Cracker Lilo's Front Porch

Just a Little Too Much

2011-11-11T12:09:00.001-05:00

I know. It's been forever. I missed blogging most of this summer. I missed Hurricane Irene and Snowtober. I missed the Fourth of July, Samhain and the start of hockey season. I missed two months of Occupy Wall Street! Blame Twitter, blame my job, blame my desire to make homemade ice cream and paint chairs instead of blog. But some thoughts don't fit in 140 characters, or even a series of tweets, so here I am.

This week, I'm thinking about loyalty. What triggered this is the Penn State football scandal, which I got sucked into like everyone else. I was horrified by the allegations against Jerry Sandusky, horrified that his crimes were covered up, and horrified by the spectacle of Penn State students taking to the streets to defend coach Joe Paterno after his sudden firing Wednesday night. Please understand that what I am writing is not a defense. I don't know anything about sexual abuse, thank the Gods, except that it is horrific and nobody, especially a child, should ever have to go through it. What I know, and am writing about, is how it feels to discover that things and people you loved are worse than you could ever have possibly imagined. It is me processing what I saw the way I do best--by writing it out.

I feel no sympathy for Paterno, though his distinguished, decades-long career flamed out in a spectacularly appalling manner. I don't feel sympathy for the students who took to the streets, either. Their main message wasn't "We support Paterno," but "Our priorities are all kinds of screwed up." But as I tried to consider why the students would go out and support Paterno rather than take to the coaches' houses with pitchforks and torches, I thought about my own fandoms.

Having lived in Florida most of my life, I grew up around college football as the state religion. Two friends of mine are in an interfaith marriage as well as a cross-rivalry marriage--an atheist Seminole and a Jewish Gator. Agreeing to raise their five children as (future) Seminoles and Jews satisfied them both. I have no doubt that if such a thing, Gods forbid, happened at the University of Florida or Florida State campuses, most students would rally around their coaches at least as passionately as the Penn State students did Wednesday night. Those coaches haven't been on these campuses for anywhere near the length of time Paterno had been. If these students are anything like the ones at UF and FSU, they grew up loving Penn State and the Nittany Lions, raised by parents who were passionate fans.

Love is a hard habit to break. Loyalty is one of the most beautiful human virtues. If it weren't for loyalty, none of us would even survive to adulthood, let alone manage to love and be loved. We need lasting love in this world, and we need loyalty. Passionate sports fandom is not only fun and a great way to meet people, but a powerful expression of humanity's best traits. Sadly, it can also contain some of the worst.

I somehow managed to avoid college football fandom. I didn't become a Florida Gator, either, which disappointed my mother. However, as a lifelong NASCAR fan, I have my own legendary old guys who I venerate. My father taught me to revere Richard Petty and Junior Johnson before he died. I know that Petty is proudly and profoundly right-wing. I know that Johnson got his start running moonshine and that he's been married and divorced several times. Yet when I see them on TV, I have to drop everything and watch. The sport I love wouldn't have been the same without them, and most fans will grieve when they're gone. I admitted on Twitter that if, Gods forbid, Petty or Johnson had been involved in anything remotely like the Penn State scandal, I "would cry for days." Love is a habit, and I have loved both of these men ever since I was old enough to recognize them on TV. I would not overturn a news van over it, but I would want to deny and defend as long as possible, until I reached the point where cold reality slapped me in the face.

Loyalty isn't loyalty, love isn't love, until you can accept imperfection. I know that Sidney Crosby has a bit of a dirty streak and worry that he won't be quite the same when he returns to the ice. I know that Tony Stewart can be a real jerk to reporters and that he gets stupid on the track when he's frustrated. I love them anyway. And then there are all the quirks and flaws that I accept in my wife, my friends, and my relatives. I love them for their weaknesses as well as their strengths, and hope they can return the favor. But where is the line between a lapse, a flaw, a weakness, and intolerable, unforgivable behavior? It's never quite as bold and bright as we think it will be when we encounter it.

I was my paternal grandfather's favorite, and I considered him the wisest man I knew. He was unfailingly kind to me, although he had this frustrating ability to know when I was planning to, say, use his John Deere green spray paint and thwart me. Imagine my horrified, devastated reaction when, at 15, I learned that my beloved granddaddy had been in the Ku Klux Klan. I still don't know precisely what he did when he was younger, but I know he didn't just turn up his nose at black men. By the time I was born, he'd left the Klan; by the time I was a teen, he had genuine friendships with black people and seldom displayed any racism. It was hard to accept that he'd been violent towards black people, and hard to even be near him after I'd accepted the reality of his younger years. He knew my love had gone cold, and we walked on eggshells with each other for a while. I eventually saw him as a changed man and a product of his environment, but I never saw him quite the same way I did as a little girl. There was a monstrous, cowardly component to his personality that I had to acknowledge even though I personally never saw it. He was capable of evil thoughts and actions.

This wasn't the first and only time I've seen the monster inside a loved one, but it was the worst. I will never know if my reactions were entirely right, or even if there was any good response available to me at all. What I know is that it's never a good feeling to know you loved and respected someone who is capable of evil. Is the evil the exception, or is it the qualities you loved? Or is that person a jumbled, confusing mess? Are they worth loving again, or do you walk away? Either way, it's going to hurt like hell.

What I think we saw in State College, Pennsylvania on Wednesday night isn't necessarily about the rape culture or a society that doesn't value its children, although those certainly are components. What I saw was a mass expression of denial, a large group of people who have been told they loved people who were capable of great evil and didn't want to hear it. The habits of love and loyalty had not been broken yet, and perhaps won't be for a while. Hopefully they will be smart and compassionate enough to feel stupid and guilty soon. Eventually they will have to stare the monsters inside people they loved and respected in the face, and accept that the football program they loved had been twisted into a place where young boys were irreparably harmed. And it will not be pleasant.

Every good thing can be turned bad when taken to excess, from cheese to bourbon to work to loyalty. Yes, even love can be turned sour and horrible. The truth is, we all have the capacities for great evil and great good inside of us. The challenge is taming our inner monsters, and letting the good in us take the lead most of the time. At times, we must recognize the evil we see around us and call it by its proper name in order to keep from becoming monstrous ourselves.

Leaving Mass Vegas

2011-06-25T17:51:00.002-04:00

You know. The whole world knows. Same-sex marriages can be performed in New York State at the end of July. My wife and I were ecstatic! After weeks of dilly-dallying and bullshit, New York State now has marriage equality!

My wife and I are one of many same-sex couples who lived under a strange compromise. I'll try to recap succinctly. We married in Massachusetts on December 31, 2004. Our marriage was legally invalidated by judges because we were not residents of Massachusetts, and there was a law against letting out-of-state couples marry there if their marriage would be illegal in their home state. (The original intent of the law was to prevent interracial couples from traveling out-of-state to marry in Massachusetts, which demonstrates how intertwined all sorts of oppression are.) Then that law was overturned, and around the same time, the State of New York began to honor marriages that had been contracted *out* of state. As in, one couldn't legally marry a same-sex partner in New York, but could marry out of state. L'Ailee and I went back to Massachusetts as close as we could to our anniversary and re-married.

We weren't the only ones. My best friend is a bisexual woman with a same-sex partner; L'Ailee's best friend is a bisexual man with a same-sex partner. Both couples eventually took quick day trips to Massachusetts, as we had for our second wedding, to get married. Both couples returned to New York before the ink dried on their marriage licenses. The six of us jokingly referred to Massachusetts as "Mass Vegas." After all, for us, it was a quick place to get married, as Las Vegas is for some people in mixed-sex relationships. Unlike the stereotypical Las Vegas couple, however, we put much thought into our marriages and had known our partners for a long time.

For some couples, "Vegas" was elsewhere. They preferred locations in Canada, or, as their choices expanded, Connecticut or even Iowa. I remember how a vendor for my company laughed as he talked about how he never thought he'd be bringing his boyfriend back home to Iowa so they could get married.

I envied him. Neither L'Ailee nor I had ever so much as driven through Massachusetts before our wedding. She is from Siberia, where she's still discouraged from returning, and I'm from Florida, where my preferred venue, the Daytona International Speedway, is. But it was legal in Mass Vegas, so that's where we went. We got lost on the way to the bed and breakfast we were staying and marrying in, and I cried in the car. It wasn't home for either of us! We had to make our friends and a few select relatives fly in! It just wasn't right. And then L'Ailee kissed my tears away, and I decided we could get married on Mars for all I cared.

But going out of state isn't an option for everyone. L'Ailee's uncle had given us money as a wedding gift, and I chipped in more from selling my truck, which was more of a liability than an asset in New York. So we were able to reserve the big conference/banquest room at the bed and breakfast, to make the trip, to help people we loved with their plane tickets. Our wedding wasn't particularly lavish, but we can't replicate it anytime soon. Her best friend, a cabbie, could only afford to take a day trip. My best friend, a chef, couldn't get time off for a honeymoon. We know other working-class same-sex couples would have a real struggle with expenses, especially if they're senior citizens or raising children. I'm glad that same-sex couples in New York now have the ability to go to their own city hall or place of worship.

Some people wish to downplay the significance. I won't. Having needed my wife to stay by my side in a medical emergency--I surfed into a sailboat off the coast of New Jersey and was lucky to get away with bruises and a concussion--I understand how important it was that she was considered my spouse. The emergency room doctor in New Jersey almost chased her away because she didn't have our "kennel papers," as we call extra legal documents that we had to get like our medical powers of attorney, on her. We had to rely on the kindness of an understanding nurse. Our friend was terrified when his daughter got sick in school, he was far away, and his partner wasn't allowed to pick her up. They hadn't married yet. He therefore wasn't a legal guardian. They decided to get married that night. They were well aware that they couldn't always make that decision.

There will be ripple effects. For one thing, New York doesn't have any residency requirements. As with other states, there's a chance that a couple can marry here, then use their status in New York to challenge their own state's DOMA ("Defense of Marriage" Act) in court. There will be adoptions and second-parent guardianships. The fact that birth sex is no longer a consideration in whether two adult citizens can get married will benefit transgender people and those who love them. Gay and bisexual kids will now grow up with the expectation that, if they want to, they can get married.

Some people think it's not enough. It isn't. I sheepishly admit that I didn't even think too much about GENDA the Gender Expresssion Non-Discrimination Act. It's another bill that kept passing in the State Assembly and getting blocked in the Senate. Essentially, if GENDA passed, one couldn't fire a person for being transsexual, deny a butch woman housing, refuse service to an effeminate man, etc. As a relatively feminine bisexual woman who answers to "Who brought the straight girl?" in most lesbian spaces, I don't deal with most of those problems. But while my wife and I fought for our marriage, other people fight for the right to simply use the bathroom in peace. I vowed on Twitter that when the state Senate reconvenes, I will call and email and beat the drum as hard for GENDA as I did for the Marriage Equality Act.

I find myself inspired by the unexpected straight allies I found. I've grown up around a lot of religious-inspired homophobia, and there's still a lot in my family. But at work, observant Catholics, Muslims, and Jews told me they were praying for us, not to change, but to see the result we wanted. My NASCAR and Pittsburgh Penguins-fan friends online gave me encouragement. Sean Avery, the notorious pest on the New York Rangers, testified in favor of same-sex marriage in Albany, leading my wife and I to joke about the win coming with an assist by him. (I no longer hate Avery!) Our cell phones blew up with text and voice messages last night. Today, as we went about errands, straight people kept wanting to hug and congratulate us.

These straight friends and allies overcame the homophobic bullshit they'd been told, opened their hearts, and looked at sexual minority people as we really are. So did several Republicans in the State Senate, though they'd been pressured most intensely under the assumption that they'd vote "for family values.' None of them had to do this. I therefore want to pay it forward by helping others.

In decorating others' houses as well as my own, I've found that one change can lead to many more. The rest of the house just looks like a mess in comparison to the renovated room, and the old things no longer work. So, this is a big repair. We may sit on the paint cans and pop open a beer or soda and smile at it today. But there are still teenagers thrown out of their homes over their sexual orientation and/or gender expression. (My wife was one of them.) There are still hate crimes. There are still people being fired for even a suspicion of queerness. There are still 44 more states to go for marriage! And there are people who, for whatever unaccountable reason, have devoted their professional lives to blocking or reversing any civil rights gains L, G, B, and/or T people might enjoy. A group of those, the National Organization for Marriage, has pledged 2 million dollars to reverse same-sex marriage in New York. They will work to oust the Republicans who voted for marriage.

I think too of the fact that straight people can also suffer. I found myself haunted by an article in the June 2011 National Geographic about child marriage. I was haunted by this photograph of a teenage girl being carried to her new husband's home. Surrounded by festive finery, she wails exactly like her short life's just been wadded up and thrown away by someone else's much bigger hands.

I think of how "love," and even "choice," are relatively modern concepts that not everyone gets to enjoy. I think of how very fortunate L'Ailee and I are. I've been fired, she's been beaten and thrown away, we've been threatened and rejected, we've suffered indignities, we've taken extra steps and had to talk fast. But we were able to find each other, love each other, live with each other, and marry each other. We are no longer afraid of being forcibly divorced again. We were able to put our arms around each other, scream, and celebrate in bed as the city erupted in (mostly) joy around us. We still count that first wedding date as our anniversary--after all, we still felt married. We joke about how every New Year's Eve, all of New York celebrates with us. Today, we really did feel like the whole city and many people around the world wanted to celebrate with us.

We want to celebrate with the world, too. We don't normally like going to New York City Pride. It sucks to get to Manhattan on a weekend. It's hot and crowded. And hey, the Sonoma NASCAR race is on! But this year, we're TiVoing Sonoma. We're going to Pride tomorrow. Anything else is unthinkable. Then we'll get up, pack our gear, and look for the next job to do.

Why Ryan Newman Snapped

2011-05-07T12:22:00.001-04:00

"Sources tell FOXSports.com that an altercation broke out between the drivers in the NASCAR hauler, the sanctioning body's at-track office where private meetings can be held.

One source told FOXSports.com that Montoya said after the incident that "Newman hits like a girl."--"Newman, Montoya Feud Hits New Heights," May 7, 2011

I'm weird about fights. I don't want to see nothing but fighting--wrestling, boxing, and MMA are boring to me--but I do like the occasional hockey fight. I *love* the extremely occasional NASCAR fight. It's like wasabi on a sushi tray. Plus, when drivers use their fists, they don't use their cars and risk taking other drivers out in the process.

It looked so much like Ryan Newman, the guy at Stewart-Haas Racing who isn't Tony Stewart, and Juan Pablo Montoya, the Colombian open-wheel veteran, would have one after they beat and banged at the Richmond race last week. There was some rather blatant retaliation by Montoya. Even the commentators were slavering over the prospect. And why not? We had two big (for NASCAR, anyway), evenly matched, emotional guys who would throw actual punches, not like the amusing but brief nerd fight between Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton last year. Also, Montoya's hot. (That was my reason for wanting it, anyway. It's not just straight men who love to watch attractive people fight.)

Sadly, it would occur yesterday, before the Darlington race, away from the cameras. Ryan Newman, the more even-keeled of the two by miles, is rumored to have thrown a punch in the hauler where NASCAR officials have stern talks with drivers. (Some fans refer to it as "the principal's office.") This gave birth to a Twitter hashtag, #WhyNewmanSnapped. I loved it. My NHL fan tweeps are excellent about coming up with hashtag games, perhaps too much so, but the fun just doesn't come to the NASCAR neighborhood of Twitter all that often. I therefore enjoyed the hell out of it. Once again, I'm archiving my own entries, and several from others that I liked.

Many of these have to do with the drivers' sponsors (Tornados snacks and US Army for Newman, Target for Montoya) or the fact that both have recently had babies. Other quirks these drivers have should become obvious.

Mine:

Montoya lied about Target-brand antacids being "just as good as Tums."

"Look! My baby's faster than yours, too!"

Montoya suggested that Ryan's next sponsor should be Extenze.

Ryan was sick of Montoya's lame-ass sound effects.

Ryan was tired of Tony Stewart being considered the tough guy at Stewart-Haas Racing.

Montoya had a good laugh at how badly Ryan + Krissie's NJ Devils did this year.

Others:

@ampedup19: Saw the bullseye

@AskThe_Man: Because he's tired of JPMs toy planes waking up his baby in the motor coach lot

@DaveCroce: Newman is just jealous that Montoya keeps sticking his neck out and he simply can't.

@DavidLStarr: Newman thinks Target's baby clothes are too expensive.

@Fieldof33: Montoya laughed when Newman said he had a real engineering degree... from Purdue.

@HitYourMarks: Having problems shooting down JPM's model airplanes.

@Jeff_Gluck: Was tired of letting Tony Stewart being the only Stewart-Haas driver to have punched someone at the track

@jjfan1993: he was pissed @jpmontoya interrupted his coverage of the Royal Wedding on the scanner

@ksrgatorfn: JPM kept blasting the Friday song outside Newman's motorcoach

@mearn: Saw the episode of Pawn Stars where they laughed at the idea of a Ryan Newman firesuit being valuable

@mearn: Montoya claimed Newman didn't know how to measure banking, old Bristol was definitely 36 degrees

@nscrwriter: Wanted to prove what the initials JPM really stand for: Just Punched Montoya

@queers4gears: because Montoya told Newman a Tornado was just a cheap American rip-off of hispanic food.

@queers4gears: JPM kept on demanding to see Ryan's birth certificate.

@queers4gears: Juan Pablo still thinks "winning" jokes are funny.

@queers4gears: Juan Pablo changed all the radio presets and adjusted the mirrors in Ryan's car.

@RaceMonkey: JPM asked Ryan if he had "a case of the mondays"

@RacingWithRich: JPM unfollowed Newman on twitter.

@Rich52370: overheard that JPM kept refering to Ryan as the creepy overweight mailman that lives downstairs

@SBPopOffValve: Thought JPM's Kentucky Derby hat was "unnecessarily showy and vulgar"

@SBPopOffValve: Auditioning for role of NHL enforcer since Matt Cooke is suspended

@SBPopOffValve: Prefers Wal-Mart to Target

@SBPopOffValve: Had "Hit on a Colombian" on his bucket list, but misinterpreted what it meant

@sbsimonds: JPM walked in and announced "My name is Juan Pablo Montoya, and you killed my father. Prepare to die"

@sbsimonds: Juan licked the last Tornado

@silverdsl: Juan referred to him as "No Neck Newman" one too many times.

@supahlissa: JPM muttered something dirty in Spanish...and didn't know Newman understood him.

@teaganvamp14: Ryan wants to be a trending topic on twitter.

@TLaut23: Newman was told that Tornadoes were no longer being sold at Target

@TomKopacz: JPM's ugly white-framed sunglasses

@wood_brothers21: Juan Pablo didn't deliver the good Columbian that Ryan was expecting.

Food and Other Revolutions

2011-05-04T14:43:00.001-04:00

It's amazing what inspires me to write. I tweeted a lot about the death of Osama bin Laden, and we went to the World Trade Center site at 1 am. We ended up watching the sun rise and taking May 2 as a personal day. By the time I felt like really writing, everyone had already said everything and a little bit more. They're still talking. I reserve the right to blog about something else.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution TV show, on ABC, has been moved from the all-important sweeps month of May to the rerun season of June, where it will probably do much better. (It had been scheduled opposite Glee and NCIS, which strikes me as a kiss of death.) Good riddance, I thought. I watched much of the first installment, where Oliver goes to Huntington, West Virginia. Huntington ranked high in all the things a city never wants to: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. So TV chef Jamie Oliver came in to "save" them.

The show absolutely disgusted me. It was turned into a stereotype-ridden fish-out-of-water drama. Poor widdle Jamie Oliver cried a lot--when kids threw away fresh homemade bread, when he faced opposition, when grown women in the school cafeteria took offense to his sexist pet names. The West Virginians were made to look like the most benighted hillbillies. Oliver literally screamed at poor families. Certainly there was a problem--children in the school couldn't even use a knife and fork properly, because they'd been fed chicken nuggets, pizza, and hamburgers so much. But I found it the most obnoxious kind of scripted "reality."

I don't like to watch people be humiliated on TV for my entertainment, unless they play for the Philadelphia Flyers or wrecked Tony Stewart last week. I don't enjoy watching real strangers cry, hug, and share their pitiful stories for the unblinking eye of a camera and the hands of an editor who will use them for maximum drama. It was painful viewing for me. I stopped. I was appalled at Oliver, at producer Ryan Seacrest, and at ABC. My hackles rose up every time someone mentioned that they liked or supported these efforts.

Also, honestly, my childhood wasn't all that far from Huntington, West Virginia. I could quite easily imagine "Miss Linda" from the lunchroom getting every bit as defensive as their lunch ladies. My brother and I drank chocolate milk because the chocolate made it less torturous to drink that thick, creamy crap with tomato sauce on a hot Florida day. If someone had yelled at us about all the sugar in our flavored milk and taken it away, leaving only plain milk, we would have yelled back and drank water with lunch. My mother was overly protective of us because our father died when I was 7, and she didn't want to lose us, too. We didn't live in a bad neighborhood, but she worried about us playing outside while she was at work. Our mother taught us how to cook and prepare food, but many of our neighbors didn't have time to teach their children knife-handling skills. It seemed like Oliver never stopped to ask anybody about things like that. He told people what they needed, and told, and told some more.

So. I gleefully read about the hit this awful, if well-intentioned, show took in its second season. I wrote this admittedly sarcastic comment amid outraged Food Revolution fans:

You mean poor single mothers don't like being screamed at by some posh stranger who keeps what they make in a year in his wallet for pocket change? You mean schools have these things called food budgets? You mean kids like sweet things, think in the short term, and get resentful when you take away all the foods they like at once? WEIRD!

I got some risible replies. These are all unedited, not just the attempt to mock me as a moron:

"yer funnie ! we shood git toogathur an klub sum seels!"

"Anyone can eat healthy for the same price it costs to eat at McDonald's. Being smart about food is what he tries to help people to do. Don't like a "stranger" telling you...I'm sure many local people who take the time to learn about how to keep their bodies moving and choose an apple over a bag of chips can tell you. He's "posh" because he has an accent and used proper grammar? Really?"

"You mean parents should CARE about what they're feeding their children! How DARE they! Especially since the state is PAYING( from MY taxes) to feed the children YOU brought into this world? How about using a condom and saving us ALL the trouble of paying for YOUR children , since you don't give a good damn about them anyway!"

Oh. Wow. How could I possibly have assumed that any classism was at work here, or that it wasn't the people who actually needed help who were watching this show? (For one thing, my grammar was at least as proper as that of other commenters.)

It would probably surprise these people to know that I wasn't typing with one hand while eating a bag of chips with the other as 20 fat, pre-diabetic toddlers ran around the house. I don't have children, just a wife and cats. I support urban farmers, including the many in Brooklyn. I do much of my food shopping at farmers' markets. I got a wake-up call when I was diagnosed with high cholesterol, and that combined with my chicken/egg allergy made me re-evaluate my own diet. I don't wish to die of a heart attack at 38 like my father. My wife, who teaches martial arts in a gym, gently keeps me in line. We started playing street hockey on spring weekends because it seemed so wrong to her to watch other people exercise while we sat on the couch. A boy who we recruited to play goalie now plays goalie for his high school's team.

I do think there's such a thing as Big Agribusiness, and I don't think it's good for us to eat foods with all the nutrition processed out. I agree with Alice Waters, who tweeted on April 29th that "The true elitism is a food system controlled by a handful of corporations." I think children should know what a cherry tastes like before they take their first sip of Cherry Coke. I don't think mega-food corporations are friends, only skilled at friendly rhetoric in commercials. They are the worst kind of backstabbers. This op-ed spoke to me.

I've learned much from my brother, one of many new organic farmers in their twenties and thirties. He double-majored in business administration and agriculture so that he could live his lifelong dream, one that people laughed at. "I make good food. I feed people. It's the best job in the world," he says.

I would like to see a reality show based on passionate young farmers like my brother. Or, perhaps, a sitcom based on them, Green Acres for a new generation. I'd like to see the cameras turn to the urban farmers in Brooklyn and elsewhere, with vines wrapped around their homes and apiaries on their roofs. To homegrown (ha!) heroes like Majora Carter, who's working to green the South Bronx. To the Catherine Ferguson Academy, an award-winning school in Michigan which taught pregnant and mothering girls how to farm. But, you know, that was closed down by an awful new Michigan state law.

Let's not promote them. Let's not showcase the real, wonderful American food revolutions going on all over this country. No, instead, let's show a caricatured version of "foodies" and aggrandize a TV chef who's already been paid a ton of money. Let's have yelling and crying and "lunch ladies" made to look incredibly stupid for TV reviewers who can't even be bothered to get their names right. (I can't blame the staffs of Los Angeles school cafeterias for not wanting Jamie Oliver and ABC's cameras around.) Let's give smug people who think they're doing good by eating organic multigrain tortilla chips instead of Lay's on their couch a good laugh at poor peoples' expense. Food Revolution fans complained that ABC had caved to Big Agribusiness, never mind that ABC is itself a large corporation. If people find a show unpleasant to watch compared to other choices, the network will do something about that show--duh?

I don't even think Oliver's all bad. His intentions are good. It's good to give back once one has earned money. He's right about processed food. I was pleased to read about one of his projects for Los Angeles--rolling kitchen on a bus where urban teenagers, among others, can learn to cook simple, healthful food. His foundation does behind-the-scenes work in two countries. In short, I'd like to see his work go on, with respect for the people being helped and without a camera and editors.

So, again, I'm rhetorically threading the needle. Or maybe my thoughts are all just a jumbled mess and I entertain way too many opinions. Whatever.

In typing all this, I almost said the attitudes displayed in Oliver's show are "all stick, no carrot." But there are two things wrong with that neat little metaphor. Firstly, human beings, including poor, unhealthy, uneducated humans, deserve to be listened to and given real help that acknowledges the realities of their lives, not trained like mules. Secondly, the nice, healthful, unprocessed carrot can actually be transformed into yet another stick for people who've been hit enough already.

We can do better than that. A good start would be to learn how to market at least as well as Big Agribusiness. They listen, they learn, and they know what to say to promote their products. Meanwhile, reformers often come off tin-eared, arrogant, and, well, douchey. It's true that douchiness isn't fatal and diabetes is. However, douchiness does cause people to tune out a message and make it incredibly easy for the real elites to paint reformers as elitists.

Get the hell out, Glenn

2011-04-23T17:49:00.001-04:00

Glenn Beck's Fox News show has reached its "Final Chapter," per both Beck and FNC. He'd been losing viewers, and, thanks to the concerted efforts of Stop Beck, advertisers for a while. His radio show was losing markets, too--New York City, Philadelphia, several towns in Connecticut, Madison, Wisconsin. For the past couple of years, it had seemed like Glenn Beck never went home, just had a cot and a cooler in the NewsCorp building someplace so he could take the occasional break between bloviations. Now it seems like he can't be jettisoned quickly enough. All I can think is, it can't happen to a nicer guy.

I have long loathed the efforts of groups like the American Family Association and Parents' Television Council, which attempt to get any media they disagree with removed from their line of sight. The AFA is largely responsible for those screens that "protect" childrens' eyes from magazines like Glamour and Cosmopolitan in a checkout line. They try to persuade advertisers to leave shows like Glee, so they become radioactive to network executives. They're against any positive depiction of gayness, bisexuality, religious beliefs that contradict their own, sex in college, etc. I never wanted to become one of those people.

I say that because I was reluctant to join in efforts like StopBeck.com, and was never an enthusiastic participant. I believe in freedom of speech. I don't pride myself on causing another person to lose their livelihood. But then, Beck embarked on a crusade to get Obama administration officials fired, figuratively getting Van Jones' scalp as he resigned from the White House Council on Environmental Quality. His fans also went after Frances Piven, a CUNY professor. There are other examples, but those glare to me. Beck has no problem robbing others of their livelihoods for simply disagreeing with him, and he doesn't need to stick with plain facts to get it done.

At least once a week, I'm required to turn off the flat-screen TVs on my office's walls at 5 pm. Beck's show is, was, on at 5, so I'd see him on "the Fox TV." (We also have CNN, HNN, and MSNBC TVs.) I was amazed at how loopy this guy sounded. He always seemed to have something incredibly hateful to say. I found his snarky, sneering, bug-eyed delivery highly unpleasant besides. It didn't surprise me to learn that he'd been a "morning zoo" radio host earlier in his career.

It dismayed me to realize that this was the man my mother kept quoting. For my brother and I, the worst thing about Beck was how much our mother liked him. She'd always been conservative, but she became increasingly credulous, and said things that seemed extremely off-the-wall to us. Her skeptical streak, which she'd raised us with, got smaller. She became much less tolerant of debate, and she'd take our disagreement personally.

In one episode, Beck managed to insult atheists, environmentalists, and organic farmers in one shot. My mother shared her new ideas with my brother...an atheist, environmentalist organic farmer. He cried to me, and they didn't speak for weeks. I went a few weeks without speaking to her when she told me what Beck had taught her about LGBT civil rights groups' role in undermining America. We were so hurt--she trusted this charlatan over her own children! She should have known better than anyone else that my brother had always wanted to farm and I just loved my wife!

She enthusiastically quoted the history Beck taught her, and I lost all the color in my face when I realized it came from David Barton, who claims to be a historian and has a long track record of "improving" history for his right-wing audience. After a while, we learned to change the subject or "have something boiling on the stove" when she'd quote Beck. She got wise to that, and it made her angry, too.

My brother and I would laugh at how we sounded so much like her when we were teenagers. She'd feared our music, our TV shows, our friends. "You know, she's getting older and more impressionable," we'd joke. We didn't want to be that way toward her. But we learned from our friends, in the real world and online, that we weren't alone in fearing the influences on our parents after Obama's election. The recession had been unkind to her, and she'd had to scramble to recover. (I don't want to share more than that.) She'd always preferred Fox News, but she had it on constantly while working from home. Several friends and siblings got interested in the Tea Party movement. Soon, Mom volunteered for conservative causes and became a Tea Partier herself. She made new friends there.

So, we know it's not just Beck. We know a lot of things worked together in her, and that it's been fairly common. We know she'd always felt bad that my brother is an atheist and I'm a Pagan, like she'd failed as a Christian mother. Her Tea Party friends kind of reinforced that. We think she's ashamed of us.

That said, we keep hoping that maybe, just maybe, the end of Beck's show will be the beginning of tolerable, even pleasant, conversations again. She's doing much better financially now, and a bit too busy to volunteer for every campaign. It's better when Mom's away from that TV constantly blaring Fox News anyway. It's easier to debate opinions than outright lies. It's easier to have a discussion when one is not positioned as part of some evil anti-American agenda. It's wonderful when we don't have to have a discussion at all, because she's not afraid that the world's going to hell in a handbasket while we worry about weather and watch hockey. We see some of the more lovable parts of our mother sometimes--for example, her humor, her amazing work ethic, her generosity. (She loaned us money for a hotel room and airfare for my uncle's funeral.) I love to discuss NASCAR and country music with her.

As I type this, I tear up. Unlike Glenn Beck, I am not using Vicks Vapo-Rub to do it. Beck is one of many media personalities and politicians--not all on Fox News--who took advantage of justifiably angry, fearful people and whipped them up into a frenzy. They distracted these people from their real problems with scapegoats and shiny objects. They convinced them that their country was not just changing, but going into the abyss, and had them screaming, "I want my country back."

My brother and I are among many people in their twenties and thirties who wondered what the hell had happened to our parents. We had been taught to respect teachers, police officers, and fire fighters; now we were told they were greedy unionists who were paid too damn much. We had been taught to respect the office of the President of the United States even if we didn't care for the current occupant's policies; now we were told that he was destroying our country. We had been told to eat sensibly and go play outside; now we were hearing advocates of those things dismissed as enemies of freedom. And so on, and so on. Frankly, we're at the point where we want to scream, "I want *my* country back."

So, as Glenn Beck leaves, we breathe a sigh of relief. He did so much damage to American political discourse in such a short time. There's a long way to go, but perhaps this is a sign that our country can eventually go sane again. That we can disagree without being disagreeable. That we can see our neighbors as perhaps a little strange, but not an enemy. That if someone's being drummed out of their job, it's because of something they actually did wrong. And Glenn Beck, you did a metric fucktonne of wrong.

Don't let the door hit you where nature split you!

For a somewhat funnier take on this--because, as my paternal grandfather said, "Some things are much too serious not to joke about"--click here.

#GlennBeckFinalShowSpoilers

2011-04-23T17:02:00.002-04:00

Twitter being Twitter, the idea of Glenn Beck's final show coming up resulted in a hashtag game on Friday evening, #GlennBeckFinalShowSpoilers. I am an avid participant in hashtag games. These were so good, I wanted to archive a few favorites somehow. I'm proud of my own, though they do betray the sorts of movies I watch when I'm in a girly-swirly mood.

Starting with my own, @GreenEyedLilo:

Cries real tears for the first time as he apologizes to everyone he's defamed.

Learns he could've gone back to his home world whenever he wanted if he clicked his heels 3 times.

Glenn reveals his alter ego, Glennda.

Laughs maniacally while saying, "Man, I really had you going! You shoulda seen the looks on your faces!"

Glenn realizes that George Soros is the soulmate he's been corresponding w/by email. #YouveGotMail

The Ghosts of Patriots Past make him see the error of his ways, + he summons a boy to fetch a plump Easter goose

Glenn learns he can be more than a pretty face, + graduates w/honors from Harvard Law School.

Now for others, several of whom I follow.

@2babru: GB removes mask. He's really 'Old Man Whithers'. "Woulda gotten away with it if it werent for you meddling kids"

@adambonin: Beck goes preppy to woo Sandy, who in turn shows up clad in tight black leather.

@adavid: Takes hammer to an entire box of chalk then snorts the lot through a rubber hose.

@allanbrauer: Goldline has been selling pyrite.

@allanbrauer: Billy Mumy turns him into a jack-in-the-box, then wishes him into the cornfield.

@allanbrauer: Glenn mortars the last brick into the wall as Mrs. Beck watches, crying, then SHE gets up and leaves basement.

@awienick: Glenn Realizes that Leia was his sister … and decides to turn to the Dark Side so he can lust after her…

@awienick: Danny Glover peers over, saying "You're one ugly…" as Beck wakes up screaming "MOTHERFUCKER!!!" Fight ensues…

@boloboffin: "You get a caliphate! And you get a caliphate! And you get a caliphate! EVERYBODY GETS A CALIPHATE!"

@bschefke: Glenn Beck realizes that the Republican budget plan is actually a cookbook
@c_r_evans: The Aristocrats!

@DaysWithDave: Beck, Hannity, Doocey, Cavuto, and O'Reilly embrace before singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary

@fountain_penmj: Glenn dresses as a bunny. He does not explain.

@fountain_penmj: Glenn reveals his Kenyan birth certificate

@FunnyManG_Child: As "Don't Stop Believing" plays in background, Van Jones, Barack Obama & Jon Stewart walk on set. Blackout...

