We made it! Hot Guy Friday!

Eion Bailey is one of those overlooked guys who're really hot in my estimation.

I love a variety of men, and one of my favorite things is a man with a hairy chest. I was very disappointed recently to see Mark Valley waxed into a stupor.

Studies have shown that productivity drops Friday morning by about 20%, and by yet another 20% on Friday afternoon. I fervently hope I am able to live up to the standards set by those rigorous studies today. I need to conserve my energy for moving all this shit someone brought in my apartment.

Having indulged our prurient interests first thing I hope we can all just sit down and take it easy today. The weather is shaping up nicely and I think I can get moved without perishing from the heat of the last few days.

I have to go ogle Eion some more. Have a great weekend.

Love

Those damn Catholics!

I wanted to post about this, but I didn't want to besmirch Hot Guy Friday so I have to do this now.

I found this on AP a little bit ago.-

-After years of speculation that Pope Benedict wears shoes by Prada, the Vatican's official newspaper denied such talk as "frivolous."


Esquire magazine last year named the 81-year-old pontiff "accessorizer of the year" for his red leather loafers that fashionistas had said were probably made by the Italian fashion house.

While the Vatican had never confirmed or denied if the shoes were Prada, continued chatter about the pope's dress sense led the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano to print a condemnation of media stories it said trivialized the head of the church.

Esquire's inclusion of the pope on its best-dressed men list was, it said, "of a frivolity that is very characteristic of an era that tends to trivialize and does not understand."

The article explained that the pope's shoes, like his range of flamboyant hats, are nothing to do with vanity but all to do with tradition. "The pope, in summary, does not wear Prada, but Christ," it said.

The article did not say who did make the shoes.

Benedict's choice of garments has often been striking. On recent drives through St. Peter's Square he shaded himself from the fierce June sun under a wide-rimmed bright red hat known as a "Saturn" after the planet with the rings.

Around Christmas 2005 he delighted pilgrims by appearing in a red velvet cap trimmed with white fur which, together with a scarlet cape, gave him the look of Santa Claus.

The Osservatore noted that both hats, far from being fashion items, are in fact traditional papal accessories that have been worn at various points in history by previous popes.-

I can't help but notice that those wily Catholics manage to make their point but stil omit a small detail, like WHO DOES MAKE THOSE SHOES YOU KIDFUCKERS!!! (thanks KG)

A sin of omission is no less a sin boys.

See, they never did get it. Rather they got it a little too well and were able to work it to their advantage.

Catholics, they don't say the darndest things.

"The Pope does not wear Prada, but Christ"....Christ!

Someone turned on the summer!

And they need to turn it off. It's a little early for 90 degree temps and high humidity, but we've got it. They say it'll stop tomorrow for a few days. I hope so, I don't want to move in this! Of course, last year it rained the entire move, and that was a lot of fun.

But! Tomorrow is Hot Guy Friday! And then it'll be go ride a horse Saturday. I swear it's been so long since I rode that I'm going if I can,and all that stuff can just sit where it is until I get back to move it into the new place.

It's unnerving when one discovers that someone one sort of admired, for lack of a better word, is not quite as great as you thought.



I read yesterday that Rob Thomas formerly of Matchbox 20, is a Scientologist. FUCK!!!

I hate it when I find out someone I like is crazy. And I find it out all too often.

Actually I've heard conflicting reports on this. It's said that he is one, and then it's said that he's offended at the very suggestion. Oh, I do hope it's the latter, cause I'd hate to think my cutie crooner was a space invader nutbag, working against his engrams (whatever the fuck those are) and all that shit.

See those people are the exact kind of people I think I was put on this earth to foil. They're bullies, and I hate bullies.

I think Scientology is a bunch of folks who fought and won a battle to get tax exempt status cause they're a "religion" (and ALL religion is bad), when all they really want is MO' MONEY! Hell, even Elvis saw through their shit, and he was bugshit crazy.

And as if we didn't have enough evidence that the world is being altered in unacceptable ways, the Belgians are taking over Anheuser-Busch, George W is buddying up to the North Koreans, and John McCain is meeting with Log Cabin-ers.


WTF???

That idea I had about the cabin the horse and the pottery wheel is sounding better and better. Of course, I'd have to subscribe to Direct tv out there in the sticks and we know how much I love them.

Today is the retirement party here for this woman I like working with. I'll miss her, she was fun. Crazy in that "born in Marin" kind of way that only those who've experienced it can understand, but sweet nonetheless. I gave her a pot for a going away present.

I'm giving my upstairs neighbor three days of recorded snoring for a going away present. It's the worst I can do short of inflicting bodily harm.


Love

I want THAT job

Apt Conc Recov Fee
$7.98
Facility Charge
$8.70
Facility Usage Fee
$3.00
Rntl Vehicle Schg
$6.00
State Tax
$10.52


I'm looking into attending a horsemanship clinic in Albuquerque in October and this is the schedule of fees over and above what it will cost me to rent a car for the weekend. Who exactly has the job of coming up with these fees? What does one major in to be considered? I majored in theatre, that should qualify me for such a useless and hated position, don't you think? I could live in New Mexico and make up fees to charge people. I could do this from home!

My telecommuting dreams come true.

BTW you may notice that "Schg" and "Conc" are not actually abbreviations.(what could they possibly mean?) I'd get to make up those too! Talk about a comprehensive position!!!

I'm mad at the Chinese!

Even though they have apparently put ethylene glycol in our toothpaste, lead paint on our children's toys, and dinnerware ingredients in our pet food, I could forgive all those things in the name of greed. But this time they've gone too far.

They fucked with my television!!!

Two years ago I gave myself an LCD tv for a birthday present. I love it. It's got a great picture, it sounds nice, it looks lovely on my wall...it makes screeching noises when the screen is predominantly white. I am not happy.

