tyra banks is a total bitch.

If you talk to me much at all these days you are probably aware that the only tv I watch consistantly these days is America's Next Top Model. C- hosts a reality tv night for all us usual suspects and we order pizza, drink a little beer and watch tyra act super important and faux motherly towards her little fashion experiments. The guys I watch with are irreverent and fun and we have a blast and it really is one of the things I look most forward too every week.

But if it weren't for the other guys and the fun that watching is with all of them, I would be done with the show. I don't have a whole lot of spare time for tv, so what it takes for me to drop a show like an ugly baby is very little. I am a fairly petulant consumer and it is little things which send me over the edge and obliterate my product loyalty and me being a creature of habit, my product loyalty is pretty serious. I'll use the same damn brand over and over and over again til I have some stupid reason to change. Perhaps my most famous boycott was the David Letterman show, which I grew up watching, loved, and often watched with my dad. But once a long time ago, Dave bumped Jaques Cousteau from the line up so the goo goo dolls could jump in a giant bowl of eggnog. Jaques Cousteau is my hero and one of the most important people of the last century. The goo goo dolls such anyway and the egg nog gag was stupid beyond belief. Then Jaques Cousteau died the next year and I didn't watch Dave for about five years. At all. Ever. Would leave the room if it came on. We have since made up and Dave is great and the whole thing was my silly bitterness which doesn't in the least hurt him or the show, but as the consumer, my only power over the situation is my choice. I was angry, annoyed, and pissed and the only thing I could do about it was tune out, so I did.

What the hell does this have to do with tyra and why am I calling her a bitch and refusing to capitalize her name? I'm not quitting the show yet, because I like the act of watching it with the guys, but I am pissed off and tyra is a self-important bitch.

So if you follow the show at all, you know that Joanie had a big ole snaggle tooth and Danielle has a serious gap in between her two front teeth. These are also the two girls that have consistantly taken the best pictures and worked the best with the direction they are given. Nenna may be pretty, but some of her pictures are totally buck. In the clowning shoot, she looks like someone put a Little Richard mask on the Grace Jones statue at Madame Tussaud's and tipped it over. Anyway, back to Joanie and Danielle. Joanie's teeth needed some work seriously and tyra et al sent the girls to the dentist to get their grills shined and told the dentist to fix up Joanie and Danielle's teeth. So nice, what a nice gesture and way even the playing field for Joanie. Danielle is a different story. Her teeth aren't crooked; she just has a gap and we all happened to like her gap. We all screamed at the tv when it looked like they were going to close her gap, but Danielle, being the total rockstar she is, told the dentist she liked the gap and considered it sort of trade mark and was happy with how she looked. We cheered, but tyra had darker things in store for us.

Long story short, Danielle was super through out the whole show (just like she has been the whole season) and the judges are idiots. Jade was kept and Brooke was sent home, an inexplicable choice but only minorly annoying next to what kind of pompous asses the judges were about Danielle's gap. It would have been one thing if ms. banks wanted to ask Danielle why she didn't get her teeth 'fixed' and tell her that the gap might cost her jobs and prevent her from being a cover girl. Maybe it would. We've all seen Lauren Hutton's big ole gap on a hundred magazine's and commercials and Madonna seems to be doing just fine, but maybe tyra was sincerely concerned for Danielle entering this cut throat business and wanted to offer motherly advice. She sure as hell didn't act like it. She was a stuck up, imperious asshole who lashed out at one of her minions for daring to question her omniscience. Since she hadn't taken tyra's advice, ty and miss jay got all catty and tried to belittle her and attack HER. Not in a caring way, just as a bitch slap to put the girl back in her place. Yeah, I know this is a competition and they are the judges and all, and as jade told us early on, this is not America's Top Best Friend, but you can't spend all the time tyra does trying to sell herself as this caring mentor and teacher/guide for these girls and then act like trash towards the nicest, most confident one who is taking the best pictures when she doesn't act all servile and simpering and grateful that you want to take away something that makes her stand out. At least on Project Runway, Heidi Klum doesn't make a big show of being this super leader, sage guide, bff and then act all bitch. She starts with the cold bitch act and let's moments of niceness shine in as the show goes on, but tyra's fake-ass sympathy and caring comes across as insanely annoying and fake and the control-freak, ego-trip bitch comes shining through.

and makes me want to change the channel.

It was easier to watch last season because we could follow it up with Martha Stewart's Apprentice. Watching ANTM, you often find yourself wanting to throw things at the tv when they say who they are kicking off. It just often doesn't make sense and you get the feeling that they are not really judging the girls on their potential as models until the very end and it is more about ratings and the misguided belief that if you keep on the person that everyone hates, we will keep watching just to see them kicked off (let's call that the Wendy Pepper Effect). It really just makes me want to change the channel, and absent the social element of watching these shows, I would have dropped ANTM a long time ago because of this frustration and wouldn't be too faithful to Project Runway, but when Martha was judging, the decisions always made sense. You could really tell that she seemed to be following closely what was going on and not just what happened in the board room. Every decision she made was exactly the one that made sense and she didn't really mince words about saying why and didn't hesitate to drop two people if they both were lame. It really felt like you were watching what she told you she was showing you and people succeeded or failed on the criteria that she set forth from the beginning. tyra changes that shit up every week and says things to bolster her inexplicable decisions. Her faux sisterly nice comes across as passive aggressive bitchiness, where Martha's not always soft bluntness came across as reassuring.

I'm not giving up on ANTM yet, but tyra can kiss my ass and stop being a bitch or this may be my last season.

Can we just be done with this crap already?

I'm saying a little prayer that Jade finally gets kicked off of America's Next Top Model tonight. It is about damn time. Also here's to hoping Joanie's teeth turn out ok and Nenna dumps her bitch-ass chump of a boyfriend.

soon...

I've been deliquent about posting lately.

and I am not going to start again now, but I will soon. I've been wanting to get around to post more movie reviews (starting with _the dying gaul_), America's Next Top Model analyses, and more pissed off political rants.

I will try this spring to occasionally not be a grumpy curmudgeon when I write, but we'll just see how that goes.

Say it ain't so!!!

Damn dude. It is one of those places that you kind of feel is trapped in time and won't go anywhere so you put off going there for a while and keep meaning to and don't and then it gets turned into a Ramada hotel.

Fuck Ramada.

But I'll check out the new place and see what it is like, though I am skeptical about any venue having the same worn-in, eastern European ex-pat feel that the Bulgarian Bar had.

Quit coddling the little whiners you idiots or they never stop whining!!!

so I followed the link to the original article that was the subject of my previous post:

TheStar.com - How to spot a baby conservative

Uh, great and all until you get to the inevitable spot where the author tries to write in a salve to the titty-baby conservative set:

"For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place.

"Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe that's just moral certainty.

"The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-indulgent and ineffectual."

The damn whiners are always getting the attention and learn this from all the lazy parents who just feed their whiney-ness from and early age and the teachers who work to not rock the boat with the bratty kids and the petulant parents. You could tell when a teacher had a fucking backbone and told the whining kids to shut up and deal or suffer the consequences. Same thing with parents.

Can we get a few reporters and politicians with spines who don't always try to triangulate to not offend these emotional retards who act like assholes and make the rest of our lives miserable? If a politician is saying stupid things, call them on it. If a person is saying ridiculous things, call them on it, and don't put in a cushion to protect their delicate ego. If you are dealing with your petulant roommate, maybe then you should soft-step and not be too heavy handed with any criticism, but politicians should be adult enough to take strong criticism or they should be run straight the hell out of public life. Conservative, liberal, democrat, republican, whatever. Whiney-ass-titty-babies should not be the folks steering the national dialogue.

Duh!

This is beyond not suprising:

Suburban Guerrilla: You Mean They Really Are Whiny Ass Titty Babies?

Little shits grow up to be big assholes (perhaps that is an unfortunate choice of explitives for this particular description... or maybe it is apt).

I should have rented _Mysterious Skin_

I've been fighting a little bit of a cold, and out with friends last night, everyone kept telling me I sounded like Kathleen Turner, so I decided to lay low today and just rent a couple of movies and lay around the house. I almost got _Mysterious Skin_ or _Bad Education_, but I wasn't sure if anyone else would be home and I kind of wanted to watch something fun and silly. I am a sucker for special effects and goofy sci-fi stuff and don't mind the occasional kid movie, so when I saw Zathura sitting on the shelf, i decided to give it a try.

Kids play old game, wind up in outer space, have to win the game to save themselves and get back to their family. Evil, human-eating, alien lizard-people, deranged robot. Awesome!

Uh, until you watch the movie. The special effects were great. The aesthetics, with the retro feel of the game/astronaut/spaceships/robot, were perfect. The acting was decent too and the story flowed reasonably well. So what was the trouble? From the first scene, you find yourself hard-pressed to not want every character you encounter to die. The children in the movie are horrible little shits who deserve to be eaten by alien lizard-people. Really, truly retched little beasts of humans whose incesant whining and selfishness makes you want to see them sent to boot camp. The dad seems to be well-meaning, but you definitely get the feeling from it that his doting attempts at being the perfect parent has created these little monsters who resent one another and try at every turn to monopolize his time and force a declaration that each is the favorite child and that the other is less important. It was like watching a retelling of cinderella with only the evil stepmom and stepsisters, a familial group of selfish trolls who would make sense as part of a story were they being contrasted against kindly, likable others.

