Dog People

I’m at La Colombe in my normal seat, and some woman left her dog tied up outside, and it kept barking. Not in an angry, aggressive way at first. More like a pathetic “where are you, master? Where did you go? Why did you leave me here?” sort of way. Then it started barking more aggressively AND jumping up at people as they left the café with food and coffee. And it’s not like the lady tied it up to run in for a coffee-to-go. No, siree. She got a mug of coffee and SAT DOWN at a table with a friend and left her dog outside. Why did she BRING the dog if she was just going leave it outside, tied up?

At some point I realized that there was a second, almost identical dog out there with it, but not tied up. We actually have leash laws in this city, u know. I so wanted to call the city dog catcher (do we still have one of those?) except that punishes the dog more than the owner, since it’ll end up being killed, prolly. She went out once and gave them a good talking to, and scratched them behind the ears. Yeah, THAT’ll teach ‘em, lady. That worked for about 60 seconds, and then it started up again. People had to hold their coffee up high to keep the dogs from getting to it. I was about to go over and say something to her. I wish Noddy’d been here. She’d’ve backed me up. Finally the woman and the guy she was with got up and left. Dog people, I’m telling ya.

Fishy Quote #16

When we were in Atlanta, Fishy sighed at one point and said, "I have a lack of indecent proposals in my life."

Atlanta

Fishy and I are in Atlanta for vacation.

First of all. Atlanta: gayest city I have ever been to in my life. And I've been to some pretty gay cities. I swear, everyone here is gay. Even Fishy, who always compl

We got here Wednesday night after some thunderstorms delayed our flights.

Thursday for lunch we drove to the Little Five Points area. We ended up eating at a place called "Savage Pizza." We decided to split a 12" pizza, which was NOT enough food, but we figured we could always get a snack later in the day, which we did. It's decorated with all sorts of comic book related art, action figures hanging from the ceiling, paintings of comic book covers, and the bathroom is literally wallpapered with pages from various comic books. All-in-all, a very satisfying decorating scheme. We walked around that area for a while after lunch. There are several cool stores there, and they have a really nice little natural foods store called something like "Sevananda," where Fishy bought some tasty vegan blueberry crisp for us to share.

Savage Pizza in Little Five Points

After we left that part of town, I was dying for some caffeine, so we went to this nice little gay bookstore/coffeeshop I'd read about on the web called Outwrite, on Piedmont Ave. (It was there that we saw our first Asian in Atlanta. How ironic is it that the first Asian person we see here is also gay??) Anyway, I had a coffee and Fishy & I split a piece of Chocolate Raspberry Cake. Fishy mostly just liked the frosting and left the rest for me.

Outwrite Bookstore

After coffee, we walked around a bit to see what else was in the area. We came across Piedmont Park and went in. It's absolutely beautiful. Although that was mitigated somewhat when we saw this woman take her dog over to a water fountain, and let it not only drink from the fountain, but slobber all over it and lick it everywhere with its big ugly wet dog tongue. Fishy stood motionless for a moment, in shock at what we had just seen, and then said, "I *WAS* going to get some water from that fountain." WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE THINKING?!!! She then proceeded to let her monster-sized dog run free as she passed a sign that said "Leashes Required For All Dogs." (This is the problem with dog people. They think these things are completely acceptable. Cat people would never be so rude.) I wish I had her name to print here plus a better shot of her face so that everyone knows what a bitch she is. "A bitch with a bitch," we joked.

The rude bitch who let her dog slobber all over the water fountain

As we walked through the park, I took some photos that I hope to turn into panoramas. We'll see how they turn out. It's a very peaceful park, with not many people (at least during the workday on a Thursday). At one point, we came across the Atlanta Botanical Garden. They had these really cool, colorful scuptures inside that had caught our eye through the gate, so we walked around (there was a lot of walking today) to the entrance and decided to go in. Despite our initial hesitation at the $12 entrance fee, it turned out to be totally worth it, (even for Fishy, who as you all know is a cheap bastard) and we spent the bulk of our day there. The Niki de Saint Phalle outdoor sculpture exhibit is the largest ever of its kind, apparently, and they brought the sculptures in from all over the world, including the 8-ton La Cabeza from San Diego. (It was this huge, colorful skull. And you could even go inside it, which was lined with mirrors, and look out at the garden through the teeth.) The grounds are quite large, and include a small Japanese garden, a frog pond, green house, orchid house, aquatic plant pond, rock garden, a small woods, a children's garden, and more. I used up almost half of the memory card on my D70 there (I love taking photos. Have I mentioned that?), and we still have 2 more days left in this trip! Fishy took a bunch of photos, too, but wasn't very happy with how a lot of them turned out, unfortunately. I wish he'd buy a Digital Rebel like he's wanted for so long. He'd enjoy it so much. Right now he has a very tiny little camera that literally fits inside an altoids tin. It's great for basic photos, but when you start wanting high quality photos in low-light, it just doesn't do as well as he'd like. And it's not like you can jack up the ISO on camera like that.

