Your Stereotypes About California Are Probably Wrong
I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland. But I was born there, and half my family tree is there. So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state. I see it from both within and without. The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland. Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.
One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years. And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California. This, from Box Turtle Bulletin…
We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.
Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.
In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:
“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.
…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death.
Dig it. The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples. Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state. It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America. Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.
There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California. But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander. The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose. The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys. The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton.
It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head. But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate. My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant. During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law. H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun. But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew. California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages. It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world. In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology. There is Hollywood and Disneyland. There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop. The human potential never had it better then in California. It is a place of magic. But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
The flower scene from The Brave Little Toaster. Just for kicks and grins I decided to see if anyone else out there was struck by that scene and maybe posted it to You Tube. Sure enough. It’s shorter then I remember, and I got a few details wrong, but otherwise I seem to have remembered it fairly well. And David Newman, who composed the background music, knew what he was doing.
You know…that damn scene still makes me want to bawl…
Some years ago, I was living in a basement in Wheaton Maryland, and trying to date this cute guy who lived nearby. I knew him from a gay BBS we were both on. One day he invited me over and we sat around chatting for a bit, and he popped this cartoon he said he really liked into his VCR. It was called The Brave Little Toaster, and on that basis alone I think I’d never have so much as touched it. It just sounded like one of those suffocatingly cute children’s things I used to absolutely hate when was a child myself. But it caught my attention instantly. There was, I could tell right away, an insightful, and playful, and very very smart mind behind it.
There’s a scene in the movie I still distinctly remember. The little toaster is walking through a grassy field (on its four tiny little toaster legs) and it walks past a flower. The flower glimpses its own reflection in the toaster’s chrome sides and instantly perks up, attracted to the beautiful reflection it sees. No, says the toaster (I’m trying to recall the dialogue from memory here…), I’m not a flower. But the flower doesn’t understand. It leans closer to the reflection it sees, utterly entranced…delighted…yearning… No, says the toaster again, distressed. That’s you, not me. I’m not a flower. And the toaster walks away. And all the flower knows is that the beautiful flower it saw just walked away from it, and when the toaster looks back, it sees the flower wilting.
It was just a little toss-off scene in the film, not really bearing at all on the action. But the depth of it stunned me. And I thought to myself A gay man wrote this…
But my attention was also distracted at the time, ironically, by the cute guy in the room with me, who would soon walk away from me too, and I never looked closely enough at the film credits to know who the creator of all this magic was. Well, now I do.
Science fiction writer and poet Thomas Disch has committed suicide. Disch died July 4 and his body was discovered July 5, according to the New York City Police Department. He was 68.
The author of popular sci-fi novels Camp Concentration and 334, Disch had been openly gay since 1968. Following the 2004 death of his partner, poet Charles Naylor, Disch reportedly began suffering from depression.
Awarded many honors for his fiction, including two O. Henry awards, the genre-bending Disch also published more than a half dozen books of poetry, a whimsical Child’s Garden of Grammar (1997); a history of speculative fiction, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998); and the Brave Little Toaster series for children.
It got him. His other half died and it got him. I could feel it myself that week, like a dark shadow hovering over the earth, patiently watching for stragglers. And, reading Anna Quindlen’s review of the book The Brave Little Toaster was based on, makes me wish I’d read it first before seeing the movie…
The publisher optimistically says ”for both children and adults,” but what would the average 10-year-old make of the information that flowers can speak only in verse and that ”daisies, being among the simpler flowers, characteristically employ a rough sort of octosyllabic doggerel, but more evolved species, especially those in the tropics, can produce sestinas, rondeaux, and villanelles of the highest order”? Besides, most of the jokes are too good for children. Like C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicles or ”The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster, ”The Brave Little Toaster” is a wonderful book for a certain sort of eccentric adult. You know who you are. Buy it for your children; read it yourself.
Yeah…
"…before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.”
