James Mtume Don't F--- Around!

"Now, you can't talk about getting out of the kitchen when there's heat. We're not the one-legged man at the ass-kicking contest. You made a statement. We're dealing with it." -- James Mtume on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC show (reacting to the latter's campaign to have actor Danny Glover booted as an MCI spokesperson)

For Leslie Cheung

A Leslie Cheung Tribute

Reel Affirmations, One-In-Ten, Pride and Heritage: A Celebration of A/PI LGBT Communities and APA Film are co-sponsoring a tribute to recently departed Hong Kong actor and singer Leslie Cheung. The acclaimed Wong Kar-Wai film Happy Together, which stars Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung, will be screened, accompanied by a discussion of his work by renowned film academic Dr. Gina Marchetti. Come celebrate the life and work of one of Asia's most popular actors, and one of the few to star in films with gay themes.

Reel Affirmations: A Leslie Cheung Tribute
- Friday, May 16
- 7:00 pm, 9:45 pm: showings of Happy Together
- 8:45 pm: Renowned film academic Dr. Gina Marchetti leads a discussion accompanied by video clips of Leslie Cheung's work (open to ticketholders of either film)
- DC Jewish Community Center (1529 16th St NW, Metro: Dupont Circle)
- $8 per showing; Tickets available ONLY at the door (cash and check only), starting at 6 pm. Open to all.

A Call to Action

[ From Keith Boykin's website; he's a signee ]

In a first-of-its-kind summit convened by the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, the group of black gay men met in Miami at the end of April to hammer out a strategy for dealing with AIDS in their communities and industries.

At the end of their three-day brainstorming session, the group of doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, writers and scientists, began drafting a joint statement, released today, which challenges African Americans to make HIV awareness a priority in their daily lives.
?Our community must recognize that this is a state of emergency," the statement said. "We must each speak openly about living with HIV -- whether we are infected or not, we?re all affected."

The group called on blacks to be engaged in the fight against AIDS, but also challenged local, state and federal governments to do more. "What we don't know will kill us, so we must get tested to learn our own HIV status. If we are positive, we must get into treatment. Regardless of our status, we must protect ourselves and our partners from the virus? continued spread," the statement said.

The group also encouraged blacks to "demand our government take appropriate and targeted action to combat the epidemic in communities of color.?

Faces of the Innocent

For those that just don't get it:

From LA Weekly, May 16 - 22: Injustice for all by Sara Catania

All told, the men and woman portrayed in The Innocents served nearly 560 years for crimes they did not commit. By visual count, it appears that 28 are black, 14 white and three Latino... Judging from the case summaries and interviews accompanying the portraits, all are lower-middle-class or poor.

A Pre-Introduction

I've decided to add a new sub- category: BlakMac News.

It won't be news for Black users of Macintosh computers and/or software. I just like the name and it's because I am Black that I chose that particular title.

I'll post regular updates on Mac/Apple news; software and hardware updates, and announcements; and, just general rants about my preferred (and a superior) operating system.

For now, check out these free gems from the Mac DevCenter. An excerpt:

Owning a computer isn't cheap. There's so much to pay for, on top of the box that does all the work: printer consumables, connectivity, hardware upgrades, maintenance.

Oh, and software. People can often end up spending more on software than they spent on the computer itself.

Here at the Mac DevCenter, we like to think we can offer a helping hand every now and then, so it occurred to us that it would be nice to tell you about some of the lesser-known freeware gems available for Mac OS X. We're talking about neat little apps that you might not have heard of, but that can do the job of something much better-known (and much more expensive) without you having to pay a penny for them.

We've only got the space to show you a handful of these gems. No doubt, you'll be able to point us to many more (please do, in the Talkbacks area at the end of this article). First, let's establish some rules.

The Rules

When we say freeware, we mean freeware. We won't be including any apps that require any payment, or pretend to be freeware while nagging you with lingering splash screens and limited features.

We're also not going to be including really obvious freeware.

