Well, I certainly don't use this website very much these days. You should probably head over to MattBaume.com for whatever it is you were looking for. Or, if you really want to, you can hang around in this weird abandoned workshop. But I don't know why you would.
About Me
Oh hey. I'm Matt. I was born in 1980 and I live in San Francisco. My head's in the clouds, and I'm well-meaning until I get to know you.
I write for a handful of local sites, I take lots of photos, and I design information.
Blogging! Yeah, meh. Is it just me, or is everyone sort of wandering away from it? I've had so much problogging to do that I can't bring myself to log in to Movable Type these days unless I have to. (Oh that reminds me, have you seen my new site where I tell you all about how you should hire me? You should hire me.)
And then it seems like everyone's putting their content on more sharey stuff anyway like the Faceface and Friendglen and Bookbleh, so excreting my own lonely RSS feed feels a bit like being the last ham radio operator. But! I worry now, if I'm ever like "I wonder what I was up to back in October of 2009," I'll have no way to peek back and see. Maybe I ought to just keep a paper diary.
But anyway! I'm certainly not going to be putting any new content here anytime soon. I'm contenting myself for now with Flickr and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. And my portfolio, now that I've finally put one together.
I like having the security of my own little castle here with a domain, rather than flinging messages into bottles. I might miss it when it's gone. Or I might not even notice.
We watched Annie a few weeks ago, the one from the 80s with Carol Burnett (and Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters, how I wish they'd team up more often), and at the time I couldn't figure out why anyone liked it. That Annie girl was so squeaky and medicated; and every five minutes they were doing another "Tomorrow" reprise.
The thing that bugged me the most was that everyone adored Annie in the film, from the moment they met her. Like, psychotically. She had some kind of magnetism on the other characters in the film that was totally invisible to me.
Also -- listen to how pissed-off the little girls sound in this version of "Hard Knock Life." They're like gang bangers! My sympathy is with the hard-drinking matron.
I came home early from work today, and found James napping. His eyes opened as I came in the room: "you're a minstrel," he said, "not a minstrel. A wanderer. A wandering minstrel. Yes, a minstrel."
His eyes closed. "You came home early today," he said, still not yet awake. "You came home to get me an ice cream cone."
So, I went to the "Get Engaged" meeting at the LGBT Center on Tuesday night. It was part of a statewide series of town halls, designed to show off the data being gathered to fight Prop 8. A good time was had by all.
Here, I think, was one of the more interesting findings: the room was surveyed both before and after the meeting to see what year everyone preferred. In both surveys, the room heavily favored 2010. After the meeting, though, there were fewer undecideds -- so the meeting did help people make up their minds otherwise. But the newly-decided people were pretty evenly split between 2010 and 2012, so the data and arguments did not skew people towards one year or the other.
The other interesting point: EQCA and Courage Campaign collaborated with David Binder on collecting tons of useful data. It's very encouraging to know that this is happening -- it'll form the basis of the campaign in 2010 or 2012 or whenever. We can't move forward without it so I'm glad to see it.
None of the findings were surprising:
- CA is split 50-50 on equal marriage
- Crucial: win not just swing voters but also those currently opposed
- Effective messages: couples, personal stories. heart stuff.
- Ineffective messages: rights, fairness. mind stuff.
- Groups we must win over: religious, elderly, conservative. Race debunked as major factor -- religiouness much more significant.
- Adding provision to ballot that clarifies religious liberty significantly increases support.
- Estimate: to change enough minds, we'll have to knock on 90,000 doors. Molly says: "that's steep, but not impossible."
- Leadership summit on July 25 (Inland Empire) will answer question "what's the plan for 2010 or 2012?"
I spoke to a bunch of people after the meeting. Everyone was wavering on the arguments between 2010 and 2012 -- we all could see the arguments for and against both years, and even the people leaning toward one year or another seemed like they could be convinced. I didn't get the impression that anyone was really strongly committed to either year.
What people DESPERATELY wanted, however, was a plan. This is totally consistent with what I'm hearing elsewhere: most folks are saying, "I'll go with either 2010 or 2012, whichever year has a plan behind it." Hopefully that plan will start to come together at the July 25th summit.
Today I was trying to figure out how to swap the contents of rows in Excel. (In Numbers, it's super-easy -- you just drag the row -- but if you do that in Excel it erases a bunch of data.)
So I typed in "swap" in the help-search-box. The first result? Instructions for using Excel to manage a Secret Santa gift exchange.
Then it froze, and stayed frozen until I closed Outlook.
"All these years you've been writing about Muni," James said to me after we were done talking to the police, "and now finally you have something interesting to say."
We had been riding the bus home from seeing Bruno (which I liked, but it was stressful!) on the 31. Some kid was asking if anyone had the time, and nobody was responding, and I was being nice -- and careless -- and looked at my watch to say 1:10am. He grabbed for the watch, I curled into a foetal position in my seat, and there were an awkward 15 seconds during which he clutched fruitlessly at my groin before giving up to run away into the public housing.
