My Blog

These "Miracles" should be curtailed

Joel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:04:54 GMT

We live in an contradictory age. On the one hand you have those who argue that magic nad mystery are extinct, that technology has supplanted myth and mysticism and spirituality and faith in intangible powers are now anachronistic concepts. on the other hand you have those who see miracles in every little mundane daily occurance, believe that technology actually working is in and of itself a miracle and that the minds who created the technology are miracle makers, they at times seem desperate to find miracles and thus are willing to bend the parameters a little and lower the bar alot. Miracles used to be things like a miraculously flying monk, a child seeing the virgin marry and then leading the French army to victory, the sick being healed, Gil Perez being magically teleported from a spanish colony in the Phillipines to Mexico City ( 1593)*.......but to me one thing stands out clearly as an act that can be permanently removed from the rosters of "miracle occurance". The birth of a child was once lauded as a "miralce of Life". I think we can safely agree that the magic has been taken out of that process. In a world where a 16 yr old girl gets national media coverage for getting pregnant (Jamie Lynn Spears) when every day there are thousands upon thousands of young unwed girls who are getting pregnant before they have even selected their Junior Year classes in high school.....clearly the act of getting pregnant and delivering a child into hte world is not an act that takes place behind a shroud of mystery and mysticism any longer. In a week where I was forced to endure wall to wall "brangalina" commentatorating about Angelina Jolie adding two more kids to her "Franklin Mint International Babies" collection it sickened me to see the state of commonality, urbaness, enui that Pregnancy and Childbirth have been brought to in modern culture when they used to be mythic occurances that preceeded celebrations within family and community to welcome the new little miracle life. Largely to blame for this casual attitude for the motherly state, I think, is the fact that the stigma abotu getting pregnant before one is actually ready in society's eyes to be a parent has been removed or so marginalized as to be nearly nonexistant. Now there are a few other stories that appeared in the news that really made me think that parenting, ushering a small life into this world, is an act that needs to be more restricted, needs to have some of the "special", the "myth", the "elevation" put back into it by giving it a bit more exclusivity so that you as a responsible person carrying a child when you are ready to be doing it and the stupid teenager who thinks she knows everything but still is a bit mystified by the mechanics of birth control (A-put pill in mouth,B-Swallow,C-repeat process with next pill tomorrow) or ( A-Purchase Condom, B-Put on condom, C-When finished remove condom and discard) are not viewed in the same light by a public disinclined to see the wonder and accomplishment of the one because of the lack of self awareness and general stupidity fo the other. So I thought about things a little and it dawned on me, there is a perfectly simple way of resolving this lacy of awe....as well as a host of other connected problems. National Birth Control..........put birth control in the water, aerisolize it in the atmosphere, add it as an extra ingredient in soft drinks, piggyback it in diet pills, coat anti depressant pills in it, and for the love of god make it an addative in any and ALL alcohol! Now...once you have hit maximum saturation within the populace it won't matter if teenagers screw like bunnies, they will not be hampering their future with a child (or the welfare system, or their parents for that matter), those of lower income who milk the welfare system for a living simply because they don't mind demonstrating they are very reproductively viable despite an overwhelming lack of resources necessary to deal with the outcome of a fruitful womb. Now now...before you all reach for your retro "kill the Commies" buttons and banners, I am not advocating a cap being placed on people that each family can only have one child like China. Have as many as you like, if you can pass a test/background check to demonstrate that you are a viable responsible parent candidate. Pass that test and you get the pill (or what ever it is) that is the countering agent to the national birth control. Ok I can hear you all getting restive over this concept, so bear with me a little. We make someone take a basic competency test before allowing them to get bgehind the wheel of several hunder pounds to a ton of metal and plastic that they are then going to possibly drive at speeds of up to 85 miles per hour legally thus endangering not only their own life but the lives of many others on a daily basis. And we make them take a test before handing them a license and saying "Go forth and endanger lives." Then ther is the fun of gun ownership. ( NOTE I am not going to open the can of worms of restricting gun ownership in this blog, but rest assured it is a pet topic of mine and one I am pretty adamant about) Before you can go out and purchase fire arms and or hunt we require that you pass a gun ownership test and pass a background check ( I realize this varries state to state, but in essence we test you to some degree). Again, before saygin its legal for you to be stalking the woods and byways of our country trying to pick off the local fauna we want to know that you know how to at least sound like a responsible gun owner before we say "Go forth and endanger lives" Heck...now in most states if you go into a drugstore and want to buy Claratin or Allegra for your allergies they make you show ID and sign a waiver attesting to your awareness that you may be questioned about your purchase of this controled substance due to its usefullness as a component in making things like Meth. I have to sign a waiver just to get relief from my allergies stating that I am aware that SOME people might use this to "go forth and endanger others" But we do nothing to restrict the pregnancy rate in our country. Our completely out of whack birth rate is probably one of the largest contributors to our economic problems as it impacts medicaid, welfare, social chairitable organizations, counseling facilaties, the environment, schools, churches. Can you even imagine how much less we as tax payers would get tagged for anually if children were not being born to parents who cannot begin to provide even the basic necessities of care for them? What if the government ( National, Sate and local) were not overburdened with having to come up with ways of providing hte needs of thousands of children because the parents ( both adult and juvenille) got pregnent with no thought of consequences and now expect someone to bail them out for their lack of responsability?How much more effective might those different levels of government be if they were freed of the necessity to be institutional parents? So you might be wondering why I am ruminating on the sad state of parenthood in our country and the need for restricting access to this "Miraculous " condition........so here you go ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Pittsburgh, PA- Authorities identified 18-year-old Kia Johnson as the woman found tied up with her uterus cut open inside a Pennsylvania apartment, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office said Sunday. The medical examiner says the body found in a Pennsylvania apartment is that of Kia Johnson. 1 of 3 Authorities used dental records to confirm the woman's identity. Johnson's partially eviscerated body was found at the apartment of a Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, woman who arrived at a hospital with a newborn infant earlier in the week. A placenta was found at the scene, the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, medical examiner said. Johnson's body "was in a state of moderate decomposition" and the woman had been dead for about two days, Medical Examiner Karl Williams said in a written statement. Johnson's hands and feet were bound by duct tape. The cause of death remains undetermined, Williams said. Drugs were found at the scene, and authorities are awaiting toxicology results to determine whether the woman was sedated, he said. It's unclear whether the woman was alive when the infant was taken, he added. The body was found Friday at an apartment belonging to a woman with a history of attempting to steal newborns, according to court records obtained by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Andrea Curry-Demus, 38, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a felony, and dealing in infant children, a misdemeanor. Court records show that she was arraigned on the felony charge Friday and is next set to appear in court on Thursday. She is being held at the Allegheny County Jail, WTAE reported. Watch Andrea Curry-Demus being taken into custody. According to a criminal complaint, Curry-Demus was taken by ambulance to a local hospital Wednesday with the baby, claiming it was hers. Tests at the hospital proved that she was not the mother, and police were notified. Curry-Demus told Grande she had suffered a miscarriage in June and "did not want her mother to get upset." In the complaint, Detective Rich Grande said Curry-Demus told him she purchased the baby from a woman named Tina for $1,000. Morton said fingerprint testing had ruled out a woman named Tina Carter, one of two other pregnant black women who have been reported missing in the area. On Wednesday, Curry-Demus said, Tina showed up with her newborn wrapped in a towel and left. Curry-Demus said she called medics because the baby was still "dirty from birth," the complaint said. The baby is in good condition, a hospital spokeswoman said, and will be released to child welfare workers when he is ready. Reporters visiting Curry-Demus' apartment earlier Friday had noticed flies and smelled an odor from the sidewalk below, WTAE said. Police Chief Ophelia Coleman said the body was not found earlier because Curry-Demus' sister led them to another apartment. Friends and relatives said Curry-Demus had told them she was pregnant for months, even having a baby shower. "I went to the baby shower and her wedding," Ivee Blunt said. "I had no idea something like this could happen. I'm totally shocked. And she was so nice and kind. It's just unbelievable." But Stephanie Epps, Curry-Demus' sister-in-law, said Curry-Demus would never allow her to touch her stomach. "Pregnant women do things like that," she said. "They're happy because they're pregnant. But she would never do none of that." As she was led out of the Wilkinsburg Police Department, Curry-Demus told reporters, "I didn't do nothing," according to WTAE. According to court records obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Curry-Demus became pregnant at 12 and miscarried four months later. She had a second miscarriage in 1990, when she was 21, the paper said. Only a few months after the second miscarriage, Curry-Demus befriended a woman who had just given birth but later attacked her with a knife and tried to steal the baby, the paper said, citing the court records. The woman's husband intervened, and she fled, the newspaper reported. The next day, she went to a hospital and befriended a woman who had brought her 3-week-old daughter to the hospital to be treated for meningitis, the Tribune-Review said. When the woman went home for the night, Curry-Demus left the hospital with the baby. It was found at her home, unharmed, the following day. In 1991, according to the records, she pleaded guilty to various charges stemming from both incidents and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, the newspaper reported. She was paroled in August 1998 and ordered to serve 10 years of probation, the paper said. Curry-Demus was examined by psychiatrists at the Allegheny County Jail before her sentencing and was diagnosed with severe depression, personality disorders and auditory hallucinations, the newspaper reported, citing court records. She told doctors she spent a lot of time thinking about her miscarriages and "kept hearing babies cry," the Tribune-Review said. Wilkinsburg is just east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, a Kansas woman was sentenced to death in the 2004 killing of a Missouri woman whose baby was cut from her womb. Lisa Montgomery was convicted in October in the death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, who was found strangled in her Skidmore, Missouri, home. Stinnett's womb was cut open, and her unborn child was missing. Montgomery was found days later at home in Kansas, where she was attempting to pass the baby off as her own. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ and then there is this lovely video footage: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/police-find-drunk-man-passed-out-in-car-with-his-kids-in-the-back/2184692915 TITUSVILLE, Fla. -- A Brevard County man was caught on video passed out at the wheel with his three children in the back seat at the Quik Stop in Titusville on Wednesday night. An Eyewitness News camera crew was in the area when a call came in over the police scanner and arrived before officers. David Novick, his friend and Novick's three kids managed to get to the gas station safe and sound, driving a couple blocks from his home down SR-50. He went there to buy cigarettes and passed out with his children, all under five years old, in the car. Novick never saw the police coming. The 37-year-old Titusville man was out cold when they showed up. His three children were unbuckled in the back seat of the parked car. Police questioned whether there was something more than alcohol involved. The single father was so out of it, not police, not a slap in the face and not even police removing his children could get him to wake up. "Dave, they are taking the kids," Novick's friend told the passed-out dad. When he finally did get out of the car, police said Novick failed a sobriety test and a breathalyzer indicated he had a blood alcohol level of .152, nearly twice the legal limit. He was arrested and charged with DUI, driving with a license suspended and, because there were three children in the car, three counts of child neglect. The three small children were placed in the care of Novick's girlfriend. "They miss him a whole bunch. They love their dad and he loves them. He's a really, really good dad. He is," said Novick's friend Shamra Sika. Novick is being held in the Brevard County jail on $30,000 bond. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- A 20-year-old Missouri woman has pleaded guilty to snatching a pregnant teenager she met online in a foiled plot to wait out delivery and steal the newborn. Lauren Gash pleaded guilty Friday to kidnapping, assaulting and restraining 18-year-old Amanda Howard in a motel room a year ago. Gash and her lawyer said in court she planned to raise the baby as her own. Investigators believe the plan failed after a co-defendant, Alisa Betts, got scared and called police. Officers arrived at the motel to find duct tape around Howard's neck. A few days later, Howard delivered a healthy boy. Betts is charged with kidnapping, assault and felonious restraint _________________________________________________________________________________________________ ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Little Caylee Anthony disappeared more than a month ago, but her mother kept her daughter's disappearance a secret until this week. Now the 22-year-old mom is in jail and the community is asking, "Where is Caylee?" Investigators said Caylee Anthony's mother borrowed a shovel from neighbors around the time the 2-year-old disappeared a month ago. They searched the back yard at Caylee's grandparent's house on Hopespring Drive (see map) Thursday night. Police said Casey Anthony had been at the home, alone, during the past five weeks and Thursday night they began searching the backyard to make sure 2-year-old Caylee was not there. Investigators used search dogs, cadaver dogs and tools to comb the yard for clues "Like everybody, I'm hopeful we find the child alive, but we want to be prudent and follow up every lead we get," said Sergeant John Allen of the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Neighbors who know the family were upset to see the grandparent's home turn into a crime scene. The family said they remain hopeful. Orange County's lead investigator on the case said they received several calls since news of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony's disappearance hit the news, but they're still looking for the little girl and they said her mother continues to be their biggest obstacle. A judge denied bond for Casey Anthony Thursday morning, saying that she lied to her family about the whereabouts of her child, whom she hasn't seen since June 9. "You left your 2-year-old child Caylee Anthony with a person who does not exist, at an apartment you can not identify and you lied to your parents and friends concerning your child's whereabouts," Judge John Jordan said during the bond hearing for Casey Anthony. "You didn't even report her missing until five weeks later and then only because the child's grandmother insisted." Anthony said nothing in court except for acknowledging to the judge who she is. She was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of child neglect and lying to the authorities. (Five Lies) "Your 2-year-old child is still missing and it appears you've shown no regrets or concern with your actions," Judge Jordan said Thursday morning. "Ms. Anthony, the court would say to you, 'Where is Caylee Anthony?' But I can't force you to answer that question. But that's the question I leave with you, do you understand?" "Yes sir," Anthony said. The judge ordered her to have a mental health screening for Baker Act criteria. Now that she's held on no bond, prosecutors say that gives them a 33-day window to file formal charges and then Anthony could ask for bond again. The grandmother of Caylee Anthony, Cynthia Anthony, has no explanation as to why her own daughter did not notify authorities that the child has been missing for weeks. "Once we got involved, it was our biggest concern to try and locate the child," Cynthia Anthony said. (Interview With Grandmother) Casey claims she dropped her daughter off with a babysitter and friend named Zenaida and has not seen either of them since. Law enforcement sources said Casey led them to an apartment where the babysitter supposedly lived, but the apartment had been vacant for more than three months. Deputies said Casey told them she worried her daughter might be hurt if the police got involved, so she lied to her own parents, telling them the young girl was fine. Investigators said they tried to question people at Casey's workplace, but she lied about working at a Universal Studios. Sources said she even led them around the park, saying she was taking them to her employee locker. "It's things like that which causes concern. This is time we could've spent trying to locate the child," said Sgt. John Allen of the Orange County Sherriff's Office. It is only one element in a story that has the woman's own mother concerned. "I've never seen her be a bad mom. She loves her daughter, I don't doubt that," said Cynthia Anthony. Investigators said they have not found the friend Casey claims she left her child with. The Department of Children and Families told Eyewitness News it has opened its own investigation, but there's little the agency can do until they find out what happened to the girl. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Now I know there are a bunch of you who are likly to want to strap on your activisim hats and start championing hte cause of those born into abject poverty in 3rd world countries and the fact that their births are in fact an actual miracle given the circumstances their mothers carry them to term in. I will not argue you that point. But I would argue in reply that a woman in Darfur who manages to carry her child to term and delivery a healthy (ish) baby into the world is liveing in a very different version of the world than a woman in the United states ( or mainland Europe) has been since at the earliest the 1950s but certainly no later than the late 1960s. The levels of difference between that Darfur mother's world and ours are several orders of magnitude apart. I will not for one moment argue that the women who manage to survive in abject poverty and care for children and still find some modicum of joy in life are not miraculous beings deserving of as much prasie (and 10 times more help) as the world can give them. We however have done everything in our power here in America and the 'modern world" to undercut the miraculousness of that act by sublimating it to the less than boring state it now resides in. * On October 14, 1593 Gil Perez was allegedly teleported from a Spanish Colony garrison in Manila Phillippines to Mexico City. Perez had been serving guard duty at the Governor's Palace in manila. Upon appearing in Mexico City he addmitted to knowing he was no longer in Manila, but having no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. He testified that the Governor (Don Gomez Perez Dasmarinas) had been assasinated. When informed he was in Mexico City, Perez refused to believe it saying that recieved his orders on the morning of October 25th in manila and that it was therefore impossible for him to be in Mexico City on the 24th. The authorities places Perez in Jail as a deserter and for the possibility that he might be in the service of Satan (Gotta love it when serving statn was still an imprisonable offense.....man the fun we could have with Geroge W on that one!). The Most Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition questioned him, but all he could say in his own defense was that he had travelled from manila to Mexico City "in less time than it takes a cock to crow". Two months later, news from the Phillippines reached Mexico City via a galleon out of Manila confirming the essential facts of perez's account. The former Governor had been beheaded in a revolt led by chinese rowers, as well as corroborating other elements of the fantastical story that Perez had first told. Wittnesses confirmed that Perez had indeed been on guard duty just before magically arriving in Mexico City. Furthermore, one of the passengers on the ship recognized Perez and swore that he had seen him in the Phillipines on October 23rd. Gil Perez eventually returned to the phillippines and took up his former position as a palace guard, living from thenceforth a seemingly uneventful life.

