Socialism!

When I awoke this morning, I crawled over to the computer to check the news. This has been my Saturday ritual for a long time now. So, when I opened up the old Huffington Post RSS feed and saw this fine bit of news, I finally saw the light!

All these years, I had been using the word “socialism” entirely incorrectly. I’d always thought that socialism meant, you know, “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.” That’s what I get for using those faulty liberal dictionaries! It is indeed fortunate that we have people like Steve King who can come along and set the record straight on this word by illustrating its proper use, as a word to denote anything that is opposed to one’s own personal beliefs!

I did some more research on the matter and found this:

Given all this new information, I have decided to expand upon my definition of socialism in at least the following ways (more to come as I can think of them):

• When a vending machine takes your money and doesn’t give you anything, that is socialism. Obviously a redistribution of wealth going on there. No wonder Coca-Cola uses red for the color of their cans!
• When a person on the highway cuts you off or passes you on the shoulder of the road… socialism! Obviously a godless socialist afraid of being put in front of a death panel for being late for one of his godless socialist indoctrination meetings.
• When any person disagrees with you… obvious socialism. Rabble-rousers and dissenters are trying to fool the American people with their satanic “facts” and “textbook definitions” and other vile LIEberal dreck. As Stephen Colbert so elegantly put it: “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
• When any person agrees with you but doesn’t do so in a sentence that includes ACORN, SEIU, Ayers, Kenya, Marx, terrorists, birth certificates, the President hating the country he leads, the Antichrist, Hitler, Stalin, witch doctors, welfare queens, Rev. Wright, wives who hate the country their husbands lead, relatives who are illegal aliens, being friends with Ahmadinejad, being friends with Kim Jong-Il, being friends with Satan yet being atheist, and jack-booted thugs putting Grandma down when she stops contributing to society… if any of those elements are missing from the conversation, then, well… it’s not an automatic determination of socialism, but the person probably sympathizes with the left. At the very least, he’s a nigger-lover like Jimmy Carter.
• When a cashier gives you back incorrect change… socialism. That new liberal math will take away your hard-working white dollars and distribute it to LAZY PEOPLE, only LAZY PEOPLE, as anyone who doesn’t have the same job as you or the same lot in life as you is LAZY.

Thank you, Steve King, for showing me the error of my ways!

The Jersey Swap

Rugby is one of those sports that I am unfamiliar with and that is pretty poorly represented in my part of the world. In my neck of the woods, it’s only American-style football that gets everyone’s attention. From what little I know about rugby, it’s a far more masculine pastime–less protection and more violence. Plus, I don’t think it’s *quite* as commercialized as American football has become. (I predict in 5 years, American football teams will wear jerseys emblazoned with brand names in much the same style as those jump suits that NASCAR drivers wear.) But rugby seems to be a sport where the men are men–and some advertisers are perfectly content to allow the men themselves to keep the spotlight.

Oddly enough, I haven’t seen any ugly rugby players. You’d think that if they were really that violent with each other, they’d be as bruised, broken and toothless as professional hockey players. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, I suspect there might be a bit of mutual appreciation amongst the rugby players for the degree of physicality involved. As proof of this, you can click the image below and watch an Adidas-sponsored promotion where professional rugby players lose their jerseys and swap them with other rugby players from different teams. You can even watch them do this in slow-motion, if that is your thing. (PS. It is my thing.) I don’t normally fall hook line and sinker for such crass and exploitative fruits of free market enterprise, but shit, you know and I know that you’ve been glancing at that image below ever since you started reading this article.

Summer of Lust: A Retrospective

Well, it’s been about a year since my run-in with that smooth-talking, blue-eyed felon whom I ended up shagging. (Please refer to the “Summer of Lust” category of blog posts for more details on that, if you’re interested in that whole debacle.) He broke my heart and my bank account, but I think that whole ordeal was a necessary learning experience for me. In a way, Billy opened the floodgates; since him, I’ve, er… well I’ve not been a slut per se, but I’ve not been too shabby either, especially for a confessed gamer geek and computer nerd. So I’ve got that going for me too.

