No cartoon Monday after all.  Hopefully later in the week.  Too much other work this weekend…

Whoops…

U.S. Life Span Shorter

WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

Jordan.  Guam.  And…the Cayman Islands.  

– A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

Next time you hear a republican yap, yap, yapping about Roe v. Wade and how abortion is murder, ask them how they feel about universal heath care for children.

A couple new political cartoons…probably Monday morning…

So…Probably not much blogging this weekend…

I might have actually done something like this…

This touching little video is from a TV commercial for the Norwegian Lesbian and Gay Rights movement (LLH). The text at the end, according to one commenter on YouTube (who presumably reads Norwegian) says “You don’t have to be THAT brave.” The number is for a information hotline for gay youth.

And before you ask…I did a lot of digging around for the background song on this. Apparently a lot of other people besides me would love to have a copy of it. But don’t go looking around on iTunes because it’s not there, or anywhere else. It was recorded especially for this PSA, and so for as I can determine, has not ever been released for purchase by the general public. Here are the lyrics…

Were dancing you and me its our destiny
Baby you and me
Make up your mind
Like I told you a 1000 times
Everything will be just fine
If I can’t see you tonight
I know my love will grow stronger

(chorus)
I’ll be dreaming of you
Like everything is bright and blue
And I’ll be here waiting
But not for so long (so long)

If I could have one song for my comic series A Coming Out Story, this would be it. I doesn’t become an obvious match though, until the last half of the series, and I’m only still in the beginning of the first half.

Well of course this was all just an innocent bit of sheer stupidity on his part…

Priest Accused Of Jogging Naked

(Frederick, Colorado)  A Catholic priest faces an indecent exposure charge after jogging in the nude about an hour before sunrise.

The Rev. Robert Whipkey told officers he had been running naked at a high school track and didn’t think anyone would be around at that time of day, a police report said.

He told officers he sweats profusely if he wears clothing while jogging. "I know what I did was wrong," he said in the report.

So he’s a Catholic priest…and he’s jogging…naked…in the predawn twilight…Around A High School Track…  Yeah…I’ll just bet he has a sweaty little problem alright…

From The Onion…

Small Town Holds Annual Gay Shame Parade

GRAND PLAINS, NE—A tight-knit rural Midwestern farming community commemorated the demonization of homosexuality Sunday with its annual Gay Shame Parade, a three-decade-old tradition that has become a cornerstone of the town’s cultural identity.

…

Despite the pageantry, parade organizers stressed that the event has a serious message

"Everyone loves a parade," PTA chairwoman Agatha Buell said. "But it’s about a lot more than the clowns, the decorations, and those Shriner fellows in their tiny cars. It’s about making folks feel sickened by the deviant homosexual lifestyle, like God wants us to."

Spectators couldn’t help but be delighted by the parade’s surprise finale, when, after dutifully leading the marching band for the entire mile-long parade route, local music teacher Colin Atherton was marched past the county line and told never, ever to return. 

…has become a cornerstone of the town’s cultural identity.  Well…considering the rhetoric coming from the radios and pulpits these days, you have to figure a lot of people might read this and wonder what the joke is.  You watch…somebody somewhere is actually going to organize one of these…

I’ve been meaning to post about this since I saw it last week, but I was on the road and I just don’t blog well when I’m flitting down the highway from one motel room to another.  But I figured last week that when I got around to it, I’d begin the post with something along the lines of…

I hate these motherfuckers!  We have goddamned freedom of the press in this country, and our newspapers resemble something out of the cold war Soviet Union…

CBS Evening News falsely described proponent of Iraq "surge" as former opponent of it

On the July 30 edition of the CBS Evening News, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin falsely described Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon as "a critic" of the Iraq war "who used to think the surge was too little too late, [but] now believes it should be continued." In fact, while O’Hanlon has been critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war, he supported the invasion and argued in a January 2007 column that President Bush’s troop increase was "the right thing to try."

Additionally, during the July 30 broadcast of Fox News’ Special Report, while introducing a report on a July 30 New York Times op-ed by O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, director of research at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy — in which they asserted: "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms" — host and Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume suggested that O’Hanlon and Pollack were longtime Iraq war critics. Hume described the two as "[a] pair of longtime opponents of President Bush’s policies in Iraq." The same night, ABC’s World News anchor Charles Gibson began his show’s report on O’Hanlon and Pollack’s op-ed by describing the authors as "long and persistent critics of the Bush administration’s handling of the war." But in focusing only on O’Hanlon and Pollack’s criticisms of the "handling" of the war, the news broadcasts failed to note that O’Hanlon and Pollack were influential proponents of the Iraq war before the invasion, leaving viewers with the impression that the two were war opponents who have now become more supportive of the war.

