Ever since my branch manager signed me up for one of those time management courses, I’ve been getting tons of flyers for all sorts of self help classes…

I could spend thousands on becoming a better me…

Emil Steiner at the Washington Post asks, "What’s going on in Colorado’s Evangelical community?"  Well…here’s what’s going on, and not just in Colorado…

Sitting cross-legged in jeans and an open-collar shirt, Barnes spoke in his video about evolving feelings growing up in a firm moral family: from confused little boy to adolescent racked with self-loathing and guilt.

In their only talk about sex, Barnes said his father took him on a drive and talked about what he would do if a "fag" approached him.

Barnes thought, "’Is that how you’d feel about me?’ It was like a knife in my heart, and it made me feel even more closed."

I have a strong hunch that dad was having some thoughts about how manly his boy was, and decided to lay it on the line for him.  It did it’s work.  When Abraham took his son to the sacrificial altar, so the story goes, an angel stayed his hand just at the moment he was about to put the knife into his son.  But I don’t think even an angel could stop some parents. 

Via Editor And Publisher…  The unfunny duck is in hot water.

‘Mallard Fillmore’ Creator Arrested Again on Alcohol-Related Charges

NEW YORK – Edward Bruce Tinsley, 48, creator of the comic strip Mallard Fillmore — known for its conservative edge — was arrested in Columbus, Indiana, on Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence, the Indianapolis Star reports today. He posted a $755 bond.

It was his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department. His previous arrest was Aug. 26.

The comic appear in almost 400 papers in the U.S., including the Star.

Tinsley lives in Columbus. He a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 — almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated.

You know…I used to get myself royally blitzed nearly every fucking weekend back when I was a younger guy, and I still do every now and then to the degree my middle aged body will occasionally allow, and I have never once, never once, gotten behind the wheel of a car while doing it.  My body, to my secret pleasure, reacts strongly to all kinds of things that never faze most other people.  Where my friends can down one drink after another, I can only take one and I am unfit to drive.  Two, and my head is on the ceiling.  I can smoke a good cigar and I am unfit to drive.  Yes, enough nicotine will do that to some of us.  A nice back massage can release enough endorphins into my body that I am massively unfit to drive, even sometimes, just to stand up.  So I don’t drive.  I am always careful to put myself in a situation where I do not need to drive Before I decide to get my head all zoned out.  It isn’t that hard.  All it takes is to use your goddamned head and think about others, before you start making yourself all high and wobbly.

But then…I am one of those goddamned bleeding heart liberals, which means I give a good goddamn about my neighbors and peace and love and not hurting people and all the bleeding heart liberal stuff that conservatives like Tinsely think is a dirty joke.  Hey pal…you ever hear of something called taxicabs?

Via The Agitator.  This is what it comes to…

It’s the holiday season, and the parties have already begun, never mind that Christmas is still a couple weeks away.  And a lot of that holiday cheer involves things like spiked eggnog, which is a decadent holiday treat if it’s done right.  I was enjoying a party the other day where one of the guests brought Bourbon slushies.  Nobody was getting ripped or anything, but we were all thoroughly enjoying ourselves, and the holiday…er…spirits.  Were we back in the 1920s, our holiday spirits would have been sold to us by mobsters, and we could all have been thrown in jail just for being caught drinking it. 

Prohibition.  They wanted a dry America.  They got a dry America.  They also got Al Capone and the Purple Gang.  For all the bellyaching about what drugs do to people, this isn’t about the health and welfare of Americans or they would be treating addiction not throwing addicts in jail.  This is about waging kultur kampf.  It’s about smacking all those dirty pot smoking hippies upside the head.  But it’s not hippies selling drugs anymore.  Nobody ever wanted to live in a violent world less then the flower children.  The Man drove them out of the business.  Now it’s blood thirsty south American drug cartels and middle eastern terrorists.  That’s what prohibition buys you. 