Damn. Rest in peace Mr. Disch. I wish I’d known how good you were when you were alive…
”Once a mortal, soon to be in Heaven, I may be
your best chance to distinguish yourself
as someone specially Blessed and bound for Glory
without going to a lot of trouble or expense …
Start with a little Tom My God shrine beside the BBQ
and before you can say Glory Be the whole back yard
and all its gardening tools are tax-deductible!
If your tax returns are challenged, show this poem
to the judge and ask him how many believers
constitute a Faith …”
But I know now. And if you and Charles aren’t together now in some better place, at least you lived to see a world where the two of you could be together in our memory.
I HAVE RESIGNED myself to the fact that the abuse of the word "intolerant" is a permanent fixture in this dear country of ours. Intolerant is now almost always (mis)used as a synonym for disagree.
I am "labelled" [sic] as "intolerant" if I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle (or the idea that all roads lead to Rome).
Has a catchy ring to it doesn’t it? Sorta like "I am labeled as antisemite if I disagree with the international Zionist conspiracy." "I am labeled as racist if I disagree with the Negro’s lazy shiftless watermelon eating way of life." "I am labeled sexist if I disagree with feminazis who should just shut the fuck up when a man is talking."
I am labeled as intolerant if I lump homosexual people into one big idiotic stereotype that I can easily feel superior to. I am labeled as intolerant if I’d rather talk about homosexuals as if they were a bunch of empty dancing scarecrows then living breathing human beings who have the same human needs I do. I am labeled as intolerant if all I want to see when I look at teh gay are stereotypes that stroke my pathetic bar stool conceits. I am labeled as intolerant if I just don’t want to see the people for the homosexuals. Woe is me. Woe, woe is me.
Oh…and he goes on in his editorial to cite NARTH junk science as proof that homosexuals can change. And he concludes with a brief but rousing pulpit thumping diatribe about godlessness and evil and atonement. How anyone could think he’s an intolerant asswipe is beyond me.
No Adrian, all roads don’t lead to Rome. Some of them lead straight into the gutter. Yours, for instance.
Well Lookie Here…A Visit From Jackson Memorial Hospital…
First…a little GLBT history…
A gay man dies alone in an unfamiliar hospital while his longtime partner tries fruitlessly to get permission to be by his side. It’s a too-common scenario that documents such as living wills, powers of attorney, and domestic-partnership registration are supposed to prevent. But in the death of Robert Lee "Bobby" Daniel, 34, at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000, none of that mattered, according to a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on February 27. San Franciscan Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., 34, had power of attorney for Daniel, his registered domestic partner, but was barred from his room and from consulting with physicians because Flanigan was not considered "family" by the hospital, charges the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The couple had been driving to meet family in northern Virginia when Daniel became ill. He died without being able to say goodbye to his partner. "I have a huge hole in my heart, and my soul, because I wasn’t allowed to be with Bobby when he needed me most," Flanigan said in a statement.
Hospital officials denied any wrongdoing. "We deliver compassionate care to every patient, with sensitivity to the wishes of our patients and their loved ones," spokesperson Ellen Beth Levitt, told The Baltimore Sun.
Flanigan and Daniel, both residents of San Francisco, signed a legal document giving Flanigan the power to make medical decisions for Daniel in expectation that doctors might not recognize Flanigan. Daniel confided to Flanigan that he did not want to go on life support at the end of his life.
Daniel was transferred to the Shock Trauma Center from the Harford Hospital in Havre de Grace, Md. That night, Flanigan sat in the waiting room for four hours while they worked on Daniel but was never consulted about medical decisions, according to the claim. When Daniel’s sister and mother arrived at the hospital, Flanigan was allowed to see Daniel for the first time.
When Flanigan and the family saw Daniel, he was unconscious with his eyes taped shut, and a breathing tube had been inserted, contrary to Flanigan’s requests, according to the claim.
