I go for weeks and months without ever thinking about the way I talk. Because I usually have better things to worry about. But last month I gave a reading from a story that appeared originally in , a story which I guess in some circles could be called a little racy, though nothing graphic or ourageous. An audience member (who apparently identifies as a Christian and claimed to be employed by Homeland Security, which sounds dodgy to me) was so outraged by the reading that he left a frothing phone message to complain about it: although six people read that night, he saw fit to single out only two of us. ?The Lesbian? (Katia Noyes, author of the brand new novel Crashing America), and me.

?The woman with the stutter.?

And suddenly I had that third-grade-playground feeling, the same way I felt when I would be told as a kid, ?don?t act upset when they bully you, you?re only making it worse.? Every year in elementary school, my concerned teacher would send me off to the sad little speech therapist?s office for a screening, and the lady would talk to me in a slow and condescending way, wary, like you would talk to a person who doesn?t speak English, and ask me to repeat sentences back to her. And invariably she would report back that although I did repeat some words and sounds and get stuck in a few spots, it didn?t fall under a category serious enough to qualify me for therapy. And on I merrily went, into adolescence and adulthood.

It?s only come up a handful of times, and all of them hurt. In high school I asked a teacher to write me a letter of recommendation for a scholarship intended for kids who had overcome some major hardship. Having gone from psych hospital inpatient to straight-A student in a short period of time, I assumed this was what she would write her letter about. I ended up not applying, and opened her letter, out of uncontrollable curiosity, to see what glowing things she?d said about me. I was horrified to discover that she?d written instead about my ?disability"— the stuttering. ?Just saying a sentence out loud in class is excruciating for her,? she wrote, ?but Suzanne has earned the respect and sympathy of her classmates.? Sympathy. I found this letter again recently and a decade later it still makes me want to punch something. A year or so after the letter incident, a college counselor told me that speech therapy would improve my chances of getting into a good school. ?You only have a short time to make a good impression in an interview,? she said. I stopped speaking to her at that point, fearing she?d pull out a diet plan next.

Stuttering is a strange and mysterious condition. No one really knows what causes it or how to fix it. It affects men far more often than women, which makes me an even rarer bird. I?ve bonded over stuttering stories many times with male acquaintances, but I?ve never met another female stutterer. I did listen very carefully to a few Joan Didion interviews, where she seems to pause, repeat herself, and draw out words in a practiced way, and I suspect she is a (post-therapy) member of the c-c-c-club. Stuttering typically stops when speaking in unison with others, singing, or when you can?t hear yourself talking. Two different friends with very bad stutters have told me that they ?graduated? from speech therapy because they no longer stuttered in the therapist?s office, though there was no effect on their speech in normal life. Maybe it?s an aftereffect of having to distract the world from the way you talk, but all the stutterers I?ve met have been very quick, funny, charming people with active social lives, jobs, romantic attachments. You would never suspect this from the despairing tone of the various stutterer?s advocacy organizations.

A severe stutter is absolutely a disability, and I?ve met people who say that speech therapy saved their lives. Mine is so mild it?s barely an annoyance, and the annoyance comes from the reaction of others. I would LOVE to never hear the following sentences again:

1. ?You should just relax and speak slower.?
Wait, I should what? Oh my god! I never thought of that, but now thanks to you all my problems are solved. I am forever indebted to you, Amateur Armchair Speech Pathologist. Turns out there was no need for the foundation, the in-ear mechanical devices, the clinical trials, or this cafepress shop.

2. ?Wow, it?s so weird! Ever since I started hanging out with you, I stutter too!?
When dating a stutterer, the moment you utter this sentence is the moment the relationship ends. And yes I?m talking to YOU, Every Every Guy I Dated Between The Years 1998 And 2002.

Are you out there, stammergirls? let?s hhhhear your story.

check in to express more screamin? Katrina outrage.

Former FEMA chief Michael Brown?you know, the one directly responsible for the 1000+ deaths?? while he ?transitions out?. Yes, that?s right, folks. He?s being paid to explain why he fucked up and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. I guess there would have been no other way to compel him to stay and answer some questions ? like, say, a subpoena?

Here?s another idea: You know those swear jars some workplaces have, where you have to put in a quarter for every swear word you use, and at the end of the month the money buys everyone a treat or something? What do you think would happen if FEMA instituted a dead body jar, where they took $100 out of the responsible person?s paycheck for every person who died in an emergency, then used the money to ? I don?t know ? pay for aid to the victims? Ya think Brownie woulda taken that job in the first place?

