Gerry Studds, a democrat from Massachusetts and the first openly gay man elected to Congress has died, according to MSNBC.  He was 69. He served from 1973-1997.

OK...

I know this is not a diary and will delete as soon as someone points me in the right direction. There's a brazillion New Yorkers and Bridge and Tunnel people here so hopefully it won't even be up long and the diary I am knocking off will return.

I bet you want to know what it is about...

It's really quite stupid...

But at least it is enviromentally correct...

Breaking news on CNN.  

They are reporting that KUSA in Denver is saying that John Mark Karr's DNA doesn't match the DNA gathered at the scene where JonBenet Ramsey was killed.

Welcome to the fourth edition of "What's for Dinner?". I'm your hostess for this evening and beyond dinner itself, tonight's chat topic is regional foods---what did you grow up on and can't find now where you live? If you have a recipe to share, that is great but if not, don't worry about it; just pull up your chair, grab a spoon, and join into the dinner conversation with your stories.

Having scraped their bitten to the nub claws into the local neighborhood porn shop and chasing them out of the fringes of town (because that's where the cheap land is to accomodate mega-churches and Wal-Mart), ultra-conservative churches have set their sites sights on your hotel room.

A coalition of 13 conservative groups -- including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America -- took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today earlier this month urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate whether some of the pay-per-view movies widely available in hotels violate federal and state obscenity laws.

Smoke this.

Those are the words a part of  my brain is saying to me almost twelve days after I had my last cigarette. I keep looking for that elusive cigarette that I know damn well isn't there, but the rest of my brain isn't quite connecting yet.

Have I told you this was a birthday gift to myself?  

As I write in the middle of one of the worst urges I've had in that 12 days, it seems like a really crappy gift to give to oneself when I probably could have bought myself some cooking gadget. I know it will pass, but jeezus, it sucks this evening.

Good evening, fellow repasters and thanks for opening what three hungry kossarians hope to make a regular Saturday this time diary---recipes and cooking without the trolls. There are always so many good recipes posted here day and night that I have personally made and each of us hope you have tried some of ours so the idea became to draw them out some and get you to share more by sharing what we make for our families and ourselves.

I admit it, I'm cranky as all get out right now.  This heat just gets me down because it is impossible to do anything outside and it turns me surly.

And all day I've been staring at my stinking, hot monitor with fans blowing all over the place. And I don't like it because I would rather be outside playing, but I can't because it is just too damn hot.

Thing is, I have three window ACs---two of which sit in a closet unused. One is meant for the bedroom but when I moved my very heavy iron and solid cherry bed in, I placed it badly.  Mrs. TVB and I have talked and talked about moving it but it weighs about 8000 brazillion tons. Until that happens, I refuse to put an AC unit in there because I don't want the damn thing blowing on me all night.

It's not the bedroom however that is driving me nuts because it is fine with spill over from the living room AC unit. I keep that one going mostly for my pets as I spend little time in there but that is where they spend the day.

Many of you may have read my past diaries about intersex.  In those diaries, I've mentioned Dr. John Money. In a way, he's the grandfather of the way intersex has been treated in the US and elsewhere for the past 60 years. As a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, he crafted a treatment model that included early surgery on those born with genitals that didn't match what is expected for standard male or female, and secrecy.

Does pop or bad culture reflect us or do we reflect it?

After torturing us with Hooked on Feeling (YouTube video)earlier this year, David Hasselhoff of Baywatch fame (or infamy depending on your point of view) has released what is certain to be another blockbuster hit.  If MTV was just a mere skeleton of what it was originally, it might even be at the top of the playlist right now. But alas, MTV as we knew it in the mid 1980s no longer is.  Quick...what was the very first video you ever saw on that crazy thing called Music Television?  Mine was The Lion Sleeps Tonight done by Tight Fit.  At least they realized they were a one hit (cover) wonder early on. Okay, I admit I had to look that up as I only remembered the video itself and not who performed one of a brazillion versions of the classic song.  