I did this cartoon about the tragedy back in 2002…
I’d only just started adding the political cartoons to my web site back then, and my drawing skills were stunted from years of neglect, but unlike a lot of the other cartoons I did at that time, this one still holds up I think. Reading the story of Flanigan and Daniel had made me livid, and probably that anger lifted my limited drawing skills up a notch or two. I also blogged about it over and over. Flanigan later found the cartoon while searching the web and I’m happy to say sent me a very heartfelt email thanking me for it.
Later, when an all heterosexual jury excused Maryland Shock Trauma for what they did to Flanigan, I did a follow-up cartoon that was pretty lame and I’ve since removed it from the cartoon site. I guess by that time my anger had turned into a weary contempt. Maryland Shock Trauma had finally found a way to give straight juries an excuse to let hospitals stick a knife in the hearts of same sex couples without having to acknowledge their own bigotries. Oh…we were just too busy to let the Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual…
All of this is to say that if you google the case of Flanigan and Daniel you will likely run across one or more of the pages here on my web site, either in the cartoon pages or the blog pages. Hold that thought for a moment. Because the case of Flanigan and Daniel is not, alas, unique. It’s still happening to same sex couples, who thought, like Flanigan and Daniel did, that their power of attorney documents might actually mean something to gay hating hospital staff…
The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple’s 18 years together.
But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond’s hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an "anti-gay city and state."
Langbehn filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging the Miami hospital with negligence and "anti-gay animus" in refusing to recognize her and the children as Pond’s family, even after a power of attorney was faxed to the hospital within an hour of their arrival.
…
Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.
"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.
…
Jackson officials declined to comment, except to say that the hospital follows state and federal laws on patient privacy that can forbid releasing health information to those outside the patient’s immediate family.
The hospital also may limit visitors if a patient is being treated for a trauma, emergency or serious infection, said Valda Clark Christian, an assistant county attorney representing Jackson.
That last statement there from the ironically named Valda Clark Christian is Jackson Memorial Hospital picking up the knife that Maryland Shock Trauma gave it, and anti-gay hospital staff everywhere. Oh…we were just too busy to let that Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual… Power of Attorney? You homosexuals have no power here…this is an anti-gay city and state…
What Jackson Memorial Hospital is going to do now is play the Maryland Shock Trauma trump card. In the case of Flanigan and Daniel, first they said Flanigan wasn’t family. Then they told him that the power of attorney document had been misplaced. Somehow none of that mattered when Daniel’s Legitimate Family arrived at the hospital because they were let right in and that was when Flanigan was, purely as a matter of coincidence surely, also allowed to see his beloved. When Flanigan sued the hospital finally came up with the excuse that they were just too busy to let Flanigan in. Never mind that they could have still respected his medical directives anyway. They didn’t have to let him into the room to do that. Daniel had a fear of dying with tubes stuck down his throat and that was precisely what the hospital staff did to him. When Flanigan and Daniel’s family were finally allowed to see him, not only were there tubes shoved down his throat, the hospital staff had put Daniel into restraints when he tried to take them out.
That was how Daniel spent his last moments on earth, in the tender care of Maryland Shock Trauma. Because they didn’t give a good goddamn about the faggot in the waiting room and his so-called power of attorney. First they openly told Flanigan that he wasn’t being allowed in because he was "not family". Then they said the power of attorney documents had been misplaced. Then when Flanigan sued they told the jury they were too busy taking care of Daniel to deal with Flanigan too. Probably they were too busy putting the tubes down Daniel’s throat. In any case, the "too busy" excuse allowed the all heterosexual jury to acquit the hospital of any wrong doing. If gay ain’t shit you must acquit…
Jackson’s lawyers surely have their own resources to look up how the case of Flanigan and Daniel went down. But the hospital is covering all its bases apparently. Someone there is doing a little research on the web regarding that case, probably to get a sense of just how the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse card is played. According to my site meter logs, someone at Jackson paid me a little visit the other day…
Nice. Note the search string: "lambda legal flanigan daniels court findings ruling judgement" Too bad you can’t search for your missing sense of human decency on Google. What the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse does is give hospitals the absolute right to disregard anything anyone tells them about patients in their care, whether they’re the "legal" family of the patient or not, whether they are legally married or not, have a power of attorney or a medical directive document. The Maryland Shock Trauma excuse gives hospitals free reign to do to your loved ones as they damn well please, so long as they die of it quickly enough that they can claim they were performing emergency procedures. Nobody’s family rights have to be respected now in any way. But of course everyone understands that it’s only the homosexuals who have no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect.