He didn't get anything. Too bad for you, public-housing-mugger! It wasn't a very good scheme, since how would you even yank a watch off of a wrist unless it was the elastic kind, which this wasn't, because I am not a computer science major in the year 1988? Or maybe he was going for my phone, which was in my pocket and he could maybe feel it as he was groping around in my lap. Anyway the whole thing was like an encore performance of Bruno. What a tangle!
Of course it was all captured on tape -- or at least, it happened in front of cameras that may or may not have been functioning. I have made some inquiries and will hopefully be getting the footage, if it exists.
The driver -- Ruth -- was very nice, and called the cops. They took a statement. I was fine. We rode the bus the rest of the way home, and at one point Ruth speculated, "do you think he went for you because you're gay?" And I knew I was back amongst friends.
So, Wednesday. I left my credit card at home, because I ordered a Wii sensor bar at Best Buy, and James was going to pick it up at the store but needed my credit card to do so. (Our original sensor bar was eaten by rats, I'm not making that up.)
So, I didn't have my credit card at work, and I didn't realize until I got to the cashier to pay for my lunch that I didn't have any cash, either. So there I am holding a to-go box of tandoori chicken and no way to pay. They don't take Discover. Of course they don't. Nobody does. Why do I even have a Discover card? Worse yet, why do I have two? I might as well carry that ancient middle-eastern currency that was a 500-pound triangle.
So, I ask the checkout lady, "oh, can I just run to the ATM?" and I left my food there with her. And I scurry off but what am I going to do at the ATM? It won't let me withdraw money against my Discover card (or against a quarter-ton triangle). "Where am I going?" I wondered as I stalked away from the cafeteria.
So, I wind up down the way at a Starbucks, and they do take Discover but their lunchy things are all miserable. Instead of a lovely tandoori I had a tiny chicken salad sandwich that was made out of unhappy chickens. Ten dollars! That's the price of the mass hysteria that is the Discover card. Also, it is the price of not having money.
So, I didn't starve, but I can never go back to the cafeteria again. Or if I do, I'll have to explain why I abandoned food like a common criminal. Drat.
Tonight I was trying to remember the title of the movie "Mrs. Henderson Presents," that one where Judy Densch opens a burlesque theater in London during WWII; but what came out of my brain was, "Mrs. Havisham's All Nude Review."
This is almost as bad as when I was trying to say something about "Bridget Jones' Diary" but said, instead, "Julie Brownback and the Book of Lies."
Over the last six months, we've spent about a thousand bucks on the rats. Admittedly, most of those costs are non-recurring fees, but still. That's a lot for two animals that would otherwise be used as snake food.
I am writing a post for Curbed that I think is one of the finest things I have ever written, but I need more puns about palm trees. I already have one about "eating out of the palm of your hand" and one about being caught "red-palmed" and one about "bidding you a frond farewell." MORE PLEASE!!!
Oh here we go again. Maine just got the freedom to marry, but now they might be voting in just a few months to take it away again. Geez. <a href="http://www.actblue.com/page/mainefreedomtomarry">Open up your wallets -- they need cash.</a>
Oh good grief I was so busy trying to get the word out about my Stop8 video that I nearly forgot to post about it on my own blog. For heaven's sake. Well anyway here it is.
YouTube commenters are behaving pretty much as you'd expect.
Awhile back, I was reading that almonds contain tiny amounts of cyanide -- not enough to hurt a person, but enough to sicken or kill a rat. So I've been really paranoid about keeping almonds out of reach of the boys. Of course, they managed to get into a bag of almonds anyway, and guess what -- no signs of illness! So, I set out to determine whether or not this cyanide thing is actually true.
The short answer: it isn't.
The long answer is a little more complicated. Bitter almonds contain prussic acid, which turns into cyanide when you eat it. Heating a bitter almond will neutralize the cyanide (I'm not entirely clear how that works, or how much it needs to be heated). So, yes, if you have bitter almonds, don't eat them raw!
But you don't have to worry. It's illegal to sell raw bitter almonds in the US. (It is legal to sell foods that contain processed bitter almonds, though; and I'm not sure whether those foods are required to be cyanide-free.) So if you have a bag of raw almonds, and you got them in this country, they are not bitter -- they're the sweet variety. Specifically, you probably have the nonpareil variety, which has no prussic acid at all.
So, the moral of the story: go ahead and feed them to your rats.
You already knew that Jesse Helms and Orrin Hatch are snarling
shitbags, right? Well, take a look at this little tidbit that I learned
as I was reading about the dreadful origins of the song "Dixie":
In a widely publicized and controversial incident, Senator Jesse Helms deeply offended Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman in the Senate and the only black Senator at the time.[106][107][108][109][110] Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, which opponents saw as an overt symbol of racism - both for the history of racial slavery in the United States and for establishment of Jim Crow laws, Helms ran into Moseley Braun in an elevator.[110]
Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said,
"Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries."[111] He then proceeded to sing the song about "the good life" during slavery to Moseley Braun.[112][113] Helms later blocked Moseley Braun's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to New Zealand.[110] Braun served in New Zealand as US ambassador from 1999 to 2001.
