With thanks to feorlen:

American Values at work in Iraq.

And do you know what that means? It means it’s time for another conservative Republican lunkhead to stand up for bigotry and prejudice!

In the spotlight today, following in the footsteps of other notable conservative Republican bigots such as Trent Lott and “Bouncing” Bobby Barr (the man who made none other than Larry Flynt say “That guy’s a pervert!”) is Republican Senator Rick Santorum.

Our buddy Rick, obviously not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, appears to espouse a somewhat paradoxical view of the American heterosexual nuclear family–that is, that it sucks, and nobody in his right mind would choose it unless forced to.

Of course, he probably doesn’t know that’s what he’s saying. But how else can you explain his idea that condoning non-traditional relationships “ the death knell of the American family“?

Yep, that’s right, this yahoo believes that if gays get together, the American family will cease to exist. Implicit in this strange notion is the unspoken belief that people choose heterosexual monogamous families only because there is no other choice–that if we allowed other choices, then nobody would choose a heterosexual monogamous marriage, and that would be the end of the nuclear family.

Psychologists say we do tend to re-invent the world in our own image. One has to wonder if Senator Rick believes nobody would ever choose a heterosexual, monogamous marriage unless forced because he himself would…er, not choose a heterosexual, monogamous marriage.

Yes, this is a rant. Read at your own risk.

I’ve been involved in both BDSM and polyamory since long before I had words to describe eaither (and, for that matter, since before the word “polyamory” even existed). I’ve been part of the organized poly community for quite a number of years, but generally speaking, I’ve tended to avoid the organized BDSM community.

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot more time in the BDSM community, and I’m beginning to remember why it is I’ve avoided it.

A friend of mine who lives, like I do, in both worlds once described a poly meeting as “Kind of likea BDSM munch, but the people are nicer.” And there’s a bit of truth to it.

This is not a diatribe against everyone in the BDSM community. I’ve met some very cool, very intelligent people in the scene, and many of these people I count among my friends.

But there are also quite a number of people I’ve encountered who are about as much fun as a toothache. To wit:

– The “7th Level Antler-Headed Yak Boy (fourth house, nineteenth tax district)” types. These are the guys (and they’re almost always men) who form elaborate societies with intricate rules and protocols, and give themselves flowery titles to boot.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. The problem comes from the idea that once you’ve mastered someone’s list of rules, probably yanked from some old pulp science-fiction novel, that you’ve mastered the intricities of domination and submission. You haven’t; you’ve just memorized someone else’s rules. D/s is arguably one of the most complex forms of all human relationships, and it’s different for everyone–something that works for one person doesn’t apply to another. Mastering one set of protocols no more makes you an expert than mastering macaroni and cheese makes you a five-star chef.

– The pathologically insecure. These people often refer to themselves exclusively as “Master (or Mistress) Thus-and Such,” and are more than happy to describe you exactly, in great deal, how and why they’ve mastered the fine art of BDSM, and why you should be grateful to sit at their feet and pick up such crumbs of arcane knowledge they see fit to provide.

Disagree with them, even about something minor, and the entire elaborate facade built to protect their insecurities comes crashing down. You have not seen histronics until you’ve suggested to such a person that perhaps there’s some element of D/s he hasn’t considered.

Hint: Being a master is like being enlightened. If you have to tell people that you are–you aren’t.

– The Domly Doms. These guys–and again, they’re almost always guys–self-identify as alpha males; they strut, they preen, they impress one another with the size of their stables of submissives. Their submissives never stick around for long; the stables rotate, because at the end of the day, interspecies dating never works. It’s just too damn hard for a human submissive to maintain a romance with a peacock.

– The completely unsocialized. These are the ones who can make a convention of Trekkies point and say “Damn, those people have poor social skills!” Many of these guys lead one to suspect that they’re part of the community because no other community’ll have them.

Hint: I understand foot fetishes as much as the next guy, but do not walk up to me and, without introduction, ask me to take off my shoes. Especially if you don’t know my sexual orientation and you’re a guy. What’s that, you say? There’s nothing sexual about feet? Well, guess what–anything that arouses you or gets you off is an intimate act, even if, in a different context, it might be completely benign.

– The One True Wayers. These are usually the people in “TPE” (total power exchange) relationships–people who live acting out a full-time master/slave relationship, who sneer at the “players”–namely, those who don’t live their entire lives in their roles–and especially those who (oh, dear God) switch roles.

Hint: If you predicate the whole of your romantic relationship, and indeed the whole of your life, along a single axis, don’t think even for half a second that you have a deeper understanding of D/s than those whose experience is broader and whose palettes are wider. You want to live in a master/slave relationship? Hey, that’s cool, whatever turns you on. You want to think that gives you a better understanding of the right way to do it? Go sit in the back of the bus with the Baptists, the fundamentalist Muslims, and all the other yahoos who think there’s only one right way to live.