This is why the fight for same sex marriage is so important. Not that a marriage ring will give bigots any more respect for same sex couples, but that the system will never see our relationships as being equal to those of heterosexuals unless we fight for equality, not some separate but equal civil union status. It’s not about the legal paperwork. Langbehn and Pond had the same legal paperwork that Flanigan and Daniel did, and it conferred nothing. It’s not about the paperwork. It’s about respect. Heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex. Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That’s it. There is nothing more to it then that. If that’s all it takes to make care givers treat loving and devoted couples with less compassion then they’d grant to laboratory rats then the moral problem here isn’t with us. They were a lesbian couple. If the word ‘lesbian’ negates the word ‘couple’ for you then You are the one with the moral problem not Langbehn and Pond. Langbehn, in her struggle to care for her beloved, had more integrity and virtue then any of the runts at Jackson Memorial, who spit on their family while Pond was dying. That’s what this is about. We are not fighting over a word. We are not fighting for a piece of paper. We are fighting for the human status. For the righteousness of love.
A hospital can be a place of hope against all the odds. It can be a place where the human heart takes its ultimate stand against the finality of death. We all die. That we still fight anyway, still love anyway, is either to our glory or just a pathetic conceit. A hospital can be a monument to our capacity to love one another, that even the taint of death cannot take from within us. Or it can be a place of despair, of the end of all things, even love. Yes, sometimes, in the heat of battle, hospital staff have to be left alone to do their jobs. But why even bother, if not for love?
Something’s wrong when the old friend from high school, who once told me he and his wife are "more into nature then technology" are more comfortable paying their bills online then I am. I’m a computer systems engineer for chrissake. He told me the other day that it was "Very ironic. Very." that I wasn’t using online payment these days. And there is this now: most of the places I mail paper checks to convert them into electronic payments anyway, and I never get a canceled check back.
So this weekend I’ve been setting up online payment accounts at various places. Also automatic payment plans for things like the phone service and utilities. I’ll get them to send me email statements now, and over the summer work on cleaning out my filing cabinets of packrat junk I just really never needed to keep, just look at and pay once a month. All I really need to keep on hand I think, are the bank statements, the pay stubs and the tax forms I’ve filed over the years.
I’m going to make an effort this summer to simplify my life some. I have too much clutter in the house…things I inherited from mom I just don’t need to keep, even for sentimental value. Furniture I really don’t like or want, old computer books and hardware I’ll never touch ever again. Keepsakes that don’t mean anything to me anymore. My house is too cluttered with stuff that I don’t use or need or want and isn’t me anymore. Some of it came here when mom passed away. Some of it is stuff I’ve kept over the years because it reminded me of a simpler time when I was younger and the future seemed brighter. I need to go through it all. I need to simplify.
I don’t drink to forget. I don’t drink to ease the pain. I don’t drink to make life more bearable. I drink to make my Baptist grandmother roll in her grave.
Hey grandma…my fellow sodomites took me to Mexico last month and I discovered Tequila! It’s very nice!
The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.
On the other hand Andrew, it may all just be an act to trick independents into voting for a democrat so they can raise your taxes, surrender to the French, confiscate your SUVs, and give pink Cadillacs to welfare mothers. Ever think of that? Isn’t it awfully convenient that the left is suddenly getting mad at Obama now that he’s won the primary? Kos is a tricky bastard…
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The Bush republicans. The Family Values voters. The Religious Right. They wanted to take back America. They wanted to remake it in their own image. They have.