Sweet, eh?  When you can’t find a critic of the war who supports the surge, you simply recast a couple old supporters of the war as opponants and…Voila!  Proof that the policies of president I’m The Decider are winning over even his toughest critics.

Glenn Greenwald dissects the shit pile that is our corporate news media some more… 

It is difficult to remember a media spectacle to match yesterday’s [July 30, 2007 -Bruce] grand pageant where Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon were paraded across virtually every network and cable news show and radio program and heralded as "war opponents" and "Bush critics" who nonetheless returned from Iraq and were forced by The Truth to admit that we are Winning. For sheer deceit and propaganda, it is difficult to remember something quite this audacious and transparently false.

As was demonstrated yesterday, O’Hanlon and Pollack were among the most voracious cheerleaders for Bush’s invasion and, as the war began to collapse, among its most deceitful defenders. But it goes so far beyond that.

Even through this year, they have remained loyal Bush supporters. They were not only advocates of the war, but cheerleaders for the Surge. They were, and continue to be, on the fringe of pro-war sentiment in this country. And yet all day yesterday, this country’s media loudly hailed them as being exactly the opposite of what they really are. It was 24 hours of unadulterated, amazingly coordinated war propaganda that could not have been any further removed from the truth.

…

I spent yesterday and today reading through virtually all of the writings and interviews of these two Brookings geniuses over the past four years concerning Iraq. There is no coherence or consistency to anything they say. It shifts constantly. They say whatever they need to say at the moment to justify the war for which they bear responsibility. It is exactly like reading through the writings of Bill Kristol, Tom Friedman and every other individual who flamboyantly supported this disaster and — motivated solely by salvaging their own reputations — are desperate to find some method to argue that they were right.

Even though I write frequently about how broken and corrupt our establishment media is, witnessing these two war lovers — supporters of the invasion, advocates of the Surge, comrades of Fred Kagan — mindlessly depicted all day yesterday by media mouthpieces as the opposite of what they are was really quite startling. After all, there is a record as long as it is clear demonstrating what they really are.

But in order to maximize the potency of their propagandistic Op-Ed, they proclaimed themselves to be "analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq" and — just like that — Americans hear all day about the magical and dramatic conversion of these deeply skeptical war opponents who were forced by the Grand Success they witnessed first-hand in Iraq, as much as they hate to do it, to admit oh-so-reluctantly that the Surge really is working! Well, if even these Howard-Dean-like War Opponents say it, it must be true. That was the leading "news" story all day yesterday.

Nice.  This is the kind of crap I was used to seeing in the state controlled press of totalitarian states like the Soviet Union.  But they all bought into the war…hell, they all bought into George Bush…early on, and now they don’t dare admit that they’ve brought an unmitigated catastrophe down on their country.  In an editorial titled, Iraq Hasn’t Even Begun, contributing editor to the Los Angles Times Timothy Ash writes…

So Iraq is over. But Iraq has not yet begun. Not yet begun in terms of the consequences for Iraq itself, the Middle East, the United States’ own foreign policy and its reputation in the world. The most probable consequence of rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in its present condition is a further bloodbath, with even larger refugee flows and the effective dismemberment of the country. Already, about 2 million Iraqis have fled across the borders, and more than 2 million are internally displaced.

Now a pained and painstaking study from the Brookings Institution argues that what its authors call "soft partition" — the peaceful, voluntary transfer of an estimated 2 million to 5 million Iraqis into distinct Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions, under close U.S. military supervision — would be the lesser evil. The lesser evil, that is, assuming that all goes according to plan and that Americans are prepared to allow their troops to stay in sufficient numbers to accomplish that thankless job — two implausible assumptions. A greater evil is more likely.