Here, however, they aren't the disagreeable foils to good, hardworking, appreciative characters; they are the center of the story. That these characters were well-recieved (as is evident in the rottentomatoes.com review of Zathura) says frightening things about us. I really have a hard time believing anyone could watch that and not want to snatch those kids up and give them an ear full. And take the dad and sign him up for a parenting class too. Where is Super-Nanny when you need her? Really, donate every last one of their under appreciated toys to charity, sign them up for some team sports and after school activities (boyscouts, gymnastics, piano lessons, whatever) and give them a chore list so they could earn an allowance to buy for themselves every future toy or gadget they wants.

The most troubling part isn't just that the charaters were awful and retched and children that you would be horrified to ever be around, but that they were believable and familiar. Those spoiled little retards are popping up everywhere these days. If you saw that movie and thought the kids were likable and that that is 'just the way kids are' and you are considering raising children, please do us all a favor and consider NOT raising kids. And if you watched it and thought the kids in the movie reminded you of your children, let me be the first to tell you that your kids are not going to find a campy mechanical space game that will uproot your home, send it flying through space, and teach them valuable life lessons and make yours a functional family. You need to get advice on raising kids from the cranky old people in your neighborhood and quit being a push-over with the little horrors you have created.

Anyway, if you are in the movie store and considering renting _Zathura_, don't. Get something with charaters you could care more about and who have more functional family relationships, like maybe any John Waters film.

wah wah wah...

"It is obvious now that the private Clay is very different from the manufactured packaged public Clay that was marketed to us."

Yup, he is the only star whose private persona deviates from their public persona. If we can't trust our pop stars, who can we trust?

But really, ladies, if you want him, you can keep him.

small man syndrome

I really don't understand why bill o'reilly is on the air. TV, radio, whatever, why do they broadcast him out in public? I know, people watch him and some folks love him, but in order to continue to believe in the best in people, I have to assume that most people watching are responding to the same instinct that makes it hard to turn away from a train wreck. Yes, you could argue that a tendency to stare at train wrecks isn't exactly the best in people, but it is better than the alternative and I do think it is better if people stare at such tragedies and bear witness to them than to pretend they didn't happen. Though perhaps the trainwreck analogy is innappropriate: if he weren't on the air, the tragedy that is his person wouldn't involve so many victims. It would just a be a domestic violence situation and the people close to him could deal with it and maybe call the authorities as needed (as it apparently has been needed in his office in the past). It wouldn't so much be everyone's business that he is an angry creep with an embarrassing and agressive defensiveness who lashes out at people and can't take criticism, but he is on the air.

Really, no point left in arguing with the man. He is just kind of pathetic. Does he have family or friends who can tell him how retarded he looks? We have all met that short guy with the over-compensating Napoleon complex who acts so tough and picks on people and get so wounded and aggressive if criticised. bill acts like that, but I believe he is supposed to be quite a tall man.

I guess there is more than one way to be short.

Maybe that is why he uses a loofah in creative ways.

In highschool, there had been a guy who lived on our hall who was likable enough when he was in a good mood, but who was super bitchy most of the time. Just a crank who would lash out and gripe and get super critical and defensive with everyone else who lived around him. My roommate was talking to his girlfriend about this constant annoyance, baffled at why he would stay wound so tight and she just laughed. One of her best friends had dated him, and she informed us that the girls seemed to think that his temper tantrums were linked to physical... shortcomings. Not bottom side of average, not kind of small, but bottom of the scale little. Less than three inches erect.

I'm not saying that bill o'reilly has a short penis. I have no idea and don't really care to. I just know that he acts like he does.

Gay Patriot � The Violent Anti-Christian Leftists In America and Abroad

I've left the gay republicans alone for a while, but every now and then I decide to go slumming through some of their posts and generally end up irritated and dumbfounded. When I need to be distracted from being irritated with idiots who I otherwise love (ie a roommate who wasn't returning phonecalls and an uncle who is borderline retarded and has taken an unseeming interest in my soul and how my gay ass will burn in hell for being a homo and a liberal), I can always count on folks like gaypatriot to have an endless supply of dreck for me to focus my fury on instead.

today, he did not disappoint. In this post, he plays the always fun fake victim game:

"Is there a connection between the 2004 political speech crimes against Republicans, the rise of anti-Semitism in France and Europe, the riots by radical and moderate Muslims alike over cartoons, the Secular Left’s “War on Christmas”, and the recent spate of anti-Christian violent acts in the United States that I note below?"

As evidence, he links to articles about the churches being burnt in AL and man who opened fire in a church in Detroit. I'll just bypass the irony of the fact that it is the redneck redstate republican contingency who are most famous for church burnings and the idiocy necessary to jump to the conclusion that if they are motivated by racism, then they must have been done by lefties who hate Jesus. And I'll ignore the fact that a church being the backdrop of a domestic conflict does not make the violence an act against Christians in general. Let's get on to his conclusion based on this evidence:

"I submit there is. Despite their hysterical rantings about the massive reduction in civil rights under BushAshcroftGonzales, the facts are that the violent acts against free speech and freedom of religion in America are directed against and not by American conservatives and people of faith (mainly Christians and Jews)."

Um, uh no, the facts aren't that. It is hysterical for folks to get upset about the executive branch breaking the law, doing it secretly, and trying to cover it up when exposed despite the fact that they could have gotten warrents under the current law, even after the fact if they had just tried? But taking to unrelated regional stories of conflict involving churches as the locations of the crimes and spinning them into evidence of oppression and violence against WASPs is just good common sense?

A big fat 'whatev dude' is about all you can say. Though, actually I have more thoughts about this "wah, wah, wah, my pussy hurts" crap that retards on the right are always going on about so I'll pick this up again later.

proud citizen of bush's nation of retards

Really, why is this man allowed to talk in public? does he have loved ones? If you care about this person, don't let him speak to groups or people. I hope this is parody, but strangely don't think it is:

"Goldberg: 'Some say that Native Americans were great environmentalists don't know history. Some think that Indians were like a Disney movie, with Indians talking to bunnies. The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo."

The Great Plains used to be a giant forest that the Indians burnt down to hunt buffalo? Have you ever seen a more damning indictment of the American educational system? Dude, I don't even think anyone can argue with you and try and set you straight; we all just need to slowly back away and leave you alone in your weird world.

This is what you voted for...

A kid walks into a gaybar and attacks people with a hatchet and a gun.

This is what the gay marriage amendment push was about. This is what the republican national convention was about. This is what "love won out" is about.

You scream from the rafters that gay people are destroying the country and communities and should matter less under the law, and soon enough folks are getting whacked in the head with a hatchet. True, usually the violence is less odd, less reported, but all the same...

"God is the lover of the zoo."

Over New Year's while talking to me, my mother was relating that my cousin who is a Baptist minister had met Bobby Welch, the president of the southern baptist convention. Mom went on to relate that my uncle had coached him, I believe in college (in what sport, I don't know) and that he always been really nice and friendly to my mom and cousin (who were about 4 at the time) and they had their first childhood crushes on him. He always talked to them when he came by the house and (I think) was a lifeguard and would sometimes take the to the pool. Kind of a sweet story, and he sounds like he is and was a really nice guy.

This is part of what makes so much of the politics of the last couple of years so painful: I know that individually the people pushing the worst policies are also really nice people individually. Not all of them are the awful people you would expect when you look just at what they support. The freepers are the vocal few, trapped alone in their miserable lives whining on the internet, but most of the folks who voted for torturing people, war for revenge and profit, cutting social programs for the poor, harming the environment, demonizing gay people, and adjusting the tax code to benifit the the wealthiest among us are suprisingly decent people when you actually meet them one on one (and make no mistake that any vote for bush this last go round can only be viewed as a vote for such; four years into it you can no longer feign ignorance). I have no doubt that were I to meet Mr. Welch, we would probably get along so long as we didn't discuss politics or religion.

But I'm probably not going to meet him individually, despite some sort of family connections. I am going to meet his effects on the direction of the baptist church. The extreme politicization of the southern baptist convention is how I have to judge him and those he represents.

Anyway, I haven't really dug too deeply into learning more about him specifically and don't care too right now. He was nice to my mom as a child and I'll stick with that for the moment (though I am not departing with my belief that the modern southern baptist convention represents the worst of modern America).

I finally googled his name though and got this link:

Go Bobby Welch!

It is an amazingly obnoxious (and long) piece of writing to read, but the final paragraph begins with this line which begged to be shared:

"God is the lover of the zoo."

If you want context, go for it, the link is there, but it really ruins it. I do recommend the whole last paragraph, but just the line itself borders so beautifully on the absurd and is likable all by itself. Without that awful article of condescending vapid ra-ra-go-team fight-fight-fight-win-win-win crap, you can give it its own context, find a way to let it make sense. Associated with the greater horror that it is part of, you can't like it so much.

Like Bobby Welch.

Sort of... but no.

I like Larry Johnson's writing in general. He offers great insight usually, but I have to take serious issue with how he simplifies why it was stupid for Condi to not have seen the Hamas victory coming. Yes, it was stupid and probably no one outside of the administration didn't at least know they were going to do well in that election. In a post at NO QUARTER he references an excerpt of his previous writing on the subject including this statement:

"We are unwilling to come to grips with a very simple truth -- the majority of people in the Middle East prefer an Islamic rather than a secular government. Economic development does not ensure a steady march towards a secular, diverse society. Heavens (irony intended) just look at us. Despite our economic prowess and alleged sophistication, religious fundamentalists in our own country have succeeded in bringing great pressure to bear on our government and our media."