Here’s hoping this summer, I’ll find a nice chap that’ll teach me even more about life, love, and other accommodations.

PS. My fear at the time, that Billy would turn me into a cock-crazed size queen, was mostly unfounded.

Musings on Bruno

I finally went last night and watched Bruno. Being a casual fan of Sacha Baron Cohen and hearing the wide range of buzz the film was getting (both positive and negative), I felt I needed to check it out for myself and determine which buzz was more accurate.

In case you didn’t know, the gay community has been fairly polarized on the subject of Bruno. A fairly sizeable minority dislike the movie primarily because it reinforces common stereotypes about gay people. According to these people, when your average American straight who knows no openly gay people sees the bleach-blonde, leather-clad Bruno with various objects in his “arschenhaller”, it’s just going to confirm very negative views of gay people in their minds. Furthermore, some are saying the ignorant and petty Eurotrash with obsessions of sex, fashion, and fame is little more than a modern-day minstrel show, except now it’s “queerface” instead of blackface to ridicule the minority. The overall opinion of the movie’s naysayers is that Cohen doesn’t really care about any potential damage the movie does, as long as the movie rakes in the money.

On the other hand, there is another camp (no pun intended) that believes overall, Bruno will have a positive effect on the gay community. Sure it’s offensive, these people say–that’s Cohen’s schtick–but the movie hits homophobes hard, very hard. Many people may not realize the extent and depth of the homophobia in society at large, so in a way, this movie brings it to people’s attention where it can be exposed for all to see, a la that parable about sunlight being the best disinfectant. And by the way, homophobia isn’t the only topic of interest in Bruno–the movie utterly decimates in other areas also, highlighting ignorance, shallowness and hypocrisy on many fronts, regarding many topics. Furthermore, this movie works on two levels, because the people being targeted aren’t just the ones in the film. Like all of Cohen’s characters, Bruno is as much directed toward the audience as it is to the people Cohen is pranking, and with that, this film is bound to cause viewers to challenge their own views and question their own responses to what they’re seeing on the big screen.

Now, my two cents…

Having seen the film, I think both sides have it partially right. Overall I think Cohen is ridiculing both homophobia as well as some of the more vapid and shallow tendencies in a certain segment of gay culture. I do not think the film was made with any sort of humanitarian purpose in mind–Cohen plays both sides of the fence to make money. But this is to be expected, because his other characters all work the same way as Bruno. Consider a side-by-side comparison between the two characters.

	Borat	Bruno
Non-American w. ridiculous accent?	Yes	Yes
Amalgamation of stereotypes?	Yes (the “ignorant backwoods foreigner”)	Yes (the “shallow, sex-obsessed queer”)
Plays on people’s prejudices?	Yes (xenophobia, etc.)	Yes (homophobia, etc.)
Exposes other kinds of ignorance?	Yes (racism, misogyny, etc.)	Yes (celebrity worship, ‘gay conversion’, etc.)
Uses crude humor to make people in the film uncomfortable?	Yes	Yes
Uses crude humor to make people in the audience uncomfortable?	Yes	Yes

Finding so much similarity in Cohen’s general comedic approach, I feel fairly sure that this movie was not a jab at gays per se, just as Borat was not a jab at the real-life people of Kazakhstan. Rather, Cohen takes a sample from a culture unknown to many “mainstream” people in middle America, and uses their unfamiliarity with that culture for his comedic ends. The extent to which Cohen is ridiculing his own characters is debateable–I believe Cohen’s interest lies in the realm of perceptions and misperceptions, and I do not think Cohen focuses on any demographic defined by any physical characteristic. Via the presentation of his characters, it is clear that Cohen is opposed to the racist bigotry of Borat and the vapid trendiness of Bruno. But he is equally opposed to those ugly world views he draws out of people in response to his caricatures and contrived situations.