Here?s a report from a gay Iranian man who recently escaped from Iran and is seeking asylum in a gay-friendly country. He was denounced by a gay acquaintance, then caught in a sting operation set up by the basiji (a para-police force tasked with the regime?s dirty work) on a gay chatline. He has been arrested, harrassed and tortured in the past several months, and finally threatened with death.

I don?t know if this sort of thing has been happening in Iran consistently in the past 25 years, or if we?re just seeing a recent upsurge of anti-gay feeling. The recent election of a conservative hardliner to the presidency could have touched off an anti-gay campaign. Or, it could be that the recent hanging of two gay teenagers in Iran has simply focused media attention on a problem that?s been bubbling along quietly this whole time. There is now some controversy over the conviction of the two gay teenagers, who may have been hanged for consensual homosexual acts, or for the rape of a 13-year-old boy. As US Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Tom Lantos, D-Calif put it in a recent letter to Condi Rice, asking her to get to the bottom of the story:

The exact details of the case remain unclear, and because the conflicting reports about the nature of the charges against the two boys make it difficult to react appropriately, we urge the State Department to do everything it can to clarify the circumstances of this case. Initial reports were that the 16-year-old and 18-year-old boys ? were punished for homosexual activity with each other. In other reports, the Iranian authorities claim the teenagers were accused of raping a 13-year-old boy. Some human rights groups suspect that this charge may have been trumped up as an excuse for the brutal treatment of gay people and to undermine public sympathy for the boys.

Project GayRussia.Ru interviewed editors of the online gay Iranian magazine MAHA shortly after the election about the hangings and about the state of homosexual tolerance in Iran. They had this to say to the question of what the situation of gays in Iran was:

The GLBT situation in Iran has changed over the past 26 years. The regime does not systematically persecute gays anymore, there are still some gay websites, there are some parks and cinemas where everyone knows that these places are  meeting places for gays, furthermore it is legal in Iran that transsexual applies for sex change and it is fully accepted by the government. There are some medias which sometimes (not often) write about such issues. Having said that, the Islamic law, according to which gays punishment is death is still in force but it is thought not much followed by the regime nowadays.
 
You may remember the Soviet days, there was not much info about homosexuality in your country, families and the society could not accept it and the regime did not allow GLBT to have their organisations or to spread info about the issue. The situation is pretty much the same in Iran today. But thanks to Internet and contact with the International community, people get the info and Iran society has changed a lot and support for GLBT rights is growing in Iran though we still have a long way to go.
 
In the recent elections there was a candidate who put “RESPECT FOR DIFFERENT LIFE STYLES” in his program. And it was something new. We do not know if he really meant gay life but we know that his front is not anti gay. In addition there is a famous political person, Mr. Akbar Ganji, who also openly talks about RESPECT FOR DIFFERENT LIFESTYLES. Add to that GLBT which is still in the beginning of its journey but it is young and determined to fight for GLBT rights. There are also opposition political groups in exile and some of them voiced their support for GLBT rights in their program.
 
So, on the whole, we are optimistic about the future as Iran’s situation can not continue like that and people are pushing for reforms and changes.

I suppose improvement in one?s situation should be looked upon with optimism. However, the editors noted elsewhere in the interview that there is still very little information available for LGBTs in Iran ? and of course, the death penalty for homosexuality, even if not enforced, still applies. What can we do?

Please do keep an eye on Iran and demand a better life and respect for Iranian GLBT. Your support means a lot for us and gives us energy and encouragement. Despite the fact that you may not hear from Iran GLBT regarding your support, please rest assured that we hear about it and we welcome it but sometimes it is not easy to work and be in touch with our friends abroad.

I can?t possibly bear to write or speak another word today about disaster relief work. Until 10 minutes from now when I start babbling again to anyone who will listen.

So what to write about? Something witty and clever and cheering? Something ranty, yet not using the words ?FEMA? or ?inbred assclownz"?

Kids? books? They?re pretty cheerful and silly. Aren?t they?