No, a majority of the people in the Middle East do not prefer an Islamic government to a secular diverse government. A majority of people in the Middle East aren't seeing their needs met and the Islamic surge is fed off of a resentment of the West's role in that lack. Hamas won because it is concerned with the day to day needs of the population of Palestine. This is not to say that Hamas goes about acheiving this the right way or that Hamas gaining more power bodes well for the region, but if you want to take the teeth out of Hamas and resistance groups there are only two ways too it and neither has a damn thing to do with religion. The religion part is just a cultural rallying point, reinforcing a sense of belonging and moral imperitive to a cause. To slow down terrorist groups you have to either kill them all ('them' being the members of not just the organization itself, but the entire group, ethnic/regional/political/whatever that they are revolting in the name of), or you have to incorporate the population back into the community. In Israel, the Palestinians have been marginalized and divided and had much of their means of economic stability destroyed. Until those issues are handled, the resistance will only get increasingly heated.

This isn't because Palestinians want an Islamic government. It is because they see Hamas as fighting against and enemy who is standing in the way of their security. Give a Middle Eastern nation security and stability for a few years and see if the populace keeps voting in an Islamic majority.

And the same with this country. Yes, economic development does insure a march towards a more secular diverse society, but only in so much as all members of society are incorporated and involved in that society and that the economic development doesn't allow one group to accumulate most of the profit. No, Christians in this country are by no means the ones with the economic short end of the stick, but they sell their message as a reaction to being victimized.

They are not selling Jesus's message, but rather using the Bible as a cultural touch stone for rallying against the forces which they peceive as threatening them. Notice that the religious right attracts the most racist, bigoted folks you will ever meet. Not only the overt ones, but the message of protecting the world from this secular onslaught is also not so subtly as they would like to believe communicating a wish for a time when being white was more overtly advantageous. We aren't stupid; we know what is meant when they talk about the good old days and it has nothing to do with morality. It is about the world being organized in a way that white people and particularly a certain segment of the white population was on top and assured of staying on top.

The religious right makes a great noise about the country turning from its values, but this is what they mean. It is just a thinly veiled attempt at resurrecting social controls that keep people 'in their place'.

I am not so cynical to believe that all religious sentiment amongst people is so calculated and callous. Certainly there are true believers and those whose moral compass is aligned by their faith, be it Christian, Muslim, or other and certainly churches and mosques play central roles in many communities and that the idea of getting a feeling on belonging and purpose isn't only a negative thing or necessarily in opposition to a functional, diverse, accepting culture. But for these things to remain positive, people's basic needs must be met and they must feel secure and safe or their religious sentiment can easily be harnessed into knee-jerk political opposition, which in more extreme cases can lead to terrorism.

Overheard commentary about Middle Eastern political commentary

If you are in my bedroom adding water to your aquarium and you overhear someone angrily pacing and talking on the phone utter the words "mother-fucking twat monkeys," you may be fairly certain that Mason has just finished reading the New York Times' editorial commentary about Middle Eastern political goings on and is now discussing it with some poor soul. Today it was their asinine and patronizing comments about Hamas's recent political success in Palestine and what it says about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

Shorter James Glanz:Should we really have allowed the brown people to vote?

john tierney still a dumbass

as I have pointed out before,john tierney is a dumbass, which of course makes him an appropriate replacement for william safire. And he is back decrying the horrors of the drug war, how it has torn minority communities apart with harsh sentencing of nonviolent offenders and...no, he's upset because a white doctor got busted for trading oxycotin prescriptions for sex. What noble cause he has taken up, an obvious miscarriage of justice.

Bustardblog has already smacked the dork for it, so I'll just keep my trap shut.

Good As You: 'Brokeback' uber-critic books another Fox News gig

From the excellent blog Good As You I see that fox news is booking an idiot bigot fearmonger to trash 'Brokeback Mountain'.

Suprising? No.

The guy's review of the movie is just as predictable. Evil Hollywood is sneakily manipulating us to not hate homos, when if they were honest, they would really be portraying the gays as pedophiles and drug addicts. Cutting edge stuff, eh? Throw in some nazi references, cry 'what about the women and kids who got hurt?', and invoke rape. Insert anti-smoking message.

Let's look at a little section:

"Yes, the talents of Hollywood's finest are brought together in a successful attempt at making us experience Ennis's suffering, supposedly inflicted by a homophobic society. Heath Ledger's performance is brilliant and devastating. We do indeed leave the theater feeling Ennis's pain. Mission accomplished."

Credit where credit is due: he at least seems to seen the movie, unlike damn near every other retarded review I have read. But uh, "supposedly inflicted by a homophobic society"? What do you propose caused the difficulties in the film? The outcome wouldn't have been different had it been set in a homo friendly society? I guess you can also blame them for being born into socio-economic settings which didn't afford them the opportunity to escape their unfriendly surroundings and build a life in a supportive community, like I was able to, but that doesn't make the fag-hostile backdrop any less culpable for having no place for these fellows other than in the closet or in the ground.

a little more? ok:

"Lost in all of this, however, are towering, life-and-death realities concerning sex and morality and the sanctity of marriage and the preciousness of children and the direction of our civilization itself. So please, you moviemakers, how about easing off that tight camera shot of Ennis's suffering and doing a slow pan over the massive wreckage all around him? What about the years of silent anguish and loneliness Alma stoically endures for the sake of keeping her family together, or the terrible betrayal, suffering and tears of the children, bereft of a father? None of this merits more than a brief acknowledgment in "Brokeback Mountain.""

Uh, you kind of have to be special to not see all the wreckage and anguish in this movie. Alma's suffering isn't exactly whitewashed, but also, true to life, she is able to remarry. She has other places to turn, a community to support her in her pain and she and their children are not left abandoned. The community that would rip Ennis to shreds or send him packing if his pain were public offers her other opportunities to move on and have a place.

And a quick aside: the whole cult of children makes me want to strangle someone. "...the preciousness of children..."? WTF? Let me go puke.

back to kupelian:

"What is important to the moviemakers, rather, is that the viewer be made to feel, and feel, and feel again as deeply as possible the exquisitely painful loneliness and heartache of the homosexual cowboys – denied their truest happiness because of an ignorant and homophobic society."

In a perfect world, this wouldn't be a political film. It isn't specifically set up to be one. It is about doomed love like most great Hollywood romance/tragedies. That it is two men should be incidental. That is how it was filmed, that is how it comes across when you watch it. It isn't intentionally some big activist film. But anything openly gay is political, intentionally or not. Ang Lee didn't go out of his way to shove some fable about ignorant and homophobic society down our throats; we live in a largely ignorant and homophobic society and so the characters' struggles resonate and feel very real to the viewer. That isn't Hollywood magic; it is an audience whose sense of empathy and recognition aren't crippled by bigotry.

one last chunk:

"Thus are the Judeo-Christian moral values that formed the very foundation and substance of Western culture for the past three millennia all swept away on a delicious tide of manufactured emotion. And believe me, skilled directors and actors can manufacture emotion by the truckload. It's what they do for a living."

And dear sir, what do you do for a living?

As far as the Judeo-Christian moral values being swept away blah blah blah... just shut the hell up. The foundation of Judeo-Christian values are the accumulation of knowledge and the application of reason, grace, and forgiveness in interaction with others. Recognizing our own personal flaws and our common humanity. Expanding our experience and using this expansion to allow us to reach further out into the world. Sure there are other bits to Judeo-Christian values, but when you said the ones which have been integral to the fabric of Western progress for three millenia, I assume you aren't talking about the genocidal and racist chunks of the Bible. I guess not being able to exercise the previously popular Biblically-proscribed bigotries as openly as society once concidered acceptable, some folks are desperate to not conceed a last few bigotries and accept them as their own instead of scapegoating God for their lack of empathy and discomfort with 'differnt'people.

Belated Holiday Correction: Jeff Foxworthy's Celebrity Roast Only the Second Gayest Thing Ever

as an aside in a fairly recent post, I had pointed out that Jeff Foxworthy's celebrity roast was the gayest thing ever. (way down at the bottom)

I was wrong.

On Christmas Day, me and roomies M1 and M2 (neither Mason) and out of town guests watched "White Christmas" at M1's emphatic insistance. I can't remember ever seeing the movie before and didn't realize that 1)it is something of a war movie (mostly post-war, but everything comes from the central male characters having been in the war together) and 2) it is the gayest movie ever made!!!! Gayer than "Tu Wong Fu", gayer than "Jeffery", gayer than "Rocky Horror Picture Show". The. Gayest. Thing. I. Have. Ever. Seen.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

and now I am taking off to the HalfKing in Chelsea to see James Wolcott.

a few heroes left: David Letterman

saw this on Gawker:

Dave Letterman Serves Bill O�Reilly Ass on a Plate

He is nice enough about it, but just finally calls bullshit on o'reilly's stupid war-on-christmas crap. So perhaps this might not qualify one for hero status, and he didn't exactly save a kitten from a fire but he effectively and dismissively smacked a smarmy loud-mouth idiot who talks straight out of his ass and contributes to giving morons even more moronic ideas which I at some point have to listen to in conversation. For actually standing up and saying 'oh shut up already, dumbass' to one of these blow-hards that everyone else seems too chickenshit to confront (ok, so Al Fraken smacked him all over the place and George Clooney does it just for sport), I have to give the man some credit.

I grew up on late night talk shows and always considered Johnny Carson as one of my childhood heroes. I always used to watch David Letterman too, but had a falling out with him in highschool (something which I am fairly certain that he is not aware of) when he bumped Jaques Cousteau as a guest so the goo goo dolls could jump in a giant bowl of eggnog. I didn't watch the show for five years after that (this is from someone who had previously watched him almost daily for years); I have since forgiven him. And been impressed when I find myself around to watch the show.

I have not forgiven the goo goo dolls, for Jaques Cousteau not being on the show that night or for their music. Or for the lead singer's hair cut.

