My frequent trips to the Ubuntu forums often bring me in contact with posts about the visual wonder that is the Beryl composite window manager (now known as Compiz Fusion). I decided to take the plunge and see if my experience lived up to all the hype. In short, it has. I now find working with a regular desktop window manager limiting. Though I love the Gnome desktop environment, 3D desktops are so freeing it’s difficult to go back to anything less.

Installing XGL + Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy Eft with an ATI card is relatively easy once you get the fglrx video driver working properly (that can be the tricky part). By the way, I use Trevino’s Beryl SVN repository. However, when I tried to enable the ANIMATED SKYDOME feature in Beryl-Manager under Desktop / Desktop Cube / Skydome, I had trouble. Browsing the Beryl forums led me to the realization that I needed to use a PNG image with a specific resolution ratio. I’m still at a loss as to the specifics beyond that but I have found a formula which works for me on my laptop with a screen resolution of 1280×800. The formula: a PNG image at a resolution of 4096×1024. That’s it.

FYI: I’m on a Dell Inspiron e1505 with the Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo processor/s, an ATI Radeon Mobile X1300 video card with a 15.4″ TrueLife Wide Screen. I dual boot WindowsXP (soon Vista) and Ubuntu Edgy Eft.

And now, for your skydoming pleasure, I have created eight 4096×1024 PNG images for you to use freely. A few of them would work well on a dual screen set up (big desktop) as well. Download them and try them out. I bet you’ll fall in love with at least one. Enjoy and please leave a comment of thanks if you use them or if you have any questions. ~Seamus7

1. Mystery Mountain

2. Cloudy Moon

3. Bucolic Beauty (hat tip: KoL, StudioTwentyEight, stock.xchange)

4. Blue Marble Tiles

5. Peacocks Feathers

6. Mind Buddha

7. Golden Buddha

8. Silver Slices

The Pasta Puttanesca is for tomorrow. A couple years ago, I was living in New York City and an opera singer friend of mine whipped up a batch of the “whore’s pasta” as it’s commonly known or “pasta of the peasant prostitute” as I’ve now decided to call it forevermore. Whatever. Back then I had never heard of capers and was intrigued. In short, I ate and loved it and obviously haven’t forgotten about the dish though I no longer have the slightest bit of memory as to how it tasted. Well, I’ve decided to find out… again.

As for the Limburger, it also has long intrigued me. When I saw it mixed in with the other cheese such as Asiago, Feta, Blue, Goat and Havarti, I knew it was the one I wanted to try tonight. The name sounded familiar. I remember seeing it from time to time in the grocery. Also, and this will prove significant, I felt a sense of unease as I surfed through my mind for any sort of clue as to what I should expect when I opened the foil wrapper and cut off a taste. There flashed a foggy warning inside my mind that left no specifics of what I ought to beware. I dismissed it.

[If only I had studied entomology, perhaps I would have thought differently. Limburger is one of the few known Mosquito attractants.]

Later, at home in the kitchen, I tossed the chestnuts in some vegetable oil and roasted them in an iron skillet over medium heat after cutting an ‘x’ in each of their shells to prevent explosions. As they roasted, I unwrapped the Limburger and took a generous up-close intimate sniff.

Horror of horrors! Instantaneous three dimnesional memories of past encounters with dirty feet, undeodorized underarms and unhygenic old women flashed throughout my nostrils. Nevertheless, still curious (morbidly?), I took a knife and cut a small piece of the cheese and placed the morsel in my mouth. Surely the odor is an illusion and this famous fromage sold in stores all over will reveal itself to be a secret delight to the tongue, I thought.

Not so! Now instead of the nostrils it was my tongue which experienced something I would honestly imagine as equivalent to eating tofu bathed in corpses (yes morbidly!). But don’t get me wrong – I like tofu. It’s the corpses part which had awoken taste buds I never knew I had. There was even a weird tingling sensation that I suppose might be due to the enzymes listed as an ingredient. I really don’t know.

[It turns out that a main ingredient in Limburger is a bacterium that can be found on the human foot.]

In the end, I wrapped the Limburger in plastic then tin foil and then plastic again and threw it in the fridge. I had thought of tossing it but then thought about how I had payed good money for that monstrosity and how I feel it my obligation to save the cheese in order to share the experience with unsuspecting visitors – preferably Limburger virgins like I had been. And also, there’s part of me still curious.

Online, I listened as the last remaining maker of Limburger in the United States revealed that the older generation are mostly the ones who still buy Limburger. He mentioned that sometimes it is enjoyed with a thick cut of raw onion as a sandwich. Sometimes it is enjoyed with sardines and horseradish on pumperknickel bread. And sometimes it is eaten with strawberry jam and toast as breakfast. I wonder if I might discover that – with such accompaniments – the taste would grow on me…

The Chestnuts finished roasting with a bit of water thrown in during the last five minutes for softening. I ate half of the bunch with a little salt. Unfortunately, they were not as delicious as I had hoped. Too dry. They probably needed an open flame or perhaps I simply cooked them too long. I remember buying a small bag of them from a street vendor in Switzerland during my college semester abroad. Loved them then.

