It hurts when a friend dies

Bless his heart. The darkness caught up and overwhelmed him. In my own experience, genius often has a dark shadow. I am saddened, almost beyond words. I seldom grieve for celebrities, but Williams was a regular fixture in my life for the past 30 years. Oh, not as a friend, but as someone I would see when out jogging, dining in a favorite restaurant, or just participating in civic life in San Francisco. I have probably seen everything he's ever done, either intentionally or simply because of his iconic status in television and movie humor. He was a part of my consciousness. I grieve as though I've lost a good friend.  Indeed, I have.


This is my favorite epitaph from the shock waves his death created on Facebook:

Dry Drunk

Following a speech in San Francisco, Rick Perry compared being Gay to being an alcoholic.  I do not doubt the sincerity of his beliefs, after all, he did stop drinking.  And he did so without help.  We call that a dry drunk. I wonder if that was his own experience with same-sex attraction rumored some years pas.

Ranting about Stupidity

Someone I like a lot put something on his FB page this morning that I thought was stupid -- a word that has a lot of power in my life experience and is therefore used sparingly.  For the record, I say "Fuck" more often than I say "Stupid."  It was a cartoon that suggested the massacre of about 150 Lakota at Wounded Knee was because the Sioux people were forced to give up their guns.  Yeah, right, that was the reason.  It had nothing to do with racism, revenge, Manifest Destiny, and overFUCKINGwhelming population advantage which gave the Whites the advantage similar to the Germans vs. Jews in the 1930s than any other comparison I can come up with.


But to the issue at hand, I seldom have anything to say about the idea of guns.  Almost everyone to whom I'm related has a personal firearm as well as several rifles used for the several types of hunting they do.  I'm totally cool with that.  I do not feel unsafe when I'm around them.  The guns I feel unsafe around are the millions of easily and cheaply obtained weapons of various power that proliferate our national landscape.


When friends visit me here in Oakland, California, I advise them to consider everyone they encounter eight years or older to be armed.  And anyone carrying a handgun thinks it bestows upon himself a magical cloak of power.  This results in the death of hundreds and thousands of young men and women of color in every city in the United States.  I have yet to hear anyone in the Pro-Life camp express concern for this ongoing tragedy, but I digress.


I am disturbed when I read a news story about a 15-year-old high school student taking an AK-15 (whatever that is, but it sounds bad) into his high school and killing someone and then being killed. Where does a 15-year-old get access to any kind of gun?


I am not a part of any sort of liberal movement to ban guns.  I get it, your guns are more important to you than peace and quiet.  I have no interest in participating in an exercise of frustration.  Keep your fucking guns.  Keep them cheap and plentiful so that they trickle down to eight year olds riding the bus, or killing one of their friends showing it off.  Keep them cheap and easily available so any 15-year-old can get one.


We are who we are and like Pogo said many, many years ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Songs Inspired by Tennessee Williams

This was shared by someone on Facebook this morning, and all I wanted to do was to share it with someone who doesn't do Facebook.  Let's see if this works.

Columbus Day Revisited

Tomorrow is a legal holiday for one of history's jokes. Christopher Columbus died disbelieving that he had stumbled upon a gigantic continent unknown to Europeans. Perhaps it is for that reason neither of the new continents is named for him. More likely they aren't named for him because his contemporaries knew him to be the lucky fool that he was. This loser gets a holiday because Franklin Roosevelt was courting the Italian vote in the East.

Indigenous Americans do not have a holiday dedicated to them. There is no national observance for the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who died from exposure to new diseases. There is no national holiday for the thousands of men, women and children who were seized and sold as slaves. There is no national holiday for any of the several massacres of men, women and children who stood in the way of America's sense of manifest destiny.

Don't get me wrong. I love holidays. Everyone should have one or two. I'm glad the Italians consider this one theirs, it's just not a day of joy for everyone. October 12 is a day with heavy kharmic implications to indigenous peoples of the Americas. On the other hand, October 10, thanks to the American proclivity to celebrate all holidays on the most convenient week-end, is just another day where a lot of folks don't have to work, and I'm all for that.

I'm Back

Have you missed me?  I've missed you.  My fling with Facebook is coming to a end.  I type too fast not to have some way of editing misplaced and/or misspelled words.

Also, I want to rant and rave about politics more.  I have too many family and friends on Facebook to subject them to constant rants about politics. 

There were some advantages to using Facebook, and that's why I'm not quitting it altogether.  Also, when I do have something to say, I can link to it and those who really want to hear my opinion can come over on their own. 