Hells Belle

Joel — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:13:36 GMT

SO as you all might have noted in previous postings I have made mention of several "guest critters" that we are hosting. They came to us through a convoluted series of circumstances that don't really have any bearing on this posting so I'm not going to bother rehashing those here. The only sallient point out of that tale of human stupidity that really bears noting is that the former owner of these 4 little lost souls has an X-wife (Dominique) who lives in Atlanta GA who wishes to come and claim the disposessed four legged wonders. BLESS HER HEART! Now first I should say that despite the inconveniences these four critters have cuased in my day to day existance, they are at base really cute, generally well behaved animals that I have honestly developed affections for......we just happen to live in a house and in a style that are not conducive to having a small herd of creatures running roughshod over the house like some sleep away play camp for thouse evolutionarily not blessed with thumbs. There are two dogs and two cats. The dogs are a Shephard Chow mIx and a Shepherd golden retriever mix....Ella and Sheba respectively, and ella is about 3 years old and Sheba is in the neighborhood of 12 to 13. The Cats are Mimi and Meesh ( I didn't choose that name.....its freakin stupid....he looks like MOrris the cat...so thats what I call him...and he seems to agree with the re-naming as he responds instantly to the new name when called) and Mimi is a bit of a bitch....she rules the pack with an iron paw and takes no prisoners. Morris likes sleeping on my bed with me and is the cuddeliest thing you'd ever want to see. Suffice it to say it is going to be hard on an emotional level for me to say goodbye to these little guys when the day comes even though it will mean an easing of tensions within the house for having had sleep schedules up-ended by these critters and the mass inconvenience of 2 extra dogs both of whom shed at an allarmingly fast and copious rate! And even if Dominique has the smarts god gave a guinea hen, she's a sweet spirit....BLESS HER HEART! which brings me to my point....the departure of the critters. Initially this arrangement was supposed to be 2 to three weeks tops. last week marked the month and a week marker post. The Woman ( Dominique) who will be claiming hte critters has sent us a whopping $100 for the care and upkeep of her animals till she can come claim them. The critters have started trying to mark territory ( because its been long enough now that they are starting to treat our house as new "home" and thus they are trying to establish a pecking order with my dog and that is a war fought with pee and poop as the weapons of first usage). So the carpets have had to be cleaned repeatedly, the animals have shot through food at an alarming rate...i had no idea 3 dogs could or would eat that rapaciously! I have been daily wakened by cats and dogs wanting out or wanting attention at the glorious hour of 5am.....and I admitt I tend to be an early riser...but you'd be amazed by teh difference between getting up at 6 and getting up at 5am and how it impacts your general demeanor....trust me...in my case it is often the difference between a power puff girl and Lizzie Borden. Our vaccuum cleaner died rather than hang in there and help us fight the unending battle against tumbleweeds of dog that daily need to be wrangled or they run the risk of taking over like so many tribbles! And she has sent us $100. Why that Dominique....she's a speacial soul, I can't imagine anyone ever thinking she was dumber than a sack of wet mice! BLESS HER HEART! Couple this inadaquacy with the fact that I was forced to strap on the "bitch hat" 2 weeks ago and put my foot down because it became increasingly clear that Dominique was manipulating the situation and trying to play the sympathy card ( i was a twee bit unclear how an X wife of 6 years gets to play the "grieving widow" act.........but mabey thats just me) everytime discussion rolled round to nailing down a definitive time for her to come and get the critters. When put to the sharpest of points verbally she confessed she actually had done nothing to formalize a plan to come collect her new children of the four legged variety from us. To say that I went ballistic would be like calling hiroshima an M-80. Dear Dominique.....BLESS HER HEART! Now I was raised by a bunch of women who, although not southern-belles geographically speaking, had definitely been imprinted by some actual honest to god Belles and as such alot of the customs and traditions trickled down to me by default. Despite my somewhat barbed tongue and strident vocabulary on here in my blog, in real life I try to err on the side of decorum most often in defference to the social graces. Sure I may let my tongue "off the leash" if I am in trusted company whom I know are not likly to be offended by my colorful retoric....but I am very conscious of the concept of "public" vs "Private" voice. i also learned from some fo the best how to be more cutting than a scyth at threshing time while still sounding perfectly polite and genteel, words can be a weapon more potent than any dueling souther beaux could have concieved of.......bruises and cuts will heal...try rehabing a reputation once a southern belle has sunk her teeth into it with an axe to grind for personal reasons and see what the recovery rate is like! So I got a scoach terse with this little Georgia Peach and made it emphatically clear that if she did not have a plan in place to collect her shedding progeny from us, that in short order I would start taking steps to place them in homes with no care for her opinion of that plan. And you know what......dropping the verbal ruffles and releasing the dialog from the confines of the hoops and crinolines that were shielding everyone from cold hard facts managed to have an impact! Low and behold Dominique will be arriving on the 21st of July to collect the critters, and should be departing on the 23rd ....theoretically....since as yet she still has no actual plan of action other than comingh here. HOw the woman manages a B&B that hosts special events and yet manages to not be able to schedule a simple trip and whenever put to the task of discussing scheduling can't seem to nail down what her daily/weekly/monthly schdule looks like.........I am so glad I am not working for/with this woman! BLESS HER HEART! oh...by the way, I have been using some basic "southergirl speak" here that a few of you might be unclear on. There is a long held tradition in southern genteel society, that you can say the most horrid disreputable things about someone ( true or less than strictly so) so long as you follow it with the caveat "Bless her heart" ( as this is most often being used when speaking of another woman) it negates all the hateful, vile things you have said before. when used alone with no critiquing commentary preceeding it, the understanding is that you think that the person in question is any of the following, but certainly not limited to this list: -a cum drunk road-stop-rest whore -a cheep junkyard floosie -dumb as a sack of hair -tackier than a tube top in church -a lying sack of horse shit -possesed of the moral fiber of a female alley cat -so ugly it looks like she fell out the ugly tree, hooked her teeth on the bottom branch end even the grim reaper won't cut her down like so much strange fruit. -so ugly is looks like someone lit her face on fire and beat it out with a bag of hot nickels feel free to add to the list of implied critiques as you see fit. I am so looking forward to meeting Dominique so I can bless her heart to her face in the sweetest tone imagineable. and thus I will leave you with this: its a hot summer afternoon in North Carolina. Two Southern Belles sit in tehir hoops skirts ( cause that's the required uniform of a Belle) sipping mint julleps watching bees buzzing in the magnolias and bouganvliiea on the outside of hte jalousies. One belle, Mary-belle(M), is telling the other , Arabell(A), about how married life is treating her......... (M)- "Well sugar, you know my Beauregard, he went and got himself promoted to Executive Vice President, and don't you know that came with a big old fat raise!" (A)-"Well, isn't that nice!" {she sips her mint jullep} (M)-"And don't you know it, Beau though it was awful I had to drive that little car to the store, so he hired a town car and driver to take me everywhere!" (A)"Well isn't that nice!" {She pats her forehead with a scrap of lace edged emboridered linen} (M)"And you know what else, he thought it high time the children were enrolled in private school so they only mix with the right element you know......." (A)-"Well isn't that nice!" {She flicks open a carved wood fan and delicately fans herself} (M)-"And the best part.......for our 1 year anniversary he got me this stupid-big DIAMOND RING {wags hand in A's face to flaunt it}! (A)-"Well.....isn't that nice!" she says appreciatively inspecting the glittering golfball size rock on M's finger...then returns to sipping her mint jullep and swats a mosquito decisively. (M)-:Well sweetie, I been sittin' here pratteling on 'bout all the things Beauregard has showered on me since gettin' his promotion and you haven't said a thing about what Jackson's been doing for you since you got married last year!" (A)-{Flicks her fan shut and sets it in her lap} "Why he got me Charm and Deportment lessons over at Miss Pitty Pat's Finishing School." she says as she checking her hair in the reflextion on the back of a silver spoon (M)-"Jackson enrolled you in charm school?" she asks in a tone that implies this is akin to discovering one has stepped in dog mess in the yard. (A)-"Why yes he did, and its been the best thing really, changed my life!" (M)-"Well I don't see how it can be all that great, I mean its not like a car, or a provate school, or a ring, or scads of money..." she replies clearly at a loss trying to locate the societal benefit charm school would offer when compared with the tangible things her husband had surrounded her with (A)-"Well, for instance, the other day when we were having our class on how to conduct oneself in social situations with other women, Miss Pitty Patt taught us, that no matter how much some catty two faced small minded gutter slut (whose husband was keeping the hookers on the boulevard in shiny red heels) might irk us and make us what to point out that no amount of diamonds, hired cars or provate schools would ever elevate her from being tacky trailer-trash, Bless her heart, and no matter how much her silly bragging might make us want to slap her silly.......any time we felt our temper starting to boil and were in danger of telling that woman to GO FUCK HERSELF!....we should smile demurely and say as sweetly as possible......"Well, isn't that nice!"