@GregFrayser: Arrested under Good Samaritan law, Beck has character witnesses called against him, beginning w/ Van Jones

@GregFrayser: O'Reilly chops off Beck's hand with lightsaber, reveals he is Beck's father

@kcivey: Camera pulls back to reveal buried Statue of Liberty. It was our Earth all along

@Kipper42: Wants to write one last thing on his chalkboard; chalk breaks. Beck breaks down in tears. Fade to black

@LauHope: Beck water skies wearing swimming trunks and leather jacket and jumps over a confined shark

@LeftsideAnnie: He reveals that he is going to be the new spokesmodel for Vick's VapoRub

@LeftsideAnnie: Glenn reveals that he's going to be on next season's DWTS.

@LiberalJaxx: Beck will reveal he's secretly a Dem hired by Soros to chase all of Fox's advertisers away.

@MagicLoveHose: "My real name is Banksy."

@myinfamy: Beck says 'Screw you guys, I'm going home'.

@MyNameIsMofuga: During a tear filled rant admits he has perfect 20/20 vision and only wore those glasses to look smarter.

@osgood9: " Yes Glenn your own gold dust covered straight jacket"

@owillis: Beck turns the earth's rotation backwards, stops election of Obama

@PatriciaB42: His sweater will get caught on the chalk board and will continue to unravel until he collapses in a sobbing pile.

@PROTIPZ: Glenn and a band of plucky conservatives fight back a hoard of evil libs preventing the opening of the Hellmouth

@rightwingwatch: Beck finally destroys the broadcasting antenna that has prevented us all from seeing that Obama is a space alien

@strawberryslady: Beck dies after begging us to "look at me" for one last time

@TVHilton: It ends just like the X-Files: with a mythology so confused and contradictory that nobody cares anymore.

@Voiceofgarth: Glen pulls his head out of his ass to the thunderous sound of suction as his head finally breaks loose.

Common threads

2011-04-14T16:40:00.000-04:00

The French parliament banned the wearing of face-covering Islamic veiling--the niqab and the burqa--and French Muslim women were arrested for wearing that attire in a protest for their right to dress and express their religious beliefs as they wished.

A designer for a clothing company appeared in a fashion spread with her young son. It contained a photograph of her painting her smiling son's toenails bright pink, and that picture became one of those news-network nontroversies that revealed oh, so much about the speakers.

A man was beaten very close to death for wearing his San Francisco Giants jersey to the Los Angeles Dodgers' home opener. As if the fact that he remains comatose isn't bad enough, on Sunday, a sports columnist took it upon himself to blame the victim for wearing that jersey at all, then express a grievance about most sports fans.

There are common threads in each of those stories, no pun intended. In each case, someone is being attacked or punished for their clothing choices. I've discussed this before, years ago, in this post. I feel the need to discuss it again.

My wife, L'Ailee, is particularly sensitive to the significance of others' clothing and accessory choices, and has imparted that sensitivity to me. She literally majored in fashion design. Although she doesn't use the degree in the way she intended, she considers fashion an art form and painstakingly assembles the outfit--the self--she'll present to the world before she goes out. Someone will disapprove of the Team Russia Olympics t-shirt, the red lipstick, the sharply tailored gray sheath dress, the heady cologne, the exposed bat tattoos on her arm, the diamond stud in her left nostril.

She maintains her right to wear whatever she wants in whatever combination she wants. When she grew up in the dying days of the Soviet Union, she was punished for such acts as daring to embroider flowers onto her school uniform shirt. Later, in an elite New York City high school where she also wore a uniform, three changes were made to the dress code thanks to her. She states that with sincere pride.

When we watch news footage from Muslim-majority countries, she's taught me to note how the women are dressed. If there aren't any women at all, we're most likely looking at an extremely totalitarian nation. If the women are swathed head to toe in black, with their faces obscured or invisible, that's also an awful sign for the entire nation. We were encouraged by the sight of bright headscarves, exposed hair, jeans, and calf-exposing skirts on the female Egyptian protestors recently. We've been told that we're shallow and looking at the wrong things. However, in totalitarian regimes, the way a person--most often, a female and/or young person--looks becomes extremely important, so much so that violations of appearance standards are met with physical punishments and arrests. If it's important to tyrants, it becomes important to the rest of us.

That said, we find France's ban on face veiling as distressing as mandated face veiling in other nations. I can see reasons to ask a woman to remove that veil--for instance, for her driver's license picture, because part of its purpose is to verify identity. However, the reason France ordered a tiny minority of a minority to remove these veils was to express anti-Muslim bigotry. They are a secular nation, they claim, and want all citizens to live by their secular values. Nevermind that sometimes people cover their faces for secular reasons, such as illness or extreme cold. Like governments that order all women to cover their faces, heads, ankles, etc., France decided that their "right" to inflict their standards onto citizens was more important than citizens' right to express themselves freely through their clothing. It is, in short, simply the other side of a slimy, rusty coin.

It isn't even working. When the French parliament first debated this law, 300 women claimed to cover their faces. Now the number is 2,000--still a tiny percentage of the nation, but exponential growth regardless. Muslimahs in France understand that they are being targeted, and this leads people to become defensive. How many times in your life have you uttered a sentence such as "Oh, you don't like that, huh? Let's see what you think about *this*!"? As far as I see, this is exactly what new and part-time niqab wearers in France are doing.

So far in this country, females can wear or not wear almost anything in public, so long as their nipples and genitalia are covered. Males technically can as well, although there are more and stronger de facto rules about it. When Jenna Lyons helped her young son Beckett paint his toenails--PINK!, even--for a J. Crew ad, she unleashed right-wing rage. Never mind how J. Crew's actual clothing looks. (For one thing, there's very little pink in their spring boys' collection.) She was encouraging her son to accessorize in a slightly feminine manner, and seemed proud and happy about that! And by allowing that picture to be published, she was clearly encouraging transsexualism and Teh Ghey!

I remember covering Love Won Out, an anti-gay seminar that had been founded by Focus on the Family (it's now an Exodus International project) in 2001, for an Orlando LGBT magazine. The speakers discussed childrens' gender identity in great detail. Boys were to be *boys*. Girls were to be *girls*. One speaker, Joseph Nicolosi, exhorted fathers to roughhouse with their sons. I'll never forget this joke of his: "You may drop him on his little head and cause brain damage, but that's a small price to pay for heterosexual masculinity." I believe he and many others truly would rather see a boy like Beckett Lyons brain-damaged than with painted toenails.

When I was a little girl, I was rather mixed in my gender presentation. Mostly, I was a lonely little geek. Y'all can see that I like pink just fine now. But when I was little, I hated it. I didn't hate it because of itself, I hated it because there was such an expectation that I would like it just because of my age and gender. I always wore skirts and dresses, but they were always shades of green and blue, which are still my favorite colors.

I would wear those green and blue dresses, with long blonde hair in braids, while climbing trees, digging in hopes of finding cool ancient stuff, training squirrels, and "winning" many Daytona 500s in milk crates. My parents told me I could be an archaelogist or a NASCAR driver if I wanted. It breaks my heart now to see how, 30 years later, there seem to be even fewer possibilities presented for children. So many things are splashed in pink to mark them as "for girls." I want every child to have every color in the big crayon box. But for every person who feels that way, it seems there are so many who want to keep choices for children as simple and limited as their own minds.

One objection to the boy's pink toenails is that "he'll be made fun of by other kids." Really? Who would be giving the other kids the idea that it's wrong for a boy to have pink nails and that such a deviation from the norm is worth discussing loudly in the cruelest language possible? Who keeps trotting that picture out, which would otherwise have been forgotten by now? It is, purely and simply, concern trolling. There is absolutely no excuse for adults with media platforms to act like the meanest playground bullies themselves.

Besides, sometimes a person can wear something that's considered 100 percent gender appropriate and still be punished for it. That's what happened to 42-year-old Bryan Stow for wearing San Francisco Giants gear to the Los Angeles Dodgers' stadium on March 31st. As I--and John Steigerwald--write, he is still comatose. Steigerwald, however, had this charming take on it: "Maybe someone can ask Stow, if he ever comes out of his coma, why he thought it was a good idea to wear Giants' gear to a Dodgers' home opener when there was a history of out-of-control drunkenness and arrests at that event going back several years....Are the 42-year-olds who find it necessary to wear their replica jerseys to a road game, those kids who are now fathers who haven't grown up?"

That's right, Steigerwald blamed the victim. Stow was expressing his unpopular minority stance through highly visible clothing in a sports arena, so of course he had a savage beating from which he may never recover coming, right? And what a perfect opportunity for Steigerwald to then address how stupid he thinks all adults look in team replica jerseys at sports events!

In all of these stories, there have been strong opinions, and people made clear their own stances on so many issues besides the bit of cloth or cosmetic. I know I'm no exception to this. In all of these stories, people think they have the right to tell other people how to express themselves, to practice their religious belief or sports fandom, to raise their children. They predict dire effects: You'll erode our secularist tradition, repress women and scare children. Your son will need years of therapy, and you want to make other children just as warped as your own. You're not just supporting your team--you're pretending you're a member of it, like a big baby!

The Thanksgiving before I took my then-girlfriend home to my family, my aunt said, "Everything was so much better when the gays stayed in the closet." I wanted to yell, "Better for *who*?" But of course, I was still semi-closeted as a bisexual girl at that point and wasn't sure I wanted to throw that rhetorical grenade into the middle of the family dinner table. I've heard other people long for the good ol' days of (what they thought were) no gays, no bisexuals, no transsexual people, no atheists, no Pagans, no Muslims, no *weirdness*.

People in all of these stories want difference stuffed deep into a closet, or at least caged and confined somehow. They find something as tiny as a small boy's toenail intolerable for flaunting difference. They don't want to open a catalog and be reminded that there are people who don't subscribe to their views of gender. They don't want to walk down a sidewalk and see a woman in full niqab, a page out of National Geographic come to life and sharing their space. They don't want a fan of some other team being an asshole by, you know, existing and cheering. Somehow, another person's difference spoils their day. Their children end up thinking and asking questions, too.

When L'Ailee shaved her head, people occasionally would get agitated: "I don't want my daughter thinking that's okay!" "So you tell her it is not okay," L'Ailee would calmly respond. But too late--a little girl saw a possibility outside of her family's carefully constructed and constrained world in a flash of pale, stubbled scalp on a small woman. For some people, such a thing is genuinely threatening.

The solution is not to hide in plain sight by carefully suppressing oneself and one's beliefs. I don't know what the solution is. I can't control another's mind. What I do know is that hiding doesn't stop people from hating anybody. Instead, it further emboldens bigots to create an atmosphere of intimidation. It allows them to believe they aren't actually hurting anybody when, say, they ban a mosque from being built in their town or a book about a child with two mommies from a library. It allows stereotypes to take root in another's heart rather than truth.

In Dr. Seuss' children's book Horton Hears a Who, a tiny creature demands to be heard by an elephant. The Who screams a "Yop!" into the elephant's ear. Those of us who are members of minority groups often have to "Yop!" to an elephant more than once in our lives. Our clothing, our accessories, our small gestures, can say it all for us. Perhaps we take a chance that we might get trampled. But we'll definitely get trampled if we remain hidden and quiet.

No Leonard Cohen afterworld yet

2011-04-05T18:43:00.001-04:00

"Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally."--Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), "Penny Royal Tea"

"I'm not like them/but I can pretend...I think I'm dumb/maybe just happy."--Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), "Dumb"

Today, "RIP Kurt Cobain" trended on Twitter. Seventeen years ago, he shot himself in the head and ended his life. He left behind a wife, a baby daughter, two bandmates who suddenly had to make new career plans for themselves, and a few CDs' worth of terrific music, just barely enough for a legacy. I put the Nirvana VEVO channel on at work, when I could, just to remember.

It was fairly obvious that he wasn't built to last, looking back. I often find Nirvana's songs hard listening now for the same reason I found them irresistable in my late teens. It's so easy to see the depressed, self-medicated mind behind his lyrics *now*, so easy to understand why authority figures hated Nirvana so much. But it felt good to hear the anger and sadness inside my head turned outside, to a backdrop of Cobain's screaming guitar.

Some teens only heard that brilliant guitar and Krist Novoselic's bass and Dave Grohl's drums, and didn't figure out what Cobain was screaming out to the world until they got older. I could dance to it. We could all dance to it. Most rock music didn't allow that. I myself was a hip-hop girl, and called a "wigger" for it because white girls in rich, preppy schools weren't supposed to love that music as much as I did. I wasn't rich or preppy, and had to defend myself a lot. I could have hidden it. After all, I hid the fact that I also loved country music, if it had enough twang and wasn't too poppy. But I hated hiding as much as I did. Cobain hid in plain sight.

I have two stories Nirvana makes me want to tell, both a bit awkward. One's funny (now), and one's painful, but they both ultimately end well. The first...well, I gave L'Ailee, the girl who would become my wife, my virginity to Nirvana. Sort of. Our relationship was long-distance, me in Orlando and her in New York. We were very young and perpetually broke, but we occasionally scraped together funds to see each other. It took us about a year to actually have sex. We discussed it before a visit, and we decided we were going to make it happen.

I felt fat, ugly, and self-conscious, especially since L'Ailee's always been very athletic and never had a problem with her weight or complexion. Her flaws were all worn on the inside. She was going to see me naked. I insisted on doing it in the dark, nevermind that she had a really good idea of what I looked like under my too-loose clothes and liked it just fine.

It went so badly. So badly. We turned on the light. She walked away and paced around her tiny living room, which she'd worked so hard to clear of roommates. I cried, and blasted Nirvana's "Nevermind" to hide my tears. She came back in. Her eyes went all big and dark. She sat close to me and wiped my tears. We kissed. Without a word, with the guitar spurring us on, we gave it another try in the light. It worked that time. For months, I couldn't listen to "Drain You" without blushing. I remember thinking that maybe when I met Kurt Cobain, I'd tell him about it.

Except that I never did get to meet Cobain. I never even saw Nirvana perform live in concert. I still regret that a little. I was 20 years old, still living with my mother, when Kurt Loder solemnly reported it on MTV News. I'd just worken up--I was working graveyard shifts at a donut shop, and so I slept in the midday. It was a hell of a thing to wake up to. I couldn't believe it at first, but he kept saying it. I burst into tears, and I was a wreck by the time my younger brother came home from school. "Kurt Cobain died!" I told him. "He killed himself!"

My brother, who was 13 and thought he was cool, blew me off. "Well, it's not like you *knew* him. You don't have to cry like that."

"You don't have to be such a jackass!"

I didn't even bother telling my mother, but my brother told it for me: "She was crying over Kurt Cobain like it was someone in our family." My mother proceeded to harangue me over why I was wrong to feel the way I did, until I screamed at her, grabbed my purse, and ran out of the house. My best friend Yemaya O'Reilly, also a hip-hop girl who loved Nirvana, and I got rip-roaring drunk that night, and I slept it off in her little studio apartment above her parents' garage.

I realized something very important over the next couple of days. I'd felt depressed, even suicidal, most of my life. My father died when I was seven, and to put it in the most ridiculously simple terms, that event seemed to set off the bio-chemical programming that came from his side of the family. I attempted suicide a couple of times as a teen. I sometimes thought things would be easier if I just died. I'd have moments when I would need to avoid a big knife because I wanted to turn it on myself, or a lake because I wanted to jump into it and never come out. This webpage geared for people considering suicide got it so right--I didn't actually want to die. What I wanted was the pain inside me to just stop, and I knew no other way to make that happen. I felt like I was a complete failure at life and, as I would morbidly joke later, the only objection would come when my mother had to clean up afterward.

I had thought that it was natural for me to be depressed. After all, my life sucked. My girlfriend was far away, and we fought quite a bit, and lots of people objected to the fact that we were both female. I lived with my mother, who is an extremely critical person. I wasn't in college because the only school I could get into was filled with classmates who'd tormented me in high school. I made minimum wage at the donut shop. So, I figured, I needed more money, I needed to move, I needed to go to back to school, I needed to get things right with L'Ailee or find someone else. I'd do all that and everything would be okay, I thought. I looked everywhere in the world *but* within.

Kurt Cobain had had so very much. He'd actually managed to profit from his own pain, and made his own wildest dreams come true. He did all that, and he still felt like he needed to just die! Like I did! It occured to me that if a freakin' rock star felt that hopeless, I'd almost certainly need more than a degree and some more paper in my wallet to get right.

I'd had people want to slap that "depression" label onto me, and I was scared of it. They all acted like I was crazy. I tried and failed to act like nothing was wrong--I'm just not a very good actress. My mother couldn't afford a psychologist throughout my adolescence, not that I'd have told one anything, and the guidance counselors at my middle and high schools were pretty terrible. All their advice could be boiled down to "Your life isn't *that* bad, cheer up, smile for once, and stop being so damned weird." My pastor at church wanted me to stop listening to the music I loved, including Nirvana, but I felt even worse listening to Christian music. I heard from the pulpit that suicides went to hell and that Christians were supposed to show the rest of the world how happy they--at that time, we--were. I therefore learned not to tell them a thing, either. I sometimes wanted to print and wear a T-shirt saying, "Don't ask me questions if you don't want to hear the answers."

But by his tragic example, Cobain had shown me that I needed to consider help. I looked up books in the library. I never checked any out, because I was scared of the librarian's look, but I made lots of copies and wrote lots of notes. I took three quizzes, and they all said I was off-the-charts depressed. By that point in her career, my mother had finally gotten decent health insurance, and I was just young enough to be on it. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done to ask her to help me see that kind of doctor. She thought I just needed to toughen up, but I'd made photocopies of those quizzes, and I showed her. She made some calls the next day.

I've taken enough of your time, so I don't want to go into the whole long process. My first two prescriptions didn't work out for me. Sometimes I had money, sometimes I didn't. I used state assistance for a while. I had some awful therapists--one who was much more interested in curing my bisexuality than my depression--and some decent ones. The first one heard me say, "Of course I'm depressed," and gave me a bit of insight. He said, "That's like saying, 'I fell off a ladder, of course my arm is broken,' then never going to a doctor to get it re-set." The more I got help, the more open I was to receiving it, even if it wasn't perfect. I still had many problems, but knives and lakes stopped looking like solutions to them. I wanted to do the work it took to get past them, not check out, and I felt like I could get it done.

Spending almost my entire childhood and adolescence depressed made it very difficult for me to gauge what "normal" or "happy" were supposed to feel like. I think it was around age 29, a strange year when I began Lexapro, needed treatment for what my relatives euphemistically call "female problems," and said yes to L'Ailee's oh-so-romantic proposal over the phone, that I finally began to really understand those concepts. By 31, I began to actually feel contentment on a regular basis. I can tell you 100 things wrong with my life, but I can also tell you 100 things that are right about it.

I no longer go to any kind of therapy, nor do I take any medication. I take dance classes a couple times a week instead. Those are much more fun. However, L'Ailee and Yemaya know what to look for. My brother does, too--he's an adult now, and a friend, not that callous 13-year-old. we've all grown up. I'm so glad I didn't leave them behind or make them suffer. Reading accounts by survivors of suicide shows me just how selfish I was at the time. I could have hurt them so horribly. But when you feel insignificant, you feel like you can do anything, because your actions have no real weight. I'm prepared for the possibility that the black cat may come after me again, and I may once again need professional help.

I thank Kurt Cobain for blessing the world with his amazing talent. I thank him for making me feel less alone. That helped a lot. I don't know exactly how to thank him for showing me what I needed, or even if I should. The way he did it was so terrible. I dearly wish both of us could have gotten help, and lived to know what a good day feels like.

Snakes in the City

2011-03-28T22:40:00.001-04:00

"The Bronx Zoo cobra was found in the Financial District, but it didn't bite anyone. Why not? Professional courtesy."--Joke I heard today

A 20-inch venomous Egyptian Cobra from the Bronx Zoo hasn't been accounted for since Friday afternoon. The news broke yesterday. The Bronx Zoo attempted to convince people that there's no reason to be afraid at all, really. And that's when the fun began.

As my wife, several of our friends, and I watched the Pittsburgh Penguins game and Fontana NASCAR race at our house, we got texts and calls about the snake. Several people made hissing sounds. A couple of the guys made things move and pretended like they saw the snake. My friend's 10-year-old daughter almost instinctively telescoped her fingers together to form a fake "snake head" and tried to "bite" her father and stepfather. Kevin Harvick's dramatic win captivated us, and we figured the snake would be found.

It's Monday night, and the snake has yet to be found. Lots of New Yorkers had fun with it, though. Pranksters brought fake snakes to school and work. At my office, people hissed and yelled, "Cobra!" at random moments. I quickly learned that this was being done elsewhere. My wife is a martial arts instructor with hair-trigger senses. A man at her gym thought it would be funny to sneak up on her and "bite" her arm as our friend's daughter had attempted; she grabbed his wrist and quickly threw him down onto his back. People quoted Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane. My work husband kept singing Montgomery Gentry's "The Big Revival": "Praise the Lord and pass me a copperhead!"

It was getting boring and annoying, to be honest. I mean, I grew up in Florida; I saw snakes all the time. Yes, a cobra's venom can kill in three minutes, as the news anchors loved to remind us, but you just stay vigilant and move slowly if you do see a snake. But I cracked up when I saw the inevitable Twitter parody account, first for the snake, then for a Bronx Zoo zookeeper:

@BronxZookeeper: Seriously, @BronxZoosCobra. I give you special entrance to the rodent exhibit and this is how you re-pay me? NOT COOL.

There are still revolutions and growing pains for new governments going on in the Arab world. Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant is still spewing out radioactive matter, and it looks like we're all getting a taste. Republican governors are still busting unions. People who need help still aren't getting it. But today, everyone in New York City discussed the snake.

I guess it's because, compared to those problems, it's almost charmingly simple. Hell, it's practically a children's book. Keep looking and someone will find that cobra, then Animal Control will come get it and return it to the zoo. Totally doable. It can't even get very far, right?

Wherever the snake is at tonight, I almost want to thank it for bringing out New Yorker's humor, even a bit of childlike silliness. We desperately needed it. HISSSSSSSSS!

Mayberry

2011-03-21T18:31:00.004-04:00

Sometimes it takes an awful song to put terrible events into perspective.

I didn't know what to say here, you know? About Egypt's and Tunisia's hard battles for freedom. About Libya's even harder battle, and the UN action there. About the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant explosion in Japan. About the war against union workers several Republican governors, including Chris Christie in the state next to mine, are waging. I read and tweet and re-tweet. I don't know what to say that hasn't been said far more clearly by far more clever people. Scarily enough, the really smart people also seem to be struggling to make sense of everything.

Then my work husband's Pandora station, which he's programmed to create the country radio station we crave but can't get as Southern transplants in NYC, played a song I hate. It happens. "Mayberry" by Rascal Flatts. If you're not familiar with that treacly crime against country music, you can torture yourself here, then play Rebecca Black to soothe your poor ears.

"Sometimes it feels like this world is spinning faster/Than it did in the old days/So naturally we have more natural disasters/From the strain of a fast pace"

Except, you know, we don't. The victims of Mount Vesuvius' explosions and the Black Plague would take exception. So would the Inca and the Maya, if they could. People got the news slowly, if at all. They would wonder why they haven't been getting the silk and spices they used to, go on expeditions, and find out that the whole village was wiped out. Or some tired, dazed traveler who lost his or her entire family would end up in a new place and tell the news of what had happened where they came from, assuming someone in said place understood their language.

The world isn't spinning faster. Information is spreading faster. I've said that a lot, but it's because I have to remind myself, too. Today Twitter turned 5 years old. I've used it for just over a year. My world's become a smaller, scarier, and more interesting place since I used it. I learn about cool new music, shows at Brooklyn Bowl, accidents that will affect my ride home, and the location of the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. I correspond with people in Singapore, New Zealand, Great Britain, and California. I get first-hand reports from people in Libya, Bahrain, Egypt, and Japan.

Before then, I blogged. Before that, I was on email lists. Those also introduced me to far-flung people. I first began to get concerned about people I'd never meet in those venues. Before that, TV showed the world the horrors of Vietnam. Newsreels in movie theaters reminded women and children of why the men in their lives had to go so far away. Photography preserved the heartbreaks of the Civil War. And so on, and so on.

"Sometimes I can hear this old earth shouting/Through the trees as the wind blows/Thats when I climb up here on this mountain/To look through God's window"

There are so many fronts on which to fight, so many ways in which to help, that it's dizzying to even choose. And then there's the terrible thought that I can't even help at all. I mean, I'm a secretary who's sometimes fortunate enough to decorate other peoples' homes for money. I'm told I'm bright, but my degree's in marketing, not anything that most people would consider practical. I do know how to swing a hammer and pick up trash, though. Can I, dare I, just put on my boots and go? The technology improved there, too--I really can go and do, well, *something*. Or do I just sit here in comfort, cuddled up with my wife to watch a race or hockey game, until the wolf decides it's time to visit *our* door next?

With vision comes responsibility. We see so very much. I don't want to become one of those hardened New Yorkers who'll keep walking with my face down when I hear someone scream. I try not to feel guilty. I remember my grandfather's admonition against seeking too much excitement, because it will come to you soon enough. I look at the poster of the story of the starfish that hangs in my bathroom. I text to donate $10 to the Red Cross--that's a day we can't go to the coffee shop where the owners treat my wife like their granddaughter for breakfast, but someone else needs it more than us. Someone always needs it more than us, until we become the needy ones. We have been needy before.

"Well I miss Mayberry/Sitting on the porch drinking ice cold Cherry --- Coke/Where everything is black & white"

Technology enables us to leave a record of our present that becomes our past.
Sometimes when I post a blog entry, I wonder what others will think years from now, and how my words will be read. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had Anne Frank or a Cambodian intellectual had been given access to today's technology. The fact that the Library of Congress archives tweets makes me think.

Sometimes I'll record one of my more profound thoughts just so I can leave more to future generations than race results, Penguins game scores, and cocktail recipes. It's not a revolution in real time, but I don't really want that, anyway. That doesn't seem like much fun at all. Then, you know, sometimes I laugh at myself and think the words may simply get lost as the technology to read them becomes obsolete (or unavailable when humanity's made to regress to the Stone Age, just you wait). Even my chatty self can only leave drops in the world's word ocean.

I'm grateful for that, though. I'm glad so many of us can just shout out our messages to the world whenever we feel like, without even having to go find a bottle to float in the ocean. It's good, in art, to have the guiding hand of a skilled editor. However, that editor can affect so much.

I viewed the Andy Griffith Show differently when a sociology professor showed us a random episode, then asked us, casually, "Now, who's missing in this town?" Black people, for one thing. In the 1960s American South, black people were rebelling against stifling laws and social norms. It was a justifiable rebellion, and it scared many white people. Mayberry, North Carolina didn't have any black people. Therefore, there were no concerns about where they ate, sat, worked, or attended school. Therefore, it could remain a sanctuary for scared white people in the 1960s to retreat to when they got home. The show would have been far more controversial, and less wholesome, had Mayberry looked more like a real small Southern town. But Mayberry survives in reruns on multiple basic cable channels, and the reality's harder to find.

"Sunday was the day of rest/Now its one more day for progress"

I'm white, and Southern, but I don't really want to live in Mayberry. I don't want people to get into my business and act all scandalized over what they find. Forget a same-sex marriage--Andy and his girlfriend hardly even kissed. Mayberry didn't have any Pagans like me. No atheists, Jews, or Muslims, either. That "day of rest" on Sunday meant some people were pressured to go to a house of worship dedicated to a God they didn't believe in, lost money at their places of business, and couldn't buy beer. Better isn't better for everyone. I, for one, am happy to have the progress.

I don't mean to pick on just one TV show, or one era. L'Ailee likes detective and procedural shows, which are also super-easy to find in reruns. However, she gets troubled by these shows, which are just a few years old. Russians like her are seldom played by Russian actors, and always seem to be villains or victims. She thought it was very strange that Monk which is set in San Francisco, never seemed to have LGBT people. Wouldn't a San Francisco police precinct occasionally see a bisexual victim, a gay villain, a transsexual witness, a lesbian cop whose wife worried about her? Then again, other shows tend to treat LGBT people pretty badly, so she has to be careful what she wishes for.

I hate that song not just because it's treacly and the singer's horrible, but because it expresses nostalgia over something that never was. I love country because it so often expresses real emotions about real things, and these singers had to pour on the fake saccharine syrup. It's an easy trap to fall into, to think that the images surviving of the past are the past. Nobody wants to dress up as a scullery maid when they put on Victorian costumes, do they? No, we usually get a far better look at the attire of noble women. We don't have to smell the smells, which must have been horrific. We don't have to keep the costumes on. We can take them right off and return to modern life, with all its benefits.

So I use the amazing technology I have access to for tweeting nonsense to my many acquaintances, jokes and hashtag games and cooking advice. I passionately follow a hockey team in a city whose sidewalks my feet have barely touched. I coo over pandas in foreign zoos. I stream songs I might have never heard if I were stuck with the technology of the bad old days, the 1990s. But I keep my eyes open. Only babies think that when they cover their eyes, everyone around them goes away--right? I know there's a way for me to help. I know I might catch something important, and be able to respond in real time. I know sometimes I need to turn the machines off, and see what's around me at this very moment. The voice I need to hear might be transmitted over the wind from a few feet away, not over a WiFi network from Australia. In fact, it almost always is.

The Busch Brothers Drinking Game, version 2.0

2011-03-05T15:09:00.003-05:00

I'm doing this in part because this weekend's NASCAR race takes place in Las Vegas, which, as we will be reminded a thousand times, is the birthplace of Kurt and Kyle Busch. I also think I need to remind myself how to write a blog entry. This game needs a few revisions from the one I created with help from my wife (who loves Kyle) and my mother (who really likes both Busches) last year. So, enjoy. More serious stuff will hopefully come soon.

The Busch Brothers Drinking Game

Take one sip/shot when:

* It is mentioned that the Busches are brothers. (This right here tells you the "sip" method's best.)
* It is mentioned that they are from Las Vegas.
* It is mentioned that Steve Addington (Kurt's current crew chief) has worked with both Busches.
* Any variation of the words "mature," "matured," or "maturing".
* Someone refers to Kurt's tempestuous past.
* The phrase "sibling rivalry".
* They're racing for the same position.
* Their stats are compared (either by an announcer or graphic.)
* The announcer notes not only that Kurt has a championship, but that Kyle doesn't.
* The announcer notes that they're racing each other hard.
* The announcer seems to expect them to cooperate (especially on restrictor-plate tracks.)

Two sips/shots when:

* You see an "Anyone But a Busch" or similar sign.
* Their mother is shown.
* They get pit stalls close together (just do this once).
* The Busches are leading 1-2 in the race.
* They're compared to old-school racing brothers (Allisons, Labontes, etc.)
* Announcer tells a story about how the Busches' competitiveness can cause them problems (like the infamous "Thanksgiving at Grandma's" story).
* Announcer tells the "Kurt's prank at Kyle's wedding" story.
* One Busch taps the other to get him out of the way.
* A Busch refers to his brother by car number rather than name. ("The number 22 got me loose, and...")
* Kurt is asked his opinion about Kyle's latest rivalry/escapade.

Three sips/shots when:

* They actually do cooperate (draft each other, block another driver for his brother, etc.)
* One Busch wrecks the other.
* You see a sign supporting both Busches.
* Someone calls Kyle "Shrub".
* Kurt and Kyle's wives are shown talking to each other.
* They're starting in the same row (just do this once).
* Their mother is interviewed.
* Their mother hugs one of them.
* A Busch relative who isn't their mother is shown.
* One congratulates the other.

Overschooled

2011-01-29T23:22:00.004-05:00

This is another long and intense one, fair warning. I got very angry. I teared up at points. I just let things out. So, I don't blame you if you turn back and I thank anyone who sticks around until the end in advance.

Most of the time, when I want to blog about a current event, I find that many bloggers were quicker on the draw and/or far more articulate and knowledgeable than myself, so I give up on the idea. This time, I feel that the event in question has been under-reported, and that I have more to say than many other people. I guess the revolution in Egypt--there is no other word for it--is overshadowing a lot of other things. But I think a few of my words need to be spent on the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar, who was sentenced to jail for sending her children to a "better" school outside their assigned school district.

It could have been worse for Williams-Bolar and her family. The sentence for falsifying her childrens' records for school was five years, and since she had 2 children, there were 2 counts. Judge Patricia Cosgrove suspended that sentence and gave her 10 days in jail, 80 hours of community service, and 3 years' probation. The truly horrific part is that Williams-Bolar's education and ability to support her family was put into jeopardy. Because she has been convicted of a felony, she cannot earn the education degree she'd been working towards, nor can she continue working as a teaching assistant for special-needs children.

I'd like to think that the simple injustice of the state of Ohio hammering down so hard upon a desperate mother who wanted to give her children the best lives possible would have affected me. But the truth is, my own mother could quite easily have been in Kelley Williams-Bolar's situation. A few things were different, of course. We were white, and exurban, and this occured in the early 1980s in Florida. But like Williams-Bolar, my mother falsified my school records. The address on file for the Ohio girls was their grandfather's. The address on file for me was my aunt's.

My father was many terrific things, but he was a horrible provider and a gambling addict. Auto mechanics usually don't starve in any economy, and my father was a good mechanic, but he made absolutely lousy decisions with money. It pains me to type all that. My mother attended night school. Things happened, and we ended up living in a cramped little camper on a campground. The thing was designed for a weekend; we spent almost two years living in it. I spent as much time as possible outside.

I'd make friends with children whose families were there for vacations, and then these friends would be gone after a week. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to have friends from school over, or to tell anyone anything about where I lived. Eventually, I just sort of stopped making friends. They always went away or wanted to have sleepovers or acted like I was weird. It became much too much of a hassle. My only friend was "Milhouse," who'd been my besty since preschool and who had some family secrets of his own. Since he was a boy, sleepovers weren't an issue.

There was a reason for all that, though. Had anyone at my school found out where I really lived, I would not have been allowed to attend. At all. Technically speaking, my family was homeless, because we didn't live in a "permanent" address. (It seemed all too permanent to us.) I couldn't even have attended public school in a "bad" district. I envied the kids in my working class public school.

Then our pastor told my parents about a scholarship that a Christian private school was granting to a couple of elementary school students. When I entered second grade, I was one of them. That was a real culture clash, to say the least--some of these kids casually talked about having to pick up their rooms so they wouldn't embarrass their parents when the cleaning lady came over. I worked hard to win the spelling bees and the Bible verse memorization contests at chapel just to prove to everyone that I belonged at the school the same as anyone else. I was frequently accused of "thinking you were so smart" being the reason I was shy and quiet on the playground. Everyone told me what a terrific opportunity it was and how I'd better not waste it, but I'm still tearing up almost 30 years later at the memory of how incredibly alone I felt.

They thought they were doing something good. No, scratch that, they *were* doing something good. My parents believed in education and hard work. Another thing we put down my aunt's address for was a library card. I read a lot. My father would read 5 words from the dictionary each night. My grandfather gave him a standing subscription to National Geographic magazine; he would transfer it to me after my father died, and my step-grandmother is still maintaining it for me every Christmas. We loved maps, globes, and atlases. I watched my mother carry home textbooks after an exhausting day of work and bend her head over them, even when she was pregnant with my younger brother. We wouldn't always live in this camper, I was promised. We would get out and live someplace we couldn't wait to show off to everybody. We just had to work for it and be patient.

