skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Oh, Bother.
Although I’m generally disdainful of blog meme tagging, I’m also completely adoring of GoB. So even though he tagged me, the love fest must go on, and I must comply. To do so, I’m supposed to recount eight random facts about me, then go on to tag eight other people.
- I grew up on a farm in rural Oregon with two hundred goats, fifty chickens, thirty five pigeons, three pigs, a cow and her calf, and a dog. Being the eldest boy, it was my job to kill the chickens that escaped repeatedly. Since I could never properly figure out how to aim my BB gun, I did it with my bare hands. (It was also really fun to give the pigs bubble gum. OMG that was some funny shit.)
- I want super human powers. I mean, I really really want them. Not unlike how an eleven year-old boy wants them before, during, and after reading a Harry Potter book or X-Men comic, I yearn for extraordinary abilities. Sometimes I want them so I can improve society, sometimes I want them just to show off or to cause a reaction, and sometimes I want them so I can hurt someone. This is how I know I would be a poor candidate for having any.
- Bumper stickers that say “Abortion stops a beating heart” really piss me off. What I want to do to the people with them on their cars reinforces my belief that I should have no super-human powers.
- If I’m not sore, I feel scrawny and unattractive. Head Chef says I have the most annoying case of body dysmorphia the world has ever known, but I disagree. There are plenty of people with it worse than me. Plus, it keeps me in the gym. Given the choice between a gym habit, chewing my finger nails, or heroin, I think I’ve chosen wisely.
- I fully expect a cure for baldness to arrive within the next ten years, and I don’t mean some Propecia-esque thing that sorta/kinda helps. I mean a cure. And I’m already preparing to deal with the ethical dilemma. Hair provides me very little increased likelihood of survival and baldness is a valid and even attractive alternative to hair. Should I take the cure, or take a stand for natural beauty? Only time will tell.
- Remodeling our home has been a grueling and long-term effort, and has taken approximately 21 months longer than originally estimated. A good friend of mine attempted the same thing a few years ago and ended up on anti-depressants. I have avoided the same fate by alternately ignoring the construction zone I live in and working on it like a man obsessed. Lately, I’ve been so obsessed that it is testing Head Chef’s patience. But we are making excellent progress and it’s exciting on at least two levels.
- For the second time in my life, I’m ready to throw caution to the wind and do something dramatic and rash that has the possibility of great reward coupled with the risk of devastating consequences. I’m either getting older and more able to face risk, or the last time was so traumatic that I’m just not afraid of it any more. Either way, it seems like a win.
- I still play World of Warcraft. I might be less inclined to continue, but the Draenei racial was just too good not to roll a new warrior.
Coming up with eight random facts about yourself can be a challenge, but coming up with eight other people to tag is a nightmare. For starters, I don’t actually know eight people. Furthermore, at least one blogger I adore is blogging in secret (figure that out). This makes it too difficult to bother with tagging eight other people.
I suppose if you break the chain in a chain letter you’re supposed to have terrible luck. So if the consequences of not tagging eight other people are so dire that I’m physically or technologically incapable of blogging them, may my silence serve as a warning to others.
Gay Bomb, Gay Schmomb.
I'm tired of hearing about the proposed but abandoned military "gay bomb" that was supposed to turn enemy armies into bands of lawless homosexuals. I'm tired of it because it's been reported before and because that wasn't what it was.
It was a "horny bomb," people, not a gay bomb. It was supposed to make enemy armies so sexually aroused that they would immediately have sex with anything or anyone, thereby effectively rendering them incapable of combat. I think we can imagine how effective that might be.
But everyone's spinning this thing like it was supposed to make people gay. Let's get this straight (so to speak). Being so uncontrollably aroused that you'll fuck a member of the same sex doesn't make you gay. If it did, there'd be a lot fewer heterosexuals out there. In fact, if that were true only 40% of the population would be straight. Gay isn't something that happens to you, or something you do, it's something you are.
No, it was supposed to make them so frickin horny that they'd stop what they were doing and get it on with the nearest human, animal, or object. So yes, there would definitely be some same-sex contact going on. Oh, definitely. And the military masterminds of this plot did acknowledge that the best-case scenario would include enemy troops gettin it on with each other. But that wasn't the only point.
So please, stop crying out about how it's offensive to think that turning people gay would cause armies to collapse. It certainly wouldn't. But making them all drop their guns and fuck definitely would. Military intelligence may be an oxymoron, but they're not actually that stupid.
If you're not perfect, how do you tell a friend that they've really let you down? That they've undermined your trust? That they've made you rethink who they are and what they're really about? Do you, even - do you even tell them? Or do you just carry on, pretending nothing's changed.
If you're Ted Kennedy, do you ask a man how his wife died in the car accident?