Atlanta Botanical Garden

Fishy bought some really pretty stones at the gift shop for his mom for Mother's Day. Even I was surprised at how inexpensive they were. In Philly, they would have cost a dollar or two a stone. But he ended up getting like 20 for $5. He's never been one to turn down a bargain, after all. :)

For dinner we went to Atlanta Underground. Or is it Underground Atlanta? Anyway, we were remarkably unimpressed. I told Fishy, "I have never seen a more touristy place in my life." He replied with two words: "Fisherman's Wharf." I stood corrected. Anyway, we ate at one of those asian places in the foodcourt that sells bourbon chicken. The place as a whole reminded us both a lot of the Gallery mall in Philly (that's not a compliment), with mostly low-end stores selling cheap things, and lots of those carts that sell things like mugs with your child's photo on them. The high point of our underground experience was that I was able to get Fishy two of those pressed pennies he collects, the kind where you put two quarters an a penny into a machine and turn a crank and your penny comes out flattened with a design on it. I always get them for Fishy when i can.

Atlanta Underground

We got back to our room around 9pm and never went out again. To tired, and not really in the mood for a gay bar, despite the bathing suit contest going on at the Compound. So we watched Keith Olbermann on MSNBC til 1am and then went to sleep.

Friday, May 12.

I had breakfast while Fishy remained in bed. I was *SO* tempted to get the buffet, except for Fishy's warning as I'd left our hotel room: "NO OMELETTES!" So i got only an English muffin, a coffee, and then an OJ for Fishy. And still he sighed when he found out. Sigh... (See, Fishy?!! I can sigh too!!) I sat in the booth at the hotel restaurant surfing the web and checking my email as I drank my coffee. I overheard one of the waitresses saying, "I gotta get me one of those laptops too!"

The Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium was the one vital part of this trip. If we did nothing else in Atlanta, we were going to be sure to make it to the Aquarium. When we got there, though, the lines were outrageous. If you go, be SURE to buy your tickets ahead of time. Tickets are sold for a certain time of day, and they sell out because they're still so new and popular, so get them online. We got there at 12:45 and had to wait until 2pm until we could get in. Fishy was clearly frustrated by it all, and I felt really bad for him. But time flew pretty quickly (in hindsight, at least, and we kept Fishy's blood sugar ramped up with half of a chicken pesto sandwich we'd sneaked past the guards, so that kept him less grumpy than usual.)

The aquarium was pretty great, but extremely crowded, mostly with small annoying children. They need to have "adult swim" hour or something for people who don't want hoardes of unruly school children surrounding them like gnats on a humid summer evening in a swamp. But I digress.... We were really impressed with the fish. Our favorite was the Ocean Voyage, which has this HUMONGOUS tank that contains thousands of fish, several schools of manta rays, and two very large whales, Ralph and Norton. We spent more time there than anywhere else in the aquarium complex. Second to the whales, my favorite part was the small-but-impressive jellyfish exhibit, and the leafy sea dragon, which must be seen to be fully appreciated. Oh, and they had another pressed penny machine, so I got Fishy 4 more pennies (aquarium-themed) for his collection.

The Georgia Aquarium

After we left the aquarium, on our walk back down Baker Street to the car, we came upon a 70-ish year old man, who saw my camera and started talking to us about taking pictures. Well, his english was OK, but he was still very confusing. We also weren't sure whether he was crazy, or just lonely and talkative, or what. From what we could make out, he was Polish, and had spent time in a concentration camp. He also seemed to be talking about a concentration camp right there in Atlanta, where Olympic Village was. And he talked a lot about the Jews. At first, we thought he was Jewish, but later he said that it was the Jews who'd put him in a concentration camp in Poland, but that he never knew why. He talked about how Hitler's original last name was Frankenberger and that he was Jewish, and how other Nazi officials were Jewish. Then he told us that President Clinton was actually Jewish. As I said, hard to tell. And something about a woman doctor at a nearby clinic who had previously been at the concentration camp. He seemed like a nice man, though, regardless of his other possible insane or anti-Semetic flaws. As Fishy said, it might have been that he saw two young(ish) people who hadn't lived through the "World War Second" like he had, and saw it as an opportunity to pass on his knowledge. He said that he'd written hundreds of pages about his story, and that now he'd add his conversation with us to his writings. If I'd been a little more sure that he wasn't potentially dangerous, I would have taken his picture, hoping that someone out there reading this might know more about him, because he was a very interesting person to listen to.