We did get out. Shortly after my father died, my mother was able to move us into a townhouse that looked like a damned palace after that camper. (I was so amazed that the upstairs was ours, too!) We didn't have to lie anymore. It helped a lot when I decided I didn't want to vie for that scholarship again and returned to my former public school. Then we moved to Orlando. My mother moved with an eye toward school districts. We moved a few times within the Orlando area, and always ended up in apartments that were within view of very nice housing developments. (Actually, they were often overpriced, hastily constructed McMansions that were way too freakin' close to each other, but you know, the fox really thought those grapes were sour, too.)

One thing my wife and I have in common is being relatively "poor" kids in "rich" schools. A year after her parents emigrated to America from the Soviet Union, she was able to get into a math and science magnet school. (She blushes a little when she says she attended it now, because she works as a martial arts instructor and hardly uses what she learned there at all.) We've talked about what a relief uniforms were for us at times. They make it a little harder to distinguish "scholarship kids" from everyone else.

"Of course, you can tell after a few minutes," L'Ailee said casually. She lists indicators quickly: "Shoes, teeth, jewelry, backpack, electronic equipment, a girl's lipstick tube. You get more if you talk." We wonder what distinguished the Williams-Bolar girls from their classmates, or if they trusted the wrong people with a secret. We wonder whether someone was out to get them. The Copley-Fairlawn school district hired a private investigator to catch them living in subsidized housing outside the district, which doesn't seem very cost-effective to us, just extremely mean.

I know that "better" school districts are usually better because they have more funding, and funding comes from property taxes. People who live in wealthy subdivisions will pay more into that system than people who live in trailers or subsidized housing, obviously. So one can legitimately argue that a person who falsifies records to get their kids into a "better" district is stealing. In fact, Williams-Bolar and her father were also charged with theft.

I don't offer any public policy solutions. For one thing, since we don't have children, we don't keep up on education-related news that often. However, I do know that my mother and Kelley Williams-Bolar are far from the only parents who've "stolen" a decent education for their children. I've come across others who'd done it or had their parents do it for them.

I don't think it's a good idea to further deplete poor school districts' funds by diverting them to charter schools. I think more needs to be done to ensure that all kids get to go to "good" schools, and that "school choice" will only ensure that good schools get overcrowded. Congress' failure to pass the DREAM Act infuriated me. It seems so medieval, so backwards, so un-American, so downright fucking *cruel*, to deny children and young people the opportunity to get an education and work their way to a better life because of the "sins" of their parents. Their productivity would be a good thing for their communities and our country!

I hear white rural and exurban people with working-class roots who wouldn't have batted an eye at what my parents did in the 1980s express hatred toward black people in subsidized housing and Hispanic "illegals." Because, you know, *they* are sponges who bilk taxpayers and rely on The System; we were just scrappy hard workers who did what we had to under the circumstances. The rhetoric by rank-and-file Tea Partiers makes me cringe and cry and want to slap sense into people. There are people who *want* everyone who makes less than 6 figures divided!

I want to see hard work mean something and actually lead to better lives. I want to see the people who scream the loudest about the importance of family and parenting and protecting the children and school choice stand up for Kelley Williams-Bolar. As a queer woman, I find that they only seem to get really concerned about education if their little darlings in the "good" suburban schools learn that Oscar Wilde was gay and are told it's wrong to call their classmates "faggot." And, of course, they want to protect The Children from Glee and magazine covers depicting happy gay-headed families and legal recognition for their parents' same-sex spouses and two women holding hands on the street. Children who live in subsidized housing or the tin ghetto, who face violence in their schools or fall through the social cracks, never ever seem to count among The Children. Maybe the real problems are just too damned hard to address. Maybe it's more profitable to simply *look* like one is doing something.

I "watch Egypt," as a co-worker of mine put it, and know we've got some serious problems of our own. I hope they can be fixed before people end up gathered on the street with metal pipes and Molotov cocktails. I pray that if, Gods forbid, we do end up on the street with metal pipes and Molotov cocktails, we at least know who and what to hit, and have sense enough to not use them on each other.

Links, if you can stand to read more:

Change.org's petition and Twitter campaign on Kelley Williams-Bolar's behalf. Also, the ACLU addresses this case.

A map of the Middle East used on Fox News When I was that little girl in that camper, I could have done better than that.

We all know most news media majors on the minors and minors on the majors. Sometimes the minors aren't even real things. Cracked.com illustrates that with a hilarious takedown of "terrifying online trends invented by the news media."

The Naval Academy shows a gay Marine's husband the respect he deserves. Hopefully this won't be news anymore real soon.

We need to save money--the snowstorms cut into our hours, and we need to pay my mom back for the money she shelled out so we could attend my uncle's funeral. So of course Grooveshark and Pandas International conspired against me with this T-shirt!

While I'm tempting y'all with T-shirts, I added a couple with Kurt Vonnegut quotes and an "I Only Look Preppy" bumper sticker to my CafePress shop.

Finally, the snowstorms have had lots of consequences. Leave it to the Onion to address pornography deprivation!

Being totally frivolous

2011-01-26T23:33:00.004-05:00

We have snow coming down outside, and I've got a damned cold, and my uncle died last week. We had to go to his funeral this weekend. I spoke about it a lot on Twitter, and I've talked with family a lot. I tried to blog it several times, and scrapped a squillion entries. So, I may or may not come back to that subject.

I'm being completely frivolous right now. I'm watching the Sharks and playing around online. CafePress has changed quite a bit since I last used it! I decided to make a design suggested by my wife and my work husband. And that meant creating a new "shop".

I developed my own style as a working-class girl bussed into a rich high school. (The case of the mother in Ohio who was arrested for falsifying her address to get her kids into a better school district is another very serious blog entry knocking around in my head.) I was too poor to really fit into any style tribe. I couldn't even fit in with the Goths and punks, since I couldn't afford the "right" clunky shoes and a new shade of Manic Panic every week. I like lightness, and brightness, and fun. I like to combine things in unexpected ways. And I like how color stands out in New York City.

Somehow I've fallen into a real love for Lilly Pulitzer and Tory Burch, when I can afford them. I wear J. Crew, Old Navy, and Eddie Bauer basics. This is considered preppy. On Monday, my work husband and I collapsed laughing when a co-worker called me "preppy". She actually said, "I know you were preppy in high school and you're preppy now, but..." Oh, hell, no I wasn't and no I'm not! But I guess I can fake it pretty well now, especially since my wife's willing to tailor knockoffs and discounted finds for me. So, I took a little time and made this:

I'm gonna see if I can make a bit of money off of this, and add more designs. For right now, I'm not real articulate thanks to sinus pain and cold medicine. So I'll just share some links:

Ted Haggard admits to being bisexual, sort of. Because we don't have enough questionable celebrity role models! But actually, it makes a great deal of sense.

Can marriage be saved from southern Christians? They, not gays, same-sex couples, or any other right-wing scapegoat, are the ones whose marriages and commitments seem to be weakest...

The "beginning of the end" for Egypt's Mubarak family's rule Also, Mother Jones magazine explains what's happening in Egypt.

It's all feminism's fault that James Dobson's daughter can't get married! Certainly it's not impossible standards or endless rules rules rules about sex and love to blame...

At NASCAR's highest levels, some drivers and owners have gotten very, very rich. There's some big money involved. And then there are drivers like my Daytona girl Alli Owens, who begged, borrowed, and worked her ass off for a ride. Also, Johanna Long will strive to become the first female Rookie of the Year in a NASCAR series.

Finally, beekeepers in Brooklyn (yes!) worked very hard to give their bees flowers to pollinate and otherwise raise them right. The bees, however, preferred the corn syrup and artificial dyes at a local maraschino cherry factory, exactly the kind of crap the beekeepers are trying to fight! Bright red honey resulted. Soon we get to try it.

Greetings from the Bisexual Chamber of Commerce!

2011-01-07T20:52:00.002-05:00

I wrote the following for publication in the Bi Women Boston Newsletter, whose only weakness is that it's all-volunteer and therefore can only come out quarterly. The next issue's theme will be "People say the strangest things." I figured I knew something about that.

I hope nobody is offended by this--I don't mean to depict all monosexuals or all straight people as ignorant. I am simply attempting to describe some of the ignorance and odd responses I've encountered, and how those make me feel as a bisexual woman. This is edited very lightly from my original submission to BWBN.

_______________________________________

Greetings from the Bisexual Chamber of Commerce!

I've been out as bisexual, to some degree or another, since I was 17 years old. I am now 36. In the nearly 20 years I've been out, I've too often been the first "real life bisexual," as a straight female friend of mine put it, that some people have met. "That isn't true," I want to tell them. "You've met others; they're just scared to tell you, is all." I don't want to be rude, though, at least not at first. I joke about becoming "the Bisexual Chamber of Commerce" to monosexuals (mostly straight, but some gay as well). I answer lots of questions and learn that some peoples' minds are already settled, sometimes in very strange ways.

"When did you know? Were you always bisexual?" I was a little 50/50 bisexual girl in Daytona Beach, Florida during the 1980s. Despite some right-wingers' fear-mongering, one does not need queer cultural role models to experience queer feelings in one's youth. I fondly remember the Dukes of Hazzard as a vital part of my psycho-sexual development. At 6 years old, I alternately decided I wanted to marry someone like Bo, Luke, or Daisy Duke when I grew up. In my defense, there were only three network channels on TV at the time, and they really did look good in tight denim. "I'll never look at the Dukes of Hazzard the same way again," I've been told more than once. As I got older, I maintained my appetite for smart-alecky rednecks, although my tastes diversified. When I was 13, I dated a boy whose family had recently moved from Great Britain and began a longstanding crush on Irish alternative-rock singer Sinead O'Connor.

"But I thought you were lesbian!" Yes, that's another woman's picture on my desk, and another woman's ring on my finger. She's meeting me for lunch today, as a matter of fact. But that doesn't stop me from noticing how cute the UPS deliverymen who serve my company are, or any other form of male attractiveness. Yes, I like guys. No, I don't have a boyfriend on the side. Yes, I'm monogamous. No, she's not bisexual. Yes, I feel fulfilled. No, she doesn't get jealous, at least not often. And, um, if I'm gonna tell you, it's not like I'm keeping my bisexuality a secret from her!

"But you seem so normal." If I became famous, I wouldn't shame the community, and I have results from an internet humor quiz to prove it. No vials of blood, no drugs, no meat dresses. I'll probably never be famous, though. I'm a femme secretary whose idea of rebellious fashion is to wear bright colors in New York City. I love to cook. I don't love to clean house, and I'm grateful my wife is willing to dust furniture. People occasionally seem disappointed that I can count my former partners on one hand and that I live a fairly average life. The more that happens, the more important I feel it is to show what a boring bisexual life looks like. The one I happen to have handy is my own.

"So I guess you made up your mind. What happened to make you choose a woman?" What I "made up my mind" about was that I loved L'Ailee and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. This doesn't mean that I chose to stop being attracted to men, or to women who differ from her physically. It doesn't mean that I can, either. I had boyfriends in my past. I was attracted to women when I was with them. There was no real trauma, nothing to "turn me off of men" and make me flee to the supposed safety of another woman's arms. Sometimes relationships depreciate, like fast new cars becoming old clunkers. This happened with males and, thankfully, hasn't happened with my wife. It's happened with you sometimes, right?

"I thought you were a married couple sharing one ID!" That amused the hell out of me when I encountered it at a hockey forum. I'm a huge fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins. I became a hockey fan because my wife, a Detroit Red Wings fanatic who's loved hockey her entire life, made me watch with her. (I'd gotten her into my beloved NASCAR, and she felt I needed to give her sport a chance.) On sports forums, I've found it's best to ease people into the idea that I'm same-sex married. The fact that I'm married to a Red Wings or Kevin Harvick fan naturally comes up. So does the fact that I find various Penguins and Tony Stewart attractive. My internet "voice" is usually read as female. It becomes surprising to some of my fellow and sister fans, then, when they learn that the spouse is also a woman. That said, many calmly accept it, and are more interested in learning how we handled it when our teams faced each other in the 2008 and 2009 Stanley Cup Finals.

"The word 'bisexual' explains a lot." I'm quoting myself this time. I've tweeted that several times, because I felt a need. It explains why I speak of a wife and an ex-boyfriend. It explains why I cuddle with my wife to watch sports, kissing her when our teams score goals or our drivers get to the front, then complain that the Penguins who I find really hot leave the roster too quickly. It explains why I don't really think of gender or sexual orientation being a bar to relationships, and have to remember that others often do. "Labels are for food," I've been told more than once, but the people who say that tend to have their own labels that they assign to others. Better to be honest and to assign yourself the correct label first, I think. Besides, what the hell else should I call myself? Some people don't get it, and some people don't actually want to get it. That's their problem, and I do my best not to let it become my problem, too.

"I guess I need to raise bail money for you this weekend, 'case you get yourself in trouble." That came from a good friend of mine, a straight man whom I'd met at work, in December 2005. I was the first openly bisexual woman he'd met, aside from a few "barsexuals" in his Southern college. New York City affords many cultural opportunities. On the same weekend, Tony Stewart was in town for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship awards festivities, and Sinead O'Connor was in town for a concert. My friend knew me well enough to tease me about my crushes, and didn't let issues of sex or gender freak him out. I was amazed, and perhaps I shouldn't have been. After all, he wasn't the first and only. Quite a few people do want to understand. For them, it's worthwhile to keep the Bisexual Chamber of Commerce open.

__________________________

Links, links:

Same-sex and mixed-sex love look exactly the same inside the human brain. I could've told those scientists that!

Egyptian Muslims offered themselves as human shields against radicals who threatened the Coptic Christian community.

Supposedly the recent rash of bird and fish kills are nothing to worry about whatsoever. There are real problems to address!

New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was at Disney World during the Christmas week snowstorm, made fun of Newark mayor Cory Booker for being a stand-up guy. Says it *all*.

I disagree with the Four Loko ban, but I have to say it's probably better as an auto fuel than a drink.

Glenn Beck's radio show is cancelled in NYC. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...

Sidney Crosby won't be playing with the Pittsburgh Penguins for a week, at least, due to a concussion. Now you know what that cussing was about!

Finally, the National Zoo's adorable panda couple, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, might be getting ready to make another precious cub.

Trying to Find a Balance

2011-01-03T20:51:00.001-05:00

This is the time of year my wife and I kind of dread. She is an instructor at a gym--mostly martial arts, but she can teach other sorts of classes, too. She teaches all kinds of classes in January, what she and her colleagues call "Resolution Season." She's tired as hell right now. It's all good for the "shared household" bank account, but I don't get to see nearly as much of her as I'd like.

We dread the annual round of diet talk, too. It's in her gym, in my office, and on our TV. I'm particularly annoyed by Slimfast's new campaign featuring what are allegedly female "comedians". The funnier the joke, the more a comedian can get away with, and at least in the ads, these women can get away with very little indeed. I expressed my feelings about the British woman who talked about needing to zip up her bridesmaid's dress in one month on Twitter today: "Take stairs instead of the elevator, eat less junk + more veggies, buy yr dress a size larger, + zip up yr lips, you whiny British wench." But slow, sensible weight loss, tolerance of one's own body, and wearing a dress made to fit you rather than forcing yourself to fit into a dress don't move dodgy diet products, do they? It's not just gym instructors who count on getting paid during Resolution Season.

I always think of the importance of balance during the winter. In December, as the days get shorter and gloomier, we decorate with bright colors and tinsel. We seek to chase away the dark with our lights, at least subconsciously. The theme of light contending against darkness comes up in the celebration of Hanukkah, in the familiar story of the Star of Bethelhem from my childhood Christmases, and in the Neo-Pagan Yule that I adopted. I feel I can have Yule decorations, as European Christians "borrowed" them from ancient Pagans hundreds of years ago. (Never mind that the Old Ones didn't have frankly fake white trees pre-lit with colored lights; that's their problem.) I appreciate it far more in New York City than I ever did in Florida.

But by January 1st, I want to take my house back. The Yule decorations that looked so pretty a month ago now seem like clutter. We're bored with it all. We're sick of trying to keep the cats off the tree, which they seem to feel we put up just for them. I'd eagerly made candy and cookies, and then taken advantage of Half-Price Chocolate Day on December 26th. Now I'm not sure I can bring myself to eat a bite of sugar ever again. We tear down the lights, wrap up ornaments, put everything away, sweep the floor. The house looks right again. It breathes, and so do we. It's over. Back to reality.

I like it, to be honest. I like the month of frenzy and indulgence followed by one of relative asceticism. It's an ancient pattern. It seems right. Today the garbage was picked up again on the streets of New York--on a "limited basis", thanks to the City's asinine response to the snowstorm, but we'll take it. It felt like the whole world had been cleaned and made new. I know that's not true. In Arkansas, people are picking up dead fish and birds by the thousands, scared that they're next. In other parts of the world, the misery is unrelenting and people know nothing else. When depression had me in its stifling embrace during my teens and twenties, I believed it when I said "Same bullshit, different year." Today, however, I got to feel a fresh start. I appreciate what an amazing gift that is.

The annoying anti-fat and anti-smoking commercials will leave my TV just like the annoying commercials turning every human endeavor into a "great gift idea" did. There will be small scraps of Valentine's pink and red among the wintery gray and white. Eventually, the first halting bits of green will poke through, too. We'll eat chocolate again, just a bit this time. The ice will all melt, and I'll happily tie on roller skates to go to the store instead of pulling on my boots and trudging. The wheel turns again and again. Best to turn with it.

If you try to find a balance, there's a better chance that balance will find you. I hope it does.

Some links that may show just how out of balance our world can get:

Valentine's Day is officially banned in Iran.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but right-wingers claim that the SnowLoko in NYC was all union members' fault.

The Physicians Committee Against Smiling--sorry, for Responsible Medicine--is trying to ban new fast-food restaurants in Detroit, even though they are based in Washington, DC.

An Evangelical Backlash Against Environmentalism Yes, my brother and I had arguments with our older relatives even though our uncle was recovering from a stroke at Christmas, and this blog entry encapsulates why.

An interesting new blog from a perspective that's often ignored: Ask a Bisexual Guy

Finally, some of you probably already know that I wasn't pleased at the outcome of the Winter Classic. (The Capitals beat the Penguins.) Eric Fehr of the Capitals outshined both of the show's leading men, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, with his two goals. Intent to Blow spoofs how that might have displeased the NHL's powers-that-be.

Two resolutions

2010-12-30T21:53:00.010-05:00

You can blame Twitter for my lack of posting. I've said a lot there. It's just so *easy* when I can communicate from a cell phone on the bus, or in the file room, or in the kitchen. The brief postlets add up to a long blog post's worth of words most days. But really, if I didn't have Twitter, I'd probably not have communicated online at all for most of the past two months. When I had time, I had nothing to say. When I had lots to say, I had no time. You know, blogging's Catch-22.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. Six years ago on December 31st, I took a deep breath and made the biggest, hardest, most rewarding decision of my life. The girl I was on-and-off-and-on-again with over a long distance for 12 years and I threw a cocktail party for friends and family in Massachusetts. We chose that state because that was where the main attraction of that party, our wedding, would be considered legal at the time. It became legally invalidated by judges in Massachusetts, and we'd have to go back to that state a couple years later when its new governor allowed us, but we still consider tomorrow our sixth wedding anniversary.

We were going to do a lot of things this month. We were going to visit my mom and Future Stepdad in the DC area, with my brother and his wife. We were going to see the familiar white marble buildings all decorated up and walk among the special animal-shaped lights at the zoo. Thanks to Future Stepdad, we were going to attend the Winter Classic game, an outdoor match between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals, on New Year's Day. We were going to spend a couple days in Pittsburgh, because we felt we hadn't seen enough of it last year.

But things change. At the beginning of the month, my uncle had...well, it still sounds like a fucked-up version of "the House That Jack Built." He got into a car accident because he had a stroke behind the wheel which was caused by the inoperable tumor in his brain. We were told he had days to live, if he was lucky. So we hastened to Florida. I packed my one black dress.

Thank the Gods, I didn't have to unpack it. The doctors are speaking of months for him now, not days. He wants a second opinion on the brain tumor. The effects of the accident were very minor, for the people in the other car as well as for him. He's definitely lost a step or five; he's definitely recovering from a stroke. He's nowhere near out of the woods yet. But he's doing so much better than anyone expected, and not just because he's alive.

I've never been close to him. But I was much closer to his two sons, who are in their late teens. My cousins were upset at us for skipping Christmas in Florida with the extended family last year, although my many aunts and uncles made things rather difficult for us. (To give an example--as I was asking one of my aunts whether my wife and I needed to come to Florida or not, she got angry at me for referring to the woman I'm legally married to as my "wife" and tried telling me to use another word around her. I respectfully declined.) The boys needed to know they were loved and supported. Suddenly avoiding another Christmas with the extended family was no longer an option.

So we went to Florida last week. I don't really want to go into all the family stuff, although my uncle could participate in some of it and I hung out with my brother and cousins a lot.

Y'all know about this year's Snowpocalypse in NYC, right? Our flight was delayed late Monday night, then we had a long layover in Atlanta. We waited forever for a cab to take us home at the airport. We were lucky. On Tuesday, flights were arriving but not departing. We felt terrible for the people who'd waited days for departing flights. Getting to work on Wednesday was downright hellacious. I basically had half-days yesterday and today. L'Ailee doesn't ever want to travel around Christmastime again, ever.

Oh, and the Weather Gods are still having some fun with us, because it'll probably be too warm and rainy to have the Winter Classic on New Year's Day in Pittsburgh. We'd spent money we couldn't really afford on both of these trips to Florida. We were tired and traveled out. People are just now getting out of NYC. So, we decided we're passing on this trip. Future Stepdad understood. My brother's going since he lives close to Pittsburgh now. We would actually prefer to watch this cuddled up on the couch with the cats and mugs of hot tea right now. My mom gave us jerseys to watch the game with for Christmas. (And my Detroit Red Wings fan looks so sexy in her black Evgeni Malkin jersey!) We'll wear them to other games, I assured her. Games that are easier for us to attend and won't get rained out...

L'Ailee and I made each other laugh during what rapidly became a trip from hell. We cut each others' whining. I've complained about those "coffee bitches" who detain me during coffee runs because they have to perfectly calibrate their cup. At the hotel, L'Ailee laughed at me and told me I'm a coffee bitch, too. She seldom cusses, so she blushed a little saying that phrase. She propped me up when I learned about my uncle's condition, listened to me, and gave my cousin math tutoring. This woman is the reason I left sunny Florida for icy New York. Every day, she finds a way to remind me just how worth it she is.

I don't like to make New Year's resolutions. As we move into 2011, though, I have two. The first is to make certain I give L'Ailee everything she needs from me. The second is to write my thoughts into Blogspot rather than Twitter sometimes, to check in to your blogs, and to not ignore the people who made blogging worthwhile. Yeah, you!

Happy New Year!

Links, links:

Someone with a family a lot like mine breaks down what hetero privilege is. And if that's not depressing enough, sexgenderbody breaks down why women still aren't equal.

What, exactly, went wrong in NYC while we were in Florida Please remember this when, not if, Michael Bloomberg runs for President.

Over 100 things New Yorkers talked about this year.

The Badass Girl Gang That Ruled London's Underworld

Finally, winter always makes me think of the amazing Calvin and Hobbes "snowman" strips. Take a look, and appreciate what Bill Watterston meant what became "that peeing boy on the stickers" to be.

Can't have everything

2010-10-29T14:58:00.000-04:00

"Goddamn it, and I'm locked into stupid Samhain in stupid Orlando!"

That was my response when I learned, via the Roots' legendary drummer ?uestlove's Twitter feed, that his band would be performing throughout the Rally for Sanity. (You know all about that, right?) I wanted to attend, but it's on October 30th. You know what's really close to that? Yes, Halloween, and the autumn Talladega race, but also Samhain.

I feel a bit self-conscious when I discuss my faith or its celebrations with people who aren't Wiccan, Pagan, or interested in Pagan religions. I used to want to talk about it with everybody, but reactions ranging from hostile to nonplussed over the 13 1/2 years I've been Pagan kinda cured that. I hate that feeling of, "Oh, Gods, I sound like a character in a damned fantasy novel!" But I'll give a bit of background. Essentially, Samhain is the ancient Celtic New Year. It's a time to honor your ancestors, to commune with them, to put old things behind you, to attempt new beginnings, to see into the future if you can, and to feast with like-minded friends if you have them. As you can imagine, it's a big deal. It's always been my favorite of the Sabbats.

For the past six years, I've flown home to Orlando to be with my friends. I co-founded a coven with a few of them several years ago. People have moved on, and the membership has grown and changed. Some former members have found other groups in their new homes. Sometimes my friend Yemaya O'Reilly, another co-founder, and I observe the other seven Sabbats with another cobbled-together group in NYC. But most former members come back. They often bring spouses or kids. It becomes a chosen-family reunion, and to miss it still feels absolutely unthinkable.

We have our own quirky traditions that you won't find in most books or websites, but that we feel good about. We eat mushrooms, whether on pizza or fancier dishes, because they're a form of life that comes from death. We make dark chocolate cupcakes, and write the names of loved ones who departed during the past year on some of them for offerings. The kids know to eat the ones with the spiderwebs or bats and leave the ones with names on them alone! We also throw roses for each departed one into a bonfire and call out names. We begin with a bardic circle, in which people share a poem, song, or other talent. I've sung a Tim McGraw song ("Let It Go"), Yemaya's young daughter sang a song from High School Musical, and Yemaya and I will be showing off the belly dancing moves we've been learning in NYC this time. After rituals, we put the kids to bed and dance and drink into the night. We dance to songs about death or by dead artists. On top of this, I end up hanging out with old non-Pagan friends during that annual trip, too.

So it's a good thing. But I leave L'Ailee behind every year because she's atheist and doesn't feel any connection to these rituals. She's seen them, and has to suppress an urge to laugh. When we dated long-distance, we used to be able to go 2 months or longer without seeing each other. Now a weekend apart seems hard. "What if one of us was in the Army or some shit?" I asked rhetorically this week, and L'Ailee chuckled ruefully.

Usually she stays behind, but this year, she's road-tripping to the Rally for Sanity with several of our friends. She's leaving tonight, too. It seemed so odd that we both packed last night, but for different destinations. I really wanted to go; I'm instead going to a mini Rally for Sanity Meetup in Orlando with some of my friends there. L'Ailee says she'll be there for us both. "It's sad that there is a need to have this rally. Since there is one, we need to be on sanity's team," she said. I felt a little guilty when she said that. She felt a little guilty that once again, I'll be almost the only married person at the Samhain celebration without her spouse. But we're both going where we belong, and we'll be back together soon, full of stories and more appreciative of each other because of our time apart.

A choice between a good or a bad thing seems obvious. A choice between two bad things is decided by which seems less painful to an individual. For example, tonight at the airport, I'll be forced to choose between having my body put on full display on a scanner or being subjected to a body search. I've joked to my friends that it depends on how hot the TSA agents are, but I'll go through the scanner because being looked at by a stranger seems just a little less violating than being touched. I choose to confront this bad choice because my friends in Orlando are worth it.

The hardest choices are between different kinds of good things. Do I want the dessert that tastes incredible or the one that won't sabotage my weight loss? Do I want to see old friends who I treasure, or do I want to rally for my country with my new friends? Do I want to get into the hotel tonight and be relatively fresh for tomorrow, or do I want to make time for the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck's seasonal farewell party tonight? Choose your own adventure, like those books 30-something Americans like myself grew up on. There are many possible endings, but the decisions you make at the end of this chapter eliminate some choices, lead to others, and might lead you away from the ending you really want.

Sometimes you can have a little bit of most things you want. I'll miss the Talladega race and a Pittsburgh Penguins game, but I can TiVo those and learn their outcomes before I get home. Technology's good like that. My Pagan friends with children take them around the neighborhood to trick-or-treat in the early evening, before rituals start in earnest. The kids know the difference between secular Halloween and sacred Samhain. However, the adults tend to miss out on the Halloween fun most of us enjoyed before we became Pagan. I got to attend my first Halloween party in forever last weekend. It was early because the host had to make a choice between good things--the pay he'll be making as a cab driver on Halloween or the fun he'll have with his friends.

I get conflicted. I get greedy and wish I could load up my metaphorical plate with all the things presented on life's buffet table. But really, I should be grateful that my life's buffet table has so many options. Many people around the world, even in America, don't have the choices I do. Some want to be away from their spouse, don't have a spouse though they want one, or don't have friends. Some can't afford to travel, even in coach, even doing side work to save up for the ticket. Some don't have the most basic forms of food or freedom. Some don't feel positive about ever being able to see a loved one again. So in this beautiful and reflective time, I thank my Gods that at least for now, They have seen fit to present me with good choices. I thank my ancestors for bringing me to this time and place and making my life possible. Of course I need to show up to thank Them, among people who understand.

Blessed Samhain, happy Halloween, have a great weekend, and above all, safe travels!

Links, if you feel up to more reading:

Some people this week, from hockey players (Alex Ovechkin) to fashion magazines (Marie Claire), treated getting fat as the worst thing a person could do. But the scariest fat-phobia by far comes from doctors who think a little cancer, suicidality, or birth defects are but small prices to pay for a pill that might reduce obesity.

Also fairly scary was the depths NYC public health workers went to in order to make their anti-soda, anti-obesity ad campaign happen.

Sweet wine and cocktails are considered unsophisticated. I'm unsophisticated and unashamed of my sweet, cheap, and cheerful tastes in alcohol. This apology from a bartender is welcome anyway. Just don't let Mayor Bloomberg or his pet doctors know...

A California DMV employee harassed a transgendered woman who came in for a name change.

Finally, the National Zoo's animals cutely celebrate Halloween.

Coming Out as Homophobic Day

2010-10-12T08:53:00.000-04:00

New York, you did National Coming Out Day wrong. The point was to come out as gay or bisexual, not as anti-gay.

Of course, my office did Columbus Day wrong, too. Banks and government entities had the day off. Many of our vendors and clients were either closed or on half-day schedules. My office was soooo open. Notice that I did not say "productive." The halls in my office feature flat screen TVs that are usually turned to the news channels or various chat shows. This is so we're all kept updated on current events, situations that may affect traffic, how the market's doing, etc. Yesterday morning, the big event, and the talk of the office, was Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino.

Paladino was in Brooklyn on Sunday. L'Ailee and I didn't know he would be. We'd love to have done or said *something*, though it's probably best that we didn't. Where Paladino was at, women weren't allowed to go inside and listen anyway. He pitched himself as the "religious values candidate" to Orthodox Jewish men in Borough Park. In the printed prepared remarks his campaign staff passed out, he was quoted as saying, "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual...that's not the example that we should be showing our children." He went on to say, "I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don't want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option. It isn't." He promised that he wouldn't sign "immoral" bills. His opponent Andrew Cuomo has promised to legalize same-sex marriage in New York.

He went onto the morning chat shows on Monday to ~~dig his hole even deeper~~defend himself. On Good Morning America, he claimed that he's "not a homophobic." He talked about his gay nephew, who I hope has a different last name and looks nothing like his uncle. He tried to wax sympathetic about the bullying this young man faces, then blamed it on his homosexuality rather than other peoples' reactions to it. Of course he did, because otherwise he might have had to take responsibility and perhaps examine what he's said at family reunions.

As he did at the synagogue where he spoke, he slammed Cuomo for going to a Pride parade. Paladino found a line about "grown men in Speedos grinding on each other" at the parade he's too good a Catholic to attend so intriguing that he used it on at least three networks. Of course, he doesn't hate homosexuals--he even has one on his campaign staff! (Where do all of these masochistic "homosexuals" who anti-gay bigots like to trot out when they're cornered come from, anyway?) If blame-shifting burned calories, he'd have weighed 90 pounds by noon.

Paladino's remarks are easy for me to condemn. They're part of a general pattern of being an ass. (How's that for objectivity?) He is running for governor of my state. If elected, he'd be making decisions about my, my wife's, and several of our friends' lives, and he wouldn't decide in our favor. But some calls are a little bit harder to make.

We office drones needed to be rewarded for all the voice mail messages, "out of office" e-mails, and Paladino slime we were getting. A couple of executives decided that we should be allowed to turn the TVs to the hockey games being played Monday afternoon. Of course, it just so happens that they're huge New York Rangers fans, and that team was playing the New York Islanders at 1 pm. (The two New York teams have a vicious long-standing rivalry, and the Islanders in particular love those holiday matinee games.) Even the non-hockey fans liked it better than the news. I heard more of the game than I saw. Since I hate the Rangers with an undying hate, I enjoyed hearing their fans cuss in the first period as the Isles went 2-1.

Then I heard about "the gesture." I started reading about it on Twitter, too. The Isles' James Wisniewski and the Rangers' Sean Avery got into a dispute. After some shouting, Wisniewski made a very evocative and NSFW sign that looked like giving a hummer in Avery's direction. You can see it here. It was replayed in slow motion, too, so that all the drones and people waiting at the doctor's office and kids watching at home could get a real good look. My entire office got into a debate over it, which totally boosted productivity, let me tell you. Rangers fans were, in general, more upset than Islanders fans.

But I'm a Penguins fan. My positions for free speech and LGBT civil rights butted heads on this. I thought it was tacky as hell. I don't expect the Islanders' players to know it was National Coming Out Day, but most people in the NYC area know about the gay men in the Bronx who were tortured by a gang last week, as well as the many recent suicides among LGBT teenagers. Also, unlike a finger given by one NASCAR driver to another, children at the event could clearly see it. (NASCAR drivers may think thoughts similar to Wisniewski's, but they wouldn't give *that* exact sign in a car--they'd wreck.)

Wisniewski will almost certainly be fined and/or suspended--Sean Avery was for saying that another player had been with his "sloppy seconds." It would only be fair, going by NHL precedent. But I'm not sure that Avery should've been punished. I say this as one of the many hockey fans who hates Avery--he's based his career on being a pest, and is the kind of player you only like when he's on your team. Hockey is a physical game where players stand an excellent chance of getting hurt on any given night. Emotions run high and players let off steam. They cuss in multiple languages, and they trash-talk just to distract the one with the puck. They reach right for the sexual insults. As a fan, I wouldn't want any of that to change. The game itself would be different, and not nearly as much fun to watch, if it did.

Wisniewski most likely didn't mean to insult all gay and bi men at a particularly bad time, although he accomplished that. He didn't think about the young boys--straight, bi, and gay--who were watching him. He didn't consider that there might be gay and bi male fans, such as our friend A., who took his 9-year-old daughter to the Pittsburgh Penguins/New Jersey Devils game in Newark later this afternoon. When S., his husband, goes with them to the arena, their daughter knows to refer to him by his first name or as "Da's friend," not his husband or her stepfather.

No, probably Wisniewski wanted only to get inside his opponent's head. He needed to out-pest a notorious pest. The fact that he felt calling Avery queer would be effective is more of a problem than the actual gesture. More knowledgeable writers than myself, such as Justin Bourne, have called for changing the culture. That's a hard row to hoe, considering the state of the rest of our culture. It's going to take a lot of things, including fans saying "That's not right". So here I am, saying "That's not right," though nobody will hear it. This is the point of Coming Out Day. We speak our truth and hope that somebody will listen.