…or, how to be goofy and creepy at the same time.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which in the past has funded such experimental projects as ARPAnet (an experimental computer network that was later renamed the Internet) is currently funding a project called the “Self-Healing Mine Field.”

The basic premise is this: An army lays down a field of antitank mines. The mines all communicate with each other, and have the ability to move. If someone clears a path through the minefield, the mines react by automatically rearranging themselves so the path is closed.

And you though people had trouble clearing out minefields left behind from long-forgotten wars now.

There’s a Flash animation about the project that you have to see to believe here.

Something bad is happening in my neighborhood. There were police cars parked in front of my neighbor’s door all evening, and now the crime scene unit is there as well.

Shelly is learning to florentine–use a flogger in each hand. She’s gotten quite good in a very short time. She’s practiced on kellyv and I… as well as on a number of pillows that, as near as I can tell, committed no offense save for being in the wrong (right?) place at the wrong time.

Had an argument with someone at PolyTampa last weekend. He maintains that love does not expose one to vulnerability, and there is no way to be “hurt” by love–it’s only the loss of someone you see as property that’s painful.

I don’t buy it for even half a second. Indeed, on my less charitable days I’m inclined to think that anyone who believes love and intimacy do not go hand-in-hand with vulnerability has never been in love.

Sometimes, love exposes you to a great deal of pain. Sometimes, it hurts like hell to lose someone you love.

I haven’t been having a good week.

Ever wonder how the US military comes up with names for its military escepades (eg, “Operation Desert Storm,” “Operation Infallible Squirrel”)? Well, boys and girls, the answer is right here!

Yes, now you, too, can come up with names for military operations that are just as exciting as those used by the Pentagon, from the comfort of your own home! Be the first on your block to launch Operation Ravenous Tree Frog against your next-door neighbor!

The bad news

It looks like I’m going to have to make a trip to New York City for one of my clients shortly. I’ll be installing high-end prepress software and training on its use. Most likely, I’ll be in NYC for about three days or so.

The good news

I quoted my client a thousand dollars a day for the job.

Anyone know anything intersting to do in NYC?

Quotes Out of Context

Her: “I’m a slightly insane, demonic Jiminy Cricket.

Progress

In the last few weeks, lordfuckbeast and I have heard from several distributors wanting to carry Symphony and Onyx, and one person who’s talking about providing venture capital for us. Sales are really picking up, too.

This is mostly good news. The bad news is that if we keep selling Symphony units, we’re going to be forced to go with a mass-production system, which is expensive; as it stands right now, each one is assembled by hand. But the good news about the bad news is that if we are selling so many that we need to mass-produce them, the money shouldn’t be a problem.

Fun

kellyv, Shelly, and I are planning to head to the BDSM play party in St. Petersburg this Saturday evening. We’ve also been invited to a play party in Ft. Myers in two weeks, which looks like it’ll be a blast. I can’t wait… 🙂

No Fun

Yesterday was spent sitting in an auditorium in the Hillsborough County Courthouse. I got called for jury duty. I don’t know why they even bother calling me; they’ll never let me sit on a jury. It’s always the same thing:

“Mr. Veaux, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a computer programmer, and…”
“Thank you, Mr. Veaux, you’re excused.”

This time, they didn’t even call me for a panel; I just spent the entire day sitting around. I brought my laptop with me, and started working on a substantial overhaul of my Web site, which will be online fairly shortly, so it wasn’t a total wash, but…

Back now from the Florida Poly Retreat, where kellyv, Shelly, and I spent a weekend with other freaks in a gorgeous nature preserve.

I’m not even going to try to make this a coherent post. There’s rather a lot going on right now, so I’m going to string it all together at random, in no particular order, and leave the sorting of feelings and impressions for another day.

Shall we begin, then?

Lena and getting down with the sickness

One of my strongest memories of my January trip to San Francisco was when Lena (altenra) took Shelly and I to an S&M sex club called Power Exchange. Lena brought her laptop and her collection of porn.

There’s a thrash/industrial band called Disturbed whose song “Down with the Sickness” appears on the soundtrack of one of Lena’s porn flicks. (It also appears on the soundtrack of the wretched “Queen of the Damned,” the sequel to the not-quite-so-wretched “Interview with the Vampire,” which is amusing in its own way.) That song has been intermitently stuck in my head since I heard it on Lena’s laptop, so I finally surrendered and bought the album last week.

I will forever associate that song with watching porn with Lena and whipping Shelly. The world is a scary place, now that you’ve woken up the demon in me…”

We cast our troubles into the water…oh, shit! INCOMING!!

Late Saturday night, the last night of the Florida Poly Retreat, Shelly, our friend Evelyn, and I built a five-foot trebuchet out of scrap we’d discovered in a run-down barn, while kellyv documented it.

We set the trebuchet up not far from the retreat bonfire. Shelly played Igor to Evelyn’s Renfield; as the Mad Scientist, I got to direct my henchmen through the process of assembling and test-firing the machine.