UPDATE: Welcome to all the folks slipping in here from global affairs forum, even if the fine fellow who linked to us did it with kind words such as these: "While we are calling both clowns, be reminded that there are ignorant dumb asses who actually defile the term hero." I'll have my little hero of the day and you can kiss my ass. That said, contrarians always welcomed. I haven't been blogging as much lately as usual, but please feel free to look around a bit and comment as you see fit.

friday random ten

I've never bothered with doing a friday random ten list like all the cool kids, but reading Amanda's today I felt like I might finally jump on this band wagon.

A quick comment on why I never do this and always end up frustrated when I try to do this simplest of all blogging tasks: a good chunk of the music on my computer was copied to it from mix cds sans names and titles, so there are a whole lot of songs which I listen to all the time but don't quite remember the names of. So if one of those songs jumps into the mix, I am just skipping it which sucks since much of the cooler stuff I listen to comes from Mason's uncanny talent for finding obscure, amazing music. What ev, such is the price of laziness.

and one other comment is that I am feeling lazy, so I'm done capitalizing things, so my un capitalized things should not be taken as indicative of ill-will as they can be on other days.

anyway...

1) valentine's day - steve earle
2) love will tear us apart - kiki & herb
*skipped song from "songs for immortals" mix lauren made for me*
3) white chocolate tea - the childballads
4) la vacaloca - manu chao
*skipped song from "lisa's girl mix for mason"*
5) star man - seu jorge
6) independant woman pt.1 - elbow
7) that's what i say - ray charles
8) long vermont roads - levi fuller (magnetic fields cover)
9) glory - liz phair

and finally:

10) heaven's just a sin away - the kendalls

With Democrats like this, who needs republicans?

democratic state sen. r. edward houck of Fredricksburg, VA:'I can't always just vote my conscience and my convictions,'

If you aren't voting your concience or your convictions, you should probably ask yourself what you are voting. Perhaps like so many americans, 51% or so, you vote your bigotries and your fears.

Just go read the story this is linked to.

Get a fucking spine, asshole. You might ask Santa for a heart, too.

bloomberg is a fucking prick

So, yeah, it will cost the city a bazillion dollars if the transit workers strike and we will all have to walk everywhere (straight to the bar), but when the mta is raising fares, laying off workers and increasing delays by reducing maintainance crews. So no, I'm not sympathetic to the mta's management and the mayor has pissed me off more than a few times so fuck him.

City Seeks Stiff Fines for Workers And Transit Union if They Strike - New York Times

I want to leave work so I won't get started on bloomberg's sudden war on nightlife since the election. All you bastard hipsters that voted for the jerk remember that's what you voted for when the lights come on and cops enter the bar at your favorite LES/E'Vil watering hole.

mickey kaus is an idiot

you can tell you are in for some enlightenment when you see this at the top of a web page:Epater Les Breeders - If you don't see "Brokeback Mountain," are you�a bigot? By Mickey�Kaus

Uh, dude, if you don't want to see the movie, don't go see it. Not going to see it doesn't make you a bigot, acting like it is ridiculous to concider that there is a possiblity that the movie can be good enough to appeal to a broad audience without the whole story being about titty-fucking is what makes you a bigot. Don't give us your whole "I'll go see it because I am with it and open minded, I'm just saying I won't like it because I am such a such a heterostud" posturing. You just come across as more of a heterotard instead.

Some one points out the idiocy of his comments gently, so he says more idiotic things and misses the whole point because he is too busy being macho to bother to actually think:

"P.S.: Reader C. E., reacting to an earlier 'Brokeback' post, emails:

"If I follow your logic, I should be genetically repelled from such films as Out of Africa, The Princess Bride, The Notebook, Wuthering Heights, The Big Easy, and basically every Hollywood romance ever made except Brokeback Mountain because I couldn't possibly enjoy a story about people who are not like myself.

"Er, no. If a gay man, say, goes to see 'Wuthering Heights,' there is at least one romantic lead of the sex he's interested in! In 'Brokeback Mountain,' neither of the two romantic leads is of a sex I'm interested in. ... My wild hypothesis is that more people will go see a movie if it features an actor or actress they find attractive! If heterosexual men in heartland America don't flock to see 'Brokeback Mountain' it's not because they're bigoted. It's because they're heterosexual. 'Heterosexuals Attracted to Members of the Opposite Sex'--for those cultural critics wondering what a commerical disappointment for this much-heralded movie will Tell Us About America Today, there's your headline. ..."

One, it is stupid to posit that straight men only go to movies to stare at tits. There are movie made just for that and having someone attractive in a movie always makes it nicer, but the point is stupid. Particularly that if that is his argument, I have a hard time thinking that he won't find Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams attractive, both of whom look amazing and are involved in sex scenes. There is no lack of attractive folks of either sex. If he really wants to go with his "I'm a perv who only goes to the movies to look at the purty girls," he still has no reason based on that arguement to avoid the movie.

If you don't want to see the movie, just don't go. Nobody really cares until you start crowing about how breeders won't like it because straight men can only like something if there are pretty girls to look at and it's not because you are bigotted you just need boobs to look at or why would you go see it since you ain't no fag. The posturing is embarassing and tired.

The movie will do well because it is well done. It is a difficult movie and might be challenging to folks, but that is to its credit. Mickey, if it is so hard for you to understand how you could care about characters whose experience is not identical to yours, then maybe you need to be challenged and ask yourself why you are so resistant to the idea. And yeah, bigotry might be the name for it.

Go Pam, Go!!!

Being a regular reader of Pandagon, I stumbled over to the home site of one of their contributors a while back: Pam's House Blend. An excellent site with quality commentary. As someone who grumbles quite often at the stupidity of so much commentary the homophobic bigots out there mucking up our public discourse, I'm always happy to find someone else raging against the stupidity without losing their mind or their sense of humor. And I especially love her pictoral history of her hair. And Mason, note that she references her "kitchen area" in the caption of the pic from April 2001. Sometimes forgetting about slang not always translating in different geographic regions/demographic groups, I have often found myself explaining to those around me why I am saying something which sounds crazy to them. Like when Mason asked if he needed a haircut and I told him he needed to clean his kitchen, which makes no sense if you didn't have black girlfriends (not that kind of girlfriend) who would refer to the base of the skull/top of the neck region on the back of your head as your "kitchen." This is one of those things where I think Mason sort of believes me but I still kind of see that vague distrust in his eyes, so I am pointing out the first written reference to this term (feel free to correct me Pam if you mean something different by "kitchen region").

Anyway, I didn't start this post to talk about Pam's hair; I am writing it to suggest you take a moment and go vote for her for to get a Weblog Awards for the Best LGBT Blog.

I haven't heard of most of the other blogs, and the few that I have are mostly ones that make my skin crawl. So even though I would vote for Pam anyway because I've read her long enough to know she's my girl in this game, I'm going to do a first impression run through of the other nominees.

1) gay patriot- ummm, yeah this is one of the ones that I recognized because they kind of make me want to kick someone. Inane political commentary from gay republican. Don't get me started.

2) Queer Visions- had never seen this one before. Seems really good. Well put together, well written. The politics seems (in a very brief perusal) more short commentary and linking to other sources. I'm keeping my endorsement with Pam, but I'll visit these guys again.

3) boi from troy- uh, gay republican sports blog. not as noxious as gaypatriot and sometimes witty, but again, we don't consort with gay repubs around here except to argue and he is throwing his support behind brat boy school who is Pam's closest competitor. I'm sticking with Pam.

4) right side of the rainbow another gay republican. That's about all I got out of it.

5) Gay Orbit- OK-ish. Some interesting commentary but again seemed to lean to the right, which I probably wouldn't have looked far enough into the blog to notice, as it isn't so overt or in your face annoying, but I'm beginning to notice a trend.

6) Shades of Gray- a really good read. Well written and entertaining. Not really overtly political.

7) brat boy school- this is inexplicably Pam's closest competitor. Just kind of boring. Never heard of him before this and don't think I will come back. Politically kind of lame, storytelling lacking that something that would make you want to read on, seemingly trying to affect a sort of diva thing that doesn't seem to quite fit right. Sort of like a poorman's malcontent.

8) Classical Values- writes decently, but is kind of annoying if you slog all the way through one of his posts. I guess I am no one to criticize anyone for longwindedness, but whatev'.

9) Good As You- pretty entertaining, good politics. Still sticking with Pam, but I promise to visit.

10) troubled diva wouldn't load, but 'diva' is one of those words that I feel is rarely well used and usually makes me roll my eyes. Like 'fierce' or when people spell 'boy' as 'boi'.

11) the malcontent- my old friend the malcontent. I'm still pissed at him for being mean to Richard Simmons and his politics are still pretty retarded, but after slogging through all these other blogs, I can at least say he is more entertaining than most. And he does a good job as far as content goes and following through on his goal to focus on providing screen/video captures not found elsewhere. But he is throwing his weight behind the totally lame brat boy school and calling Pam a moonbat.

12) BlogActive great blog; pissed off, take no shit, don't fuck with this faggot politics. They are endorsing Pam too.

13) towleroad- pretty entertaining blog, but they are endorsing the brat boy, so whatev'.

14) Homocon- I am getting exhausted and want to go home an eat. This one seemed less than noxious and looks well put together, so maybe I will check them out another time.

So one last time, go vote for Pam and then do it again tomorrow (you can vote once a day per ip address).

I'm going to get in trouble because M- is cooking goetta tonight and I promised to be home by 9 to try this Cinncinatti delicasy, so I gotsta run.

larry the cable guy is an idiot

Yeah, David Cross can be fucking annoying at times, but I kind of think that is the point of a lot of his act, and his rabid fans can be just as annoying ("Hey let's watch these Mr. Show episodes that I taped. Again."), but he hits the nail right on the head with this letter to larry the cable guy. Coming from the South, I've got no patience for damn idiots who work hard to perpetuate the idea that southerners are a bunch of slow-ass morons. Plenty are, but so are plenty of folks everywhere and I don't need anyone else hanging that stigma on my birthplace in particular.