Hellboy 2 and other thoughts

Joel — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:23:49 GMT

Gabriel, as promised, this is for you. I am a bit on the foggy side for want of sleep, but given the unexpected pleasure of a phone call earlier, I can't not post this now so you can read it ASAP if you so choose. Its strange that we had the conversation about beer and the fact that is nothing more than packaged frat boy piss....granted yes I will allow that guiness is a thing unto itself and not to be lumped into the same category as beer.........but I am of the mindset that it is nothing more elaborate than Irish Stew pulsed in a blender with beer and served as a beverage....Guiness the beer that drinks like a meal ( and ought to be served with a sharp knife and a fork!....in any event I digress.....Beer ended up playing a part in our evening after the phone conversation...and regret that it did since I am sure we summoned it by saying its name more than three times ( beetle juice rules do apply in real life) Anyway......Hellboy 2: Guillermo Del Toro is amazing. this man has an imagination like no other.....this is good in some ways since some of the images he creates from that imagination are truly disturbing ....but in other ways our world would be a far richer place if more people would develop the eyesight that looks inward through the lense of imagination to see as Del Toro does. The opening sequence where a young Hellboy is being told a bedtime story and imagining the events of the story as if being acted out by toys and puppets sounds odd and infantile when reduced to words on a screen...but when you see the images and the beautiful way they are composed....you'll see whay I am happy to report that in fun, in vision, and in beauty, this movie not only meets expectations, but exceeds them. I am not going to give away any of the major plot points because I want you al lto go and see the movie, I will however say that I am in love with the costume designer's work....whomever they had hand deying fabrics more than earned his/her money for the creation of the yards of dazzeling blue silk that Princess Nualla wears as well as the amazingly delicate fade from ivory at the top to deep scarlet at he hem 9 an accomplishment of dip deying not to be sneezed at for any who have ever attempted this nerve wracking procedure and have the many failures to show for it) The story is not earth shattering, it is good, it is the performances and the expanding of the world in which the characters inhabited in the last film that really make this a fun movie.......though I have to say I was impressed with their usage of Tenneyson, not to mention the beauty of the piece of his they chose to excerpt into the dialog. For anyone who is familiar with Ron Perlman's early career and his turn as Vincent in Beauty and The Beast back in the 80s, there is a cameo early on in the film that you will appreciate and be amused by.....there's a good amount of effects make up in the way....but the voice gives it away. it is well worth seeing...particularly in a summer movie season that presented so many potential thrills and chills that did not pan out ot be the great experiences they were lauded as. So Gabriel...Having drunk a toast to your boys with the Nicaraguan Rum....of what ever you used if you had exhausted that bottle by the time that news was brought to you.......I hope you are sleeping peacefully tonight. I'm going to call in a few markers since in reality I am JUST a trophy wife and not a fully fledged fairy godmother yet...so the powers are going to be loaners for tonight, but this once the loan will be worth it.........those twinkeling lights I am about to go to sleep under, the same ones over you on your end of the country.......just for tonight they really are just stars and you can enjoy them. I can only make it last a night, but just for you ( well for Fouty and Jimenez too really) they aren't a massive swarm of all our collected pannic buttons flashing down at us. They're just stars tonight. Oh....and i almost forgot.....the beer. So my friend Tristan and I exit the elevator into hte below ground parking deck to go to her car......and we are chatting about the movie and our pleasure at all it presented.........when we notice beer cans all over her car! 2 six packs worth to be precise. Some on the roof, one behind each wheel, on the hood. All empty or with just a few dregs left in them, none appearing to have been poured on the car. Now I should add that in Bellevue WA we call it "Blah-view" because its nothing but nouveau riche microsoft money.......no culture or taste, just mega shit ton's of money. So the idea that anyone, much less several someones had nothign better to do with their night on a Thursday in this yuppie haven but hang out in the 3rd sub level of a parking garage and drink Miller Lite and leave the cans on my friend Tristan's car sortta baffeled us. The only thing we could theorize beyond random weirdness was the "Obama for President" campaign sign she has in her back window possibly provoking someone who is anti Obama to do something as infantile as this. Mind you they had to do some stepping to do it...because unless they were cruising around with 2 six packs of miller lite in their car in the 3rd sub level of a parking garage in bellevue on a thursday late night.....they had to drive at least 5 blocks in any given direction to get to a place where they could even have purchased that piss water beer! And given the cost of gas mileage these days and the average vehicle any of the overly pampered self indulgant bellevueians drive is a big ass SUV....well we took comfort in the fact that this practical joke in all liklihood probably sot them more than the energy it casued us to expend flicking aside the empties ( after taking a few digital pics to be forwarded on to the Mall's security company) and then drive home. Ok...so I need sleep now, I'm going to go and enjoy the view of a few of those stars through my bedroom window while they still are just stars. go back to your lives more to report later

It takes a Village to raise an IDIOT

Joel — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:48:46 GMT

OK...so I just watched the clip. and there are a few things that any third rate PR person could have told Reverand Jackson that would have saved him from the fiasco he is now embroiled in. 1-There is no such thing as "off Camera" when you are one of the most prominent Black politicians in America in an election where the country is being offered their first Black Presidential Candidate......no matter what the producer and camera man say......assume the camera is ALWAYS rolling. 2-As a Prominent Reverand with alot of clout in the political arean...it might be wise to refrain from using phrases like " ....cut his nuts off" { even if whispering in a situation when you think no one is able to hear you} when in a public setting. Long range camera and long range directional mics are NOT your friend and WILL catch what you want least to have recorded and replayed ad infinitum on the news programs and tabloid shows. not to mention your political capital will plumit since you have called into question your religous/spiritual credentials by descending to gutter language and thug style threats to voice your disagreement with a member of your own political party and faith. 3-much like the camera comment.....if there is a Microphone clipped to ANY part of you....assume it is always recording...because it probably is 4-LOOK FOR THE LITTLE GREEN LIGHT YOU IDIOT! When the little green light on the camera is lit you can safely assume that...you are being recorded, the camera is "hot" , you are "live" etc...insert industry buzz phrase for your happy ass is being recorded! now we have a former "also ran" runner up who never got the crown and roses creating an non-issue issue to distract the campaign from dealing with actual real honest to god issues worthy of attention. There are days when "B" reel is fun....this is not one of them!

Wanted: Dead, or Alive?