Or so goes the claim made by Shirley Phelps-Roper of Westboro Cult infamy last week while being interviewed on "The Big Story" by Julie Banderas.

"You think gay pride, bimbo" was the retort put forth by Mrs. Phelps, who bears an uncanny resemblence of her psycho father, Fred.

The interview was in response to the lawsuit filed by a family in Maryland of a marine killed in Iraq after the Phelps clan protested at his funeral. The family of Lance Cpl. Matthew a. Snyder filed suit earlier this month after the Phelps cult took their roadshow to Maryland and Matt's funeral. Unlike many MSM outlets, Faux gets credit for calling the cult of whackos what they are:  anti-gay. Never once did they call them anti-war protesters.

Cheers to them for that.

What transpired in the next few minutes must be watched to be believed. It's pretty damn entertaining too.

My boro has enacted a water ban.

I opened the notice this evening while going through the weekend mail and am pretty pissed.  I conserve water beyond silly but I also have a garden that needs water.

Some of the conservation I practice is using a small cup to brush and rinse my teeth with.  Really short showers...often just to rinse myself off after a shallow bath.  Shaving my legs with cream before I turn the water on. Reusing cooking water for other vegetables if compatible...this actually tastes nice afterwards too as a cool tea.

So, who are you and what do your genitals look like?  Do they look like something in a porn magazine or do they resemble something like the rest of us have?

What do you call your genitals?

Do you give them a 'pet name' or do you refer to them as their proper name?  Hell, do you name them at all?  

There's no wrong answer there.

What would you call them if the doctors present when you were born said they weren't proper?

Do you know that those genitals you probably have right now are what gave you the label of boy or girl at birth? There is no standard of sex or gender testing at birth.

Reading the many diaries over the past day and the preceding weekend, I've seen intersex issues trying to be introduced into the argument about the Federal Hate Marriage Amendment. Most of the efforts here have been crude but understandable because intersex seems to still be a great mystery to many despite the many websites and activism taking place in the area. Hopefully I can help you understand exactly where intersex fits or doesn't fit in the whole marriage spectrum and this pandering to the right. Knowing the correct information will be helpful as you talk to your friends, family, and neighbors about it.

Just to qualify myself to write on the issue here, I'm a well-known intersex advocate amongst those who pay attention to the issue. I founded and run an organization that focuses on peer-support issues and we work quite closely with other organizations on the other issues. I've spoken all over the world on it and am regularly cited in the MSM as an expert when the issue arises.  In fact later today, I am scheduled to teach a class on it to hungry for knowledge college students.  

Last August, I found a refuge while waiting for Katrina to ravage the landscape of Louisiana.  I was simply stunned at the incompentence of what I saw unfolding before my eyes and felt like I needed to do something, even if doing something simply meant typing.  

I remember reading and writing and thinking to myself how the site was beautifully clean of trolls and nasty people.  Eventually, I got TUstatus  and saw the ugly underbelly of this neat site called DKos and discovered why that crap was hidden---it was ugly, it was nasty, and it deserved to be behind closed doors.

How long will it go on?  

Days?

Months?

Years?

For an eternity?

Will it happen after the rapture, too? (If it does, please leave the key to your apartment and the passwords here before you go, okay?  I can see St. Peter at the gate counting how many hidden comments I've had on DailyKos and failing because there aren't any so I won't be going and it's such a waste to not recycle your stuff to me.)

A bookstore was burned in Tennessee early this year.  It wasn't just any bookstore, but an adult bookstore. The kind with books of pictures of nekkid people having (gasp) sex.

It was arson and no one could figure it out.  Arson happens for a number of reasons---insurance fraud, payback for something stupid, or just a firebug looking for some type of weird kick.

^AP-APNewsAlert,0032
    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office says Rush Limbaugh has been arrested on prescription fraud charges.

    (Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)