I?ve talked before about how the Harry Potter series is moving towards this interesting subtext. Its message is that truth is a fluid concept, and authority is not necessarily to be trusted. That?s fairly subversive, though on the surface the books never seem particularly radical. I?ve talked about this on my own blog, and a reader, blog-friend, and mild-mannered librarian, Elsewhere, pointed out to me that J.K. Rowling pays homage frequently to Jessica Mitford, a radical political activist and notorious over-the-top prankster.

How about another insanely popular series, the Captain Underpants books by Dav Pilkey? I?ve got ?Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies From Outer Space (and the Subsequent Assault of the Equally Evil Lunchroom Zombie Nerds)? right here in front of me.

The heroes of Capt. U are two fourth grade boys who draw comic books about their principal, Mr. Krupp. (Oddly, I just read Neal Stephenson?s first novel, The Big U, and noticed that the school?s top administrator is named S.S. Krupp. Coincidence? I think not.) Mr. Krupp by a trick of fate turns into Captain Underpants, a superhero, if he hears fingers snapping. If you pour water over him, he turns back to the mean principal. So, I have never quite figured out why the boys are so hot to rescue him and restore the status quo! They freak out and save him every time! They like him, and worry that he?ll get into trouble! It?s all about exposing that adults have secret, scary dark sides that get exposed suddenly, and how then they have to be helped to stuff their Ids back into a box. So it?s training in a way for the kids to do that with themselves: the book, like many great children?s books, is like a little hegemony installation system. While it?s on the surface an annoying book about fart and booger jokes, it?s deeply ?status quo restoring?.

But the 2 comic-book drawing bad kids also save the world by their abilities of naughtiness and prank-playing.

Both HP and Capt. U. share the idea that naughtiness, in fact, extreme, dangerous, thuggish badness, can be a very strong site of political resistance. That?s kind of cool!

Then, thinking about the gender politics in play? I wondered if I could come up with examples of that level of thuggishness being a site of resistance for girls. The Akiko books? Nah. They?re great, but Akiko triumphs over adversity by being Nice and having lots of cool geeky friends. That?s fine? Hmm. Nausicaa or other Miyazake books? Nah again. Girls win by being nice. Gail Carson Levine?s Princess series? That?s more fruitful? the rewrite of the story about the sister who drips jewels from her mouth vs. the one who spits out disgusting vermin and insects was quite excellent. The jewel-drooler does okay in life, but is dull. The bug-spitter has a rip-roaring time. But it?s not? socially or politically subversive.

Where are the kids? books about nasty, lying, weaselly, booger-joking, shoplifting, rule-breaking, bitchy little hellcat girls who set off bottle rockets in school? And then who grow up to be bomb-throwing revolutionaries or who save the world from alien invasions? Instead, girl-badness in stories comes later, with sexual maturity and misbehavior. That seems so dumb and limited. I?m just wondering.

Citizen! Stop living your life! Do not attempt to be an individual! Or you risk discovering that your life is wrong according to the most venerable of journalistic bludgeons, the unsourced trend piece. The New York Times is here to tell you the way ?many? people are living their lives ? which of course just happens to be the most conservative wet dream possible.

The most recent example, of course is the Times? which allegedly proves that ?many women? at elite colleges are planning to abandon their careers for husbands and kids, pretty much as soon as they graduate. As various bloggers, including Kevin Drum, have pointed out, the story is based on nothing. Basically Louise Story had a good hit of a crack pipe and then decided that she glimpsed a trend in the fumes. There are not only no statistics, the piece is based on a handful of interviews and a smattering of emails that Story sent out to a skewed sample of women.

The Times also recently had a trend piece about South Asians in the U.S. deciding to have arranged marriages, only with veto power. This piece was similarly conservative, and similarly based on absolutely no data, except for a few interviews. And the liberal use of the word ?many,? as in ?many people think the New York Times is full of crap.

I still haven?t forgiven the Times for letting Judith Miller hype non-existent ?intelligence? about WMDs in Iraq.

But really, the Times is just one example of the decrepitude of print journalism. The goal is to present a stultifying world view that encourages people never to try and challenge any of the idiotic aspects of the status quo. Remain in your brain-dampening chambers, citizens! ? Do not attempt to exercise brain activity! ? The brain-orderlies will come and administer an extra dose of Soma shortly!