Much more at the link, culled from the Mac Network Journal, one of the most viable, personal Apple computing sites online.

Update: I forget to mention some time ago that I've added a tag board for the "Conversations" category. BlakMac News will fall under this category.

No Title Fits

I've been watching with a bit of curiosity the exchange reported by Silver Rights regarding a white teacher's racist behavior in Seattle. I'm saddened by anyone's worship of such idiotic racism. Saddened, but not surprised. It's a dirty little secret of the homosexual male community that they can be just as racist (if not more so given the fight for Gay rights) as their heterosexualist brethren -- and from my experience, I rarely see it amongst lesbians (or trans folk).

I'll quote a student from the Seattle school:

[ ... ] Smith added that a role model shouldn't use that language to prove a point. "He's an adult, and adults have more sense than kids do," he said.

As if. Just as Big Mama advises, "Common sense ain't common!" There can be no comparison between "gay" as a mild put down and the use of "nigger" in any instance. The former is barely a slight and is almost never used to demean and/or intimidate. The latter is used to put Blacks in their place. This imbecile's second usage is most definitely a classic example. Even if he wanted to point out the improper usage, he should have done so without calling the student a nigger, and the thought of using it in front of the class was brainless.

The matter was brought to the attention of the Seattle NAACP by Eric Dawson, the father of another student in the class.

Dawson said that on the day of the incident, his son stood up and told Emanuels, "You can't talk to him like that," and the two began a verbal exchange until a teacher separated the two.

The fact that blows/shoving almost came to past is enough reason for me to demand that the bigot be put out on his ass.

If the school comes correct, they'll terminate their relationship with this so-called teacher. But don't expect it to happen without out-loud voices from the NAACP, Black parents, students and other concerned people.

Great White Hope Quits

Seattle teacher Brian "Nigger, Nigger" Emanuels announced he will resign after the school board gave him a slap on the wrist:

After investigating the matter, Seattle Public Schools officials concluded Brian Emanuels did not mean to convey disrespect or intolerance but called his remarks "inappropriate and unprofessional."

"It was clear from our investigation that Mr. Emanuels meant no harm and that he was trying to drive home a very important point: that words can hurt," school district spokeswoman Lynn Steinberg said. "Unfortunately, he went about his lesson the wrong way."

Right.

I love the little slap at his critics in his written statement:

"I am very pleased with the decision of the school district confirming that my comments on April 29 were CLEARLY intended to teach tolerance and respect for all groups, not to cause harm to any student or group.

"I hope that we can all learn from this experience about ways to treat one another with greater civility and respect," he went on to say. "That's the point I was trying to make, and I apologize to those who were offended by how I went about it."

{emphais mine, clearly}

Those offended instead of those I offended. Typical. No word yet from the cullud children left without a savior.

Special Delivery

Done!

After a bit of procrastination, HTML tinkering and some spiritual hand-holding by a certain someone, I changed BlakMac News from a sub-category of Conversations, to a full category.

It was easy after copying and change a tiny fraction of the index pages created by Donald. I have to admit I was too afraid to really work on the HTML for this site. My coding is basic and I still do it by hand. Copying and pasting makes it easier, but it gets tedious, boring and it takes nothing to make simple mistakes that can frustrate for hours.

Apple Stores: Happy 2nd Birthday!

Apple Marks Second Anniversary of Retail Stores

Apple this week marks the second anniversary of opening its first retail store in May 2001. Since then, Apple has opened 57 retail stores in 26 states, hosted over 15 million visitors and sold over $650 million of products through its retail stores. More than 1,100 Apple employees work in Apple’s retail stores and there is an Apple store location within 15 miles of 90 million people in the U.S.

During the next 12 months Apple plans to open 20 new Apple retail stores, including its first store in downtown Chicago, on North Michigan Avenue; its first store in San Francisco, in Union Square; and its first retail store outside of the U.S., in Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district. These three locations will be high profile store formats, like Apple’s incredibly popular SoHo store in New York City.