Especially since the warranty ran out in early June.

There is some reluctance to replace the part under the expired warranty, but we're going to fight about that until I win. I've so far spoken to two people. One suddenly didn't speak English when the going got tough, a ruse which I have encountered previously and never buy into. Then I managed to find this guy who seems to be genuinely intent on helping.

He does however want me to take the part out of the tv and send it to him for repair. This is not exactly what I had in mind, but it appears compromise will be involved here. I am not a fan of compromise, but if it gets my tv fixed so be it.

I discovered today that this woman I knew professionally in the 90's has been making her living...hmm, how do I say this without identifying her...well, she's been impersonating a dead country music star for many years. I know this because the community radio station I support locally is having a cd release party for her new album next month and I ran across the announcement. Sadly,(ahem) I will be out of the city that day.

I have to wonder if she ever married. She never had much luck with men when I knew her. They always turned out to be...well...gay. Except one, and even that isn't true as I distinctly remember sharing him with some woman after copious alcohol consumption one evening. So, no, she never had much luck with men. In fact I over heard a conversation once regarding my alcoholic paramour and someone said, "Is JD gay?" In response the other person said, "Well, he dated, PC." 'Nuf said I guess.

I'm riding a horse this weekend come hell or high water. Yesterday's meetings have spawned yet more meetings, and a domino effect on my weekly schedule here in educationland. So things will have to be prioritized. In other words, what am I NOT going to do this week? Dicey, since I'll only be in three days next week. I'm taking Monday for the move, and Friday is, of course, Independence Day.

Such a taxing existence.

I really do want to buy a horse, pack my pottery wheel and my cd's and take off for the mountains. Simplicity! It seems so...simple.

Alas.

Is it Hot Guy Friday yet???


Love

What could YOU possibly want..right now?

You know those days when your life seems like one endless meeting that has absolutely nothing to do with you?


Welcome to my Tuesday.

I seldom wish for Wednesday, but this week. Hell Yeah!

I need to meditate.

Love

Cool Mornings

(photo courtesy of Towleroad.com)

How fucking cool is this? Gay Cubanos planting a rainbow flag Iwo Gima Style! Felicitations de los Hermanos Cubano on their newfound freedoms. I hope it goes on forever and gets better and better. Let's just hope they keep the Catholics out of there or all this will be over. I'm thinking that a place with no Catholics and free gay people would be a place for me if I could get there. Way past time to lift the travel restrictions to Cuba. Let's see if we can believe in some change of that sort.

Friday I had a great morning. The weather was perfect, traffic was light, people behaved on the way to work, I was getting the added bonus of torturing my upstairs neighbor prior to moving this week, and then I arrived at work to find that everyone would be gone by Noon. I, of course, would be gone by 1. Nice!

Sunday I got up early to ride, Again the weather was perfect, on the way out to the trail there was a rainbow as I drove through a little rainstorm, then the sun shone through the clouds in this really prefect way which was very cool. While I was riding something caught my eye and I looked up to see a hang-glider above Mill Valley. Then I stopped to take a look at the Kansas River, since It's been up quite a bit recently and it's moving pretty fast. Just as I arrived at the lookout, a paddling of ducks passed headed downriver.

There were a few moving complications Friday. I called UHaul to cancel the truck since I've hired movers, they put me on old for over 15 minutes and never did answer, so I have to call them back today, Directv informed me that they were going to attempt to screw me over the move, soon. (read Saturdays post) The apartment complex informed me they fired the woman who rented me the apt, so I went over there to be sure that we were on the same page as far as my move was concerned, do not want surprises this weekend. (ever, for that matter, but especially this weekend) While I was dealing with the apartment complex on the phone, I attempted to change my address on the USPS website. For reasons passing understanding, they require that you provide them with a credit or bank card number for verification purposes. In true Post Office fashion, they informed me that according to their records I do not actually live at my old address so they weren't able to post my address change. They were however able to charge my bankcard two dollars, once for each attempt I made to submit the change. I politely requested that since I do not live there could they stop delivering those pesky bills to my old address, they didn't understand that one. I decided that Friday wasn't the day for moving stuff. I'll try again today. I did however get a quite a few boxes to the garage, and most things are packed. I still have about 20 trips to the garage with what's left.

I will be so glad when I get moved. And I am really thinking that I need to find an income stream that will allow me to telecommute. Cause I think the Americas and some of the Carribean needs me to see it. And possibly be there for extended periods. Sounds like a good idea to me. At least for a few years. I've been sitting still for far too long. Time to get some solid plans to move around.

Shit Piss Fuck Cunt Cocksucker Motherfucker and Tits! Take care George, we'll miss your voice of sanity in this world without reason.

Directv SUCKS!!!

I told the young guy I talked to Friday morning I was going to do this and i always keep my promises to young Mexican men.

Last year I reactivated my old account with Directv, I was going to live in the country where there is no cable and that wasn't going to work, so Direct tv it was.

It took me a week and FIVE people to explain that I no longer lived in Arkansas, where I'd last had an account and that I now needed service at my NEW address. I gave each of the five the new address. The installer had to give it to three more, and finally I had to have him repeat it after me to get it right. It seemed that they couldn't get my service to turn on cause they were still looking for me at the Arkansas address...morons.

It took five more phone calls to get the account address updated.

Through circumstance I had to move into the city a few months later. I called to have the service changed to the new address. It took a week.

That was last June. In August I decided to upgrade to HD. I logged onto the website and requested a box for that purpose. It arrived and didn't work so I called the customer service ctr. The guy there finally figured out that I didnt' have the right dish to get HD and when he told me it would be six weeks I told him I'd rather just stay with the service I had. So I returned the box and thought that would be that. Oh ho ho, how naive I can be.