I?ve thought a lot lately that we don?t talk about the central facts of our age nearly as much as you?d expect ? global warming, extreme income inequality, our massive debt, and other signs that we?re living in a way that is drastically unsustainable in the short term. (Plus the housing bubble, and the widespread predictions that the world?s supply of oil will peak soon.) People have said that sort of thing for decades but it seems truer than ever now. And we do talk about all those things ? but at the same time, we sort of talk around them more than we talk about them. They?re sort of on the horizon but not squatting on our heads like ugly birds. They should be all we talk about, not just things we talk about occasionally.

And I think the media actively work to keep us from discussing the only things that matter in our world. In favor of bullshit celebrity news, or manufactured controversies. But also by focusing us on ?trends? that let us know that everything is fine, ?many? people are behaving in an orderly, obedient manner.

So I was away, then dealing with job transitions and general madness, have not posted in a long while and may not post regularly, but here I am now. I admit to feeling a bit inadequate when my fellow Otheries know all kind of stuff about the news and stuff, and I know about Mr. T. Now, I also know about ?Dog The Bounty Hunter", which may be the greatest show on TV and I have been watching the A&E marathon all week.It?s a reality show about a bail bondsman and the bad guys who he hunts down and helps with his own brand of tough love, with the help of his gigantically breasted wife Beth and really, really attractive son Leland. I can?t help thinking, though, that spectacularly mulleted Duane ?Dog? Chapman calls himself ?The world?s greatest bounty hunter", but they are based in Honolulu. How hard could it be to hunt down impoverished meth-heads?on a small island? Especially when their moms and girlfriends call your office to tell you exactly where they are? But quibbles aside, my heart was in my throat when hot, hot Leland was sent to capture a kickboxer during a match. He waited until the guy won the fight, then arrested him IN THE RING to the boos of the crowd. But he got through it, and not one hair on his waist-length ponytail was out of place. (everybody on this show has excellent, highly dramatic, enormous hair.)

I?m fascinated by the show because of the respect they have for the suspects. I don?t know if it?s a Hawaii thing, or just a Dog thing, but they routinely do things like give jobs to the teenage kids of the women they arrest, or help a guy get out of jail quicker because they know he?s the only one who can lift his legless mother in and out of bed. When they have to arrest a broken-down Native Hawaiian for public drunkenness, they acknowledge that ?alcohol is the white man?s curse on native people.? If all cops in this country acted like these guys?looking every arrested man in the eye and acknowledging him as a human being with a family who is having some serious problems and needs a lot of help, problems of his own making as well as economic and racial realities that he is up against?I think the crime rate and the prison population would drop dramatically. But it?ll never happen.

And my first ever post got several bitchy responses from an American Apparel employee. As far as I can figure, Am. Ap. gets google alerts when they are mentioned in a blog, and then an employee posts an indignant message about how professional they are and offers a factory tour to prove how saintly and good they are and not coke snorting, orgy-having ass grabbers. I honestly don?t care enough about the subject to keep talking about it. So there.

I meant to blog about stuttering, and stutterers as an overlooked minority group. I promise to write about that next time. I have a lot to say about it. And I?d rather say it in print so I don?t have to see that look people get when watching me get through a moment of Stop-Plosive Consonant Disfluency.

In the meantime, please have a look at Fixed Gear Enthusiass, a site for anyone who likes bicycles and/or men in underpants.

Some of you may have seen this by now: a group in Massachusetts is publishing online a list of names and addresses of people who sign an anti-same-sex-marriage petition. .

The website, KnowThyNeighbor.org, states about this campaign:

In the fall of 2005, extremists will attempt to convince 65,825+ Massachusetts voters to sign a petition that would add anti-family language to our state constitution. Those who sign it will be listed here.

Quite straightforward. Now, there is nothing illegal in this. It?s all open and aboveboard. And furthermore, I have no objection to activists using social pressure as a tactic. That?s the point of boycotts, protests, letters to the editor, and pretty much every other weapon in the arsenal of the political activist. Plus, this seems like it might actually be more effective than most of the small arms lefties carry. So there?s that.

But I?m just not comfortable with the fact that this tactic so obviously employs intimidation. Because it?s clear that this will only work if people are too afraid to be seen by their neighbors online to actually sign the petition. If people didn?t care, or were passionate enough about restricting same sex unions to do it anyway, then this effort would be wasted. What?s having petition signatories available online gonna hurt, if the petition gets delivered with sufficient signatures anyway?