So, let's get this show on the road.

Boycotting Target and Best Buy


I'm not big on boycotts. In my opinion, they seldom work on a national or international level any longer. Because Minnesota has some very strict laws about financial disclosure in political campaigns, we know that the CEO of Target, Gregg Steinhafel, donated $150,000 to a pro-business Minnesota political action committee which in turn has given financial support to GOP candidate for Minnesota governor, Tom Emmer. Pretty tenuous connection so far, eh? Gregg even went so far as to write a letter to the employees of Target Stores stating that Target's support for its employees who are Gay and Lesbian is "unwavering." That's nice to hear. Even better to hear is that Target doesn't just "talk the talk," but also "walks the walk."

"In the context of this contribution, some of you have raised questions regarding our commitment to diversity, and more specifically, the GLBT community. Let me be very clear, Target’s support of the GLBT community is unwavering, and inclusiveness remains a core value of our company. Some current examples of that support include:

• Domestic Partner Benefits

• Sponsorship of Twin Cities Pride

• Sponsorship of Minnesota AIDS Walk

In addition, Target’s rating of 100% on the 2009 and 2010 Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index further demonstrates the reputation our company has earned.
"


Why then is there so much anger at Target in the Gay and Lesbian community at one of our corporate success stories? A closer examination of Tom Emmer is necessary to understand why Gays and Lesbians might feel betrayed by Gregg's indifference to Gay Rights.  Emmer isn't just against same-sex marriage, he is passionately obsessed by it.   Emmer is a male Minnesota version of Sarah Palin.  There's no subject which he cannot reduce to a simplistic jingo.  Emmer has "positions are jarringly reactionary for a state where even the right prides itself on some degree of progressiveness."  He thinks the U.S.Constitution guarantees you the right to smoke tobacco, but not the right to control your own body, as in abortion.  No surprise there, eh?

So again, why should Gays and Lesbians be bothered by Gregg Steinhafel's contribution to the PAC Minnesota Forward which in turn supports Tom Emmer?  Since this contribution came to light, it's also been disclosed that Gregg and his wife both gave the maximum personal donation to Emmer's campaign, and also maxed out contributions to Michele Bachman, ol' miss crazy eyes.

While I have  no intention of boycotting Target, I don't think I'll go shopping there anytime in the near future.  Same with Best Buy.  Both corporations are exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech according to the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by the Roberts' Court, a concept our founding fathers would probably find ludicrous, and I'm all for free speech.  I am not, however, inclined to give my money to corporations which support nativist Do-Nothings.  It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

As for explaining his donation as being simply "pro-business," I'd like to remind Gregg that "Mussolini may have done many brutal and tyrannical things; he may have destroyed human freedom in Italy; he may have murdered and tortured citizens whose only crime was to oppose Mussolini; but 'one had to admit' one thing about the Dictator: he 'made the trains run on time.'”  (Ashley Montague and Edward Darling writing tongue in cheek in The Ignorance of Certainty, 1970)

The Problem with Immigration Laws

All of the branches of my family were in the Americas before there was a United States of America.  I'm not bragging, I'm just explaining our limited experience with immigration laws.  Oh, there was one exception:  my mother's people crossed into Texas illegally as early as 1807.  They didn't speak Spanish, weren't Catholic, and didn't have permission from the Spanish government of Texas, or from its successor, the Republic of Mexico.  They ended up rebelling against the lawful government and oppressing the Spanish speaking earlier inhabitants.  If turn about is fair play, no wonder my cousins in Texas and Louisiana are worried about the influx of Mexicans coming into the country.

I Used to Be a Writer

But that was then and this is now.  Writers write.  I'm having difficulty stringing half a dozen words together, much less sentences, and god forbid, paragraphs.  Hopefully, it's just a faze I'm going through.  Time will tell.

Meahwhile, I'll go and read some more.

The Threat of Communism

The Republican Party of 2009 reminds of me of the Republican Party of 1954.  Here's a little clip someone put together that brings the point home.

L'Shana Tova

May we all live in peace and have health insurance.

The March on Washington, 9/12/09

Je me souviens Katrina

NUDE PICTURES OF BRAD PITT!

(That's called blog whoring. I don't have any pictures of Brad Pitt. Despite his rather beautiful body, I don't have any interest in pictures of Brad Pitt. I do, however, think that he is a very interesting man.)