Joel — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:02:49 GMT

As previously promised I am popping in with a redux of "Wanted". In a summer that has forced the movie industry to rethink how, what and when it presents films it had assumed were slam dunk hit potentials to a populace increasingly empowered to disagree with Hollywood's assesment of these films....we are served up the most recent installment of"blockbuster-mania". The Film's advance-press-kit comes pre-lubed with skid greasing star power in the persons of Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, and James MacCavoy; each of whom has done some pretty signifigant work and garnered their own accolades and when ammassed in one film should act as a pretty iron clad insurance policy for success. Add to this star power an internationally acclaimed Russian Director, Timur Bekmambetov , who rocketed into the cinema world's collective consciousness with the first two installments of his trilogy of "watcher" movies.....a vampire franchise "Nochnoy dozor" {night watch} (2004) and Dnevnoy dozor {Day Watch} (2006), which he directed during 2003 - 2005. Both films became international blockbusters, and received several awards and nominations. The third installment, Twilight Watch (2009), is slated for release in 2009. If you've not seen them....rent them, buy them or stick them on your netflix lists....because damn are they good and will give you a wonderful scare thrill of an adrenaline rush....and the visuals are just plain stunning. All of these factors combined, plus a top notch team of visual effects specialists, a cult favorite of a comic book that it is based on, and you have what should be considered a sure thing in the arena of summer blockbusters. One would think......... And if one did so, one would be regretably disappointed with the actual product they recieved in the film. The reality of this cinematic jaunt does not come near to living up to the potential put forth in its ultra hip trailer that prominently features the acrobatics of Angalina Jolie as an assasin who tears up the scenery in a metropolitan car chase that looks to break new ground in the arena of expecting the audience to willfully suspend its disbelief in the gratuitous defiance of physics, modern mechanics, balistics, as well as coture (her frock remains amazingly intact despite some acrobatics that should have reduced it to shreds, which could only have served to please the men in the audience.....not to mention after leaning out a broken window she has narry a snag in its elicate shell........but I digress). If the pacing of the movie were so frenetic that I was sucked in and never aloowed to consider these things, I'd be ok with that. If the writing were so good that I was not sitting there ticking off a list of the movies that preceed this one that the director lifted from heavily for stylistic influences in both the dialog and in the filming technique or just the plot line......well ultimately I was left feeling that there was very little of this movie that was really "new" it felt like warmed over rehashes of already existing much better films that had packeged the concepts, characters, or plot points that "Wanted" attempts to re-invigorate much more adroitly and with vastly superior sophistocation than 'Wanted" can muster. Now the film does open promisingly with a suitably cryptic confrontation that has overtones of "The Matrix" threaded through it so heavily that its hard to separate the cloth of one from the other they are so interwoven. There are laws of physics broken in interesting ways that spark interest, but are ultimately never really explained. There are plenty of grotesque deaths at the point of alot of very artfully shot bullets in a few cases their trajectories are back tracked so the viewing audience can see how arty the shooter was. Visual masturbation. after this action packed intro we are subjected to a much slower and less well crafted retread of edward norton's character at the begining of "Fight Club" complete with the droll snide superior voice over to navigate us through the tedious morass that James Macavoy's character ( Wilson Gibson) has allowed his life to become. in-artfully decorated with editorializing overly critical cash machine screen commentaries and complete with a direct nod to the Ikea blase-ness of Edward Notorton's Ikea catalog existance in 'Fight Club"...all i could think as we sat there watching Wilson's life crawl across the screen pathetically was please dear lord let the plot kick in soon! and sure enough, as if the projector were capable of comprehending that the audience's attention was flagging and in danger of wandering....there is Angelina Jolie. Well, at least now we'll get some action out of this movie. And we do...see the above reference to the metro car chace that bends about every rule imagineable. From the point of the car chase on all I can say is that Angelina had to have been Pissed as all Hell that Brad got to make "Fight Club" before her because the next 45 minutes wastes alot of time acting like a bad step cousin of "Fight Club". Now anyone who has seen "Star Wars" is not likly to miss the "Luke I'm your Father" come to jesus moment that is telegraphed from the begining of the movie, and I assure you I am not spoiling an earth shattering surprise by mentioning that fact. Helen Keller could have predicted that bit all on hewr own steam! Ultimately, this is an instance where I am inclined to say that "Immitation is ther sincerest form of flattery" might be how the saying goes but I think Missy Elliot put it more accurately: "Coppywritten, so don't copy me! Y'all do it sloppily, and Y'all can't get close to me!" at the end of the movie ( after a very glib and annoying closing line) my final thought was that the movie should more accurately have been titled "Wanting!"

Designer Labels and Bargain Shopping

Joel — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:22:40 GMT

Shopping for labels, shopping for love Manolo and Louis, it's all I'm thinking of Shopping for labels, shopping for love Manolo and Louis, it's all I'm thinking of I already know what my addiction is I be looking for labels, I ain't looking for love I shop for purses while love walks out the door Don't cry, buy a bag and get over it And, I'm not concerned with all the politics It's a lot of men I know I could find another. I know I might come off as negative I be looking for labels, I ain't looking for love Relationships are often so hard to tame A Prada dress has never broken my heart before And, ballin's something that I'm fed up with I'mma do the damn thing, watch me do the damn thing Cause I know that my credit card will help me put out the flames I'm guessing Supercalifragi-sexy, nothing to be playing with I love him, hate him, kiss him, diss him, tryna to walk a mile in my kicks Love's like a runway but which one do I love more? No emotional baggage, just big bags filled with Dior Love's like a runway, so what's all the fussing for? Let's stop chasing them boys and shop some more. Gucci, Fendi, Prada purses, purchasing them finer things Men they come a dime a dozen, just give me them diamond rings I'm into a lot of bling, Cadillac, Chanel and Coach Fellas boast but they can't really handle my female approach Buying things is hard to say Rocking Christian Audigier, Manolo, Polo, taking photos in my Cartier So we can't go all the way, I know you might hate it but I'm a shop for labels while them ladies lay and wait for love _______________________________________________________________________________________ SO admittedly Fergie is not ever going to be accused of being the next Cole Porter or rival Rogers and Hammerstein for intelligence and subtle wit of lyrics....but while tooling along through my work the last few days with the soundtrack to "Sex and the City" playing on my Ipod this song got stuck in my head because it is really really catchy. and it got me to thiking about the idea of shopping for Labels, and how we do it in relationships as much as we do it when shopping for things...clothes, soft drinks, beers, cars, jewelry, cigarettes....the list that madison Avenue decides we can be influenced ,through their not so delicate ministrations ( manipulations), to buy on an ever increasing persuit of the illusive "cool factor" attached to having the new cool thing. We like to tell ourselves that we are an egallitarian society, that we don't judge books by their covers. If that were true Delta Burke would be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and Jack black would get a full centerfold spread in Playgirl. I think we can all agree that neither of those things is likly to ever happen. But despite surrounding ourselves with media outlets that bombard our id with imagery crafted to specifically stimulate our inner neanderthal, we repeat the mantra to ourselves that we look at the personality and not the skin wrapping paper and that true beauty comes from within. Well, I say lets own our inner consumer, that shopper who eyes up a potential purchase on the market of love, and without so much as a singe word of conversation, will dismiss someone as unattractive for a list fo arbitrary physical characteristics that now can have almost nothing to do with genetic ( good or bad) if you have the monetary fortitude to commission the Da Vinci's and Michelangelo's of our age....plastic surgeouns to recreate you in the image of your own personal God(dess). Lets put our cards on the table and stop with the crackly-granola-crystal-toting-hippy-dippy-Kum-By-Ah crap and stop pretending we actuallt believe that real beauty comes from within. If everyone really believed that would Donald Trump have married the women he has? Would Pamela Anderson have inflated and reduced her breasts so much that she now can most accurately be described as the "goldi-cocks" of mammery-esque-pool-floation-devices ( "No Dr...these E cups are to small, no Dr these Double M cups are too large, Ah...these I cups are JUST RIGHT!")? Would we all be getting poorly targeted emails offering us a larger penis in weeks with a higher volume of ejaculation ( and how that even begins to qualify as a selling points and not a warning on a par with "anal leakage" mentioned in Olestra and Olean's respective fine print really escapes my comprehension...but mabey its just me) if realy beauty was radiating from within and the outer wrapping paper didn't matter? Now I do have to warn you, embracing our labels of attraction, owning up to the styles and designer-look in human flesh we find most appealing does come with a hefty price tag. You have to be willing to pay the price for being openly prejudicial. And this is where, I think, the concept of "inner beauty" comes into play. If, as we are sifting humans like so much grain from chaff, we throw the occasional "bargain special" that we know we're never actually going to buy and take hom onto the pile of things to be considered and ultimately rejected, something that really suits us more realistically and may be more practical and less fantasy based.......something we can say we didn't like the fit of, didn't think it flattered us enough, was a little too old, wasn't quite teh style we had been hoping for, would have been perfect if it came in a different color....we can con ourselves into believing the hype that we aren't prejudicial in how we look at one another. I noticed something the other day while window shopping in the "meat section" of the human equivalent of Nieman marcus.....Gay.com. Now before you all sreech and run, hear me out. I'm not going to go into the gory details of who was trolling for what...believe me my retina's are scorched enough from having read a few of the "seeking" categories on a few choicer profiles! I'll not taint the keyboard by typing out some of the more....umm...."interesting" (in that I never wanna be within 100 yards of someone doing this sort of way).....carnal proclivities. I am just going to comment on the hypocricy embodied in a long laundry list of shallow characteristics by which gay men will sift one another, and then after reducing the worth of a man to nothing more lofty than his skin color, his physique, his age, his percieved masculinity, or the size of his penis...and then as if to try to wipe away the reductive descriminatory tone such a laundry list implies punctuate it with "no offense". This is about as viable as ordering the entire menue at McDonalds for yourself and adding a Diet Coke to try negating your gross overindulgance. But it's not just gay men who belive the whole is no where near as interesting as the individual parts....look at the vast quantity of highly specific porn magazines that cater to every possible way a man's libido can carve up a woman's physique to separate out those cahracteristics he finds appealing. Big Boobs, Big Boobs on skinny chicks, big boobs on fat chicks, natural boobs, fake boobs, almost no boobs....you neame it there's a magazine and a video company that caters to it. Now of all clasees of humans, straight men I have found most willing to won their "label preferences".....the problem is that they tend to reach for what amounts to the unattainable 95% of the time! tehy let the fantasy color reality until any woman who isn't an exact match to their very trait specific libido starters will ultimately be discarded as imperfect for having too many other qualities that he cannot reconcile to the inadequate space the little jello mold his fantasy represents when placed nect to a living breathing woman with a many faceted personality. Women are jsut as bad....How many men are sick of being held agains Brad pitt, Colin Farell, Orlando Bloom, as examples of 'perfect physiques or bodies? The fact that Calf, Buttock, Penile, and Pec implants are a growing bumper crop industry in the cosmetic surgery industry clearly demonstrates that men are just as suceptibel to vanity's "labeling" dictates. Granted, men need to be warrier of going under the knife than women. Men don't care if a lady has "amped up" her figure by having liposuction, has granite solid D-cup tits that can smack her in the eye when she hiccoughs.....so long as she fulfills that fantasy exterior that he lusts after he won't care if its real or a Designer imposter. Few Straight men could sopt a fake Fendi, nor are they inclined to care as long as it looks like Fendi. Women are different. Once you have lusted after the "designer one of a kind original" getting a guy who looks like Brad Pitt, but is in reality so botoxed and implanted that he can't have a real facial expression and sleeping with him is like having a vibrator that loads its own batteries but never feels like "the real thing"....well she's likly to loose her fascination with the fantasy and turn to more reality based imagery sooner All this being said.........If Chris Noth, Mikhal Barishnakov, Patrick Stewart, Sting, Lambert Wilson, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, George Clooney, or James Marster ( to name a few) were to show up on my doporstep wanting a date with me don't think I'd hesitate for a new york minute! I know my prefered labels, and I know they are a good fit so I have no qualms shopping for them!