Even so, that Limburger taste lingers still on my tongue. I’m glad I tried the cheese and even a little excited by the pungent power of its smell and taste. But ultimately, I’m disappointed. I can’t possilby imagine enjoying it spread on a toasted Everything Bagel nor do I possess the courage to act on my curiosity and give it another try. If only I had thought to combine the Limburger Cheese and Chestnuts. Well there’s always tomorrow’s Puttanesca…

What was your first time like with Limburger? Any Limburger lovers out there? I’ll understand if you wish to remain anonymous.

We are not fundamentally gays who happen to be human. We are fundamentally humans who happen to be gay. Therefore, all impulses that predominantly manifest in humans no matter of what ancestry, ethnicity, dialect, race, nationality, religion or politics will also manifest in humans no matter of what sexuality.

The more freedoms we are given to participate in mainstream activities, institutions, rituals, etc. the more gay people will do so. The drive to participate and assimilate will in the long-run win out once we achieve equality and protection under the law for we are not fundamentally driven by an ideology, we are fundamentally driven by our humanity.

The Gay Lesbian Civil Rights Movement’s most important success will be that of creating an environment in which gay people feel free and welcome to express their basic core humanity without regard to their sexuality. The energy that out gay people now must expend in order to make their place openly and honestly is unfair and distracting.

Most gay people, no matter what their outward face, desire a life of community in which their sexuality is irrelevant but acknowledged. The ways in which our humanity expresses itself are indistinguishable from the ways in which all other peoples have expressed their humanity throughout all of time: creativity and relationship. Ultimately gay people are only as queer as our environment makes us. The current gay subculture is mostly a temporary reactionary formation that will subside once the mainstream more fully welcomes us as the full human beings we already know ourselves to be.

Some gay activists go too far in rejecting all things that were previously denied to us. That, I think, is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Wanting a family, children, a monogamous committed relationship, acceptance, respect, belonging, normalcy, etc. isn’t a sign that some sort of fascist heterosexism is at play but a sign that standard human impulses are at play and that they are inescapable and undeniable. Any attempts to paint them as artificial notions brainwashed into us is rather silly and confused.

Gay people are not from Mars.

(“I wonder if the monogamistic, parenting impulse is hard wired to our brain or something we learn from culture?” Justin R. asked in comment #99 to the article Gay America: The Next Generation on BlogCritics.org. The above article was my response.)

Written by Patrick Yaeger
Published in The Letter
August 2005 Issue

In the Fall of 1987, Chuck Rosenfield and his boyfriend, both in their twenties, bought and moved into what they considered their share of the American dream. Theirs was a cape cod style four bedroom on a street sandwiched between, what was then, the separate cities of Shivley and Louisville in Jefferson County, Kentucky. They were thrilled with their new home together and began readying it for visiting friends and family.

But when school let out for the Summer in 1988, a neighborhood gang of juveniles began trespassing through their property, sometimes looking in the windows. When the couple spoke up and asked the youth to stop, the intrusions only grew worse. Fences locked were climbed and damaged, a rock was thrown through the front window, and one youth even mentioned using a Molotov cocktail to ‘burn them out’. Chuck and his partner began keeping a shotgun near the bed at night.

When the Jefferson County Police were called regarding the vandalism, the officer who responded didn’t seem sympathetic. “Well, you are two men living in a house together…,” Chuck recalls him saying. There was no investigation. They sold their dream home in the Spring of 1989.

If it had been the year 1992, Chuck’s call might have brought a somewhat different response from the police, for in that year Kentucky passed its first piece of hate crime (also called bias crime) legislation. The statute, KRS 15.331, mandated that officers be trained to recognize hate crime. At the very least, officers in 1992 Kentucky might have been more aware that crime, when motivated by bias against homosexuals, was no less serious.

The first federal hate crime statute, the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, mandated the collection and reporting of hate crime data. Logically, Kentucky’s 1992 statute (KRS 15.331), in addition to mandating hate crime training for officers, required the collection and reporting of hate crime to the various state and national crime databases. Therefore, in 1992, it was intended that officers, unlike the one who responded to Chuck Rosenfield’s call back in 1988, would be more capable and more likely to recognize and report hate crime.

In fact, hate crime legislation has arisen due to the growing consensus that the apathy shown by Chuck’s responding officer back in 1988 should no longer be acceptable and that crimes motivated solely by a victim’s perceived race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin are fundamentally more egregious than conventional crimes. These types of bias crime, it is thought, target entire communities of citizens (i.e. black, jewish, gay) and not just the individual victimized.

