Obama nation

My dislike of the President and his policies and actions continues.
No surprise.

About the Gates affair, my question is this: why is the Chief Executive
of the Federal Government sticking his nose into a local police matter?
Obviously just because it's got race in it.
So he's the Race Judge in Chief?

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Likely bestseller

With thanks to the author.

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On Islam in Europe

From a New York Times review, no less, Bruce Bawer on the Islamization of the Old Continent.

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LGBT reconsidered

My unhappiness with the LesbianGayBisexualTransgendered thing is clear. I have called it a sexual Yugoslavia, an artificial group created out of parts that do not really belong together.

LGBT produces a Google number of over 11 million. If you put Gay in front of Lesbian, as in GLBT, you get about 6 million hits. Even though lesbians are numerically far fewer than gay men, the PC law requires that, as women, and because they are fewer, they get named first.

And the T thing has bothered me. I have not understood why someone like me, who is more than happy to be a man and who loves other men, should belong to a group with people who hate their physical gender and when they transition, often desire members of the newly opposite sex.

Ever since Jack Donovan (aka Malebranche) wrote Androphilia and rudely pointed out that Gay does not simply mean Happily Homosexual, but seriously implies effeminacy, my natural gender conservatism has been hyperactivated and the girly unmanliness of many, many gay men has become very irritating.

I have noticed how dominant is the assumption that to be a gay man is to be a kind of woman, or at least a womanish man or mixed manwoman. It is virtually inescapeable. I see it in movies and films, in common speech, jokes, etc. And importantly, I see it as much as or more in gay-produced and/or supposedly gay-friendly sources than I do in straight or mainstream sources. I have added the LOGO channel to my TV list and it is dominated by lesbian material and then gay male images that are overwhelmingly effeminate.

I don't have a one-dimensional notion of what it means to be a man. It doesn't require, as a lot of gays think, swaggering, burping and unrelated cluelessness. Or, when they are trying to be "serious", misogyny and violence. But I think it is an important question and although it will likely always be contested, being a man is certainly not a contentless drag routine.

Having said all that...

I am having the perverse and unfriendly notion that, due to the above reflections, the best way to understand the psychology of many male homosexuals is to see gayness precisely as a variant of transgenderism! The TGLB community: people who either physically or psychologically want to be the other sex.

Count me out.

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Malesoul 30

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Because

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Oops

Margaret Atwood's 1985 Handmaid's Tale, which I am now watching in the movie version, describes a fundamentalist Christian dystopia in North America built primarily on the oppression of women. Liberal paranoia about the evil Christian Right, which is always about to take over the country and put homos in camps, etc.

However, it actually describes an Islamic theocracy. Oops.

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Torchwood

Being a fan of Captain Jack, (pictured with "sideman" Ianto and friend Gwen) I have watched the Torchwood miniseries, Children of Earth this week. The trailers led me to believe that it would be a version of Children of the Corn or something equally derivative. I was happily surprised and then pretty horrified by how the plot developed. The writers have quite the dark imagination.

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Couldn't resist, on a couple of levels

The uniquely common

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things
Will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

The Falls of Constantinople

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Alternate evidence

I am pretty clear on the inherent flaws in the human race. And I use this blog often to discharge my irritation about human stupidity.

But, of course, I know very well that humans are also capable of heart-moving goodness. Sometimes you get surprised by it.*

Watching a nature program on supersized fish in the rivers of Mongolia. As an aside, the host points out a small newly-built monastery, not yet occupied. It seems that that "Stalinists" burned the old monastery that had been there for centuries. A standard part of their improvement of the world, including wiping out Buddhism. The new one was built...largely through donations from the tourist anglers who fish the river. And some young monks are being trained in the city to move there soon.

I am easily moved these days and this brought tears to my eyes. Human kindness trying to heal inhuman evil.

*And while I'm at it, although it's no surprise, friends have been good to me of late when I have needed it. That, too, brings tears.

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Opposites attract

"My, what a large venn you have."

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Nightworlds

In the middle of June, I had a dream.