Next came East Atlanta. For our afternoon coffee, we went to Joe's Coffee House, where we arrived just in time before a huge crowd showed up. I got a coffee/chocolate frappe and Fishy got a raspberry italian soda. We split a piece of German chocolate cake. We walked around the area for a bit (small, but nice) before getting back into the car.

Joe's East Atlanta Coffee Shop

As we drove, we passed Emory, where Fishy's sister is graduating from on Monday. Since it's not likely we'd be in town again anytime soon, we decided to walk around campus a bit. I'd been hoping to find a nice view of campus I could make a nice panoramic photo of, but everything is so closed-in that it was almost impossible to find what I was looking for, so i gave up and we went back to the car, but we had a very nice walk around campus.

Next stop: the Atlanta Leather Company. We've been to a lot of leather stores/sex shops/erotic boutiques/whatever, but we were pretty impressed with this one. I mean, it's no Mr. S. Leather, but then nothing is, right? We got there just a few minutes before it closed, but it's not like we were going to buy anything there. The two guys working there were really friendly, and took time to show us all the cool stuff they had.

After ALC, we drove around the Buckhead area, but it was fairly late in the day by that point, and the only thing that was still open was bars and clubs and restaurants, so we drove for a bit, until we ended up at Lenox Square Mall, which was closing in 30 minutes. They had an Apple Store, and I was hoping they'd have a Mac-compatible compact flash card reader so i could backup my photos to my laptop, but no luck. We had dinner at the food court there. Taco Bell and Cinnabon (classy, eh?) I haven't had cinnabon in years (because Fishy usually doesn't let me get it anymore.) It was *good* but not *great* as Homer would say. The restrooms in the foodcourt area were out of order, so we had to trek across to the other side of the mall to pee. By the time we got back, Bloomingdales had closed their mall entrance, so we couldn't get back to where we'd parked. We found another exit and wandered for 20 minutes until we finally found our car.

Krispy Kreme. Earlier in the day, we'd driven by a Krispy Kreme. It was one of those big 24-hour ones, that clearly makes its own donuts fresh all the time, so we decided to go back for dessert that nite. I mean really, is there ANYTHING tastier than a fresh, hot Krispy Kreme donut??? (The answer is no.)

Krispy Kreme

Saturday

The day started with lunch. We ate at a place called Joli Kobe Bakery, a Japanese-owned French bakery that had wonderful pastries. We had brunch there before heading on our way. Good food. Recommended.

Today's main event was the Fernbank Museum. It was highly reminiscent of The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly. Or the Franklin Institute. It was smaller than we'd imagined it would be, but we had a really nice time there, even though it's clearly intended primarily for children. We also saw the "Amazon" IMAX film, which we hadn't seen before. They also had two amazing dinosaurs in the main gallery. I think it was an Argentinosaurus and a gigantosaurs.

Dinosaurs at the Fernbank Museum

Part of any good visit to a new city includes a search for the best cup of coffee in town. According to the websites I visited this morning, Aurora Coffee was the place to go. Interestingly, more than one person commented on the rude service there, but we had no problem. Unfortunately, their only real non-coffee drink was expensive "Fresh Samantha"-like juice, which Dan didn't want to pay for, so I drank my (very tasty) cup of coffee while Fishy read a comic book left over from Free Comic Book Day last week.

Aurora Coffee

I knew Fishy was hungry (because Fishy is always hungry), so we headed up the street to Belly General Store, which was supposed to have good cupcakes. Fishy got a vanilla one, which was quite moist, but which he thought was undercooked and smelled funny. I had to agree about the smell, which was vinegaresque, or perhaps even slightly moldy. But the cinnamon raisin bagel I had, we both thought, was delicious.

Jelly General Store



Afterward, we walked around the shops there, in the Virginia Highland area. Fishy got a mother's day card at CVS (with hours to spare), we both tried some free samples at an upscale food shop (the kind of place that sells a small bottle of lemon pear marmalade for $8), and we bought a "mini-cone" of Geranium flavored gelato for $1 at an ice-cream parlor where the salesgirl was the most non-friendly person we've encountered so far on this trip.