Fugitive hedge-fund manager Samuel Israel surrendered to police in Massachusetts, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday in its online edition, citing the Justice Department. Israel has been on the run since June 9 when his sport-utility vehicle was found abandoned in New York’s Westchester County with the words "suicide is painless" scrawled on the hood.
I’ll bet that suicide was especially painless. He was heading for jail for defrauding investors, so maybe he simply decided to end his life the way he lived it…by faking it. They talk a good game in the financial stratosphere about free markets and self reliance for pretty much the same reason the religious right likes to yap, yap, yap about Jesus and family values.
Number 248 in a series of comprehensive test questions…
Were you a childhood bookworm? Would you have rather stayed home with a good book then joined your friends in a rousing game of baseball? Which of these sad goodbyes brought tears to your eyes as you read…
1) "Shane…Come Back!"
2) "Mary Poppins…Come Back!"
Actually…I cried pretty bitterly when Jody killed Flag too. Absolutely couldn’t bring myself to watch Old Yeller after that…
When Your Own Cheapshit Prejudices Start Laughing At You…
So as it turns out, One News Now, the so-called Christian News Service which is actually an American Family Association front group, gets newsfeeds from various real news wire services for its "service" which it then feeds back out to its subscribers in a Family Friendly sorta way. As it turns out, that means filtering the copy it gets from all those secular news sources to make the text more Family Friendly.
Their filtering software is about as doggedly single-minded about fighting The Gay Agenda as they are it seems. Even if it means also fighting the Tyson Gay Agenda…
This is the problem with auto replace. Here’s the article fetched from Google Cache. Go grab yourself a nice cold drink, sit a spell and have yourself a thoroughly enjoyable read…noting how the OneNewsNow auto-replace got all the instances of "Gay", but missed "Gay’s"…
Homosexual breaks Greene’s US record in 100 at trials
Homosexual broke Maurice Greene’s American mark in the 100 meters by running 9.77 seconds in his quarterfinal at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.
"It tells me I’m in pretty good shape," Homosexual said. "We’ve got two more rounds left."
He tied the fourth-fastest time in the history of the event, despite clearly easing up a tad over his final few strides. Still, that was nothing compared what he did in his opening heat earlier in the day, when Homosexual came awfully close to a monumental blunder.
After building a big lead, the reigning world champion eased up a lot with about 30 meters left-so much that the rest of the field began to catch him. Homosexual was forced to accelerate again and he lunged across the finish line in fourth place, good enough to advance.
"The first round I was scared. I almost started crying. I didn’t know if I made it," Homosexual said after bettering the record Greene set in 1999. "This round I felt good."
As well he should. The performance had to be a big boost of confidence for Gay, who was a distant second-a spectator, really-in New York on May 31, when Jamaica’s Usain Bolt broke the world record by clocking 9.72.
Gay’s had to answer plenty of questions about how much of a challenge he’ll present at the Beijing Olympics to Bolt and another Jamaican, previous world record-holder Asafa Powell.
Could Homosexual challenge Bolt’s mark in Sunday’s semifinal or final?
"Anything’s possible," said Wallace Spearmon, who sneaked into the semifinals by running 10.07. "Tyson’s fast."
So is the track at Hayward Field, which already has produced two U.S. records in running events and is serving up the sort of dry, hot weather-the temperature hit 95 degrees Saturday-conducive to quick sprinting.
The runner-up in Gay’s quarterfinal was Jeffery Demps of Okahumpka, Fla., who got out of the blocks a bit ahead of the favorite and wound up setting a national high school record at 10.01. In other words, this was a very fast race.
Between the heats, Homosexual blamed his mistake in his opener on misjudging the lines on the track. It was hardly a veteran move from a man who has won the past two U.S. titles in the dash. He also completed a 100-200 double at the 2007 world championships.
When Homosexual spoke to his coach, Jon Drummond, before the quarterfinal, there was something of a talking-to.
"He told me champions don’t do that," Homosexual said, "and I had to make up for it."