I called yesterday to cancel my service as of the 30th since I'm moving and won't have access to th southern sky, and direct tv is stupidly expensive. this wold be 12 months which fulfills my contract with them.

I was informed that since I had signed up for HD service in August the clock had started over on my contract and I had renewed for 24 months. So I would be required to pay out he first year, at almost $200 to get out of this contract.

I, of course, don't and never did have HD service. This does not matter to the assholes at Directv. So now there'll be a fight.

So when you see those commercials about how Directv is first in customer satisfaction. They're BULLSHIT. Directv hires kids in Las Cruces for 7.50 an hour to take these calls and they, of course, get what they pay for, as do we. Those kids could care less and I don't blame them.

Unfortunately for me, this guy yesterday sounded just like Jay Hernandez on the phone, and since, in my head I was talking to Jay Hernandez, there just wasn't much of a fight.

So, now I get to fight with them to see if I can make it stop. By the way, they still have the wrong zip code listed on my account.

But do NOT believe those commercials.

DIRECTV SUCKS!

Hot Guy Friday!!!

This week we're dipping into the archives and demonstrating that we were once a progressive and inclusive people.

Actor Michael Ontkean shared what I believe to be the first onscreen man-on-man kiss with Harry Hamlin in 1982. In fact I think we'll just feature both of them today. They're a lovely couple, ain't they?








Happy Pride month!

Have a great weekend. It's a lovely day and I intend to get "sick" asap so I can get in a good ride this afternoon. (cough, cough, hack)

Oh and Happy Summer Solstice, dance around a cauldron if your so inclined.

Love

I feel clueless

I found this on Towleroad.com just this morning:

"Talk Radio Network's Michael Savage has unleashed some particularly disgusting anti-gay nonsense on his show this week.

"I had to explain to my young son why these two men were holding hands the other day," said one caller on the June 16th broadcast of anti-gay radio show host Michael Savage's radio show.

Savage responded:

"You've got to explain to the children ... why God told people this was wrong. You have to explain this to them in this time of mental rape that's going on. The children's minds are being raped by the homosexual mafia, that's my position. They're raping our children's minds." -

There's a homosexual mafia?

Why don't I know this?

How cool would that be? A 'mo Mafia. I don't know about raping children's minds, mine sure was raped pretty good when I was little on this very subject.

It sounds to me like the dying cries of bigots who know in their hearts they can't win by spewing hate all over the place.

Let's hope they know.

My love letter to Barry

Senator Obama:

I'm not voting this election and I am writing to tell you why. You say that marriage is for one man one woman. Why? Where do you get off with all this "Change we can Believe in" crap and then go out and spout the same old shit everyone else does.

Now, you'll probably be President, unless you do something completely stupid and make your candidacy self-destruct. Or unless the Republicans march out enough bigots who can't stand the thought of a genetically African-American man in the White House and they make John McCain President. Then of course I'll be really pissed at you. But you'll likely end up President of the United States.

I should say I'm not a huge marriage proponent, I frankly could care less from a personal standpoint whether I am able to get married or not. I believe we should celebrate the difference and not homogenize ourselves to be like you heterosexual asses anyway, but that's just me.

So, know that I am not voting for your manipulating self, Senator. Because just like many many before you, you've chosen to use me, lie to me to get my vote, and then throw me under the bus just to get what you were after in the first place.

So Fuck You Senator, get the Presidency without my help.

Order of the week

Congratulations to all those who got married in California this week. Seriously, I think it's great. I'm not a huge marriage proponent, but it's here and I'm glad we've made yet another step in the right direction.

My feeling is that love doesn't need validation from outsiders. That the single most important thing in a relationship is loyalty. That though it is said that love is blind it really isn't, it just develops selective vision. That staying, especially when it's tough to do, is something you're going to do whether there's a piece of paper or not.

I'm managing to get nothing done though I'm still behind from taking the extra day this weekend. It's a fine art.

I brought everything I need to ride this afternoon at lunch and then realized that I have an appt and can't ride at all until at least this evening, and that's a maybe, it's supposed to rain. I swear I live in the tropics, and to quote Bette Midler in "Jinxed" "I hate the fuckin' tropics!" Maybe tomorrow.

Love

Reality Orientation

Taking a day off is great while the day is actually happening. I got a lot of things done including quite a bit of packing. I rode 35 miles and renewed the car registration. Which I COULD have done online, had I been able to remember where I put the form. It's done now at any rate. The weather yesterday was glorious and I simply could not stop riding once I started. The packing is going famously.

Looking at new Cities to live in. And new jobs to be employed at. Still undecided. Maybe I need two. That would be fun. Work between two places and two different jobs. I think I might like that. Well the twins (I'm a gemini) would certainly be endlessly entertained and less likely to cause me trouble.

Unfortunately, I came back to a pile of stuff that not only constitutes a busy Tuesday, but what wold have been a busy Monday as well. It's catch up day I guess.

Oh I found this while reading headlines this morning and I laughed out loud. You'll know why if you waste your money and go see "The Happening" Dear God what a POS.

"Mark Wahlberg disses Clooney’s ‘Ocean’s’ films"

THAT takes true grit.

The Ocean films were no particular height of the art, but if you're gonna diss somebody, at least wipe your shoes from the last film you made before you do it.

This from the guy who felt compelled to tell the world that he passed on Brokeback Mountain (thank god) because the whole spitting in the hand thing wasn't for him.

I can respect that Marky, but what exactly is for you? Four Brothers,(or should I say Oh Brother!) The Shooter, The Planet of the Apes, The Truth about Charlie, The Italian (hand) Job? Let's face it, Boogie Nights, your only worthwhile movie so far, owed far less of it's success to you than Julianne Moore, John Reilly, William Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, Thomas Jane, Don Cheadle, and Burt Reynolds. Were you even IN that movie?