Truck Nutz! or Sexuality politicized

Joel — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:09:26 GMT

So I know there are those of you who are well versed in the fact that sexuality in its wide palette of flavors, proclivities, transgression, and indulgances has become more politicized than even in the age of the inquisition. In a time when what you choose to do, with whom you choose to do it, in what room you choose to do it, whom you are pretending to be while doing it, what props and costumes you are using to further the doing of "doing it" all conspire to demographically sift you into smaller and smaller groupings that allow the mainstream of the populace to neatly seal you in societal 'tupperware", burp the lid and shelve you as a comfortingly quantified and reassuringly "not like me" quantity; can it really be that great a surprise that many men have decided to re-embrace their inner neanderthal and make it unflinchingly clear to those of us (who really had no doubts or desire to see visual asertions) in society that not only are they heterosexual...but demonstrably so? As you might have guessed from the title of this blog, what got me thinking of this, and a few other tengentally connected thing, was a story I recently read about the Florida Legislature, Now mind you, I am a pretty tollerant creature. I can withstand alot of assaults on my visual cortex without going off the deep end and scrawling a minfesto out and then heading for a bell tower with a high powered rifle. But there are points at which I do seriously wonder about the collective mentality of our country. The Florida Legislature gave me pause and made me experience one of those moments. So in a social climate being fanned into fanaticism by heated debates about the government breaking laws in its surveillance practices, an economy being batted around like a badminton birdie everytime someone talks about high gas proces, immigration, the war in iraq, possible war in iran, tornadoes, earth quakes, floods in myanmar and the despotic dictatorship preventing relief from being sent to those victims...as well as revolutionary changes in Cuba.....what does the Florida legislature choose to spend time on? Truck Nutz. Yep, amidst all the potentially worthy topics they could be addressing to potentially better the lives of the residents of Florida....tehy have chosen to debate a bill proposing to make it illegal in the state of Florida to have "Truck Nutz"(tm) on your vehicle. Not only was there an actual floor debate...cause well its not enough that they wasted good tax payers money on this unimaginably idiotic topic...but no, it gets better Senator Jim King ( A republican representing Jacksonville...go figure) had the audacity to go on Senate record by saying: Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, said he had a set on one of his vehicles, which he described as "all pimped out." They are no more than "an expression of truckliness," he said, although he'd acceded to his wife's request to take them off. Now...before going on, I implore any of you reading this who live in the Jacksonville voting district....PLEASE make sure he answers for this damningly stupid statement when its time to re-elect him! I could give a flying rats ass if he has a set of fake testicles dangling from his truck, his car, or the pull tab on his trousers zipper....but please for the love of god if you are going to be an elected governmental official empowered to make decisions for the populace of your state could you try not to sound like such a blithering idiot?! I am sure there are those who might applaud Jim King's "testicular fortitude" in coming out as a "truck-nutter" but really....is that what you want representing you people....think about it. and have no fear...i am going to be doling out my ire and dissatisfaction with public vs private expression of sexuality...and not just heap it solely on the head of the red-neck-straight-good-ol'-boys sporting truck nutz. now I do have to admitt that there was a voice of reason in all of this bruhaha over "Lee-press-on-testicles": "I find it shocking we'd tell people with metallic testicles on their bumpers that this is a violation," said Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale. "There's got to be better things for us to spend time debating." mabey there is actually hope......a faint glimmer.......that stupidity is not being bred into the population as a dominant trait. now as said, sexuality is politicized to a ridiculous degree in our society, and also as said I am going to dole the critical observations around equally and liberally. But thats hardly a surprise since there is no secter of society you can turn your attention to without seeing that sex or sexuality have irrevocably redefined its politics and agenda. Women....there is no woman whom I have talked to in the past 15 years who doesn't have a strong opinion on one side of the fence or the other about Abortion. Abortion and the right to it and the desire to ban or severely restrict it are fast becoming the new political third rail gaurenteed to tank nearly any campaign for elected office because there is no answer a man can give on this nuanced question that won't piss of a signifigant number of demographic groups. A MAN.. Am I the only person in this country that thinks it quite odd that a governing body comprised almost entirely of the sex that will never ( with one glitteringly odd talk show freak exception) be burdened with having to carry a child to term and then give birth is in charge of deciding reproductive policy for the gender who are biologically designed to do so? Personally i say it should be a referendum vote that only those who have the "female" designation on their Identification and voter registration cards get to actually vote on...and what ever they com up with as a sollution then us schmoes with a penis can damn well shut up and live with it. I'm aware this is a somewhat reductive approach, but I really wish it was that simple. And in this age when children are only children until mabey the age of 5 or 6 at which point they are forced to rapidly evolve into little adults who must then grapple with larger abstract concepts and consequences while at the same time being asked by teachers to perfect long division and diagram sentences and learn american history. Into this fray march 18 young girls aged 16 or younger in Gloucester high School in Gloucester MA, who all made a pact ( allegedly...the authorities are still sussing out the details) to get pregnant and raise their babies together! Not at some unspecified time in the future when they had gone to college and established themselves as bread winning adults capable of providing for the panoply of demands a child places on its parents.....NOW...Pronto...ASAP. So determined to accomplish this goal are some of the girls that they were demonstrably upset when they were not pregnant despite their best efforts at accomplishing the deed, not to mention the fact that one of the girls had resorted to choosing a 24 yr old ( yes a 24 yr old father a chhild on a girl under the age of 16...so add statutory rape into the mix as well) homelss man as the father to her child. Gloucester High SChool has experienced a pregnancy boom this year in its 1,200 student body that is 4 times higher than the rate last year. So clearly we are managing to divorce the act of sex from any set of consequences quite sucessfully if children are engaging in it with the end goal of getting pregnant at the ages of 14-16 before they have even really begun to live their own lives. We have abandoned them to navigate the mine field that is an active sex life in this day and age and left them with modern media as their only constant and inconsistent instructor and then we marvel and ponder at the choices they arrive at? How daft can we be? Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl this week. She's 16. The news reported it like it s a great thing and not a travesty of bad parenting and poor sybling example setting. Something is horribly wrong. How does that all stack up to politicizing sexuality? Who's paying for those children'ss medical coverage, their food, their clothing, their day care while some of the mothers are in school still? We are, though welfare and the government. So how can children getting pregnant at an allarming rate not be a political concern in one way or another? moving right along, 'cause lord knows this is hardly the end of the spectrum of political sexuality......... California this week started officially solemnizing Same Sex Marriages. No doubt this is going to be the very tip of the ice berg that is likly to rake across the bow of American government and start filling alot of compartments with icy difficulty navigated waters. Massachusets was the "Ice Berg dead ahead!" cry...and ever since then elected officials have been arranging deck chairs in the face of impending disaster. I think it wonderful that CA has taken up the charge to advance equality in an new century that has wittnessed it slowing to move in small baby steps. But this one has to qualify as the Grand-daddy of political sex iussues. the last bastion of heterosexual exclusivity is being scaled and possibly breeched ( depending on how things shake out in the state constitutional refferendum in Nov...and then in the courts potentially following that). It is forcing Heterosexual married couples to do some serious soul searching they have resisted for many many years. On the one hand they are defending the sanctity of marriage as inherently only possible between a man and a woman....while at the same time pretzeling the honor and devotion of the vows on a daily basis if you look at the divorce rate here in America and the average causes leading to it and the wreckage straight couples cause socially within ttheir families with their divorces. I think it rather contradictory to have the religous communities defending marriage as a state of existance inherently not suited to the implied lack of morality of homosexuals while simultaneously fueling a skyrocketing divorce rate. and then of course there is the politics of sex within the gay community itself. At no time of year is it thrust more into the public eye than the coming weeks. With the looming commencement of Pride festivities in metropolitan cities the world over the politics of what it is to be gay, and how you choose to trumpet that fact to the world are very much a political entity. I personally remove myself from the hot house atmosphere of most Pride festivities as I have a tendancy to trod on toes metaphorically with many of my views on this ass-backwards attempt at courting public acceptance of the gay community. Yes...I just pee'd on the electric fence surrounding the sacred cow of the gay community...I called Pride week ass-backwards....and guess what....I didn't get shocked nor did the gay maffia come and take my gay card away! So for those of you who have been living at the bottom of a garden pond or in front of an X-Box exclusively for the past 20 years and are unaware of the overly fabulized side show extravaganze that many Pride fests have become...let me give you a little bit of context, For starters there's usually parade....and before you start imagining something like Macy's thanksgiving parade or the Tournament of Roses....stop right there and shake the etch-a-sketch because those displays bear little to no resemblance to a gay pride parade other than that they are linear and on a street. One of the first things your visual cortex is likly to be assaulted by are drag queens. Not "pretty-trying-to-pass-as-real" drag....scarry, 9 feet tall in platform heels, sequins, more feathers and fake jems than a Vegas showgirl...and probably a goodly quantity of stubble poking through the foundation. Now...these drag queens are going to be A- hung over from teh partying the night before, B-Still drunk from the night before, C-drinking and consuming illicit drugs to stave off the hangover from the night before, or D- ALL OF THE PREVIOUS 3. ( by the by...this same multiple choice will apply to any of the categories of "freak" the viewer might encounter at a Pride Parade....so assume it is applied to them all so I don't have to retype it for each one.) NOw a 9 foot tall scarry drag queen is formidabel in a state of sobriety....coked out of her gourd and so soused on what ever liuquor she could get her hands on that Betty Ford couldn't wring her dry with a decade to try....she is almost a force of nature and not to be got in the way of. Not something you necessarily want to subject the unsuspecting polulace at large to in a parade designed to try and get the conservatives to embrace the gay community ( outside of airport mens rooms thankyou) as just like them. then there are the circut boys/ go go boys. You will be able to spot them because they are orange. They appear to live in a tanning bed, like reverse vampires incapable of existing without bronzer and tanning lotion. The time they do not spend in a tanning bed is spent in a gymn because they have negative 50% body fat, their muscles have muscles and they have irradicated all extraneous body hair to reval said musculature. You will see plenty of that musculature because they are not affriad to show it off almost entirely in teh tiniest of speedo or thong bathing costumes concieved of and still allowable in public without garnering a citation for public indeacency. they will wiggle and jiggle and taunt those not graced with their physiques and flaunt thier lack of tan lines and their "wedding tackle" in its abbreviated wrappings. (Apply the checklist from above here) Now don't for a second think we have trotted thorugh the whole range of images you didn't want or need...no no no..we've still got more. We've not even begun to expostulate on the Leather community. Here you will see men ( and usually those who should be wearing considerably more than they are) sporting leather cahps, leather vests, leather jockstraps, leather thongs, leather caps and hats of all shapes and varieties, floggers, whips, handcuffs, breath controll masks, sensory deprivation masks, gloves, cigars, and there will be some colored stripes to dellineate the sub proclivities of those in the leather. All I am saying is this....if you encounter someone with either a brown or a yellow stripe...DO NOT...I repeat DO NOT ask them what it means unless you want ot quickly flee to a restrom and scrub your retinas with a nail brush and some bleach to try irradicating imagery you never never never wanted in your entirte life Now for the "folksier" gays...there are the country and western crowd....here you will see lots of guys in denim that looks like it was shot out of a spray can under extreme pressure...cause thats the only way it could have gotten on these guys...unlike you they did not put those jeans on one leg at a time....at least thats the only plausible explaination I can come up with for those impossibly tight jeans. And I grew up in the 80s when we put our jeans on wet and used coat hangers to pull the zipper up while laying on the bed and then drying teh m tighter with a hair dryer after they were on...so that I think they are spray on as the only explaination should be telling you something. Accessorizing these drumskin tight denim clad line dancers just a little too fabulous to really be "country' you will find glittering belt buckles larger than most you'd find in deep heartland texas, 30 gallon designer hats, and pony skin ( fur still on) cowboy boots with lots of silver adornments and heels just a wee bit higher than is strictly masculine., and they will be texas-2-steppin' and boot-scoot-boogyin' to beat the bend while administering the occasional slap to a tightly clad ass and dolling out the occasional smooch while doe-see-doe-ing. Of course there are the Daddy/boi variously intermingled with "bears", "Cubs", "otters", Pandas", "Polar Bears" a veritable petting soo of older men with various amounts of hair in various shades and age ranges. Remember...in this petting zoo...pet at your own risk and only if you want you "horizons broadened" as it were. there are other smaller groups of men.....but I am tiring of tehir predictability...so lets move along to the few categories of lesbians I am versed enough in to at least identify them in the field. the diesel-dykes......you will hard pressed to differentiate these "ladies" from men...other than that they are likly to be the most macho thing in the whole danged parade so you can pretty much assume they aren't actuall packing a penis in them jeans......cause nothing in one of these parades is really ever what it seems on first glance. the Femi-nazis...these are the Lesbians who think all men are evil, oppressors and often are likly to want to have history retitled as "Her-story" in schools, they have long since eschewd shaving any body hair, often have the worst haircuts on the planet with long and short patches in arrangements that defy logic and make you wonder if their hair dresser still does herion on the job. they will often be crystal toting, hippy-dippy tree hugging embrace your inner goddess aphorism spouting cliches that you can't fathom how they exist in day to day life. there are the lipstic lesbians who are very pretty and teh srot most often inclined to spark straight boy fantasies of getting to wittness girl on girl action....and of course they know this and sometimes even revel in the fact thay are the desired object of boys who will never quite attain that holy grail of penthouse forum letters that start "I never would have believed it till it happened to me one night" So what is the point of describing al lthese categories within gay society? Well its simple. Gay Pride as it is presented to the public; a festival of gay people coming together to express their solidarity and entreat mainstream heterosexual society to embrace them as part of the whole....its a big fat freakin lie! there I said it! We are not a united community...if that were the case there wouldnot be leather bars, twink bars, daddy bars, S &M bars, lesbian bars, lipstick lesbian bars......we'd all mix and mingle and interact all the time. Truth is...we don't. We spend the other 51 weeks of the year completely segregated into our own little sub communities, sniping at those in the other communites because of what they do, what they wear, who they vote for, what they watch on tv....I mean in essence we really are no dofferent than straight society in that regard....but the fake message of "we all love one another and accept on another" is bunk. If that were true then when you go on sites like "Gay.com" and see people's profiles they would not put disclaimers like " No fats, fems, blacks, latinos, asians, or over 30s please" and think they were gettingo ut of being reductive and narrow minded by saying "no offense" afterward...........we judge each other by our wrapping paper far harsher than straight society judges us...and all I can think is that we seem to think that we can't be that badly off societally speaking if there is omeone being more harshly judged by a more arbitrary set of critera...even if we are the ones doing the judging to accomplish the illusory feeling of not being the bottom rung. Really...we are actually no different than straight society...though I am at times not so sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. So I guess to wrap this up I would have to say that I think it high time we unpoliticize sex. HOw do we do that...well thats a discussion for alot of us to put our heads together on and not rush to any ill thought conclusions.......but I think its a discussion that needs to begin pretty quick or the path we are on is going to lead us through sections of the garden I really don't think we are prepaired to deal with and the founding fathers would leap out of their graves to stop us from even approaching! I think its time to get the ballot box out of the bedroom and put personal live back in it because I think neither has been where it belongs for quite some time.