In an article for the Web magazine Open Democracy, Middle East specialist Fred Halliday spells out some regional consequences. Besides the effective destruction of the Iraqi state, these include the revitalizing of militant Islamism and enhancement of the international appeal of the Al Qaeda brand; the eruption, for the first time in modern history, of internecine war between Sunni and Shiite, "a trend that reverberates in other states of mixed confessional composition"; the alienation of most sectors of Turkish politics from the West and the stimulation of authoritarian nationalism there; the strengthening of a nuclear-hungry Iran; and a new regional rivalry pitting the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, against Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

For the United States, the world is now, as a result of the Iraq war, a more dangerous place. At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged "Al Qaeda Central" in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed, and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2007, there is an Al Qaeda in Iraq, parts of the old Al Qaeda are creeping back into Afghanistan and there are Al Qaeda emulators spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe.

Osama bin Laden’s plan was to get the U.S. to overreact and overreach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, Bush fell slap-bang into that trap. The U.S. government’s own latest National Intelligence Estimate, released this week, suggests that Al Qaeda in Iraq is now among the most significant threats to the security of the American homeland.

The U.S. has probably not yet fully woken up to the appalling fact that, after a long period in which the first motto of its military was "no more Vietnams," it faces another Vietnam. There are many important differences, but the basic result is similar: The mightiest military in the world fails to achieve its strategic goals and is, in the end, politically defeated by an economically and technologically inferior adversary.

Even if there are no scenes of helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, there will surely be some totemic photographic image of national humiliation as the U.S. struggles to extract its troops.

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to the U.S. reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful. And Bin Laden, still alive, will claim another victory over the death-fearing weaklings of the West.

In history, the most important consequences are often the unintended ones. We do not yet know the longer-term unintended consequences of Iraq. Maybe there is a silver lining hidden somewhere in this cloud. But as far as the human eye can see, the likely consequences of Iraq range from the bad to the catastrophic.

Looking back over a quarter of a century of chronicling current affairs, I cannot recall a more comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster.

And Atrios writes of this…

This is the basic point, but it’s also something that has not penetrated the brains of the Very Serious People who rule our elite discourse. They fucked up. Lots of people died. Lots of people continue to die. Each of them, in their own little way, contributed to this "comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster," and most of them are unwilling and unable to face up to that fact. This is truly the era of Bush, where accountability is for suckers, and I’ve come to conclude that’s pretty much the dominant cultural fact of elite Washington.

Our corporate news media served the voters up this disaster on a silver platter of dollar store bullshit, jingoism, and their drunken bar stool conceits.  They hated Bill Clinton, they hated the democrats, they hated the liberals, and most of all they hated the Dirty Fucking Hippies Who Made Us Loose In Vietnam.  Bush was their hero, their knight in shining armor, their exoneration.  Pusillanimous, pampered, petulant, with a abundant sense of his own entitlement to match his grotesque self righteousness.  He was their hero, the hero they all knew they were deep down inside.  And when terrorists killed over three-thousand Americans on 9-11, they figured their moment of glory had arrived at last.  Along with their hero, they were going to remake the nation…and the world…in their own image.

Well, they have. 

Just…funky…

Walking outdoors when the air is so goddamned hot it’s like a swaddling coat…wrapping you in heat and humidity…  

iPod pumping Woody Herman’s Woodchoppers Ball into your mind…

Dancing down the street with an imaginary boyfriend…

and it’s so hot you can’t walk very far before your legs start to give out and you have to turn back to home…

and then…Baia…

Someone I long to see…keeps haunting my reverie…

Jesus what’s it going to be like when I’m too old to walk outside in this heat…

I reckon I’ll just keep dancing until I can’t anymore…

Alone…probably…

Damn…this heat is…stifling… 

But my legs keep moving…my body dancing…

How I pray for the day…
When I’ll see your smile…
And my heart will beat again…

We gay folk have friends among the heterosexuals.  Never doubt that.  Never, never, never.  And because they are beautiful people…decent…good hearted…good people…they don’t really understand what it is we’re all facing.  They just don’t…

Tom Tomorrow:

Yet another example

Here (referencing this).

When I saw Angels in America, I thought the closeted gay Mormon character was a little too heavy handed, but in retrospect I’ve come to realize that Tony Kushner understood something about the world that I did not.

Just…ugly.  The weather, that is.  Ugly.  So it must be August.