So, move out of that glass house Marky and then start dissing other peoples bad movies. Cause I do NOT value your opinion based on your body of work so far.

Oh! catch up day...right.

Love

It seems LIke Hot Guy Friday was a long time coming.

So without much adieu here's Christian Bale.






Finally they figured out what to do with Batman.

I want to lick that spot on his neck while listening to his speech impediment.

Or maybe it's his speech impediment that makes me want to lick his neck, I can't tell which.

Last night I felt pretty good after sleeping off all the allergy meds and so I decided I needed to grab the bike and head out.

I kept finding myself going, "I can go ten minutes more." Of course, this was thinking that the approaching storm would hold off on its arrival until I got back to the car.

At 12 miles out I decided I'd tempted fate long enough and turned back. Things were going swimmingly until the tornado sirens began to wail...and the lightning began to strike...and I still had three miles to go.

Normally these things wouldn't bother me, but last night the storm actually decided to try to produce a tornado, and there I was, on a bicycle, racing for the car, with a green wall cloud approaching over my left shoulder.

I made it to the car before the rain, the tornado fizzled out and I rode too fast too late in the day so going to sleep was, shall we say, a bitch.

I did however feel a lot like---



But I've lived to see another Hot Guy Friday so Batman it is.

I can't wait for The Dark Knight!

That's drive-in fodder if ever I saw it.

Love

Water Water everywhere!

...and plenty to drink. It's raining...AGAIN!!! I seldom think about the fact that I live at the top of a hill. But right now I see it as a lucky thing. There is a creek at the bottom of said hill (turkey, for those of you in the know) and it's at the edges of its banks. I'm waiting for it to start spilling into the street any minute.

Unfortunately, all this rain is making mold grow like crazy. And my body does not like mold. So after I managed to drag myself through the morning yesterday I went to the pharmacy and stocked up on anything that relieves allergies and went home and took some of all of it. This, of course, resulted in an inability to not only move but to stay awake. Benadryl is the shit when it comes to allergy relief, it's that lack of consciousness part that I hate. Even my upstairs neighbor (may he be tortured to death) couldn't wake me up yesterday afternoon, and God knows he tried.

So today, though I'm a little less allergic all that medication has made me nauseous, so I'm ducking out of here at the first opportunity again today.

But tomorrow! Tomorrow is Hot Guy Friday!!!! That always cheers me for some reason. I'm looking for this weeks object er subject. We'll see. The fog has lifted a little, but until we reach the drier part of summer I may not be much good to anyone.

Love

In the midst

I think of these times we live in as troubled. There are people quietly going about the business of trying to make my life considerably more difficult because of who I love and their moral and or religious perceptions of it.

There are people quietly suffering because their government won't allow any help to reach them after a devastating natural disaster.

There are people quietly trying to get from day to day because others are motivated by greed and are literally taking the food out of their mouths by hiking the price of the fuel necessary to run our society. Making those who barely get by that much more separated by class.


Then I run across an article like this one that I found on Salon.com this morning:

My Paulina, my country
During the making of a film about my exile from Chile, I finally met the anonymous woman who saved my life during Pinochet's murderous reign.
By Ariel Dorfman

Peter Raymont

Ariel Dorfman in Plaza Italia, Santiago, Chile.

June 11, 2008 |

It was the end of September 1973 and the city was Santiago de Chile and I was running for my life.
Waiting to go into an exile from which I couldn't be sure I would ever return.
That's when I met that woman.

She drove up to the chalet where I had been hiding, one of the many houses where I had sought sanctuary after the coup that had toppled the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. I had never met her before and did not know her name. Only that she was part of a vast, clandestine network of men and women dedicated to saving the lives of Allendistas, only that she had found somebody willing to secretly give me refuge, only that if we were caught we would both be killed.

As we crossed the city infected with soldiers and guns and fear, I can remember, in the midst of the wild dread, a bizarre thought flashing into my mind: Hey, this would make a great flick. I couldn't help myself. I had always been a child of the movies, used to filtering my experiences through the celluloid screen of life -- humming a soundtrack even in the most perilous, the most intimate, moments. But in this case a more prudent voice inside added: A great flick, sure, if you survive to tell the tale, that is.

I did survive and I did tell the tale and now, almost 35 years later, a film has been made ["A Promise to the Dead"] recounting the story of those days and how it led to a life of indefinite wandering. At the end of 2006, the great Canadian filmmaker Peter Raymont followed me back to Chile to revisit the joys of the Allende revolution and the murderous aftermath of Augusto Pinochet's military takeover, and one of the rewards of that journey into the past was that I finally got to track down and thank the woman who had saved my life.

I had often thought of her during the 17 years of exile, and when a precarious, still endangered democracy was restored in 1990, I paid homage to her by making Paulina, the protagonist of "Death and the Maiden," someone who had salvaged victims from the flood after a coup d'état in a country similar to Chile. And I could only hope that, unlike Paulina, my anonymous rescuer had been saved from the fate of arrest, torture or exile.

But no, she was safe and she was sane -- and, as she drove me down the same avenues from long ago, retracing our itinerary, I learned her real name and the fascinating story of her life.

And yet, that story, that name, that woman, are not in the documentary.
True, the streets of a now democratic Santiago were no longer filled with soldiers, but the old fear still malingered in the air, and still continues to contaminate far too many lives. My "Paulina" did not want to be filmed, she said, because right-wing members of her family -- one of her sons, one of her daughters -- haven't the slightest inkling of her secret heroism, how she risked everything to save people like me. If her identity surfaced on a screen, she added, there would be drastic consequences to pay.