I was on the train to Samarkand. Frank, a small grey man, sat across from me and said that he was going to give him a friendship ring and that he would certainly take it. It was a double ring, made out of the sign for infinity.

I looked down at my chest; it was open and my heart was visible. It was locked. And the lock was made of lead.

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Pugilism again

In March 2008, I posted this:

To punch above one's weight

Meaning

Competing against someone who you are no match for.

Origin

The different classes of contestants in boxing matches are distinguished by the weight of the competing boxers - heavyweight, middleweight, lightweight, flyweight etc. The sport is regulated so that only boxers of the same weight fight each other.

Someone from a lighter weight wouldn't be expected to have much chance if 'punching above his weight' against a heavier fighter.

The term is often used figuratively in situations where someone finds themselves competing outside their usual class. For example, the Irish comedian Graham Norton described that, since becoming well-known, he was able to attract better-looking partners than previously and that he was 'punching above my weight' when it comes to relationships.

Thanks to www.phrases.org.uk

But what if the lighter weight fighter knocks out the heavier guy?
Then who's punching above his weight?

Turns out that my question was prophetic. One fighter was older, taller, stronger, bigger, more experienced, deeper, maybe even a bit smarter...but he got KO'd.

He was competing against someone he was really no match for. An opponent who was much tougher.
And he lost.

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City by the Bay 1

One of the great things about SF is the closeness of so many natural spots. Kirby Cove, just across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin, a quiet rural place within clear sight of this amazing city. I was on a foggy picnic there once and it was empty but for us. Easter Monday 2008. I remember it well.


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Memory

I was watching TV today and some really stupid 50's biblical epic came on screen. Lurid color, bad costumes, and American actors speaking King Jamesian English in fake British accents.

It reminded me of one of the truly awful movies, The Conqueror (1956), with John Wayne as Ghenghis Khan (!) and Susan Hayward as his alluring paramour, Bortai.

I remembered when I first saw this masterpiece and for the first time in four days, I smiled.

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Irony in the male

This just arrived in my mailbox.

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Losing

Part of getting older is losing things. If I can keep a set of sunglasses for more than a month these days, it is a miracle.

Part of getting older is losing people.

Last summer I ended a thirteen-year stint in my workplace. It was time to go; I was burnt out on that kind of work. But I lost a whole community of people.

This past fall, a friend and mentor of twenty five years passed away of Parkinson's. I was the person who pointed out to him his strange new gait years ago and told him to have it checked out. He was a man whom I knew would always be around in some form or other if I needed him. And he would also tell me the blunt truth. I miss him.

This past winter, another friend died, of a recurrence of cancer she had beaten some fifteen to twenty years previous. She was a wonderfully down-to-earth woman with warmth, brains, love of life and a great sense of humor. I miss her.

When I was home to see my family, my father's dementia was so advanced that he no longer knew who I was. He just looked at me as if I were not there. So in a way, he is already gone for me.

Two weeks ago, a woman who is like a sister to me, my closest female friend, left town to go back to her home after a wonderful two-year local stint close by me. Although I was not aware of it, having her here was like having family around, especially my deceased sister who died suddenly in 2004. And having her leave was hard. Still is. Town seems emptier without her. I miss her.

And now I have lost, well, I don't exactly know what to call him. That was part of the problem. A lover. A friend. A playmate. A lost-and-found buddy. A flawed and ordinary and splendid man. All of those and something more. But he made me supremely happy. And God, God, do I miss him.

I am tired, very tired, of losing.

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Malesoul Lament

It is you I want most to talk to, and can't.
Want most to see, and can't.
Want most to hear, and can't.
Want most to touch, and can't.
Want most to be lost in, and can't.

Anymore.

The beginnings of a grief.

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Malesoul 5, yet again

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To serve and protect

The British are now beyond parody, refusing to publish the names of escaped prisoners lest their privacy rights be violated...

HT to "Dr. Sanity."

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And that night I was happy

….And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was
on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the
next at evening came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll
slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as
directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same
cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was
inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night
I was happy.