The sky is gray and overcast here in Baltimore.  Like it’s about to rain.  Except it isn’t.  It’s just the usual horrible muggy overcast you get when it gets this hot in August.  The sunlight is diffuse.  There are no shadows cast.  Just…gray sky.  Like when it’s drizzling in April.  But it’s not April.  It’s August…and it’s fucking 103 degrees in Baltimore…

Some weeks ago, Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin noted this comment from Exodus’ Mike Ensley on Warren Throckmorton’s website…

Mary, honestly I don’t think you understand Exodus’ political involvement at all. Do you think all (or even most) pro-homosexual activist groups are adopting a “live and let live” policy toward people with different beliefs? Hardly.

My focus is entirely on youth and education, and believe me, the lobbying in that field is nothing like “live and let live.” In California, for instance, pro-gay advocates have exclusive rights to what children are taught in public schools regarding these issues. Parents are explicitly kept out of the loop–and if they somehow get in the loop, they have no right to opt their children out of instruction that undermines their values.

As for “ending people’s rights,” I would just like to know what rights Exodus is helping to end, and for whom?

Your comment about a “you must live our way” stand really doesn’t have any basis, either. Opposing thought-crimes legislation and education law that excludes every view except a gay-centric one is hardly forcing others to live the way we do.

…which was in response to this one, directed at Randy Thomas:

Randy,
I can say that Exodus’ “policy” or “position” has not helped. Had they taken a live and let live stand rather than a you must live our way stand then perhaps this would not be happening?? Politicking against a group has certianly thrown smoke into a hornet’s nest. We should not be trying to end anyone’s rights and instead be working towards an agreement that respects both sides. Even when threatened now, I can say – I understand how gays have become so angry, defensive, and strong. I don’t like the idea that my rights are threatened – but that does not mean I would agrue to destroy the rights of others with whom I disagree.

Well…no.  I mean…yes Exodus’ political activism probably factors into it…but that’s not where this is coming from.  Where it came from was all the attention the ex-gay movement got after a gay teenager who was content just the way he is was seen being dragged into a horrific reparative therapy program by the entire fucking world.  That one incident got the attention of a lot of people, and without a doubt it radicalized many against the ex-gay movement.  The increased scrutiny that reparative therapy suddenly came under was eminently predictable.  That’s what has brought this all on.

Throckmorton in his post raises the specter of reparative therapy doctors quacks being tossed into the slammer after the gay militants who dominate the APA have reparative therapy banned…

AOL’s GLBT community blog Queersighted has an article by Richard Rothstein this morning that marks tomorrow’s first meeting of the APA Sexual Orientation Task as an important date in gay history. Why? Because he hopes the task force will suggest to the APA that all reparative/conversion therapy should be banned. And what if the APA bans reparative therapy (never defined in this piece)? Well, round up the posse, boys, Mr. Rothstein has the answer:

If the APA does in fact ban reparative or conversion therapy, we will at long last have a solid legal argument for shutting down such groups as Exodus International and Homosexuals Anonymous. This will also mean that under standard and existing malpractice laws, psychologists and therapists who continue to advocate and practice such therapy would be subject to license revocation, hefty fines and even imprisonment.

So if Mr. Rothstein’s vision is realized, reparative therapists and maybe the Exodus crew will be answering questions like: “Hey, doc, what are you in for?”

And maybe the other guy is in jail for selling capsules full of dry cleaning fluid to people as a cure for insomnia.  Or maybe he was selling crack cocaine to teenagers.  As a matter of fact, doc, people who harm others for money really do need to be held accountable for that.  People who sell cures that don’t really do anything at best, and do terrible harm to the patents at worst, really do need to be held accountable for that.  It’s not religious persecution to hold people accountable for the harm they do to others. 

To his everlasting credit, Throckmorton condemned the practice of giving ex-gay therapy to unwilling teens when the protests at Love In Action broke out a couple summers ago.  And there were others like him in the ex-gay movement who were absolutely appalled at what they saw being done to kids in these so-called ministries.  But there were many others who doggedly defended the practice and you best believe that I’d like to see every one of those mother fucking bastards that pushed sexual self loathing and fear of intimacy into a gay teenager’s heart locked up for a long, long time, with all the other sex offenders.  Because that’s exactly what it is…child sexual abuse. 

Now, as predictably as the rising sun in the east, the priests of the ex-gay movement are bellyaching that their sincere religious beliefs are under attack.  The problem is, it’s hard to reach a place of mutual respect with people who constantly lie through their teeth.  The leaders of Exodus may claim their actions are only motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, but their word on just about anything isn’t worth spit.  They lie about homosexuals.  They lie about homosexuality.  And they lie…brazenly…about themselves.