I guess this is really just about being very disappointed in people not living up to my standards. Two people, specifically, from opposite ends of an ocean. But fear not - neither could be bothered to read this blog, so you're not one of them.
That's not to say that I always live up to my standards, either. No, for all my principles and boisterous pronouncements of ethical concerns, I stray. I am Ted Kennedy, and I am not without sin. I have not killed a man yet, but I'm sure I've hurt one or two.
Since these things move in karmic cycles I will be hurt, too. And others will be hurt as well, and we'll all hold onto our pain and disappointment and let it simmer in a little stewpot. We'll drop in the sacred promises not kept, secrets told to gossips, and political maneuvering by our confidantes, and we'll just let it cook on low. And then we'll hop in. We'll keep the heat down and let the salty brine of our personal disappointments just cook till all that's left is a little crusty reminder at the bottom of our stewpot.
It'll be a mere scab of what it was when it was fresh, and easy to overlook. But it will always be there, reminding us of our dashed hopes and the fact that we dare say nothing because we're Ted Kennedy.
As too many people have already noted, so-called Dr. Holsinger, Bush’s nominee for Surgeon General, is a crackpot. He’s a bigoted ideologue who ignores increasingly voluminous scientific evidence that gayness is a naturally occurring phenomenon and then turns around to distort science in order to villainize us. And he’s a nominee for Surgeon General?
Yeah. 'Cause paying attention to medical science is, like, totally not important for the country’s head doctor.
This is so obviously a doomed nomination it makes ya wonder how it could come to be. Well I’ll tell ya how.
Did you see the Democratic party presidential debates? Did you catch how every single one of them, without exception, is progressive on issues of gay citizenship?
So “Dr.” GaysArePervs gets nominated even though he can’t possibly be confirmed. And three different Democratic party contenders are on the committee that will turn him down.
Two plus two still equals four, right?
Bush – or more likely, Rove – is putting Holsinger in front of this committee not because they think he’ll be confirmed, but because they’re counting on Clinton, Obama, et al to go on record saying something pro gay. Something the next bigoted, fear-mongering, middle-class-eliminating, war-drum-beating Republican can use to excite their exhausted, alienated base.
So careful there, Hil and Bar. It’s a setup, and they’re watching you. And we are, too.
As a dutiful homo-ner (translation: gay owner of a home), I recognize and perform according to my duty to work on my abode. And so with Head Chef laboring over the power tools, I do the more menial tasks that must be done even though they require a bit more patience and perhaps a little less emotional return for the effort.
And despite the fact that it was he, not I, who operated the power tools, I still found my way to the hospital with a gushing head wound.
See, the ceiling fan attacked me in cold blood. I was innocently patching pukas in the ceiling and the wicked thing reached out and lacerated the back of my head. The impact resonated with a huge “WHAM!” through my head. I fell to the bed I stood on, and heard Head Chef turn off the power tools outside in the garage.
“Are you OK?” he called in. I got up from the bed and put my hand to the back of my head for the blood check. Sure enough, my hand was covered in beautiful red.
“I’m bleeding,” I responded as he came into the house and I went out into the hallway. Although the pain was subsiding quickly, he reported that the cut was an inch or more long, apparently deep, and covered in dust bunnies that had collected on the fan blades since their last cleaning.
So after some convincing, he took me to Kuakini hospital for cleaning, stitches, and a fashionable bandage.
And it was there that it happened again. The admitting nurse asked me my name. She asked me my occupation. She wanted to know if I had any other injury or had fallen to the floor. And she wondered if Head Chef and I were twins.
No? Perhaps brothers? Cousins? Step in-laws thrice removed? I held a cool, damp rag to my head with my right hand, and it was significantly streaked with blood. I looked over at Head Chef and rolled my eyes. Clearly, all bearded, bald men are related.
It was the first time I had ever been irritated by the question. Up to this point over the past nine years, I was fine with it. It even amused me. “Brothers! Ha! More like kissing cousins,” I always wanted to answer. But in this context, the nurse’s question wasn’t amusing at all. It was tedious.
And it was stupid and obvious that we are not brothers. I’m taller, more fair, with narrow shoulders and a gigantic head. I look English/French. Head Chef is shorter, darker, with broad shoulders and a decidedly Czech look to him, and yet again, “Are you brothers?” You should see the family get-togethers.
The bad news was that I needed stitches and a tetanus booster. I braved both, and brother Chef smirked at my discomfort and embarrassment. I was stoic in the face of hypodermics and self-effacing for foolishly standing up into a ceiling fan on high.
My twin (he has teeth and a spinal column) and I left the hospital and returned home to find the fan still spinning. With my head dressed in bandages, I stood there menacing it from the room’s doorway, “spin all you want, but I’ll get you in the end.”