The org itself indirectly acknowledges its intimidation tactic by warning the sites users not to actually, ya know, intimidate people:

KnowThyNeighbor.org hopes to inspire Civil, Legal, and Respectful Discourse on the topic and discourages with its fullest conviction the actions by anyone to harm a person or their property in retribution for exercising their democratic right to sign the petition.

Yeah ? right. You know what this reminds me of? The whole argument for permitting the government to use torture to interrogate terrorists. The threat of possible torture has been shown to be very effective in interrogation. Therefore, proponents argue, if you publicly permit torture, you mostly don?t have to use it. But if you really do prohibit torture and everyone knows it, then you?ve lost your most effective, non-torture tactic.

Likewise, this effort only works if the threat of neighborly retribution for ?exercising their democratic right to sign the petition? stops people from signing. If they know that those lefties are too pc pussified to attack, then the website has failed. Like with torturing terrorists, KnowThyNeighbor.org operates in the shadowy zone between threat and fulfillment.

Furthermore, if we move out of the shadowy zone, KnowThyNeighbor can?t be expected to take responsibility for the actions taken by those who read the website and actually exact retribution. But the cause benefits from the added intimidation factor that would create.

I don?t like it. I know, I know ? but I don?t like it.

My new favorite author is Ken MacLeod, a Scottish science fiction writer whose political space operas always have three crucial ingredients: fully-realized characters, lots of interesting speculative politics, and super-cool aliens (or cyborgs). Plus, spaceships. Did I mention the spaceships?

I fell in love with MacLeod while reading a manuscript version of Newton?s Wake that had been sent to me gawd knows how long ago when I was a book review editor. It languished in my ?to read? pile for over a year before I read the first paragraph, noticed that the main character was an ass-kicking female ?combat archeologist,? and dug in. Combining witty pop culture references (separatist, Christian farming communities on terraformed planets call themselves ?America Offline") with a tale of gray market interplanetary trade routes ruled by a group of off-the-hook capitalist Scots, the novel manages to explore both the future of social democracy and the sexuality of synthetic humans.

I promptly went out and bought MacLeod?s ?Engines of Light? trilogy from Borderlands, and I?m about half-way through the second book, Dark Light. There?s more political intrigue ? communists vs. anarchists vs. capitalists vs. tribalists ? and a lot of terrific commentary on gender roles. Two of the main characters in the novel are more or less cross-gendered: one is a male-to-female transsexual from a tribal culture which views gender as a function of social role, and therefore people can switch genders if they want; the other is a female machinist from a proto-social democracy where her interest in a male-dominated profession makes her something of an oddity. Plus there are polyamorous aliens, computer geeks, and a mysterious alien plot to relocate humans from all eras in earth?s history to a bunch of remote planets in a ?second sphere? of the universe.

Even better, I found MacLeod?s blog, where I discovered to my great pleasure that he is a terrifically thoughtful Marxist and all-around leftist curmugeon. I highly recommend the novels and the blog ? but mostly the novels. Smart, politically-astute science fiction with a leftist, queerish, feminist bent is hard to find. I?m glad I found MacLeod.

The Republicans have been arguing for years that private charities are better at caring for the poor and vulnerable than the government. Either because private non-profis are more efficient (!) or because they won?t encourage people to become dependent the way government programs allegedly will. I?ve had a number of problems with this argument, not least the fact that often private charities are stretched to their limits before the government cuts social spending, and private donations or volunteer resources don?t increase enough to pick up the slack.

But also, my pretty extensive experience with homeless charities left me feeling as though there are a lot of people whom non-profits can?t help. Non-profits, especially ones which rely on volunteers, tend to be kind of capricious about whom they help and how much. I sat through hours of discussions with people who only wanted to help the ?deserving? homeless, or the homeless people who acted grateful and kissed our hands. The rude homeless, the angry homeless, the ones who didn?t grovel or who obviously had major behavior problems, nobody wanted to help. And the last homeless charity I tried to get involved with had wanted volunteers to ask people why they thought they were homeless, and then the volunteers would write why we thought the people (whom we?d just met) were homeless. And then we were supposed to make a judgment about whether the homeless people were sincere about wanting to change, or else they?d be tossed out of the shelter.

So I ended up feeling as though a major strength of government programs was that there wasn?t as much scope for individual volunteers, or even managers, to discriminate. If you qualify for a government program, you get helped, regardless of whether you look nice, or seem to be the ?right? kind of person. Of course, in practice, every government program spawns some horrible bureaucracy that?s designed to frustrate and confuse people, especially people the individual bureaucrats don?t like. But at least with a government program, you have clear criteria for receiving benefits.