This was not how I had pictured our glorious reunion. Somewhat naively, I had anticipated that, just as she had offered me redemption from death, now the documentary crew trailing me around Chile would redeem her from an underserved oblivion.

But if the camera inhibited her advent into our film, that same camera facilitated, on the other hand, a series of other encounters that I would never have had if there had been no one present to register them -- no director persistently demanding that I face some of the pain in the forbidden zones of my past which I had until then been reluctant to acknowledge.

Unfinished business I had kept putting off.

The last time I had seen Salvador Allende alive he had been on a balcony at the Presidential Palace waving to a crowd of a million marching enthusiasts -- so enthusiastic, in fact, that my friends and I had passed by a second time, as if to say goodbye. And now the making of the film allowed me to stand at that same balcony, looking down onto an empty plaza, and measure what it meant that Allende was a mound of ashes and all those men and women were no longer down there defying injustice.
I had written at length about the invasion of our private lives, and the violation of our bodies, during the dictatorship. But nothing prepared me for the basement I stumbled upon: Where Pinochet's Gestapo had spied on Chileans, listening in on their conversations and leaving behind a warp of twisted, tangled wires arrayed in a multitude of bright colors that made them all the more perverse. An experience that sickens me right now, as I remember it, returning me to the nights when we were on the verge of extinction, when we did not yet allow ourselves to recognize what this sort of repression does to your soul, to your land.

The film also forced me to confront more personal demons. Rodrigo, my son and frequent collaborator on film projects and associate producer of this documentary, insisted that one of my obligations was to journey to the Buenos Aires of my birth and find the grave of my favorite grandmother, whose funeral I had been unable to attend when she had died in 1976. The reason then had been that it was too perilous to travel to an Argentina ruled by the military, intoxicated with roaming death squads. But why, during many later returns to Buenos Aires, had I put off paying my respects to the woman who had nourished me as a child and comforted me as an adolescent? When you are gripped by so much loss that's how you survive: by postponing every possible sorrow.

That deferral of grief comes, however, with a price. When Rodrigo and I visited the cemetery where my Baba Pizzi had been laid to rest, we discovered to our consternation that her tomb had not been paid for in decades and hands that were not ours had therefore cast my grandparents into the common ground of paupers and orphans and outcasts, the nameless territory where -- as the administrator of that memorial park wisely told me -- "we all end up anyway." And all I could pray for was that my grandmother would understand, would have understood, would forgive me for having failed her, for mourning her so belatedly.

It was not the only lesson I was to learn on this trip. Another death awaited me in Chile, one that would more sorely test me.

One morning in Santiago, smack in the middle of the film shoot, the radio brought the news that my nemesis, General Augusto Pinochet, had suffered a stroke -- from which, one week later, he would die.

We rushed to the hospital.

Exile may be full of distress, but at least it spares you the unpleasantness of having to cohabit with the minions and accomplices of the dictator. There they were, outside the gates of the medical facilities, a group of women, crying out for their dying leader, led by a small, chubby woman, lips thick with lipstick, fingers clutching a portrait of her hero, a litany of tears streaming from behind incongruous dark glasses. There she was, making a pathetic spectacle of herself for all the world to see, defending a man who had been indicted by courts abroad and in Santiago as a torturer, a murderer, a liar and a thief. That was what Chile had become: a country where this woman who had celebrated the demise of democracy -- who had rejoiced while I was being hunted down and my friends were being killed -- that woman was being transmitted and feted by dozens of cameras and hundreds of microphones, while my Paulina was still invisible, still in hiding, still suffering the terror inflicted by the general being so lavishly praised.

And yet, I was paradoxically, inexplicably, uncontrollably moved by her misery. And so, unable to stop myself, I approached the woman and told her how I had mourned Allende and therefore understood that it was now her turn to mourn her leader -- but that I also wanted her to realize how much pain there was on our side.

She seemed dumbfounded by my words, and managed to mutter something like "thanks" -- whether sincere or perplexed or both, I still cannot say. But for one illusory, transitory instant I felt that we shared a territory, perhaps pointed in the direction of a possibly different land.

Did I do the right thing?

In my plays and novels I had meditated extensively on the walls that separate us from those who have done us grievous harm. I had forced my characters to deal with their enemies and ask themselves how to avoid the sweet trap of victimhood and retribution. And I had suggested that repentance was essential for any dialogue to transpire. But when it came to real life I could not wait eternally for that repentance. In real life, I felt compelled, if only for a minute, to break down those walls myself, leap across the divide, imagine a different sort of world.

That interlude of compassion forms, I believe, the gentle core of the film. It is the sort of moment that fiction can only enviously dream of, a moment that only a documentary can ultimately capture.

I dedicate that moment to my Paulina.

May she someday emerge from the shadows.

"A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman" opens the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City, on June 13.



And I have to wonder if our trials are ever over. Do we ever stop persecuting one another? Is there ever a point where we finally see that it accomplishes nothing to force others to live in a manner contrary to their beliefs, their upbringing...their nature? Do the haves always take from the have-nots without regret?

Seriously what's the point in all this?

We chase health, wealth, marriage, retirement, education, love, happiness, and there's always a new carrot being dangled in our faces, just out of our reach. And then there's a moment, something that makes you just stop and wonder why all these things are considered so important when life is at the core of what is meaningful. just life, nothing more. Like Gay Langlan said in the Misfits: "Well, you start by going to sleep. You get up when you feel like it. You scratch yourself. You fry yourself some eggs. You see what kind of a day it is; throw stones at a can, whistle."

You do these things because you can. They are what should be celebrated. Not world travel nor degrees, nor bank accounts, nor conquering heroes...living.