Shoe's on the other foot ( and other oddness)

Joel — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:52:31 GMT

so from a news/life perspective this has been a week worthy of discussion. Monday: the shoe was literally on the other foot today. Canadian local law enforcement on Westham Island 15 miles south of Vancouver in BC baffeled all possible bounds of "stupid in front of a reporter" when discussing a foot that washed up on the shore. It was the 5th in the last year ( spanning a time window dating back to last August). Until Monday's body challenged foot arrived gift wrapped in sneaker on the dewey shores Westham Island in the Fraser River Sound all previous floating foot discoveries the others had all been right feet ( I will smack the first one of you I hear singing "You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out....!). The authorities are "unsure if there is any connection" between the feet arriving this way within the span of a year. WTF?! Admittedly I have seen one too many episodes of CSI, CSI Miami, and CSI NY.....but even that not withstanding....it really doesn't take a brain surgeon to add 2 and 2 together here.....5 feet wash up one at a time over the span of 10 months and the police are not sure if there is a connection?! Now if you are thinking I might be a tad harsh on the local constabulary and their investagatory practices......I submitt for your perusal: Wednesday this surfaced: A 6TH FOOT!!! British Columbia's coroner's office called the discovery of a sixth floating foot a hoax, saying Thursday it was really an animal paw stuffed inside a running shoe. But the sixth discovery was determined a hoax after coroner's officials determined that it was the skeletal remains of an animal's foot. The first three feet washed ashore about 40 miles southwest of Vancouver on islands in the Strait of Georgia. The first foot was discovered last summer by beachcombers. Days later, a foot was found inside a man's Reebok sneaker. The remains of a third right foot were found Feb 8. The fourth foot was found May 22 on Kirkland Island in the Fraser River, about 15 miles south of Vancouver. About a mile away, the fifth foot — and only left foot, was discovered Monday morning floating in water off Westham Island. K....so here's my reasoning for thinking the locals are a bunch of bumbeling idiots 1-they are "unsure" if there's a connection between all the feet showing up 2-they were unable to recognize the difference between an animal bone sticking out of the shoe and a human one ______________________________________________________________________________________ I am going to do something I seldom do and address the subject of one of my comments directly. I'm not doing it because i actually think she will see or read it now....but in the off chance that she does a google search while on some of her internet time in the big house once the state of CA sends her up the river....well I want her to have a special message waiting for her...... Starkeisha Brown.... there is a special place in hell for you...many special places in fact, they are being readied for you. And once you are convicted of the heinous assaults and abuses you perpetrated on that poor child who has the misfortune to call you mother...and make no mistake, they are going to throw the book at you royally........you are going to have to try surviving more than 48 hrs in the penal system with a known record for what you did to that poor little boy.......if you are lucky the inmates will ONLY do to you what you did to him....but I wouldn't hold my breath on it. I've been told that education is permeating the prison system and that inmates are far more "creatively minded" than they were in days gone by....so they might just dream up a few extra special "rites of passage" to usher you on to your next incarnation...whatever rock that might happen to be under. now in case you wonder why I am being so harsh minded here: LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The little boy's body was a study in pain.Starkeisha Brown, 24, is suspected of starving and torturing her 5-year-old son.1 of 2 He was covered in cigarette burns, including to his genitals. He couldn't fully open his hand because it had been burned on a stove. His tooth was broken with a nerve exposed. And he had been made to sit in his own urine and feces, authorities say. As the 5-year-old remains hospitalized by kidney failure brought on from malnutrition, two county supervisors are blaming welfare and law enforcement agencies for missing chances to rescue the child from what police say were months of "unbearable psychological and physical abuse." The case came to light after a woman called a hot line June 4, saying the boy told her at a commuter train station that his mother had burned his hand on top of a stove. Summoned to a county Department of Children and Family Services office, authorities say, Starkeisha Brown brought her baby sitter's healthy 4-year-old son and daughter and tried to pass them off as her own. Brown and her girlfriend ran from the office when a social worker questioned whether the child was really Brown's, authorities say. The boy was found nearby, after someone called 911 to report that a sick child with bruises had been left with a homeless person. The child was taken to a hospital with a round belly common in cases of severe malnutrition. Police were shocked by injuries that showed the abuse was horrific and prolonged. "I've never seen anyone with these kinds of injuries who has lived," Assistant Police Chief James McDonnell said last week. "This kid must have a tremendous will to live, to be able to still hang on despite what he's been through." The anonymous June 4 call was the second public tip that the boy was at risk. The agency is investigating why no one followed up an initial case review after a tip in November 2005 that the boy was neglected and at risk while in the care of his grandmother, who took the boy in after his mother was arrested for shoplifting. An array of other agencies missed their chance to intervene, said Gloria Molina, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, including the state Department of Corrections and the county's Department of Probation, Department of Mental Health and foster care agencies that had case files for Brown and the two other women charged in the case. "Why was there no intervention? It shouldn't have to be from the hot line," Molina said. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky blamed the "silo" mentality of agencies that do not reflexively alert one another to potential risks posed by cases. Others missed chances to stop the torture. The boy's great-grandmother and two caretakers told the Los Angeles Times they saw scratches on his body, a large knot on his forehead and other warning signs but didn't want to believe that he was abused. "I don't really know what I was thinking," said Donna Hunter, who took turns taking care of the child with his great-grandmother while his mother was in prison. Brown, 24, turned herself in to police June 13. A woman authorities describe as her live-in girlfriend, 24-year-old Krystal Matthews, was arrested later. Both were charged with one count each of torture, child abuse, corporal injury to a child and dissuading a witness and two counts each of conspiracy. They face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. Brown's attorney, Donald Herzstein, and a public defender assigned to Matthews both declined comment this week. Both women have criminal records. Matthews was sentenced to three years of probation earlier this year for assault with a deadly weapon, according to court documents. The boy's mother served 2½ years in prison for felony robbery of an elderly woman in 2003 and for petty theft. A third woman, LaTanya Jones, 26, was arrested in the case Tuesday. Authorities said they believe that Jones, described as a baby sitter, disfigured the boy's hand by holding it to the stove. She has been charged with child abuse, corporal injury to a child and conspiracy to dissuade a witness. Jones was ordered held in lieu of $180,000 bail Thursday. A sheriff's deputy at the jail did not know whether she had an attorney. Jones' son, who Brown allegedly tried to claim was hers, and a daughter have both been taken into protective custody. As for the 5-year-old, authorities describe him as withdrawn and shy but playful with people he trusts. He has a healthy appetite and began walking over the weekend with a slight limp. His burnt hand is healing well and regaining its range of motion. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ And you know....there are moments when, despite my normal tendancy toward tollerance and wanting everyone to get along peacably and for the world to humm along in its rotations with narry a hitch or bump, I really think we need to build our very own Roman Coloseum, import a bunch of really hungry lions, and start inviting the uber right wing nuttioer than squirel poo bible thumping christians on spiritual steriods over for a "picnic" in the arena......oh and by the way here just put on this suit made of lunch meat! Its ultra chic and the bees knees where you're going! Now mind your head when you walk under the portcullis into the arena where the "picnic" is all set up and waiting for you! Again you may be wondering why I am a bit fatuttzed over gods Amway reps who never fail to annoy by screwing up alot of perfectly good benign doctrine with their oh so Third Reich-esqu implimentation of said doctrines......so here ya go School administrators in Ohio voted Friday to begin the process of firing a middle school teacher accused of burning a cross into a student's arm and refusing to keep his religious beliefs out of the classroom. A middle school student in Ohio says his teacher branded a cross on his arm. The Mount Vernon School Board passed a resolution to terminate the employment of John Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher for the past 21 years. Freshwater, according to an independent report, used an electrostatic device to mark a cross on the arm of one of his students, causing pain to the student the night of the incident and leaving a mark that lasted for approximately 3 weeks. According to the Ohio Department of Education, the student's family has filed a lawsuit. Freshwater was also reprimanded several times for refusing to move his Bible from his classroom desk and teaching creationism alongside evolution, according to the 15-page independent report. The report also cites evidence that Mr. Freshwater told his students that "science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner." The Board of Education of the Mount Vernon City School District met in special session Friday to address the case. Freshwater has the option to contest the process by requesting a formal hearing before the Board of Education. Neither Freshwater nor his attorney could be reached by CNN for comment.