By the way, the Islanders beat the Rangers, 6-4. Then the Penguins beat the Devils 3-1. And that's what really counts, right?

Links, links:

Coming out at work, or, "Be gay over there"

The Insane Clown Posse has been a couple of born-again Evangelical Christians all along. Boy, they hate science. And boy, they've got issues. This will tell you what the "Miracles" song--"Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?"--was about. One of my younger cousins used to listen to them because his fundamentalist Christian parents hated them. I'd love to know what he thinks of this.

A male college student managed to drug most of the female guests with rohypnol at a party. Twelve women ended up having to go to the hospital. Because they are under 21, they may end up being expelled for drinking alcohol.

A USA Today travel writer claims that bedbugs are no big deal, really.

Finally, 20 real, hilarious, and unfortunate company names around the world.

Even a Stopped Clock

2010-10-05T20:59:00.000-04:00

This is going to be an action-packed week for me. Tomorrow night brings M.I.A.'s free concert at Brooklyn Bowl (yes, a bowling alley, but the coolest bowling alley *ever*) that's intended to make up for the Hard NYC debacle this summer. Thursday is the official start of the NHL season, including the Pittsburgh Penguins/Philadelphia Flyers game. Oh, and yesterday, I got a flu shot.

Sounds earth-shaking and momentous, right? I was scared. For me, it had real significance. The last time I did this was 7 years ago, in Orlando. I was 29. I'd never gotten a flu shot before that one, but I'd been pressured into it by my mom, my boss, and my friends. Aaaannnnd it didn't work out.

I got it at a clinic on a Saturday, on the way to do other errands. I got tired "for some stupid reason," finished my errands quicker than I'd planned, and went home. Soon after, my arm swelled up and got hot and red--I imagined a hot dog felt like that in the microwave. I then started breaking out in hives. I started running a fever. I felt nauseous as hell. I called 911, my best friend, my mom, and my brother, in that order. Then I did throw up.

Later I learned that I was allergic to chicken and eggs. I'd never liked chicken, eggs or most things with eggs in them (although I could occasionally make an exception for Kentucky Fried Chicken and pecan or Key lime pies, and brushed off any waves of nausea afterwards as a sign of overindulgence). The doctor told me I'd been lucky and probably always had a mild allergy that got more severe as I grew older. I was told to never get flu shots again, though I'd figured that one out all by myself.

Sunday morning, my mom called me. She began the conversation badly: "Look, I know how you feel about Fox News, but you really need to listen to this."
"Um, do *what*?" I steeled myself.
Mom told me that a Dr. Rosenfeld was on their Sunday morning show to answer viewer questions. One question to Dr. Rosenfeld was about flu shots for people with egg allergies. He said that there were new formulas that are safer for people who are allergic to eggs. He also said that a doctor could give an allergic patient 10 percent of the dosage, wait 30 minutes, and if there were no adverse reactions, give the patient the other 90 percent.

I hated to admit it, but this did sound interesting to me. My wife had already gotten her flu shot. My boss said she wished I could get one, because I usually have to take a couple sick days every winter and I don't have any to spare right now. So I looked it up online before the race, and it turned out that my mother and the Fox News doctor were right. Something accurate said on Fox News, huh! I joked to L'Ailee that I hoped poor Dr. Rosenfeld wouldn't get fired or worse for that.

Monday morning, I told my boss about it. She told me I should give my doctor a call. (I really can't spare another sick day right now.) My doctor agreed with Dr. Rosenfeld and the three websites I consulted, and told me I could come in at lunch. Then I started shaking a little. I called L'Ailee, who asked if she needed to be there just in case. Seemed a little dramatic for a flu shot, I thought, but I appreciated the gesture. I had, after all, called her just in case I ended up in the ER again. I felt like I was on my way to get a lethal injection rather than a flu shot as I walked into the waiting room.

I flicked through magazines. I played on Twitter. The half hour ran out, and I could barely see the needle spot on my arm. There were no symptoms. I got the rest of the shot. Then I walked out, got coffee mixed with hot chocolate, ate a Kashi bar as I walked, and just barely entered the office on time. I had a little bump on my arm, like a mosquito bite. That's it! Everyone's really pleased with me for getting it done.

One of my favorite expressions is, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." Most of the time, I believe in finding wisdom wherever it's at, without writing off the source. I was ready to write off Fox News and, while I'm being honest, my mother who's always watching and quoting that station. I'm really grateful that I didn't. Not that I'm going to start watching Fox News again; I've passed by a TV that plays it in the hall at my office and gotten thoroughly angry more than once, and I've "just given it a chance" for my mother. But apparently at least one person is allowed to tell the truth on Fox News. Huh! I still chuckle a little bit to think that it actually benefited my queer, Pagan, social-libertarian life.

Something I say more often than "Even a stopped clock..." is "Why can't we just do this one simple thing?" Why can't we get some pizzas ordered for the company or organize a game of street hockey or go to a concert without any drama, damn it? I get impatient. Yesterday at my office, a couple of co-workers thought I was being a baby about the flu shot. To them, it was a simple thing. They didn't even have to make doctors' appointments--they just went to CVS. Though I can now get a flu shot, there will never be any "just" about it for me. It's not "simple." It has to be adapted to work around a condition that I have, and my first attempt almost killed me. Perhaps the "simple things" that I sometimes seethe about require adaptation and complication for other people. Nothing is ever simple for everyone. I want to remember that.

So, I became immune to the flu and a little bit smarter and nicer yesterday, plus I got an extra half hour for lunch. Not bad, really!

Links, links:

From the ACLU: When Being Poor Is a Crime. Absolutely appalling--the return of debtor's prisons. It's not exactly financially sound, either.

The attorney general of Virginia is trying to intimidate and threaten scientists who don't come to conclusions about climate change that he likes.

Dan Savage, a gay sex columnist who I generally dislike because he's biphobic, did a great thing for LGBT youth with his "It Gets Better" video project. The Make It Better Project compliments that. Our kids deserve a full toolbox.

That Pew religion survey, the one that yielded the "startling" conclusion that atheists and agnostics are more religiously literate than anyone else, didn't talk about Pagans except in the past tense. This interesting article finally accounts for us.

L'Ailee and I *love* mushrooms! So this article about their history and the toxicity of some varieties interested me. This line is damn near poetic: "Sprouting as they do from rot and waste, the sightless, silent things seem to spin life from death itself." I like to make food with mushrooms for Samhain (even if it's only pizza) for that reason.

I love pandas because they enjoy things so thoroughly, especially their food. Zoos and habitats all over the world give pandas treats, including special "cakes" for their birthdays, and I suspect it's just because they react adorably, with bright eyes and happy smiles and eager paws. There is now a whole Tumblr devoted to pandas enjoying cakes and other parts of celebrations called Panda Loves to Party. It's a quick cute fix.

Actually, I love all black and white animals. The National Zoo is known for its precious pandas, but check out these beautiful zebras, too!

Like-minded partners

2010-09-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

My wife and I aren't as happy as we could be. We're fine and all, just a little deflated. Tony Stewart finished 21st in today's race and 10th in Chase for the Championship points. He had a terrible finish last week after taking a gas gamble, too. Her favorite driver, Kevin Harvick, finished the race at 15th and 5th in the points. My Pittsburgh Penguins have won all three of their pre-season games so far, but her Detroit Red Wings have only won one. (And one of those losses was against the Penguins!)

Then there's the way the whole world seemed a bit prickly and oversensitive this weekend. I sure was. Some of our friends started bickering with other friends. My wife got into it, too. We think it'll blow over, and nobody felt the need to kick anyone out of our house or storm out in a huff, but it wasn't comfortable. Two women I like on Twitter felt personally insulted by things the other had said; one left today. My brother and I got argumentative on the phone, and I was stupid enough to call my mother, which never ends well. At the grocery store, I got into disputes with the cashier, who refused to accept my coupons, and the bagger, who crammed everydamnthing into one canvas bag even though I gave him four. That bag would've exploded as I walked!

L'Ailee and I got into an argument about our religious differences over dinner last night. I'm Pagan, she's atheist. Well-intended advice for Pagans and atheists in interfaith relationships usually addresses only the Big Three monotheistic religions, or just Christianity. They don't talk about the real differences that can arise when one person is superstitious, likes ritual, and believes in thousands of Gods, including Gods of computers and cars Who haven't been named yet, and the other prides herself on her lack of superstition and doesn't believe in any Gods at all.

Yesterday, I went to Pagan Pride Day at Battery Park. L'Ailee had to work that morning, but she didn't want to be there for even part of it. She'd gone to some Pagan gatherings and rituals before, and simply couldn't get into it. She can't even watch me give a small offering or do even a brief and informal ritual without wanting to laugh, so she walks away and leaves me alone. I went with my best friend Yemaya O'Reilly, her wife, and their nine-year-old daughter. Yemaya and her wife share Pagan, polytheistic beliefs, and while the daughter will be allowed to make her own choice, she gets into the holidays and insists on wearing a small pentacle. I felt like a third wheel. Other couples and families were there, too.

I feel like bragging to type this, but I had to tell five people, "Thanks, but I'm married." Three men and two women wanted a date, a number, a Twitter or Facebook handle, an e-mail address from me. That *never* happens. One of the men was looking at his cell phone and excitedly told his male friend, "The Rangers just put Redden on waivers!" Wade Redden was a grossly overpaid defenseman for the New York Rangers. That caught my attention, so I had to ask if I'd heard right. The man smiled broadly. We talked hockey a little, and then he asked me if I wanted to go "have dinner or something" after the Pagan Pride Day festivities. After I said no--gently, I hoped--I heard him tell his friend, "The Gods have a sick sense of humor, don't they? I finally meet a Pagan girl who likes hockey, and she's married!" I felt a little proud, and then a little mean for being proud, that I could still cause this kind of reaction in a person.

The people who approached me all wanted a like-minded partner who would understand them, and it seems perfectly reasonable that a gathering of people who share their minority religious viewpoint would be a good place to look. And the ring I held up as I said "Thanks, but...", was a near-identical twin to one worn by someone who thinks my Gods don't exist and my rituals are ineffective. I wasn't angry, but I'd under-estimated how sensitive I would be later.

At dinner, L'Ailee asked me how it went. She smiled when I told her about the belly dancing workshop. "You had to be the best. No, maybe [Yemaya] was the best, but you had to be at least the second-best." (I'm the first to admit that Yemaya totally blows me out of the water.) She shook her head at the T-shirt I'd bought: "That looks like a busy mess." Her eyes glazed over when I described the symbolism in the design: "Look, the apple is for the fall harvest, and also, we live in the Big Apple." Then she laughed when I described the harvest ritual at the end. That set me off.

"Look, maybe you think my religion is just hilarious, but I happen to think those rituals are beautiful," I told her, trying not to cry or raise my voice. "I don't even care if it works--it feels good."
"Perhaps it does."
"I think the seasons are something to be thankful for. I think our food's something to be thankful for."
"Listen, why are you so upset?"
"It's bad enough that you couldn't come with me, so I had to be the third wheel with [Yemaya and her wife], but then you had to go and laugh at it. And you asked how it went! If you were just going to laugh, why would you ask me like you cared?"
"I wondered how that makes you feel. Would it have been better if I went with you?"
"It would be better if you didn't think it was funny."
"But I think all religions are funny in some ways. That is why I don't believe in any religions."

At this point, the waiter asked if everything was okay, and we chorused, "We're *fine*!" in such a way that he scurried off. I'm laughing a bit at that right now. It wasn't funny last night. I'll spare you the middle, but this was the end:

"I want to think you respect me," I said.
"I do respect you."
"I usually feel like you do."
"But not tonight," she inferred. I nodded. "Your religion is something that makes you feel good and makes you want to be a better person, so I support it for you. But it is a hard thing for me to understand. I used to spend time in a church, praying. I think now, what a waste of my time. I laugh when I think about putting on my long church dress and the scarf on my head." She was once Eastern Orthodox. "I am sorry that I laughed. I did not mean to laugh at *you*."
"Okay," I said. "I felt so good today. I looked forward to seeing you again tonight. I don't know why I got so upset. Sorry."
"Let's eat our food before it all gets cold. Do you still want to go to the movie?" We were planning to see Never Let Me Go.
"I do if you do."
"I do," she said softly. We were quiet until we got out of the movie. On the bus, we looked for our teams' scores on our cell phones and discussed them. Before we went to bed, she apologized again and I asked if we were okay. We agreed that we were.

L'Ailee and I have many things in common. We both respect science and love nature, although we don't love spending a lot of time in raw nature with no electricity or running water. We want to leave the world a slightly better place than we found it. Our childhoods were difficult, and we believe it's not too late to have a happy childhood now. We take care of our adult responsibilities the best we can. We love food and friends and animals and music. Although our beliefs about the Divine are quite different, we both believe in the wrong number of Gods as far as the majority of people are concerned. We've both had many opportunities to see conservative Christians, and sometimes Jews and Muslims, at their worst. This is the main reason why we support the Park 51 community center. The protestors looked much too familiar.

We defend each other. When the Christine O'Donnell "dabbling in witchcraft" comments became news, L'Ailee told people, "[Lilo] never had any picnics on bloody Satanic altars with me. She can't even watch a full episode of CSI." I've shared our jokes about how atheists are "cute and cuddly" and use her as an example of an ordinary atheist life. We point each other to books, articles, and websites. We're glad we aren't trying to raise children together--some friends of ours are raising our children as interfaith couples (or ex-couples), and sometimes it gets confusing or contentious. Not every spouse or partner at the Orlando Samhain gathering will be Pagan, and I won't be the only one going alone.

There are many things that I wouldn't be if it weren't for her. I've known her my entire adult life, longer than I knew that some people still worship the ancient Gods, and longer than I've been one of those people. I don't know what I'd be without her, but I'd be different. At Battery Park, the conversation about hockey happened because she got me into that sport, and if I looked attractive to other Pagans, it's because she knows exactly what I need to do with my hair, clothes, and makeup. I know how to belly-dance because she insisted that I take advantage of the domestic partner membership at the gym where she teaches and that class appealed to me. We both shuddered at Never Let Me Go, and we both needed to read the novel beforehand. I know there are ways I've gotten to her and shaped her, too. In the last post, I mentioned that we had a mizpah necklace when we first launched our relationship. We knew even as kids that we'd found the missing puzzle piece.

I hope the people who approached me at Battery Park find someone else who'll say yes to them. Those people may not share their beliefs. This won't be a bad thing, but sometimes it will be a challenging thing. Another thing L'Ailee and I have in common is that we have no problem with challenges.

Lots of links, if you care to read more:

Beautiful Autumn Equinox rituals from all over the world

We both laughed hard when we saw Saturday Night Live's Ground Zero Mosque that does gay weddings bit online this morning.

New Yorkers need to forget about things like Park 51 and unite against the real enemy--bedbugs! They're taking over!

Y'all probably saw the Republican Party's "Pledge to America" this week. It's like the Contract with America, only with smaller words and 50 percent more anger. The Real Pledge to America site is hilarious.

It's Banned Books Week! I can't afford anything new, so I should probably revisit one of these books that have been banned or challenged.

I won't be able to make Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity on October 30th, as I'll be in Orlando for Samhain. But there are Rally for Sanity Meetups going on all over the country!

When will we get a professional womens' hockey league?

Homophobia is not all religious, and it sometimes comes from "tolerant" people who claim not to have a homophobic bone in their body, but... This article is a case in point. The author believes that same-sex couples should be kept off of arena Kiss Cams for his young daughter's sake. I'd be happy to get rid of the Kiss Cams altogether, but something tells me he'd also not want his kid "exposed" to L'Ailee and I holding hands.

Finally, shouldn't mens' underwear come in cup sizes, too?

The Doing of Seven Giants

2010-09-18T18:26:00.001-04:00

L'Ailee and I went to see the movie Easy A this afternoon, though it's a bit "young" for us, for one simple reason. I could sort of relate to the plot. Not quite, of course; I never got guys to pay me for the right to say they'd slept with me, though that plot element made me wish for a second that my life had better writers, and I certainly didn't look as good as Emma Stone in high school. But like Olive, the movie's protagonist, I had a name without playing the game. To this day, I hate slut-bashing, including the rare times I myself have indulged in it. I know better, damn it.

At 36, I'm alternately bemused, amused, and angry when I think of how I got a reputation as a slut in high school. Unlike Olive, I didn't make any claims for myself. The claims got made for me, and I honestly couldn't see how. After a while, I gave up trying to defend my own honor. I held my head up and basically gave off an attitude that said, "To hell with you all, go ahead and think what you want." Sometimes I'd spend the night studying and almost look forward to hearing about what I was "really" doing all night the next day.

I guess I understand now. My mother made sure that my brother and I knew the correct scientific terms for every part of our bodies. She taught us about diseases and birth control. I have always loved to do research, and when I find a topic that interests me, I'll explore it in depth. Like every other teenager, I was interested in sex, so I researched that. I've always been good at keeping other peoples' secrets. I also have a tendency to give advice, as some of you know. So I'd tell other girls how to take a pregnancy test or that it's legal for teenagers to buy condoms or that they needed to look at their family medical history before going on the pill. It didn't occur to me that some of these girls might think I'd arrived at my knowledge from first hand experience rather than books and magazines, and that they wouldn't be as careful about keeping secrets as I was.

I was a working class girl bused to a rich school--my mother had made certain to choose an apartment in a "good" school district. As she promised, I do thank her for that now. It was an uncomfortable position to be in, though. Even the punk kids wouldn't accept someone who couldn't afford the right over-$100 pair of clunky shoes and a new shade of Manic Panic hair dye every week. So I floated among cliques and mostly made my friends outside of school, in the neighborhood and my church youth group and all-ages nightclubs.

I made the conscientious decision not to date anyone at school when I was invited to homecoming by a cute senior boy during sophomore year, and found out that I was the target of a "dogfight." Basically, guys were competing to bring the ugliest, geekiest girls as dates, and the one judged to have the worst dog for a date won a betting pool. My feelings went from the top of a mountain to the bottom of a canyon when I found out. Now I think I wasn't all that ugly, just a typically awkward teenager with bad skin and a pot belly. But even as my skin cleared up and I learned how to dress, my distrust for the "snotty rich boys" remained firmly in place.

Shortly after the dogfight, a childhood friend in Daytona Beach got his driver's license and asked if he could drive to Orlando to see me. We began dating. Fifty miles separated us, and boy, we thought that was long distance. We formed a band with a couple of friends, and even got to play a few parties for money. Mostly, our dates were practicing or playing, with perhaps a bit of kissing and groping. Sometimes we'd go two or three weeks without seeing each other because I had to babysit or he had to work. But it didn't take much to get the girls in my classes and youth group to talk, and that got them talking. Surely I had to be up to some real excitement with this cute guitar player, and he couldn't be coming all the way from Daytona just for my turntable and bass playing. The less I said, the more room I gave their imaginations.

We broke up in the middle of my junior year. For a few weeks, I dated a guy in the Navy. (At the time, Orlando had a naval base; it was abandoned in the mid-1990s.) He was only two years older than me, and very little happened, but again, that fueled gossip. Then there was the time someone set off a smoke bomb, and the fire department came out. I happened to be in the hall when I spotted this really fine Hispanic firefighter who couldn't have been more than 22. I struck up a conversation with him while his superior was talking with my school's vice principal. I maintain that we were about to exchange phone numbers when a teacher and his supervisor separated us. "I'm a junior, I'm 17," I said. (I'd recently learned the meaning of the phrase "statutory rape.") Amazingly, he didn't run back to me and give me the phone number anyway. I heard about it for weeks afterwards.

A focus had been placed on "purity" and "sexual sin" in my church youth group. I don't think I dressed provocatively. I typically wore loose knee-length babydoll dresses with bright and/or patterned tights. I wanted to gloss over my belly and show off my legs, to look cute. (This was the early 1990s.) I was told that my tights were "tempting my brothers to think of me as something other than a sister in Christ." We girls were asked to stand up if we intended to wait until marriage. I was the only girl who didn't stand up. I didn't want to be married until at least my mid-twenties, and while I wasn't having sex, I was only a technical virgin and didn't see myself maintaining even that until marriage. I didn't want to lie to God in a church. Meanwhile, girls whom I knew had sex, had confided in me, were standing up. Aaaannndddd they talked. And some of them went to my school.

On top of all of this, I was bisexual and coming to terms with that. Between my junior and senior years, I met the girl who would become my wife on a college tour in New York City. I had a lot of stuff to process. I allowed that I'd met "someone" on the college tour, but was rather vague about it. If a relationship with a guitar player in Daytona was something to talk about, a relationship with a vague someone in New York City was on a whole nother level. I'd grown used to kids filling in the blanks. Let them, I thought. Only one more year among them.

I quit my church over it. I naturally lost my tolerance for gay jokes, and items like same-sex couples in Hawaii trying to get married were in the news. I spoke up on behalf of gay rights and respect. This was not a popular cause. I was quite literally told by other students in debate class that I'd won a debate about same-sex marriage based on my points and research, but that they couldn't bring themselves to say I'd won because same-sex marriage was so gross. I was wearing half of the mizpah necklace I shared with L'Ailee at the time--I remember I couldn't keep my hands off of it, and I felt like I was betraying her. We'd been talking about how maybe we'd go to Hawaii and get married after we graduated college.

So I was a slut. I think now that there are worse things to have been. I wish I hadn't been so damned naive. I wonder what would have happened if I didn't have such a chip on my shoulder, though I don't quite blame my teenage self for having had it. I didn't have much to work with besides my own defenses. I wonder what would have happened if I could really talk to an adult who understood, and if those existed. By my senior year, I'd stopped trusting the adults in my school, too, and responded to concern by saying a whole lot of nothing until they let me leave. Hindsight's 20/20, though. One day when I'm really brave, I may even want to find out what kind of adult eyes some of my classmates see all this with now, though when the 10th class reunion came around, I told them to forget my name. I haven't been asked about the 20th yet. A very small part of me kinda wants to be found by the planning committee; most of me doesn't.

Watching the movie, I related to Olive's geekiness, and to her misguided attempts to be considered cool. I especially related to the almost-pride she took in her newly soiled reputation. Don't get me wrong, it's a comedy. We laughed and cringed throughout it. But a couple of times, I teared up a little. The someone in New York wiped the tears and held my hand tight. We don't wear that cheap mizpah anymore. She wears a necklace with a silver infinity symbol pendant that I gave her, and we wear matching platinum bands, a plain one and one with a tiny aquamarine and ruby flanking a small diamond. (Aquamarine and ruby are, respectively, my birthstone and hers.) We got up when the lights came back on and tried to discreetly check each other's clothes for bedbugs, which we do not want back in our house ever ever again.

My classmates didn't know anything. I didn't either. Whatever. Let people talk. I know how quickly the swatting of seven flies can be turned into the doing of seven giants.

Links, links:

Alphonse D'Amato made New York proud on the Fox Business Channel.

This new anti-bullying act should also make New York proud. Our legislature did something!

Pagan Pride Day is being celebrated in NYC on the 25th, in Battery Park. It's meant to align with the Autumn Equinox, or at least the weekend thereof, when most of us can really celebrate!

And nothing says "Pagan pride" quite like Delaware's own Christine O'Donnell admitting that she "dabbled into witchcraft".

Finally, the Pittsburgh Penguins show why they're one of the classiest teams around by hosting a free pre-season home game with job fair.

Never Forgot

2010-09-08T20:46:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again.

It's time for politicians like Joe Biden to make their appearances. For fundraisers to benefit survivors and rescuers. For cynical manipulators like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to use tragedy to their own advantage, and I'm not joking when I say I'm glad they'll be way the hell in Alaska, away from NYC. For xenophobes like Pastor Terry Jones to spread hatred in the name of Christ, nevermind the consequences. For people who don't want to succumb to hatred or vote Republican or spend any more blood and treasure on endless war to be accused of forgetting, as if we could ever forget. 9/11 Season. I fucking hate it.

It's time for people who left NYC and those who stayed to converge near a patch of what used to be prime property, what finally may become prime property again. Some of them will have new last names, new spouses, and children too young to remember, who may not even have been born yet. It's time for people to do the same near the Pentagon in Washington DC and what used to be a farm in Pennsylvania, a field that is now a stark reminder of just how heroic ordinary people can be. In NYC, it can be easy to forget that others were affected.

It's time for my wife to sew or read or pound her speedbag until she's so exhausted she has to sleep, because she can't do it otherwise. Every year, she wakes up sweating and screaming less and doesn't kick me quite as much as the last. It's like she's dreaming of playing soccer, except I know good and well she isn't. It's time for me to remind her that she needs to eat, and make food that she likes so much it compels her. It's time for her to go to whatever Fashion Week events she can and try to get on with business like so many others, but feel a bit strange about it. It's time for her to remember a very close friend who died, as well as several acquaintances and customers. It's the day she was scheduled, by random lucky stroke, to come to work at a store in the World Trade Center in the afternoon. It's the day she tried to donate blood and was still rejected for being a tick too small even though the blood bank was desperate. It's the night she sat on the floor in her friend's cramped apartment, calling his mother in Russia to let her know he never left the building. The call was long and cost a fortune. Nobody cared.

It's time for me to remember that day. How ordinary it was. How I'd just gotten to work and set up. How I was playing around on the computer a bit, because I could, and then I saw it on the Yahoo! homepage. There had been articles about relatively trivial things, and then those suddenly got knocked the hell off the page. The ripples of "Oh my God, did you hear...?" reverberated around my Orlando office. Work didn't get done that day. Several of us were allowed to use the long-distance lines to call loved ones in NYC, including myself. We had a hard time getting through. I didn't reach L'Ailee until midnight, on my own phone. She'd had an excruciatingly busy and stressful day, and it ended with her long-distance girlfriend screaming, "Never do that to me again! Don't you ever scare me like that again!" I feel kinda bad about that...now.

It's time for us to meet at the former World Trade Center site along with some of our friends. We'll tell each other what we're wearing (black, of course, even me, though I hate how I look in black), and text each other when we get there, and have brunch afterwards. L'Ailee's best friend A. is coming with his husband, his ex-wife, and their daughter. He and the ex-wife will bury the hatchet for the morning. She ran out of one of the towers that day. She has memories of her own, worse ones than L'Ailee's. She's not one of my favorite people, but I hope she's finding comfort this week, too. The daughter was a baby that day; she is now a tall almost-10-year-old girl who asked them if she could go for once. We will listen to the names. I didn't know any of them when they were alive, but I know by now which ones my wife and friends need to hear.

It's time for us to stand and shift our feet and be polite even when the mayor speaks and hold hands. It's time for most of us, including L'Ailee, to remember. It's time for me to remember how very lucky I am that I can stand next to her. The man who is my closest friend at work, and one of my closest friends outside it as well, feels the same way about his wife. We will talk in the restaurant, and tear up, and tell the familiar stories. We'll even laugh a little. It doesn't feel weird for anybody anymore. We will scatter and go about our business. Most of us will reunite at L'Ailee's and my home that night to watch the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Richmond. It's a big deal because it's the last one before the Chase for the Championship. Last May, during the spring race at Richmond, there was a car rigged with explosives, ready to go off in Times Square. Our cell phones buzzed with the news, and we quickly flipped the TV away from the race. The ones who prayed did. We were all on pins and needles. We learned the true beauty of the word "attempted." Our city is a far more vigilant one now than it used to be, and New Yorkers aren't quite as cool as they once were.

It's time for us to remember the day everything changed.

Links, links:

This is what we're doing Friday night. People for the American Way has organized a Vigil for Equality, Diversity, and Religious Freedom to make a statement against hate in New Yorkers' and 9/11 victims' names.

I want everyone to read this. It's much better than anything I can write, and so eloquently says many things I've wanted to say myself. America, I Live in New York City, I'm Gay, and I'm a Real American, Too

Five worries parents should drop, and five they shouldn't This one brings home the meaning of an expression I like: "When you hear hoofprints, think horses, not zebras."

Adult milkshakes--that is, laced with alcohol--were very popular this summer. The New York Times explains why. I can't have the Brooklyn Bowl shakes because I'm allergic to that "good" ice cream with egg yolks, but I'm happy to make egg-free versions at home.

Sidney Crosby's not just one of the very best hockey players around right now, he's also pretty danged good at baseball. Based on what Pittsburgh Penguins fans who are actually based in Pittsburgh say about their local baseball team, he might get an offer from the Pirates.

Finally, a blogger turns a bit of uneducated hate mail calling him a "foggot" into one of the most hilarious e-mail exchanges ever!

Any USB port in a storm

2010-09-01T22:20:00.000-04:00

There were several topics I thought I should post about and just didn't, couldn't, didn't wanna, didn't have time, was beaten to, etc. Like the proposed Park51 community center two blocks away from the former World Trade Center site, formerly known as Cordoba House, also known by a media scare name that I refuse to use. Like Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in DC, which my mother, two aunts, and an uncle attended. Like another event from last weekend--L'Ailee and I babysitting our best friends' daughters, taking them to the zoo, the bowling alley, and Trader Joe's. Like the Discovery Channel building hostage situation this afternoon.

I'm not blogging about any of this. Instead, I believe I will answer the question, "Why do you still buy so many books instead of a Kindle or something?"

Hurricane Earl is coming up the East Coast. As I type, the Outer Banks of North Carolina are being threatened and have been evacuated. It's a nice area from what my work husband and I saw--we went there for a friend's funeral last year--and we wanted to go again for happier reasons. Since it's a tourist destination, it's going to be losing that last infusion of seasonal cash from Labor Day weekend. Earl will then be on its way up here by Friday. My best friend Yemaya O'Reilly and I are hoping we'll have good surfing weather with lighter-than-usual beach traffic this weekend, but of course shit can get much more serious than that and we've had to prepare. Yemaya's Jamaican and I'm Floridian; we know how to prepare, and we have. It still seems weird to me that news of a hurricane's making me have to worry more about myself, wife, and friends in NYC than about my family and friends back home in Florida. This weirdness has been pointed out to me several times.

Whenever I think of electronic readers, the same scene pops up in my head--me outside on the patio after a hurricane knocked our power out, reading to pass the time. Part of a Floridian childhood is learning how to entertain oneself without electricity a few days a year. The thing about an electronic device, including a reader, is that one has to recharge it, and the juice has to come from somewhere. Now if the juice isn't available for days or weeks? Well, then, you're fucked when the power goes out. I can extrapolate it further, imagine how it would be if everyone's most dystopian visions came to pass and the electricity never came back on again. I won't. Even without hurricanes, NYC's dealt with blackouts related to heat waves as everyone ran the A/C and nobody wanted to leave the house. They come from tornadoes, ice storms, and mismanagement.

I think about a passage in a young adult book I read in middle school, one so disposable I forget the rest of it. (I've read many books like that, and wonder if maybe a reader wouldn't be such a bad idea after all, just to eliminate waste.) What stuck with me in this book was the young narrator's grandfather expressing his disdain for computers. I paraphrase: "All this knowledge on computers. What happens to your knowledge when you unplug it?" I don't want my knowledge to go away at the pull of a plug.

As a teenager, one of my struggles at school was having to use a calculator for math class. Yes, in Central Florida in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were required. I know this is going to sound weird--some of you will say, "I wish I could have used a calculator." But I have dyscalculia. To vastly oversimplify, dyscalculia is dyslexia with numbers instead of letters. I can read written and typed numbers most of the time, after a great deal of brain training as a young teen, but square digital numbers have always been an absolute bitch for me to tell apart even in the best of times. I wasn't about to ask my mother to waste $90 on a required scientific calculator I could never use--or worse yet, spend several CDs' worth of my own babysitting money! So I insisted on writing my problems out very neatly on paper.

My teachers didn't like this at all, and kept insisting that I use a calculator like the other kids. I shamed one in 11th grade: "I thought I was here to learn how to do math, not press buttons," I told her. "I already know how to press buttons. Why are you yelling at me for doing math in math class?" She never bothered me again. As an adult, I can figure out a tip or halve a recipe very quickly on paper, as quickly as most can on a calculator, which amazes everyone who knows I'm dyscalculiate. I was forced to learn math the hard way--the old school, analog, unplugged way--and some of it actually stuck with me. I know this may sound like bragging, but I'm glad to have that ability now.

I have other considerations, too. I like books and always have--how they feel, how they smell, even the words previous owners have written in the margins when I get one secondhand. They've been very good friends to me since I was a little girl. One of the things I like about riding the bus every day--and there aren't many--is having a little time to relax with a book or magazine. It brings me back to school, in a good way. The last book I read on the bus was Composed, Rosanne Cash's memoir. I've occasionally lost books on buses. I hated losing $20 or less worth of book--imagine losing $200 worth of e-reader plus downloads! You have a better chance of getting your book back!

I like looking at our shelves in the living room and seeing L'Ailee's books, my books, and our books that we share. The Russian novels and the ones about science, sports, and classical music are hers. The Southern authors and the ones about color theory, history, and politics are mine. Together we like science fiction, graphic novels, and satire, so we get one copy of those books for the two of us. It's a little funny how we'll compete to grab the books we both want. "I got the Passage, ha ha ha!" I texted when I picked up Justin Cronin's dystopian tome at the store earlier this year. "Shut up!" she texted back. By getting the book first, I'd earned the right to read it first, starting on the ride home. She got me back a couple weeks ago by buying Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story out from under me.

Hurricane preparedness means buying water and cat food and batteries and matches, making sure we have enough tape, all that. It also means that I'm torturing myself further by not starting Super Sad True Love Story until this weekend, just in case. I've also got Will Bunch's ultra-cheerful new non-fiction about the hatefulness in current right-wing politics, the Backlash, on deck. Hopefully I'll read it in the AC, but if not, I'll put up my hair, make a fan out of copy paper, make some sun tea, and bring them outside.

Yesterday afternoon, I said, "Modern technology's awesome, but so is knowing how to get things done w/o it when you need to." I tweeted that from my cell phone.

Links to click before the power goes out:

9/11 Season is here, and that means opportunistic jackasses trying to make a political thing out of it. Usually those are the same jackasses who talk about "liberal New York elites" most of the year. Case in point, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are having a rally in Alaska on 9/11. Ironically, in 2002, L'Ailee and I went there so she could be away from NYC during the anniversary (since she actually lost her job and a friend and all on that day). It *was* nice...

Speaking of Beck, Kathleen Parker, a conservative-leaning columnist whom I've often disagreed with, does some amateur analysis on him.

San Francisco gets used and scapegoated by politicians, too. What politicians mean by "San Francisco values."

Is New York the next "Papers, please" state?

Some barbed humor: Top 10 Things to Build at Ground Zero Besides a Terrorist Mosque

Finally, the hottest song you'll never hear on the radio, Cee-Lo Green's "Fuck You", now has an official video!

If I Only Could

2010-08-05T09:54:00.003-04:00

Yesterday brought terrific news. Judge Vaughn Walker ruled California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional. There is a stay on it being overturned until Friday. And make no mistake, this sucker's going all the way to the Supreme Court no matter what. But for right now, it's great. Last night, L'Ailee and I went to dinner, then the celebratory rally in front of the NYC Supreme Court building. One thing L'Ailee and I dearly want is to be able to *stay* happy, to not have to worry about the next court challenge or legislative session or constitutional question that's extremely difficult not to take personally. We want not to look over our shoulders. We want our decisions to be our decisions, and not some politician's or judge's or "morality" groups.