Because your bones could be tossed haphazardly in the pauper's grave heap, and your fortune could disappear overnight, and your health can deteriorate without warning, and your accomplishments can come to naught, and people can pursue and kill you over politics and ideology that, in the end will matter only to those who are gone.

Katharine Hepburn, as Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter said: "There is everything in life but hope." I don't think she was right. I think that's the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning.

I'm more of a Robert Browning man myself:
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp."

That's what hope is built on.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

-Suess

Pay Attention Boy!

Read This:

Saudi Arabia will call for a summit between oil producing countries and consumer states to discuss soaring energy prices, Information and Culture Minister Iyad Madani said Monday.

The kingdom will also work with OPEC to "guarantee the availability of oil supplies now and in the future," the minister said following the weekly Cabinet meeting, held in the seaport city of Jiddah.

Madani said that the kingdom has informed "all oil companies it deals with as well as countries that consume oil that (the kingdom) is ready to provide them with any additional oil they need."

"The Saudi Cabinet has instructed Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi to call for a meeting in the near future that will include representatives of oil-producing countries, consumers and companies that work in extracting, exporting and selling oil to look into the price hike, its causes and how to deal with it," said Madani.

The Saudi announcement comes just three days after the biggest single-day price leap ever, when oil surged more than $11 to surpass $139 per barrel.

Retail gas prices rose further above $4 Monday in the United States, the world's largest oil consumer, following the unprecedented price rally.

The kingdom will work to ensure there will be no "unwarranted and unnatural oil price hikes that could affect international economies, especially those of developing countries," said Madani.

"There is no justification for the current rise in prices," he said.

On Monday, light, sweet crude for July delivery fell $4.18 to $134.36 a barrel in volatile trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"It's not a situation that's going to move the market today," said Phil Flynn at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago, suggesting that there it might have a more long term effect. "I do think a conference is warranted, we need to sit down."

Jim Ritterbusch, president of the U.S.-based energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates cautioned that such meetings have taken place in the past and could be more an effort to calm the market without taking concrete measures.

"It's not anywhere near as significant as if they called an emergency OPEC meeting," he said. "It seems to me to be more political than anything ... They're reaching their worry threshold."

The Saudis are concerned that sustained high oil prices will eventually slacken the world's appetite for oil, affecting them in the long run.

Investors last month shrugged off news that Saudi Arabia had increased production by 300,000 barrels a day after a visit from President Bush, who sought a major production increase.

Energy experts say most producers have little ability to expand output. The exception is Saudi Arabia, which is producing about 9.4 million barrels a day and has the ability to increase production by about 2 million barrels a day, but has not done so.

"In the current circumstances, every barrel that can be used is being used," said Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy. "Unless the Saudis and OPEC suddenly produce some oil that nobody has heretofore known about, then this meeting is likely to produce no meaningful outcomes."

The current president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Chakib Khelil, has said that the cartel will make no new decision on production levels until its Sept. 9 meeting in Vienna.


So, do you get it now?

We're not getting screwed by OPEC, nor are we getting screwed by the Saudi's. We're getting screwed by our very own speculators on Wall Street.

Let me reiterate: "There IS NO JUSTIFICATION for the current rise in prices."

Which means that someone is hiking the price artificially, and no one is doing a thing to stop it.

What are YOU going to do?

Am I BEING Monday?

OK my horoscope told me I was going to be a bit disagreeable today, but DAMN! It did not tell me that I was going to be offended by the knowledge of people's existence.

It appears I am.

So far I've had words with the cleaning lady at my apt who had stuff strewn all over the hall this morning when I tried to pass.

I've had enough with the guy upstairs who wouldn't let me sleep Saturday night when I was trying to hold off a cold. So he's spending the day trying to sleep while listening to a looped recording of "Heavy Snoring." That qualifies as an argument in my book. I may just let it play continuously until I move on the 30th, THAT would do me good I can tell you that.

I was crossing the street after parking outdoors since they cut us loose on Friday when they closed the garage, and while I was doing so,this guy pulled into the crosswalk. There were words.

I got into it with the Bilerico project website, which is entirely too difficult to signup to comment on. The site told me my own url is invalid. Then it told me my display name was taken. Which is wholly unlikely. Then it told me the name it did accept was invalid. Needless to say I had words with their webmaster.

See!?!?

I'm just too mean to live today.

Oh! and I also discovered that someone (in Portugal) felt the need to review this website, and as with most reviewers they totally don't get it.

For some unexplainable reason this fool thinks I'm doing this for approval. That I not only want it, but that it's important and that I'm trying to be original here at the same time.

I'd suggest this person look back and read the whole blog from the beginning and they'd discover that all I'm trying to be is me. Don't like it? Too fucking bad. I spent the first 50 years of my life looking for approval and kissing everyone's ass to get it. (and I never did btw) I'm not about to start sucking up to ANYONE at this late date.

I'm writing here for me, for my own edification. To keep a record of the formation of what is probably the last few decades of my existence on this plane and my feeble attempts to understand what is going on and how I got here. Some of it will be diary, some sincere reflection, and some bullshit filler. It is not in any way an attempt to hold myself forth as some original freethinker who happens to write a blog that people are drawn to.

Should there be a few people who find some of what I have to say interesting that's great. But please don't think I am writing here to fill some egotistical need to be public about my life, and my thoughts. The communion with others I get from this is a huge bonus, but it's not really what I am here for.

I'm just trying to figure it all out like everybody else.

You'll never guess...

Casey Affleck is soo cute! Unfortunately he's married to a Phoenix. (as in Joaquin's sister.) The original hippie family. My friend K knew them when he lived in Sonoma County many moons ago.

So here's Casey. His brother has that magic that the camera loves, but Casey is the actor in the family.