But who says that’s a bad thing?  Take another look at that photo.  That man isn’t a soldier, he’s a cop.  Look at all the equipment he’s wearing.  Take a guess at how much all of that cost.  The drug cartels aren’t the only people racking in the bucks over products that would otherwise cost next to nothing to produce and buy.  Funny isn’t it, how every goddamned moral crusade the right gets this country into, ends up lining the pockets of blood thirsty thugs, big government contractors and the moral crusaders themselves, who keep insisting that they’re fighting for all that is good and decent, while the rest of us are caught in a place between them that just keeps getting smaller and smaller, and then one day you wake up and realize that you can’t even take a piss without a man with a machine gun watching you.

The web page that was inserted onto Nell Dominique’s site is being routinely updated it seems, by the crooks who hacked her site. I guess since I (and who knows how many other people) notified SIAS that their web site was hacked, they took steps to fix the problem and now the crooks are simply using another web site and apparently are able to update the redirect information on any of these other feeder web sites they’ve managed to hack.   The page on Nell’s site now re-directs to opifexmundi.org, a site that seems to be otherwise dead.  And whois gives rather strange contact information for the Registrant and Admin there.

If someone knows a French, can you please tell this lady that her website has been hacked?  I’d really appreciate it.  This kinda really pisses me off.  Nell is another artist just trying to use the web to get her stuff out there where it can be seen and appreciated.

[Update…] As of December 12 the Phisher link on Nell’s page was gone.  So her web admin either discovered it, or someone clued them in.  Now if the cops could just get their hands on the lout who put it there…

Via This Modern World…a glance back at how utterly wrong all those dirty anti-war hippies were…

AREN’T YOU PROUD of us? For most of this past week, as an overwhelmingly successful, lightning-quick Anglo-American military assault liberated Iraq’s capital city, and ordinary Baghdadis poured into the streets to kiss our GIs and stomp on pictures of Saddam Hussein, THE SCRAPBOOK has remained the soul of magnanimity and restraint.

Here in our office there’s this giant archive of newsclips, transcripts, and Internet postings we collected in the months preceding the war, wherein a world community of jackasses confidently predicted that the events lately unfolding on our television screens could not and would not ever take place. And you can imagine the temptation, we’re sure: A lesser SCRAPBOOK would throw open the file boxes and run through the streets with treasures like these, laughing hysterically.

"This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut, and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe. What will set it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense–and transparent–political stupidity."

–Chris Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2002

"Iraqis hate the United States government even more than they hate Saddam, and they are even more distrustful of America’s intentions than Saddam’s. . . . [I]f President Bush thinks our invasion and occupation will go smoothly because Iraqis will welcome us, then [he] is deluding himself."

–New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, October 4, 2002

ut being the soul of magnanimity and restraint, we’re not going to do any such thing. Instead, THE SCRAPBOOK is going to run through the streets, laughing hysterically at all the people who were so blinded by hatred of President Bush–or general anti-Americanism, or their own sheer foolishness–that they continued to prophesy doom even after the war had begun and was already being won. People like a certain former U.N. weapons inspector turned Baath party apologist turned peace-movement celebrity:

"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated….We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable. . . . [W]e will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost."

–Scott Ritter, on a South African radio station, March 25, 2003

t takes all kinds, of course. You’ve got your late-career journalist gasbag, phoning it in from the dinner-party front lines:

"With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made . . . gross military misjudgments. . . . The very term ‘shock and awe’ has a swagger to it, no doubt because it was intended to discourage Mr. Hussein and his circle. But it rings hollow now."

–New York Times "news analyst" R.W. Apple Jr., March 30, 2003

You’ve got your war novelist, phoning it in from his experiences in Vietnam, 30 years ago:

"Visions of cheering throngs welcoming them as liberators have vanished in the wake of a bloody engagement whose full casualties are still unknown. . . . Welcome to hell. Many of us lived it in another era. And don’t expect it to get any better for a while."