The performance of government agencies in the wake of the Katrina disaster has shaken my point of view. Not just becuase of all the horrendous inefficiency, but also because there are so many stories floating around of people with FEMA and the National Guard and various other agencies behaving in a capricious and discriminatory fashion. Some of the stories of functionaries and soldiers pushing people around and denying people access to stuff reminded me very strongly of my worst charity experiences.

So I?m not sure what the take-home message is now. Having good, well-funded government programs is only the start, but then you also have to rules in place to prevent abusive behavior and discrimination? And find ways to attract the best people to those sort of agencies? Or maybe the message is that discrimination is endemic to human endeavors, and no amount of standardization can eliminate it?

It was the worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of credulity, it was the season of darkness ? in short some of this season?s noisiest authorities insisted upon its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Bitches.

FEMA chief Michael Brown, apparently still stinging from the one-two punch of being removed from NOLA relief and being spanked by the press, sent out a ?candid? email to family and friends this week in which he complained:

?I don?t mind the negative press (well, actually, I do, but I try to ignore it) but it is really wearing out the family ? No wonder people don?t go into public service. This country is devouring itself, the 24-hour news cycle is numbing our ability to think for ourselves ??

Poor baby! I mean, my God, people were actually expecting him to do his job? It?s almost as if the press didn?t know that FEMA Director is just a neocon sinecure. No wonder people don?t go into public service! Where?s the gratitude? The way they pick at you when the slightest little thing goes wrong! I mean really, what?s wrong with Brownie?s resume?

Meanwhile, on the other side of metaphorical town: nonprofits that rely on public charitable giving (i.e. most nonprofits) were already taking a hit in favor of Katrina relief. While an L.A.-based cultural center cancelled a major fundraiser for lack of ticket sales, United Way fretted about its ability to maintain:

?It?s important that people realize that the nonprofits that are here are providing resources for a critical safety net that would not otherwise be there,? said Elise Buik, the group?s president and chief executive. ?We have 90,000 homeless right here in Los Angeles County.?

Social service and cultural nonprofits may have already taken a hit this year because of the overwhelming response to the call for tsunami relief. The generosity Katrina has called out in folks is truly awesome. But everyone, please keep in mind that the hurricane was so devastating because it came on top of all the problems of homelessness and poverty and poor education that America already has.

This year is extra harsh. Please try to give a little extra this year, even if it isn?t money. Don?t let this year be a tale of two competing generosities.

New Scientist reported a few days ago on a study showing that stem cells degrade as they replicate over time. Basically, they begin mutating wildly as they ?grow older.? This comes as bad news to the scientific community, which has been limited by law to using only a few elderly stem cell lines in federally-funded experiments. Privately-funded and state-funded research has no such restrictions, and several states have set up their own stem cell research centers for this reason. But as New Scientist points out, many stem cell therapies rely on replicating these pluripotent cells into liver cells, nerve cells, or whatever. So even if scientists have access to ?fresh? stem cells, the whole basis of the therapy might be undermined if it turns out that these cells have a tendency to mutate when they?re replicating (genetic mutation usually leads to cancers).

Even though I?ve supported stem cell research, and fought the religious hocus-pocus behind the idea that embryonic stem cells are ?unborn babies,? I?ve always been suspicious of the idea that stem cells could become the cure-all for cancer, aging, and inherited diseases. At this point, there?s religious zealotry on both sides of the stem cell debate. The stem cell true believers often claim that new therapies will grant us eternal life as we replenish our ailing organs with new cells that keep us going forever.

A lot of money is being thrown at stem cell research, despite the fact that we haven?t reached a point where we know much about how stem cell therapies will work. The therapies look promising, but mostly on paper. We?re only just now discovering how stem cell lines function over time, as this new study suggests. I wonder if stem cell ?cures,? like electrotherapies of the nineteenth century, will turn out to be more fad than fact?

I wish I had something smart or insightful to say about Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans. Unfortunately, I?m stunned in a particularly unhelpful way.

Meanwhile, though, I?m going to blog about something I?ve been vaguely obsessed with lately. I wish there were an umbrella term for people who are queer, but not gay or lesbian. In other words, a term that encompasses trannies, bisexuals, genderqueers, pansexuals, intersex people and whoever else calls themselves queer. Just not gays or lesbians.