Nice ass Casey! Wouldn't you just die if your mother came in the bathroom when you were naked in the tub and started hugging you? ...freak!

I also have to include this photo I just found on Towleroad.com It's a school of Stingrays.



Cool, NO?

I rode just short of 20 miles last night. I would have gone all the way, but there was a storm coming and I didn't want to tempt the lightning Gods any further. I love this new bike more and more, I was flying, and at the end of the first hour all I wanted was more, more, more. So I made a good choice apparently. I'm going out this weekend, maybe both days, to get in another 40 or 50 miles.

For reasons passing understanding my adoptive father has given my brother the mantel clock I was to get in his will. So my brother wants to give me that this weekend. It's great, strange but great. My brother says all Daddy dearest wants is rid of all the stuff he's not taking with him to the new condo. I told my brother that I went through that when our Stepmother died and about three months after he moves the bitching will start about not having anything in the house because "you kids took everything I had." That old man is nothing if not predictable. I am however getting the rest of the dynamat that he never had put in his car. I bought a huge box of the stuff and did the floors and trunk of his new car so it'd be quiet and then he did me dirty and simply "can't understand" why I never came back and took his doors apart and put dynamat in them too. What an asshole. To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite movies, Nobody's Fool with Paul Newman "Fuck him eternally."

The LCD TV is developing some kind of problem and I'm not one fucking bit happy about it. I'm pretty sure the power supply is going out. I'm also pretty sure that there are none, or at least very few available. So I figure I'll spend the better part of the weekend replacing capacitors in the existing one. Which sucks, especially since I'm 60 days out of warranty. Maybe this is why God gave me a Bestbuy credit card. hmmm.

Of course if I'm trying to buy a house, running up the credit cards isn't the best idea I've ever had. I guess I need to cuss more on this blog, my cuss-o-meter numbers are dropping like fucking crazy. Let's hope that helps


Well Happy Hot Guy Friday! Have a good weekend.

Crises Concurrences Curiosities and Cuties

I'm feeling alliterative today.

I still need to get the hell out of here and go back to New Mexico where I want to be. I think about it everyday and dream about it every night. (Isn't that a song lyric?)

Ok, here it is.

What I want is a place I can live from now on, where I can have a horse that I can actually ride, and make pots and become a better potter and travel a little, and where there is at least the possibility that I could teach at least part time. And where I feel free. New Mexico is the only place I've ever felt that and I suspect that's the big attraction.

I've found a house. It's new, yet very affordable. Away from everything, yet not isolated. Endowed with a location I couldn't dream up if I tried. And it's very near an artistic conclave. Oh by the way, the 4 acres it sits on border a national forest FILLED with horseback riding trails all the way to Colorado and beyond.

I could do it. I could buy it while I'm still here, and even if I only used it as a vacation home for a couple of years until I got a job there I could actually make it work. It seems perfect at least on paper, or should I say cyberspace.

I already have the horse,well, essentially. I could get my stables to sell me one of the many they already own and arrive with that part settled.

I'm already furnished cause the house isn't that big, and I just bought new stuff.

I've always planned to have two residences anyway. This would meet all the needs and do it now instead of that waiting game I've been playing for five years. Meaning my life will have finally started instead of being on hold until I find that dream job.

Maybe it really is time to start having some of the things I dream of and stop living for "one day."

I'll let you know what my real estate agent says.

I'm also wondering if I'm not being party to a scam of sorts. There is a blog that I really love and that I have read for a while. But I'm starting to wonder if there was just recently one too many coincidences. I'll still read, and I still want to believe but the seeds of doubt have been planted. Now I read with a skeptical eye. I think I still love the whole bunch of them though. They're scoundrels after my own heart.

And remember tomorrow! Hot Guy Friday! Guess I better go decide who it is.


Love

In Dogged Pursuit

I've been putting this off for months, and today I just decided I was going to get it done with.

I sent the letter to Mommie Dearest demanding she tell me Daddy's name.

Now, mind you I was nice. well...I didn't threaten her with legalities...at least until the end of the letter, anyway.

But I didn't exactly threaten I just let it be known that I was aware that there are remedies available to me like DNA tests and such, that I don't want, nor I am certain does any of the other parties concerned. Especially since one of the parties has never told their current husband about me...at all! I thought that might expedite the issue so I threw it in. Not the husband part, but the DNA.

So, if Mommie Dearest is smart and really wants to put all this behind her forever she'll get with the program and send me back that stamped self-addressed postcard I enclosed with the letter, on which she'll write Daddy's last name so she can be safely shed of me forever.

Or she can keep getting letters that make her heart race whenever she opens them. It's up to her I guess.

I'm sure the whole court, DNA thing would never happen since it would open up a whole sticky wicket for parents who've put children up for adoption all over the country, but it's a fun idea.

In other news, it's rained here almost every day this week. Killing any chance that I'll get to ride this weekend. The trails are swamped so I'll be doing other stuff instead. Packing would be smart since I'm moving in three weeks and I haven't packed a thing.

I'm gettin' a jones to ride horses and bikes both, this weather isn't helping me at all in that area.

I have a request from one of the schools I applied to for some more info on my CV, so I guess a trip to the post office is in order. It's a silly request, the info is right there on my CV, but they want it again, in yet another form. I can't decide if it's because they're simple, or if they're checking to see if I'll fill out 50 fucking forms and send them back. Hard to tell.

Oh! The 59fifty (I'm such a dork, I get excited over a hat)is here! I don't have a picture but you can bet there'll be one of the new lid when I get a chance.

I'm getting a little concerned that Someone is confusing their role in a relationship we have. I saw Someone the other day and then later got this gushy little email.

Huh?

Gushy ain't exactly what we're about, so this confused and concerned me. We work so well together I'd hate to see this get complicated. Hopefully it was just a passing thing.