In the end, I can say that Bruno is probably the most intellectual movie I’ve ever seen that had full frontal nudity and unsimulated sex scenes. For that, I must recommend it. I’d also recommend seeing it with straight friends to see how they react. As my friend Matt remarked when we walked out of the theater, “it makes you think.”

The Failings of Beautiful Boys

Not terribly long ago I blogged about an interesting gay vlogger who has developed quite a following. I counted myself among the Davey Wavey devotees for many months, as I allowed myself to fall for him in the same way that hundreds of other young gay men have fallen for him. Spout enough pseudo-spiritual truisms and random religious quotes, and do it while shirtless and while possessing a very fit and trim body, and you’ll have a cult following in no time. Here was a man who fell outside the mainstream with his views, but was still easy on the eyes. Quite the rarity indeed. Mr. Wavey regularly invites his following to contact him–to write him emails and comment on his blog and vlog posts. I suppose he is the type that likes lots of attention… but anyway.

Being ever the web savvy young fruit, our Davey Wavey has spread his presence to a variety of well-known web sites. Besides his blog, you can find him on YouTube (of course), Flickr, MySpace, etc. The other day, I found that you can also find him on a few, er… less well-known web sites; to wit: LifeOut, a social networking site not unlike MySpace but exclusively for LGBT folk. I know this because I am a member of LifeOut (it’s the only social networking site I bother with), and he uses the same nickname on there that he does on his main site.

Well, I’d never attempted to contact Mr. Wavey before, other than anonymous comments on his blog, so I thought I’d contact him and tell him that I appreciated his thoughtfulness, his charitable work, and his spiritual insights, and that it was refreshing that a prominent gay youth could be free of the empty trappings and viewpoints of ’standard’ gay culture… an antithesis to the Perez Hiltons of the world, as it were. (Didn’t use that exact language, but you get the idea.) I closed the note with a request that I might add him to my friends list.

One of the nice things about LifeOut is you can see what people have done with your message once you’ve sent it. So, about a week or so later when I realized I hadn’t heard anything, I looked into it, and found that Davey received the note, checked out my own profile, then deleted my note with not so much as a curt ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ Taking another look at his LifeOut profile, I found all his friends were people who’d posted pictures of either their hard-ons or their gaping anuses for their face pics–tasteless, IMO–and that the only people he paid any attention to or interacted with in any way were the gym bunnies and skanky twinks who were looking for nothing more than a hookup.

It was a bit disappointing to see that my optimism and esteem for this young man had been misplaced. There is of course the personal aspect of it–I wasn’t even asking for a hook-up or anything like that, just expressing a simple “I like what you do” sort of sentiment–but even if that hadn’t happened, there is still the fact that Mr. Wavey portrays in one location is very different from what he portrays in another. Which is very unfortunate, especially for people who took his musings seriously. Elsewhere, Mr. Wavey frequently says “everyone is beautiful and I love everyone” and that sort of thing, but that must only be the party line when people are looking. In the shadows, where the public won’t look, he reverts to a gloryhole attendee and common slut. I do not fault him for this behavior per se, but I fault him for being hypocritical and leading such a double life.

It’s the same sort of thing I’ve seen among people in my own area–folks who purport to be one thing but quickly prove to be something else entirely. Gay twentysomethings in particular have a large disconnect between what they *say* they are interested in and stand for, and what they actually *are* interested in and stand for. Rather than surpassing this expectation and being truly unique in his own right, Davey Wavey simply fits with this behavior, and is no different from any of the other young gay men I know who are “into Buddhism” or “are independent thinkers”, etc. It’s just contrived fluff to make them look like they have some depth to their personality other than a crude and raging sex drive, or a constant need for attention.

Needless to say, I’m not a Davey Wavey follower anymore.

Not Blind Yet… (NSFW)

…but this post might help, if the old adage about masturbation causing blindness has any truth to it.

