Sam Woodfin's Micro

Well Done, Craigslist!

 

And I can still search for an apartment! It just takes an extra step!

I'd black this blog out for the day, if I knew how to do that without losing the entire thing, but I'm hosted at TypePad. It's not as easy to disappear and reappear as when I was hosting my own site!

And blackouts aren't what really matters. Stopping SOPA? That's what matters! The people we vote into office need to be paying attention!

Someone FINALLY Said It! Thanks, Scott Thompson!

During a recent interview, openly gay Kids in the Hall comedian Scott Thompson had the following controversial words to say to bullying victims:

"Grow a pair. Here's the thing: The world is not kind to us; it never really will be. The gay male is always going to be at the bottom. I believe the things that happened to me as a child scarred me terribly, and I wish somebody would have helped me with some of the things that happened. But you have to fight back."

"So much of these bullying campaigns are part of the trend that we were just talking about - the recasting of gay men as eternal victims and it's like, fight back! Fathers should start teaching the boys how to punch. He does that to you, here's what you do: You f**king punch him in the face."

via perezhilton.com

Perez Hilton may disagree (and you'll have to click through to his blog post to see that he does), but my experience has been that bullies stop bullying when you start fighting back. It was one of the most important lessons my mom ever taught me, in the form of "The next time he hits you, if you don't whoop him, I'm gonna whoop you!"

I suspect it was an idle threat on her part, but it put a quick end to the kid next door slapping me on the front lawn.

*It should be noted that I'm not a gay man, and can't speak to bullying from that perspective. 'Though I suspect that, on some level, bullying is bullying, regardless of the target. And parents should teach kids how to punch, regardless of gender.

Travel Prep: Solidarity! (And clean windows!)

For better or worse, kids, it looks like this trip is going to happen!

Really, Twitter?

Here's Some Government Waste For You

House Democrats are condemning a Republican-sanctioned $1 million spending increase to defend the Defense of Marriage Act.

via thehill.com

I'm tired, and I am cranky, and I keep seeing people online complaining about money wasted on social programs, because, obviously, everyone should be self-sustaining, even when we create an environment (both economically and by legal restriction) which makes self-sustenance harder and harder; and now, lo and behold, Republicans want to toss away an extra million to keep suppressing the rights of people that they don't agree with.

In a statement Tuesday, Reps. Robert Brady (D-Pa.), Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) criticized their GOP colleagues for increasing the contract with the lawyer hired to defend DOMA from $500,000 to $1.5 million.

via thehill.com

And, while my primary bitch in this post is about government waste (and that's exactly what this is, given that the nature of defending DOMA is inherently both anti-freedom and doomed to eventual failure), I don't want to harp on Republicans alone. Oh, no. While the GOP may be the party willing to waste that bit (and it is a bit, compared to what goes into feeding both the hungry and the war machine), don't take this post as a rallying cry for Democrats, either. It's not as if equal marriage rights have seen clear support from the Dems' side of the aisle.

“We were disappointed to learn that House Republicans will spend even more money on defending the indefensible and unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act,” wrote the Democratic lawmakers of the proposed tripling of the contract.

via thehill.com

But they are at least right about taxpayers not footing the bill to suppress their own liberties.

via @thehill via @ShanaSmiles4You

Occupy FOX

I'm sure that most of my followers on Twitter have already seen this, and most of my friends on Facebook wouldn't care. So I'm posting this here for me, 'cause I could watch it over and over and over again.

Occupy Wall Street. On Zazzle.

I knew someone (or lots of someones) would be making Zazzle products that said "Occupy (Some Place)", either because people wanted to create a way for the rest of us to support the protesters and share the message, or because someone saw a way to make a quick buck. It didn't take me long to find these designs from Demand Change. According to the product descriptions, all proceeds "will be donated to Occupy Wall Street and/or used for helping people travel to Liberty Plaza and stand up for the 99%". I'm assuming that 1. this is true, and 2. it only refers to the designer's proceeds, not Zazzle's.

