Feb 15, 1998, 7:05am

A few things to take care of today.

First off, a story in the Vancouver Sun on Saturday caught my eye - "Valentine kiss called homophobic". The place: Langara College, in Vancouver. The details: It turns out that a simple image adorning the window of the financial services office - a silhouette of the heads of two people, a guy and a girl just about to kiss, was deemed offensive and "homophobic" by a few on campus lesbians and gays.

Folks, this is political correctness gone way, way too far. The picture is not in the least bit offensive - in fact, it's a very simple drawing, and you can see it to the right. (photo by Christina Bergstrom)

What we have is a bunch of zealots, so anal about their rights and privileges, that anything can be deemed "offensive" or "homophobic". I just can't believe how far it's gotten. The office staff that put it up said, and quite rightly, that the whole issue was "beyond silliness", but the university ordered them to remove the picture anyway, and they complied. Chalk one more up for the anal retentive PC police.

One thing made me laugh though. The chickenshits in the Gay and Lesbian Society wouldn't speak to the Sun (maybe they realized how just plain stupid and anal they were being), but the plain stupidity of the issue was completely oblivious to a Langara Student Union representative, Donavin Thompson. The lad's comments on the issue? ...it was probably discriminatory". His other comments? This is what made me laugh - when asked what would be acceptable, he suggested a neutral decoration, such as a pair of hands holding - but when the reporter asked him, hey, wouldn't a pair of hands be offensive to someone without hands? - the lad said, oh yah... I guess so.

Gawd, this whole issue reminds me of a South Park episode - the anti-Christmas one, where just about every special interest had a problem with just about everything involved in Christmas, from Santa's red outfit to Santa himself. Luckily, a piece of shit (literally) saved the day.

So let's review. We have a simple valentines day poster, offensive in no real way. We have a couple of anal retentive politically correct types on campus who lodge a complaint with Langara's Student Services Dean, Valerie Dunsterville. Dunsterville orders the poster down, and these politically correct types (no one confirmed who they were, but I bet is was members of GALA) win another one. And what about Dunsterville? She was conveniently off campus Friday, and couldn't be reached for comment.

This kind of thing makes me do two things - it makes me laugh at the stupidity and downright anal retentiveness of people, and it makes me ill to think that they can actually get away with this kind of bullshit. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be a campus backlash... then again, maybe not - students by and large are pretty apathetic - except, of course, for the small vocal minorities and special interest groups.

One thing before I shift gears. I haven't defended my own feelings (or actually, lack thereof) toward homosexuals, because frankly, it's a non-issue for me. People can do what they want, as long as no one gets hurt - thats my attitude - but with this issue, it seems that a few homosexuals object to what a lot of heterosexuals do - kiss... it's "offensive to them. How far we've sunk.

Now for the next thing. Only a few days ago, I gave my testament to how it's gonna be for me in 98 and beyond, at least when it comes to the Net. I was sorely tempted, with the very first rant after that testament to break my own rules, and flare up another web opera here on my page. But in the immortal words of George Bush... "not gonna doona".

I will say this though, cryptic as may be - I do have a fair amount of respect for some people I don't get on with. During my ID battles it was Shawn Chute. During the FS times, it was two FS sales people who presented intelligent, non-insulting opposite viewpoints via email. Today, there's one or two people who I don't like very much, but I still respect the hell outta them, but in keeping with the anti-web opera ways, I won't name names.

But I don't have one iota of respect for a person who twists things the wrong way, comes out of left field with massive insults and tirades, and then prefaces all their comments with smiley faces? What's up with that? Naw. I don't have much respect for a person with screws loose. Sympathy, pity maybe, heck, in some cases (not this one), even compassion, but not respect. And don't worry, save for one or two readers of this page, it's no one you know. Gawd, to think, Jean and I actually considered, at one time, giving this person a place to stay if they came to Vancouver! Yikes! What was I thinking!!??

And now, just so you can't say I don't ever leave this rant on a good, positive, and upswing note, Let me tell you about Valentine's day. This year, Valentine's was all about Jean doing things for me! She bought me a ton of beanie babies, because I guess she thought I had fun with the single one (a baby duckie) for Christmas (and heck, I did - ole Dukie and Alf really got it on once and a while! :-)). So because Dukie was a "good thing", Jean bought me a veritable zoo for valentines day.

She got me twelve in all: a penguin, a turtle, a lion and a tiger, a pink pig, a goose, a cow, a frog, an elephant, a baby sheep, a bunny, and a macaw. I have to give them names... based on obscure or weird rock stars or comics, but so far, I've only come up a few. The penguin is now Opus, The elephant is Beetus, and no, the tiger isn't Hobbes... Got any suggestions for names?

Somehow, I've managed to get 9 of them on top of my monitor, and I've still kept my quickcam in the middle, and visible. I'll get a snap of that up soon. The other 4 (including dukie) sit on top of my speakers on the shelf above the monitor.

I feel a bit foolish with them all, and I've even harmlessly chided net.friends in the past for having zoos around their monitors, but now I have one too. Kinda weird, but here's the coooooool cooooool thing. (it's a bit mushy, so those of you squeamish should turn away now). With them sitting all around my monitor and desk, they are a constant reminder of Jean and our love, which is pretty nifty keen.

Oh oh. you know what that means? She's going to go out and buy me even more. Beanie Babies of the world, watch out!! My only regret is that she didn't get me any monkey beanie babies, so I could do a simulated throttling of the Monkey-Boy once in a while! :-). But I bet ole Dave has already bought out the town's supply of beanie baby monkeys!

Se ya next time! Thanks for stopping by!

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