more than just the campground that really made my weekend. everything–the djs, the music, the amount of work put into the sets, the company–it made for a great time.

and as usual, i especially appreciated the vibes and attitudes at Zoe. there are no police and minimal rules, a temporary autonomous zone where the main goal is a burst of spontaneous creativity. it’s a getaway designed to release the frustrations of living in the modern world, to allow people to exist completely in the moment for a few short days. before we came back to St. Louis i realized how much my short vacation really restored my sanity and reopened my eyes to the countless ways of creating “art” and expressing yourself through your creations. i’m looking forward to finding more ways of creative expression in my daily life and all that jazz.

anyway, enough with the hippy shit, now i’m back in the city and naturally just as busy as ever. my three jobs (if you count GlitterBomb, which i do) are keeping me on my toes, but i’m hoping to scale back on the corporate job soon. the money is good for the moment but i gotta get the hell out of dodge before the corporate restaurant industry turns me into an evil zombie.

to avoid complications, she never kept the same address.

let’s get one thing straight. i don’t support homosexuals getting married. i don’t support heterosexuals getting married, either. but ultimately, they should have that right if they should so choose to indulge. everyone should have the right to legally bind themselves to each other and suffer the consequences.

today, on the 42nd anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia case, which allowed his parents’ marriage to even be possible in this country, President Obama decided to talk out of the right side of his mouth and defend Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) from 1996. this law, for those of you who don’t know, says that individual states do not have to recognize the same-sex marriages of other states where they are valid. simultaneously, the federal government is prohibited from recognizing ANY same-sex marriages performed in the states.

let’s cut through all the bullshit and get one fact clear: Obama is a liar at worst or a two-faced opportunist pussy at best. for months now, people have been speculating at the motive behind the amazing disappearing (and re-appearing, and disappearing again!) act of the pro-GLBT language on the White House’s civil rights page. campaign promises to repeal DOMA have been sufficiently watered down to the point of a reversal of opinion. so what is it, Obama? are you capitulating to right wing crazies or giving your real opinion on GLBT matters? or do you just not care enough about your GLBT constituents–the ones you would have not won the election without?

while Obama opines about why DOMA is a legitimate and rational interest for the federal government, he includes precious morsels like these:

Loving v. Virginia is not to the contrary. … The Court had little difficulty concluding that the statute, which applied only to “interracial marriages involving white persons,” was “designed to maintain White Supremacy” and therefore unconstitutional. Id. at 11. No comparable purpose is present here, however, for DOMA does not seek in any way to advance the “supremacy” of men over women, or of women over men. Thus DOMA cannot be “traced to a . . . purpose” to discriminate against either men or women.

No, you fuckwad, it’s obviously NOT about the supremacy of or discrimination against men OR women. it’s about the supremacy of heterosexual relationships over homosexual relationships.

Section 3 of DOMA does not distinguish among persons of different sexual orientations, but rather it limits federal benefits to those who have entered into the traditional form of marriage.

No, you twat, it specifically DOES distinguish homos apart from everyone else. that’s like saying “we do not discriminate against black people, but we’re limiting federal benefits to only those who marry who we tell them to. (ie: don’t marry white people!)”

If [a State] were to permit homosexuals to marry, these marital benefits would, absent some legislative response, presumably have to be made available to homosexual couples and surviving spouses of homosexual marriages on the same terms as they are now available to opposite-sex married couples and spouses. To deny federal recognition to same-sex marriages will thus preserve scarce government resources, surely a legitimate government purpose.”

so we can’t give equal rights because it would be too expensive to give out the same benefits we already give to hetero marriages! how rich–or rather, how frugal of you. to that i would say, fine, get rid of all the apparently expensive benefits you give to straight couples. keep marriage a religious concept, quit getting the government involved with love and the decisions that two people make about their relationships.

fuck marriage, and fuck Obama, too. he doesn’t give two shits about your faggot ass.

HAPPY PRIDE!

shorty get loose.

Not too long ago, I discovered that the old building that housed Faces nightclub for decades was being renovated and rented out by a certain Robert Williams who had decided to move his club, “Club TV” from Washington Ave in St. Louis. By looking at the Club TV MySpace and reading other reports, apparently the space was being used as some sort of hybrid between a dance club and local hip-hop recording studio.

Not anymore.

Mr. Williams apparently had used “fradulent credit” to buy things for the renovation, as well as stealing equipment from the former location at Washington Ave. The new Club TV was raided by ESTL & STL Police as well as the DEA on Friday, and all the equipment was confiscated–along with 400+ lbs of marijuana, all stuffed in large duffel bags. Let’s also not forget the man was getting his liquor license illegally through a relative. To top it all off, the East St. Louis mayor and liquor license commissioner, Alvin Parks, just had his office raided the day before, with some liquor licensing records being taken in the investigation. As someone pointed out in the comments.. why did it take the E. St. Louis police an entire year to figure out that this is where the stolen equipment was located?

and on a side note: Why is this random sentence in the news report?