Some of my own relatives think this is terrible. They think they have a right to vote on marriages like ours, and they would vote against even though they know us and claim to love at least me. They are the reason we couldn't go home (well, my home, not L'Ailee's) to Florida and marry in the infield of the Daytona International Speedway on Valentine's Day like I'd dreamed of when I was a little girl. (Tell me it wouldn't have been cool to rent an RV, wear sundresses, pay some dude in a Richard Petty T-shirt with a notary license a case of beer to officiate, and then climb on the roof of the RV and watch the Daytona 500!) Then there are the advocacy groups whose representatives must always be interviewed for these stories to provide journalistic "balance." Then there are the rank-and-file strangers who post hate on Twitter and Facebook, among other online venues.

You know about the hate. I know about the hate. I'm avoiding most of my relatives for the next little bit, which I think suits us all fine. I'm glancing at the news and websites, and regretting that each time. I don't really feel like playing "Justify My Existence" with people who don't know me and my wife but hate us anyway, repeating the same answers to the same questions. I just don't. I tried that shit; it wears me the hell out.

But I want to say a few things. I wish I *could* say them and have them heard by the people who needed to hear them. Maybe I'll get brave and try some of this, in the most delicate and ladylike fashion, on one of my aunts or the loudmouths on Twitter. I'll say it here to start, anyway.

In states where same-sex marriage is legal, it's also legal for you to be as mean as you want to LGBT people and same-sex couples. Seriously. You can disinherit your granddaughter for marrying another woman. You can refuse to go to your son's wedding. You can completely shatter your relationship with a family member. You can try to maintain the relationship, but make her and her wife feel so unwelcome they prefer to stay in hotels or, um, skip Christmas with you in favor of watching their hockey teams play at their home venues for once. You can snub your gay neighbors and refuse to return their waves. You can refuse to let your children play with the female couple down the block's children. You can demonstrate at the gay pride parade and try to ruin everybody's day for Jesus. It's perfectly legal for you to be a homophobic douche. Just remember it's also legal for us to call you one, to your face or behind your back. You're not being persecuted when we do.

You do not have the "right" to vote on whether other people can get married. I can bring up how degrading the very idea of voting on a fellow law-abiding adult citizen's ability to marry another is. I can bring up how absolutely, mind-blowingly stupid and mean-spirited the "we both have the same right to marry a member of the opposite sex" rebuttal is. I can bring up how civil rights advances for racial minorities were decided by judges rather than voters for very good reasons. Or I can explain it to you this way: Imagine a classroom of 30 kids. Ten percent--three--like jumping rope. The rest prefer kickball. If the teacher took a vote on which game everyone should play, the kids who preferred jumping rope would always have to play kickball, right? They'd be outnumbered by the majority. Their rights at recess would be kickball or nothing. Now let's say the teacher considered the situation, used her authority, and brought out a jump rope as well as a couple of kickballs for recess. I hope you don't think she's discriminating against the kids who like kickball by letting every kid have a choice to play the game they prefer. Just remember, not everyone is a conservative Christian. You might be the kid who prefers jumping rope one day.

Stop lying about how you're being persecuted because you're Christian. (I hope you're lying, anyway, and not so brainwashed or living in such a narrow world that you really don't see the rest of it.) It's an insult to people in the Middle East and China who really do get persecuted for being Christian, by being thrown in jail and having their churches raided and stuff, for one thing. You and your pastor don't have to open up your church to us, any more than, say, a Catholic priest has to marry divorcees or a rabbi has to marry an interfaith couple. I'm Pagan and my wife is atheist. We never wanted to marry in your church or any other. Why would we want to go into some boxy Assemblies of God church that looks more like an office building and have your pastor cringe through a ceremony on what is supposed to be the happiest moment of our lives anyway? We got married by a Wiccan priest, as I also would've had things worked out better with my Wiccan ex-boyfriend. (By the way, that may not be your definition of a "godly" or "traditional" marriage, but it is legal. See the distinction there? No, that doesn't mean go bother a straight Wiccan couple.) We want the option of going to City Hall. Oh, and some Christian ministers--I don't care if you consider those "real" Christians or not, that's your God's call to make--are, in fact, willing to officiate at same-sex ceremonies.

I don't want to have to fight for my marriage, at least not in the political sense. (You always have to work for your marriage on a personal level, and I'll get to that in a bit.) I didn't want to go to that rally last night, as nice as it was to have a night out with my wife. Last year, I missed a fucking Eastern Conference Finals game to go to the rally protesting the previous decision validating Proposition 8. Penguins swept it! I barely got home in time to watch Sidney Crosby hold the Prince of Wales trophy, and I had to watch the highlights on TiVo! Do you know how pissed I was at you for making me have to go out to some bore-ass rally that night? I could use the money I spend on donations for other things--maybe give a little more to the National Wildlife Foundation or food bank instead, or just buy a cute pair of boots. I don't like reading your unpleasantness, nevermind watching your angry twisted-up faces and listening to your sneering voices on the news. I'd prefer it if I never had to go through life knowing who characters like Maggie Gallagher, Mat Staver, and Peter LaBarbera were. I would, in short, like to just be married and think about something besides your latest attempt to get people like us un-married.

We are not, as you allege, doing this as an act of convenience. "Convenience" kinda leaves the picture when a couple is forcibly legally divorced by a judge, as we were, and made to re-marry a couple years after the fact when New York and Massachusetts changed governors. How can you sit there with a straight face, no pun intended, and talk about how we're marrying out of convenience when you make it so goddamned inconvenient? We still had to get thousands of dollars' worth of legal paperwork that you don't have to worry about. We joke about how we travel from state to state with our "kennel papers," just in case bad things happen. (And they have--I crashed into a sailboat while surfing in New Jersey, which led to a concussion and an ER visit, which got very ugly when the doctor didn't consider us married.) But you can travel from New York to New Jersey without having to carry yours, so why do we have to carry ours? You, that's why!

You can leave the kids out of this. So many times, my wife and I have been told not to hold hands in front of someone else's children, while the children are looking at something else altogether. Why don't you just admit it's you being made uncomfortable, and not try to hide behind your kids? My best friend and my wife's best friend are both bisexual parents, with kids from past mixed-sex relationships, and are both raising them with same-sex spouses. As I said, you don't have to let your kids play with theirs, though it does tend to make them cry when you do that. (As they've gotten older, I've also heard them call people who do that names that they really richly deserve.) But you know, kids get hurt. They get sick. They need to be taken out of school or to the emergency room. They need a parent with legal standing to do these things. Who does it protect to make it hard for the step-parent who loves them to take care of them? Not them, and not your children, and not you. You simply make a child suffer for no good reason but to satisfy your hate. You're damn sure not protecting them, so stop your lying about that, too. By the way, when your kid says awful things about another kid's same-sex parents, it's not "homosexual indoctrination" to tell them to stop. It's teaching manners. Of course, I can see how you'd get confused by that, judging by the way you treat us.

If you're really worried about kids, maybe you should be a mentor to, you know, kids. You're worried that the son of lesbian parents in your neighborhood won't have a man to teach him how to play baseball or take him fishing? Instead of yelling at and about his mothers, you can teach him baseball or take him fishing. Of course, many same-sex couples make certain that their children have role models of both genders. Are you worried about "the family"? Then why not help *a* family? There's probably one whose parents are unemployed right in your church, given the state of the economy. Wanna donate to a Christian organization? Why not a local homeless shelter, or a Gulf Coast area church that's helping families whose lives have been devastated by the BP oilspill? Think about the things that are really hurting real families, even the conservative Christian heterosexual-led ones. We're way, way down on the list.

We don't want to ruin your marriage. We aren't against mixed-sex marriage in general. We're for all people who love, just like we say on our signs. We're not like you; we don't think there's only so much marriage to go around and anyone who gets a slice leaves less for everyone else. My wife and I have introduced two mixed-sex couples who are now married, and one of those met at our wedding. (Don't you add your nasty scare quotes to that word, either.) We'd feel bad for you if you got divorced. We wonder why you go to demonstrations and things like those "How to Be a Better Homophobe" seminars that teach you how awful we are. Don't you ever just want to take that money and that weekend and go to a nice hotel? Don't you like to have date nights and family dinners? Don't you want to lock the door of your bedroom, tell the kids not to knock unless someone's dying, and think about how your wife looks in her bra and panties instead of the horrible sinful things two married men are doing to consummate their marriage? Those would be so much better for your marriage than bothering us.

So go mind your own marriage and focus on your own family. You'll probably find that we're less angry and militant after a while. You might even be happier, too.

Links, links:

Great background on Judge Walker here. Suppose the Republicans who wanted his appointment will say the Democrats had it right, and the Democrats who opposed him will apologize?

Lelo in NoPo celebrates the Day of Decision with The Gays Won't Ruin Your Marriage Pie

The bigot eruptions aren't just for LGBT people. Many of the same people protesting our marriages are also protesting the building of Park 51, a/k/a the "Gr**nd Z*r* M*sq**." (I refuse to use that deliberately hysteria-inducing term.) After that terrific speech by Mayor Bloomberg--and I *never* thought I'd say that--the bigots lost their damn minds! Oh, and Bryan Fischer from the American Family Association, out of Tupelo, Mississippi, wants us to blacklist all the contractors working on Park 51. As my granddaddy used to say, people in hell want ice water, too.

And the brilliance continues as the Dallas police chief claims that women can stop date rape by stopping drinking.

Finally, if you're a child of the 1980s, you'll love this 80s music quiz!

Right Up Until the End

2010-07-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

Thursday was L'Ailee's birthday. She's 35. Music seemed to be the theme of her gifts. I bought her what the New York Philharmonic called an "iTunes pass," which basically means she can download all of last season's performances plus some extras to her iPod. While I was at the website, I also got her a T-shirt, which she'll be wearing with pride on those days when she wants to assure her martial-arts students that she has a bit of culture. She loved that, and the raspberry icebox cake I made her as well.

We went out for sushi with her closest friends because she was craving it and I can't make it. (My rolls come out the size of fists. Big man fists.) It's sort of a tradition for several of us to go in together on big gifts for each other--why spend a few dollars on a forgettable, useless trifle, when you can band together and give your friend a bottle of perfume she loves but can never afford or an iPod to replace the one he broke? L'Ailee doesn't only like classical music. Her non-classical enthusiasms tend to be English and electronic, and M.I.A. is a favorite of hers. I enjoy her music, too, especially for working out or driving. She's really almost the only artist we agree on! M.I.A. rocked the Siren Festival at Coney Island a couple years ago. She was headlining the traveling Hard festival on Governors Island on Saturday night. Tickets were $60 apiece. So two tickets to the Hard NYC festival seemed like a great gift for the wife, right?

Well. First of all, yesterday was stifling hot, touching 100 degrees, and humid besides. But I'm a tenth-generation Florida Cracker, and we're tough bitches, and we know to stay hydrated and carry sunblock, and anyway, most of the festival was at night. We didn't want to waste our friends' money, either. So off we went to board the ferry to Governors Island with all the other crazy people late yesterday afternoon.

We enjoy riding the ferry, and always want to do it more often. We were frustrated by the security and bag checks at Governors Island. We had to buy water, lots of it, at an inflated price. A good deal of it went on our heads and down our backs--we frankly didn't care how we looked. We helped each other reapply sunscreen, so I think we look better than many other attendees did this morning. There was tequila and other alcohol available, and there were other substances getting sold and consumed around us, too. L'Ailee doesn't drink, and the more other people around me drink, the less I want to. We stuck to our water, except for a couple energy drinks apiece. We were happy to note that we were at the old end of the demographic spectrum, but definitely not the only thirtysomethings there. We both saw people we knew from work. Some people were smart enough to skip the first few acts and show up at 8 o'clock or later. Whoever else we saw, whatever else was going on (like a Katy Perry and Russell Brand sighting), we were all there for M.I.A. at 11:00.

M.I.A. was really the only artist on the bill that we'd heard of. We still enjoyed most of the other acts. We particularly liked Sleigh Bells. Die Antwoord is a white rapper from South Africa who mostly uses Afrikaans, which I found interesting. L'Ailee wondered if he was a joke, but as his performance went on, we could tell he was quite serious. Then the stage got set up for M.I.A. We waited, and waited some more. There were some sprinkles, maybe a little rumbling, but everyone stayed. And then....

You can listen to some of what we heard for yourself here, if you dare. That song in the video was supposed to be "Bucky Done Gun." M.I.A. clearly didn't share our approach to hydration. Hers involved lots of vodka and tequila. She threw bottles and plastic glasses out into the crowd. The sound quality was absolutely awful. The music sounded like robots killing other robots, just pure jangly electronic noise, and her voice was muffled. The other acts had no technical problems. Then the clouds burst open, and many people, including us, fled for the ferries. I joked that the Weather Gods didn't want to hear any more, either. L'Ailee pointed out that the thunderstorms were in the forecast. Some diehards stayed. Apparently she ended by singing "Born Free" a capella, in the rain, with lasers going, and the few who'd stayed thought it was epic. We're perfectly okay with missing that.

I want to say how grateful I am for the ferry captains and for the staff at Governors Island. The show could have ended in a very ugly way very quickly. The debacle at Germany's Love Parade, which killed 19 people, is a stark reminder of that. Some people were drunk or stoned off their asses, most of us felt ripped off, and all of us were tired and hot. L'Ailee's best friend always tells us we're welcome to call him and see if he's in the area if we need a cab ride home--we still have to pay him, of course, but it's so nice to have him available to us. So she called him while we were on the ferry, despite the sheets of rain around us. He wasn't this time. He'd had a far worse night than us, and a drunk customer had thrown up in his cab. We called another cabbie he recommended to us. L'Ailee told him about the concert while I tweeted nonsense just to stay awake. We got so punchy and giggly in the cab that the driver thought we were drunk, and he didn't like how wet and disheveled we were, either. We were immensely grateful to have A. vouch for us. We dimly remember life before cell phones, but this morning, we agreed that we don't miss it.

We were so exhausted, we couldn't sleep! We plugged in our cell phones, made sure the cats were okay, and hopped into the shower. We ended up having quick, giggly, exhausted sex in the bathtub. Didn't get to sleep until 4 am, didn't wake up again until after 10 am. Our friends had wanted to give L'Ailee an interesting experience for her birthday and remind her that she's not old yet. They certainly accomplished that. We've decided that we really don't want event tickets for our birthdays again. My gift this year was tickets to the Pittsburgh Penguins at New Jersey Devils game on March 17, and of course the Penguins lost that game and the Devils fans were rude as hell to us. Hell, our precious darling friends can save their money and give us cards! Really!

Speaking of which, they came over this afternoon to watch the Brickyard 400 race. Of course, I was in no mood to cook, so we chipped in for pizza. (Anyone seeing a theme here?) We all have our allegiances to particular drivers, but we all really wanted Juan Pablo Montoya to win. Some of us like him because he's cute, or funny, or an immigrant in a fan base that's occasionally hostile to foreigners, or willing to give up a stellar career in Formula 1 to try something different. He won the Indianapolis 500 on that track, so he'd have accomplished an interesting feat by winning a NASCAR race there, too. He came ridiculously close last year, but screwed up by speeding in pit road. (Drivers are penalized for it because it's a safety risk to the crews.) So it was easy to root for him. He started on the pole, led the majority of the laps, absolutely dominated, and then, with only 29 laps to go....

It seemed to fit in with the theme of our weekend that Montoya's crew chief made a decision that looked sensible, but put him a bit further back in the pack. Several drivers only got 2 tires changed; Montoya got all 4. The Brickyard is a tire-eater of a track, so it seemed like the best thing to get 4 tires. The ones that got 2 did so to save time and get back onto the track faster. Well, it worked. Montoya ended up in a wreck with Dale Earnhardt, Jr., sending A., who loves Junior, into fits of rage. Montoya was wiping away tears. We all groaned, cried, or cussed over the unfairness of it. He'd done all the right things, just absolutely nothing wrong this time.

It looked like Kevin Harvick or Tony Stewart now had a chance, though, and we'd definitely have taken that. But no. Jamie Fucking McMurray had to win it. He's a driver who everyone at my house felt neutral about--don't particularly hate or like him. This year has been hot for him--he began it by winning the Daytona 500, and he'd been in danger of not having a ride at all. So we could have felt good. But really, it felt awful, even though he's Montoya's teammate. For the moment, we do kinda hate him, just a little bit.

The weekend could have gone worse, so much worse. Yet we kind of feel like the air's been let out of our tires. Tomorrow we'll be happy to go into work, possibly by canoe, and have more interesting answers than usual to the question, "How was your weekend?"

Links, links:

It's probably as well that we couldn't enjoy a full set from M.I.A., as OneNewsNow, a "news" site from the American Family Association, contends that she's a radical Islamist. Yep, a scantily clad radical Islamist woman who makes her living performing electronic music...

This is seriously scary, and everyone should read it. Yahoo! compiled a list of 22 indicators showing that America's middle class is disappearing.

Since I've flown into Orlando a lot over the past few years, it also scared me to learn how bigoted the air marshal's office there was.

There have been some terrible responses to Andrew Breitbart's railroading of Shirley Sherrod from her job, which is terrible enough. Right-wing commentators are attacking her anew for calling Breitbart a racist. Meanwhile, a CNN commentator called for crackdowns on "bloggers".

Everyone's heard about the scary mosque being built by Ground Zero. Guess what? It would be the second in the neighborhood.

Many of us cherished the Beezus and Ramona books. The movie...well, consider it a gateway drug to the books for girls you know. A low-quality one.

Finally, I loved this: the Twitter Real-Time Mood Map

The Cupcakes That Saved New York

2010-07-18T17:19:00.002-04:00

Today L'Ailee and I are just chilling. Yesterday, we enjoyed the sports-less, work-less weekend by going to the Siren Festival at Coney Island. She loves electronica and classical; I love hip-hop and country. Neither of us really got what we wanted. Fun as it was to ride the Cyclone roller coaster to the accompaniment of a live rock band below, we left early. We were so pathetically happy to get snacks to sneak into a movie theater and get there just in time for the last matinee showing of Inception. Total brain popcorn, but we wouldn't have felt cheated if we'd paid full price.

Even though it's mid-July, cupcakes and hockey dominated my Twitter timeline late last week. The New York Islanders, who I really want to stay in the area just because I hate the Rangers so so much and don't want them to be the only hockey team in town, gave a local businesswoman a contract to sell cupcakes during games. Other hockey teams' fans made fun, but they're probably just jealous. You don't get tons of food choices in a hockey arena.

I can't have their cupcakes (although I'm certain a few will be thrown at me and L'Ailee's direction should we show up in our Pittsburgh Penguins or Detroit Red Wings gear next season.) I can't have most cupcakes, because they contain eggs and I'm allergic to them. However, I could indulge in the Twitter hashtag trend that inevitably resulted. I tend to indulge in lots of Twitter hashtag trends. Oh, there was lots of fun to be had with #NHLCupcakes. These were mine:

Marc-Andre Fleury (Penguins, goalie): Sweet, flaky, often tasty, but OH GOD STAY IN THE WRAPPER!
Martin Brodeur (New Jersey Devils, goalie): Big enough to share with your sister.
Sidney Crosby (Penguins, center): It only looks super-sweet and plain vanilla.
Brooks Orpik (Penguins, defenseman): Comes with Free Candy sprinkles, may damage internal organs.
Daniel Carcillo (Philadelphia Flyers, wing): Can be eaten without incisors, but tainted with rat hairs.
And the one my wife liked best, requiring me to link to these more Red Wings fan-friendly ones:
The Detroit Red Wings: Bitter old ginger

Bet y'all can tell who I don't care for, even if you don't get the jokes!

As if that wasn't enough, Grub Street NY noted that just might be helping to save New York City's economy. No, really! Boy, are they popular here, almost as popular as the word "fuck." There are tons of cupcake shops, mostly owned by small-time entrepreneurs, with at least five employees apiece. Cupcakes are a relatively small, cheap indulgence, which goes over well in bad economic times. The people at Grub Street may be over them, but it's a good thing other New Yorkers aren't.

Given all this, I wanted some cupcakes. And what's better for saving the city than vegan cupcakes? L'Ailee bought me vegan chocolate-orange cupcakes from one of those many cupcake shops for my birthday in March, but she can't remember which one. So really, my only choice is to get baking. (Hey, grocery stores need support, too!)

Non-vegetarians tend to get all lemon-faced at the mention of vegan baked goods, but remember, if I'm going to be eating them, I can't really bake anything else. To make these, I blatantly ripped off a moist, tasty cake recipe at the Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen, poured it into a cupcake pan, then ripped off an orange frosting recipe from About.com Southern Food. These don't rise quite as high as regular cupcakes, but you won't care. L'Ailee and her best friend sure as hell didn't!

Vegan Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soy yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (I used Florida's Natural with pulp instead, because it's summer.)
2 tablespoons grated orange peel

Spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray and dust the cups lightly with unsweetened cocoa. Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, salt, cocoa, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Add the yogurt, vanilla, balsamic vinegar, water, and orange juice. Beat by hand or with a mixer on low speed just until well-combined, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in the grated orange peel, and pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of one comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then pull out, using a knife if necessary. Cool the rest of the way on a wire rack. Then ice with...

Orange Frosting

4 tablespoons softened margarine
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons orange juice
finely grated zest of 1 orange

Beat margarine with vanilla until light and well blended; beat in powdered sugar slowly. Add a few tablespoons of orange juice and the orange zest. Beat and add more orange juice as needed to make the frosting spreadable.

Hungry yet? No, I don't know which hockey player or team those cupcakes should be compared with.

Links that don't involve cupcakes or hockey:

Enjoy your chocolate now, because it's about to get more expensive.

Rupert Murdoch's paywalls for the UK-based Newscorp websites don't seem to be working out for them.. Awwww....

A teacher resigned after people complained about her anointing students with "holy oil." A good part is that local Christian leaders found it inappropriate, too.

Scary photos from the Himalayas show that climate change is happening, really fast.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets bummed out after hearing a friend or relative's problems. This article about "secondhand blues" may help.

Bejeweled is one of the few computer games I play, so I enjoyed these fun facts about it.

Finally, I got to watch this song performed live last weekend by these guys, at the OkayAfrica concert. Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew bring the latest dance craze, straight from Sierra Leone: the Jacky Jacky! Honestly, despite the 80s production values in the video, this thing will get into your head, in a good way.

Ballad of the Black Gold

2010-07-12T23:21:00.003-04:00

As I type, BP's supposedly got their new and improved cap over their blown oil well. It seems to be working!!! I'm hoping. I'm about overcome by the prospect, and I can't imagine how people closer to the problem are feeling. I don't care if it's BP or a government entity that does it, I don't care if it's wrong or right or cheap or expensive. I'll take anything short of the nuclear bomb that's been proposed. Just stop the damned oil, stop the damned oil, stop the damned oil, that's all I care about. There's still a lot to do and a lot of wrong going on. I can't believe BP is still allowed to be in charge of cleanup, because they've made almost nothing but horrible decisions that exacerbate the problem. But stopping the flow helps everyone turn a corner.

My day job's been fairly busy. I may have another interior decorating job to do soon--toes crossed so I can type! Can't say much more about that, but we'd definitely appreciate more in our savings account. I know we should feel incredibly grateful that we even have savings, because many Americans don't.

It'd be nice if I can start the decorating job this weekend, because there's no NASCAR Sprint Cup race. It was good to see David Reutimann, who'll never be in the new Hall of Fame, prove to everyone that he can win the right way, without a rain delay. But I hate that Tony Stewart hasn't won once this season. My friends have been teasing me, saying he seems to be happier since the woman who accompanied him to the track earlier this season hasn't been there. You know, that's why I didn't marry him--he can't seem to have a relationship and a championship at the same time. Well, that and I met this really brilliant, beautiful, downright amazing girl before I ever even heard of him. Her birthday and the anniversary of the day we met are coming up quickly; I'm trying to figure out what I should do for both.

I damn sure wouldn't be in NYC if it weren't for her. I've been sort of regretting it the past couple weeks. The MTA made a lot of service cuts, which is making bus rides take longer and connections harder to get. We've thought about using the subway more--we try to avoid it--but that won't help much. I missed my truck. I sold it soon after moving up here, because it's super-hard to find legal parking, keep the gas tank filled, and maneuver it through the streets. It's just an expensive pain in the ass to have a personal vehicle if you're not rich, even if it were, like, a Smart Car and not a big truck.

The heat was absolutely oppressive last week. I couldn't believe even my home state of Florida was cooler. We tried to keep our electricity usage down, per Con Edison's understandable but rather forceful "requests." We kept only two small fans going in the basement while we were out, for our cats and rabbits. (They prefer the basement in summer because it's cooler than the rest of the house.) We turned the AC off while we were out and unplugged everything but our refrigerator. Our AC went to 78 when we were home and no lower, though our skinny little brick row house felt like a pizza oven when we walked in. Even so, we had a couple short blackouts while we were out. We had a very reliable teenage boy on our block, who's fed and played with our cats while we were on trips, come over to look in on them. We figured we'd assumed responsibility for those cats and we could take care of ourselves better than they could; we also thought they wouldn't look as good as us with their legs waxed.

I nervously looked at the blackout maps at work--everyone did. My office usually has flat-panel TVs blaring out various cable news networks, and occasionally daytime sporting events as a treat for us minions, in the halls. Those were turned off, and I didn't miss them one bit. My herbs got mostly dried out, including my mint plants. I needed to cut them back ruthlessly once the heat calmed down some. I had the idea to lug a glass pitcher for sun tea, a box of Bigelow's Plantation Mint, and some dried mint leaves to work. I made strongly mint-scented black tea using the oh-so-abundant solar power coming through our windows, and it was a hit! The next day, I brought more mint leaves, another pitcher, and some cheesecloth to make a second all-herbal mint blend. My job became keeping both types of mint tea coming! It was pretty good, because I work in a department that nobody likes to visit unless they have to. The mint tea was better at luring people than the candy dish full of Lindor balls I tried once.

Summer in NYC isn't all bad. L'Ailee lounged around the house in bikinis most of last week, thereby showing me just how worthwhile it was to move up here for her. We have the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and the Shake Shack. And we have tons of free and cheap concerts! L'Ailee and I went to see Rosanne Cash at Governor's Island for Independence Day. Being in our mid-thirties, we were the youngest there by about ten years that we saw. Awesome concert, though--I love her voice, and I know I'll love her new CD and autobiography coming out.

I passed up Lady Gaga performing for the Today Show, unlike a ton of other people. I preferred to crowd up with my good friend Yemaya O'Reilly for the OkayAfrica.com launch party in Prospect Park last night. (If you like African pop and hip-hop music--or think you might--do pay that site a visit!) About 20,000 people came for that. There was no room to dance or hardly breathe, and there were people being kept out, and I was tired today, but it was sooooo worth it! Talib Kweli (who we also saw a few weeks ago), the Roots, members of the cast of Fela!, and Nice and Smooth with the encore! Nice and Smooth was part of our high school soundtrack; Yemaya and I turned 16 again and squealed when they came out. I am extremely glad I have a Twitter account, because that's how I know about those shows and the locations for the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.

May you all find some joy in your summer some way--or your winter, if you're on the other side of the world--wherever you are.

Links, links:

I've linked to this before, but this is the real hip-hop song of Summer 2010. Reflection Eternal (Talib Kweli's project) with the Roots, "Ballad of the Black Gold"

One thing I love about L'Ailee is that we love some of the same weird things. Like the Future is Wild series and book. We both felt just a little spooked by Paul the Psychic Octopus. So might you if you'd watched scientists speculate that the next form of intelligent life on Earth will be descended from the cephalopods. Come on, Squibbons!

Mayor Bloomberg finally got one right! There have been people just absolutely losing their shit over a mosque being built close to Ground Zero, and of course Faux News fanned the flames. Bloomberg calls the idea of investigating the mosque un-American.

Wall Street's hiring in anticipation of an economic recovery.

I find myself saying that "some people really cherish their ignorance" a lot. Now I have solid scientific proof.

A British comedian named Jackie Clune has a bisexual history, absurd expectations, and a headful of stereotypes. She shared just how rigid and mean-spirited she can be in an article about leaving "committed lesbianism" and becoming married to a man and a mother of four. And the lesbian and bi women of Great Britain breathe a sigh of relief...

Kyle Busch, the 25-year-old who unknowingly competes with Kevin Harvick for the position of "L'Ailee's Favorite Driver," was once a wide-eyed boy who wanted driver autographs. Including Tony Stewart's.

The Pittsburgh Penguins are moving to a new arena, and with it will come ice girls--women in tight pants and short tops coming out to clean the ice and give out freebies. I didn't like the idea, but thought it might be hypocritical of me to condemn it outright, considering the many games of Cyanide I've played while watching hockey games. I'm still not going to be completely furious, but Kim and Zoe at Puck Huffers make a very good case against them. One of my very favorite kids is a girl who wants to be a Pittsburgh Penguin when she grows up; if she inherits her parents' height and keeps playing the way she's been, I'd like to think our team will have more to offer her than a chance to audition while wearing a crop top and conforming to absurd grooming requirements.

Finally, the Onion gets it right once again: Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Paves Way for Gay Sex Right on Battlefield, Opponents Fantasize

Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

2010-06-23T12:00:00.001-04:00

I've been busy, and now I'm a bit bored. I finally have interior decorating work again this summer, and I'm so grateful for that. On Saturday, I wrapped up my second interior decorating job this summer, and I might have a couple more coming. (Toes crossed so I can type.) The thing about any kind of creative work, especially when you have to take a day job to support yourself, is that it's so easy to fall out of it. You can rather quickly go from being a writer who works at Starbucks, say, to being a Starbucks barista who writes at night, to being a Starbucks barista who *used* to write. I have to work interior decorating jobs around an administrative assistant's schedule. I hope one day I can just be an interior decorator-slash-nothing! But unless you have society connections or were born with money, you get that by putting in your dues, the same as any other creative occupation. I'm grateful for the work, and grateful for a bit of a break, too. L'Ailee told me she's happy I'm home more this week! It's funny how often the absence of most things can make one appreciate them more when they come back.

I am going out one night, though. Tonight my best friend Yemaya O'Reilly and I are going to see Reflection Eternal, Talib Kweli's project, at SOBs. Can't wait. They were at Brooklyn Bowl on Sunday, which would've been more convenient for us, but we had to go celebrate the Summer Solstice that night. We spent more time doing rituals to get what was the Deepwater Horizon oil well stopped and heal the Gulf than anything else, which is probably right. After all, it's not going to be a good summer for anyone until the damned well is capped and the oil stops flowing, and there won't be good summers around the Gulf for quite some time. Seeing summer concerts is much easier on us. They're one of our favorite parts of living in NYC. When we lived in Orlando, Yemaya was the one who urged me to go out on weeknights and taught me how to fake it for work the next morning. We're semi-responsible married thirty-somethings now, and she has a daughter to think about, but occasionally it's nice to revisit those nights.

Growing up as a Florida Cracker, I always resented it when Northerners yammered about how we didn't have seasons. I could sort of sympathize with kids, but adults pissed me off, because it wasn't like they were forced to come to my home state and then complain about everything wrong with it at gunpoint. Of course we fucking have seasons! It gets cooler in late September, cold in late December, and really pretty in February and March. But now that I'm in NYC, I kinda concede that those whiny-ass transplants had half a point. I never liked summer in Florida. I dreaded June, because it would get super-hot. It's pretty hot here right now, too. Now that I'm the transplant, I'm getting teased about bringing my Florida weather with me. But I appreciate summer a whole lot more after dealing with snowstorms and enjoying a cool spring. Even August is easier when I know autumn's not far behind it. Again, the absence of most things can make one appreciate them more when they come back. Even the whole Wheel of the Year thing is easier up here. We had to adapt, adapt, and adapt some more in my Florida coven.

I'm going to be completely shallow for a moment. L'Ailee stopped shaving her head when it got super-cold this winter--it seemed stupid to her to keep doing it when she was just going to wear a cap every time she got the mail anyway. She's now got this cute short, wavy style that looks a lot like Morena Baccarin's, the actress who plays Anna on V. (Yes, I think Morena Baccarin is really quite smoking hot, but that's not the only reason I like L'Ailee's hair right now.) She's tempted to shave it off again as the temperatures stay in the 90s. I'm begging her to hold off, though of course I know it's her decision, not mine. I know that gift only begins with the box. She gave up her right to comment on anything I consider (not that I ever deviate from long-with-bangs-and-natural-amber-color too much) because when we were just starting our LDR, she went from having beautiful black waist-length hair to completely bald and didn't bother to tell me until I couldn't find her at the airport.

You see I don't have a world of substantial things to think about in my own life, for which I guess I should be glad. Sometimes I feel like the news is happening all around us. I know that's not true, that everything affects everyone eventually. But I love how Yemaya signs her e-mails with this good wish: "Stay out of the news!" I completely understand her logic there.

Speaking of news, I have a ton of links:

The Rolling Stone article that caused all the trouble with McChrystal, because I don't want you to have to buy it in public like I did. Last time I bought a Rolling Stone was a year and a half ago, to read a long article about Tony Stewart and look at pictures that weren't online.

It's good for the environment when cities are crowded and noisy.

Speaking of good for the environment, I just learned about an awesome blog called Inhabitat with the motto, "Good design will save the world." They share news about such encouraging things as solar power in the Sahara desert, low-energy air conditioning, and a solar-powered soccer ball that might allow blind people to play. It'll make you feel better about being human.

What do (some) conservatives have against education?

And what does Mayor Bloomberg have against food trucks?

There was recently a full-figured fashion week, and it was awesome!

When will women break into NASCAR Sprint Cup racing?

Finally, I have learned that just because hockey's not played in summer doesn't mean it's all over in summer. Oh, no. There are drafts and trades and schedules to be done. Intent to Blow notes that the NHL kinda likes marketing the Penguins, and I found this hilarious though I'm a Penguins fan who's thrilled to be going to the Penguins/Capitals Winter Classic next year. Also, L'Ailee and I hate that the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup a little less now that we know some of them are bringing the Cup to Chicago's Pride parade.

Because We Can

2010-06-14T09:43:00.001-04:00

First of all, I want to discuss what my wife and I are doing tonight. We are going to a rally in Union Square for the Ali Forney Center in Queens, which provides housing and support for homeless LGBT youth. The Forney Center was recently vandalized, a double blow for kids who've already been told they're unwanted. If you're in the area and read this on time, it's at 6 pm tonight. We didn't march in the Brooklyn Pride parade on Saturday night because we were tired and my knee was tweaked, but this is non-negotiable for us. The cause is close to our hearts.

Some LGBT kids become homeless or enter the foster care system for the same reasons other kids do. But there are special problems that LGBT kids go through because of other peoples' responses to their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender presentation. Sometimes kids in the system have a hard time finding a forever home because foster parents freak the hell out about their gender-atypical behavior or sexual identity. Sometimes kids have their parents make their lives so intolerable--like cutting them off from their friends and making them go to ex-gay ministries, or beating them--that the kids feel they absolutely have to rabbit as soon as they have the chance. And then there are the parents who literally throw their children away. I'm not going to write lots about this because it makes me cry and it's not really my story to tell and I was asked to keep it very brief. However, L'Ailee was one of them, at age 17. This happened shortly after we met. Her parents were abusive to begin with, and then they ended up being the last in the neighborhood to find out she was lesbian. They told her to change or leave. She left.