One little tidbit about the fellow that sticks in my craw:

"Well, I suppose I've already covered part of that in the above. But you also specifically dumb down your speech while making hundreds of purposefully grammatical errors. How do I know this? It's on page 17 of your book wherein you describe how you would 'Larry' up your commentaries for radio. What does it mean to 'Larry' something up? Take a wild guess. The reason you feel the need to 'Larry' something up? Because you are not that dumb. I mean you, Dan Whitney, the guy who's name the bank account is under. You were born and raised in Nebraska (hardly The South), went to private school and moved to Florida when you were 16. This is when you developed your accent?! Not exactly the developmental years are they? At age 16 that's the kind of thing you have to make a concerted effort to adopt. Did you hire a voice coach? Or were you like one of those people who go to England for a week and come back sounding like an extra from 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'? As you said yourself in an interview once, 'I can pop in and out of it pretty much whenever I want'. In your book on page 89 you say in reference to the 'gee-shucks' millionaire comment, '...see, to his (David's) mind, bein' well paid means I'm no longer real and I can't be a country boy anymore. It's just an act.' Hey, it's always been an act! That's my fucking point! You admit it yourself so cut the indignation shit."

He's not even fucking southern! If you are going to make a life out of making fun of the South can you at least be fucking southern? Nebraska? I grew up within 30 miles of where I was born. We moved from Mississippi across the state line to where my parents still live when I was about 5 and I switched from a MS school to an AL school when I was in the 4th grade and I was still considered something of a new kid on into highschool. You don't just get a pass at being southern because you move there. And Florida is a lot of things, but if you aren't above I-10, it is NOT the South.

Whatever, make a buck off of being a charicature of the worst backwards ass elements of the country and associate them with the South (where they certainly are, in spades) but shut up about defending them from slander by David Cross et al. Your whole schtick is slandering the region and getting folks to laugh at it.

larry the cable guy is always going to be a second rate clown in Jeff Foxworthy's idiot redneck circus. His momma's got to be proud.

Makes me miss Lewis Grizzard.

(and this is a random side note, but is Jeff Foxworthy gay? Not trying to start anything and I'm not just saying it because he looks gay -which he does- but if you caught any of his celebrity roast, it was the gayest thing I have ever seen. It seemed like an awful lot of the jokes were thinly veiled gay jokes and seemed to hint just a little too at... something. Am I the only person who thought so?)

Stick to the praise music, bub, and leave the rockin' and honky tonking to us.

TBogg linked to this:Six Meat Buffet � Rock Songs Conservatives Can Love

I decided to swing by and check out what the rock songs the fellow found to be conservative. Really, sure try and tag some rock music as conservative...actually scratch that. Rock and roll, the blues, and really even a hell of a lot of country music is all about bucking things up and either raging at having no place in the status quo or about just doing your thing despite all the shit going on around you. So no, the conservative, things-used-to-be-tilted-more-in-my-favor-wah-wah-wah folks don't get any of it. They are the stupid bitches running around wishing for some dumb charicature of what they are gullible enough to believe the world used to be like in the 'good old days' (where those niggers and faggots and women knew their places), so no, you don't get to claim rock songs for your agenda. Say their are things in rock songs you relate to, but don't try to drag them up on your idiot bandwagon. You can have praise music and christian rock (if you want it; and note this does not give you permission to mess around with gospel or old school hymns; hands off).

Please, had you stuck to just latterday Eagles, I would posit that the only idiots I have ever known who looked for getting rich out of accidents and bogus liability cry-baby claims tended to be republicans and that it was written lashing out at the me-first culture of reaganites, but I would have left well enough alone and let you enjoy your smarm... but "Revolution"?!?!? You want to claim a Beatles song, one of their most overtly political, anti-war peace songs as a conservative fave? I'm not concerned that you lack an understanding of irony like the rest of Tbogg's folks are; I'm worried that you are stupid.

a day late, a few somber thoughts

Tbogg put this post up making fun of racist idiots. I'll leave those particular bigots to him; I couldn't one up his sarcasm if I tried and these jerks don't really merit more attention than the sharp sneer and dismissal he has already dealt. But his post included this picture:



Yesterday was Blogging Against Racism Day. Don't know who decided that, but a few folks whose stuff I regularly read and respect were talking about it and it seems like a fine enough goal. It was also World Aids Day. I didn't find time for blogging yesterday, so I contributed to neither, but given my recurring topics, neither topic is lacking for mention on this blog.

but that picture.

The folks in it. They don't look all that different from pictures of my family members (other than choice of background). Smiling, holding hands.

Though friends here in NYC might joke about me being country and white trash, I don't come from trashy folk back home. You have to be more than just poor and white to be "white trash". Unless just bandied about as a joke, it draws up a specific thing in my head. And we while my family wasn't rolling in money and was probably poorer than many of my friend's families, we came from educated and cultured folks and for that reason, many kids where I went to school at times thought I came from a wealthy family. I couldn't afford to go see a movie on the weekend and my parents both did side work in addition to their main jobs to keep us in the black, but our house was always filled with books, guests always welcome, family always important, and manners strictly enforced. My parents were lax about letting us grow our hair out and dress pretty much as we wanted (within reason), but being polite was non negotiable. To anyone, anywhere, anytime. Black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, whatever. Please and thank you and yes, sir/ma'am were not optional.

I'm sure my parents could think of a thousand times when each of us has seemed insanely rude to them, but I can't think of very many times they let it pass or of very many times when I have seen one of my numerous siblings being rude to someone unprovoked. Plenty of sarcasm and attitude in my family, but generally delivered with that syrupy southern sweetness that makes it all the more potent.

What is the point? Bear with me.

Growing up in AL/MS, race is right there on the table in everything. In your homes not so much all the time, but in your interaction with your community and the world, it is unavoidable. Those two states are internationally synonymous with racism, and you know it when you grow up there. You see plenty of it, but I also inherited a horror of it. Every chapter in Alabama history is about race relations, from the french and spanish first dealing with the indians straight on up til today. I knew things weren't perfect there growing up, but I also knew that they weren't the same as they once had been or the same as they were still often portrayed. People weren't being lynched, the idea of someone burning a cross in someone's yard was regarded with abject horror by the general populace. You could get angry, seek revenge on someone, but lace it with overt racism and you were dragging all of us and our very tenuous and already fairly bad reputation into it. Black people and white people went to the same schools mostly and the same stores and interacted fairly civilly.

Of course there was still plenty of division and things weren't all hunky dory, but I had the feeling that coming out of our history and having the social turmoil we had had and all the other baggage, for the most part, folks in those two states were doing better than the world seemed to portray and the general populace was pointed in, trying to point in the right direction. Even if folks still weren't quite sure how to shake off old prejudices and it would take a few generations to get there, we were trying.

For the first time in my life, when I went home last Christmas, I didn't feel that anymore. Racist statements weren't just something relegated to the trashy folks that didn't know better. Not that I suddenly started hearing racial epithets slung around, but the atmosphere had somehow changed. Instead of that past history being something that we were trying so dreadfully to escape, to forget, to distance ourselves from, we were clamouring to get back to it. It was palpable. How can any human in this country from almost any community have any illusions about what it means when they say they want to go back to the "good old days"? I know what you are saying and I don't like it. You can say this or that was good, but you can't talk wholesale about the "good old days" without there being an implicit meaning that you want the world to go back to having black people in their place or dead and a power consolidated in the hands of a few community movers and shakers and that horrible communal approval or blanketing smothering silence regulating dissent. I've felt it trying to suffocate me more than a few times and see what happens when it does keep people under and it isn't pretty.

This picture in which I had never imagined my family/community a part of in the past was suddenly something that they were willing to countenance in the future. My mom or dad would be horrified at such hyperbole, and for the most part it is just that, hyperbole. But there was that element of it that glimpsed out from underneath everything.

Why did anyone in this country vote for george bush in the last election? Honestly, name one thing he did right in the previous four years, in his time as governor. One thing that indicated that he was or could one day be a good leader. You can gripe all you want about Kerry, but honestly, if you look at Kerry's record and that of John Edwards, they have done a few things right and both spoke reasonably well in the debates. bush was an absolute buffoon and doesn't hide it very well. Growing up, if we had known him in person, I will bet you a dollar my mother would have gone out of her way not to let us around him. Because he is a liar and obnoxious and mean and self-important and I've seen how she reacts to similar folks. Suffering fools isn't something that happens too often in our family and certainly not with my mother. But put him in control of nuclear weapons and stick him on television promoting an amendment that said her son doesn't matter as much under the law and have him lie pretty blatanly and with little finesse to lead the country into an unnecessary war, and I have to explain to her why I can't understand how anyone could vote for him. I don't know if she did. I don't want to. He ran his whole campaign on dirty tricks to trash his opponent and on folks' bigotries ("let's go blow up brown people and put those faggots in their place!").

and won.

Am I trying to say that he or anyone who voted for him wants to smile and dress up and hold hands with black people swinging from trees in the background? No. Not at all. But I'll argue that those things come from the same place. Those folks smiled beneath that strange fruit for the same reason people voted for bush: because someone was putting 'those people' back in their place. What in the hell is the difference between Guantanamo/Abu Gharaib and that lynching? Torturing someone to death (there have been more than a few deaths in both) is somehow less violent than hanging them? Less racist to beat/shoot/bomb foreign brown people to death because we as a nation feel emasculated by the actions of some other foreign brown folks than lynching some black folks for somehow emasculating some white community through some real or percieved crime? Or it makes you less guilty of the crime to vote for it than to be there?

