mei 2006 Archives

Tomorrow—well, technically today—I am heading back home to San Francisco, and while I am very much looking forward to being in my own home and in that most special of Cities where the sun powers me and the moon seems to hang from the dome of sky almost within reach, I find myself wishing.

Wishing that twelve days didn't zip by so fast here with my family. Wishing that I had more time to spend in New York with Jennie and Tney! and JMG and the rest of the wonderful folks I got to meet or to see again. Wishing that here and there were just plain Here. That all of the people I love were within driving distance. That stopping by my brother Sam's house was as simple as firing up iChat. That touch could be communicated via TCP or UDP. That this country were not so big.

I will admit that my own sense of habit and sense of center have had me bounding, in the past, for the City after being away from it for any length of time. I would keep one foot firmly on the terra not-so-firma of San Francisco, emotionally, and wherever I was—and not who was around me—was simply “away”.

But this time? Maybe it's a lack of habit because of the accident and the disability. Maybe it's the recent breakup of a relationship that I desperately had wanted to work out and be forever. Maybe the climb has been too steep for too long and I've hit a stall-point. Or maybe all of our virtual worlds overlap so much and have become so commonplace that these real-world visits serve to illustrate all the dimensions of living that we miss, all those extra colors of the rainbow that we forget we can see.

I love my family very much, even when we fight and sometimes especially when we fight—because I know I can express myself and they can express themselves and no matter the volume or the temper, it is an absolute given that we all love each other and that will never change.

That's really all I've ever wanted out of my friendships and my relationships: to be sure of the others. I'm sure of my family and I'm certainly sure and surely certain of myself. I'm hopeful that I will see my family members again, in person, sooner rather than later. And I know that the only way to be sure of anything is to stop wishing and start doing.

As Marie would occasionally say whenever one of us would start a sentence with I wish...: Wish in one hand; shit in the other. See which one gets filled faster.

Tact is for strangers; politesse for opponents. Candor? That's family. Where wishing just gets in the way of having.

And I have the best family any man could ask for.

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Will Al Gore run for office? Will Hillary?

I say both! They should run against each other in the primaries. Get a big pitched battle going, get the country's majority choosing the better of two who are better than Bush or any Republican. Get the issues out and argued over. Get as much airtime as possible. Own the agenda. Set a progressive against a neo-centrist.

Then, whoever wins obviously becomes the Democratic Presidential candidate, while the other automatically gets added to the ticket as the VP candidate.

All that discourse, all the tilting at progressive issues, all the versus-ing going on all fold in together and back a team of candidates they can love.

And who can win.

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From time to time, Marie joneses for QVC. Yes, cable television shopping. That QVC. So I'm sitting here chatting with Sweet Baby James and Tney and Hottie McHott (aka David M.) and my favorite crazy Cuban, here in the “TV Room” of the ancestral home while my mom and dad watch QVC. I am absorbing the hard sales pitches osmotically. In the 30 minutes this has been going on, I've learned of an ultra-concentrated cleaning solution you attach to a garden hose. It's safe for plants, they say, but they dodged the question about pets. Hmmm. I've also learned about telescoping, ratcheting pruning shears that are your “best friend!” in the garden. I'm guessing that the oak tree that they're clipping branch after branch from isn't too crazy about the shears as a friend. Friends don't let friends delimb them. I'm just sayin'.

I've also learned about a hexagonal, one-piece, click-in-place gazebo. It's today's special value. It comes with a carrying bag and it weighs only 31 lbs in the bag! 110 sq feet of space. Can you imagine? How are you living without one? I don't have the yard space back in San Francisco, but I'm considering putting one in my own TV room—then I won't have to repaint the ceiling.

Good lord, I have to go. The “Diamonique Afternoon Delight” show has started! For “two fabulous hours” I'll learn about fabricated, simulated diamonds—including colored ones! OMG a 3.35 carat (total weight) canary diamonique ring is available!

I feel like Penguin Opus ordering cases of Tomato Crushers.

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Being “Back Home” (as opposed to At Home—the Germans are so much better at grammar) is seriously fucking with my Timesense. It's not a bad thing, just as every “being fucked” isn't a bad thing. It's just taking me out for a serious spin, is all.

I was driving my nephew Nick back to his father's house, which is in what we all thought of as the “rich section” of town back in the day, which is also the house that my great Aunt Ann and Uncle George lived in until a year ago. It's a small town: it doesn't need San Francisco's magical air to syncretize the world.

Anyway, I took a right hand turn at where the Hoagie Bar used to be (I would suck at giving directions around here) and headed up through New Goss Manor, what used to pass for an upscaled housing development and, I suppose, still is (when you've lived with San Francisco housing prices, the price of any house in this area seems expressed in Monopoly® money). I was relaying to Nick that coincidentally, a bunch of girls that I went to High School with lived in this part of “the manor”. As I said this, I noticed an 18 yr old girl (or thereabouts...what do I know about girls, much less teen girls?) with her hair in a ponytail and she was sitting on the front lawn of one of the houses.

And for a moment, I looked more closely to see if she was someone I was in school with.