–James Webb, in the New York Times, March 30, 2003

And you’ve got your usefully idiotic, broadcast-media war correspondent, phoning it in from wherever his Baath party minders want him to:

"The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. . . . Clearly the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. And I personally do not understand how that happened, because I’ve been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces. . . . But me, and others who felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration."

–Peter Arnett on Iraqi state television, March 30, 2003

How stupid those dirty anti-war hippies all were…

Do you see it there, in that Weekly Standard article?  The bar stool swagger?  The ritual chest thumping?  The loutish bragging about how they were right and everyone else was wrong?  It’s tempting for some folks to wonder why so many people misjudged the measure of George Bush.  They didn’t.  They had his measure exactly.  He was their boy…full of the same toxic mix of cheapshit conceits and resentments they were.  Imagine any one of these bloviating cretins in the White House instead of George Bush, ask yourself if it would make any difference whatever in the outcome, and you have the picture.  They’re all cut from the same cloth.  That’s why they supported him back in 2000.  That’s why they still support him.  He achieved the fantasy they’ve all dreamed of…being the  one everyone has to take orders from, the one everyone has to listen to, the one nobody can ever contradict, because their word is law.  The decider.  If Junior fails now, then what does that make them?

The problem with brick brain louts like this is that you can rub their noses in their own shit forever and they’ll never admit it stinks.  They’ll just dig in their heels and whine that they’re not to blame for anything, because it’s always, always, everyone else’s fault.  Atrios is right.  As long as Junior is in the White House, we’re not leaving Iraq, no matter how many American soldiers die, no matter how many innocent Iraqis die, no matter how many  back doors the Wise Men Of Washington give him.  Remember this?

"There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again."

He can’t end this war, any more then he could physically make himself say the words, "shame on me". 

…I’d like to strangle them all.

So I get Yet Another bogus email from Bank of America in my mailbox a little while ago, and as I will do for kicks and grins and laughs, I open it up using the View Source function in my mail client (Mozilla Thunderbird), and look for the deceptive link…

Your primary e-mail address for Bank of America Online Banking has been changed.  Want to confirm this email is from Bank of America? Log in to Online Banking, select Manage Alerts and Alerts History to view all alerts sent from Bank of America. Your Alerts History is updated every 2 hours.

Use the link below to go to you online account:

The email is, naturally, full of all sorts of links to the actual Bank of America website, from which it gets the actual Bank of America logos and such.  But the Manage Your Account link, again naturally, goes elsewhere.  This is how phishers operate.  So just for kicks and grims I go look it up…

…and what I discover is that this particular phisher isn’t operating from some hit and run domain, but from a Belgian Artist’s website, a lady named Nell Dominique apparently, because I can’t read the French her website is written in.  So I dig a little more.  I wget the page the phish mail is linked to…

All that page is, is a simple re-direct to another page.  That other page lives on the website of the Securities Investors Association of Singapore.  So they’ve been hacked too.  And the page the hacker(s) have inserted there seems to be a copy of the actual Bank of America login page.  I can’t tell at a glance where they’ve made their devious little substitutions, but at a quick guess it seems like they’re running some servlets on the SIAS web site they’ve hacked, that substitute for the servlets that would be running on the BOA website, were that the actual BOA website, and not somebody else’s web site.  But that’s just a guess.  I don’t have time to dig that deeply into that code.

So…  Some unsuspecting person opens up this email that seems to have come from their bank.  It says their email has been changed.  They panic and think that someone is trying to break into their online account.  They click the handy link, and get routed to the website of a Belgian artist, then to a Singapore investment website, which serves them up a page that sure looks like it’s the Bank of America web page, except it isn’t.  They enter their account name and password and then (I think, I haven’t really studied the code there carefully), a servlet wakes up and sends that information to God Knows Where.

If anyone reading this knows a little French, can you please tell the poor soul at nelldominique.be that her website has been hacked.  There’s a page, "boa.html" in her html root that she needs to get rid of.  I’ve already notified the folks at SIAS about their little uninvited guest, and I reckon I’ll tell Bank of America what’s going on too, although by now they probably already know.