As it was late at night, we used flashlights for the payload; after all, it does no good to fire ancient seige weapons in darkness if you can’t enjoy watching the projectile sail into the heavens. We aimed it across a broad swath of grassthat terminated in the nearby river.

While we were assembling our fearsome engine of destruction, a healing circle was taking pace at the nearby bonfire, where the karma of peace and love was no doubt being brutally savaged by our karma of destruction and violence. We test-fired our flashlights several times, and discovered that the machine worked rather better than we’d anticipated.

Presently, it came to pass that the healing circle went down to the water’s edge to conclude their ritual, as we fired our last shot of the evening. Which worked, ahem, far, far better than we expected it to. The projectile reached the water’s edge easily, and would no doubt have come crashing down in the middle of the ceremony but for a lucky group of trees between us and them. Well, lucky for them, anyway; less lucky for the trees, and far less lucky for the flashlight that collided with the trees.

I’m going to hell. I’m definitely going to hell. But at least I’ll still have my henchmen. And we have a cool trebuchet victory dance, too.

Other Florida Poly Retreat stuff

Much of the rest of the retreat was a blur. A few things that stand out:

– Going canoeing with Shelly. Her first time in a canoe; my second. We had a marvelous time, and didn’t get eaten by alligators.
– The Polyamory 101 panel with smoocherie. At 9:30 in the morning. I think I was coherent, but I’m not really sure.
– Invader Zim with Eric, Kim, and Keirston. Invader Zim is a short-lived and highly surreal cartoon that ran briefly on Nickelodeon. I won’t even try to explain it; it’s whacked, that’s all.

Intrusive Iraq stuff

janezero, author of one of the most interesting journals on LiveJournal, has also written one of the best analyses I’ve seen yet on the matter of military action in Iraq. I won’t bother to try to repeat her points here; just read it. Really.

Sex and Money

In about an hour, lordfuckbeast and I have a meeting with a distributor who’s interested in distributing Symphony, our internet-controlled sex toy. He wants to put it in a bunch of stores, which is both good news and bad news. Good, because it’s exactly what we need; bad, because the amount of labor that goes into building these things is nothing short of insane. Who knew bringing a product to market would be so goddamn difficult?

Sex and Love

Shelly is discovering in her needs that can’t be met within the context of our relationship. We’re working on the discomfort this causes her; when all is said and done, both kellyv and I do want her in our lives. It’s good stuff; I think we’ll be okay.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

Seen on the back of a car on my way in to the office: Protect YOUR family from the American Family Association

URL of the Week

Switch to Linux–it’s the supervillain’s choice!

Birthday madness

My birthday kind of snuck up on me this year; traditionally, I celebrate with a large, obnoxious party, but I didn’t realize how close it was this year until it was too late.

Had a good weekend anyway. Saturday, bandage, kellyv, and I went to a BDSM play party at a new S&M club in downtown St. Petersburg. The turnout was light, but we had a great time anyway; it’s a very cool space, with a lot of interesting equipment to use. I was able to tie bandage down and give her a good cropping, which is always fun. She still has the bruises. 🙂

The three of us spent most of the day Sunday in bed, not really doing much of anything. bandage made the world’s largest tray of Nachos, and we watched “Pinky and the Brain” cartoons on videotape…bandage was a Pinky and the Brain virgin, so we got to deflower her.

Rant

I also talked to feorlen, who is having some difficulty with the San Francisco antiwar protesters.

What is with these nitwits? I swear, it seems like the entire net IQ of the entire antiwar protest would scarcely reach double digits. I’ve got no idea where these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers are coming from, but they’re so profoundly imbecilic that it makes me embarrassed to be philosophically associated with these slope-headed cretins. Much as I’m opposed to the war on Iraq, I’m also opposed to these barnyard animals who seem to believe, thorough some misguided intellectual failure, that the way to end the war is to break windows and throw rocks and shut down businesses in the heart of San Francisco–one of the most liberal and antiwar cities in the country.

Calling these lowbrow pinheads “retarded” does a grave disservice to the developmentally challenged. If I were of a paranoid mindset, I might believe that these halfwits were actually pro-war protesters trying to damage and discredit the antiwar movement. Some of these dullards, whose cranial capacities can barely be measured in cubic millimeters, are so breathtakingly, dazzlingly chuckleheaded that–get this–they believe that breaking windows and attacking police officers is an effective way to show that…er, violence is wrong.

Bloody amazing. And I thought George W. was dead from the neck up.

The Call

Lori called me on Sunday to wish me a happy birthday.

I was surprised, and very happy, that she called, though talking to her brought back just how much I miss her.

Many people believe that losing a relationship is easier for someone who’s poly than for someone who isn’t, because, hey, you still have other relationships to fall back on, right?

Wrong. People aren’t interchangeable. It hurts just as much to lose a loverif you have multiple relationships than if you have only one, and having others doesn’t make that go away. And I still do miss her.