Well, for a start, it won’t be at Ground Zero. It’ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood a jumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic “prayer room,” which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y—a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions.

The point still stands though. If free expression doesn’t mean protection for the most extreme or offensive thoughts and words and symbols, then it doesn’t mean anything.

And so, I can at least understand the impulse to want to fight against it. But, as long as that’s all we’re talking about, words and symbols, then so be it. If that really is the motivation, then fine. That just makes them dicks, and us still the freest city in the freest nation in the world. I can live with that.

• The Internet (Ok, fine. The World Wide Web)
  “In my day, Google was called the library, and ran on the blood, sweat, and tears of librarians! Craigslist was published in the newspaper! YouTube was hosted by Bob Saget!”
• Cell Phones (Ok, fine. Modern (2G+) cell phones)
  “In my day, when you left the house, that was it! You were incommunicado. If you wanted to reach someone, the best you could hope for was that at some point they would come home. Also you had to dial the phone with a fucking wheel.”
• MP3s/Digital Video/eBooks
  “In my day, the only way to steal music was to outsmart the security guards at Sam Goody! Also, sometimes I had to rewind things!”
• Digital Cameras
  “In my day, you couldn’t just take pictures willy nilly! You had to buy film, and lug around your gigantic, expensive camera, and afterwards take it to some guy who would charge you for every photo, even the ones where your finger was in front of the lens. The only way to tag your friends was to bring the photo over their house and say ‘Look, that’s you!’”

The only thing worse than people who don’t reply all when they should, is people who do reply all when they shouldn’t. Not replying all on a mail when what you’re saying is pertinent to everyone is rude. Replying to everyone when your potentially private message is just for the sender makes you look incompetent, and possibly like an asshole.

Mind your Tos and Ccs!

The Brick resident, a born-again Christian who is currently unemployed, mixes conservative manifestos with hip-hop beats.

“I’m just doing this because I don’t know what else to do with myself.”

He took the stage to perform the anthem, “Patriotic People,” which contains such lines as “This is the USA, not the USSR. We need more Ann Coulter, less Bill Maher.”

“I figured, rather than relying on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity to get the message out there, I could rap to reach younger people because it’s coming in a format they understand. They don’t understand Bill O’Reilly using words like ‘pithy,’ his little catchwords.”

He did go through a gangsta phase, celebrating the lifestyle by partying (not the tea kind) and selling drugs, which led to 14 months in county jail.

“This isn’t a bunch of boring people who just listen to one kind of music. Don’t get me wrong. I love country music, but we have an edge, too.”

“Hip-hop needs more positivity,” says Cal. “It should be telling people to get off of welfare, get off the corner, stop selling drugs, stop disrespecting your beautiful black queen.”

Cal is happy to call himself Mr. Conservative and rap exclusively at Tea Party gatherings. “I’ve limited myself to rallies and marches because any other hip-hop venue I’d get booed off stage.”

Is he angry about paying taxes on his unemployment checks? Or worried that Obama will take away the health insurance he likely doesn’t have? Just curious.

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” he said of same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

Oh, right! Because that would be like saying: “There are some people who believe in evangelical Christianity, so we should accommodate them.” But that would be ridiculous! Since evangelicals are

• more likely to have their teens get pregnant
• more likely to be racist
• more likely to support torture
• less likely to be educated

That can hardly be considered to be “the ideal” behavioral pattern. Perhaps it should be illegal, Mike?

Or maybe we could just practice tolerance toward consenting adults who make different decisions than we do.

With some friends:

There was a big pillow fight (which was somewhat hard to see from where we were):

Then we had coffee (mine is the boring one):

Fun.