[Update…] As of December 12 the Phisher link on Nell’s page was gone.  So her web admin either discovered it, or someone clued them in.  Now if the cops could just get their hands on the lout who put it there…

Digby, riffing on Lambert, preaches a fine fire and brimstone sermon on deference…

Lambert points out something important relating to my post yesterday on The Aristocrats:

When Bush got all snippy with Jim Webb, George Will distorted the quote precisely to highlight Webb’s supposed lack of deference.

All the Beltway 500 code words—Civil, Dignified, Ungracious—for trashing Democrats and preventing them from saying what needs to be said have to do with Republicans reinforcing this fundamental aristocratic value of deference.

It’s the same deal with Civil, Moderate, and Bipartisan are also code words for reinforcing deference.

That’s why it’s important to mock, belittle, insult, degrade and make Republicans laughable at all times and in all conditions. These are all tools for eliminating deference from our political discourse.

Naturally, when we do this, the Beltway 500 clutches its pearls and calls us Shrill or Rude. That’s a good sign: It means we’re displaying the lack of deference appropriate a Democracy.

I think the single most sickening example of this phenomenon was the mewling and puking on the part of the Washington establishment over the revelation of an extra-marital affair by one who never understood how to behave in the company of his betters. The way they told it, Washington DC is just like Bedford Falls,Zuzu’s petals and all, upholding the values of mom and pop and McDonalds 2-for-1 apple pies — an aristocracy of small town kids who just happen to be millionaire insiders in the capital of the most powerful nation on earth.

I’m going to publish a long excerpt of the following article, because I’m not sure there is anything in the American media that better illuminates the phony sanctimony and the sickening hypocrisy of the political ruling class. You will note that the author says quite explicitly that the nation does not share the superior values of their betters.

You should go read it…it’s a Sally Quinn column in the Washington Post of November 2, 1998, and it’s frangrant with all the rancid pretenses of the inside the beltway chattering class.  Digby makes mincemeat of it.  I wish I was this good:

Dear Me! These mandarins and court scribes, these lords and ladies of the beltway, took great umbrage at Bill Clinton’s lack of deference to their completely phony bourgoise pretensions, and that simply was not done. So they crucified him.

Meanwhile, the very well bred cretinous moron who currently occupies the White House behaves like a disgusting pig in foreign capitals and is reputed to enjoy "fart" jokes in the oval office and has never been similarly derided for his uncouth ways. One can only speculate why that might be so.

And all these bluenosed hypocrites who excoriated Clinton for his lie ("I will not be lied to!") about a personal matter and complain that the office lost its moral authority, seem not to be personally exercized about the repeated, endless lies of the Bush administration that landed us in the most unnecessary, intractable foreign policy crisis in the nation’s history. Broder and his snuff-snorting fellow courtiers aren’t nattering on about how Junior "trashed the place." But then the only place he’s trashed is the United States of America, where the silly peasants live — and Iraq which is filled with a bunch of dirty foreigners. In the nation’s capital everyone is perfectly happy because as far as they are concerned, the "right" people are in charge. And that’s all that matters.

Some of us may recall they did the same thing to Carter.  There was a time I wouldn’t have credited the hostility toward democrats by the beltway gasbags as something driven primarily by notions of class, but more by politics, and specifically, the after effects of the Reagan era morality of greed.  Democrats were bleeding heart brie feeding effete wusses.  The future belongs to the muscular capitalists who don’t give a good goddamn about anything but the bottom line.  But Bush has been a miserable failure at everything he ever put his hand to, and the cronyism and corruption of his administration is something that even Grant’s ghost can laugh at, and now I understand a little better the tribalism going on here.   This isn’t about greed, so much as how blue your blood is.  The smirking spoiled rich man’s brat who gets cranky whenever he’s contradicted gets deference from the Washington pundocracy that no democrat ever would, because he’s got the right pedigree.  It isn’t money that matters, it’s how old the money is. 