She didn't have anything like the Forney Center. She had friends, older and her own age, several of whom let her couch surf until one finally let her stay for the rest of the school year. She had teachers who cared for her. One is a friend of hers today. I don't care for the woman, and she hates my guts, but I always have to be profoundly grateful to her for her role in saving the girl who would become my wife's life when she needed help. My wife was fortunate, resourceful, and intelligent enough to help sew herself a patchwork quilt. Some kids just get patches, if that. So we donate a bit to the Forney Center, and we're showing the kids support tonight.

If you're interested in other organizations that help LGBT kids, the Point Foundation helps college students who have been marginalized (basically, cut off by their parents or rejected by previous sources of money, such as religious-based scholarships) get scholarships. I just learned about A Thousand Moms through Twitter. It helps LGBT teens in the New York State foster system find assistance and forever homes. You know how Pepsi is donating money to organizations based on web votes? (Well, I do 'cause I drink tons of their diet sodas.) A Thousand Moms is in the running, so if you don't have money, you can still click here and help them get some of Pepsi's money. Kicked Out, the book and the blog, tells stories of other LGBT kids who were thrown away by their parents and suggests ways to help. I'd love it if there was absolutely no need for any of these organizations. But there is, thanks in part to the shrill voices and hateful words of activists who claim to be "pro-family" and want to "protect children."

But there's tons of other depressing stuff to think about, isn't there? Like, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster! (I still don't know what to call it. "Spill's" too damned mild by half.) I'm usually vegetarian and have absolutely no problem avoiding meat. There's so much other wonderful stuff in the world to be eaten! That said, when I do get a meat craving, it's usually shrimp. We know what's happening to the US shrimp supply right at this very moment, don't we? I decided to eat my first meat in over a year by indulging my craving for salt and pepper shrimp during the race yesterday. It's not like they'll be making tons more anytime soon, at least not at a price most people can afford! I also made shrimp tacos for everybody.

Most people who come to our house to watch the race are omnivores, and the vegetarians, like me, aren't the nasty preachy type who holler at people for eating hamburgers. It was funny, though. The cats hung around just waiting for something to fall off our plates. When I was about to take my first forkful of salt-and-pepper shrimp bliss, everyone, including my wife, stared at me! You'd have thought I was fixing to eat panda meat! "Come on, y'all, let me enjoy it while I can," I begged. Then everyone returned to watching the race and minding their own plates. I guess people get used to their friends and loved ones acting a certain way, and become disconcerted when they do something different, even if it's simply eating the same thing they are for once. It was really delicious, though, and so was the shrimp taco. I wished it didn't come with the sad, angry aftertaste.

Tonight won't be the only evening I'm out. I'm shocked given the gyrations the market has gone through in the past few weeks, but I got another interior decorating job. He works into the evening, so it suited him just fine to let me send contractors and delivery people over on weekdays, take a look at the progress during lunch hour, and help work on the place for a few hours myself after my day job, mostly freeing up both of our weekends. Primarily, I'm gonna paint! I *love* painting. Many full-time interior decorators don't do this, and the super-expensive society ones really don't. But emerging decorators--that's the polite term for "starting out without a lot of advantages or connections in a bad economy"--like me do tend to pitch in on the actual work.

Sometimes we get our spouses to do it, too. L'Ailee said, "You always look so happy and sexy when you paint!"
"You can come see me in action," I teased. "Come help me out one night, and we can go get dinner together after."
"Oh, that's all right..."
"You can earn your Watkins Glen ticket." Yes, we decided to go to the Watkins Glen race as well as donate some money to charity and save the rest.
"Excuse me?"
"You look sexy when you paint, too. Especially from the back."
"That is the part you should look at, because I will not be happy." But she was smiling. Can't wait!

I am so grateful for her and for our life together. I'm grateful that we can watch the race and eat shrimp tacos and tease each other. I'm grateful that she has room in her brain to get upset that the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup and be happy that Kevin Harvick is still on top of the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings. I hope that the kids being helped by the Ali Forney Center grow up to have that someday.

Links, links:

Lots of people are watching the World Cup. I'm not 'cause I just can't get into it. Last night, my mom talked about how sick she was "soccer being shoved down our throats." I've heard other people, mostly conservatives, get downright angry about it! This piece attempts to explain why. By the way, even though Dave Zirin doesn't have much to say about racing or hockey, I like his approach to covering sports.

But Glenn Beck also provided us some comedy, even though it wasn't on purpose. Read these excerpts from his new novel, if you dare. (Twitterers will understand where the #DontTeaseThePanther hashtag came from afterwards. If you don't, savor this moment--you'll miss it once you click the link.)

Being 50/50 bisexual, I could as easily have ended up with a man as a woman, but I always felt queer even with a man. This is a terrific article by a queer woman sharing her experiences of loving a man.

Finally, Mental Floss offers a great history of NASCAR advertising. Comment warning: NASCAR pisses some people off, too, as I reminded my mom last night.

Sun, stars, and clouds at the picnic

2010-06-01T23:52:00.001-04:00

Top Kill didn't work. The oil's thisclose to hitting Florida. The CEO of BP, who evidently learned public relations from Marie Antoinette, "wants his life back," unlike all the sea creatures and the many people along the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods rely on fishing and tourism. The Dow's going slideways. And Israel raided a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza, killing 9 workers and detaining hundreds more. Cheerful, cheerful stuff.

As usual, my belly dancing instructor hosted a huge picnic at her home on Memorial Day where her intermediate and advanced students, her daughters, and some of her friends performed. She's a Christian woman from Egypt, and the event has a distinctly Middle Eastern flair. I performed a solo dance to the Cure's "Let's Go to Bed". My instructor's always telling me I need to be sexier and more flirtatious--or, as my best friend Yemaya O'Reilly said, "You need to slut it up." With that song, it was fairly easy, plus I could play to my wife. When L'Ailee's eyes go big and dark and she bites her lips, I know I'm doing it right! Yemaya and I also had a tandem performance to Gangstarr's "Dwyck", which is a forever favorite of ours. When we heard Guru died earlier this spring, we knew we needed to perform to that one.

The dancing went very well. I contributed four pina colada pies and some vaguely Asian-inflected pasta salads; those went over well, too. (I personally can't have mayonnaise-based salads because I have egg allergies, and lots of people dislike them or worry about them turning in the heat anyway.) My classmates and I always enjoy seeing each other outside the classroom, with the spouses and partners and children we always talk about.

Can you hear the "but" coming? It was nice as usual and our hosts were terrific, but...there was a pall over the whole thing. Many of the attendees were Middle Eastern and/or Muslim. For Muslims in the NYC area, a huge topic of conversation is the knee-jerk xenophobic reaction that some New Yorkers, and people around the USA, are having to the idea of a Muslim community center/mosque near the Ground Zero site. The other hot topic was the Israeli raid on the flotilla. People were quite angry, of course. I could understand that.

What I couldn't understand was the frosty attitudes I was getting from a couple of Muslim women. They didn't even want to eat anything I'd contributed. I figured it might have been because I'm queer and they saw me with L'Ailee. We didn't have our tongues down each others' throats or anything, but it does become obvious to even the densest and most sheltered people that we're a couple. Homophobia comes in a multitude of guises; we've learned that. Then I heard one caution her young daughter away from me. "Don't talk to that woman in the white. She is a Jew." I knew she meant me. I was the only one in the direction she pointed to wearing white, for one thing. I decided to speak to her.

"I'm not Jewish," I said.
"You wear the star." She pointed to my necklace.
"It's a pentacle. It means I'm Pagan." I didn't think she'd exactly warm to that, either, but I kept going. "Look, five points, not six. But even if I was Jewish, that's an awful thing to say to your kid."
"It really is not your business! You heard about the Israelis attacking the aid workers! Jews hate us!"
"I'm so sorry you feel bad. I understand."
"No, you don't understand!"
"Maybe I don't. But it won't help anything to teach her not to talk to Jews. If you're planning on living in New York, she's gonna be in a bad way if she can't talk to any Jewish people." At this point, my instructor/hostess intervened. I felt so awful for her, being in that situation. I apologized for making her party awkward for her. She apologized for her friend-of-a-friend's ignorance to me, not that she had to or even could, really.

It bothered me tremendously. The hatefulness wasn't about me, of course. Even if I were Jewish and wearing the Star of David rather than a pentacle, it still wouldn't have been about me. It would have been about what she thinks Jewish people are, which is different from actual Jewish people. (Most of the ones I know think Israel is acting way the hell out of line, for one thing.) That's the definition of prejudice--you know one thing about a person and think that's all you *need* to know.

I know what it's like to be taught prejudice as a child. I've written lots of posts about the homophobia and religious intolerance of my mostly Assemblies of God maternal relatives. I spent most of my time growing up with them, and communicate with them more simply because things got awkward with some of my paternal relatives after my father died. My paternal aunts never liked my mother, so my mother kept my brother and I away from them. Ride with me, please; I'm coming to a point.

Some of my older paternal relatives were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Some of the younger ones were Neo-Nazis. They left these groups, but often retained at least some of their racism. My paternal grandmother was loving to her grandchildren, but remained virulently racist her entire life. My cousin S. and I knew that if we were to fall in love with a black person, she'd disown us. S. is one year older than me, and our grandmother lived with him and his parents. We had a bond just because we were the only people our age at the family gatherings. We also went to the same high school. Sometimes, our grandmother would go off on a rant about black people, and other relatives would agree with her nonsense. S. and I would flee to his bedroom and play games until their voices died down. We went to school with black kids and teachers. We liked black musicians, actors, and athletes. We knew they were wrong. What we really hated was how red, twisted, and downright ugly their faces would get. It frightened us even when we were small. We didn't ever want to get that way about anyone or anything, and we told each other so as we sunk each others' Battleships and Connected Four.

I've seen my maternal cousins get scared of their older relatives' prejudices and choose to refuse hatred. Of course, in their case, they have the Other--queer, non-Christian, and/or liberal--in their own family in the form of my brother and I. I've seen the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly scare children with their angry red faces and shrill vocal tones. I hope that woman's daughter also sees how quite literally ugly prejudice can be, and meets Jewish people who disprove the hateful lies she's being taught, and chooses to refuse hatred. It really upsets me to see children actively being taught prejudice of any kind. Parents will inevitably pass down the worst of themselves as well as the best, but this is a conscious bequeathing of the worst in them to their children.

Whatever side they're on, soldiers and guerrilas and the people who mobilize them were all children once.

Links, links:

What today's SCOTUS decision regarding Miranda rights means.

Girls are a majority in NYC schools' gifted programs, and some people really want to know why, or just apply their pet theories. If this adds anything, my elementary school's gifted program classes, 25 years ago, also had slight female majorities, and then it went to slight male majorities in advanced placement and honors classes in high school.

Why Einstein was so danged smart. It's because his parents played him the right DVDs and sent him to the right private preschool, of course!

The National Zoo is offering a terrific once-in-a-lifetime trip to go see pandas in China, including their Tai Shan in his new home. Oh, I *wish*....

Those of you who've been suffering through the Stanley Cup Finals--oh, and any Blackhawks or *shudder* Flyers fans out there--may have heard plenty about the Flyers' Chris Pronger's jerkass behavior, including taking the game pucks even though his opponents won. The wife and I both hate his vile guts. (He hurt a lot of Detroit Red Wings players when he was on Western Conference teams.) Leave it to Down Goes Brown, everyone's favorite NHL humor site, to dig up other jerkass moves by Pronger over his long career!

The Busch Brothers Drinking Game

2010-05-31T17:32:00.002-04:00

I decided I need something stupid and frivolous rightdamnnow. I'll post about some serious shit later this week. NASCAR fans, save this for next weekend!

Pittsburgh Penguins fans are familiar with Puck Huffers' Staal Brothers Drinking Game. The Penguins' third-line center, Jordan Staal, has three brothers who also play in the NHL. Whenever their teams play each other, the announcers just have to make the most of it. It occured to me that NASCAR has something similar, only it comes up every single week. There used to be several pairs of brothers, as well as the occasional father/son combo, who would race each other. Now we have Kurt and Kyle Busch, those good boys with bad attitudes who bring enough drama for several families. (Okay, most of it comes from Kyle now. That's why we love him.) I am astonished that there aren't already several Busch drinking games!

I need to note that my wife and mother helped make this happen over breakfast this morning. (Mom was on the phone, of course.) The fact that they cooperated shows that something special has happened, just like when Kurt and Kyle Busch are actually getting along. L'Ailee is a Kyle Busch fan; my mom is a Kurt Busch fan and likes Kyle. I also need to note that I myself very seldom participate in drinking games (anymore) and only use the "sip" method, not the "shot" method, when I do. The "shot" method could put you in the hospital with this game! Even the "sip" method might when "the Brothers Busch" are racing in their native Las Vegas. Or you can do like Kyle and drink Nos Energy Drink. Link, rip, repost, whatever as you wish. I'm happy to take suggestions.

The Busch Brothers Drinking Game

Take one sip/shot when:

* It is mentioned that the Busches are brothers. (This right here tells you the "sip" method's best.)
* It is mentioned that they are from Las Vegas.
* It is mentioned that Steve Addington (Kurt's current crew chief) has worked with both Busches.
* Any variation of the words "mature," "matured," or "maturing".
* Someone refers to Kurt's tempestuous past.
* The phrase "sibling rivalry".
* They're racing for the same position.
* Their stats are compared (either by an announcer or graphic.)
* The announcer notes not only that Kurt has a championship, but that Kyle doesn't.
* The announcer notes that they're racing each other hard.
* The announcer seems to expect them to cooperate (especially on restrictor-plate tracks.)

Two sips/shots when:

* You see an "Anyone But a Busch" or similar sign.
* Their mother is shown.
* They get pit stalls close together (just do this once).
* The Busches are leading 1-2 in the race.
* They're compared to old-school racing brothers (Allisons, Labontes, etc.)
* Announcer tells a story about how the Busches' competitiveness can cause them problems (like the infamous "Thanksgiving at Grandma's" story).
* One Busch taps the other to get him out of the way.
* A Busch refers to his brother by car number rather than name. ("The number 18 got me loose, and...")
* Kurt is asked his opinion about Kyle's latest rivalry/escapade.

Three sips/shots when:

* They actually do cooperate (draft each other, block another driver for his brother, etc.)
* One Busch wrecks the other.
* You see a sign supporting both Busches.
* Someone calls Kyle "Shrub".
* Kurt's wife and Kyle's fiancee are shown talking to each other.
* They're starting in the same row (just do this once).
* Their mother is interviewed.
* Their mother hugs one of them.
* One congratulates the other.

Elephant steaks

2010-05-29T16:57:00.000-04:00

Once again, it's been a while. I really am grateful for Twitter--I can say what's on my mind from a cab or a bus, during a coffee run, in the locker room at the gym, etc. It's been busy at my work. I also had an interior decorating job--my first of the *year*--since I last posted.

I love decorating because it isn't just about paint and furniture, as wonderful as those are. Usually, I get called upon to help a person or family through a time of transition. The couple I worked for are engaged, and wanted to change her apartment around, turn it from hers to theirs. I have another job coming up, for a recently divorced man who wants to wipe all traces of his ex-wife from his apartment without completely repelling other women. I like being part of these changes. I find that I need to be attentive to my clients' feelings about them as well as their favorite colors and the ways they'll use a room.

I have plans for that extra money. The Gulf oil spill--catastrophe? Disaster? Explosion? "Spill" seems far too mild--has horrified me and occupied a fairly large chunk of my mind. I get to send the National Wildlife Fund a decent-sized check after that second job. (No doubt you've read this tons already, but while I'm at it, you can also send them $10, taken off your cell phone bill, by texting "WILDLIFE" to 20222. I've done that, too.) This sounds so weird and corny, but I want to do something for the ocean in this time of extreme need because it's done so much for me in my life. When I read about the loop current sending that oil toward the Florida Keys, I had to run to the lav at work and cry. I felt just like a member of my family was dying, and it sounds sooooo melodramatic, but it's true. I am thinking of taking my summer vacation week and going to the Gulf to volunteer, though L'Ailee isn't really interested. I understand that. That particular patch of ocean, and Florida's coasts, have never been hers.

If anyone reading knows of an opportunity to volunteer, I'm listening. I know a few days of cleaning sludge is small. Even the check that seems big to me will be infinitesimal. However, I've been thinking a lot about something my grandfather used to say to us. When we had a seemingly insurmountable problem, he'd ask us, "How do you eat an elephant?" Then he'd answer his own question: "One bite at a time, gal, one bite at a time." Top Kill, if it works, will be like a few elephant steaks. I want--no, that's not it, I feel *compelled*--to go eat a few bites of elephant steak myself. There's gonna be lots of it to go around for a very long time.

L'Ailee and I wanted to go to Watkins Glen, the road course in upstate New York, for its NASCAR race this summer. We thought of going because tickets are still available and some of our friends might be, too. Also, our favorite drivers--Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Juan Pablo Montoya--are good on road courses. It kind of seems twisted given the oil spill, though. Yeah, we're watching races on TV. The TV itself is going to take fossil fuel energy, we know. The lights, the buses we take, the cars around us, the cell phones we charge daily that I texted NWF contributions on, the hockey games we've also watched, the baseball games my co-workers who imply that they're way too smart and enlightened to watch NASCAR enjoy--all those things eat up fossil fuels. It's just more blatant with NASCAR. So we're holding off buying those tickets for a minute. We have until August to decide. Hell, we probably will be going. The Glen always brings drivers' emotions out, and it's gotten much more fun to watch in recent years since the cars have been redesigned.

Of course, we've already planned to attend another sporting event and reserved a hotel room for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. The Winter Classic, an outdoor NHL game held on New Year's Day, will be featuring my Pittsburgh Penguins *again*, which pisses off everyone who says they're overexposed already. It's in Pittsburgh, at Heinz Field, and they'll be playing the Washington Capitals because nobody's sick of the Sidney Crosby/Alex Ovechkin rivalry. (I've often commented that the NHL would have promotional materials with Crosby in a white cowboy hat and Ovechkin in a black one, except that would be too subtle for them.) All that said, I can't wait. Future Stepdad has gone to all the Winter Classics so far (this will be the fourth.) He asked my mother to ask my brother and I if we want him to buy us and our wives tickets, too. The answer was "Hell yeah!," since he can afford it. My brother lives fairly close to Pittsburgh, and L'Ailee and I will pay for our own hotel room and transportation.

Last year, we skipped Christmas with the family in favor of a vacation that revolved around hockey; I think my mom wants to make damn sure she sees both her kids together at least close to Christmas this year! Imagine Marie Barone as a widow with a professional career and a taste for Fox News and talk radio, and you'll get something close to her. Those free tickets are gonna get awfully expensive, we know! That said, I almost cried when I read the e-mail where she asked us about Future Stepdad buying them, and not because I want to see that game so badly. I've mentioned that she runs hot and cold on my and L'Ailee's marriage, and she's been cold for over a year. She talks about feeling "conflicted" because we're both women and she's Christian and she's heard it's wrong all her life and blah blah fucking blah. But in the e-mail she sent us about the Classic, she wrote, "We'd love to give this as an anniversary gift for [Lilo and L'Ailee.]" She didn't even acknowledge our anniversary last New Year's. I know she'll probably cycle back all too soon. I'll take this, though.

Links, links:

Luna Park opened at Coney Island today! I really hope it lasts. I didn't go, despite the promise of free rides. Those freebies would be made awfully expensive by the crowds. But we're going very soon!

It's not 100 percent wonderful news all around, but the Malawian couple sentenced to prison for 14 years for being two biological males together has been pardoned, thank the Gods.

Just when you've think Glenn Beck has hit rock bottom, he gets out a shovel and digs, bless his heart. Not just about his mocking Malia Obama, as despicable as that is.

Reflection Eternal and the Roots are two of my very, very favorite hip-hop groups. And they both have new music out! Give a listen to this performance of the Ballad of the Black Gold.

Finally, Heidi Montag is one of those people I have only seen on my screen for a minute, but hear tons about. I know she had a reality show on MTV, but that's about it. MTV used to show Daria, a terrific cartoon that featured a smart teenage girl. The ladies at Jezebel.com cleverly had Quinn Morgendorffer, a character from Daria, set Heidi straight after her divorce.

Of hockey and heartache

2010-05-13T00:54:00.001-04:00

My wife and I both have our evenings back a whole lot earlier than we wanted, and we can cancel the appointments with the nice marriage counselor who specializes in same-sex couples this June. Neither her Detroit Red Wings nor my Pittsburgh Penguins will be heading for the Stanley Cup Finals this year, let alone both. Both of our teams got knocked out in the second round in surprising fashion, by teams that "everyone" knew were inferior (in the case of the Montreal Canadiens versus the Penguins) or the worst chokers in the NHL (in the case of the San Jose Sharks versus the Red Wings.) If either or both play for the Cup, it will be a terrific story. Fuck terrific stories anyway.

I know, okay? I know everything that everyone who happens to read this, particularly the non-hockey fans, might want to tell me. There are so many things in this world that are so much worse. Just flip the channel from Versus to CNN for a second. Just get news updates texted to you on your cell phone, and hear it go off to announce some new grim thing when you're trying to watch a game. We'll see. We have seen. We've seen in our own lives and our friends' lives, lives that don't make headlines. We'll see again. Given that, a 22-year-old multimillionaire who's already accomplished most of his career objectives barely holding back tears and admitting he was stunned by a defeat seems at least faintly ridiculous, and it's even more ridiculous to be unable to hold back your own tears for him and his team and the building where they've played.

I know, okay? I know everything the hockey fans might want to tell me, too. Some teams haven't been to the playoffs in forever, let alone lost a round. It's an amazing thing that the Red Wings and Penguins could make it to the Finals two years in a row, and that the Pens won the Cup once, and that three of the Penguins (Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Brooks Orpik) have Olympic medals. Repeating even the trip to the Finals would have been, to say the very least, difficult. The Penguins were complacent much of this past year, and played with an irritating air of entitlement, consistently playing down to teams that looked worse on paper and losing.

Late last year, earlier this season, I wrote about how getting into each others' sports helped to bring L'Ailee and I closer. We chose different teams and different race car drivers for different reasons. However, we were able to bond over our appreciation of the sports themselves. We kiss on either Penguins or Red Wings goals, and we kiss whenever Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, or Juan Pablo Montoya take the lead. We've learned so much, quite literally, about where the other one comes from. We are as different as Florida and Siberia, the places that gave birth to us. We've found it easier to visualize each other as little girls. We've taught and learned and been pleased to watch the other one learn.

There are other relationships in life. We've met each others' friends by having them over at our little row house to watch hockey and racing. Our friends have become each others' friends, too. My work husband, a straight man from Birmingham, Alabama, is still a little amazed that one of his best friends is a bisexual man from Moscow, the one who's been L'Ailee's best friend since they arrived in NYC. (I think the feeling is mutual, too.) I bonded with L'Ailee's friend's precocious daughter, in part, over our shared love for the Penguins.

My brother never watched any sort of sports at all. When he moved to Western Pennsylvania this year, he asked me to teach him about the Penguins so he'd "at least know one of the local sports teams." He got hooked on the Penguins and hockey itself, to the point of growing a sympathy playoff beard with the guys on the team. I teased him about looking like Jordan Staal, who his wife has a crush on. We've talked and texted about the games. We have so many other things to talk about, of course. But it was really special to give the gift of the sport to him and his wife, the way my wife gave it to me. I don't think I can even put into words how special it was when he allowed me to name one of his cocktail recipes after a Penguins player on my weird little fan blog.

Speaking of that weird little fan blog, I've learned about the fountains of creativity that hockey can inspire in its fans. I believe I have the only blog on the Internet where appreciation for NHL players' contributions is expressed in the form of recipes. I certainly have the only Penguins fan blog that does this in a Southern bisexual voice with an emphasis on fresh ingredients. Other fans like to draw, or make video tributes, or post pictures of good-looking players, or write hilarious commentary and recaps of the games, or make funny Photoshops, or--and this surprised me the most--write slash fic about their favorite players. (I don't have to tell you how very NSFW that last link is, do I?)

Actually, maintaining Cocktails with the Penguins allowed me to do something I never had before--write a collection of recipes. I always "doctored up" other peoples' recipes or "threw things together". I will be entering a few of the recipes I've written out in cocktail contests this summer. I never thought I'd do that. It's amazing how long the chain of things I never thought I'd do can extend when I let it.

I'm grateful for hockey. I'm grateful for all the beautiful highlight reel moments. I'm grateful for the times I went outside to help A.'s daughter see if she could replicate those moments. I'm grateful for Olympic hockey getting me through recovery from my myomectomy a few months ago. I'm grateful for what hockey does to a man's glutes--if L'Ailee had told me about hockey butts, I'd probably have been an NHL fan much earlier! (I still want to see a Wranglers ad with Bill Guerin.) I'm grateful that I've gotten to watch talented boys in their late teens grow into young men capable of being champions--I've compared it to watching the pandas at the National and San Diego Zoos grow from tiny "sticks of butter" to big, beautiful bears on camera. I'm grateful for the friends I made online and the water-cooler discussions I had at work. I'm grateful for the trip L'Ailee and I took to watch our teams play in their home arenas instead of suffering through another Christmas with my family, one that made me very grateful I knew the sport when we dropped in on her hockey-crazed Russian-Canadian relatives! I still have NASCAR, and I hope Tony Stewart does much better in the next few months than he has early this season. I'll be talking about that more here, most likely. But as I wrote to my brother a couple nights ago, "NASCAR is our roots and our blood family. Hockey is our future and our choice family."

I raise one of my cocktails, then, to the future, one that I know will include lots of exciting games at the new Consol Energy Center and more Stanley Cup celebrations for the Penguins.

Non-hockey links will be in the next post, I swear. ;-)

Some things'll scare you so bad...

2010-05-08T15:44:00.000-04:00

Sorry I've been a bad blogfriend. I'll be better after this weekend.

My BossLady told me I was "a calming influence" late yesterday afternoon. Gods, if there was such a thing as Office Oscars, I'd at least be one of the nominees. There's been a lot of scary stuff going on this week. For the past couple of afternoons, everyone in my office has spent quite a bit of time looking at the TVs in the hall that show the news. I think my heart actually skipped a beat or two on Thursday afternoon, when the Dow went down almost a thousand points. But quite a few people were about to lose their minds. If I'd had paper bags to pass out for everyone to breathe into, I'd have done it.

That's what caused the steep drop in the first place--panic. The narrative has become that it was caused by a typo. It goes a little deeper than that, definitely, but the fact is, people freaked out. Of course there was going to be a decline, given world events like that horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the meltdown of the Greek economy, and the protests of belt-tightening measures by Greek people. As I tweeted, I'd have been more scared if there wasn't a decline. We're probably not going to see 11,000 again for a while, and that's okay under the circumstances. The thousand-point freefall wasn't okay, though. I realized that I still have an almost childlike faith in "experts". Don't get me wrong here. I believe in education, especially in areas I don't know well like economics, and I believe in people who have that education. But they can be as wrong, as panicky, and as human as anyone else. Then their panic feeds everyone else's panic.

This is true all over. Yesterday, Times Square was shut down due to a bomb threat. I can sort of understand that. Last Saturday, everyone's cell phones went off with news about the SUV bomb in Times Square. We were watching the Richmond race. We figured that a potentially explosive vehicle in Times Square is far more important than one on the Richmond track, so we turned it to the news. New Yorkers claim to be calm and unflappable, but there was still a bit of fear in the air this week. So someone left a cooler on the sidewalk in Times Square. It contained books and water bottles. As some tourist no doubt wondered where the hell they left their cooler and regretfully paid an inflated price for a bottled water, the cops were clearing the sidewalks. The cell phones went nuts once again. We stood in front of the TVs again. Panic, again. As my favorite T-shirt, one I sell at CafePress.com 'cause I couldn't find another, says, "Living in fear sucks."

You know what? I think I want to let the late, great Molly Ivins communicate my point for me. She wrote and I read this back in 1993, and it's stuck with me since:

[John Henry Faulk] used to tell a story about when he was a Texas Ranger, a captain in fact. He was seven at the time. His friend Boots Cooper, who was six, was sheriff, and the two of them used to do a lot of heavy law enforcement behind the Faulk place in south Austin. One day Johnny's mama, having two such fine officers on the place, asked them to go down to the hen house and rout out the chicken snake that had been doing some damage there.

Johnny and Boots loped down to the hen house on their trusty brooms (which they tethered outside) and commenced to search for the snake. They went through all the nests on the bottom shelf of the hen house and couldn't find it, so the both of them stood on tippy-toes to look on the top shelf. I myself have never been nose-to-nose with a chicken snake, but I always took Johnny's word for it that it will just scare the living shit out of you. Scared those boys so bad that they both tried to exit the hen house at the same time, doing considerable damage to both themselves and the door.

Johnny's mama, Miz Faulk, was a kindly lady, but watching all this, it struck her funny. She was still laughin' when the captain and the sheriff trailed back up to the front porch. "Boys, boys," said Miz Faulk, "what is wrong with you? You know perfectly well that a chicken snake cannot hurt you."

That's when Boots Cooper made his semi-immortal observation. "Yes ma'am," he said, "but there's some things'll scare you so bad, you hurt yourself."

And isn't that what we keep doing in this country, over and over again? We get scared so bad--about the communist menace or illegal immigration or AIDS or pornography or violent crime, some damn scary thing--that we hurt ourselves. We take the odd notion that the only way to protect ourselves is to give up some of our freedom--just trim a little, hedge a bit, and we'll all be safe after all.

As I first started writing this, one of the Staten Island ferries crashed. Once again, NYC's first responders proved themselves to be the very best in the entire world. You know what they don't do? Give themselves over to panic.

For all the mothers who've read this far, Happy Mother's Day tomorrow!

Just a few links:

"Unwed mother" may mean an educated woman in her thirties or forties.

How probable Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan might do on civil liberties issues

Finally, if you've been as preoccupied with the NHL playoffs as my wife and I have, do yourself a favor and check out this trending topic on Twitter: #nhlsexacts I may have contributed one or, um, ten.

Twitter doesn't cure the randoms

2010-04-21T23:29:00.002-04:00

I said in the last post about my great-aunt (whose daughter is still packing up her stuff for hospice, poor thing) that there was a lot of random stuff I wanted to talk about. Twitter, as some people have told me, is excellent for getting random stuff out of my head. However, I still want to discuss it here, too.

I'm a bit cranky--my boss and I both forgot it was "Administrative Professional's Day" (I think "Secretaries' Day" is less patronizing), even though I'm the one who always sends out the calendar with special dates via e-mail every month. I thought another Administrative Professional had gotten flowers from her boyfriend or something. So BossLady hastily told me I was going to lunch with her, just before I went outside with my lunch. I honestly thought that either I or the company was in some trouble I didn't know about and she wanted to break it to me gently, the way she approached it! Then she had me go through her desk and pick something from the stash of gift cards she keeps there as rewards, most of which I got. (I picked a $20 iTunes one.) I know it's petty as hell , but part of me wishes she'd just let it pass.

Then tonight I used Veet on my legs. For those who aren't familiar, you're applying a noxious-smelling cream full of chemicals that burn the hair off your legs, then scraping it off with a plastic scraper. The Veet didn't get all the hair, so I've got patches all over my legs. I can't do a thing about them yet, because you're just courting a furious rash and ingrown hairs if you try shaving too soon after using Veet. So I get to start tomorrow by wearing an icky pantsuit--pantsuits are, by definition, always icky on short, thick women, and I only wear them if I have to--and swimming with patchy legs. FUN. I definitely understand that I should be very grateful that these are my problems, and I am, but it's just been that kind of day.

Other, more interesting things I wanted to bring up:

* It's the NHL playoffs! Time for weird superstitions, like wearing Ed Hardy's "Love Kills Slowly" perfume every game day! (This will go great with my pantsuit, but it actually smells good on me.) Time to TiVo the few actual shows we like! Time to forget your favorite players and the douchebags who dare to touch them can't hear you through the TV!

My Pittsburgh Penguins lead the Ottawa Senators 3-1, and I'm superstitiously hating all the talk about how the Penguins are going to just kill the series tomorrow night. They play bad when they play cocky, and I think that kind of shit tempts the Hockey Gods anyway. L'Ailee enjoyed the way her Detroit Red Wings dominated the Phoenix Coyotes at the end of last night's game, although the Coyotes didn't have their star player Shane Doan on hand. Those teams are 2-2.

* Another ~~bit of weirdness~~ beloved playoff tradition of ours is the weekend games of street hockey. L'Ailee started it because it seemed horribly ironic to her to sit on the couch all weekend watching other people move around. It doesn't help that we also love NASCAR. She felt that we and our friends should be "easy to distinguish from plants." So she asked everyone to bring roller skates and gear early in last year's playoffs, and we loved it.

My friend A.'s 9-year-old daughter, who approaches hockey exactly like her ambition in life is to be the first woman to win the Stanley Cup, has really hated sitting on the sidelines. Being a responsible father, of course A. didn't want her getting accidentally roughed up by adults. He told her that she could play when she was as big as L'Ailee, who at a tick under 5 feet and a tick under 100 pounds is the smallest of the adults. Well, A.'s daughter has inherited her father's well-above-average size, and is almost there.

"You're still shorter," he told her. "Only a couple inches! Plus I think I weigh as much as she does," the girl retorted. I'm not the only woman there who was struck by that--even at 9 years old, most of us (except L'Ailee) were already too neurotic about our growing bodies to say anything like that about our own weight. I've overheard self-hating statements from girls even younger than she is that make me want to cry for them. I love that she's still confident about her body, and I know it's her sport that helps her. I urged A. to go ahead and let her play--"Of course, she'll sit if it gets too rough." The girl played on my line. L'Ailee and I looked out for her, but she can look out for herself already. She enjoyed the hell out of it, and she and L'Ailee made me look...well, much less like a Floridian who started playing at age 34. I really hope she can carry her pride in her body as something that allows her to play a sport she loves into her adolescence.

* Speaking of sports, three bisexual men are suing a gay softball league for discrimination. They were considered "non-gay", and therefore ringers for the team, which had been doing really well for a while. Never mind that bi men deal with the same legal discrimination gay ones do, never mind that bi men are certainly gay enough to scare macho straight athletes and fans, never mind how horribly self-hating it is for gay men to conclude that a male athlete with any talent obviously isn't "gay enough" for a gay team. I'm disgusted that people who know good and well what discrimination based on sexual orientation feels like would perpetuate it. This sort of biphobia sounds much too familiar to me. No, nobody *has* to play on a rec league. Also, a league full of people who are more interested in investigating what members of a winning team do in the bedroom than watching what they do on the field is one I would stay away from. But it sucks to be forced out of anything. Whatever happens, this story is a little bit too instructive. The only good part was a tweet I saw about it today: "Switch hitters disqualified from softball tournament." HA!