Indeed, had he not recovered, an exit by Homosexual in the first round of qualifying would have been a major surprise at this 10-day meet to determine the American roster for the Beijing Games. His time of 10.14 seconds tied for the 11th-fastest among the 30 starters in the 100. That stuck him in lane 2 for his quarterfinal, a less-than-ideal position.
But it didn’t matter, and after Homosexual crossed the finish line, well ahead of everyone else, he looked up at the scoreboard briefly. Then the trailing runners approached to offer pats on the back and palm slaps.
Walter Dix, the 2007 NCAA champion from Florida State, Xavier Carter and John Capel were among others advancing to the 100 semifinals.
In the women’s 100 semifinals Saturday, Torri Edwards used a perfectly timed start and down-the-stretch speed to win her heat in 10.78 seconds-the fastest legal 100 time in the world this year, by a whopping 10th of a second.
That time also makes Edwards, the 2003 world champion, the eighth-fastest woman in history. She had no desire to discuss that showing, however, with the event final coming later Saturday.
"Finals, please," she said to reporters, and kept walking.
Saturday’s schedule at Hayward Field also included the conclusion of the heptathlon and the men’s shot put final.
Some Google search screen shots from Right Wing Watch showing how One News Now has been doing this to poor Tyson for quite some time now and nobody there seems to have noticed. Certainly none of their readers seem to have. You have to figure there aren’t all that many sports fans in the batshit crazy pews.
This is instructive, in a kind-of Road Runner verses Coyote sense. Chuck Jones once said that his Coyote fit the classic definition of a zealot as being someone who doubles their effort after they’ve forgotten what their original goal was. If the anti-gay fanatics over at OneNewsNow were just a tad little less fanatical, they’d have thought their brilliant plan to automatically replace "gay" with "homosexual" through a little more carefully. But we’re the bell to their Pavlov’s dog and they couldn’t even think to think. They just jerked their knees, and out came one headline after another, about how Tyson Homosexual set a record at the 100 yard dash.
"It tells me I’m in pretty good shape," Homosexual said. "We’ve got two more rounds left."
Hate destroys you from within and it laughs at you while it’s doing it.
Why Are Bruce’s Photographs Like Hitler’s Watercolors…
Answer: They have no people in them.
So…it’s come to my attention that certain folks seem to think my photography is notable for absence of people. That’s not exactly true, or I probably wouldn’t be invited to take pictures so often of things like weddings and prom dates. Oh…and drag performer award ceremonies. But I’ll admit it’s true that I don’t often spotlight my people pictures in my art photography galleries. Sad but true…what you mostly get there is this kind of thing…
That’s from the Puerto Vallarta gallery. People were asking the other day where the hell the people were. I’d depopulated the entire city, they joked. I’d posted a private gallery with a bunch of snapshots of the friends who took me there, but I elected to omit those from the published gallery for two reasons. First, those were private. But the gallery was intended for my art photography, and yes, that stuff tends to run in this direction…
That’s a typical specimen from the Shadows and Light gallery. I do that sort of thing. And…this sort of thing too…
And this sort of thing…
Lots and lots of that sort of thing, actually. It’s what comes out of me most of the time. And for what it’s worth…I hate it. I hate it so much that for just over a decade I put my cameras down and refused to take any more pictures because I was so sick of looking at it. Even when I was trying to be playful, I kept seeing it…
They say there’s a fine line between artistic and crazy. After just over a decade of not even so much as touching my cameras, I picked them up again because I just had to. It sounds insufferably arrogant to stick the ‘artist’ label onto yourself, but if one symptom of it is you do it because you have to, even if you hate what you’re doing, because something deep down inside of you just keeps pushing you into it and you could stop breathing before you could stop making your art, well then that’s me.
But…well…I don’t hate everything I do. I really like my people pictures. Back in high school, and my college years, back when the camera bug really got me, I actually did a lot more people stuff then shadows and light stuff. I really got into it as a matter of fact. Really, really into it…
Really…really…into it…
And…somehow…I stopped doing that kind of thing. I just can’t imagine what happened. Nobody who knows me seems to be able to figure it out either. All they know is Bruce doesn’t take people pictures.