We peasents are obliged to be respectful.  It is not our place to point out that the king is a blathering idiot.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper, who campaigned on a promise to hold a free vote on restoring the traditional definition of marriage, read the tea leaves and instead ended up holding a vote on whether or not to hold a vote.  You can’t govern from the far right in a country whose political process and news media haven’t been utterly corrupted by right wing billionaires and big business. 

Demonizing minorities for the sake of driving the bigot vote to the polls can only get you so far in the civilized world, and Harper apparently wants to keep on being prime minister…

Same-sex marriage file closed for good, PM says

Tory attempt to restore traditional definition fails in House; social conservatives cry foul as Harper declares debate over

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared the contentious issue of same-sex marriage to be permanently closed.

After a Conservative motion calling on the government to restore the traditional definition of marriage was defeated yesterday by a resounding 175 to 123, Mr. Harper said he will not bring the matter back before Parliament.

"I don’t see reopening this question in the future," he told reporters who asked whether same-sex marriage would return to the table if the Conservatives won a majority government.

Nor does he intend to introduce a "defence of religions" act to allow public officials, such as justices of the peace, to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

"If there ever were a time in the future where fundamental freedoms were threatened, of course the government would respond to protect them," said the Prime Minister, who voted for the motion. "The government has no plans at this time."

The declared end of the same-sex marriage debate brought comfort to those who have been fighting for such unions. But social conservatives who have supported Mr. Harper’s government said they felt betrayed by his decision to quit their fight; some said it will come back to haunt the party in the next election campaign.

"I am afraid that the Conservative Party feels that they can take social conservatives for granted in this country," said Joseph Ben Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values.

Social Conservatives…? That’s a polite way of saying ‘bigot’ isn’t it?  And as I understand recent Canadian political history, calling Harper a Tory is a bit misleading.  Harper’s party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was formed from a really odd (to this outsider) merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance, which, particularly in Alberta, couldn’t seem to fag bash enough.  The Alliance was Canada’s bigot right, in morals and tone not all that dissimilar from the southern state republicans down here in the U.S,.  They can’t be happy with this.

But the rest of the western industrial world isn’t still arguing about evolution.  Whatever levers big money has to pull in Canada, it looks like playing the fundamentalists for votes isn’t a winning proposition.  So for now anyway, gay people in Canada don’t have to play the roll of the bogeyman herald of the apocalypse who drives the batshit crazies to the polls and keeps the conservatives in power.  They can have lives.  Real lives.

So I finally watched Brokeback Mountain last night.  Yes, it was as painful to watch as I thought it would be.  Yes, I was bawling my eyes out at the end.

I hear they’re releasing a collector’s edition sometime next month.  I reckon I’ll probably go buy it.  For when I want to make myself miserable I guess.  Or explain to myself why I’m still trying so hard to find my soul mate.

The Groffs continue to vent.  I make a reply…

Groff seems to think I’m censoring him.  In a word: no.  There are two things I won’t allow in the comments, and mostly that’s advertising spam.  I also won’t allow my space here to be used to insult my friends and my readers.  Feel free to hurl insults at me if you like, but be aware that I’ve probably heard it before and unless you’re a friend of mine (or a fan of my artwork) I am unlikely to care what you think of me.  Oherwise I’m not going to censor my comments.  If you have a hair up your butt about homosexuals and homosexuality and you just want to give me some flack about it, fine.  As long as you know I’ll probably fire back.  I spent nearly eight years arguing with ‘phobes on the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup alt.politics.homosexuality, and trust me, I know the drill.

Looks like Fred Phelps will be gracing my little neck of the woods this weekend…

The Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Baltimore. On Dec. 8 and 9 a handful of protesters from the Topeka, Kan., church will be outside the Baltimore School for the Arts on Cathedral Street in Mount Vernon to picket the school’s production of the play The Laramie Project.

The church is infamous for its anti-gay rhetoric (it operates a web site called www.godhatesfags.com) and it protests at the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq. According to the church’s attorney, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Westboro Baptist protests the funerals because they want people to make the connection that the war "is where God is dealing with this nation for their rebellion against him." Such rebellion, she says, includes putting on productions of The Laramie Project, which is based on the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming man who was killed in 1998 for being gay. Phelps-Roper says of the play: "It’s got only one goal, and that’s to promote a perverse manner of life."

One of the most poignant moments in the play is the scene where the Phelps clan is busy waving their obscenity laced signs at the townspeople in front of the courthouse where Matthew Shepard’s murderers were being tried, and Romaine Patterson and about a dozen of her friends, dressed as angels with huge wings, step between Phelps and the townspeople, and turn their backs on the Phelps’, their wings blocking Phelps signs from view.  So I’m sure The Laramie Project holds a special place on Fred’s little shit list.

From Good As You, some thoughts about marriage verses civil unions…

The "Whites Only" fountain once dispensed the same water as the "Coloreds" one did; but the implications of having to walk the alternate line to obtain the H20 spoke volumes.

Via Blue Jersey, here’s an example of how the consequences of separate but equal play out in the lives of gay people…

Consider Paula Long and Rosalind Heggs of Camden who have been together over 15 years. They were registered as domestic partners and also had a civil union from Vermont. Under New Jersey law, they have hospital visitation rights and the right to make decisions on behalf of each other when the other is sick. That’s what’s on paper, but when Rosalind had a heart attack and needed a blood transfusion, the hospital refused to allow Paula to give consent. Paula even had a highlighted copy of the relevant law with her, but that didn’t matter to the hospital. They demanded to see their marriage certificate. (see video of their story)

This story happens over and over again from one end of this country to the other, in red states and blue alike, and it’s indicative of a mindset.  Here’s that mindset in a nutshell:

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be…  Bigots such as Orson Scott Card cannot, will never, acknowledge there is a bond between same sex couples, but only, and grudgingly, that they may feel themselves to have one.  Card later wrote another column, in which he reduced the struggle of gay and lesbian Americans for simple justice, to a childish demand for "fairness"…

The single most effective argument being used to gain support for the redefinition of marriage to mean anything, therefore nothing, is this:

"It’s not fair that homosexuals can’t get married just like heterosexuals."

This argument is only effective because nobody is bothering to define "fairness" or to figure out whether the result will be in any way more fair than the hitherto universal definition of marriage.

When our kids were little, we made it a very clear rule in our family that fairness didn’t mean that everybody got exactly what anybody else got.

"Suppose we buy a dress for your sister," I said to my son. "Would you want us to get a dress for you too?"

Never mind for a moment, the brain dead sexism in that example (picture Card telling his daughter, "suppose we buy blue jeans for your brother.  Would you want us to get blue jeans for you too?"  "Well…yeah dad…why not?"  But maybe females aren’t allowed to wear pants in Card’s family…)  Just look at it for a moment.  Card is saying there, that to ask hospital staff to let you be with your other half as they lay sick, and maybe even dying, is like a child throwing a tantrum because daddy didn’t bring him a present too.  Read that entire column, and if you aren’t a bigot like he is, one sickening thing just leaps out at you like a ghoul at a fun house, and laughs in your face: nowhere in that column is there even the slightest hint that Card can see there may be a deep and profound bond of love between a same sex couple.  It just doesn’t even cross his mind.

Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  Homosexual sex.  Because they’re disfunctional…. 

But it is grossly unfair to demand, in the name of "fairness," that the normal pattern of marriage and family be deprived of its privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about dysfunctions that even they insist are nobody’s fault.

This is the mindset that same sex couples have to face every time they try to assert their rights as a couple.  The hospital staff that kept Paula Long out of the room where her other half was suffering from a heart attack, treated their union like it was some kind of pathetic imitation of their own, because that’s exactly what they thought of it.  Equal marriage rights won’t change their minds about that.  But what it can do is warn them upfront, that if they let their cheap conceits and bar stool prejudices devastate the lives of innocent people, there will be consequences.   Separate but equal on the other hand, merely validates their prejudices and conceits.  As long as they believe they can put the knife in our hearts and get away with it, they’ll keep doing it.  Because it is unfair to demand that normal families loose their privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about their dysfunctions .