Watch the republican national convention and tell me again that that wasn't what you voted for if you voted for bush. Why did you vote for him then? The booming economy? The strong dollar? The international goodwill he had fostered? The improvements in our education system? In healthcare? In the environment? His eloquence and the dignity with which he carries himself?

That people voted for bush is one thing; why is another. And the why is what I couldn't stomach. I have never been so happy to be somewhere as I was to get back to New York after the holidays. I had a great time with my family and love them and loved the visit, but it was all somehow different.

I love my older sister, but instead of staying with her again when I flew out of Atlanta, I stayed at a hostel. Because everything we said to each other was laced with politics, even when we tried to keep politics out of it. I don't think my dad voted for bush, and in the end I don't think my mom did, but my sister I am sure did. And for all the wrong reasons. Not because she is racist, but because "He is a Christian." So is Kerry for that matter, but what she meant was "He is one of Us." And in suggesting that Kerry wasn't enough of a Christian she was also not so subtly suggesting that I wasn't either; that I was part of that 'Them' who her beloved 'Us' was called to reign in. Her vote was for me not to be a faggot. I am not so conceited to think that was the long and short of it, no other reasons in the mix, but the message wasn't subtle and it was part of it. And perhaps she doesn't realize that this is implied when one implies such things, but the implication is that there should not be homosexuals at all. 'Quit acting like a fag, boy, or you might not be around any more.' Not my sister's message to me, but it is the one she voted for. The one a majority (however bare a majority, a majority none the less)of this country voted for. So pardon me for feeling a little uncomfortable with a picture of a lynching. Both as someone horrified with the idea that the people who did the lynching were from the same social class and likely a very similar place that I am and as someone being told to get back in line. They didn't hang black people just because they were black. They hung them because they were black and stepped out of line or as a warning for others not to. Were in the wrong part of town, looked at someone wrong, asked the wrong question, refused some indignity, embarassed/challenged some weak whimpy white idiots who had to make themselves feel strong and secure again by exacting a community backed revenge on that ominous 'Other'.

'That'll learn 'em good.'

Anyway, that picture. Dragged up some stuff. Getting close to going back down south, looking forward to seeing my family, but realizing there is still alot of baggage there and not sure how some things will go. That picture is a historical document; not a representation of the South anymore, of America any more. I want to make sure it stays that way. I want to be able to believe again that that is what everyone else wants too.

(Note: I speak about the South in particular because I come from the South, but I have no illusions that only or all southerners voted for bush. And as the malcontent shows, even gay people in NYC can be so callow and self-centered as to vote for these cretins.)

He pities the fool; I respect him.

The last half of this article further outlines his past charity work and how it came back to comfort him through his struggle with cancer and the first part is about him planning his comeback.

The Sun Online - Life: Second coming of Mr T

But the middle explains why his comeback will be sans bling:

"Off-screen, Mr T is lending a helping hand to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
The tragedy deeply affected the 53-year-old Christian star, who was so moved by what happened in New Orleans that it convinced him to give up his trademark gold chains.
He said: 'I watched my people, the black people, screaming, begging and crying just for water.
'They didn't want diamond rings or new houses, they just wanted water, and they couldn't get any.
'I knew that soon I would be going around visiting these people in homeless shelters and it would be a sin against God and a sin against humanity to go around there wearing a million-dollars worth of gold chains, rings and diamonds.
'It would be wrong for me to say 'it's going to be alright buddy' and then go about my business. That would be a lie.
'People need to see that Mr T has a heart of gold, not just the gold that drips around my neck.
'That's my wardrobe, my uniform, but I will never wear it again.'"

Wow.

Smarmy annoying person eases towards sensibility, refuses to drop the smarmy annoyingness.

Yeah, so I did it. I didn't want to, but you know it is kind of like watching a trainwreck. So hard not to take just one more look at the horror of it all. I went back to scott adams' blog to see if he had dabbled in carrying intelligent design's water.

of course he has:

The Dilbert Blog

Again he starts up with his, 'Gee a bunch of crazy people got all worked up because I am so clever and they can't see that I am baiting them' crap. Yeah, we know you are trying to just be cute like some asshole vegan teenager trying to bait the adults into an argument at thanksgiving, but with a large audience who loves you based on your ability to make corporate life seem enlightening in its nilism, you get extra attention, even if it is a stunt and chances are you will never read a word I write. Anyway, the science folks seem to be wearing him down, even if he is still acting like an ass in his capitulation:

"I understand the argument for excluding Intelligent Design from science classes. Most scientists believe it doesn't meet the definition of science. You can't argue with the people who MAKE the definitions. If the vast majority say it doesn't have enough substance to qualify as science, that's okay with me. But I have to wonder if that's the real reason most scientists oppose including it in schools. I would expect scientists to welcome such a clear model of something that is NOT science, as an example of exactly that.
"Kids, astronomy is science and astrology isn't. Here are some more examples of things that aren't science..."
Sure, it might confuse the dumb kids, but they aren't the ones building the spaceships of tomorrow anyway. I learned about not using 'ain't' in English class and that didn't hurt me too much. So it just seems fishy to me that scientists are so worked up about Intelligent Design. Could their true fear be the slippery slope argument? If you let ID in the door, before long we'll all be wearing scraggly beards and beating ourselves with prayer paddles."

"You can't argue with the people who MAKE the definitions." Uh, can we say bitchy and juvenile? Whatever dude, that is the i.d./creationist crowd's modus operandi. The whole point they are trying to make to attack the Enlightenment. They see all teaching that is not squarely rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible to be the enemy. No, not all proponents view the battle as such; there are plenty (some of my relatives surely, shamefully, included in this number) who jump in on the wrong side of this battle simply because they understand it as evolution being true meaning God doesn't exist and haven't thought through the implications of what they are positing. "Does God exist?" is in no danger of disappearing as a philosophical/theological question, but whether or not it has a place as part of a science curriculum has long been settled. Evolution wasn't accepted as the unifying theory in biology because of some nefarious plot by some evil cabal of athiest "darwinist" trying to do satan's work to lead good christian souls off to hell. And that is the gist of the creationism folks.

The side of the mouth disparragement of the folks who MAKE the definitions really boils down to the same thing: an attack on modern inquiry. Scientist don't MAKE definitions out of thin air. The suggestion is that they can't be trusted because they are lording over these arbitratary definitions, keeping out disparate ideas like intelligent design. This isn't just some stupid turf war ('We want to make the rules!' 'No, we get too!'), this is about the fundamental ways that modern knowledge has and continues to progress. If you throw out evolution over religious qualms and try to insert untested/untestable religious dogma into the cannon based on political pressure, you are throwing out the scientific method. You are taking the first step back towards a preindustrial world. You can argue all you want about the troubles that have come along with the modern world, but you throw out all the advances of the last couple of centuries when you start pulling the rug out from under science.

And the 'Golly, why wouldn't scientists want to use it in classes to contrast between real science and fake science?' crap can be dropped right now. If that was the point you were trying to make, you had three other posts to make it but surely in all the research you have done you aren't dumb enought to think that you are representing either side with that suggestion. Teachers already do that plenty. More than a few of my college course made it a point to emphasize being critical and demanding of sources of information and either pointed out or asked us to find examples of pseudo-science and compare and contrast what made it un-scientific. No one on the science side of this argument is arguing against that and that isn't for a second what the i.d. folks are fighting for. They are trying to shove the stuff in to be held up next to the theory of natural selection and have teachers say, 'Or it could have happened this way.'

If in an argument with someone, and it is quickly becoming apparent that you are on the losing side of things, don't do mr. adams half-capitulation well-yeah-of-course-that's-right-I-meant-something-different-see-I'm-still-right-you-are-wrong dance. It ain't cute. Dude, shut up about the debate until you put the holier-than-though attitude down and take a couple of classes and read a few books. You side with the idiots and you are going to get reprimanded just like them.

Some folks should stick to their medium.

I love reading the funnies, and have a special place in my heart for those most brilliant cartoonists. I owe a huge debt to Bill Waterson (I hate everyone of you fuckers with those stupid Calvin pissing on ford/chevy stickers on your car; way to ruin it for everyone, assholes), Berkely Breathed, Gary Larson, and Gary Trudeau for their role in helping me form my world view. They may seem silly, but read every day and framing current events and human situations in unique and humorous ways helps shape curious little developing minds. I later came to also love Dilbert, The Boondocks, Get Fuzzy, and Non Sequitor. I would read the other ones, even Family Circus and Cathy and I have a strange place in my heart for Prince Valiant, but these are the ones that I look forward to reading, that really seemed to have something to really add to interpretation of the human experience.

Dilbert I relate to perhaps less than the others because I tend to do my best to stay away from beauracracy and corporate life as much as is possible in this modern world of ours, but I still find the strip funny and entertaining. scott adams can write a comic strip. But having just been introduced to his blog, I think I'll do my best to steer clear of it. It comes across as smarmy and obnoxiously know-it-all in a sort of you-can't-trust-anything kind of way that is as useless as it is annoying.

Anyone who knows me knows about how much I like folks jumping into scientific debates without knowing much of anything about what they are talking about. So maybe I would be kinder on mr. adams had I not first found him throwing his hat in with the intelligent design folks:

The Dilbert Blog: Intelligent Design, Part 1

PZ Meyers does a wonderful job of taking apart his arguments piece by piece, so I'll mostly defer to him:

Pharyngula::Scott Adams is a Wally

From reading scott's second post about how uncredible and ridiculous everyone is on either side of the debate, I am certain he would take ofense as me characterizing him as being in cahootze with the i.d.ers, but his post seems mostly aimed at arguing that science is basically untrustworthy and uses their terminology for framing the debate, so pardon me if I take his i'm-neutral posturing as unconvincing.

