Hiatus
Be back soon
For now, have some pandas vomiting rainbows
On Mortality and Strategic Relocation
It seems that a gay 40-something man was beaten to death in the parking lot of the only gay bar in at least a 50-mile radius. (This was, in fact, the same place I visited with the BF not too long ago.) While this crime in and of itself is a terrible thing, it is made worse by the fact that the fundies are crawling out of the woodwork on the site of the local news station to criticize the perversion of all who were even inside the establishment to begin with. Local authorities don’t seem to know why exactly the people were arguing, nor the relationship between the two men, nor any other piece of evidence about the case, but they were suspiciously quick to say that it was definitely not a hate crime.
“Uh, well we don’t really know any details at this point… We don’t really know who witnessed it… Hell, we don’t even know for sure if it was the punch or the fall that killed the guy. Really, the only thing we do know is… it was totally not a hate crime. Seriously. Now, move along, nothing to see here.”
WTF.
It is all a bleak reminder of where I live, and just exactly who my neighbors are, and what they think of me. It is impossible to move anywhere to escape happenings such as this, but by God there are better places to live… and better people to live among. It’s hard to fight for one’s civil rights when people will shoot your queer ass without a second thought. In some parts of the country, it’s a privilege to just survive with the primitives, unscathed and unbeaten… well, fuck that.
But, on the other hand… if I take up my belongings and move to a better place, it’s somewhat self-defeating, because I shouldn’t have to do that shit. Our people should be able to live wherever we want to call home without fear of stoning or being tied to fence posts. And if we want to change hearts and minds and show society that those who like their own sex are nothing to fear, we have to stay spread out among the general population to a certain extent, so that all can see that we are just people. Nothing more, nothing less, only people.
Chocolate Rabbit Doom
This sums up the idea of existentialism quite nicely.
This Bizarre Cranial Wiring Must Extend Even Into My Subconscious
So I’d dreamed all night about sitting in on various lectures about economic theory. I had split my time between a lecture that was offered by Milton Friedman and one that was offered by Mister T. This was surprisingly plausible in my mind, because I could tell T was simply reading straight from the textbook and using the canned PowerPoint presentation that came with the teaching materials.
After having spent all night dreaming about this, I found myself sitting in a small meeting room with three or four of my Indian colleagues. I was intensely curious about elephant poop paper, the physics of which I still wasn’t too sure about. Did the elephant’s digestion transform the cellulose into a substance not unlike the wood pulp used at paper mills? What color was this unusual paper? Was it grainy? Did it have visible variations in color?
Of course, all these thoughts crossed my mind but were not uttered to my coworkers. After one of them acknowledged that he used the paper, the question that immediately came to mind (and which I asked him) was: if you are printing on elephant poop paper and it gets stuck in the printer, do you have to use a plunger?
The room erupted into laughter, and I woke up.
Comfort for Old Hippies
I watched a video recently showing an 89-year-old folk musician, Pete Seeger, performing at the Lincoln Memorial prior to Obama’s inauguration. (I won’t post the video here, since all I’ve been doing lately is posting videos and I need to make you bastards work for your content sometimes.) It was a riveting performance–this man in the twilight of his life, singing his heart out in pure joy with people 1/3 his age (or less) backing him up in the chorus. Here, I thought, was a person who was a part of the original hippie movement, who lived through most of the great social upheavals of the past century. Here was a man who had seen the zeitgeist shift from good to bad many times over the years, and after the extreme darkness that was the past 8 years, was seeing a new birth of hope once again.
I think the inauguration of Obama must provide comfort to old, unrepentant hippies who are nearing their last moments. To have been a flower child and to die during the last few years would have been a terribly depressing thing to endure, what with the world seeming to spin ever closer toward its collapse. And while most people realize that Obama is not a miracle worker, it is easy to see in him a spark of hope, a sign that maybe America (and by extension, the rest of the world) is not quite so terminally fucked as it was before. For those Aquarians who passed the baton to the next generation, only to see their brethren be devoured by the hedonistic apathy of the 70s and the selfish consumerism of the 80s, this new outpouring of unity and common purpose must be a relief to them in their old age. These folks can now give up the ghost with perhaps greater ease, knowing that people still might be able to un-fuck themselves after all.
Inauguration Day: A Gray Perspective
The weather today was pretty crappy, what with an assload of snow and ice, so with permission from my supervisor, I worked from home. (One of the advantages of having an IT job…) As such, I had the TV on and I watched the inauguration while working. The inauguration itself was a spectacle; Dianne Feinstein seemed to be truly relishing her “emcee” role. This role was a vast improvement over her breakout performance in 1978:
Rick Warren went on to given a painfully overwrought-but-inelegant invocation, which was pretty much what I was expecting. His “multicultural” pronouncements of “Jesus” underscore his belief that freedom of religion in America is the right to follow any branch of Christianity one so desires. But the way he pronounced the names of Obama’s daughters, Sasha and Malia, smacked of some sort of inner belief that the First Family was somehow exotic or alien, that they were wild strangers from a faraway land and most likely had middle names that consist of clicking sounds.
Yadda yadda yadda, some cellos and shit, there’s Biden swearing on that big-ass Lincoln bible, yadda yadda yadda. It was actually pretty exciting at the time, but after my eyes witnessed the spectacle that was Aretha Franklin’s hat, the rest of the show paled in comparison. I mean, I’m not a fashion-minded fag by any stretch of the imagination, but come on. There are very few people who could pull that shit off, and I guess she is one of them.
And John Roberts, WTF? Tripping up on the oath?! I mean, I thought you were a strict constructionist and all that–I would have figured you’d know the traditional words by heart. I think probably he knew the correct words, he was just trying to trip up Obama by having him repeat an incorrect oath and thus give conservative bloggers fodder for years to come on how the Presidency was somehow illegitimate. Oh, Supreme Court, you and your silly schemes!
All in all it was a pretty remarkable and memorable event, and I’m glad I got to watch it from home. I’m sure there are some people who were present for the inauguration that wish they would have just stayed at home.
Last Black Night
The sun has set on the last day of the Bush era.
I am spending the evening in quiet reflection of this fact.
I hope… I feel that the next 4, possibly 8 years will be a time of great social and cultural progress, a dose of enlightenment to counteract and ward off the ignorance that enveloped so many for so long.
The Old Popularity Index