Well…Actually…yes I do. When I get the chance. When it’s something that strikes at my heart. People I find doing noble work, and I just have to document it, because it’s so beautiful to see…
People I know…creative people…doing noble work…
People taking a stand for life’s beauty…becoming beautiful themselves in the doing of it…
People… Yes…I take pictures of them…
But…you know…sometimes it’s the artifacts we leave behind, the marks made on the earth by the human hand…by the human heart…those ephemeral footsteps along the shore we leave behind…that speak so profoundly to the human condition…to existence…
And that’s what keeps calling to me. That’s what I have to go find. And bring back. These are my little footsteps in the sand.
There’s a difference between the carefree snaps I take of my friends when we go here and there, and my art photography. And my artwork isn’t entirely devoid of people. Furthermore, if you look closely, carefully, you can still see a spark of that sense of life I used to have…back when I could still be certain I would find my soulmate…back when I could still be certain beauty made life worth living. At least I can still see it. A little bit.
You know…beauty…
Yes, actually, I Can do people. If all you can see in my photo imagery is the lack of people, you’re not really looking at it. On the other hand, I really really wish my friends would quit thoughtlessly blaming me for the solitary, emotionally isolated life I’ve lived for so long, that I hate the sight of whenever I look at the brutalist imagery. Particularly the friends in a position to at least try to help me out of here. If I fucking hear "You just need to get out more" one more fucking time I swear I will go nuclear. Yes, as a matter of fact, there Are people in my photos, and yes, as a matter of fact, I Do go out from time to time. Just not into gay bars looking for this week’s trick every Friday night. Does that make me a recluse?
So…some months ago we all went to this bar we’d never gone to because our usual hangout had been invaded by bears. And yeah…you all noticed how immediately taken I became by the bartender that night. You started joking about it. That’s Bruce’s type all right… And there I was…gawking away like a schoolboy again. Somebody did me a really big favor that night. A favor nobody else had ever done for me before. They got his name for me. Sweet. And then I was able to talk to him. And some of you may have noticed that I put some effort into getting to know him a bit more in the weeks and months afterward. Yeah…nothing eventually came of it. But to the guy who did me that favor…Thank You! I had a chance I wouldn’t otherwise have had because of your kindness. Nobody ever did that sort of thing for me before. I am not kidding. That was the first time in my life someone ever did that for me…and I note that you not only didn’t think twice about it when you sized up the situation, but that you enjoyed doing it. Wow. Never mind a boyfriend…where were You all my life!
For a while there, I didn’t feel so disconnected from…people. It’s nice to feel like you’re a part of the world from time to time. I really don’t want the brutalist imagery to define me. You know what I really hate more then the thought of dying alone? It’s the thought of people picking over the body of my work after I’m gone from this earth and going "Oh how tragic that he was so lonely…but Such Wonderful Artwork that tragedy produced! No. Please. I’m going to put it in my will that if I die never having found that intimate other in my life, my executor is to burn it all. All the film and prints and hard drives with the digital library. All the paintings and drawings. Take down the web galleries and the cartoon pages. No collector’s joy in my desolation…please. One way or another, I will not be defined in death by my sorrow.
A man in his late teens told police that he knew his roommate in Crown Hill smoked marijuana when they moved in together about a month ago.
But there was too much pot smoking too often.
Until last week, when one roommate took a few bong hits. The other roommate had enough, said there would be no more pot smoking and shattered the bong on the sidewalk.
Tempers flared. Obscenities flew. One pushed the other before both retreated to their rooms.
The next morning, the bong-breaking roommate returned to find that his Xbox and the power supply had been removed from the stereo shelf.
When he grabbed the game console, a liquid ran out that he said "smelled like urine," according to the police report.
He also found the joy sticks had been partially glued in place and a tube of glue was next to the controls.
No arrested had been made when the report was filed.
There’s a period of adjustment in every relationship…
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