I logged out of Zazzle before creating these links, so no, this isn't about referrals for me, either. There are more designs/products at the shop link, above.

Occupy Wall Street by DemandChange	End Corporate Greed by DemandChange	Occupy Wall Street by DemandChange
	Occupy Wall Street by DemandChange

Hello, Shana Logic!

Monetizing a web site is easy. Successfully monetizing a web site is hard. And -- much like privacy in a connected world -- ethically monetizing a web site is a minefield. So I was thrilled this morning when this site was approved for Shana Logic's affiliate program. (No, it's not that difficult. Yes, I am that easy. And easy = happy. So there.)

A bit of back story:

Long, long ago, when I'd just gotten my first computer with a hard drive, and I was running Mac OS 9 in an OS X world, my favorite hobby was customizing my Mac's appearance. One of my favorite sites for finding desktop icons and desktop pictures was Pixelgirl Presents. (To this day, when I want to dress up my PC for Halloween, or when I just miss seeing some of the old stuff from MacuserX [nee The Devil's Desktop], Pixelgirl Presents is the first place I go.) And a few years later, when Shana Victor, the owner of Pixelgirl Presents, started Shana Logic, I became a fan of that site, too.

If you know me, at all (and I know that most of you reading this do), you know that I'm not big on shopping. But I am big on art. And one of the coolest things about Shana Logic is that it supports independent artists. This is a snippet from the shop's "About" page:

The shop is 100% made & designed by artists and small indie businesses! We've got 1000 amazing items created by 100 artists from around the world!

 

Shana Logic is owned and run by one girl (Shana--nice to meet ya! ;-). I started the shop in 2003 in my teeny basement but today I run it out of a small warehouse with the help of my three fabulous assistants!

And how does this tie in to our current political and economic climate? Glad I asked for you! Simply put, when you support independent artists, you support people, not corporations. You're supporting the arts in a very direct way, and you're helping individual artists to support themselves.

(And hey! When you make a purchase after visiting Shana Logic through a link on this site, you're helping to support me, too!)

On a much less political level, the stuff at Shana Logic has cornered the market on cute.

To recap, I've chosen to affiliate with:

1. a shop I'm a fan of, with or without the potential for me to profit.
2. a shop which enables independent artists to support themselves while continuing to make art.
3. a shop which supports both human culture and economic independence by enabling the things listed in #2.
4. a shop that sells quality merchandise (and, yes, I do always worry about that when pushing my Zazzle products).
5. a server full of adorable.

Whether this will end up becoming profitable or not remains to be seen. But, success or failure aside, kids, this is how you do affiliate marketing without sacrificing your conscience:

You support what you believe in.

Occupy Me

I'm filing this under "Wish I Were There", because as much as the places I'd really like to be include snow, moutains, trees, and as little of New York City as possible, I've been more excited about Occupy Wall Street than I've been about much of anything -- outside my own little realm of existence -- in a very long time. I've been excited enough that I think I've pissed off a Facebook friend or two, and that's OK, because some of them have pissed me off, too.

And, in the long run, who gets angry with me or who I am angry with is less important than what's going on in New York (and Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, etc.). Because while most people in the U.S. -- and I can only speak from an American perspective -- are unhappy with the current state of things, economically and politically, it's in these protests that people are finally standing up and making their voices heard.

It once was that society was structured around the concept that might makes right. We still have that, to some extent, in the sense that whoever has the biggest military wins. But, on a more mundane level, we've moved on, deemed ourselves "enlightened", then  replaced "might" with "money". 

Which is no more ethical, equitable, or moral than  the previous system.

I don't want to rant on about my own utopian ideals, or how I'm torn between socialism and anarchy, or how I'd just as soon go back to fighting with sticks as fighting with dollars and cents. But I'd like to make it very clear that I have a great deal of respect for all of you who are protesting in all of these American cities (and beyond), that I hope these protests become an impetus for positive change, and that even if it doesn't, I'm still delighted that all of these people care enough to stand up.

And, as impossible as it would be, for me, I really do wish I were there to protest with you.