He then has a third post on the debacle titled "Who Is Credible to Me?" It is no more illuminating and only further makes my heart sink as one more fairly talented person in his main medium comes across as an obnoxious pointless contrarian outside of it.

There are just a few little things about his arguments that I want to question before I wash my hands of this whole mess. In the first post, he opines:

"First of all, you’d be hard pressed to find a useful debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design, of the sort that you could use to form your own opinion. I can’t find one, and I’ve looked. What you have instead is each side misrepresenting the other’s position and then making a good argument for why the misrepresentation is wrong. (If you don’t believe me, just watch the comments I get to this post.)"

and

"The Intelligent Design people have a not-so-kooky argument against the idea of trusting 90%+ of scientists. They point out that evolution is supported by different branches of science (paleontologists, microbiologists, etc.) and those folks are specialists who only understand their own field. That’s no problem, you think, because each scientist validates Darwinism from his or her own specialty, then they all compare notes, and everything fits. Right?

"Here’s where it gets interesting. The Intelligent Design people allege that some experts within each narrow field are NOT convinced that the evidence within their specialty is a slam-dunk support of Darwin. Each branch of science, they say, has pro-Darwinists who acknowledge that while they assume the other branches of science have more solid evidence for Darwinism, their own branch is lacking in that high level of certainty. In other words, the scientists are in a weird peer pressure, herd mentality loop where they think that the other guy must have the “good stuff.”

"Is that possible? I have no way of knowing."


Please, mr. scott, where have you looked? I really honestly want to know what you have read about biology. Have you taken a college level biology course, have you read _On the Origin of the Species_ or any of the more modern books on the subject? I wouldn't start with Richard Dawkins if you are new to science, but Stephen J. Gould wrote expansively and skillfully for a popular audience as has E. O. Wilson. Really, what texts are you basing your arguments on? Where does you understanding of science come from? Your arguments sound like someone who read one book on intelligent design and a couple of articles written for Time or the Washington Post about the controversy instead of actually reading about science.

And as to the idea that specialists understand only their little field and are assuming other branches hold the real evidence for evolution, please tell me you are kidding. For my undergraduate degree in marine biology, we had to take a broad range of biology classes in addition to physics classes, general and organic chemistry classes, geology, and oceanography. Functioning in biology requires a broad understanding of sciences in general and while scientists may have pet specializations, they have to have an abilty to put their work in a larger frame work for it to be very useful. It isn't a bunch of isolated, near-sighted hermits carving out these tiny little pieces of knowledge that are then cobbled together willy-nilly based on some assuptions about other folks over the way knowing something that makes their version work.

One more little peeve, the suggestion that it is ridiculous to lump the i.d. folks in with the creationist folks. When we talk about intelligent design, we aren't talking about biologists who believe in god. A scientist religious beliefs are irrelavent if they don't taint his work. The folks promoting i.d. are promoting it for religious/political reasons. Dig into who is backing the i.d. stuff and where the i.d. curriculums are coming from. It still wouldn't be included as science even if it was just what folks say it is; what are you going to test for? How does it become anything other than an anecdotal argument ("Look at how beautiful and wonderful everything is? Kind of makes you believe there is someone out there. You can see god's hand in nature's beauty and function.") and if it isn't, then why are people trying to insert it into curricula? It is being promoted as an assault on science and an attempt to sow doubt in the public sphere about biology and evolution because these are used to argue against folks' uncritical acceptance of religious dogma. I saw Julia Sweeney's one-woman show "Letting Go of God" last week and a particularly amusing part was about dating a fellow that was into intelligent design. (if you can go see the show, i highly recommend it.)

Anyway, whatever. scott adams never was really that high in the pantheon of comic strip artists and this really can be left separate from appreciation of his little cartoon world which is so enjoyable, so I can just turn away from the annoying blog and be done with it. I really hope he does take the time to read more about science though. For the uninnitiated, I really do recommend Stephen J. Gould as a good starting point. All of his books are excellent and often collections of stand-alone essays so they don't necessary require cover to cover reading to take something useful away (though reading cover to cover is still encouraged).

Off-handed sexism and such...

I haven't been reading Atrios as much lately as I used to, so I really am in no position to really jump into this argument with Ann Althouse over feminism or the lack thereof, except to say that I have read the blog for a long time and find the commentary to be generally agreeable.

So I am not going to comment on their particular argument. They can sort that out. I usually don't read comments on the big sites unless really compelled, so I certainly don't care to hop in a pissing war over who has worse commentors. Whatev', yo.

But I read a few of Ann's comments and this one jumped out at me:

"Ann,
Off handed sexism is alive and well among liberal men. So is incredibly insesitive comments related to gays and lesbians. In fact, the only group they really seem to be mostly politically correct about are African Americans.
What does that say about the actual state of affairs in this country?"

Huh? Sexism alive and well amongst men and insensitive comments about gays and lesbians? Yup, it happens in right here in America, folks. That some liberal men are sometimes off-handedly sexist is shocking and damning how? (stay with me for a minute before getting all in a huff)

The difference is that part and parcel to liberal play of the game is examining and facing down our own prejudices as we also look at those in society as a whole. Folks claiming to be liberal aren't claiming to be perfect and free from taint and baggage. I deal with mine everyday and will be til I die, but I'm working hard to deal with what I find and always further challenge myself to base my views on sex/race/gender/etc. on an ever deepening understanding. I want to approach and deal with my prejudices with discernment and work towards moving them to a more realistic and nuanced place rather than bemoan the world changing from a framework in which my set (white males) could have our pet prejudices and expound on them with impunity. This is the conservative mind set. Why can't things be rolled back to the place where we could be openly racist/sexist/homophobic like the way they used to be? I hardly think such open nostalgia for cultural hedgemony is the same thing as liberals not yet having rid sexism/racism/homophobia completely from their ranks. Its all in where you are aiming folks. The right is aiming at putting blacks/gays/women/po'folks back in their place; the left is aiming at making this country a place for everyone equally. The whiney right critics can kiss my happy ass. Mess with my splinters after you deal with your planks.

I've more to say about this subject, wanting to address directly misogyny amongst gay men, but that will have to wait for now.

Recognition is funny

I'm not going to link to the post, because I generally don't link to blogs which seem to be written for an audience of close friends unless I know said person well and they have said they don't mind being linked to, but I was looking through one of my friend's friends posts on livejournal trying to see if I could figure out who any of the other folks were (since we have many mutual friends) and came across a couple of posts which mentioned a party we recently had. It is always interesting to get folks impressions of you, particularly when they have no idea that you may ever read/hear what they have said.

We have color parties, as did some of our friends when we lived in Charleston. Now, as then, we go a little crazy with decking out the house in whatever color (we have done orange, blue, pink, and most recently brown) and are pretty militant about anyone coming to the party wearing at least some amount of whatever color. The nice and somewhat overwhelming thing about New York is that if you do something fun, it takes no time whatsoever for word to spread and for it to reach capacity. There are at least ten of us here in NYC who used to frequent the Charleston color parties, and each person invites a few, and BAM! you have some serious party momentum.

It is fun seeing how each color affects the mood of people at the party and the feel of the room. Orange was kind of boisterous and really happy; blue was strangely lascivious, with everyone just feeling kind of skeezy and with the mood just feeling like we were in the creepy, but not scary part of some fairytale; pink was like walking into a giant vagina, a bit heavier feeling than one might expect but upbeat and fun and people acting silly; brown was fun and kind of felt like being in a forest, but strangely the word that I heard more than a few people use to describe the feel of the room and the decorations was 'masculine'. Yes, with three of the five roommates being gay boys, there were a lot of men there, but I don't think that is what was meant by it, and generally a room full of homosexuals, even with lots of bearded brooklyn 'mos, doesn't generally elicit the adjective 'masculine' off the bat and the room was decorated with frilly cut brown paper hanging from the ceiling. But I kind of got what they meant. Surrounding yourself in one main color changes the mood of a crowd in interesting ways.

Anyway, as folks have spread the word about the party, there is a larger chunk of folks that attended the party that I know only peripherally or not at all. It has been kind of nice weird the last couple of weeks since the party having folks that I didn't even realize made it to the party or don't even recognize at all come up and start talking to me about the party or hearing someone talking about it not realizing I was one of the hosts.

Looking through the blogs of friends of my friend trying to figure out who was who, since the north brooklyn gay boy community is pretty interconnected, I came across a couple of posts about the party. More interesting than the actual posts was the comments section of a post from the day before where my friend C- was inviting his other friend to the party. So the invitee, trying to figure out who was throwing the party asked "is this the same d- with the icky moustache?"

The answer to which is, of course, "Yes" though I will argue with that icky part. I find it funnier than I find it insulting though. C- diplomatically confirmed "yeah, the boy with the mustache."

I'm leaving out bits of the dialogue, but this is my blog so only the parts about me are going to be discussed, so we continue:

"maybe i should start being nice to the boy with the moustache, but the reason i'm not is sort of silly. we see eachother everywhere and have mutual friends but he gives me bad looks and never says hi or has even introduced himself to me!!! !!! ! ! ! !"