Mary, honestly I don’t think you understand Exodus’ political involvement at all…  Oh…we understand it all right.  After Ensley babbled that in the comments on Throckmorton’s blog, Timothy Kincaid asked the readers of Box Turtle Bulletin to help him jog Ensley’s memory about the extent of Exodus’ political activity.  And then mere days after Ensley posting his comment on Throckmorton’s blog, Jim Burroway posts this little expose’ on Exodus’ new Director of Governmental Affairs and "ExodusRoots" grassroots campaign…

Banks described the process they go through in deciding which political issues to get involved in. The chief consideration was “policy proposals that would infringe on the ministry that we do.” And in deciding whether to get involved, she said they ask themselves two questions: 1) Does the issue affect our ministries or members, and 2) Do we have an opportunity to offer a unique perspective and opportunity to influence? And on this second point, the role of Exodus’s “door to our stories” becomes very clear: if “change is possible” then laws granting equality and protections for gays and lesbians are unnecessary.

She talked about a couple of specific examples, starting with hate crime legislation. She repeated the same lies that we’ve heard before (it elevates one group of victims above another, it threatens pastors ability to preach the gospel, gays aren’t economically disadvantaged and therefore aren’t oppressed, it creates a category of “thought crimes”). And for good measure she threw in a few more, saying that hate crimes legislation would include other “orientations” such as pedophilia and polygamy — a charge that comes straight out the Traditional Values Coalition’s playbook, and one that I haven’t heard any Exodus official use before.

Banks also talked about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which she falsely claims would require religious organizations to hire people who would threaten their mission. In fact, section six of the bill specifically exempts religious organizations from the act.

You need to read Burroway’s post to grasp the scope of Exodus’ interest and involvement in anti-gay politics.  I’ve been saying for years now that these groups, and Exodus in particular, are only ex-gay as a facade.  They are, in fact, Anti-Gay political groups, nothing more, nothing less, that only exploit ex-gays and reparative therapy in order to score political points and provide the religious right with moral cover for gay bashing.  Gays choose to be gay…therefore they also choose to be discriminated against…  We are not discriminating against homosexuals…it is the homosexuals who choose to be discriminated against, because they could always choose not to be homosexuals if they wanted to…  In fact…there is No Such Thing as a homosexual…so how could we be discriminating against them…

You have to understand the agenda here is anti-gay political action, not saving souls for Christ, not freeing people from the chains of homosexuality, not curing people of their homosexual addictions, not healing people of their same sex attractions.  Exodus, and other ex-gay ministries like them, are about one thing and one thing only: waging the political war against gay people.  That’s why there is no follow-up when people leave counseling and therapy.  That’s why they keep no statistics on success and failure rates, do no quality assurance activity, don’t…let’s be honest here…give a rat’s ass about whether they’re doing their clients any goddamned good at all. That’s not what they are about.  The clients are the window dressing.  The real work is the anti-gay political activity. 

Happy National Underwear Day…!

A Coming Out Story…Episode 10  

Actually, the real object of my affections back then wore BVDs.  Most days I could tell anyway.  But I thought Jockeys were sexier back then (though I wouldn’t admit it) and so I used a little artistic license there. 

Back when I was still trying to convince myself that I wasn’t gay, oddly enough I could tell exactly what kind of underwear a guy was wearing just by getting the slightest glimpse of the waistband…usually in gym class.  If I could see enough of the stitching through a guy’s gym shorts, or if he was wearing his pants tight enough, I could tell that way too.

"T.K." used to drive me absolutely nuts whenever he was out on that tennis court.  Not only did he wear his gym shorts very tight…tight enough that I could clearly see the lines of his underwear…he’d wear a loose t-shirt that didn’t quite go all the way down his waist.  So every time he took a swing at the ball I’d get a glimpse of his stomach…and that little bit of elastic waistband.  At 17, it was electrifying.  For the life of me I couldn’t turn my eyes away.  But I knew I wasn’t sexually attracted to guys. 