Take his taste in women, for example. What's the name of his first wife, Jennifer Something-or-Another? That's not fair. I know who she is. She's all right. She just happened to be caught unawares when her man found another woman more stimulating. That's tough. Who among us haven't been caught there? Okay, so maybe it doesn't happen to everyone.

But back to Brad Pitt. You know what I find depressing? Brad Pitt is now playing parts I always imagined were filled by older, mature men. Men I looked up to when I was growing up. Fuck! I'm a hundred years older than Brad Pitt. He will always be the hitchhiker in Thelma and Louise. You have to appreciate his marketing of himself. First, he casts himself in that reverse aging movie which his people and Hollywood rewrote after appropriating the title of that story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh shit, you know the one. Something... Something ... Something... Oh yeah, now I remember: Something something or another an Benjamin Buttons. It's about someone who was born old and grew younger while everyone else grew older. I know I read that story about forty years ago, and I have no conscious memory of it, but I know that the movie subsequently made, only used the concept as they imagined it from the title of the story. Sort of like reading a book by its cover. I can't begin to tell you howmany times I made book reports in high school based on that idea. Oh sure, I read a lot of books in high school, hundreds if not thousands. Even so, I did not read every book for which I got credit. What can I say? I come from three hundred years (that we know of) of outlaws and con artists. It's in my blog, er, I mean, my blood.


I'm not sure where I'm going here, but what must we always be going somewheres? My point is, Brad Pitt should not be playing older, "mature" men. WTF does that make me? Dirt?

Okay, this is an aside: Brad Pitt impresses the hell out of me. I don't know him from shit, but he seems to be using his fame and celebrity to focus attention on areas that would otherwise never get any light. Take post-Katrina New Orleans. A lot of people "talk the talk," but not nearly as many "walk the walk." Thank you, Mr. Pitt.

I haven't written a fan letter since I was twelve, but bear witness, world, this is a fan letter to a remarkable young man who has done much to make the world a better place. Right on! Brother.

Why I interrupted Bill Clinton's speech at Netroots Nation

I agree with Lane's reasoning 100%, and I don't think his question was unreasonable. What is unreasonable is the Democrat elite, Bill Clinton included, thinking that they do not owe us explanations for their acts. Bill Clinton is the worst offender in this category, and has been ever since his presidency. He did not engage the GLBT community in the discussion of his many options as President. He made decisions and demanded that we acquiesce and support him because, well you know, the other side is worse. It's called "betrayal" because it's done by someone you trusted. I have not cared for Bill Clinton since the March on Washington in 1993. He treated us like we were a strange disease and avoided us. Fast forward to 2009: nothing's changed, really. Bill Clinton thinks we should be thankful for his magnitude. Well, I'm not. Now here's my personal peave about DADT: the homophobes in the military never stopped asking. The witch hunts continued. No one in Clinton's administration ever tried to make them keep their part of the bargain. Ask anyone of the ten thousand or so Gays and Lesbians who were discharged since DADT if they did anything to call attention to themselves.



Bill Clinton owes the GLBT community a sincere apology for fucking us over when he was President.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Is John Bolton Really That Big an Asshole,
or does he just play one on TV?

Inquiring minds want to know. In a column for the Washington Post, he criticizes former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and by implication, President Barack Obama for their efforts which led to the successful return of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for Al Gore's San Francisco-based Current TV who were taken prisoner by North Korean authorities last year. My vote is that he is a total asshole in his real life as well.

This song is dedicated to the phoniest hypocrit in southwest Louisiana, Beverly J.


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Somebody call George Will

This picture of the Beaufort Sea almost free of ice was kept secret by the Bush regime. I'm sure they thought it might send the wrong message to America's enemies.

Ow! The Stupid, it Hurts

"Of course Canada has longer life expectancy than the U.S. -- we have 10 times more people." - Bill O'Reilly, in response to a caller commenting on the longer life expectancy of Canadians to Americans. Bill O'Reilly, taking stupid to an entirely new level.

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=3060320&ref=fpblg

Music I'm Listening To

I hope Amy Winehouse doesn't fly so close to the sun that she burns out. I'm spending the evening alone, on purpose, listening to Amy Winehouse's album, Frank. I find it -- and her -- incredible. Take a few moments and listen to this incredible woman sing the blues. She's a wordsmith, too, so as much as you can, pay attention to the words. If you can't understand them, do a Google search and then follow along. Here's a link to her singing Come Fuck Me Pumps. Amy Winehouse doesn't do elevator or background music. You either listen to her or you don't hear her. Plain and simple.