Attention Fellow Nerds!

I stumbled across this site called Free Rice a few days ago. Play the (increasingly difficult) vocabulary game and for every word you get right the money spent by advertisers will donate 20 grains of rice - it adds up fast. The donations go directly to the United Nations World Food Program. Get clicking! And tell me what you scored.

Queer DC Gets Bloggy

I've been really disappointed with the state of queer DC online. I love Metro Weekly but there is not enough fresh content to keep up with the pace of things or space to interact. The New Gay has been fixing that daily. They bill themselves as "Post-Gay, New Gay, Pomosexual, Alterna-Queer or WTF in Washington DC." They have fantastic event listings and 4 different writers covering all sorts of terrain. You can also send them tidbits regarding an event or an outrage to share. The New Gay served as an information hub during the recent protests at Rite Aid on U St after a gay couple was booted from the store for hugging. I'm loving the posts on lesbian DC by Amy Cavanaugh; they've made me leave the house & go mix it up on more than one occasion.

New Morgan Spurlock Movie!

Check out the trailer for What Would Jesus Buy

Color Me Impressed

Last Wednesday I went to ye ole Phase One (the oldest lesbian bar in the country, dontcha know) to see the traveling road show Sister Spit: The Next Generation perform. The show was put on by Gina Mamone and Riot Grrrl. Once again it was fantastic to see the number of people who will show up for quality queer lesbo events, even on a cold Wednesday night! The ever fabulous Mara Levi opened the show and then we were off into a very punchy evening of spoken word & readings from various anthologies, blogs, journals and hot off the screen of the writer's Apple lap top, brought up to the stage to squintly read off the latest. The performers each had their own charms, but the last woman up blew me away. Her nom de guerre is Arlene Textaqueen (more here) and she had come from Australia bearing slides of her work and a bandolier of magic markers. Her bit consisted of commenting on the pictures as they flashed in their multi-colored felt-tipped brilliance on the wall of the bar. I loved it! She had a 2008 calendar for sale and I snatched it up. It was really really nice to be surprised like this by an artist doing something unexpected (explaining all her Aussie slang as she went).

Sweet Sweet Sugar

I met Jacq at PhaseFest this past summer when she did her fantastic harness workshop. We discovered we were both pastor's kids and it was all downhill from there. She has a fantastic store named Sugar in Baltimore. I can be found there most Sunday afternoons, come & play! Soon we'll be doing private shopping parties at my house to bring a little Sugar to DC.

http://www.sugartheshop.com/

A New Beginning

I'm starting this endeavor for a number of reasons, knowing full well that the last thing anyone needs is another blog. But wait! I'm out there in the real world talking to all kinds of people about a million different projects and I want one place where I can try and put all the threads together and see what we are collectively weaving.

Also, I'm at a turning point in my life where my daily experiment is in meshing the internal & external worlds, the personal & the professional. It became clear to me that anything less than full-time queer just wasn't good enough and I'm reshaping my life to reflect that new understanding. My passions are independent retail, communities that are viable for all of their members, communication with minimal bullshit, books of all sorts and lesbian visibility. Doesn't that sound like a good read?

The plan is to post some of my own writing here but mainly to serve as a traffic cop, pointing out things of interest ("Ladies and gentleman, out your left window you can see the Grand Canyon"), goings on that are having an impact in DC, in indie retail and in the queer community at large. I've long served as a combo personal shopper/human encyclopedia/tour guide for my friends. This is another way to do that without flooding your email box with links I thought were groovy.

So send me ideas, keep in touch, tell me what you are up to and I'll do the same. Cheers!