It's a "say something Hat" day

Joel — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:01:24 GMT

ok...so this is going to be somewhat randome scatter shot as afr as blogs go. To say I am sleep deprived would be like saying Anna Nicole Smith is a little dead. So in No particular order: 1-Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the Crystal Skull: K for al lyou guys wanting to have this be your summer thrill...Indie back on the big screen after far too long a hiatus.......hate to burst the bubble, but it was so so. I put it on a par with Last Crusade. The dialog sequences felt like very manipulative set pieces designed to shuffel the viewer along to the next rock em sock em action sequence. Granted these actiona sequences were pretty...but TOO pretty! you could see the C.G. effects practically oozing out of the screen...seeping through at the seams so that the magic was just not there and the effects were jut not that special. Cate Blanchette makes an amusing severe russian villaness, disney should definitely ink a contract for her to be a villaness in an upcoming project...she'd be scrumptious! I wanna date who ever they got to be Harrison Ford's body double when ( after dubiously surviving a test detonation of a nuclear bomb out at area 51) he is being scrubbed rather vigorously in the shower ( no naughty bits or "other bullwhip" make appearances...so keep your heart rate in check) and I can tel lyou for sure...that was most definitely NOT Harrison Ford's 60-something body we were rfeasting on with our eyes. 2-Speed Racer-.Now this is what a summer blockbuster should be all about. Screw the story line, who gives a flying fuck-all for character development....gimme glitz, slick effects, zippy action, and unrepentant redrawing of life according to much more visually stimulating computer generated lines and eyepoppingly lurid technocolor ( on acid) color palates....and then I am happy. Is it Shakespeare? Hells no...but man do those races look like a butt ton of fun.......of course cars do things and survive doing things and continue running flawlessly after surviving doing things no actual car could ever withstand...but who the hell cares.....its escapism pure and simple! A word of warning...if you are mildly inclined toward epilepsy...you might wanna scartch this one off the "to be seen" list....it's gonna put you in the ER for sure! 3-The Happening........(it so wasn't!)-For all you M. Night Shamalyan fans who are hoping this movie is going to be the holy grail that rescues M Night from the pages of the ridiculous and irrelevant......keep holding your breath. When all of you keel over of self induced asphyxiation M Night can then make another distaster flick about your collective suicide for no good reason and still not make enough to pay the craft services bill for the mac n chees served on the shoot. To say this movie sucked is really the understatement of the month. Mr Wahlber.....poor thing, I can only assume his annuity payments for those calvin Klein gutchies ads have been falling off, or that his erstwhile attempt to market a line of Dirk Diggler Dildos has quite unsurprisingly gone flacid and thus the lad is in desperate need of a pay check no matter where it comes from. All I can say is, if the choice is between doing another M NIght Shamalyan Movie and doing gay porn to make a few bucks...Drop your pants and remember it only hurts the first time! At least in gay porn you'd get an orgasm to show for your pains......with Shamalayn's lates opus he merely has a constipated look most of the time, incredibly bad dialog, and if he is any where close to an accurate representation of what high school science teachers are like these days....we are doomed I say....doomed! Zoe Daschenel...well yet again she manages to suck the life out of a cahracter and reduce her to a pair of big glossy blue eyes always either crying or on the verge of tears. Wake up girl....Julia Roberts cashed in that ticket to stardom ages ago...you're going to have to come up with something better! Oh...and lest we forget...there's the gore-nography factor to be taken into account. We are supposed to swallow the supository sized horsepill of illogical plot that Shamalyan feeds us that somehow plants are angry, have decided to "fight back" by releasing a toxin that over-rides our instinctual self preservation "switch"...driving us all to comitt suicide. Well, not just comitt suicide, but do it in ever stupider and "creative" ways. Instead of making us just forget to keep breathing so we asphyxiate where we stand, no the plants have crafted a toxin that allows us to try and out do one another in the ways we off ourselves.......skewering yourself with your hair stick right through the neck.....walking off a high construction site ( lots of guys do this...in my sick twisted mind I was hearing "It's raining men...halalua it's raining men!....but thats just me.)......hanging themselves, shooting themselves, laying down in front of an industrial sized lawn mower ( that he had turned on himself.......P.S. most anyone who has ridden one of these bad boys knows that when they hit a large "obstruction" they usually come to a screeching halt so you can clear said obstruction rather than let it fuck up your rotary blades...but hey...whats logic got to do with this?!).......banging your head into a wall repeatedly......oh and lets not forget my all time favorite........walking int oa lion display at the zoo and "teasing" the lion into ripping your arm off ( on camera mind you and very poorly done) and then "turning the other cheek" so that the one behind you can have a go at your other arm......It was practically right ou of a monty python skit it was so cheesy. Spare youselves the agony of seeing this film......'Cause guess what...there's not even the stereotypical Shamalayn "hook" to give you that cool "gottcha" that suddenly shifts the perspective of the movie and makes the whole thing cool. Nope...just a real sucker punch of an ending that makes you think you were just thrown back into the worst after date sex you've ever had...you know that jack rabbit guy who thought he was rocking your world by battering your head into the wall while saying "oh baby!' over and over again unti lyou just wanted him to cum already and get it over with so you could get on with your life....yep thats this move all over again! and Le Piece de la resistance ( pardon lack of accent marks...my computer is being an anglophile tonight)......... 5-SEX AND THE CITY.......( insert sounds of violins and an angelic chorus here) This movie rocked. Granted I am pre-disposed to liking it seeing as I thought the series was great, but although I live in Seattle, there is a part of me that latched hold of New York when I lived there for a summer and has never quite let go ( hence my dating troubles here in seattle....cause all these seattlite gay men really don't get east coast timing!...anyhow...thats a whole different blog) so this movie was like "Glamor-porn" Dripping designer labels, chic locations, wonderful cameos from fashionistas, pseudo-celbutants.....and Manolo Blahnik shoes galore........I'd wear nothign but high heels the rest of my life and be glad of it if I could have the pair of saphire blue silk satin gem encrusted 5 inch stiletto heel shoes Carrie has in the movie...they are a work of art in and of themselves. And the Vivienn Westwood and Christian Dior Wedding gowns Carrie is photographed in are architectual wonders. Oh...and I liked the story and the character development too...just so you don't think I got side tracked by label watching and forgot to notice the story. ok...so enough about movies for a while......i will pop in a bit about Hell Boy 2 when it comes out, and I am looking forward to Wall-e and a few others......oh what the hell, I'll probably go see "Wanted" for the visual fun....don't get me started on Angalina Jolie though,,,cause I don't care how many foreign babies she adopts in an ersatz attempt to recreate herself as earth mother...she's still the big old freak who smooched her brother on the lips in front of the oscars press core, the same freak who married Billy Bob Thornton ( freakish enough in its own rite) and then proceeded to flaunt a vial of his blood on a chain around her neck, and last but certainly not least...she be 'da HO who snatched Brad Pitt away from Rachel! Thus putting the Kabosh on "the fairytale marriage" and crushing th hopes of teen beat magazine subscribers across the globe, So my advice to her.....quite trying to be the next Mother Theresa....it ain't gonna stick...just embrace your inner freakdom, fly that frak flag high n proud and stop trying to pretend otherwise. yes i said I am sleep deprived. Why you may be wondering?....well its not for any good carnal reasons thts for damned sure. We are watching 2 dogs and 2 cats whose owner committed suicide ( and before you think this is going to turn into a weepy rumination on the fleetingness of life...save it.....not bloody likly! I have no idea who this guy was...and all I can say is if he was not smart enough to try offing himself by some other means than hanging himself...botching it so that he was found, but enough of a success that he malingerd in a hospital for 4 days before eventually dying of teh injuries he had inflicted on himself...well I am a firm believer that this was natural selection at work...thankyou very much and thats my story and I'm sticking to it..say what you will. The dead guy is an Ex-husband of a friend of a friend nad we were asked to temporarily house the animals until the Ex-wife can fly out from GA to bring them home to her ( the dead Guy lives about tried to off himself at home about 45 minutes from my house)....The dogs whine at night...they will not come sleep on the bed with me so they can be close and thus not whine......they whine! The cats have decide my bed is the greatest place to sleep in the whole world...oh have I mentioned I'm allergic to cats? And we are keeping them all sequestered on the ground floor of the house so that my housemate's cats don't freak the fuck out. So I have 3 dogs ( my black lab, a German Shephard/Chow mix, and A Chow ) + two cats all roaming the ground floor of the house.......oh and the shephard/chow, and chow are both shedding...and by shedding I mean walk up, grab a fist full of hair and pull...and you have a ball of hair with no discernable difference visible on the dog....still dense thick fur! I'm telling you...a few more nights of only 3 hrs sleep or a string of little 2 hr naps in between rounds of whining, wheezing and sneezing and I'm liable to say screw it and embrace my inner Cruella De Ville! ok...I am going to go make an attempt at sleeping...we'll see how that goes. P.S. the "say something hat" is a Phillip Treacy "orchid hat"...I like ot think of it as my THINKING CAP

Is breaking up really hard to do?