* And speaking of discrimination, this is much more serious and extremely scary. You've probably seen it, but everyone needs to, and not just queer people. Clay Greene was a 77-year-old man in Sonoma County, California. He and his 88-year-old partner weren't legally married, but had done all the legal things right that they could, including medical directives, powers of attorney and wills. The 88-year-old fell, broke his hip, and went to the hospital. Greene was considered not a family member by the hospital. Then it got worse. Much worse. The couple was separated, forced out of their home and into separate nursing homes, and all of their worldly possessions were sold by the county. Greene's trial against Sonoma County is this July, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights is providing assistance. We're donating--not much, not yet, but more will be coming--and I hope others who don't want to be part of a living nightmare like this do the same. Next time someone tries to bullshit you about legal paperwork being good enough, so you don't need or deserve a marriage license, remember this case.

* Disaster was averted in NYC when the local chapter of the Service Employees' International Union came to an agreement super-early this morning. There won't be a doormen's strike. Actually, it's easy to make fun, especially since I don't deal with doormen in my row house in Brooklyn, but they are a part of security in high-rise buildings. Also, L'Ailee says Manhattan smelled really bad because the garbage piled up the last time the doormen went on strike. So, I'm glad for the doormen and glad for the residents of the buildings that employ them.

* Another thing that people talked about a lot around NYC yesterday was the death of Guru, a/k/a Keith Elam, who was the awesome MC for Gangstarr. He was 43. Cancer took him. It is pretty apparent that he either died with a lot of hate in his heart toward DJ Premier (the other half of Gangstarr) or was taken advantage of by his last producer, Solar, judging by a letter purportedly written by Guru in his last weeks that Solar quoted. Whatever happened, I'm grateful for the music he left behind, with and without Premier. My belly dancing instructor told the class to "give a thought" to music for our performances on Memorial Day. I'm still thinking about the song for my solo, but my best friend Yemaya O'Reilly and I know what we're using for our tandem performance now. One of our favorite songs ever, "Dwyck" by Gangstarr In lieu of a moment of silence, pay special attention to the middle part and turn it up!

* Happy Earth Day tomorrow! I'm going to celebrate by...using mass transit to get to and from work, then watching springtime ice hockey on TV tomorrow night! Hopefully I find something a little more appropriate to do by the end of Earth Week this weekend, and I don't mean watching Talladega on Sunday.

Because I have to

2010-04-19T22:53:00.002-04:00

My maternal great-aunt just turned 90 last week. She called me tonight. It hurt her to talk--the digestive tract problems she's been enduring are affecting her throat. She's going into hospice later this week, and wanted me to know. I'm very glad she told me. A lot of people on both sides of my family keep others in the dark--I mean, I found out my paternal aunt was dying in a parenthetical aside my other paternal aunt wrote in a Christmas card, for fuck's sake. So I'm glad she told me herself. I'm glad she could. I know what "hospice" means, though, especially if she's willing to go.

Sometimes I wish I believed in heaven or could say with any confidence I knew an afterworld existed. She lost her husband 3 years ago. She lost her nephew, my grandfather, 6 years ago. That's how we got to know each other--he wanted my mother and I to let her know what was going on with him. We just barely knew the other one existed before. She says she's going to join them soon and I shouldn't feel sad for her. I hate that kind of talk on so many levels. But I'm not going to try and talk a sick old woman out of her comfort, no way. I just really wish those kind of thoughts weren't where she was finding her comfort. I wish she could be looking forward to things right here on Earth, but I know she can't.

I'm really glad we spent Christmas Eve with her in Michigan last year, even though her daughter annoyed us some. We knew she wasn't doing well then. She tried to be cheerful, but you only needed eyes *or* ears to know better, not even both. L'Ailee said, "Of course we need to go to her funeral." I'm glad she said that, too, but I don't want to discuss those particular travel arrangements until I have to.

I was going to blog about random shit tonight, probably another list of bullet points. About stuff in the news, NYC and worldwide. About Earth Day coming up. About songs I'm thinking of for belly-dancing. About playing street hockey and my 9-year-old "niece" being cute again. About the NHL playoffs and another rained-out race. This kinda knocked all that out of my head. I'm going to try looking at pandas and the National Zoo's baby bears--that association between cute "teddy bears" and sleep helps me sometimes. I know this is totally depressing and I didn't even know her that long, but I think banging it out here may help me a little, too. I can't take this feeling to work tomorrow. If you actually read this, thanks for indulging me.

Loving young

2010-04-10T00:52:00.002-04:00

NOTE: I had the NASCAR Nationwide race at Phoenix, which was on super-late, playing on TV as I typed this. L'Ailee came downstairs and watched the last bit with me as her second-favorite driver Kyle Busch raged his way back to the front after suffering some self-inflicted bad luck. As he grabbed first place, L'Ailee yelled, "Kyle Kyle Kyle Kyle cooooome onnnnnn!", punctuating it by banging on the arm of the couch. Then as he won, "That...was...SICK!" Very cute. Makes the following very, very easy. :-)

At my work, I am, among other things, the intern-wrangler. To the two, three, or four interns we have every year, most of whom are female, I tend to be the agony aunt. Conversations often turn to issues of love, family, love, finances, love, dealing with authority figures, and did I mention love? I try not to let it intrude on our tasks at hand too much, but I don't mind giving them an ear and, when I can and they actually want it, a bit of advice.

It happened again with two of our three interns yesterday. One bemoaned the fact that she couldn't "get a guy to stick around more than two weeks." The other intern actually hadn't come to me for romantic advice yet. The first intern turned to her. "You are *so lucky*. You already have your guy. He's been around forever."
The second intern's facial expression turned a bit strange. "[My fiance] and I have our problems, too."
"Yeah, but he sticks around." She turned to me. "This one met her boyfriend when she was *thirteen*."
"I was fourteen. Freshman in high school." Her tone was a little defensive.
"And now they're engaged!"
"We're getting married after I graduate."
I said an automatic "Congratulations!" Then I added, "I met my wife when I was 18 and she was 17. We were touring your school, actually, only she got in and I didn't."
"So you were pretty young when you met yours, too." The second intern's smile began to reach her eyes. "How old are you now?"
"Thirty-six, and she turns 35 this summer."
"Oh, wow, that's half your lives!"
"I know, literally. If anyone wonders why we're crazy, that's why. We made each other that way!" She grinned then.
The first intern shook her head. "Another one who met her soul mate when she was a kid. I wish I had that."
"You should be more careful what you wish for," I told her. The second intern nodded. The first left quickly. The second stuck around a little while to talk.

Some people--and I am not referring to any frequent reader or commenter here--seem to think that L'Ailee and I met our ultimate soul mates on that long-ago summer day when I climbed the tree in which she read her book. It usually surprises them when one or the other of us tells them that we don't believe in soul mates. As an atheist, L'Ailee doesn't believe in the soul at all. I believe that there are several people--not many, but a few--who a person could happily live their lives with, if they're willing to put in some work and they bend a little bit. (Needless to say, the person they pick should also be willing to work and to bend a little bit.) L'Ailee and I are both loyal and stubborn. We chose each other, and it would take a lot to make us un-choose each other and go elsewhere, that's all.

When you meet your longterm, maybe even lifelong, love at a young age, you grow up differently than someone who is searching in her twenties, thirties, forties, or later. You grow up together. You shape each other. Sometimes your influence on each other is really obvious, like when my Russian-born wife who emigrated to NYC says "y'all". Sometimes the influence is far more subtle, so much so that it's hard to distinguish your own thoughts from the thoughts you arrived at together. L'Ailee and I speak of each other as being "the other half of my brain." The longer you get used to having that, the harder it is to contemplate leaving that behind. Ultimately, I think that I'm a better and more well-rounded person because L'Ailee has been part of my life for my entire adulthood, and she's said she thinks the same about having me in her life. It's because of her, and me, and how we interact, not because of the ages we were when we found each other or the length of time we've been together.

Sometimes as your friends tell their stories and live their lives, you feel a bit weird. Maybe your friend's been sleeping with a Whitman's Sampler of different desirable people, and when she's done telling you about it, the only story you've got is, "Um, we tried doing it with candlelight last time." Likewise, maybe your friend's had her heart stepped on for the quintillionth time, and you feel oh so grateful that you don't have to date. Or maybe you feel like you *should* be dating, like you're keeping yourself above the mess everyone else your age is in, like you're missing out on important life-shaping experiences and holding your beloved back from having those, too. Maybe what you have isn't really love at all, but a force of habit or a lack of imagination. Then s/he calls, or you go home, and you get over that fast and feel a bit guilty for having had those thoughts. All you needed was their voice to remind you, it's really love, and your friends can keep their erotic Whitman's Samplers and sad, funny stories. Rest assured, other aspects of you and your beloved's lives will give you tons of "learning experiences".

My mother and I have had our struggles, especially lately, but she gave me one truly excellent piece of advice. She'd always tell me that a wedding was the beginning of a story, not an end. She made me want to know what came after "Happily ever after" in fairy tales. Sometimes we'd discuss it. I even wrote a few juvenile fanfics: Sleeping Beauty was an insomniac and never wanted to sew anything, Cinderella was super-nice to the palace maids and urged her husband to be more considerate as well, Snow White knighted the dwarves and urged people to examine their apples carefully before eating them.

I'm pretty sure the second intern hadn't done anything like that, but she understood quite well that her and her fiance's love story didn't end in their early teens. If anything, it's only beginning. Many of her peers, like the other intern, don't quite understand that. They think snagging the guy (or girl) and getting him (or her) to stick around is *it*. But what happens after they've been around a while? That's another amazing story in itself, and one that doesn't get told in our culture nearly as often. I think it needs to be.

Of course, my mother would know. She met her husband, my father, when she was 19. He was 10 years older. One of the unique hazards of meeting your lifelong love young is that they may not, in fact, be lifelong at all. You're still growing up, and you have the potential to grow into something very different from that starry-eyed girl or boy. That's what my mother did. Eventually, she felt he was holding her back, and began to take night classes. Her natural ambition began to assert itself, and she began to assert herself. It freaked my father out a little bit. He died of a heart attack at age 38. (This owes far more to his pack a day smoking habit and love of fried pork chops than my mother's growing up into something different.) We all believe that if he'd lived, they'd have divorced. She has dated a very different, very ambitious man for over 20 years. She has been engaged to him for several of those years, but doesn't really want to get married again. I have a hard time imagining her loving my father, especially after relatives started telling me stories, but she did!

She told my brother and I both to hold out for the right one. You know what happened with me. My brother met his future wife when he was 18, too. She was 14. My mother, of course, was afraid that if things went sour, her parents would accuse him of statutory rape, even though they weren't having sex. So he dated other, older girls until she turned 17. They gratefully ran to each other after that. She moved in with him on her 18th birthday, and they didn't look back. They struggled as they both attended college. Now that they've graduated, they can't imagine trying to go through college without each other.

I don't know what the Fates have for the intern and her fiance, or my brother and sister-in-law, or L'Ailee and me for that matter. I do know that while there is a lot of beauty in falling in love young, there are also a lot of difficulties. Sometimes it's hard to process those intense adult feelings when you're in your teens. You hope your life lasts a lot longer than your teens, you know? L'Ailee and I both had a lot-lot of issues with commitment and other things that we needed to resolve before we could become, well, marriageable. In some ways we helped each other, in others, we needed outside help.

I think ultimately that it helped us to keep the relationship long-distance, her in NYC and me in Orlando, for over a decade. Neither of us really wanted to leave, and we couldn't find a compromise place. We weren't always monogamous, either, though we were always truthful. (I don't think that would work for a lot of people, nor would that work for us anymore. We claim "Celebrity Sex Amnesty" now--regular readers know the male athletes I choose--but that's not real, either.) Sometimes I even think the fact that we couldn't legally marry each other, being two women, helped some. It gave us time to really think about things, instead of having people demand, "When are you gonna get married?" like my brother and SIL did.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm typing this out, only that I kinda feel like I need to after that conversation. I don't really like what our society and our media teach about love. So maybe by blogging this out, I get to (barely) articulate something different to a few people. I think every real love story is going to be different simply because every person and every relationship are different. Some people may begin theirs early. Some people may begin theirs very, very late. Some people may have multiple love stories in their lives, and some of those love stories may run concurrently. I hope everyone reading this finds their "happily ever after," their way, and doesn't let either the media or someone else they know make them feel bad about something that's going good. I hope everyone reading this learns what comes after "happily ever after."

Links, if you care to read more:

If you aren't already an expert on Kyrgyzstan--and I'd bet money that you aren't--you'll probably need to read this primer on exactly what the hell happened to make the Kyrgyz people so angry.

Just to remind everybody, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich ain't the only Christian game in town, no matter how loudly they say they are. I for one really do need that reminder sometimes as a non-Christian.

Finally, a professional fashion snob is "terrified" of Lilly Pulitzer! Makes me love her stuff all the more, though I can't afford as much as I like. (Actually, in NYC, it's probably all to the good that I can only afford Lilly accessories, and not many of those. Still...)

Happy (not to have to celebrate) Easter!

2010-04-04T21:46:00.000-04:00

I thought I wanted to write something for the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm this weekend. Then I tried writing something. I got writer's block. Apparently all I was capable of were tweets about how hot it is when Bill Guerin from the Pittsburgh Penguins fights, how much it sucks that the Atlantic Ocean's all glassy when my best friend and I are both actually able to go surfing for once, and how nice it is to go to Prospect Park Zoo and see the kangaroos. Then, at the very last minute, I realized that I did have something. It's not profound, but here it is.

I was raised sort of in the Assemblies of God church. My mother believed, mostly, but she'd been burned by the church and seldom actually took us. She comes from a large family, and my aunts and uncles were far more observant. I tried it for myself as a teenager, but it didn't really take, especially not after I met this amazing girl when I was 18 years old and finally came out as bisexual. (We were able to marry legally over a decade later.) When I was 21, I studied Wicca, and by the time I was 23, I was a full-fledged eclectic, polytheistic Neo-Pagan. I've stayed there ever since. I'm 36 now. I'm still a bit amazed that I've managed to hold on to a religion that long.

I don't regret any of these decisions. I've been told I would, I've certainly had people *hope* I would, and I've even had a few people try to make me regret them. If anything, this makes me feel better about the twists and turns my life has taken. The only things that induced religious buyer's remorse in me are the two major Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter. I really love to celebrate things. Yes, I have eight lovely Sabbats, but people around me don't really, you know, understand. When I left Orlando for New York City, I'd hoped more people would understand, but if anything, it's even harder to communicate what I'm celebrating.

I know my nostalgia for Christian holidays, as I celebrated them in my childhood, is a bit misplaced. The holidays usually meant food that I hated with critical relatives in scratchy dresses. I loathed Christmas carols and coloring eggs. But there are things I like--trees, baskets full of candy, just taking a break from everyday life. Mostly, my first few Christmases and Easters as a Pagan made me feel kinda stupid for leaving the majority group and becoming a minority by choice. A friend who was Jewish by birth told me, "Welcome to my world."

The longer I was Pagan, though, the more used I got to being a minority. I learned that the "Christmas" greenery was actually part of European Pagan celebrations first, and welcomed it into my home on my terms. I learned to celebrate the seasons and enjoy something in each one. I joked about my favorite holidays being the "Half-Price Chocolate Days" that follow the holidays most people celebrate, and how Easter isn't a bad thing if it means getting Robin's Egg candies really cheap. One rainy spring Sunday, I played with my two new kittens, did my taxes, and gave my house the top-to-bottom cleaning it desperately needed. Only the fact that there was no NASCAR Sprint Cup race on for me to watch reminded me that, "Oh yeah, it's Easter today." I'd completely forgotten!

It was a good weekend. On Friday night, we saw the remake of Clash of the Titans. Actually, I saw it; my wife was tired from work and slept through half of it. It wasn't bad as a bit of dumb fun, especially since we'd paid for 2D rather than 3D tickets. On Saturday, we went shopping, watched hockey with friends, and cleaned the house. Today, as happens every Easter, no NASCAR Sprint Cup race was scheduled this Sunday. Most of the drivers are Christian and have families with whom they'd like to spend this day. It leaves a little void in my weekend, but I understand it. My atheist wife and I decided we needed to find something else to do today, something to take us out of the house. The weather was beautiful. I wanted to go surfing with my best friend, but the beautiful weather on land translated to an overly calm ocean. Me, my best friend and our wives decided to go to the Prospect Park Zoo and have lunch.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the zoo was open today. But New York City zoos are open every day, even on holidays. My wife saw a worker wearing a cross necklace and said, "Thank you for coming to work today so we can go to the zoo." She smiled at us. We had our pick of restaurants when we'd seen all we wanted, and chose to have Vietnamese. When we got home, we remembered that even though there was no NASCAR, her Detroit Red Wings were playing a game against the hated Philadelphia Flyers. We tuned in for the last period and watched Pavel Datsyuk, the only man she'll ever love, score a goal, which made her happy even though her team ultimately lost.

I found myself grateful that even though being a religious minority can be an uncomfortable thing in America, it isn't a completely horrible thing by any means. I didn't have to spend this beautiful weekend day in church. I could choose to sleep late, to clean, to go to the zoo, to do whatever I wanted with whomever I wanted. Even the trip to the beach was only aborted because the ocean was glassy, not because I or anyone else was forced to stay away. The zoo and the restaurants could be open for us, the Red Wings and Flyers could play for our entertainment. I could, in fact, follow the dictates of my conscience and openly declare myself a polytheist Pagan in the first place. I can freely thank the various Gods of the sun, the water, the earth, and the trees for the beauty of this day, and get little worse than funny looks and awkward conversations. It's more than religious minorities in some other countries get. It's more than some people in this country would like us to have, too.

I hope that American Christians are also grateful for this freedom. Those who went to church today, did so of their own free will, according to their own conscience. They could choose the style of worship that appealed to them. They could dress up in special pastel Easter clothing or go in their jeans. They could go straight home and have dinner and quiet Bible readings with their families, believing that this is what God requires of them on a Sunday. They could also have joined atheists and Pagans and Jews at the zoo or movie theater or hockey game after church. They could have called today "Resurrection Sunday" because they think "Easter" is too Pagan, or laughed at people who believe that and led their children in an Easter egg hunt. Whatever their decisions, it was between them and God, not between them, God, and the State. Their celebrations flowed from joy and genuine felt belief, not fear and false forced piety. I think, no matter what some want us to believe, that this comes fairly close to what our Founding Parents wanted for us.

No matter what and how you believe, I'll see you at the Easter candy remainder bins tomorrow. I'll let you have the Cadbury's, but hands off my Robin's Eggs!

Links, links:

First of all, if you pray in any way to anyone(s), you might want to pray for Baja California, which was hit by an earthquake today. It was a real surprise when I saw tweets about it on Twitter around 6 pm EDT, but a real relief to read Californians' tweets.

Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin explains in a wonderfully clear, calm, and reasoned style exactly why even the kindest, best-intentioned, prettiest-sounding attempts by conservative Christians to "reach" LGBT people upset us.

Finally, the Dixie Chicks have released a terrific song dealing bluntly with the effects of homophobia.

An April fool, as it were

2010-04-01T22:07:00.003-04:00

"You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had a 'lectrified fooling machine!"--Homer Simpson, to Bart

Usually April Fool's Day isn't a production at my office. There are a couple of small pranks, and most of us are vigilant about changing our computer passwords, and people say something that everyone knows is wrong and follow it with "April Fool's," but that's about it. This year was...different. *Everybody* got into the fun. Staplers were emptied, phone receivers were taped down, fonts were upside down, and an exec's computer was programmed to make a noise like the Emergency Broadcast System's every time he clicked an icon. I think it's because we've had a lot of stress in the past year, and there was a lot of steam to be blown off. I usually don't do anything on April Fool's Day, mostly because that's when people expect a prank and I like to have the element of surprise. I got dragged into it today.

My work husband B., bless his heart, just doesn't have the subtlety to be a prankster. He started the festivities by shaking my can of Diet Pepsi while my boss called me into her office for something. I noticed there was a big handprint in the condensation and it was a bit warm, but really, what tipped me off was the fact that he was standing around watching me and hinting that I should open it up. I immediately stuck it in the fridge and bought another out of the vending machine. While I was on another errand, someone dropped a Glenn Beck book into my bag. It had a bargain bin sticker on it, and on the inside cover was a note: "For my biggest fan, [Lilo]. Send your mother my love. Love always, Glenn Beck." It was uncanny how Beck's handwriting looked an awful lot like B.'s. I figured I'd have to give him my thanks for that book, with its thoughtful inscription, later in the day.

It was a day that called for caffeine, lots of it. Around 10 am, I decided to get the Diet Pepsi that B. shook for me out of the fridge. Now, I try not to be obnoxious about having a food allergy. I don't need or want to be treated with kid gloves. But since I'm allergic to chicken, turkey, eggs, and pretty much anything else relating to birds, I have to pass up a fair amount of common foods that many people find perfectly good. Then I have to explain that I really can't "just have the turkey sandwich" or try your homemade cheesecake. After a few years, people who work with you know. Anyway, I've learned that in offices in Manhattan, a lot of people eat special diets to accommodate allergies, conditions, their religion's requirements, their ethics, whatever--it's almost weird to not have a dietary quirk.

Bet you know where this is going. I pack my lunch most every day but Friday. As I bragged to Bluzdude last night, this helps keep costs and calories down. Well, when I went for that soda, I noticed my bag had been messed with. Sure enough, my hummus wrap and other goodies had been replaced with a turkey sandwich, a hard-boiled egg, and a slice of cheesecake. I hate wasting food, but I dumped the mess immediately without touching it and tried not to squeak over it. My doctor tells me it's probably a survival mechanism and the reason why I made it to age 30 without having my allergy diagnosed, but I find just the smells of turkey and eggs extremely, gag-inducingly repulsive, and they were reeking through the Saran Wrap. So I had to wash my bag (it's drying now), and I had to eat out an extra day this week.

This needed to be addressed. Soon. I didn't say I'd opened my lunch bag to anyone, but I figured out who the culprit was pretty quickly. She's also an "administrative professional." She'd been working on a presentation for her boss. I decided to "help." I created a lovely PowerPoint presentation at my desk. As I tweeted this afternoon, all 6-7 pages of it were written entirely in LOLcat. (I was inspired by a TopFive.com list from a few days ago.) It was pink, and the LOLcat-style words were rendered in a scrolly royal purple font. She loves Hello Kitty, so I figured she'd appreciate some Hello Kitty graphics. And let's not spare the sparkles! She foolishly left her computer wide open when she went to lunch. I quickly figured out which file was her boss' big-deal presentation, uploaded my presentation, did a hasty edit on PowerPoint so her computer wouldn't give me away as the writer, and saved the prank presentation under a name that was very similar to the one she'd assigned the real one. I made it so she'd be able to find her real presentation, but would have to sweat a little first. Soon after she got back, she screamed, "OH MY GOD NO!" in gratifying and echo-ey fashion.

CollegeHumor.com pulled a prank on Manhattan today, too. I've never had an In-and-Out burger, though I understand that they're legendary west of the Mississippi. (I've hardly even been out west. When I ate meat, I made classically Florida-girl choices--Back Yard Burger, Steak and Shake, Checkers.) In-and-Out Burger has long maintained that they won't come East. Well, there was a sign announcing a future In-and-Out Burger by Union Square today. My work husband has spent time out west, and really wishes he could have In-and-Out burgers lots more often. So I told him about the new one coming to town. I did *not* tell him that it wasn't for real. He got all excited, looked it up, and then accused me: "You knew it was a joke!" I handed him his Glenn Beck book back and said, "Now we're even."

I can't write about pranks and offices without sharing my absolute favorite ever. I've seen lots, done lots, and been on the receiving end of a few. This is one I did. This was in Orlando. There was a very conservative Evangelical Christian woman in my office who was very strident about her opinions. Of course, we just absolutely loved each other, because I was also openly bi and Pagan there. In addition to being strident and making a lot of people angry for a lot of reasons, she had some terrible work habits. One of them was checking voice mails on her speakerphone. Loudly. We had a huge open-plan layout that we drones called the Big Room. My boss spoke to her about it several times, but she'd fall right back into that habit.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I lifted the basic idea from Scott Adams' the Joy of Work, which was written in the mid-1990s and has tons of good, classic pranks in it. But the execution was terrific. I usually don't involve other people in my pranks--too much chance something can go wrong--but I needed help for this one. The phones in my office had special lights indicating that a call was coming from elsewhere in the office, so I couldn't use mine. Plus, of course, she knew my voice. My best friend Yemaya O'Reilly owed me a favor. I told her I'd forgive her the $20 she owed me if she would call Stupid Bitch's extension and leave a message similar to the script I handed her. It involved an adult novelties store that is locally infamous in Orlando.

I turned the volume on her phone way up before I left one night, and Yemaya left this message on Stupid Bitch's voicemail early the following morning: "Hello, [Stupid Bitch], this is [Yemaya] calling from Fairvilla Adult Megastore. Good news--your special order just came in! Yes, we managed to find that Mr. Big and Buzzy vibrator you've been wanting, and I'll put in some D batteries for you so you can enjoy it right away. We also found that wintergreen lube you like! Slip and Slide's still making it, but can you believe they only sell it in Europe now? Of course, you can come pick it up on your lunch hour, or whenever you like. Have a great day and a really great night!" I figured Stupid Bitch would be too flustered to turn down the volume or take it off the speaker right away, and boy, was I right. Everyone in the Big Room, whatever their race or color, was turning purple--Stupid Bitch from embarrassment and anger, the rest of us from laughing to tears. When she went to lunch, other people put wintergreen mints and D batteries on her desk, which prolonged the fun. I actually felt a little bad, but the great thing about her was that she was so obnoxious, she snapped me out of it real quick, allowing me to enjoy the prank without a speck of guilt.

If you have a good prank story--giving, receiving, or witnessing, today or a while ago--I'd love to read it in comments!

Links, links:

Great stuff from the National Zoo this week! Their new Andean bear cubs just got their first exam. The little darlings didn't like it, and vocalized their feelings about exams quite strongly. Also, Mei Xiang, a/k/a "Mama Panda", may have a cub on the way.

Haiti's original Declaration of Independence was recently found in London. This is a significant thing for a country that really needs some good news.

Anna Paquin (Sookie on True Blood) came out as bisexual while filming a PSA for a gay-rights group. Very nice to see a non-embarrassing celebrity come out as bi.

Because Constance McMillen's classmates at Itawamba High School (where the prom was canceled rather than let her and her girlfriend go) apparently don't already know how to harass an L, G, B, or T teenager for Jesus well enough, the American Family Association handed out special free "youth-oriented" Bibles there today.

Finally, there is now such a thing as Hello Kitty Wine. This is absolutely not a joke.

Always playing

2010-03-29T22:54:00.005-04:00

"I work very hard, but I'm lazy."--Justine Frischmann (Elastica), "Waking Up"
"Work, work all week long/Punchin’ that clock from dusk till dawn/Countin’ the days till Friday night/That’s when all the conditions are right/For a good time/I need a good time."--Alan Jackson, "Good Time"

I don't really want to talk about the uncontrolled crane in Manhattan this weekend or the Moscow subway bombing this morning. So I won't. I've been beaten to those topics anyway.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about work and leisure and my relationship with both. I've been praised by several people lately because I know how to have fun. I've also been criticized by a couple of people because of the ways I have fun.

"You two are always playing!" That is what my grandmother told me, in a snide voice, Sunday afternoon. She called me Saturday afternoon, too, but we were playing street hockey and I decided to let it go to voice mail. I told her this when she asked why I didn't call back. "Street hockey? You know you're in your thirties now, right?"
"So are a lot of professional hockey players. And race car drivers." She's also a NASCAR fan, and was also disappointed that Martinsville got rained out yesterday.
"But you aren't a professional athlete."
"[L'Ailee] is, technically speaking. Her whole job is working out." She teaches martial arts, gymnastics, and when she has to, aerobics. "It just seemed wrong to her that we were sitting on our butts watching hockey players run around ragged. She figured we needed to sweat a little in between games."
"Well, maybe, but..."
"It was so much fun. I got two goals and two assists!"
She sighed, thoroughly exasperated, then tried to get some gossip about my brother and SIL out of me. I further exasperated her by being an absolute brick wall about that. We talked about racing a little bit, and I told her how I'm voting for Juan Pablo Montoya to get into the All-Star Race because I think he's hot. (That's not the only reason, but it helps, a lot.) She doesn't like Montoya because he's from Colombia. TTG, she decided she needed to go after that.

Most of my maternal relatives, except for my brother, are just exceptionally good at getting to me. You can see that in the last post, about my mom and politics, too. I wish they weren't, and I know at least intellectually that it's me and my reactions that I have to control, not them. I have always regarded family as an important thing, and I keep taking calls because I don't want to cut them out completely. I don't like having avoidance as my only option. I believe with all my heart that we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. Ancestral reverence is part of my spiritual practice as a Pagan, and I believe that includes giving respect to my living ancestors. But as I once told a spiritual mentor of mine, "The living ones are sooo haaaard!" She fell over laughing at that. She said she'd heard other people say similar things, and it was hard for her, too.

Knowing intellectually why people and their words can hurt doesn't necessarily stop the pain, any more than knowing intellectually that a chainsaw will hurt you if you aim it wrong will stop the bleeding when you do. Neither L'Ailee nor I are "always playing" by any stretch. In her thirties, L'Ailee is limber and damn near hyperactive. She loves her job, and it pays better than other things she's tried. She's thinking about what she'll do when she can't exercise for a living anymore, but she takes care of herself so that day doesn't come too quickly. She believes the maxim, attributed to Confucius, that "if you do what you love, you will never work another day in your life." (Of course, some days are challenging for her.) I have a clerical position that can be interesting, challenging, maddening, and/or boring depending on the hour. Last week was a very busy and challenging one for me, and I'm allowed to chat and surf the Web on boring days so I'm available for those days that'll make me nostalgic for boredom. I have an interior decorating certification, but that work comes in trickles because I'm a newbie with no fashionable connections in a bad economy. I need that clerical job. I'm really grateful I have it.

At home, we still work. We divide labor on a "what is important to whom" basis. The kitchen and bathroom are mine, dusting and bed-making are hers. I cut out coupons and do most of the grocery shopping because I have a good eye for bargains when it comes to food. She balances our checkbooks because she's awesome at math and I'm numeric-dyslexic. I do all the cooking, but she chops vegetables and fruit for me. We take turns cleaning up after our cats. She sews, and I recondition cheap and free-to-me furniture into something interesting, and we help our friends' kids with their homework. My paternal grandfather used to say that money isn't the only thing we have to spend. Time is also a currency. His wife, my step-grandmother, would add that you can spend your money to save time, or spend your time to save money. I think of that when L'Ailee sews herself a designer knockoff or I soak dried beans in the Crock-Pot.

But growing up, I was branded as "lazy" by my maternal relatives, no matter how much housework I did and how many hours I spent looking after my younger brother, my cousins, and neighbors' children. I did the chores I was asked to do, the way I was asked to do them, and no more. I enjoyed learning, but not school. From the time I was in elementary school, I figured I'd put in my legally-required six hours a day, five days a week plus homework, and that was that. My mother was active in many after-school activities; to her chagrin, I regarded those as being for suckers. (I did join Bible Club in my sophomore year because I was searching spiritually and ended up taking on more of a leadership role. I was also persuaded to join Debate Club as a junior, and said "yes" to my teacher because I enjoyed the class and needed something for my college application.)

For me, "real life" began when all my mother's stupid knickknacks were finally dusted, when the final bell rang its sweet song, when I was finally FREE. Free to do what? To dance, to swim in the pool (never for some stupid team), to read, to write stories, to watch movies, to spray-paint a garage-sale find, to just *be*. My brother was very similar in that way. One of our favorite stories happened when he was 8 years old. He loved to play sandlot baseball in our apartment complex with his friends. So our mother thought he'd enjoy playing Little League at the nearby park. When she pulled into the park to sign him up, he burst into tears. He pleaded, "Mom, what did I do? I promise I'll never do it again. Please, don't make me play Little League!" Mom was dumbfounded. "Baseball's fun, but Little League has rules!" he tried to explain. "They make you wear *uniforms*. The coach makes you pay attention. You have to play ball with kids you hate because their parents signed them up, too." I understood him completely. We're both glad we have each other.

As an adult, I am definitely far more of a "work to live" type than a "live to work." (Sometimes I wonder how different it'll be if I ever get to make a living doing nothing but interior decorating and/or writing, but I'm not there yet.) I still put in my time, do what I'm told, and leave it all behind when I clock out. "Yabba dabba DOO!" I make damn sure that I'm back from lunch on time because I don't want to be that 75-minute lunch hour woman who nobody likes. However, a couple early-morning swims and lunchtime belly-dancing classes a week help keep me sane, as does eating outdoors. My "real life" begins on the bus home to Brooklyn, while I text or read a book. I actually love using my bus time to read. It takes me back to when I was a girl, in a good way. I cook, play with the cats, play around online, fix a cocktail, flip on the game, and talk with my wife. I live for the weekends. I love to play hostess, though people put what they can in a hat (usually about $5, still cheaper than any sports bar here) to subsidize it. I love surfing when I can and the occasional night out at a club. I love the return of street hockey in between the events we want to watch, and love L'Ailee for suggesting it.

I have had to learn that I'm okay being a leisurely, work-to-live person. This doesn't make me better or worse than anyone else. The world couldn't run without the live-to-work types. The world needs people who flourish in uniforms playing by rules. That said, I'll bet the likes of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell and Benjamin Franklin had *fun* thinking up things that would change the world, and hardly felt like they were working at all as the hours slipped away.

I know my cousins will fondly remember the times L'Ailee taught them martial arts moves and we shot BBs at cans with them. Our friend A.'s ambitious 9-year-old daughter, who is serious about wanting to be the first woman to win the Stanley Cup, is glad to have adults in her life who are willing to help her see if she can replicate her favorite players' highlight-reel goals. My neighbors are always happy when I feel like using up the fruit in the community farmers' box in pies. Our friends have formed unlikely friendships with each other in our home. As we give ourselves good memories, L'Ailee and I help create good memories for others, too. One day, maybe I can convince certain people in my life that this is a source of pride, not shame.

Anyway, it really was cool when L'Ailee and I kept scoring off each others' shots this past weekend.

Links, if you can stand to read more:

I've always thought Sinead O'Connor was sexy as hell; her takedown of the Catholic Church in the Washington Post op-ed page confirmed it.

Everyone on Twitter today, it seemed, had fun with the revelation that members of the Republican National Committee spent $2,000 at a bondage-themed strip club. My favorite tweet was, "Bondage stripclub was honest mistake - RNC is looking for a new congressional whip."

Y'all know I wouldn't even *think* about Glenn Beck, except that too many of my maternal relatives love him. (Reminds self, "I respect my living ancestors...") Anyway, the bastard went to my alma mater to kick off his speaking tour this weekend. Will Bunch's account struck me as painfully familiar.

How cell phones are revolutionizing North Korea

Finally, for other hockey fans, I learned about a new (to me) blog satirizing targets in the NHL that richly deserve it called Intent to Blow.