When Bill Flanigan admitted his partner Robert Daniel to the hospital because of AIDS-related complications his loss was tremendous.

Kept from Daniel during his last hours alive, Flanigan was denied the chance to say goodbye to his partner of more than five years. He filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore City Circuit Court on February 27.

Not only was Flanigan refused the right to be with Daniel, he was also not permitted to share Daniel’s treatment wishes with his physicians, according to a statement issued by Lambda Legal. All because the staff from the Maryland Medical System Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore said Flanigan was not family.

…

It was only after Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town that the Shock Trauma Center released information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and allowed the entire family — including Flanigan — to see Daniel. But it was too late — Daniel was no longer conscious and his eyes were taped shut, and his wishes not to have life prolonging measures performed had been denied. There were tubes in his throat.

That was particularly hard for Flanigan to take.

At one point Daniel briefly regained consciousness, according to a nurse, and he tried to pull out the breathing tube. In response hospital staff tied down Daniel’s arms.

You want us to get a dress for you too?

I’ve been an avid collector of film music since I was a kid.  I love any music that is evocative and beautiful, particularly when it makes use of a full symphonic orchestra.  But it’s not a very well respected genre.  Way back when, I seldom saw recordings from films whose music I liked (Just try finding a copy of David Whitaker’s gorgeous music to Run Wild, Run Free), and when I did it was often not the original soundtrack, but some aftermarket re-recording that seldom did the original music justice (which was, alas, what I got when I finally was able to get my hands on an LP of Run Wild, Run Free).  Most people here in America who’ve seen Legend probably think of the music Toto recorded for the American release, unless they’ve had a chance to see a copy of the European version with it’s lush Jerry Goldsmith music.  And nowadays, the entertainment companies would rather release something with a lot of band tunes on it, whether any of those tunes were actually played during the runtime of the movie or not.  Witness the two competing CDs of music "from" the film Pleasantville, only one of which actually has the beautiful Randy Newman music on it, the other having about a dozen or so hit tunes, only one of which was played during the movie, and that while the closing credits were running.

I stumbled across this place last week, and thought I’d found a secret treasure trove.  They have CDs from dozens of films whose music I’d never seen released anywhere before, including Lalo Schifrin’s music for The Liquidator, which you should listen to if only for Shirley Bassey belting out the title song like she is going to make everyone forget about Goldfinger.

I got two CDs from them in the mail last night, two Michael Legrand scores I’d been dying to find on CD:  Summer of 42, and Ice Station Zebra. What’s wonderful about Ice Station Zebra is that it was pulled from the original masters, unlike the previous CD release which sounds like it was taped off an old LP copy, the cues are in order now, and it contains cues that were missing from the original release.  When I listen to film music, I seldom even think of the film I first heard it played to.  I enjoy it simply as pure music.  It’s so hard to find new music anymore, that is evocative and beautiful for its own sake.  But it often helps to have the music presented on the recording, as it was played to the film, as the story it was following in the film was the structure the composer was writing to.  When the cues are out of order the music just looses its impact somehow.  It’s like listening to a symphony with the movements all jumbled up randomly.

I have a list.  Could the powers that be please release in CD or some other digital form, the original soundtrack music to, Run Wild, Run Free, Maya, The Dark Crystal, Robert Russell Bennett’s amazing full length score to The Twisted Cross, Morton Gould’s music for the TV series World War 1, Vyacheslav Ovchinnokov’s War And Peace, and the music for The Apartment, Nicolas and Alexandra, Born Free, and The Bible?  Please.  Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated…

So I’m bumping this post up again for a couple folks who might be visiting here in the near future, who wouldn’t have seen it.. 

Episode Eight of A Coming Out Story…  Wherein our hero actually tries to say something…

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