Joel — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:49:17 GMT

So I sat there this evening, mint Julip in hand, a piece of chocolate pie in front of me ( the closest I could get to "derby Pie" that my college roomate's mother used to make each spring) with a spreadsheet of all the horses running in the tripple crown. I did it all so I could feel like I was part of the excitement there at the track. Its an anual tradition for me...I always try to pick the winning horse, I'll google search the previous years notable attendees and look at the hats. The tripple Crown; The Bellmont Stakes,The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness....they're throw backs to a time when society at least made an effort at gentility, even if the facade of gentility really was nothing more than an overly sugary icing on a cake comprised of thoroughly distasteful ingredients....the effort was still made. And there are times when effort counts. We have all been in situations where showing up and putting in the effort was as important as the outcome...sometimes even more so. And this week I felt the need to make an effort, to show up. After the last few entries in this mini tome I thought it high time to shake things out a little, stretch, lift my head and smell the fresh spring air and write about something amusing and witty since the last few entries were downers. So what, you might be wondering, am I going to write about? Well clearly you are in need of a large latte since you somehow missed the title at the top...but hey, repetition is supposed to spark learning....so here you go........... BREAKUPS. [Que quirky intro soundtrack music] So lacking a weekend style section to peruse with a gal pal and completely eviscerate the models for being wrickett ridden scurvy-skinny scare crows of fashion, oooh and aaah over Van Cleef and Arpel advertisements, and lament my utter lack of new shoes this spring...I had a copy of Vogue. I had a nice stiff Mint Julip courtesy the mint syrup my dear friend PJ sent me....she understands the true "southern-girl-implied-meaning" of saying the phrase "Well Isn' that NICE!" to one of your best frenamies.....(you've just told them to go F*&K themselves....in case you were wondering). Next to the Vogue and the Mint Jullip I had a copy of the racing sheet and the vital statistics on the various horses in the race, not that it really matters. Nope; 'cause I never really look at the statistics. That would imply I am actually a racing afficianado, which I most deffinitely am not. I did however pick the the winner in the '99' Kentucky Derby and with my friends who were betting with me I cleaned house.....if only it had not been kids fake paper money we were betting with! But I did it based on the name....which is how I always do it. I scan the betting sheet and look for a name that jumps out at me and that's the one I pin my hopes to. But today thre was no contest, it was Big Brown all the way. Big Brown was the dream choice. Single handedly favroed to tie up history neatly by being the first horse in ages to win all three races, revitalize the racing industry, re-invigorate a secter of southern society that had literally been dealt death blows the last two years with the tragic finish line injuries that resulted in the deaths of two of racings most promising young thoroughbreds, and in general add an uplifting note to a week that had been peppered with more dismal news of a further down turning economy, a stock market that decided to leap out a second story window Friday, a presidential nomination campaign ending.....it was Kent Desormeax's day to ride Big Brown across the finish line and tie up teh week with a victorious happy bow. OK, so I had raised the bar of expectation to an all time high in this case.perhaps I should clarify a bit. So I am writing about breakups. No I have not been secretly dating someone whom I have just had an earth shattering break up with that I am now going to detail in grotesque and inappropriate detail here. But there are a wide range of relationships we form in our lives to get us through a day, a week, a year...insert quantity of time of your choosing here. And sooner or later despite our best efforts at clinging to the familiar comfort these connections can offer us we are faced with the fact life has marched inexorably onward all around us and the stakes we pounded into the ground to anchor those safe havens around us are now being drug across new and uncharted territory....new and uncharted because we have been to busy trying to deny the progress around us to notice the dazzeling detail the change brings with it. And that got me to thinking as I sat contemplating the stinging aftermath of the race and the completely misplaced hope in Big Brown and I wondered if in reality, in the words of the song ........."Is Breaking up hard to do" in actuality? The envelope, when it arrived on Thursday afternoon, was as easily read a statement as the note it contained. It was a glossy black paper, lettered in a very crisp block letter hand that marched across the envelope's surface like little soldiers, perfectly upright and ridgid, very evenly spaced, and I knew from having watched the hand that made it many times do similar work...it was madeningly un premeditated.....it came naturally to the hand. I had watched that rock steady confident hand sign restaurant credit card reciepts with that same disregard for potential mistake, I had seen those same block lettter caps scratched into heavy stationary sent from far flung hotels and offices. I had even seen it on the cards that accompanied gifts his assistant had been staffed out to choose. The fact that it was a black envelope was his idea of humor, and I have to confess did make me giggle ruefully. But then Mr Dick did have a way of getting under your skin, thats why I dated him...till I found the cure. Fortunately like measles once you've had a good case of Mr Dick...or as my friend Meredyth phrased it once you'd been Mr Dicked-over....you never get it again. All the card said was: "Told you so." He was, of course, making reference to Obama clinching the nomination over Hillary at the begining of the week. So neatly paralleling my thoughts that it still makes me wonder if he knew the path my mind was starting down as I drafted this in my head, he managed to hand me a perfect example of dealing with two break-up situations in just that card. Fortunately this was not going to require tempting the fates by calling a cab and running the risk of Crazy Hakim showing up to take me to another rendezvous with Mr Dick. He is mercifully back on his side of the beltway back in DC running spin like every other Democratic pundit and wanna-be theorizing what Hillary will do next and what Obama ought to do etc. i sat there, turning the card over in my hand and thought about the relationships it represented. First there was the literal old relationship long past being shocked back into life by any sort of emotional defibrulation......the Relationship with Mr Dick. But even with a break up that made Mt St helens blowing its stack look like a grade school science fair "Volcano-project", the relationship with Mr Dick still had the ability to reach from beyond it's clinically dug grave, and despite the stake I had driven thorugh it and the garlic I had thrown on the coffin...manage to spark a reaction in me even still. And it was the effort that did it. I looked down again and realized, it's a HANDWRITTEN card. It might seem a little effort to youall reading this, but it was actually something signifigant to me. And not only that I know he was aware when he did it, that it would be signifigant to me. I grew up in an old school Scottish family, I am only 3rd genmeration off the boat and can find our family's lands on the orkney Islands on the map if given enough caffine. this may not have alot of meaning to you so let me add some context. My great Aunt always warned us kids to be careful of mirrors because tehy never forget a face so make sure a mirror is not capturing a face you wouldn't want seen again later. Despite being devoutly protestant....to the point of elevating Presbeterianism to the level of "new world order"....the aunts and grandparents and great uncles always warned us to be warry of the "wee ones" who lived in hedges and behind the skirting boards and would leave short bread biscuts on a saucer in a corner with a small cup of milk. We were always told by parents to ignore it, or just to humor our elders since its how theings were done in the old world. My grandmother was addamant that writing a note, a card or a letter to someone was putting a part of yourself onto the paper and giving it to someone else, and that was not a gift to be taken lightly. She had shoe boxes and hat bowes and cigar boxes in her attic filled to overflowing with letters, carfully sorted, that comprised her entire adult life...every letter she had ever recieved. I have a drawer in my desk that is filled not with EVERY letter I have ever recieved, but the truly special ones. I am quite ok with parting ways with some letters. So the fact that Mr Dick took the time to choose the paper and envelope, write the card and hand address it, although the sum total was not huge, was still a signifigant gesture, one worth noting. Does it mean I suddenly have rethought our relationship and now want to revisit it. Oh good lord god no! but he took the effort, he showed up, which is as important sometimes as the result, especially when you know the result before hand and could as easily make no effort at all and have the same outcome. And then there was the larger relationship, one much more abstract, but one I had placed alot of importance on, and one that had gone sour just as the relationship with Mr Dick had. Hillary. When she had first thrown her hat in the ring as a contender for the presidential race nomination I was there. Not literally in the room with her, but with her in the sense that I was ready to give time, what money my budget would allow, energy and dedication to helping get her nominated as the democratic candidate for the 2008 Presidential election. It was a relationship of a much different sort, but a relationship none the less. It had history....I had worked on both campaigns to get Bill Clinton elected, had met both of them when he was campaigning for office orriginally, had been in tthere both times Bill made his acceptance speeches on election night, the second time the election actually happened on my birthday (as it will again this year). Were we on a calling one anotehr basis of friendship? Certainly not. BUt I had developed a relationship with Mr and Mrs Clinton in that I had integrated their views and ideas into my own and had sent them letters and contributions in the hope that they would embrace my views (along with the similar views of millions of other citizens). And the relationship soured. After my last run in with Mr Dick I was forced to accept that I was les and less enamored with the choices Hillary was making, both directly and by proxy through the opperatives she chose to allow to function in her name. It had finally come to the point that, about a month before the actual end of her campaign for the nomination I had made my "break up" in the form of a rather strongly worded letter sent to the campaign headquarters stating that hence forward I would be endorsing Obama and to please remove me from any and all mailing lists for Hillary for President. and sitting there with the note card in hand, sipping my mint jullip waiting for the race to start I thought about the race for the nomination and how it had been very like a long slow, protracted breakup. It's like when you were in high school and a popular football player and a popular cheerleader broke up........they spent the next few day/weeks courting public opinion to their side...drawing factional lines in the cafeteria easily discernable to everyone in the room for all their physical insubstantiality. They each present their take on the events that lead to the split, why each feels they are in the right, the reasons why we should side with one and not the other, the social consequences of choosing wrongly. But in the end......we all lined up shoulder to shoulder and shouted the same cheers at the football game against the opposing team, we never let the competition see that there had been cracks in the line of defense for the week/month before the big game. All I can hope now is that the Democratic Prom Queen will dust off her pom-poms and make all her little "heathers" and "mean girls" line up rank and file behind her and march them in lock step behind the Quarterback attempting to bum rush the whitehouse! lets hope the break up was not really as big a deal as everone made it out to be and that at game time it will fade in everyone's memory in light of the pressing need for a victory ahead. And then I listened to the Radio as Big Brown was left in the dead last place in the Belmont Stakes. And you know what? Just this once, even though a relationship didn't perform up to my hopes, this time I'm not going to break up. Because this time I think the more important thing is that a beautiful young horse finished the race, did not suffer a horrible injury, will not have to be put down, and will live to mabey race another day. And in addition Da Tara, a long shot at 38 to 1 crossed the finish line 5 1/4 lengths ahead of anyone else and made someone else very happy they had put their faith in his name. In the imortal words of Scarlette O Hara........ "Fiddle-dee-dee! I'll think about it tomorrow! I'll go mad if I think about it today!" (words to live by)

Closure

Joel — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:09:26 GMT

I was informed last night by a friend several tiers closer to this tragedy than I am, that at sunset today ( Memorial day) the machines will be turned off, tubes will be removed, and with his mother and several other close family members and friends surrounding him, Michka will leave this world. The final decisions had been delayed until his mother and a few other relatives could get here from far flung parts of the lower 48. but once they had arrived, been informed of the facts of the situation and best case scenario if they chose to keep himon the machines and fight to try to reclaim some amount of the man they are now forced to say goodbye to; the decision was made to end this as gracefully and with as little intrusion as is possible under these circumstances. because my computerrecently did it's beset Madame Butterfly impersonation, committing a long, slow, melodramatic electronic suicide that could only have been more annoying had it been accompanied by actual opera music; I have been sorting through photos Ihad saved on CD's and actual hard copy photos so I canbegin to recreate the info bank of visual research I lost when my computerfinally decided to fling itself over the edge like some clunky electronic Tosca. I found two photos that Michka took of my sister and I last year at May Crown. My little sister had been visiting me for a week on her way back home to PA after having spent the preceeding 3 years teaching english at a school in Thailand. It was great to spend time with my little sis' and see the amazing young woman she has evolved into and the sophistication and poise that teaching and striking out on her own in a completely foreign culture had instilled in her. While she was visiting, I took her to an SCA event, our kingdom's May Crown tournament. So she wouldn't feel out of place showing up in street clothes I strapped her into one of my frocks which miraculously fit her pretty well and off we went. While we were watching the tournament and Iwasexplaining the process and combatants as best I could, Michka wastaking pictures. I thought nothing of it, I had seen him at many events with that hand cannon of a camera aimed at someone. Iwas fullyrigged in my big acid green knock off of the Ditchley Portrait and my sister was in the black and white brocade knock off of Eleanora de Toledo's pretty famous portrait.......these two frocks coupled with dazzeling bursts of sunlight in between rolling desert clouds and a fairly brisk breeze were making my sister and I a bit of a spectacle. Michka came running up to my Sister and I, wide grinstretched across his face, and without so much as an introduction to my Sister started showing us thumbnails of the photos he had taken, one of which was an amazing candid shot of my sister. Seeing her as he had captured her was like seeing her for the first time as a young woman all over again People are going to say what they will of his flaws,comment as they see fit on his behavior, his choices, and in a way it all merits note when weighing the imprint of the man he is leaving behind when he leaves the stage this evening; but all those things aside, he did have moments of starteling clarity and insight when weilding a camera, and that is a talent that should be enumerated along with all the othertraits and attributes when the final annalysisis tallied. Do I think it outweighs,negates, or counter-balances the parts that were less favorable or downright reprehensible? nope. It just is. Like the bad and the indifferent......it just is. And it should be credited to him like all the more sensationalistic unfavorables will be. Seeing that picture, and stopping to think of his mother having to look at the beating his shell barely survived in the accident were the two components of the key to unlocking genuine sympathy to offer those wanting it. No matter what bad acts are ultimately attributed irrevocably to him, and no matter what her view of those acts might be ( if she is even aware of them), his mother was faced with saying goodbye to a part of herself that she had brought into this world, she who got to see him screaming and indignant at the harshness of his entry into this existance, is now faced with watching him slip away without a fight, a hug, a goodbye, or even an acknowledgement that she is there to see him off as he leaves. Looking at it in these terms, I can set aside all the other internal conflicts that had been preventing me from connecting with what my friends closer to this have been going through and stand with them unreservedly. Took a little doing to find the key, but I'm glad I got there, it's made me think about things bigger and farther reaching than just the present situation, so it was a good process to go through.