The word ?queer? is great as an umbrella term, but given how much visibility gays and lesbians tend to have in the ?queer? scene, it?s easy for everybody else to disappear into that term. And I feel as though there are a lot of people who are queer-but-not-gay who get lumped into the ?gay? category. Maybe we?d be surprised how many of us there were if we had a word for us.

Is this divisive? I don?t know. But in my experience of both the bi/pansexual and the trans/genderqueer scenes, I?ve found that people spend a lot of time whining that the ?mainstream? queer community doesn?t include them enough. I?d like to see us doing a better job of building our own scenes and including each other. Maybe if trans/genderqueer people had scenes that included bi/pansexual people, and vice versa, the gays and lesbians would see how cool we were and beg us to come play in their sandbox.

My suggestion for a word that means ?queer but not gay or lesbian"? I really don?t have one, I?m afraid. I thought of ?wanderqueer,? which sounds like ?wanderlust,? but is also too cutesy. Any other suggestions? Or do you think this is a bad idea in the first place?

I don?t know why I can?t look away from Katrina, but I?m riveted, like a bunny in headlights. This must be the most blogged disaster in the history of the world, simply because it?s American (and because it?s the most recent.)

Here?s a bitter and empassioned tirade by Anne Rice. Yes, the vampire lady. She says:

Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn?t do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920?s couldn?t do. Nature had done what ?modern life? with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn?t do. It has done what racism couldn?t do, and what segregation couldn?t do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.

and:

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us ?Sin City,? and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

Okay, how fucked are we that we are taking a huge, moderate-to-liberal gulp at the death of a Nixon/Reagan appointee? Here?s the Guardian on Rehnquist?s legacy:

He dissented on some landmark decisions during his career on the bench. They included Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that women have a constitutional right to an abortion. He also objected to a 2003 ruling that struck down laws criminalising gay sex, and to a ruling that preserved affirmative action to favour black student admissions at public universities.

The chief justice pressed for the expansion of states? rights at the expense of central government; he backed the death penalty and opposed the separation of church and state.

As the highest judge in the land, he presided over the impeachment trial of president Bill Clinton.

He played a pivotal role in the contentious 2000 presidential election, siding with the conservative majority in a bitterly divided court to stop ballot recounts in Florida and hand the White House to Mr Bush.

This is what we are sincerely mourning in the anticipation of something much, much worse? I?m exhausted from bad news and have no comment to make.

What we really need now is a good insult. I can?t believe the Department of Homeland Security wasn?t prepared for this eventuality. We pay all these taxes, and they don?t even have a Disaster Plan.

A good disaster response plan has really catchy disparaging terms. Like, in the early 20th century we had the word ?Wop", ?Without Papers? to insult refugees. Who could forget the Okies, and all those hobos and bums in their shantytown Hoovervilles? Then later after WWII, we had D.P.s, ?Displaced Persons?. Since I grew up partly in Houston, I had the handy term ?wetback? to add to the plethora of racial insults available to insult Latinos living in the area.

Now, post-Katrina, we need something catchy so we can talk smack about hurricane refugees. I was thinking at first ?Nolas", but then realized that would leave out all the people from Biloxi and Gulfport. FEMAbots? No. Too technical-sounding. So how about ?Caners?. It?s short. It?s simple. It rolls off the tongue beautifully. You can say it, then lean over a little and spit expressively on the sidewalk. ?Goddamn filthy Caners, messin? up our city.? *spit* See?

How come I had to think of this? Imagine all those decent, hardworking people who live in Houston. They?re being flooded with dirty homeless people who mostly talk funny and who probably just finished looting some DVDs, Huggies, and Fritos out of a Quickie-Mart, and who?s going to hire them when they can?t prove who they are? Why didn?t they have their birth certificates and social security cards into ziplock baggies, stapled into their underwear, just in case the levees broke? They keep freaking out and crying like howling animals. They can?t even act like civilized people. Shooting?s too good for them. And when that?s the case, you need a good catch-all term to make them seem more like desperate subhumans - to encourage the proper state of paranoia and suspicion among decent citizens.

The people in Houston and Atlanta can breathe easy, because while the Dept. of Homeland Security and FEMA have fallen down on the job, I am here in the breach, extending the glorious English language.