I didn't tell Nick that, for fear of scaring him that someone so enfeebled was driving a car with him in it, but I did start to laugh. I suppose that was worse, for the look he gave me.

I find it rather effortless to slip into forgetting When I am. I've noted this before on these pages. This was more...immersive. I zipped past Laura Shelby's house...then Laura Wright's and Helene Harris' houses and still thought they might be home. To the right was where Lisa Mikulis lives (not lived, lives). Lisa was my Junior Prom date (it was a pleasant and platonic evening, in case you were wondering andIknowyouweren't).

The Alarm once sang: “Memories come flooding back, the bitter pain and disappointment...”, but that was never me. I suppose with considerable effort I could muster bitterness for not having had any way in which to come out of the closet. Hell, it was so Normal here that I didn't even know I was in a closet. The whole fucking place was a cultural closet. Homosexuals lived elsewhere and weren't Good Catholic Boys. Lest you think this is written in anger, I'm merely trying to impress upon y'all that there weren't heterosexuals, either. There just were People Who Grew Up And Got Married And Had Children. “Got Married”. That's why so many people don't want same-sex couples included in “marriage”, methinks. The taking-for-grantedness of Life's Rich And Fully Anticipated Pageantry is at stake, you flaunting-it poncyboys and prisondykes.

Ahhh, I kid the stereotypes.

This is the way it goes today, at least in my family: as I was pulling away from my brother's house in my Mom & Dad's (Jack & Marie's) Chevy Malibu Maxx—nice car, by the way—I asked Nick if he wanted to go see X3 with me. He asked his dad and his dad said, “as long as you're home by 7”. Nick responded, “That's gay.”

My response? “That's ok, so am I!” Nick turns bright red. My brother is laughing so hard he almost falls over. Jessica laughs and shakes her head. “But I'm the good kind of gay,” I added, and drove off.

From the responses I've gotten to the recent post about my family, I know how lucky I am to have such an amazing family—not just for their healthy (read: low) prioritization of sexual orientation as a conscious element in our lives, but for everything. My family is a communal being sometimes, and certain currents of thought and emotion form its bloodstream. It's a creature you'd want to know. It's kind and it's generous and it loves without limit. It's the Cleavers in color but without the hubris and the lies.

It's that part of here and now that was there and then and will be alive forever.

There's god-enough for me. And immortality is just the always-now.

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Meme from Sam:

...that reminds you of an ex:
Such Great Heights by The Postal Service

...that makes you cry:
Somewhere Only We Know by Keane

...that reminds you of your childhood:
Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque by The Partridge Family

...that reminds you of high school:
The Stroke by Billy Squier

...that mirrors you too closely:
The Longest Time by Billy Joel

...that makes you laugh:
Gett Off by Prince

...that will always get you up to dance:
Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order

...that you used to hate, but now love:
Can't Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue

...that you love but wouldn't know of if it weren't for a friend:
Theme from Valley of the Dolls by k.d. lang

...that you like from your parents' collection:
Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra

...that makes you think of sex:
Lovesexy by Prince

...that is your anthem:
Downtown by Petula Clark (or Mary Chapin Carpenter)

...that is your ultimate love song:
Move On by Bernadette Peters & Mandy Patinkin (music by Stephen Sondheim)

...that reminds you of something nasty:
Any House music overly deconstructed and propped up by Steve Mueller

...that reminds you of a break-up:
Somewhere Only We Know by Keane

...that makes you think of your friends:
Any 80s alternative music, including industrial and techno

...that is held between you and a friend:
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel

...that would be your choice for a national anthem:
War Is Release by The Toll

...that changed your life in some pragmatic way:
Put On Your Sunday Clothes by Carol Channing & Original Cast of Hello Dolly!

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Most of us have a strong sense of the family we were born into. Some of us (like me) feel incredibly lucky for the family we have.

Many of us gay men and women also have a sense of family—a chosen family. Even Marie understands this point: not long after Allen and I became a couple way back when, she sent me a sweatshirt that said “A Family is a group of people who love each other.”

And that's the definition I like best, because it includes everyone.

I have decided to hang out with my family back here in Pennsylvania for a few days longer, because I don't get to spend as much time as I'd like with my family in a given year.

Oh, and it's Jack and Marie's 45th Wedding Anniversary today.

My Awesome Family

Mikey and Jennie

Edgar and Me (and Nikko!)

Jack and Marie back in High School

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Pat Robertson has a Jesus- age defying shake available here. It's just too fucking weird.

Did you know that if you replace “milkshake” with “Jesus”, you mostly end up with a song about Pat Robertson and his Church Empire 700 Club? No, it's true! Here:

[Repeat x2]
My milkshake Jesus brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

I know you want it,
The thing that makes me,
What the guys go crazy for.
They lose their minds,
The way I wind,
I think it's time

[Chorus x2]
La la-la la la,
Warm it up.
Lala-lalala,
The boys are waiting

My milkshake Jesus brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

I can see you're on it,
You want me to teach thee
Techniques that freaks these boys,
It can't be bought,
Just know, thieves get caught,
Watch if your smart,

[Chorus x2]
La la-la la la,
Warm it up,
La la-la la la,
The boys are waiting,

My milkshake Jesus brings all the boys to the yard,
And their like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

Oh, once you get involved,
Everyone will look this way-so,
You must maintain your charm,
Same time maintain your halo,
Just get the perfect blend,
Plus what you have within,
Then next his eyes are squint,
Then he's picked up your scent,

[Chorus x2]
Lala-lalala,
Warm it up,
Lala-lalala,
The boys are waiting,

My milkshake Jesus brings all the boys to the yard,
And their like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

Isn't that utterly, utterly creepy? However, it does explain a LOT.