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Articles of faith

An article in the "UK Telegraph" (HT to Kathy Shaidle) points out the continuing blindness of gays to Muslim homo-hatred. The Liberal Narrative requires that the threat to All Things Good and Liberal come from the White Christian Right. Islam has the status of People of Color and therefore cannot be attacked, no matter what Muslims regularly say and do.

Reminds me once again of how often I hear ranting and raving against the White Christian Right, George Bush (not so much anymore), Republicans, conservatives, etc...and now Sarah Palin. But never never never have I heard San Francisco gays rant against the Muslim jihadis and the Islamic communities which loathe and often kill homosexuals. There have been maybe two formal events or statements over the years about the hanging of gays in Iran and the recent upsurge in gay killings in Iraq, but nothing from the "gay street." Silence.

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Corroboration

Watching a re-run of "Will & Grace" this morning. Hey, I was feeling out of sorts, had a bad night.

One of the staff who works for Karen Walker is a very sexy pastry chef. He turns out to have slept both with Karen and Will. When he is discovered, he invites them to a three way. Will protests, saying that if he were going to sleep with a woman "it would be with Hillary Swank...or Toby Maguire."

Reminded me of how irritating I find Toby Spiderman, p-whipped by cranky moralizing Kirsten Dunst and his endless angst and grovelling. Hillary Swank would be butcher.

A good line from W&G for once.

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For America

It was not until after 9/11 that I took a new interest in American history and have become, well, enamored of the Founding Fathers and their generation. A book by a controversial historian, Founding Brothers, let me see these men in three dimensions, as vividly human. Their flaws, rather than putting me off, endeared them to me. And that has made the existence of this amazing place, America, my homeland, all the more of a continuing miracle. I have been reading about them for the last years; I have have pictures of them on my wall.

The book and series about John Adams was very moving to me, bringing alive the daily details of life in those days. I embed a scene, George Washington taking the oath of office as the first President of the new Republic. I have to confess, it brings tears to my eyes.

Happy Fourth.

Exercising

I was a sporadic exerciser for much of my life, but in 2002 I started going to the gym with a new attitude (for which I thank my therapist) and have been going regularly, five times a week or more, for most of the last seven years. As others, and even my mother, pointed out, I look far better at 60 than I did at 50.

I am not a fanatic, especially about the dietary part, and I have the limitations of my gene pool and my age, so I am not cover-boy material. In fact, part of why I go so regularly is so that I can eat what I like and still stay in decent shape. The last year I slacked off a bit and gained some non-muscle weight, but that is coming off slowly but surely.

There is a definite narcissistic thrill to being in good shape, especially if you are not born with a naturally athletic frame and have spent parts of your life not so comfortable in your body. Funny moments happen, like this week. I was helping a friend do some moving. It was a hot day, so I was just in jeans and a tank top. I turned a corner and looked up into a large plate-glass window with some reflective quality to it. I saw this...well, I'm gonna say it...big, strong, nicely built and handsome dude looking at me. And a nanosecond later I realized it was me. Very funny. I turned to my friend and said, "Is that really me?". Eyes rolled.

But the regularity of gym exercise has a variety of benefits, not just the change in physique. Someone else has laid them out, very well. I concur completely.

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O Canada

July 1st is the Canadian national holiday, Canada Day.

I lived in Canada, around Toronto, from 1974-1991 and eventually became a naturalized citizen, once the US allowed dual citizenship. Some of the most significant events of my life took place in Canada and some of the most significant people in my life are Canadians.

Most Americans have the dimmest idea of Canada. And over the years, unfortunately, I think that too many Canadians have taken on a very dim notion of who they are, allowing them to engineer their own fading away.

My sense of Canada nowadays is largely wistful, regretful that a unique people, dazzled by a leader like Pierre Trudeau, (who reminds me of Barack Hussein Obama) allowed their history and natural identity to be discarded in favor of a set of supposedly superior values, especially government-driven multiculturalism, state-controlled medicine and an unearned sense of anti-American moral superiority, which includes having transcended the merely Yankee notion of free speech.

Canada is my second country, a vast and beautiful country, a place and people I became part of and who became part of me. But if I had to choose, I'd take July 4th over July 1st.