Subtlety ought to count for something these days, but it really doesn’t, so I don’t know why I continue to pretend like it does. I like subtle, I like tasteful suggestions that allow the people to put two and two together in their mind and come to their own conclusions, but these are blatant times we live in, and there isn’t much room for subtlety when everything’s so blatant.

Plus it’s always good to give the people what they want, and if it’s gay porn, then…

*ahem*

Well, I’m giving people fair warning that they shouldn’t scroll any farther if they don’t want to see things that appeal to me (and you know what *things* I’m talking about.

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The Best Part of Waking Up…

Cultural Guerilla Tactics from ‘99

Stonewall

Today’s the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. If you’re not familiar, I’d encourage you to read here.

It is from these riots that today’s gay pride events originate.

Take a moment to do something fabulous today.

News Bits for Misfits

Well I thought I would have a nice quiet June but there’s been so much shit going on in the world here lately that I just couldn’t resist offering comment. So, I’m putting down my mojito and having my swarthy Cuban man-servant bring me my laptop so that I can muse upon the strange happenings over the last few days.

• Carrie Prejean gets shitcanned. Well, imagine that, I thought Trump had already forgiven the dumb bitch for riling up the gays. Turns out she couldn’t live up to her job expectations and regularly cancelled her speaking engagements. Huh! A capitalist exercising personal accountability in his employees… you’d think the conservatives would like that shit, wouldn’t you? But nooooo, take some time to visit the conservative blogosphere or (if you’re extra-bold) the Fox News forums, and the vast majority of asshats at those places still think this was a *nudge*nudge*wink*wink* kind of appeasement deal, that the real reason she was stripped of her title was due to her belief only in “opposite marriage”. “Nice try,” they say to the Donald, “but we see what you did there.” WTF you bunch of paranoid losers. GET OVER IT and accept that your anointed one, your blessed messenger of God with the state-sanctioned titties was fired for failing at her job, not for any other reason–and if someone can’t keep up with the duties and responsibilities of being eye candy who makes token appearances and offers scripted messages… maybe McDonald’s would be more their speed.
• David Carradine was a kinky old goat, which led to his demise. First of all, I loved David Carradine, he was one of my favorite actors. Weird as hell but still a badass, and he had one of those voices that just immediately lent authority to what he was saying, like some sage from some half-forgotten place and time. When I heard they found him hanging, I immediately expressed my grief to my friends via text message–that’s how us jutes communicate en masse these days–and I was really bummed out. But as details emerge, it looks less like suicide and more like accidental suffocation via autoerotic asphyxiation. Apparently his wife walked in on him attempting it some 25 years ago and had to intervene to save him. I will never understand the kinks of some people–call me an old fogey, but I don’t have to put myself in risky situations and/or border between life and death to get my jollies. *sigh*
• Iranian elections–exciting until they actually happen. So here was this Mousavi dude who captured the Iranian public’s fascination leading up to the elections. Opinion polls had him running neck and neck with Ahmadinejad, and everyone thought that finally, here was a chance for Iran to redeem itself and shed its crazy, megalomaniacal leader. But then the actual elections occur and SURPRISE! A landslide victory for Ahmadinejad (something like a 2-to-1 margin), as blessed and decreed by the Ayatollah and his minions. Insiders in the country’s government reported getting orders to doctor the election results. Is anyone surprised? I actually don’t blame Ahmadinejad for this outcome–most thinking Iranians can see through his aspirations and through his election ploy of giving out cash to people to get them to vote for him. The fingerprints of the theocracy are all over this bitch, and until Iran can establish true separation of church and state, the country’s Muslim overlords will continue to place their favorite pawns into influential positions.
• Adam Lambert admits to being gay. For fuck’s sake, why does this even matter? He’s a skilled entertainer–who he likes to sleep with is no one’s business. People ought to be judged by their merits and not by some aspect of their person. This is, by the way, the reason why Kris Allen beat Adam Lambert in American Idol–it ended up being a vote between “the (self-professed) Christian guy” versus “the gay guy.” And we all know who “mainstream America” is going to vote for. Like any kind of election in America, it’s never the issues or the merits of the candidates that matter–people always vote for the person they see as more likeable. And guyliner is still too much for most of the country.