Oh! And we met Jesus Christ. Well, that's how she introduced herself, anyway. A pretty woman sitting on a bench saw my camera as we walked by and asked,

"What are you taking pictures of?"
"Everything." I responded truthfully, smiling.
"Tell me! Tell me!" she said. "Do you want to take a picture of Jesus Christ? Here I am, the genuine article."

At this point, I was still unsure whether she was just really friendly, or whether she was also crazy. Then I got a whiff of her and realized she was probably crazy. It was that I-haven't-bathed-in-three-months kind of smell. But she was indeed very friendly, and we talked with her for a few minutes. She showed us the stuff she'd been writing, and drawing. She even drew a picture of "the spirit" of "one of her personalities" while we watched, and she labelled it "Atlanta." I guess she is the spirit of Atlanta, perhaps? Anyway, I took a few photos of her (she especially wanted her photo taken with her Evian water, which she said was her favorite), and we eventually said good-bye.

The woman who called herself Jesus Christ

We walked around a bit more and ultimately ended up at Soul Vegetarian restaurant for dinner. It was Fishy's suggestion, which was more than a little shocking given that he'd specifically said he wanted "meat" for dinner. It was a medium-sized place, run by African Hebrews (or at least African-American Hebrews in this case), and the food, although vegan, was delicious. And the service was very friendly. The best part, we both agreed, was the vegan Mac & Cheese.

Soul Vegetarian Restaurant

We ended the evening back at Krispy Kreme again, where I got two hot, and Fishy got two Strawberries-and-Cream donuts before driving back to the hotel for an early bedtime, since my plane leaves tomorrow morning.

Equality Forum 2006, Christian Protesters

I just got home from a fantastic day at "Sunday Out," the street-festival portion of Equality Forum. I ran into a few old friends I haven't seen in ages, met some interesting new people, saw a bunch of cute boys, talked with the protesters, and took about 350 photographs.


I do not like the protesters, Sam-I-Am. One day, I hope we'll look back at these photos of these hateful signs and feel the same way about them that we feel now when we look back at photographs of signs that say "Whites Only." They have no business coming to our events and disrupting them with their hateful messages. The come in the guise of people who love us, who simply want to save our souls. But all they ever do is tell us that we're "abominations," that we're evil, that we're going to hell. I've grown somewhat accustomed to their presence at gay events, and that bothers me most of all. Can you imagine a black pride rally, and the Klan showing up, and all the black people there just quietly accepting their presence???

I don't mind if they're simply present, quietly handing out pamphlets. And that's what a few are doing, but the main group of protesters walks around carrying large signs containing offensive, anti-gay language, and preaching loudly through a megaphone. It may be legal, but it is rude and it is immoral, and it is wrong.

Here are the loudest:

Michael Marcavage:

Michael is with "Repent America". Several years ago when he was still a student at Temple University, he was involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital after some sort of Christian protest he was involved in on campus. Why they let him out of the hospital, we'll never know. Today, he believes that the government should "uphold God's law" by rounding up gay people and killing them.

Jason Storm:




I don't know what ministry Jason is from, but then: who cares? The thing you probably notice right away about Jason Storm is that he's smoking hot. I mean, I never like goatees, but I'd totally do Jason Storm. You can see above the photo where he's looking right at me. I'm hoping that's lust in his eyes. Jason came to Penn's campus a year or two ago, and I was somewhat impressed with him. He can be charismatic at times. And on a college campus, I have no problem with him. The problem at gay events is that it's hard to take him seriously when he's doing is gosh-darned best to ruin the day of everyone else present. And he says awful things. For example he quotes the high suicide rate among gay teens as evidence that there's something fundamentally (no pun intended) wrong with them, rather than as evidence that so many impressionable gay teens internalize the horrible, hate-filled message that we are evil abominations who don't deserve to live. I completely lost my temper at him last year at the same event and screamed back at him before I even realized I'd opened my mouth. Also, did I mention that I'd do him?