Though in 1992, KRS 15.331 added no penalty enhancements to this new quality of crime, it nonetheless marked a growing understanding, at the state level, of their seriousness and need for further study.

In May of 1996, two young lovers planned for one final ‘get away’ before work and study resumed in June.

Lollie Winans, 26, originally from Michigan, was finishing college in Unity, Maine. Julie Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minnesota, was an accomplished geologist living in Burlington, Vermont. Both were skilled trail guides who enjoyed hiking, camping and canoeing together.

On May 18th, the two women headed south to Virginia to the Shenandoah National Park for what was supposed to be an eight day backwoods camping excursion. Arriving at the park entrance on the 19th, they got camping permits. On May 23rd, they hiked along the famous Appalachian Trail stopping for photos at Crescent Rock Overlook. Later that day, they caught a ride to a nearby trail head parking lot with a park ranger. More photos were taken on May 24th.

Then, sometime between the 24th and 27th, someone happened to Lollie and Julie; they didn’t return when expected; parents contacted authorities. On June 1st, in a creek-side camp site along the old Bridal Trail on Stony Man Mountain the two young women were found bound and gagged with their throats slit.

Six years later, in April of 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft announces the indictment of Darrell David Rice for the brutal killings of Julie and Lollie. And for the first time the United Stated Department of Justice invokes the federal hate crimes statute which allows for enhanced penalties to be charged to the alleged murderer:

“Today’s indictment charges that Rice singled out Julianne Marie Williams and Laura Winans for murder because of their gender or sexual orientation… The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate, prosecute and punish criminal acts of violence and vigilantism motivated by hate and intolerance… By invoking the hate crimes enhancement parts of sentencing enhancement today, today’s murder indictment makes clear our commitment to seek every prosecutorial advantage and to use every available statute to secure justice for victims like Julianne Marie Williams and Lollie Winans.”

Unlike the Matthew Shephard case in Wyoming, the Department of Justice – led first by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno in 1996 and now by John Ashcroft – was able to step in and help Virginia prosecutors because Lollie and Julie’s murder took place in a federal park. The sentencing enhancements Ashcroft mentioned in the 2001 press conference were possible due to the federal statute passed in 1994 called the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act. It provided for stiffer penalties in bias-motivated attacks involving federal crimes.

As for Darrell David Rice, charges against him were withdrawn in 2004 by federal prosecutors due to the discovery of new forensic DNA evidence casting doubt on his guilt. Nevertheless, Mr. Rice remains a suspect in the case. In 1997 he was charged and later convicted with attempted abduction of a female bicyclist in Shenandoah National Park and it was during that investigation that he was linked to Lollie and Julie’s murder. Prosecutors have quoted Rice as saying he selected women to intimidate and assault because “they are more vulnerable than men” and that Lollie and Julie “deserved to die because they were lesbian whores.”

Since the passage of the federal Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, our picture of the prevalence of hate crime has slowly begun to form though it remains a piecemeal snapshot. For instance, in Kentucky, while hundreds of local agencies participated in crime reporting, only approximately 15% reported hate crimes as having occurred in their jurisdiction. While underreporting of hate crime, especially that motivated by sexual orientation, is a major problem, the data gathered remains worthy of study.

As it stands, Federal hate crime legislation sends a powerful signal to the states that the assumptions on which hate crime statutes are based are fundamentally accepted as correct. However, because federal hate crime legislation narrowly restricts when federal authorities can step in, it is in practice weak.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act, introduced in the U.S. House of Representative in January of 2003 and updated in 2005, seeks to remedy this situation. If it were to pass, federal authorities would have greater freedom to assist when hate crimes occur at the state level. The bill would also expand the federal criminal code to include criminal penalties for certain hate crimes. Given the current make-up of the U.S. Congress, passage is unlikely.

2004 Hate Crime Statistics is due for publication later this year.

There is no psychological evolution. One is what one is or one is something else not based on reality but rather based on fantasies and visions in our mind. To see through this doesn’t take an immense amount of time and effort, it simply takes the understanding to do it. Once one has this understanding then all that’s left is to stop the diversionary thought worlds and efforts at “self-improvement” and simply be the real you that has always been.

Be what you are here and now, yesterday and tomorrow. Don’t try to figure out what that is for then you just end up creating another ideal or fantasy image in your mind, rather stop all that and settle into the presence all around and within you right now.

Also, he says there’s no methodology or “way” of achieving this for that in itself is another form of dogma, ritual, fantasy path that only leads away from what is already here. He understands the existence of conditioning and the barriers that this conditioning can present to those who would like to circumvent it. Again, he simply says to “see” this conditioning and then it is no longer a problem it simply is a part of what is.

It is not something to “get rid of” or work at “undoing”, rather it is a part of the reality of what is and therefore is to be “seen”, recognized, acknowledged, yet not scorned or cursed. It is real and therefore can only be seen or ignored and to ignore something that is real and a part of you is to deal in fantasy and idealization.