> > > from dotmac.info news, a Apple/Mac info site

do/undo

you cannot unlove someone, but you can love again.

-- from "The Things We Do For Love" by J. Tarin Towers at {fray}

Heaven's Gonna Get A Bit More Fabulous

RIP: Pepper LaBeija

Queen of Harlem House Balls has moved to a higher place.

iTrey

I've finally updated Movable Type to version 2.63. Of course, I needed a tiny bit of help some assistance.

Apple has updated iTunes to version 4.01. A few minor updates, but the real story is its ending of sharing except for on a local Mac network. Overly enthusiastic sharers forced Jobs' hand; although I'm quite sure that hackers have already worked around this new barrier.

Am loving Mozilla Firebird. Although I haven't completed my week of testing with MF as my default browser, I think it will become my default. It handles tabs better than Safari and is noticably faster. I think the color output could be better, but I'll see what happens once Safari goes "Gold Master" status some time next month. For now, Firebird is the ish!

bonus:I'm trying out NetZero's Platinum ISP service. It's now available for Mac OS X and less than half the price of my current Earthlink service. Of course, I just signed up for DSL service with the latter and will *fingers crossed* be leaving the world of dialup soon. There are several improvements: better integration of proprietary software, faster logins, and pretty good customer service (I haven't used it yet, but I like their system). If you have to use dialup, I would recommend them.

Love Is Love

This was posted in several Yahoo groups that I belong to. I'll admit I was lazy and didn't really check out the website and know very little about the doc mentioned. But the poster, Larry Chang, is interviewed in said doc and he's a cool, intelligent and well-informed guy. Stop by if you can. Unfortunately, I can't make it.

Jah Loveboy Productions Presents the NYC Premiere of, Songs of Freedom, Compelling Documentary about Gay Life in Jamaica

WHEN: Sunday June 1, 2003 @ 4:15 & 6:15 pm WHERE: NYU Cantor Film Center 36 East 8th Street (Between Broadway & University Place)    (Subway: 8 Street-New York University/Broadway Stop on the N or R Line) PRICE: Admission: $8.00 Tickets available at the door. There will be a Q&A with the director following each screening. Songs of Freedom, Canada, 2002, Video, 75 Minutes - Produced & Directed by Phillip Pike

"They don't think about what we have together as love. How can you hate someone for loving someone else? It's ridiculous. It doesn't matter what sense it's in, it's still love. And that's all I have to say to everyone. What we have is love and we are sharing it."

So declares Denise, a young Jamaican lesbian who remains defiant in the face of a notoriously violent, homophobic society that threatens her safety and condemns the way she chooses to love.

Songs of Freedom takes us inside Denise's world and that of other Jamaican gays and lesbians. It tells compelling stories of individuals courageously carving out meaningful lives, despite the taboo against their sexual identity. Instilled with an often contradictory sense of humour and anguish, these stories are about growing up, going to school, dating, and "coming out" in a country where one's individuality often collides with the dictates of family, community and religion.

Still, Songs of Freedom does more than capture the conflict inherent in the lives of Jamaican lesbians and gays. Evoking the emancipative philosophy of the late Bob Marley, the documentary also conveys the unflinching sense of hope, love and camaraderie used by the people in front of the camera to compose their personal songs of freedom and redemption. We see them as whole persons, full of beauty, complexity and contradictions, always deserving of love and respect.

In this sense, Songs of Freedom breaks new ground as the first documentary about gay life in Jamaica, even as it reflects the universal quest for human dignity in the face of oppression. Songs of Freedom features exclusive footage of a drag queen beauty contest. It also features a kick-ass soundtrack with original music composed by Toronto musician Quammie.

Producer/Director Phillip Pike is a former human rights lawyer and community activist. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Phillip immigrated with his family to Canada in the early 70's. A graduate of McGill University's Faculty of Law, Phillip's journey of personal discovery has taken him from the practice of law to an emerging career as a video artist. Phillip received training in video production at Trinity Square Video in Toronto and at the Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco.