personal catapult: our homemade trebuchet

Catapult built with brothers and cousins at the family reunion.

otter skull.

swedish hobo candle

While in Sweden earlier this year on a business trip, my father was taught a simple yet useful trick for turning an ordinary log into a sort of stove/lantern/torch. Turn the log up on end, saw several criss-crossing cuts lengthwise taking care not to cut all the way to the bottom, add a little diesel fuel to the center, light and enjoy! He calls them "Swedish candles" and was told they were developed years back by a Swedish hobo. Perfect for cooking your tin of beans on top of and huddling around during cold nights, but none of us came up with a good answer as to how a hobo might get his hands on a chainsaw to make one.

Above is a picture of one we made over the holidays as practice for the Burning Labyrinth.

burning labyrinth design 3

burning labyrinth design 2

burning labyrinth design 1

location, location, location...

Of all the places in my parents house, why is it that my bed is the universal choice of place to bed down for all the various cats we have had down through the years. And even if I close the door, they always find a way to get in. At least this year, Okra (my brother's cat) is a much better cuddler than Waleena (my sister's cat) ever was.

High on a mountain top: putting 'those' people in their place.

Do the police target stings at heterosexual couples in popular make-out spots? And if they did, would those arrested be subjected to having their names and photos displayed by the local news station?

Monte Sano park in Huntsville is a beautiful place from my memory of it. As a kid, I went there with my cousins when visiting them in Huntsville. There was a pretty cool playground, but I liked it mostly because there were cliffs and rocks to climb, geographical features missing from the landscape around my house. When we were teenagers, we would sneak off up the cliffs so they could smoke or make out with girlfriends. They would tell me scary stories of how it was dangerous to go there at night because satan worshipers gathered there, but we mostly laughed at these accounts. We were no longer spooked by the drug users that we had been warned frequented the park when we were kids, since at this point someone with us was usually smoking pot. It is always funny to find that you have become the bogey man you were so strenuously warned against.

Again, it seems that I'm the bogey man that haunts that park, though not the pot smoking teenagers. I never knew about the cruising areas, probably because the public spaces that gay men frequent for cruising are usually those at the edges where other people rarely go. Guys trying to find someone for casual sex usually don't go places that are filled with kids and families; they don't want to be seen by anyone who isn't looking for the same.

Honestly, who fucking cares if someone has sex in a corner of a park. The guys positioned themselves in a place so they could see the parking lot and avoid being seen by outsiders, and the police and tv station go to extreme lengths to voyeurize the activity and take it from the fringes of the community and force it into every home via the nightly news. Why is the activity of consenting adults so news worthy? Because the people involved are gay (different) and refuse to submit to the desires of the authorities. And why is it ok for the the police and the tv station to subject these people, consenting adults, to public humiliation and extra-legal punishment? Because gay people matter less under the law.

This is what the gay marriage battle is about. This is what ENDA is about. This is what the fight to allow gays in the military is about. The fight is about having or not having laws that say, "You don't matter as much because you are gay. The law will not protect you. We do not have to treat you like you are fully human."

These men were consensual adults, participating in a non-violent, victimless crime. That the police find it necessary to go out of their way to harass and target these men with stings is offensive enough in and of itself, but to bring in the local news crew and work to exact an extra-legal punishment is disgusting. Why bring in the news, why publish faces and names? To shame them. To go beyond the law and exact punishment above and beyond that called for under the law. They feel emboldened to do this because the limits of the law are not the limits of the public's jurisdiction over the queer amongst us. Those people don't matter as much to the law, and because of this, the law is not seen as the boundary around how gay people should be treated. The law is for the real people, the good citizens, not the faggots.

This is why it is ok for the local news station to act as a branch of enforcement, to act as police and judges in this case. Gay people shouldn't be able to get married because law shouldn't treat them as real people or full citizens. Gay people shouldn't be able to serve in the military because the law shouldn't treat them as real people or full citizens. Gay people shouldn't have the same protections in the workplace because the law shouldn't treat them as real people or full citizens. This is the message.

These are hot button issues for the right wings because they do not want to be bound by the law in how they respond to the gay community. They do not want to be limited by the law in how they exact punishment on these 'others', we the bogey men.

Towleroad's article on this is full of comments about how the men got what they deserved or how they shouldn't expect to be exempt from laws. I'll forget for a moment that personally I don't think that having sex in public should be illegal unless it is some kind of disturbance of the peace. My argument here isn't that these guys should expect special treatment under the law. Instead the fight is about equal protection under the law, and limiting the jurisdiction for punishment to the legal system. The frequent, targeted stings were specifically enacted because the targets were engaging in homosexual behavior. For the police to go by and issue tickets wasn't enough, because the law was not the limit to the enforcement the police and others in the community felt entitled to. This was not a situation of "Do the crime, do the time." This was, "Get in your place, boy (or in this case, 'faggot'), or someone might put you there." It was meant to be intimidating and it was meant to exact a punishment for more than just the crime. It was meant to remind the public that gay people should not expect their rights to be the same under the law.

We can't fight for the right to marry and then turn our back on the rights of everyone to be treated the same under the law. The ability of the police and media outlets to participate in intimidation and demonization like this emboldens our opponents to treat all gay people like we aren't full citizens and aren't deserving of full protection under the law. Get out of the best-little-boy-in-the-world trap: "If we just act good enough, show them how like them we can be, then they'll treat us like we are real people too!" Bullshit. Capitulating to and encouraging the belief that individuals should be subject to punishment (legal and otherwise) for not conforming to majority approved roles and that personal expression and identity should be subject to public control only emboldens these fucktards to further try to mistreat anyone who is different.

This sting isn't just about some old closet cases fucking in a park; it is about me and every other gay person in this country. This is about me because I want to be able to expect the same treatment under the law as everyone else, because I don't want to have to worry that my behavior is subject to extra scrutiny and extra-legal judgement and punishment because I am gay.

My state always knows how to make me proud!

I've been spinning my wheels and starting to write and then not publishing anything, but this will shake me back into commentary. My state always makes me so damn proud.

And honestly, this sounds like such sweeeet just desserts that I wouldn't mind some fucking idiot asswipe like troy king getting served, but I bet you a dollar that this all just gets swallowed up and quietly washed away. There is something about Alabama that let's controversy stay gossip and never acknowledges it as news. When something distasteful appears, it is like being in the middle of a field during a flood. You can scream bloody murder, but the background din of social chatter about nothing just slowly rises until whatever taboo subject is drowned like unwanted puppies. People know it happened, but afterwards you are just left with a sore throat from hollering and as this emergency chatter drains away everything sort of settles back where it started.

In Alabama, all public memory is secret. Everyone may know and remember whatever troubling detail, but never underestimate the power of a polite southerner to be unable to recall an uncomfortable detail. If it doesn't get you killed, the community will just hush damn near anything over. Blame someone, remove them, edit them from stories or vaguely recall their existence.

There is no Post or Daily News. There are a thousand reasons to hate either of those publications, but they also keep shit like this from dying unceremoniously. Like I predict this fellow will. It is either true and it will be whispered near and wide, but never officially published (please let me be wrong about this) and if he has reciprocal dirt he will quietly shift into some other lucrative position out of the search lights, or it isn't true and is some kind of political hit piece (remember that Alabama is where karl rove honed his skills), maybe retribution for not pulling off the Siegleman frame-up smoothly, and the rumors will do their damage and he will quietly be scooted into oblivion. Granted, it might be true and still be getting spread as some kind of retribution from his repub overlords, or just plain old pissed off enemies, but either way I'll be amazed and proud if even ONE newspaper in Alabama has the balls to run with this story openly. Maybe they already have, I've only just heard about this story and so haven't really started digging yet. Oh, but I will...

I hate the andy griffith show.

Sure it is a great show. Funny enough, silly characters, whatever. But my entire life it has come on at least twice a day at my parents house on the only channel that consistantly comes in clearly, and something about it's cheerful homey joviality makes my hair stand on end.

Maybe I could stand the hokey sweetness of the show if... no, never mind. I can't take it. I can't watch it.

Gerald Allen: the blood on his hands.

Once again I am proud to be from Alabama. The state I love comes up with new and more insane ways to aggressively defend the national and international perception of it being the most bigoted backwards-ass place on the planet. Thank you, representative gerald allen (tuscaloosa, 50 miles from my parents' home) for making sure that bigotry remains the number one association that people have when they hear the word "alabama".

a little on how he has done us so proud (from the Guardian)

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | 'We have to protect people'


>What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It's my fifth meeting with Mr Bush."

Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".<




By 'moral values' did you mean anything about caring for the poor, or helping the sick, or caring for the depressed and hurt among you? When you invoke moral values, are you invoking caring for your fellow man as you do for yourself? Does this mean calling for honesty and openness from our public officials and holding them accountable for how their policies affect our fellow man, at home and abroad?

No, when you say 'moral values' you mean 'bigotry'. Plain and simple, the 'moral values' vote was the bigot vote. You meant ostracizing and punishing the 'different' people. It is harder these days to get away with flat out, overt racism (although you already know how I feel about folks who like to say it isn't still a problem), so cultural bigotry is the new, acceptible racism (find Mason's rant in the archives on Abu Ghraib for more on this). Domestically, homos are the big easy target.

And when the representatives put us in their bullseye, so do others. Other alabamians decided to skip the book burnings and go straight on to burning the faggots:

Scotty Joe Weaver and Billy Jack Gaither

Billy Jack was killed around the time of Matthew Shepard, but he was older and less pretty, so the national media didn't really care when he was beaten to death and burned on a pile of kerosene soaked tires. Only the gay media really covered it at all and alabama turned a largely blind eye to what happened.

So it happened again. Scotty Joe was attacked and killed and burned as well. And yes these deaths happened before you got it in your fool mind that there should be no positive representations of homosexuals available to kids in alabama, and no you didn't commit these crimes, representative allen, but when you say there should be no positive representation of us available, you are painting a big bullseye on the head of every poor gay kid who stays stuck in what you are determined to keep a violent, bigoted backwater of a state. The blood of these men is on your hands and so will be the blood of the next. You are loading bullets in the guns that troubled homosexual adolescents will be blowing their own brains out with; you are pouring the kerosene on the pile of tires that will be used to burn the next victim.

Lynching niggers is out, so lets burn the faggots.

You can cry all you want that that isn't what you meant, but you be very sure of this: it is what you are doing.

And you better be very thankful of your relationship with Jesus, because he is the only one who might forgive you.

And yes, I do take this very personally. I got out in one piece, but it wasn't a given that I would and there were more than a few that I know that didn't. I am well educated and mobile and able to chose where I live and who I surround myself with, but that is not the option available to every (or even most) gay kid(s). The average gay person isn't like the representations on Will and Grace. Most gay people aren't wealthy and happy and educated. Plenty of us are, because we aren't given much of a choice (find a way out or die), but so many more are still hacking it out in hostile environments. Being able to get married isn't their biggest issue and whether or not the hot guy at the gym noticed them or which party they should go to are not their biggest dilemmas. Their lives just became a little more dangerous.