Nod to skittles for the original link.

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Here at the Geisinger Medical Center Hospital, the restrooms on the second floor share a vestibule with the “GI Fellows” office. I found that funny, for some reason, and I laughed—not something you want to do in Straighty McStraightsville when you're a man walking into the men's restroom.

Marie is here for an outpatient thing-thing and I rode down with her; she's at her appointment and I'm sitting in the hospital's coffee shop. They have a Douwe Egberts push-button cappuccino machine and my coffee tastes appropriately....European.

Too bad all the very white, very overweight very old Americans crash that feeling. That, and there's a rack of “choice books” in the gift “shoppe” area. You won't be surprised that I'm thinking about trash novels, and that leads me to remember something Marie said about the “crazier” Christians out there...that people should be worrying about their own sense of decency, their own kindnesses towards others, their own souls and stop worrying about death and other people's souls and “many Biblical scholars believe that everyone is going to Heaven”. She rules.

So combine trashy novels and “crazier” Christians and what do you get? Well, my big round head cooks up the image of those scarily wildly-popular “Left Behind” novels about the Rapture and the war against the anti-Christ, etc. Reading the Book of Revelation will bake your noodle. And not in a good way.

The word I've come up with to describe those types was “hyper-ecstatic”, meaning craving the extreme religious-ecstasy experience. But that word sounded a lot like “super-elastic”. And, of course, if you're older than a fetus, you would remember “Super Elastic Bubble Plastic!” Yeah, Marie wouldn't let us have that because of the fumes it produced.

There was an old Saturday Night Live skit back in the days of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players about toy safety at Christmastime. One after the other, a sleazy Dan Ackroyd pimping ever more horribly dangerous toys, including “Bag O' Broken Glass”.

So, anyhoo, now I have another jinked juxtapositioning: Super Elastic Bubble Plastic and the kind of people who read and believe the “Left Behind” kind of stuff. This may be where the wheels come off the wagon, but it occurred to me that for some, Religion is like Super Elastic Bubble Plastic! It's stuff that we breathe life into such as we see fit. The surface area of the stuff expands, capturing more and more of the air and space around it. And it gives off noxious fumes that, in high enough doses, can alter one's perception of reality. And in the end, what you got was something that was far less fun and far more ugly than advertised.

Then again, I did sneak the purchase of Super Elastic Bubble Plastic! a few times without Marie's knowledge, played with it as directed and stopped blowing bubbles when the smell got to me. So I know first-hand how the stuff worked, but I don't go hunting on internet specialty stores to buy it.

But if I could get my hands on a Monster Maker or a Vertibird, I'd be right there with my credit card...

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Old home week continues.

Bet you didn't know that when I was seven years old, my dad discovered my artistic talents, such as they were/are: he found me drawing Pluto (the Disney dog, not the planet) from an ad for an Art College in the TV guide. “Can you draw me?” Remember those?

Anyway, my parents, being no other than who they are, found a weekly art class for me. It was with Mrs. Hughes, a few miles over the mountain range near us. It went from 4pm to 6pm every Wednesday. There were from 3 to 7 students in the class. I learned basic color theory—something that equipped me to confidently disagree with something one of my high school teachers was trying to pass off as fact—as well as spatial theory and a host of different media (all quite analog).

Anyhoo, the penultimate goal was to apply all the theory and past experiences with tempera paints, watercolors, pastels (oil- and water-based) to creating oil paintings. She had genres of “compulsories” to paint, and after that, the end of the road: painting or drawing whatever you wanted, with help from her.

So I went on to paint a bunch of things, some of which—but only some, because Marie will state flatly what she likes and doesn't like—hang in the living room of my folks' house. I've snapped a few images of the paintings, which were completed by me at ages, oh, 14 through, say, 16.

Be gentle, gentle readers. (click for larger)

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Click for larger:

1. Jeff & Mikey
2. Jeff & Mikey, less blurry
3. Michael & Jeff
4. Michael, Joe.My.God. & James
5. Mikey & Jennie
6. Joe.My.God. & God of Biscuits
7. Eric & Mikey

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I have decided that I will no longer play matchmaker for Johnny and the Rhino. I am too selfish for it and I want the Jennie all to myself.

It is with a heavy heart that I leave New York. You'd think it would be leavening that I am going to visit my family for more than a week—a King's Ransom of time these days—but as happy as I am about it, that's a different kind of happy and doesn't seem to balance the sad that I feel in leaving Michael and Jennie, Bill and Edgar, Walt, Michael, Byrne, Sara, Joe, Eric.

This time in New York was different. This time I felt somewhat at home. As if I could live here. Ironic, given that Mikey is moving back to San Francisco on the same day that I return there. There's a desperation in how much I miss Bill & Edgar and a sweet timeless quality to time spent with Jennie (or, “J'Po” as the kids seem to be calling her these days).

It's not often in real time that you recognize those moments you know you'll remember forever. I had an entire weekend full of them! What do you in the aftermath of that? I'll answer my own question: I guess one just endures it and remembers that the return to Home may bring even better times—and soon.

I am out of sorts, morose. I want everyone here and now, local to me. I want my loved ones back. The world is full of people of dignity and we gather only a few to us, sips from the torrent. Too many people for too open a person. It's not about being crowded out, for me, but mixed in. Immersed in so many different particular flows of humanity in places with familiar names: Harlem, Chelsea, Midtown, The Village. I am alternately too white and then too mundane, eyes too much like jewels and then skin too pallid.

With the humility of a guest I trudged the neighborhoods at all hours of the day and night, not in fear but in a wariness that comes from unsure footing. I do not impose myself on here and there, but rather let it wash over me, around me. Through me. And take those things with me that are accessible to a whiteboy hippie from San Francisco, a backwoods boy from the sticks of northeastern Pennsylvania. Sometimes that ain't much. And other times I swoon with it.

Waves of people sweep through the streets; the time and tide of humanity amble past a coffeehouse window and a quarter hour is all it takes to lose perspective, for the numbers to become so large you can only understand it in terms of analogy or statistics. But the soul's first language was never mathematics, and your grasp on sheer number loses its purchase at the mere thought of each individual and the life he or she leads, the thousand things she thinks about, the worries of her day, how joyous she feels in this glorious weather or how beaten down she is by the events of her past year.

The only conclusion is this: we are each more similar than different. This is not an insult or belittlement, but an acknowledgment that what may emerge from us all together is the only god we've ever needed: humanity's collective reflection in the waters of the world.

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I can't recall the last time I was in flight at nighttime. But then again, some days I don't recall much of all. Such is what happens to me when there's no external structure to my world. But flying at night is a different experience. For some reason, it's more expansive than the already-expansive feeling of being in a plane at all. How can you not feel more abstract, more like the mist and less like the rock when you're 35,000 ft in the air, high enough that you can sense the curvature of the earth and feel the black of space pressing its face against the atmosphere?

For those of you who understand even some of Qi Gong or some forms of yoga, you know what I mean when I say that there is no earth energy to be had and the soles of the feet feel opaque.

Maybe because there are no visuals that there's more to night time flying. Maybe the inky black promises no universal energy either, and with out either earth or universal energy, what's left but to spin up some of your own?

I finished one book that should have read when I was a younger fellow: “The Prophet: 26 poetic essays” (Kahlil Gibran), and I started another: “The Year of Magical Thinking” (Joan Didion).

The Prophet is a book that beautifully haunts all the familiar “ah ha!” moments of my life; life's melody infuses the spaces between the sparse text of its pages. But then again, perhaps there is no shortcut. In any event, it's a book I want to give to so many people. Or better, sit down and read it to them (but I fear there would be too many moments when I'd triumphantly point at the page and say “See!?! This is me!”)

Perhaps I should have read Didion first.

For all the ageless sagacity of Gibran, Didion shockingly dragged me into Now—or rather, into Then. The pearls of moments that form a lifetime, the ordinary comfort of the ordinary; the times that bind.

I'm not very far into The Year of Magical Thinking, interrupted as I was by the short layover (same plane) in North Carolina, but I suspect reading it will be a measure of the measureless subjectivity of the internal world. In the twenty-three or so pages so far, I am reminded of my own interruptions of the ordinary, my own experiences with the death and near-death of men and women important to me.

Sightless sighs, Deaf Delusions
Sightless eyes, Deft Allusions

Put that in your homonymnal and smoke it. I honestly don't know where those two lines came from, but they arrived front and center just after i ceremoniously—as I always do—closed the back cover of The Prophet. Go figure.

What to do between here and NYC? Read? Or write? Meditate until my thoughts run their course and I'm left with the same inky void outside my window seat?

We'll just have to see, I suppose, how I spend my night flight.

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I just landed in Charlotte. She says hi.

The men are prettier in San Francisco than in the Charlotte, NC airport. I'm just sayin'. And a t-mobile wireless network taunts me by showing up in the list of accessible networks here, but refusing to establish a connection. Bitches.

I paid the $150 to upgrade my seat to first class (so yes, I have a first class seat...smack!) and I'm glad I did it. The ribs don't hurt nearly as much as I expected them to after five hours sitting generally upright. I wonder if I can deduct it as a medical expense.

The MacBook Pro got a respectable 3.5 hours on a single battery. Battery number 2 is in place now, though hot-swapping the batteries didn't work on this like it did on my PowerBook G4.

Off to NYC in about 40 minutes. Another almost two hours in the air.

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In 24 hours I will be with my former next-door neighbors, Bill & Edgar.

Eight to ten hours after that, Mikey and Jennie!

And sometime (hopefully soon) after that, Walt and Byrne and Michael!

And JoeMyGod and hopefully plenty of others after that!

Oooooh! I could just pee!

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Naïve, stupid, Dummy McStupidstein God of Biscuits.

Who would have thought that pointing out lies so that others would be wary would turn into a game of brinksmanship? Not me, folks. But maybe you all did.

Maybe drama is the lifeblood of blogs. Maybe there are too many people these days whose introduction to the internet has turned it into the pool that everyone pisses in but doesn't ever admit to it. Or maybe it's a personal Las Vegas: whatever happens on the internet stays on the internet?

And maybe that's just a sign that I'm getting old. Kids these days. They think that just because there are two people at odds, that each automatically is as meritorious as the other. That there's no endgame. No resolution. Just ongoing “can't we all just along?”

It reminds me quite a bit of Intelligent Design. Just because it was an alternative to evolution and at least two or three were gathered in its name, it must be “valid” and must be given “equal time” to evolution. Well, except that evolution is based on referenced research and can be checked by anyone because the path backward is provided and anyone can reach objective conclusions or at least participate in informed discourse. Not so much with the Intelligent Design folks. No published papers. And every argument ends with: “God did it”.

I expected people to resist the idea that they had been duped—seems the only thing worse that being duped is being reminded that you were duped—but I also expected people to click on links to verify what I'd said. I guess that click is too much to ask, instead I've been relegated to being no better than the Al-malgam of Bents.

What's more to say except, sorry, Moby? I was just trying to resolve a lie aimed at me and to save you some pain.

P.S. I totally stole the tag-line from my favorite Pastry Chef, who got it from somewhere else.

P.P.S A reminder: I let anyone post any comments they want here so long as a) they are on-topic and b) they don't contain allegations of illegal behavior of others, demonstrable or not. It's still a free country, folks. Take advantage while you can.

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So it looks like a few of us are meeting up:

WHERE: Ty's Bar in the Village
WHEN: Friday, May 19, 2006 @ 10pm

I don't recall if I've ever been there (though I did do a bar crawl a few years back with Crashiepoo), but I've heard it's a good place to be on a Friday night.

Hope to see a whole bunch of you there.

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Look out, Manhattan, the God of Biscuits will be Big Appling it this week. I arrive late on Wednesday night, and will be in town until Saturday during the day.

Your GoB and Savatier (ok, I use gay fists and I wear capezios, but otherwise...) will descend on NYC like the Plague Peter Pan Jebus and bring cookies and good will to all humankind.

No, not really.

But I would like to see as many folks as possible while I'm there for my visit. I will be hangin' and swangin' with the DogPoet and Johnny mainly (and who doesn't love 'em some Mikey & Jennie deep fried action?), but hey, we get around.

Joe is gonna suggest a place to meet up on Friday, so I'll post date and time stuff when it's settled on. This means you, you, you and you and anyone else I may have missed...

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Just to put a cherry on the Steve/Al/Karen Bent Collective drama cake, all of you with blogs out there, you might want to block a specific IP address: 70.28.157.151

For those of you with Movable Type installations, you have to enable a couple of things in order to block this IP address from making comments. I don't know the specifics of banning this address from Blogger or WordPress, but I'm sure there's a way.

If you're getting email notifications of each comment made to your blog, no matter what blogging system you're using, look at the details and I'm sure it will tell you what IP address the commenter is commenting from.

Do yourself a favor and just ban the IP address, 70.28.157.151, which belongs to the rogers.com domain, from even reading your site. It's the IP address that Al “and” Steve have both commented from on my blog.

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First off, in the interest of full disclosure (and for Ted's sake), I did bring up the topic of Steve and Al at the Lone Star that weekend that several bloggers, including Homer, Moby and BrettCajun. Homer remembers me saying something to the effect of “Just a warning, what do you really know about Steve and Al? They seem to have the same writing style”. I don't remember issuing a warning, but the general gist is there. Certain flags have gone up for me over time, and I wondered if I were the only one who noticed. I do, though, remember following it with “but I hope I'm wrong. It'd be better if the world had that kind of person in it.”

That's all, folks. That's the cruel and hurtful, hateful bile that I've been spewing.

I will also admit to having gone to check on Steve's claim that his dad had certain, uhhh, successes in the Summer Olympics of 1968 and 1972. I came up empty-handed, but I dismissed that as either shoddy research effort on my part, or I let it slide as a little white lie/brag, or I just wanted to believe in Steve.

So let's recap this whole sad, sordid, histrionic tale:

1. I was genuinely happy to have “met” Steve online
2. We had what I thought were very rich and deep discussions about topics that most people don't even consider, like having had partners die, about the need for raw, absolute language about medical facts, about how lonely it must be sometimes to have such a rare genetic deletion, even if it appears to be a huge win, etc.
3. Along the way, Steve's life appears to be more and more star-crosssed, more and more fabulous, more and more incredible.
4. And then more and more in credible. If you know what I mean.
5. Still, I said nothing to anyone about it, other than the cock of my head to a few people whom I trust, for whatever reasons I trust them.
6. I read Bent Collective less and less over time, that regardless of adding authors Al and Karen, all the writing appeared to be from the same person.
7. Then Steve, whose primary hallmark is a no-nonsense, call-'em-on-it, link-to-it kind of aggressive argumentativeness suddenly becomes coy about some “SF blogger he thought was a friend” saying hateful bilious things about him.
8. This does surprise me when I read it, so I ask about it and tell him he should go after this guy.
9. Karen decides to post that, in fact, this guy is me!
10. So I'm dumbfounded, GoB-smacked, if you will.
11. Then I realize: hey, this guy who is likely a fake, likely writing using three different personae, is now saying false things about your favorite god of the biscuits.
12. It was like there were so many things wrong with it that I didn't know where to start.
13. So I started posting comments on their blog, only to be met with “we said we're done talking about it!”
14. Queer stuff, from queer stuff.
15. Truth Will Out, I always say (and did say!)
16. But then Al has to have his say, and does. He doesn't like the fact that he's being put upon to produce evidence of what I said. Certainly it was never in the cards to produce evidence to Who They Are.
17. Garbage In, Garbage Out, I say.

Which brings us to Now. Right here. Whew!

Now, I have this thing about personal integrity and presenting what I think is an accurate (if incomplete) picture of myself on here, in email and in life. So what to do about someone whose identity is in question anyway, who then turns around and makes shit up about you? Who lives with libel, even from the crazies? I mean, disagree with me all you want, but if you're going to argue something that is not a matter of opinion, you better goddamned well have the references to back up what you say.

What to do? Well, you go internet spelunking. You google. And it turns out, it takes very little time to uncover lies. And then when other people email you saying they share your suspicions and offer their own research, what to do?

Why, you make a list of falsehoods:

• Stanford doesn't offer an MPH. Like, at all.
• there is no military hospital in Maui
• Steve never appeared in the doco or book, “I Missed Flight 93”, a work which was painstakingly researched
• it appears there was never a news story about the accident involving the death of “Sera” and her son
• there was never an O'Brien in the 68 or 72 summer Olympics, nor did any male win back to back gold medals for those years, much less set an Olympics record while doing so
• it strikes me that the whole “secure medical feed” is overkill, since SSL works for most corporations and most government agencies. Why is a mission of mercy so much more in need of security?
• both steve and al have commented multiple times on my blog from the same IP address
• many large canadian cities have their own police, but there is no national police force for canada save the Royal Mounties
• Karen uses American spellings, not UK/Canadian spellings, and all three seem to make the same typos.
• medical professionals never misspell medical terminology.
• Al lists 'twink bars' as a dislike of his and when Karen wrote about drug use, she referred to general big gay danceclubs as “twink bars”, a potshot of a put-down

And, the coup de grâce:

• the man who discovered the genetic deletion that Steve possesses—and Al, too! OMG!—is called Dr. Steve O'Brien.

Does all this add up unequivocally to Steve, Al and Karen being fakey-fakes? No, of course not. Does it convince me that they're fake? Sure does.

Is this malice? No. It's an answer to their libel. Are they dangerous? I don't know, you tell me. Go read 'em and see. They dispense medical advice and flatly state they are qualified and credentialed to do so. And in my own opinion, that's dangerous.

Your mileage (or kilometerage) may vary.

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Any bets on how long it takes until right-wing blogs actually start talking about Rove instead of just bitching about how the left-wingers are 'salivating' over the event?

Go Jason!

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The original phrase, in Latin, is post hoc, ergo propter hoc which, directly translated means “after, therefore because of”. It's a warning against a mistake in logic and conclusion that many people—myself included—have made, do make, will continue to make. A more accessible translation for the warning is: just because one event happened before a second event does not mean it caused the second event.

For example, just because we're here to wonder about the existence of a god does not mean that a god must have created us. I suppose it's entirely possible, but as you know, I'm a bigger fan of invisible pink unicorns.

Most of us look at the universe in terms of cause and effect, which is fine for most things, just as Euclidean geometry works for most local phenomenon. Beyond that, mapping Euclidean concepts (a point, a line, a plane) onto something like a globe will bake your noodle. A straight line becomes an arc, flat land is really a spherical cap. The wheels come off the wagon pretty quickly.

The same is true with cause and effect: look what it does to politicians! Do they resemble any of the everyday humanity in any of their behavior, their speeches? Maybe that's why W. was so popular: he aped the ordinary, fooling enough people. He never was real human, just a boy in his daddy's bubble.

But I digress.

So the translation of this entry's title is a bastardized one: After bullshit, therefore because of bullshit; put another way, the bullshit of the past is not necessarily the cause of the bullshit of the present.

Bullshit I know. I've had an email account since my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon, which means come this August I will have been doing email for 24 years. So I know how to handle myself online versus onlife. CMU's campus wasn't that large; if you hurled invectives at someone in email, chances were good that you'd run into them in a class or on the quad or in the Kiltie Cafe.

So you learn pretty quickly that email is just another way of conducting yourself with other human beings. The web happened too quickly, was too far-flung. Many people never learned that one shouldn't really accept the mantle of anonymity, much less use the anonymity as a shield behind which they can fly arrows to everyone and expect no return-fire (mostly? metaphors do mix).

You end up with the Dog's Knot. Or you end up with cracker-ass-crazy Texans calling everyone a bigot by using bigoted statements. You end up with invented personalities. You end up with imbuing mental disorders with a trait they priorly lacked: contagiousness. You pull people into alternate realities. But Cookie Man, you say, doesn't a movie do the same thing?

Well, sure it does, but the houselights come up at the end of the flick, or the DVD returns to the droning of the DVD main menu's music. No such luck in an ongoing portrayal online.

Martians have invaded from the North, and we're all gullible enough to run from our radios in a mass panic in the streets.

There was a blogger deception last year that everyone talked about, but no one would expose! What's up with that? Even close friends of mine wouldn't give me the URL to the offending blogger, even as they blogged about how awful it felt to be deceived!

I'm in the same position right now. And unless any of you all can give me a solid reason for not going public with a solid demonstration of deception, it'll happen soon. Very soon.

So...anyone? Anyone?

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Riddle me this: what do a churlish, racist, self-involved recent transplant to San Francisco and a collective intelligence from the Great White North have in common?

I call it the fight and flight. Or hit and run. Or a “you suck” followed by fingers in ears with a “LALALALALAIamNotListening!”

What do you call someone whom you ask, “may I use your email in a public forum?” who answers “no you may not” when he's already used your own email content in his own public forum?

What do you call someone who calls homeless people “put together with dirt and grime” but claims he has no hostility towards them? Or who bitches about the Cantonese women on buses too crowded together who he's sure will “give him SARS”?

What do you call someone who says “I love it when people send in nasty comments, but are too chicken to post their email for a reply” and then posts comments to your own blog with a false email address hurling all kinds of ad hominem insults at you?

What do you call someone who deletes all your comments, then uses out-of-context pull-quotes from them in subsequent blog entries?

What do you call someone who has said he's been an EMT, a European Rugby Player, a policeman, a grad student, almost got on Flight 93, is Canadian but was born in Hawaii because in the few moments of a layover he was born on that American soil and so has dual citizenship, has a father who not only won consecutive Gold medals in the 200m in 1968 and 1972 but also set an Olympic time record in the process, who lives in San Francisco, who chronicles his own life and exploits all over the world, but when it comes to posting new pictures of himself, claims “I don't want people stealing my identity”?

What do you call it when people who claim to be blunt and candid and no-nonsense, and who pride themselves on being immune to bullshit by going right to the source, turn around and believe some hearsay overheard at a bar thousands of miles away, reported by people they never met in person, without first challenging the one who was overheard in the first place, then accuses that person (me) obliquely and without reference?

And what do you call it when challenged on all that, the response is, “I've let it go already, and if you have any class, you'll drop it as well”?

I call it subterfuge. Concealment. A feint. A distraction.

I call it bent. I call it “'kel' domage”.

I call it cowardice.

This isn't just drama. This is dramalamadingdong.

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There are less than eight minutes left in my Monday.

Good Riddance.

However, thanks to Sugar Tits for helping restore my sense of well-being.

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I sit here at my usual table, in the usual seat. A worn, wooden paneled wall is on my right. I face the door.

The walls are barer than usual, paintings one by one disappearing throughout the last couple of weeks as Soonae and Jong slowly dismantle the Best Place That Ever Was.

Today is the last day for this place, Cafe Commons, while my tunnel vision is here, focused on the virtual page which fills with words even as the Cafe empties itself of its identity. Maudlin, I know, but melodrama protects me from tomorrow, when I won't be here. When the cafe won't be here.

Soonae and Jong will still be here, in the City. And I am close enough to them that though our contact may end up less frequent, the time spent will be of longer duration and better quality. “I love you both,” I wrote on the matte of surrounding a picture intended for all comers to sign. “You are my family.” There's no shame in admitting things that are true, no matter the context, no matter who will see it and wonder at its veracity.

I know it's true and so do Soonae and Jong, and that's all that matters.

It's difficult to pick my head up and look around. There's a somberness and solemnity that flows near the feet, like hollywood fog or witches' brew. So as long as you keep your head up, at the smiles that are forced (but not in a bad way), you can imagine that now goes on forever.

I focus on the good; Soonae and Jong have been logging 87-hour weeks (each!) and so I am looking forward to their being able to slow down and rest. They'll have so much more opportunity for enjoying their lives instead of running this cafe all the time.

So I'll miss Cafe Commons, but a place is just a place. It's the people that count. And to me, Soonae and Jong count more than almost anyone.

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I just watched the Aaron Sorkin opus, A Few Good Men.

Besides the famous line uttered by Jack Nicholson's character, “You can't handle the truth!” and the disturbing evidence that Tom Cruise can, in fact, act, there's a startling bit of turnabout that's more energy redirection than force-met-with-force.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say the lynchpin of the entire play/screenplay—and not just the trial contained therein—is simply this: those people who are so sure and so convinced that the world works just as they see it are begging to tell you about their own extraordinary behavior along those lines.

Like a villian in a melodrama “monologues” right before he's destroyed, there are those drama queens, narcissists, control freaks and other shallow slips of humanity out there that are dying to get it all out and tell you why they're always right and disagreement isn't just a difference of opinion, it's just Plain Wrong.

As Shakespeare wrote: “happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending”. Early on I was taught that being wrong wasn't bad, but not learning from it was.

In certain martial arts the mindful student will remember that often the key to success is to use one's opponent's own energies against him.

It's a theme I won't soon forget.

More Shakespeare: “In practise let us put it presently.”

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I'm not burying the lead (as I'm so famous for doing) when I say up front that the downside to breaking up with someone you love is significant and unalterable. Some think that throwing yourself into a new relationship is a cure-all, or throwing yourself at, on or under everything with a penis and a pulse is the way to moving on, but not for me. I have to face it all head on, let it pass over and through me, and just stand up to and, well, stand it. Endure it.

Otherwise, you live in fear of being attacked from behind by what you left behind. Or rather, what refused to be left behind no matter how much you tried to ignore it.

The Native Americans (judeo-christian-godless as they were) knew the value and purpose of serenity. As do I, after all that's happened in my life thus far. Death has a lesson, if you're human enough to be open to the learning.

It is with that class of in vivo academics on my C.V. that I turn to the positive aspects of being alone. While the downside is a massive and monolithic singleton, the upsides are a happy multitude of lilting and lovely things, sips of nectar from an unexpected blossom in that part of the wood where flowering trees are plentiful.

Today, my Babycakes is visiting the City with her son, Sean. I'm at Cafe Commons, the place that has been sometimes more of a home to me than the house I've lived in, just up the hill, for nearly thirteen years. It is as well-situated as a man could ever ask for.

Despite the embarrassment of riches of people in my life like Judy, like Jerry, Fred, the DogPoet, Davids M. & B., PamPam, James, Jennie-Jennie, Michael, Derek, Bubba, Steve, JP, the Rhino, and, especially, my family back East, it does well to remember those with whom I no longer are beholden to associate with, or at least stay my tongue around (sorry for the dangles).

For just as free with the love and positivity I am with those I love, when you're single you can be as blunt and disarming as your own judgement tells you is appropriate, with those you would never have otherwise abided. And appropriateness for me requires the bluntness to be constructive and the harshness of the lessons conveyed to be without compromise.

I'm quite good at thinking on my feet while still not shooting from the hip. (And other bodypart idioms as well!)

So I look forward to candor unfettered. It's one of those sips of nectar that may bring lessons. Lessons for myself as well.

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A Pall upon a Baker's Will.
A death-bringing shade on an English Shore
Shadowcasting across the world.
Safety suffers for the journey.

An Old World Disease come to New World Land.
Charm and oddly-compelling dyscrasia
Circumvents the skeptical
And Followers chase the Leader.

The propulsion of a wagging tail
Motion towards with no control.
Damn the future, full speed ahead
“What you need you can only find here.”

Hansel and Gretel's Sin was not Gluttony,
But rather in leading breadcrumb addicts to
A Predator's Kiss.

But there are always new addicts, always new lands.
The English know: they mapped the world.
A card of Green is all it takes
To infect the distance.

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One of the Conservatives' favorite bromides is yapping about the “Liberal Media”. You must understand that this is only an effective rallying cry because of the a priori repetition of variations on the notion that Liberal is not only bad, but is instead identical to Evil. Yes, that Evil. The Pure One. The Absolute One. Even uttering “liberal” without godblessing yourself is cause to fear for your soul.

So when someone like Stephen Colbert not only calls the Emerperor naked to his face but also takes his spineless courtiers to task for not even bothering to investigate the possibility that there's a nudity coverup, what's a True Believer to do?

I don't know...I still support the right to choose whatever worldview salves one's own fear of one's own mortality. But for the rest of us? I say, pop some popcorn, sit back and watch the circus.

And for those of you less heartless than that, less into that kind of godenfreude, just be sure to keep your hands at a safe distance from so many gyrations and so many grinding gears as you reach out to these people.

It used to be if you didn't like the message, you shot the messenger. These days, it's not easy enough again yet to get away with murder, so you satisfy yourself by discrediting the messenger, and then in turn, the message.

But if the message is loud and clear and uttered with candor and directness to the point that it nags at your very Faith, how to avoid the crisis? By focusing on the idea of general appropriateness and trying to fabricate the notion of good will that you just spent the last 20 years sucking dry.

So the biggest argument out there turns into “it was supposed to be a fun and safe evening! and Colbert was out of line!”.

If that was true, wouldn't W and Laura be even more at fault for giving Colbert such an icy reception after his bit was done? Politesse is such tricky business.

What I like best about the Colbert performance is that he finally exposes the media, not by stating so, but by forcing a reaction that aligns the crazy-ass Rightwingers with the media on the very same side.

What did the NY Times write about Correspondents' Dinner? They wrote about a faux ventriloquist act with a “Bush Dummy”, acknowledging neither the irony nor the redundancy in that phrase.

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