If you’d asked me anything back then about women’s lingerie I wouldn’t have had clue one.  Matter of fact, I still don’t.  For a bit of fun…hang out at the Victoria’s Secret at your local shopping mall and watch guys as they walk by.  Most of them just can’t not look…even if their wives or girl friends are with them.  And some are completely oblivious.  That would be me, usually.  Too bad there isn’t a men’s equivalent store chain.  I’d make it a point to stroll past its window every time I walked in a mall with one.

At the end of episode ten, my libido warns my teenage self that things get more complicated after they invent designer underwear.  But it’s a happy complexity…

• If you wear glasses to drive, they will fog up immediately upon exiting your nice air conditioned car.
• Glasses with a slight astigmatic correction aren’t real swell for driving at night (unless they don’t make good ones in Memphis…).
• If it wasn’t for Michelangelo Signorile and Sunset Cruse, Derek & Romaine would have convinced me that gay satellite radio is a completely worthless proposition.
• ABC radio is even more right wing, brain dead and full of hate then Fox News.  This is a Disney operation?
• Crappy commercials aren’t any less crappy on subscription radio then they are on broadcast radio.  Does everyone who has a satellite radio have credit card debt problems?
• Birds will completely empty your feeders in three weeks, no matter how full they are and how many you put out.  Your feeders will be in almost new condition they will be so cleaned out.
• When you leave for a three week vacation hoping your flowers will survive on rain water, there won’t be any rain for three weeks.
• Ivy grows, even when everything else around it is withering in a drought.  You will have to trim your ivy when you get home, even if your lawn is dead.
• To appreciate how uncomfortable summers are in the Baltimore/Washington metro area, you need to spend some time in a desert.

Miles traveled : 8,126.

Gallons of Gas: 244.953.

Cost of Gas: 726.54.

High gas price: 3.599 in Nevada.

Low gas price: 2.729 in Virgina.

States Crossed: 16 (Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma).

Motels Stayed In: 10.

Motels with reliable broadband: 5.

Road Headaches: 1.

Missed Turns: 3.

Traffic Jams Endured: 3.  Denver, Albuquerque, Pismo Beach.  Yes…Pismo Beach.

County Fairs visited: 1.

Cute guys gawked at: Too many for my own good.

Trading Posts visited: 8.

Turquoise Bought: 5 bracelets, 2 chokers.

Bone Chokers Bought:  3 Cherokee, 1 Navajo.

Tie-dye t-shirts bought: 5.

"Is that one of those iPhones?": 3 times.

"You work for the Hubble Space Telescope?": 7 times.

"You drove all the way from Maryland?": 20+ times.

"How long did it take to grow your hair that long?": 4 times.

"Baltimore…?  That’s somewhere on the east coast…right?": 1 time.

Discoveries: 

• Texting can be addictive. 
• Taking your own pillow along is well worth the cargo space it takes up. 
• Digital SLR makers badly need to get a handle on the dust issue. 
• Wyoming should not be judged by I-80. 
• Portland gets nicer every time you visit. 
• Slot machines are even more evil then I thought. 
• Travel alone isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

This post is either going to seem a bit freaky or you’ll be like me and just smile and shrug and write it off to the random weirdness of dreams.  Sorry, but sometimes I just like to think out loud.  Maybe some of you have had odd little dreams like this and they leave you wondering too about what the hell goes on inside the human brain.

Nap dreams somehow just get weird more often then sleep dreams.  I don’t know why this is, other then possibly something to do with the fact that naps aren’t really part of the normal sleep cycle.  This afternoon, after unloading the car and getting my house back up and running, and putting a few things away, I felt suddenly like a nap.  After three weeks on the road it felt nice to just lay down in my own bed again.  It wasn’t a long nap…maybe about an hour or so.  But I had this really vivid dream.  Most nap dreams are pretty vivid for some reason.

In my dream, I’m wandering around the house getting things back in order after my trip.  I go into the upstairs bathroom and start washing my hands.  I notice there is a pipe next to the faucet I’ve never seen before.  It’s a copper pipe, about a half foot to the right of the faucet, about an inch and a half in diameter.  It comes straight up out of the sink top for about a foot, and then bends back down again in a severe ‘U’.  The pipe ends about halfway back down its length.  The end is open, almost as if it’s another faucet, except that it’s not over the sink basin.   If anything came out of it, it would end up on the counter.   I’ve never seen this pipe before.  Somehow, in the dream, that is not unusual.  I continue washing my hands and pay it little attention.  Then something starts coming out of it.