I'm trying to muscle my way into a webmaster position here at work. We'll see just how much political capital I have built up. I'm willing to compromise, but are they? That's the question.

Cross your fingers on that and the latest with Mommie Dearest. Let's hope the most recent white trash drama passes without too many hitches.

it happens to all of us...

What does it stand for? This flag we're so proud of.

I think I'm just getting old. Because the world makes so little sense anymore. Somehow I am expected to want to get married, have a little cottage with a picket fence and a couple of kids and a dog.

Now here's where this post is gonna get tricky. I'm risking offending a whole segment of society, but what the hell.

I have no notion of what it's like to be transgendered. I don't! I'm as ignorant of it as John McCain is about the unpopularity of the war in Iraq. I don't know what a transgendered person goes through either emotionally or socially, and I doubt that I ever will have a good understanding of it.

I also have no notion of what it's like to be married, to have children, to be assimilated, and I don't want to know. Unfortunately, I find that I am once again on the unpopular side of a cultural shift that's (as usual) going against me.

I want to celebrate the difference. I want to know that I don't have to be like everyone else to be identified as acceptable. I would prefer to fight for rights that match my life, not rights that make my life like someone else's so that THEN I'm not different, and not scary.

I see all this struggle to establish this citizenry that is ALL THE FUCKING SAME, and I wonder why we look at ourselves and think WE have to change.

Of course, Gay "Pride" month doesn't do much for my mood anymore either.

Yes, I've stood up. Yes, I've gone to Washington and marched. Yes I've stood in front of the White House with my voice raised and my fist in the air. Yes I've marched in Pride parades. I've even gone so far as to protest in front of a Wal-Mart in Blue Springs Missouri, no mean feat, that.

But I would not march in a Pride parade today. The purpose it lost.

Long, long, ago in 1987, I went to Washington as a member of ACTUP/KC. We were a small group who believed that grass roots meant you started at the bottom and made noise for change, for what was right. I left there feeling more a part of a community than ever before, or since.

Then came 1993. I went back, and it was a huge party. I stayed one day, marched...perfunctorily, and left the next day for San Francisco where I was to bury yet another lost friend. I didn't feel the community that week, I can tell you that.

Pride has meant less and less to me in the ensuing years. I find no reason to feel pride in being assimilated. In fact I find it yet another moment in history when "they" tell me I'm not ok, and that I need to be more like them to be accepted. More like them, just not equal. Cause marriage is for men and women, not me.

Well, frankly that's ok with me. I think we're struggling for the wrong issue, for the wrong ideal, for a futile goal that will drain resources and occupy lobbyists and never really address the inequality we've all lived with all our lives. It'll mean that some people, who choose to use this newfound "right" might (and I use that term loosely) find some acceptance, and some access to benefits they wouldn't otherwise have had. Talk about serving the few!

I suppose it's human to want to keep up with the Joneses, to think the grass is greener on the "straight" side of our culture, to want to be like every one else. But the fact is that we're not! We're different, very different, and that should be something that makes us stand taller and hold our heads up. Instead it inspires us to celebrate young men in very small bathing suits wearing roller skates. It makes us the joke we've always been to the culture at large. It helps them not to take us seriously.

Insisting on being taken seriously is the only way we're ever going to make them listen. And we're not serious, at least not yet.

Don't assimilate, infiltrate! Move to the suburbs and make some noise. Get their attention and then get something done. A Pride parade in the middle of the city is easy to avoid. A pride parade in the suburbs isn't. And yes sometimes you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet. I didn't say this was going to be easy.

In 2001 I WAS the gay Pride parade in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I went to the area where most people hang out in that college town, and discovered that although there is quite a large population of gay men and women there, Pride celebrations were not had. I proceeded to the local novelty card shop, (where else would one find a gag gift?) and purchased a rainbow flag on a stick.

I then went out in the middle of Dickson Street and marched it's length waving the flag at all passersby. I was different that day, I can tell you that.

But I walked taller for it.

More calendar fun. We've got six more months of this to go folks, so you may as well enjoy this calendar as much as I do, cause it ain't stopping.


Nice weekend! It started off a little strange but turned out ok.

I got a call Thursday from K, one of my oldest friends. He was trying to guilt me into doing something he didn't think I'd do, which was to go to birthday dinner with him, his partner, and partner's best friend. Partner's best friend happens to be my ex. Mind you, we sorta kinda dated 5 years ago for about 6 months, four of which I lived 250 miles away. So when things went sour it seemed odd that ex would give me attitude when we ran into each other, but there it was, so I declined to be around him. Seriously, who needs that junior high crap? (we're 50 years old! I have no energy for that!)

So I threw caution to the wind and went to dinner Friday. Ex behaved perfectly, and everything was fine. We ate at this great seafood place, the waitress told me that the seabass melts in your mouth. She wasn't exaggerating. It was one of those orgasmic food experiences.

Saturday I rode horses early and then went home to collapse on the couch. It was hot later in the day so I was glad I got it out of the way early.

Friends came over for dinner and cards and I grilled shrimp and corn on the cob and made pesto pasta. For dessert I was bad, I stuffed cannoli with a ricotta, cream, and cinnamon mixture and made a raspberry glaze to pour over them. It was pretty fuckin good.

Sunday I rode the bike 25 miles, just no time to make the whole 30 so far. Then I did the car wash and wax thing, and put together a load of pots to take to a shop here in town for sale.

I also fought, and won, my battle with Chase, sweet talked my housekeeper into coming with me to the new place, bought chairs for the new deck, made the appt with the movers for the 30th, and had breakfast Sunday with my friend C.

But! It's monday and I'm back to the daily. HAD to share the calendar though.

Have a good week.

Love