I'm not sure who this is. There weren't enough details to tease out exactly which friend of friends this was who came to the party and I often run into out and about, so maybe I am actually mean to him and just can't think of who it is, but I imagine it is probably unintentional. I don't tend to snub folks intentionally unless I have a reason to, but I wonder how many folks I come across as aloof to? I am more used to people trying to steer clear of me because they think I am too forward rather than too unfriendly. I go to the same damn places over and over (I like my habitual ways; that was not meant as lament) and talk to about anyone who isn't rude and doesn't run away, but maybe I can come across as a big bruesque at times. Maybe that is why I like C- so much. He is way too hyper and enthusiastic and often scares the shit out of people with his complete lack of qualms about introducing himself to new people combined with his tendency to get louder and abruptly confessional when nervous. But he is upfront and fun to hang out with and serious about his silliness and doesn't beat around the bush, which sometimes rubs other folks the wrong way. Which I guess I also do sometimes.

Still, it strikes me as ridiculous to dislike someone else for never having introduced themselves if you haven't introduced yourself to them. Why should I be the initiator? Which C- points out:

"that is silly. you are so funny, how it is the other person's responsibility to introduce themselves, get rid of that way of thinking. and just say hi. he is a really nice, southern boy - so friendly. "

which seems to make sense to this mystery peep:

"it's his responsibility because i'm shy and stupid! but okay, i'll try harder. i'm from the south too sort of, so i can pretend to know what chitlins are for the sake of mustachioed-friendship."

While I do know what chitlins are, I've never eaten them, so no need to front. Anyway, this is probably the most boring post I have ever put up, but thought the whole thing was funny and what is the point of finding folks talking about you in cyberspace if you can't talk back a little?

Is bush a faggot?

I've railed more than a few times against bigotted idiot assumptions about sterotypes of the relationships that homos have with their parents. Maybe though since Spongedob and pals have such fun with hanging their idiot shit on us and trying to make our parents feel guilty to further alienate us and damage relationships, lets play this game in reverse:

Pandagon: 'Bush rarely speaks to father, family is split'

So bush is an emotional sissy who lashes out when criticized, has a history of abusing substances and partying, was a cheerleader in college, the pampered son of an over-doting mother who is now only talking to the mommy figures in his life and has long had a tense and distant relationship with his father, with whom he is practically no longer speaking. By everything that dobson and his ilk have told us, the kingpin retard should have grown up to be a big ole fag. Boys who are too close to their mothers become homos. Boys who have distant fathers become queer. Boys who aren't steered into macho sports become a little light in the loafers. So why shouldn't we believe that dear leader isn't some faggy-ass closet case just like so many other republican tools?

Because the idiots that promote that shit are idiots and assholes and my dad could have no more turned me into some paragon of heterosexuality by taking me hunting and forcing me to sign up for the football team than bush could have been made gay by his creepy dad favoring the fat asshole brother currently fucking up florida or by babs being delighted to have him as her little imperious, entitled, smart-ass clone sans pearls. You breeders can keep the fucker.

I don't have words for this.

This is one woman's story of sorting through the wreckage of her father and aunt's home with her family and finding their bodies left there despite the assurance that the home had been searched.

Robert Lindsay: The Horror, the Horror: A Katrina Tale

I hope her experience is unique; I am fairly certain it isn't.

Huh?

It's no secret I am big country music fan. So I figure I could read the article the Times had today about a songwriter who is up for an award:

He Writes the Songs, Out of the Spotlight - New York Times

Ummmm, and then I remember why I generally skip over their music reviews:

"The country music industry is really two industries, divided between the music publishing companies that sell songs and the record companies that sell singers to the public. It was a music publishing company, Acuff-Rose, that helped establish Nashville as the capital of country music. And while rock fans expect their singers to be songwriters, too, country fans have grown comfortable with the division of labor; some of the most respected country singers, like George Strait, pride themselves on being interpreters, not composers. "

Yeah, in country music, one person writes the songs, someone else does the singing unlike rock with its singer-songwriters. Uh, what? So yeah Nashville has profession songwriters who write songs for other people; since when did rock bands not have songwriters? Yeah, the back street boys and ashlee simpson write all their own music. What, you don't concider them very rock, more pop? Well, I feel the same way about much of the music they are talking about coming out of Nashvegas. It is just country pop, and you have a bunch of pretty singing faces getting pegged to sell the songs just like you have with so many friggin' rock/whatever bands. If they sing well and I like them as a performer, I really don't care, but you always have to have a special place for singer/songwriters. I just find it kind of stupid to set this out in an article like rock is all about the singer/songwriters and country is about putting words in pretty hillbillies' mouths to make a buck. How cute, they take pride in singing well, even if they can't write too. How fucking patronizing can you get? I don't mean to dis any artist out there who mostly sing songs written by other people, but this wholesale sort of stereotyping is annoying. Especially since so many country stars do also write, either for themselves or for other folks. And more than a few rock stars don't.

One more dumb journalist grasping at an angle and making his argument patronizing and pointless. The unsung stars behind the hits: is there a story to be found there? Sure, but make it interesting instead of moronic and simplistic and write about the story there instead of stretching your current event over a lame stereotype.

"I'd like to see you try it!"

What are you doing Sunday night?

New York Gypsy Festival

If you know me very well, you know I'm a huge Gogol Bordello fan. Gogol Bordello is easily the best live band in the city. Before I had even gotten to New York, my brother was already preaching their gospel to me in preparation. They have been central to my NYC experience and one more chance to see them is welcome. We used to go dance to frontman Eugene Hutz's djing every friday night, first at the Ukrainian National Center and then at Luxx (r.i.p.). I haven't been a devoted acolyte to the party at Bulgarian Bar as it is just slightly further out of my normal path and on Thursday night, but still sneak down there from time to time to get a little fix.

I love going to see live music and am a person who likes to move my feet when I do, but I get frustrated by the crowds watching raucus music and standing there like stumps and when the crowd dampens the dancey vibe, its hard to keep your boogie going, even if the band is doing there part. Gogol Bordello doesn't have this problem. Their loyal fan base likes to stompy-dance and ain't shy about it. First note of the first song and the whole room is in motion. You had better wear strong shoes and be ready for a workout.

Gogol Bordello is at the top of a short list of bands/performers that I will go out of my way to see anytime they play in the city:

Gogol Bordello
Hidden Cameras
Old Crow Medicine Show
Kiki & Herb

They play; I go. Any venue; almost any price. The Scissor Sisters used to be on this list, but now that they have gotten big, they tend to either be out of my price range or sell out before I get around to buying a ticket. The last show of theirs I saw was at Bowery Ballroom just as they were breaking through and if their performances are to be temporarily relegated to memory, that was a good show to be remembered by til I can see them live again.

There are many other musicians who I would go see despite almost any hurdle, but who don't come often and/or are generally out of my price range to justify keeping them on a list: Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Raul Malo, the Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earl, Robert Earl Keen Jr., Yakuza Dance Mob, Iron & Wine, etc.

Anyway, we were gonna have another hootenanny Sunday as part of a little baby step towards perhaps me and the boys starting our own little band, but I think perhaps the evening would be better spent being inspired than in practice. I'll see you at the Gypsy Music Festival at the Roxy Sunday night. I'll be the one with the curly moustache, right down front, dancing like a maniac. I wish my bro were still in town to fight the crowds with me, but hey, I can dance for both of us since he is busy in the down South representing at backwoods Sunday-night bootlegger live blues dance romps.

Don't you fucking dare...

Via Pandagon and Pam's House Blend I ended up reading this lovely little quote:

"'The whole point of the CD is to develop a heart for the homosexual,' said Bennett. 'While it is critical for churches to resist the effort to normalize homosexuality in our society, it is equally important for the church to reach out to these hurting, broken people.'"

Some more schmucks are selling their dignity for dollars, starting a radio show about ex-gay crap and have developed more products to sell to religious bigots who want to fix the people in their family/congregation/neighborhood who don't fit their butch/fem charicature of ideal humanity and drive more kids to suicide and self immolation. I won't swallow a drop of your stupid 'be nice about it and they will listen to you' bile and don't you dare say this is about churches reaching "out to these hurt broken people." I'm not interested in you being nice or arguing the Bible with you. I don't doubt for a second that you are being sincere in what you are doing (actually, I do, but I'll extend the benefit of the doubt for the time being) and I know exactly what kind of fucked up contortions a politically christian mindset will go through to try to grab hold of those first feelings of finally being mainstream and less of an anathema to the general populace and I know how the status quo enforcers will support and encourage your capitulation to their world view. I can imagine a gay person who can't get past the idea that being gay is nothing more than having sex with men might never develop anything more than a sexualized understanding of their homosexuality and see promiscuity as analogous to homosexuality rather than a part of how they themselves are approaching it and thus find retreat into a woman's arms something of a welcome escape. You may love your wife and you are married now and that is all good and well and I wouldn't begrudge you your hard won 'normalcy', but don't you fucking dare step out and end a sentence in the first half of which you iterate the importance of churches trying to make life worse, more difficult and more marginal for gay people with patronizingly calling us "hurt, broken people."

Yeah, asshole, there are a lot of hurt broken people out there and a lot of hurt, broken gay people, but do you ever stop and think about why gay folks tend to be more likely to commit suicide? Assholes like you trying to reinforce the idea that their innate feelings are evil and deranged and abbhorrant. You aren't going to fuck with those of us who made it out on the otherside of dealing with our demons and have made peace with the the-way-it-is-supposed-to-be shit we were force fed to internalize, but your crap hurts the folks who haven't made it and you are trying to make sure they don't. Because you didn't.

One more holy asshole out to make a buck off of other folks pain. Make sure you are getting a decent cut of the profit, because you better believe they are using your ex gay ass to make a dollar. Bigotry sells, and nothing makes it go down smoother than some turncoat willing to sell the idea that it is a noble cause. you deciding you want to spend your life with a woman and have a family, fine. You marketing that desicion as a device for mass marketing bigotry, go fuck yourself.