Feathers.  Tawny brown feathers…they look like a barn owl’s wing primaries.  Picture a Japanese paper fan, folded up, but instead of being made out of paper it’s made out of owl feathers.  That’s what slowly comes down out of the pipe next to the faucet.  I watch, fascinated.  The feather fan comes down out of the pipe…then slowly unfolds…then slowly folds back up again…then goes back up into the pipe. 

Well that’s really odd…I think to myself.  You know it’s a weird dream when its weird enough to realize the weirdness of it while you’re still dreaming it.  I finish washing my hands and go back downstairs.  When I get to the kitchen I notice there is a similar copper pipe next to the kitchen sink faucet.  I don’t recall ever seeing that one either.  I walk over to the sink, turn on the tap, and once again a fan of owl feathers slowly comes down out of the pipe, unfolds, folds, then starts going back up.  I grab it before it goes all the way back in.

I try pulling the feather fan back out.  Something is pulling it back up the pipe, but not strongly.  I feel like I could just yank it out, but then I’d break something, whatever it’s connected to on the other end, so I don’t.  Eventually I let it go back up the pipe.

This is very strange...I think.   I go down into the basement and check the utility sink.  Sure enough, there is one of those copper pipes next to the faucet there too.  I turn on the water, and another owl feather fan slowly comes down out of the pipe, opens, closes, and goes back up.

What the fuck…???   I look up and notice that my brother is here in the house with me (I was visiting him for a bit earlier in the week).  He’s a home improvement contractor and I figure he might know what’s going on.  He’s looking around the finished side of my basement.  I call out to him.  "Hey…Billy…come over here…I want you to see something…"

As he starts walking over I turn off the tap, and turn it back on, and the owl feather fan starts coming out of the pipe again.  It opens, and closes, and I grab hold to keep it from going back up the pipe before my brother has a chance to see it.  It’s a delicate operation.  I don’t want to break whatever it is, but I want Billy to see it.  He comes over, stands next to me.

"Look at that…look at that…  What is this…?" 

We both look at the feather fan.  And I wake up.

I wrote about another dream I had once, Here…and said that some dreams…"really show you that all your careful analysis of your thoughts and feelings amounts to nothing more then mapping the waves on a restless sea and you really don’t understand very much at all about what is going on in the silent darkness beneath them or what makes it all work."  Yes.  I think that’s what interests me about dreams the most.  Where makes your brain assemble the imagery in them in that particular way?

I’m not one to see Mysterious Psychic Prophesies in dreams.  Well…once I had one that worries me, even now.   But dreams are amazing things to me all the same.  I like to dream.  They make sleep worthwhile.  Otherwise I could do without it. There aren’t enough hours in my day as it is.  But dreams not only make sleeping worthwhile, they can be inspiring.  They can lift your spirits, thrill you, scare the hell out of you, leave you with a peaceful glow, or a feeling of dread, that lasts all day.  They don’t come out of nowhere.   Which is where the techno/science geek in me gets really fascinated.  I’m laying in bed right after waking up from this dream and wondering where the hell that image of a fan of owl feathers coming out of a pipe next to my sink faucets is coming from.  The ingredients have to be somewhere inside my own noggin.  But…where?  And…what made them come together to produce that dream?

I can account for some of it…I guess.  I just got home from a long trip.  I Have been wandering around the house, making sure that everything is okay after having been away for so long.  I had to turn on the water, since I’d turned it off, and start up the hot water heater again.  I tend to fret about leaks upon re-pressurizing the water pipes after a long trip, and so I go around checking things for hours afterward to make sure there aren’t any.  Owls are a favorite bird, and barn owls in particular.  And…in a Gallup trading post I bought an earring with a little barn owl feather made out of bone.  I’m thinking about getting my ear pierced later this month.  As I was unpacking, before I took the nap, I carefully put all the turquoise I’d bought away, along with the earring.  I also bought a owl feather wall hanging made of pottery, and I was looking for a spot to hang it before I took the nap.  How all that made this particular dream, if that’s what was going on, would probably be really interesting if I could fathom it.  And also a bit freaky. 

Do you really want to know…?  Yeah.  I really want to know.  Our brains are strange, amazing things.  The thoughts you know in the foreground seem sometimes like they’re just waves on a restless sea…and what’s going on in the silent darkness beneath them is a mystery…