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A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges -- This is the year. No, really. This is the it. This is the year you resolve to let it all hang out and lick the fingertips of the divine and stop holding back and stop quivering with unchecked anticipation/dread as you realize that, if you care a whit for self-definition and spiritual nuance and hot wet intelligence and deep karmic color in this tsunami-hammered, Bush-ravaged world, you are desperately needed right now. It's true. Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or...

Attention, liberal shoppers! Next year, screw those GOP-supportin' companies, and try buying blue Do you care much that greasy ol' Pizza Hut gave tens of thousands in PAC money to the GOP last year? How about the fact that Taco Bell stopped pumping out their happily toxic semirancid meatlike substances just long enough to write a fat check to the conservative Right? Isn't that weirdly fascinating, in a depressing and indigestible sort of way? Does it matter a whit that, say, Fruit of the Loom underwear gave nearly 100 percent of its corporate donations to tighty-whitey-wearing Republicans, nearly every one...

As the world swoons over France's soaring beauty of a bridge, S.F. gets slapped with an eyesore And did you hear the one about how those gul-dang baguette-sucking antiwar French just completed work on this astounding new bridge, a soaring, airy, delicate thing erected in southern France, and it's all over the international press and the French people are justifiably proud and even the venerable Le Monde has deemed the new Millau bridge a "work of art," and the amazing pictures are being featured everywhere, for good reason? And you look at the photos and see the breathtakingly elegant architecture...

Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What's next, free porn and candy? Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires,...

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost...

The odds are very good that you are on drugs. Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and chattering the teeth of your very bones. Maybe it's regulating your blood...

This is what you won't see in the paper. This is what you won't see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major media Web site anywhere and especially no goddamn way ever in hell will you see it within a thousand miles of Fox News. You aren't supposed to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain ignorant and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is merely this ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way, way over there, carefully orchestrated and...

'Hydrogen highway' bad route, group saysAlternative fuel championed by governor flawed, but proponents say give it more time By Harrison SheppardSACRAMENTO BUREAU Saturday, November 20, 2004 - SACRAMENTO -- A report by a libertarian think tank seeks to debunk Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plans for a "hydrogen highway" by claiming hydrogen-fueled vehicles will make little difference in reducing harmful emissions. The report released this week by the Reason Foundation argues that even while hydrogen itself may be clean-burning, the processes used to manufacture and distribute hydrogen are dirty enough to nearly negate the benefits -- and the cost of conversion isn't...

I said it, you said it, pretty much anyone with a brain larger than a grape or a soul more nimble than a rock said it maybe a thousand times over. And you probably weren't even all that drunk when you said it and maybe you were even a little more than half serious and maybe you said it just like this: If Bush somehow snags another election, if the unthinkable comes to pass and the Dubya neocon nightmare refuses to end, well, that's it. I'm outta here. Done. Over. Gone. Moving away. To Canada. Or France. Latvia. Uranus. Anywhere,...

This is the great thing about rabid fundamentalism. You really just don't have to give a damn. Take the environment. I mean, isn't it just a little pointless to care so damn deeply about the air and the soil and the water and the stupid little disposable animals on this silly spinning ball of expendable rock when the Second Coming is imminent and a blood-soaked fire-breathin' Jesus who looks remarkably like Mel Gibson will return very soon to smite the heathens and the gays and the vegetarians and the Francophiles, and who will rescue all those who worship patriarchy and...

CONWAY, Ark. (AP) - Organizers of a gay pride parade awoke to find the parade route covered in cow manure, but it was cleaned up in time for the event. Police said the dump-truck load was spread at about 6:30 a.m. Sunday. Authorities are investigating, they said, and criminal mischief and littering charges could be filed. City workers scooped and rinsed the manure from the route. The parade attracted about 275 marchers in the town of 26,000 north of Little Rock. It also attracted protesters, many from local churches. Police said there were no injuries or arrests. "We want to...

UCSB Offers New Queer Studies Minor By Jason La - Staff Writer Wednesday May 19, 2004 A new minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer studies was recently added to the academic pool at UCSB. The university officially sanctioned the LGBTQ minor last week, and students can sign up for it immediately. Overseen by the Women's Studies program, the minor's required classes range from women's studies courses to English classes. Erin Pullin, UCSB alumna and assistant to the director of the Resource Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity, was a student organizer who worked to get a LGBTQ...

When last we left our sneering caped crusaders, Rummy had testified under oath that he didn't really know who ordered what at Abu "Tortures R' Us" Grhraib prison, and George "Wha Happun?" Bush was mumbling into his hand puppet about how he was utterly shocked and aapalled, and was blaming the whole thing on "a coupla bad apples" and gul-dangit, he weren't gunna stan' fer it. And while he still loved Rumsfeld like a drunken frat brother and swore Rummy was doing a "superb job" and stood by him 'til or impeachment they do part, something must be done and...

Anglican Split Feared as Gay Bishop Is Consecrated(2003-11-02) By Greg FrostDURHAM, N.H. (Reuters) - The Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson was consecrated on Sunday as the first openly gay bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, a move that threatens to tear apart the worldwide Anglican community.The Most Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, consecrated Robinson amid cheers and applause from the several thousand people who gathered under tight security for the ceremony in a college sports arena.Robinson, his voice trembling, told the congregation he felt deeply honored but also urged compassion toward church members angered and...

Episcopalians now trot through their annual ritual of hand-wringing over gay priests. Canada now recognizes same-sex marriages. Not to be outdone by our fair-weather friends to the North, the White House Press Corps' hammered Mr. Bush on our Puritanical aversion. The president of the United States, in a Twilight Zone moment for me, had to clarify that marriage is for a man and a woman. The Vatican echoed the Bush doctrine on marriage. Pat Robertson has called for prayers for a new Supreme Court following the court's ruling that the Texas sodomy statute was unconstitutional. The basis for that decision...

June 8, 2003 New Hampshire Episcopalians Choose Gay Bishop, and ConflictBy LAURIE GOODSTEIN ONCORD, N.H., June 7 — Episcopalians in the Diocese of New Hampshire today elected as their leader the first openly gay bishop anywhere in the worldwide Anglican communion, a step likely to roil the church in the United States and England, and deepen the disaffection of the more conservative Anglican churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The bishop-elect, the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, who had developed a loyal following here in 16 years as assistant to the current bishop, was elected from among four...