Ugh. Good riddance to Jesse Helms. It's a shame he didn't die at the end of a rope.
Christopher has had a bit of a sniffle for the past week or so -- have you ever heard a rat sneeze? It is peculiar. So we brought him to the vet today. It was his first time out of the house since he arrived back in January.
It was not a fun time for him, alas. The vet alarmed him. The flashlight she shone in his nose alarmed him. The stethoscope she put against his chest to listen to his breathing alarmed him. And he was especially alarmed when he found antibiotic being squirted into his mouth.
We're going to have to keep administering a liquid antibiotic for another 10 days. Our first attempt this evening to get it into him was ... contentious. A fair amount of it wound up on our hands and sleeves. Have you ever tried to put 3 drops of medicine into a sneezing rat? It is messy.
Look at that, a #hashtag in a blog post! What strange times we live in.
Anyway, this weekend I went to the Courage Campaign's training event in Oakland. It's basically just a re-skinning of Camp Obama, with equality as the new campaign. It was pretty packed -- maybe 200 or so people -- and fairly busy, running from 9 to 5 both days. The time was split between speeches, applause, tips & tricks, strategy briefings, more applause, practice sessions, and also applause. Clap clap clap. I found some of it a little too woo-woo California-crunchy for my tastes -- the motto of the event was "Respect, Empower, Include" -- but I understand that most humans are not like me and they really need that stuff. So, they got plenty of it.
(Sidenote: I've lived in SF for 8 years, and that was the first time I've ever gotten off the BART before Berkeley. Did you know Oakland is a real city, with office buildings and bus stops and electricity? Who knew!)
It would be impossible to sum up everything that happened this weekend, but here are what I think were some of the most important points. Really, what it all comes down to is marketing. Of course they didn't call it that, but most of what we did was just honing a sales pitch. Tell Good Stories About Why Marriage Equality Matters to You
There's tricks to telling good stories:
Paint a vivid, specific scenario
Express the emotions of the people in the story
Describe a difficult choice that someone faced
Explain the situation and emotion that resulted from that choice
There were a lot of great real-life examples -- running away from home, shame, parents' fears, returning to church. It was like This American Life.
It's important to know what your story is (they called it your "story of self," which sounds a little too poetic for me), and to be able to tell it in just a minute or two. You can persuade a lot of people by telling them a heartfelt story.
Persuade Through Agreement
One of the women leading the training was a former lawyer -- a really really good one. She had fantastic tips:
Talking AT people never works. Talk WITH them.
That means listening and asking questions. Your mouth should be closed at least 50% of the time.
Figure out what you want the outcome of the conversation to be -- you don't have to fully convince someone, often it's enough to just plant the seed of an idea.
Most importantly: help people discover what you are saying on their own. Don't try to force them with arguments: instead, shift their perspective. Show them a new way of looking at things.
You do that by listening. Find out who you're talking to, and what they want. Start by agreeing with them; and then gradually move from a point of common agreement so that they can see how you got from point a to point b.
Don't hit them with arguments -- on marriage equality, people aren't thinking, they're feeling. Know your evidence and arguments backwards and forwards; but only pull them out after you've spent time listening, acknowledging, finding common ground, and exchanging feelings.
I hate all this stuff. Emotions! Pah! But it's really interesting how well humans respond to it. They are curious mammals.
Why Do People Vote Against Us?
Potential allies tend to cite these three reasons for opposing gay couples:
Faith
Tradition
Children
Remember, they're not thinking, they're feeling. So it doesn't work to just say, "there is no threat to faith," or "marriage has been changed many times," or "this doesn't effect schools." At best, people will say, "oh, I suppose you're right," but their tone of voice will say, "I know you're right, but I think I'm right too; and I believe me instead of you."
Fortunately, we got some very good training in how to have productive conversations on all three topics. A key point: telling your own personal story. But there's more to it than that, a whole process of acknowledging the values of your potential ally and finding common ground and asking questions.
I'm not sure if we're supposed to be talking about that training, or if they want to keep it under wraps. In my opinion, keeping it secret is the worst thing they could do; but maybe there's some reason they don't want it to fall into enemy hands. I'll post more about it if I get permission to do so.
So, there you have it: tell good stories; perusade through agreement; anticipate certain arguments and know how to discuss them. It was a very good weekend.
My next step, I think, is going to be to spread this information. We learned so much valuable stuff, but there were only a few hundred of us. Some of it was difficult, and could only be learned in an immersion experience like Camp Courage. But other stuff -- like practicing your own personal story -- is something that everyone can do. And everyone should have access to the tips that we had at the camp. So, over the next few weeks, I'll work on ways to help people learn the things that I learned.