• Obama fires two opening salvos against the gay rights movement. That’s right folks, the guy who declared during the election that he would be a “fierce advocate” of the rights of the LGBT community has been silent on gay rights until this past week, when the administration has actually sided against the gay rights movement in two very important ways. For starters, there was the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the challenge to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”–in the legal brief filed by the Department of Justice, the administration argued that the policy is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion,” and that until legislation is filed that will repeal the policy, the administration will defend it. (The legal brief actually went on to explain, in very unflattering terms, why it was in the government’s legitimate interest, and at one point, the concept of incest was used in an attempt to make a, *ahem* suitable comparison.) That was the first knife in the back. The second knife in the back came when I learned that the administration is taking a similar “we’re going to enforce it and champion its validity until legislators can repeal it” stance on the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to not recognize the same-sex marriages of other states. (Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution be damned.) In this case, the administration argued that it is actually a “good law”, and that the supposed “financial savings” are “helping to preserve scarce government resources.” Really, Obama? Really?? You are going to use a financial argument to deny my civil liberties, when your own administration has no qualms about spending $787 billion in taxpayer money, just because you thought the economy needed it?
• Ray Nagin got shanghaied. On a lighter note, it was pretty damn amusing to hear about Ray Nagin getting quarantined in Shanghai when a passenger aboard his plane started exhibiting the symptoms of swine flu. He’s finally back home now… thank God. Don’t know how we would have gotten by without him. I wonder if he found Shanghai to be a “moo goo gai pan” city, just as New Orleans is his own “chocolate” city…
• A far-right extremist nutjob shot up the Holocaust Museum in DC. Earlier in the week, an 88-year-old white supremacist asshat took it upon himself to shoot as many blacks, Jews, and black Jews as he could. So he loaded up his car with notebooks full of his craziness, went to the Holocaust Museum, and did just that. While the act itself probably merits more attention, I’m more interested in the background of this man. He was staunchly conservative and evidently one of the wackjobs who believes that Obama is not a natural born US citizen, and that the state of Hawaii and the government are hiding this fact. He of course is a proponent of other crazy right-wing theories too–his notebooks are full of paranoid ramblings about the government taking his guns, how taxes are unfair, etc. The most telling thing about this story is that, while it unfolded, there was virtually no commentary on this offered at Fox News. Other news stories prompt the creation of new forums so that the loonies can spout their beliefs, but this wasn’t the case here–probaby because someone realized that this man fits the same profile as 75% of the people who post on the Fox News forums, and they didn’t want to run the risk of people defending his actions (which they most certainly would). No, rather than talk about that, there were about two or three new forums (to add to the existing 5 or 6 forums) for the discussion of the true motives surrounding the firing of Carrie Prejean. (Eventually they did open up *one* forum on the subject, to complain about how the evil liberal media is twisting the Holocaust Museum shooting into conservative bashing.) I’d also like to point out that Fox News stirred up tons of outrage amongst its base regarding a report issued earlier in the year by the Department of Homeland Security that said that right-wing extremists were a rising threat in the country. Looks like there was some truth to that report after all, eh Mr. Murdoch?
• A 72-year-old granny got tasered in Austin. I’m going to withhold commentary on this one except to say that at first, I was worried that this might have been Jackie Sue since the clip shows the woman telling off the officer, but then I realized that if it had been Jackie Sue, she’d probably have kicked the ass of anyone attempting to taser her. No one tasers YDG and lives to tell about it.

Argh, what depressing bullshit to think about. I’m going back to my break. Enrique! Time to reapply my sunblock!