The club for decades had been the Faces nightclub and is near the Fifth and Missouri MetroLink station in downtown East St. Louis. Club TV One is a dance club that opened in November and features hip-hop as well as R&B artists, and D.J.s. “Shorty” is a hip-hop term for a girlfriend or attractive woman.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on 132 Collinsville Ave and see if karma allows it any more incarnations, shorty.

a real ‘attitudes’ problem.

while i was at work on friday morning, the St. Louis gay world was abuzz (as usual) with the news that a young woman had been stabbed inside the bathroom at Attitude’s Nightclub thursday night before close. Attitudes is in the Grove on Manchester along with most of the other gay St. Louis nightlife establishments.

According to the first stories on Fox 2 and in the Post-Dispatch, the woman was stabbed as she was leaving the bathroom and the ambulance was called before 3AM. She was rushed to the hospital, and Fox 2 reported (with video!) that she would be fine.

Later that day, Attitudes posted a bulletin from it’s MySpace disputing the official reports, saying that:

Yes, unfortunately a woman was injured. Witnesses say that the injury did not happen inside Attitudes, but the victim came inside the club for our help. We understand that the incident was not a mugging, but a personal attack. Don’t always believe everything you see on the news…even the reporters don’t know it all. The incident is still under investigation.

Attitudes owners Jan & Bonnie are now claiming (on the Fox 2 news…another video!) that the woman was stabbed outside in the nearby parking lot (you know, the one where your car always gets fucked with?) and came in to ask for help. They (or the people close to them) are really trying to push the bad press out, as is evidenced by a certain “aries32984″ that has reposted the MySpace bulletin on the Post-Dispatch and Vital Voice comments sections.

So what really happened? Who knows..but there is one other comment on the Vital Voice page that might give us a clue..”juice314soco” claims to be the stabbing victim herself:

Im makin this statement because Attitudes owner and staff have changed their story and lied about what happened. I felt like Attitudes was a home away from home and never would have I thought that Jan the owner would be so heartless. The first thing she said was did I do it to myself. Then asked marcus if it was 1 of ATTITUDES knifes. I don’t appreciate the things that have been said by Attitudes. I am a victim of a stabbing. im still in the hospital in so much pain. I would like to know where this information about me came from…None of it is true other then I got stabbed… I appreciate Attitudes for calling the authorities and getting the paramedics there asap…. but what happened was not my fault and I will not be victimized again by ATTITUDES….

Of course, this could just be some random person with some odd sense of humor, it could be a rival competitor in the bar scene (Gays fight DIRTY), or it could be the victim. Anything is possible, but either way, crime does happen in the Grove. It’s not usually violent crime, but petty crime does occur more frequently than the bar owners would want you to believe. It’s a consequence of centralizing the gays in the ghetto, though I’m not complaining–I’d rather be in the ghetto or on the East side than somewhere in suburbia.

What I really want to know is why the owners would think that making some sort of distinction between “mugging” and “personal attack” and thus relieving themselves of any responsibility really makes that much of a difference. A person was still stabbed IN or CLOSE TO your bar, own up to it and leave it alone.

observations on election day

today is an election day for St. Louis, voting on the Mayoral Democratic primaries and then neighborhood-specific issues.

on the mayor: Francis Slay has been the mayor for eight years now. He’s had more than one charge of corruption which all boil down to messing with the people’s money and shit. throw the fucker out, bring in someone new.

personally, i voted for Irene J. Smith. She can piss in a bucket and filibuster at the same time–we need someone who can multitask.

on the “safer shaw” initiative: i voted no. i don’t want my rent raised so that a few property owners that don’t even live here (yet still get to vote on the inititive) feel safe about buying up the rest of the block. we don’t need a private off-duty police force. obviously the people in my neighborhood feel safe enough, considering 75% of the yards I saw on my way to vote were littered with NO SAFER SHAW signs. we also have a brand new police substation within a few blocks.

i don’t know how this one will go.. the renters here outnumber the property owners and certainly don’t want to see taxes put on property owners trickle down into their rent payments–but the renters are less likely to vote.

i guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

ongina dethroned

so, after winning the last two competitions on RuPaul’s Drag Race, this week the amazing Ongina had to sashay away. I’m a little bitter, but I’m also a little excited about following her career. From what I’ve seen on Drag Race and other videos, she has an amazing aura and great potential. She’s just so damn spunky!

Apparently MAC Cosmetics is already working with Ongina–or at least making her a de facto spokesperson–and sent her to deliver a $25,000 MAC contribution to the Harvey Milk School in NYC. The school has lost a lot of private and government funding in the past year while at the same time experiencing a “surge in demand” for it’s services such as homeless gay youth support. Obviously MAC is making a smart move here–ensuring a whole new generation of customer loyalty and giving the homeless kids (they are aplenty) a place to stay.

Anyway, I’ll admit I’m guilty of trying to investigate the winner of Drag Race via Google, but either it’s a very closely-guarded secret or I’m just not looking in the right places. Surely it has to be somewhere on the internet (it knows everything!) and everyone knows drag queens & company wouldn’t (couldn’t) keep quiet about that kind of thing.

It’s totally Nina.

bad advertising

(EDIT: this blog is really several weeks old, but i forgot to actually write it until now.)