Some other protesters worthy of special mention:

Denny and Merv:














Denny (left) was standing at 5th and Market, quietly handing out religious tracts. Ironically (and I told him this, too), I came *SO* close to wearing that same shirt that he was wearing today! Thank god I went with the green polo shirt instead, right? Anyway, I spoke with him for a while, and I was impressed with his non-confrontational style. He and Merv come from a ministry in Virginia. I later learned that Denny has 10 people (or is it 10 children?) in his family. Apparently they mostly live on donations that come in from around the country. I spoke with Merv, too. He's originally from around Reading, PA, apparently, but I forget where he says he moved to. Both were extremely nice, and neither was from the same ministry as Michael Marcavage or Jason Storm above, although they were familiar with both. Denny said they'll probably hand out 4000-5000 tracts today. And I know from experience that they have to buy those tracts--they're not free. As you may know, i collect religious tracts. I started collecting them at gay events, actually. The idea was that if *I* took a pamphlet, then that's one less that someone else could take and potentially be poisoned by.

And that's a great segue into our next specially-featured protester:

Caleb:

Hands off, boys; he's Christian. Caleb, it turns out, is Denny's son, but I didn't know that at first. Still, it explains the scraggly beginnings of a beard that Caleb is growing. The encounter started when I saw Chumley wearing an official Equality Forum staff pass and a microphone headset, rushing off down Market Street. My spidey sense tingled: Something's afoot! So I headed off after him. It quickly became apparent that he was following a guy (Caleb) who was handing out religious tracts and collecting them from the recipients. Indeed, Chumley had a stack of 10 or 15 in his hand already. I asked if I could have them, for my collection, but since he didn't know me from Adam at the time, he said no, possibly figuring me for another Christian protester. A woman followed closely behind, and I followed closely behind her. We all stopped walking when we'd gone halfway around the block, at something (4th?) & Chestnut. There the conversation began:


Chumley made it plain--much to Caleb's chagrin--that he would continue to follow him as long as he kept handing out those religious tracts at Equality Forum. Chumley was eventually called away, leaving the woman (Amena) and I with Caleb. We stood and talked on that corner for at least a half hour. It was actually a very pleasant, very interesting conversation. Obviously, Amena and I disagreed with Caleb, and we debated back and forth, each of us explaining our view of God, trying to find flaws in the other side's argument, and so on. Caleb seemed quite surprised that we even believed in God. So right there it was nice to be able to help humanize gay people to the fundamentalists who preach against us and disabuse them of the myths and misconceptions they have about us. And we learned about him--a 16 year old from a large family, who has a job framing houses, but will probably one day give that up in favor of doing outreach, and he's homeschooled (no surprise there) and he's never seen The Matrix (another big surprise), and he thinks Fred Phelps is evil (a surpise at last). And this conversation had the added benefit of occupying the time of someone who would otherwise be out trying to brainwash other gay people. We were right across the street from Xando, and I offered to buy all 3 of us a coffee if they'd like to join me (I was getting hot, plus tired of standing up for so long. It's 3 hours later now and I'm still exhausted.) They declined, alas, and the conversation continued for a bit until we all returned to the street fair. I was extremely impressed with Caleb. He's only 16, but he clearly knows what he believes, he's very familiar with the bible, and you have to admit it takes a heck of a lot of guts to go out and minister to thousands of people who basically hate you. Too bad he's so misguided.

Some other protesters:



Oh, and I love this. It happens quite a bit with these protestes. You go to take their photograph, and they hide their faces. Wow. They must be SOOOOOO proud to be doing God's work, huh?




Now, I don't want you to think that everyone at the street festival just stood quietly and ignored these dillweeds (can I say that?).

I don't know this woman, but I love her. She stood and watched the "Christian" protesters for a moment, then she went and proudly stood next to them while displaying her flyer for transgendered people who are transitioning. I gave her a hug:


This guy was walking backwards while he verbally engaged the protesters, who were themselves walking through the street fair. He was clearly angry, and justifiably so:



This guy had only two words--Sieg Heil! :


The angriest of the counter-protesters. This man was not taking shit from ANYONE, and least of all the faux-Christians who pretend to "love" us. He was just screaming at them as he accusatorially pointed his finger at them. The crowd applauded him:


Another man who yelled back:


These guys have been around for the last few "christian" protests. I'm not sure who they are, but they're great. They use their banners to hide the "Christians" from view, and they chant and shout to drown out the hateful messages the protesters are spewing.


Here's Chumley, using an air horn to drown out the voices of the protesters:


This guy made his own sign right there on the spot and proudly stood directly in front of the protesters. I think the sign speaks for itself:

And finally, the people who really DO believe that God loves us. They lined the street and guarded the front of Christ Church, where MCC was holding a religious ceremony.





Heroes, all.