One night a few weeks ago, Tyler, Charlie, Brian Ray, and myself went to go check out the new gay bar next to Attitudes, Rehab (formerly rBar, formerly AM Lounge). It’s a very cute place, and the owners are fabulously polite and generous with their alcohol. The three of us were pleasantly tanked within an hour.

We did a little exploring of the bar, and to (at least MY) great enjoyment, found that the bathroom and bathroom ‘lobby’ walls were made to plaster graffiti all over them—dirty 70’s gay bar style. Some people had already written on the walls with a black-light reactive marker, so we went to go find one to memorialize ourselves.

After Tyler and Charlie had written on the wall, I decided that I would do a little advertising for this site above the men’s bathroom door. Brian Ray hoisted me on his shoulders, and I wrote the link front and center.

At least, what I thought was the link.

After returning to Rehab a couple of weeks later (and subsequently discovering that they own a Plinko board), I went to the back to admire my handiwork and see if anyone had written around it. Lo and behold–I was so drunk the first night that I wrote down the wrong URL for the fucking blog. I know, I’m retarded, right?

So, for those of you going to Rehab on Manchester who might notice my URL, it’s not “pinkoplinko.blogspot.com,” in fact it is “pinkoplinko.wordpress.com.”

not that you’ll know that, because you’ll be too busy reading some other website that I mistakenly referred you to.

yeah, i’m an idiot.

skivvies.

I bought new underwear today (and I don’t buy new things for myself too often). It’s from an old Ginch Gonch line, so it’s a bit cheaper than the newer stuff, which makes it all the more cute. Hopefully I’ll get them before the next U*C*D!!, so I can..yanno…show them off.

Speaking of U*C*D!! (March 13th!), Tyler just got done helping Skank Extraordinare Veruca Salt make an original “Cheerleader Whore” mix for her to perform this Friday at the Glitter Bombshells show. You should come out and see it.

we wanna talk about ongina!

if you haven’t been watching RuPaul’s Drag Race (to be be honest, I don’t know what TV channel it’s on, we watch it online), you are missing out on some positively silly shit. My favorite girl is Ongina, this little asian queen who looks like she just stepped out of a ladyboy brothel in thailand. i fell in love from episode 1. Ongina has her own
YouTube channel with other videos, but you should just go watch the show too..and believe me, these bitches are not exaggerating–drag queens really are that self-centered and insane. it’s magical.

Nina Flowers, another contestant, from Puerto Rico (and doesn’t speak English well), also sick’ning.

mine my data hard

i have always been mildly skeptical of facebook for no other reason than the fact that it’s mildly creepy in its’ ability to tell you anything about some random person’s life that they don’t specifically keep private. myspace can be much more personalized and privatized; thus why i enjoy it more (among other reasons.)

recently though, i have been using facebook a lot more, mostly for Glitterbomb advertising and networking for which facebook just works better. while lots of people may talk MySpace down for being a part of a conservative media conglomerate, Facebook has not been without its’ share of controversies.

of the most recent, occurring only days ago, a blogger at The Consumerist uncovered Facebook’s altered-yet-unannounced Terms of Service. apparently, Facebook decided that it was the sole owner of all property you placed on Facebook now and forever–even after you delete your account. it didn’t take long for thousands of Facebook users to start online groups protesting the change of ToS such as “People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS)”. yesterday, the owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, caved to pressure and decided to revert to the old Terms of Service until a new agreement could written.

it would seem that this is another example of online activists (in this case, Facebook users) creating giant forces in less than two days and winning a victory for online privacy–but what is going largely unnoticed on Facebook (and on countless other social networking and other websites) is the stealthy data-mining technologies like Beacon. Data-mining technologies scour the internet, endlessly collecting data about each individual member-recognizing patterns and cataloging those patterns in order to directly advertise to members of the website.

most of us are used to this type of advertising. we sign onto facebook or myspace (for example) and are bombarded by advertisements that are connected to keywords in our profiles and the things we search for on Google. in my case, I get a lot of ads for Drag queens, djing equipment, gay cruises–etc. these programs watch everything we do online, process it into a pattern–a market niche– and throw it in our face. it’s capitalism thrown into hyperdrive. the people don’t control the markets, the corporations prepackage the markets for us according to calculated data patterns they concocted by spying.

so while fighting against overt breaches of online privacy in one case is appreciated, i think facebook users are simply ignoring the bigger problem of of data mining and predatory advertising.

—–

in the recent past, i found myself cornered in the back seat of an aquaintances’ car in the Complex parking lot with Tyler. While in said person’s car, he yammered on to us from the front seat about his job as a data miner. to make a long story short, this guy spent a good 20 minutes trying to convince tyler and i about the great possibilities of data mining and what it does and could do for online advertising. i found myself pretty horrified at this person’s profound appreciation for tracking a person’s web activity and subsequent advertising bombardment. i felt i had to get out of the car before i puked all over myself. all that talk was upsetting my delicate sensibilities.

not too much longer, tyler did puke—but that was just the amazing amount of alcohol he consumed in an hour.