Family and politics, again

2010-03-16T21:32:00.002-04:00

Last night, I was in a bad mood, but finally starting to calm down. The rain and wind made everything miserable. Transportation was down all over. Of course I didn't go surfing on Sunday. We lost power for a few hours. Some of our friends were worse off, and we let them come over to shower and charge their cell phones, abiding by the laws of Florida hurricane etiquette that I'd grown up with. Getting to work was an absolute bitch on Monday. Today the sun came out, and I was so happy to see it, but I was in an awful mood last night. L'Ailee and I filled out our census form. We decided she was Person 1 because she'd rented this place with a roommate before I moved in, and she sang, "I...am...Number 1!" like Nelly. We proudly put a Queer the Census sticker on the envelope. Then we flipped on the Detroit Red Wings/Calgary Flames game for her. Then my mother called.

I made the mistake of answering the question, "What are you doing?" honestly. "Just filled out our census form, and now we're watching the Wings game." She went on a rager about the Census, how Obama and Pelosi will be misusing the information, how horrible it is that they asked about race. "But they always asked about race," I said. "Besides, the Census isn't Obama's idea. It's in the Constitution, you know?" She didn't care. She wasn't going to fill it out, and anyway, I'm probably being brainwashed by all the ads. I decided I'd just had it. "Look, I am so not in the mood for this Tea Party crap! Not tonight, not ever again! You can rant and rave to someone else!"
She got very upset. "I don't appreciate you calling my opinions 'crap'."
"I don't appreciate you yelling in my ear over the latest thing that pisses you off."
"You're yelling."
"Yeah, *now*." She wanted to talk it over. I refused. I hate long "talks" anyway, and didn't feel that this one would be productive, to put it nicely. She said, "This conversation isn't over." I said it was. I did *not* say that I knew it would actually be more of a monologue for her, and I wasn't going to waste my time or eardrums. We forced out "I love you"s before we hung up.

I've tried to have that conversation a few times, but she doesn't seem to get it. I know she thinks I don't, either, and maybe I don't. My brother and I are both hating how she's gone from fiscal conservative/social libertarian to increasingly shrill, angry, and right-wing. She talks about how she feels guilty about not taking us to church more. She knows that I am Pagan, bi, and married to another woman, and that my brother is an environmentalist, atheist and has been a freethinker in some form or fashion since he was a boy. We thought she accepted those things. She doesn't, not now. Why is it that when the economy pinches and things get a bit harder than they used to be, some people will find anger and cruelty and hammering down nails that stick up to be as comforting as a cup of hot chamomile tea and a fluffy pair of slippers?

We know she wants to talk about the stuff that excites her, just like we do. We think if by going more into the religion she grew up with and getting involved politically, even in "Tea Party crap," she finds comfort, that's okay. We know her life's not as comfortable as it has been right now. (And I can't tell exactly why--her story isn't mine to tell--but let's say it might sound familiar to many.) But we wish she understood that she's not going to convert us and that we're not interested in whatever some Fox News host or Rush Limbaugh said. We feel like the stuff that made her hard to live with is getting magnified and the stuff that made up for it is receding. I cried last night; I'm crying again now as I type this.

But there are good things. L'Ailee urged Simply Sleep on me last night, because that kind of drama can keep me up way too late. The sun came out again. Thanks to good friends who pooled what they had together to make me happy on my birthday, my wife and I are going to see the Penguins play in New Jersey tomorrow, and hopefully beat the Devils just once. Spring is coming!

Being a Witch, I'm going to celebrate the Spring Equinox this weekend with a loose circle of other Witches, including my best friend and her wife. We don't work for anything political, apart from "wisdom for our leaders and the best outcome for all," because our opinions are very divergent. However, I'm thinking I can ask to work for peace, and calmness, and stability for those we love. Thank the Gods, we don't have to agree on everything, but we can agree on wanting to see a rebirth very soon. So mote it be!

Links, links:

Now a movie's coming out where a witch-hunter who keeps the population of witches and warlocks in check is a hero.

Hopefully Stephen Baldwin fails as bad as a Religious Right activist trying to attract "the youth" as he did as an actor.

A woman in Arizona was evicted from her home because her solar panels and icebox didn't give her a good enough "quality of life".

I've got to make this less depressing. How about lots of interesting-looking new bisexual books?

Also, I linked to this quite recently, but the National Zoo's 2-month-old Andean bear cubs are getting super-squirmy and cute.

The Onion's got a writer who knows I'm not the only one who loves both the NHL and NASCAR, and cleverly summed up the scariest weekend of sports-watching I've experienced in a while.

Finally, Margaret Atwood--yes, *that* Margaret Atwood, the author--gives lessons on goaltending in a hilarious video.

Birthday gir...grown-ass woman

2010-03-13T23:11:00.003-05:00

"I'm old enough to know better/but I'm still too young to care."--Wade Hayes, "Old Enough to Know Better"

I've been told that with all the random bursts of thought I have and the articles I want to share, Twitter would be great for me. And the people who told me that are right. I've been enjoying it a whole lot more than I thought, and I apologize to everyone who used it before I did for making fun of it.

Not a lot has happened since I last posted. Today I belly-danced for the first time since my myomectomy, and tomorrow, hopefully, I can go surf with my best friend Yemaya. It's been heavy, heavy rain, which is livable. I always have to laugh when people go, "Surfing in the *rain*?", like I wouldn't be getting wet otherwise! What's never okay is lightning, and we're a little concerned about that.

I turned 36 on Thursday. Still seems like a slightly bigger number than fits me, but there I am. (And I'm not fishing for any "Oh, no, that's still young!" protestations, either. I know it's not, especially when I listen to pop music or hear my little intern girls talk about their weekends.) My mom and my wife both tell me I look 10 years younger than I am. Mom, of course, is invested in that idea--she doesn't want people thinking she's old enough to have a 36-year-old daughter. L'Ailee really does look 10 years younger than she is, and sometimes when she skates or demonstrates gymnastics moves to kids or something, she actually reminds me of when we were in our late teens again. I'd take her opinion.

I always used to dread my birthdays. When I was a kid, I had horrible ones. Mom thought I had measles on my seventh birthday; it turned out that I was allergic to the dryer sheets she used. (My chemical allergies aren't quite as bad as they were when I was a girl, but I'm still careful about what I use, and I still absolutely will never use Bounce.) So I missed out on decorating the corkboard in my classroom my way and handing out cupcakes. We tried to have a Sweet 16 party, but nobody showed up except a few neighbors who wandered in for food. Others weren't quite that horrible, but they weren't good, either. One of the nice things about being grown is that you can take control over your birthday in your hands and do your best to *make* it good. As the drag queen Nuclia Waste says, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

L'Ailee started the morning by giving me fantastic lingerie. She doesn't cook. She ordered a couple of cupcakes for me--vegan, dark chocolate/orange flavored, with orange frosting. I actually had one for breakfast. It was so good. The day was pretty decent all around. I worked, but got a steady stream of e-cards, texts, and regular cards, as well as an iTunes gift card from my boss. I met up with several of my friends and L'Ailee at an Indian restaurant after work. We chose it because it didn't have a huge Wall Street presence or seem like the kind of place where a group of thirtysomethings would go to celebrate a birthday. However, the owners could see that something was up, and offered us free dessert. I had gajar halva, a/k/a carrot pudding, which is an awesome shade of neon orange and tastes like carrot cake without the cake.

Several friends went in for a present. We do that a lot--why give a bunch of lame little things when we can give, say, that perfume she loves but can't afford or the sick new smartphone he's been wanting? Mine was two tickets to the Pittsburgh Penguins/New Jersey Devils game on March 17th. The Penguins have not been able to beat the Devils once this season, including an incredibly frustrating game last night, but we hope the Pens can win just one before the season's over. Anyway, it's always fun to actually be at the game, and the seats are damn near on the glass. We've watched a lot of live hockey this season, at least for us. I hope we can also all go see the race in Watkins Glen this summer, but for me and L'Ailee, that will depend on whether I can get interior decorating work or not.

L'Ailee's real present wasn't the lingerie. It was allowing me to go dancing with some of my friends, without her, and not giving me any shit at all over it. She couldn't go because Friday is always her busiest day at the gym and she needed to get some rest. I changed into jeans, a tank top, and my favorite cowgirl boots, and we kissed goodbye before she took my work clothes home. So sweet of her. I thanked her probably a thousand times for doing that. I felt incredibly guilty, actually, but she kept insisting that it was okay for me to "go dance and have fun" without her.

Yemaya is a pastry chef and never has the weekends off, so she was also really eager to go out at night for once and had all kinds of places in mind to take me. She's always been my favorite dance partner, though I danced with a few other people as well, mostly men. B. wanted to go to a country bar, and I was dressed perfectly for that. He hardly goes out at night, either. Of the eight of us who started out, everyone had to go home eventually, except Yemaya. Our second-to-last stop, before coffee, was a lesbian club. There was a "curious" and recently divorced woman, our age, who had her friend trying to encourage her to make a move. I became her first same-sex dance partner besides that friend. She wanted to exchange numbers, but I showed her my rings quickly. She seemed to feel a bit better, though, and was dancing with another woman by the time we left.

It's always a good birthday, I think, when you eat and drink a little too much and have fun with friends who know what you need. This is one that I'll remember forever in a good way. I'm so grateful for that. I got maybe 3 hours' sleep and had to remember all the job-preservation techniques I'd learned when Yemaya was dragging me around Orlando clubs eons ago. It was cool, but I felt really okay with being 36. That's still a fun place to visit. I'm glad we don't live there anymore.

Links, links:

I found out about an LGBT country dance club called Big Apple Ranch! That'll be my next going-out night. I'm going to have to really work on people to go--my queer friends (including L'Ailee) don't like country, and my friends who like country are all straight!

You may have heard about the super-controversial meeting of the Texas Board of Education that determined the content of the state's--and by extension, much of the country's--textbooks. Huffington Post explains what happened with the Texas Textbook Massacre.

But New York isn't immune from stupidity, as I'm sure y'all have been seeing. Right now, since we don't have any other problems with our budget or misuses of office or anything, and since everyone in the city is getting enough healthful stuff to eat, and since we all must be saved from enjoying a single morsel of our food, Brooklyn's assemblyman Felix Ortiz wanted to try banning salt from restaurants. (Yemaya has proposed some medieval tortures involving salt for him.) Thank the Gods, a few people in the Assembly seem to have gone temporarily sane.

Finally, check out these sick surfing moves! I am not trying any of these!

Late adopter

2010-03-04T17:41:00.002-05:00

I've finally been convinced to try Twitter. I now have a "professional" account and a "fun" account. I have much to learn in both of them.

The "fun" account is here: @greeneyedlilo.

So far I am following 10 accounts. You'd think I'm into NASCAR, the NHL, Paganism, and LGBT civil rights or something. If you decide to follow me, there's a 99 percent chance that I'll follow you back.

And a couple more things....

2010-03-03T10:10:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I updated late last night, and if any of y'all feel like commenting on just one post here, I hope it's the one below. But...

Charles Rangel stepped down from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee this morning.

The first same-sex marriage licenses are being issued in Washington, DC as I type!

As far as I'm concerned, it's shaping up to be a good week. Between those two tidbits of news and the NHL trade deadline today, my e-mail boxes are blowing up and all the texts are putting my cellie on, like, perma-vibrate today.

Pages turn

2010-03-03T00:53:00.001-05:00

"I ache for the return of dysfunction. Dysfunction had its problems, but at least dysfunction has function in its title."--Manhattan Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell, 3/1/10

First off, I'm doing much better right now, and I thank everyone for their good wishes. I no longer need to prop a teddy bear or pillow up against my surgical scar when I sit at a desk. I have been back at work since last Thursday. (I needed a couple of extra days off.) I am taking extra Tylenol or Tylenol PM, not Percocet. I'm really grateful for that, too, because Percocet gives me really horrible and loopy dreams. Still sleeping on the couch, though. On Friday, my gynecologist is giving me a follow-up exam and hopefully, um, clearing me for takeoff. I know y'all desperately needed to know all of this.

Olympics hockey gave me a terrific distraction while I was healing that first week. L'Ailee got into an evil mood because the Russian men's team was eliminated before any medal rounds and most other Russian competitors just sucked. But things even out. She was offered tickets to the Met--nosebleed ones, but still--to see the premiere of the opera Attila, though, and I let her go with her friend. I decided that it was okay to have a shatterproof excuse as to why I couldn't go, and she was able to enjoy it with someone who understood it.

We're both still amazed that she got me caring about the hockey games. I was so proud of both the USA womens' and mens' teams! But Canada was ordained from the git-go for a reason. Sunday evening provided the first and hopefully last time that I cussed and teared up because Sidney Crosby scored a really clutch goal. I've said fairly often in the past couple days that if it had to be a Canadian scoring that overtime goal, I'm glad it was that one. Other Pittsburgh Penguins fans are conflicted, too. Tonight, the Buffalo Sabres played the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ryan Miller, the Sabres' goalie as well as Team USA's, received a standing ovation, while Crosby got some boos from his hometown crowd! I'm glad the regular NHL season's back.

There's a lot of other, more serious news to discuss at my work. The big debate is whether David Paterson should resign as governor. I think so. Next time any of my Florida relatives start telling me how NYC isn't safe for a woman, I'll tell them that Albany is far worse. Hiram Monserrate, from Queens, was convicted of domestic violence earlier this year and expelled from the State Senate. He is now campaigning to get that seat back. And clergy are supporting him just because he opposes same-sex marriage. After all, that's immoral, unlike slashing one's girlfriend's face with a shard of broken glass.

So now it comes out that Paterson, who agreed with the State Senate when they ejected Monserrate, allegedly had two state employees intimidate a woman who accused one of his aides of domestic violence against her. The New York State chapter of NOW wants him gone, and so does most everyone else. As I typed this, I learned that Harry Corbitt, superintendent of the New York State Police, just resigned because of this scandal. I wish Paterson would do the same.

Frankly, sometimes I wonder how anything but scandals, fighting, and embezzling gets accomplished in New York, the city or the state. I am tempted to beg L'Ailee to go to Washington, DC, where same-sex marriage has just become legal--we like it there. Then I remember that this would be a move from the frying pan to the fire when it comes to escaping political insanity, and also, my mother lives and works in the area. I am tempted to vote for Kristin Davis, the "Manhattan Madam" who claims to have sent prostitutes to ex-governor Eliot Spitzer. She's running for governor now. I don't see how she'd do any worse. At least she knows how to manage money, and she won't be a total nanny-statist, and there aren't any skeletons in her closet.

Things are happening, anyway. It's been a long winter, and spring is coming, thank the Gods. I can't wait for the Equinox. L'Ailee let her hair grow some because it seemed stupid to her to shave her head when she was just going to cover it with a hat outside, and she's learned how to fight her curls and win. I think she looks cute as hell and want her to keep it. I want a lot of things--among them to see some of the scum scrubbed out of New York politics, to stay well, to skate to the store instead of trudging through slush, to never again hear the phrase "tea party" unless darjeeling and crumpets are involved. I hope to see a few of them rise up this spring.

Links, some of which are depressing:

Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning decided to stop being an obstructionist asshole tonight.

To register their feelings about same-sex marriage, Catholic Charities in Washington, DC denied spousal benefits to all new employees so as not to fund a stray same-sex spouse.

A Christian shop teacher didn't like that a student made a Wiccan altar his project. He made the Wiccan teen stop. He was disciplined for religious discrimination. It is pretty damned obvious how that teacher and many others in the community feel about Wicca. I can't wait for spring; this kid is a high school senior and no doubt can't see summer come soon enough!

The National Zoo has two new baby bears. Not as cute as the new panda cub I'm waiting on, but they'll do.

Finally, speaking of bears in zoos, poor Knut, the polar bear in Berlin, just can't be left alone. Now the German chapter of PETA is calling for him to be castrated.

A home panda and a work panda

2010-02-20T22:44:00.003-05:00

I'm still taking painkillers, so please bear with me if this seems weird. Boy, I'm grateful for spell check.

So I had surgery on Thursday morning. It went all right. The myomectomy was done, plus the surgeon found and removed a cyst on my right ovary while he was there. L'Ailee has watched both surgeries, and she said this myomectomy didn't take nearly as long as the last one I had (five years ago). She's had a couple of surgeries during our time together, too, and I didn't watch either because I don't do well with blood. I'm still amazed that she demands to watch. She wants to make sure nothing untoward happens, that they only slice into the places I personally marked up with their sharpie marker and that nobody leaves a sponge or watch inside me.

When I woke up from the anesthetic, people were talking about a plane that hit a building in Texas. So I wanted to know what they were talking about. At first, the nurse there thought it was too upsetting for me, but L'Ailee knew I wouldn't feel right until my curiosity was satisfied. So we turned on CNN. I was stunned not by how crazy Joe Stack's manifesto sounded, but by how almost sane it sounded, like things I've heard in private conversations and read online. Not everyone has a plane, but lots of people have guns and knives. "I don't think this is going to end in Texas," L'Ailee says I said. I cried, and the nurse asked me if I knew anyone in Austin. When I said no, she said we definitely needed to change the channel, and I let her have her way on that. I'm no longer shaking off anesthesia or on a morphine pump. I still feel that way.

It was upsetting L'Ailee, too. Her mind went right to 9/11--as I've mentioned, she worked at the WTC. It occured to me later that maybe that nurse and other members of the hospital staff might have immediately thought of 9/11, too. L'Ailee found the station that was going to show Olympics ice hockey for me. The room was going to be semi-private--a screen in between me and an older woman who L'Ailee says was probably Catholic. But the woman was upset about L'Ailee and I acting like a couple, like, the way I called her "babydoll" and she called me "darling." She wanted to be transferred away from us. I told her that if she really wanted to put people out and let me have a private room because she's a bigot, she could be my guest. (I *think* I said that, anyway.) She got her wish, and I was okay with that.

L'Ailee decided she wanted to stay overnight with me, and went home to get herself some stuff and arrange a babysitter for the cats. She gets paid by the class, and she missed quite a few, but I'm glad she stayed with me. I forgot how in the hospital, you can't just sleep straight through the evening. Nurses keep wanting to take your vital signs and make you do stuff. Well, I understand. When they go for your insides, they want to make sure everything still works properly. I drank awful diet ginger ale and watched most of USA versus Norway mens', some of the USA womens' game, and about half of Canada versus Switzerland mens'. (L'Ailee made sure I was awake for the shootout.) I was glad to have something to think about besides the building in Texas and feeling bad. They let me wear my Team USA Womens' T-shirt as a nightshirt, and L'Ailee wore her Team Russia/Evgeni Malkin T-shirt with track pants. This seemed to tickle the night nurse. It was almost like a sleepover, with L'Ailee on the cot next to me and the two of us talking and cheering. The older Catholic woman might have been on to something.

I went home Friday afternoon, once my regular gynecologist and the surgeon had visited with me and everyone was satisfied that everything worked okay. L'Ailee made a bed for me on the couch and taught her afternoon classes while I slept. Percocet's not as good as that lovely morphine pump, but it does have advantages, like not being delivered by IV. I got flowers delivered to me, and two big panda teddy bears. I told my boss how the last time I had this, I had to prop a pillow or teddy bear up to my stomach while I worked at a desk for a week because it would hurt like crazy otherwise. She promised me a panda because I love them, and she delivered! So did my work husband. So now I have a home panda and a work panda. The home panda's on my lap now. It seems silly, but it really does help.

I got my surgical staples out this morning, and everything seems all right so far. I'm still sleeping on the couch, and I will be for a while. I'm really glad L'Ailee was next to me at the hospital. It was good just to have her close. I told her, we really need to arrange it so the next time one of us is in one of those hospital beds, we can take advantage of the things two people can do on it and not be out of commission. She said she'd try to plan her next injury accordingly.

Thanks to everyone who wondered. I appreciate it. Links will be back later!

Two holidays in one

2010-02-13T00:12:00.002-05:00

"Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out."--Hafiz quote, and part of my e-mail sig

Been a while. The sports stuff will only be a few paragraphs. As I type, I just finished watching the Penguins get beat by the sorry-ass New York Rangers in overtime. I hate the Rangers, and I have loved watching the Pens stomp on them this season. Tonight, Sidney Crosby scored two goals and set a new personal best for goals in the regular season, but it just wasn't enough. So now the Rangers fans in my office, most of whom are execs, will have all weekend to come up with witticisms for me and be smug as hell on Monday.

L'Ailee had to watch the opening ceremonies for the Olympics first. We're still stunned by the death of the Georgian luger on the track during practice. I remember when Dale Earnhardt died at the Daytona 500 in 2001. It was horrible to be there and watch that crash, horrible to leave the track knowing that he was bound for Halifax Hospital and not leaving the infield care center all pissed off that his car was wrecked, horrible to hear that he was dead on the way home. My Ex-Boy had to pull his truck over so we could cry on each others' shoulders, and when we finished, we found that other couples had done the same.

Though I love that race and would never dream of skipping it, I felt awful that another human being had died for my entertainment. And if the athletes weren't pushing themselves to their limits, there would be no pleasure in it for them or the spectators. I missed the next few months of racing. But I was back in Daytona for the summer race, called the Pepsi 400 at the time, and I watched the 500 in 2002 with an almost clear conscience. This year, we'll still watch Olympic hockey, womens' and mens', and she'll still watch figure skating, and we'll hope like crazy that the luge track is fixed and the athletes are safe.

The middle of February contains two of my very favorite holidays: Valentine's Day as well as the Daytona 500. (Gods, I want Tony Stewart to finally get it this year, but that shouldn't surprise anyone!) This year, NASCAR went a step further by actually having the race *on* Valentine's Day. So L'Ailee and I, and several of our friends, will be having Valentine's night tomorrow night.

We realized that we haven't gone on anything one could call a "date" in a very long time, so we're doing the most cliched thing and going to dinner and a movie. We haven't seen a movie in a theater recently, either. We still don't know exactly what we're going to see. Probably "Wolfman," though that got horrible reviews. Defo not "Valentine's Day," even if there is supposed to be a nice little queer subplot in it. We have different tastes in movies, but thankfully, neither of us like romantic comedies.

For those of you who are wondering, my surgery is scheduled for the 18th. I have three and a half days off from work not counting the weekend, and BossLady told me I can have a couple more if I need them. I'm grateful for that. I think I timed it perfectly--Gods willing, I'll be healed by my birthday. I have to stay overnight at the hospital--hate that. Once again, L'Ailee reminded the surgeon that we have the same blood type and told her she'd donate a pint if I needed it! L'Ailee didn't tell me this. My straight male surgeon did, cracking up laughing as he said it. "That is a special woman, and she loves you very much," he said. All I could say is, "I know, of course I know." "Treat her right on the 14th," he advised me, but I didn't need him to remind me.

It's more than the big gestures, though. Last weekend, the Penguins played the Washington Capitals in a much-hyped match. We had her best friend and his husband and daughter over to watch. The Budweiser Shootout, the start of the new NASCAR season, had been on the night before. Last year, I engaged in a bit of sympathetic magick for Tony Stewart--I had my toenails done in red to match his car, and kept them red until he won. I decided I'd do it again this year. L'Ailee gave me a recession pedicure on the couch, my feet in her lap as we watched the game and my favorite cocktail, the one I ironically named Crosby Sucks on my other blog, in my hand . Life gets no better, I thought. A reference was made to the Capitals' fans "rocking the red," and I muttered, "Great, now my foot's rocking the red."
L'Ailee gently squeezed the foot she hadn't done yet. "You are such a superstitious..." She searched for the word. "...dork!" she concluded triumphantly.
"Yeah, I am." Our friends laughed.
"Come on, I might as well finish." I just smiled at her as she finished and the Pens threw away their 3-goal lead. I went to take care of the dishes during a commercial break when she was finished. "You cooked for us," she said. "Let your toenails dry." She and one of our friends took care of the dishes.

I know not everyone is going to have a happy Valentine's day. I know some people just want to treat it as another Sunday night, and not all of those people are single or unhappy in a relationship, either. I understand, I do. I hope I don't offend anyone. But I'm happy, and I'm proud of it. It sounds almost brazenly immodest for a woman to say that in this society--as with our bodies, we're expected to complain and commisserate and admit our happiness only in quiet little whispers, if at all. To hell with that. Things even out, and I have problems in other areas. In love, I have been both lucky and hard-working.

With the debates over Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Proposition 8 trial, we have had straight people treating us as, like the Queer Chamber of Commerce and asking our opinions. I have been reading about open admissions from right-wing political leaders that they want to make same-gender sex illegal again so we can be imprisoned. I have been reading absolutely horrific international news. We have to fight so hard to love and live openly that it's easy for love itself to get lost in the shuffle. Just like with mixed-sex relationships, love dies when you treat it like it can take care of itself.

It's going to sound weird, maybe, and not at all heartsy-and-flowery romantic, but one reason why I cherish Valentine's Day is that it was born out of the triumph of love over suppression. In the Middle East and India, some religious fundamentalists have tried to ban it, but Valentine's Day is becoming increasingly popular. It's not just queer people who have to fight like hell to love. Tomorrow night we'll hold hands at the restaurant and the movie theater and be grateful.

Links, if you can stand to read more:

Some suggestions for distinctly bisexual things to do on Valentine's Day. "Deep-kissing your wife because Tony Stewart's leading the 500" isn't one of them! I love the bit about bubble baths, but we think it's dirtier to keep kids' bubble bath in the original packaging...

Advice for Pagans in interfaith relationships It does focus on Christianity as the "other" religious belief, though I'm far from the only Pagan I know who is in a relationship with an atheist. Worth checking out anyway.

L'Ailee and I were both disgusted by this, but in her words, "These girls have the right to show how mean-spirited they are, and other girls have the right to try a group that is more tolerant." To quote another smart woman who commented, "And yet they would just die if the school made them wear uniforms." Check out a Cornell sorority's fashion and beauty rules for pledges.

Finally, since I last blogged, sweet Tai Shan, the 4-year-old panda born at the National Zoo, left us and was flown to the Bifengxia Reserve in China for breeding. I've discussed this lots at the Pandas Unlimited group. That said, I saw this update on how he's doing in China. As I suspected, he seems to be coping better than many humans who loved him. :-)

Sick days

2010-01-30T14:20:00.001-05:00

It's been a while. I've updated Cocktails With the Penguins, but not this. I haven't looked at most blogs, either, and I apologize for that. Work was a whole lot busier than usual for January. I'm glad, actually--L'Ailee was also very busy with post-New Year's Resolution customers at her gym, and I'm usually at loose ends in January because of that. Also, I have had a damn cold. I tried to update this blog three times in the past couple days, and you should be glad my bleary-eyed, Nyquil-fueled rants never got published. I almost took sick days Thursday and Friday, but didn't. I have surgery coming up, and I'm going to need about three days. I'll get to that in a bit.

There's stuff going on around us. The Dow has been on one hell of a wild ride. The Khalid Sheikh Mohammad trial will probably be moved out of NYC. The Proposition 8 trial in California has paused after going on and on, but not for a ruling. I've thought about all these things. That last one is the one I know best, though not the one that affects me and L'Ailee the most at the moment. My aunt brought it up in what was a pleasant phone conversation Thursday evening. She'd have voted for it. She voted to ban same-sex marriage in Florida, and believes "the people" had a "right to vote on this" in California. We got into a screaming argument that became very personal very quickly. We probably won't be talking again for a little while.

The last time I blogged, I talked about how my uterine fibroid problem came back and now I need treatment. Apparently there are exciting results when it comes to green tea extracts in mice, and human trials start soon. Unfortunately, I don't think drinking tons of green tea will help all by itself, even if I liked it, which I don't. I can only stand the stuff when it's got a lot of flavoring. My gynecologist did tell me to cut way back on eating and drinking soy, though, because it has phytoestrogens and those might encourage fibroid growth. This is tricky for a vegetarian who's trying to keep her cholesterol down, but I'm doing my best.

Gods, I don't want to talk about surgery. I have talked about it with people IRL, including L'Ailee, BossLady, my best friends, and women in my swimming group and belly-dancing class. I had a myomectomy five and a half years ago. This involves cutting into the uterus, taking the fibroids out, and reconstructing the uterus. (You desperately wanted to know that, yes?) I will be having one again. My gynecologist tells me that the partial hysterectomy I wanted is a desperation move, particularly since I'm under 40, even though I know I'm not having kids. I just don't want to keep going through this! She suggested uterine artery embolization, but a lot can go wrong there. Basically, the blood flow to the fibroids is blocked, and the fibroids die. One of my Swim Girls *and* one of the women in my belly-dancing class told harrowing stories involving the stuff used for blocking the arteries migrating and midnight trips to the ER. That put UAE into the "no way in hell" column real quick!

So, another round. Thankfully, I don't need hormone therapy this time, because my "fibroid burden" is still relatively light. I asked if it could wait until after Valentine's Day. My gynecologist laughed, but allowed it. She says that's one reason why she doesn't want to do the partial hysterectomy if she doesn't have to--"you genuinely enjoy sex, and I don't want to take a chance and do something that might interfere with that." I've heard reactions from women who've had it that are all over the map when it comes to their post-surgical enjoyment, but I'm very glad that my gynecologist considered it anyway. (Of course, she's also L'Ailee's gynecologist.) Since my job is sedentary, I don't need much time off from work, just a couple recovery days with high-octane painkillers. Last time, I did find that it helped ease my pain to sit on a cushion with a pillow or teddy bear in my lap when I sat at a desk and typed. I told BossLady about that, and she offered to buy me "the biggest, cuddliest, cutest panda teddy bear I can find." Not necessary, of course, but it felt good when she said that.

I think I'll be all right. It's not work I'll be missing, it's fun for about three weeks. I hate it, but I can live with it. I know that if I ignore fibroids, they do *not* go away. The last time became a crisis because I'd gone over a year without visiting a gynecologist. (A good doctor moved away, and my HMO's choices for me became Lesbophobic Bitch or It's-All-In-Your-Head Quack.) So I'm not going to let things get bad again.

Last weekend was a good one. Saturday afternoon, I went surfing with my best friend Yemaya O'Reilly. People who don't surf think it's crazy to go out into the cold, but the waves get all stirred up in winter weather and the salt in the water keeps it from getting frozen. You can't stay out as long as you can in summer, but if you wear a full-length wetsuit and aqua shoes--we prefer them bright so we don't blend into all the hazy gray-blues and we can keep an eye on each other--you're fine. It clears our heads. I could never really meditate when I've tried, but I get close to a meditative state when I surf. I have to stay focused on keeping my feet on that board and seeing the next wave coming. It's wonderful.

Yemaya's also in my belly-dancing class. Sunday was a performance day. She actually started it off with a performance to, of all things, "Big Blonde and Beautiful" from the musical version of Hairspray. We laughed because she's multiracial and recently bleached her hair in response to a few grays. We laughed a lot. I was missing the Pittsburgh Penguins/Philadelphia Flyers game that afternoon, and L'Ailee had jokingly suggested that I wear my black and gold performance costume--Penguins team colors! I did, with my Penguins earrings. A lot of women liked that, and some others wished they'd worn some sports team or other's colors, too.

It was about 30 women, ranging widely in age (late teens to early sixties) and in a lot of other things as well. Unlike my instructor's bigger, better-attended Memorial Day performance/picnic at her home, no spouses, partners, boyfriends, or girlfriends were allowed. I found it a bit difficult--when L'Ailee's eyes go really big, I know I'm doing it right! A few other women felt similarly. It was especially tricky for me because when we were choreographing our solo performances, Yemaya advised me that I needed to "slut it up a little," and my instructor nodded. Move sexy...but without anybody to move sexy *for*?

I did fine, though. We all did. We gave each other zaghareets, the traditional cheer, then ate delicious Middle Eastern snacks when we finished. Belly dancing is also liberating in its way. In the Middle East, I was told, women dance and socialize in womens' only groups most of the time. Women who are tightly controlled and strictly veiled on the street cut loose around their friends. Thank the Gods, we don't worry about literal morality police here.

But we put other chains on ourselves and accept other unreasonable demands from the world around us. We're nice girls. We have no rhythm. We look ridiculous when we dance--our mother, father, brother, gym coach told us so. We don't want to do something to please some guy. We're too Christian, too Jewish, too feminist, too smart. We're too fat, too old, have boy hips, have hippo hips, haven't been the same since we gave birth, have scars. But we all have something, don't we? We all have something good, too. Sunday, a random and unlikely group of women showed each other that something good. We put our regular clothes, our regular selves, back on late in the afternoon--hijab scarves, jeans, designer leather jackets, Land's End parkas, Pittsburgh Penguins jerseys--and strutted outside. I know Yemaya and I weren't the only ones who wanted to bring that feeling in the room out into the world with us.

I actually got into belly dancing because of that myomectomy, which I will soon count as my first. My abdominal muscles were never very good, but they'd been sliced into and knitted slowly back together. L'Ailee's gym offers domestic partners free memberships, and that's what I became shortly after the myomectomy. I moved from Orlando to NYC after I recovered. (It was a very eventful autumn.) I tried other exercises for my abs, but didn't care for them. Pretty much the only thing I liked about the gym was the pool. One of the two belly dancing instructors recommended her class as a way to help strengthen my abs. I felt fat and gross, and I didn't think that would be for me. "Look," she said in an exasperated voice, "we wear regular exercise clothing to class. We don't judge your body, only whether you learn. How do you think you become fit? You become fit by working out. This is like saying, 'I cannot practice driving because I don't know how to drive.'" She was right, of course. I joined her class the next week.

I'll have to work hard to get back into it after this surgery. My friend Mona, who I met in that class, struggled a little after her son was born. But it's way more fun than Pilates, or worse yet, doing nothing at all. Isn't everything?

Happy Imbolc to all who celebrate, happy February to those who don't. Spring will come back! Really!

Links, if you can stand to read more:

Two of America's zoo pandas are leaving us this week: Tai Shan in Washington DC's National Zoo and Mei Lan in Zoo Atlanta. They will be going to China's Bifengxia reserve as part of their breeding program. I have been watching them--Tai Shan especially--on cams since they were born, and I'm a bit sad over it. They leave on February 4th, and despite the snow, both zoos are throwing going-away parties for them this weekend. This is a touching interview with one of Tai Shan's keepers, who will be accompanying him as he transitions to China.

On a sorta-related note, Lilly Pulitzer, which I love with all my heart, comes out with its first black and white print this spring: Pandamonium. Yes, I pre-ordered.

Bi teens of both genders get bullied a lot, but bi girls do some bullying themselves.

Why death and disaster don't change atheists' minds. I found the last paragraphs particularly powerful.

The commercials for Campbell's Select Harvest Light soups promote disordered eating...or, as a Salon.com writer put it, are mmmm, mmmm, fucked up.

Finally, enjoy this roundup of NYC-centric blogs from the Village Voice.

Better problems to have

2010-01-13T21:06:00.001-05:00

"Honey, don't be guilty. Be grateful."--My step-grandmother, many times throughout my life

"I want to get married in OUR country, not YOUR church."--Bumper sticker seen in California

Sometimes I feel the need to pause and be grateful for everything I've got, but especially my problems. I'd been following the Proposition 8 trial in California pretty closely, and getting angrier by the day at the depths to which homophobes will sink. Other bloggers have been documenting that--I've been too busy for it, and usually January is a pretty slow month for me. Monday, I got a voice mail from my gynecologist. I hate voice mail, but I'll always check one from her!

My "bad cramps" are my uterine fibroids are coming back, and I need to consider my treatment options. (I'll probably blog more about that later. I definitely will should I have surgery. Promise not to make it *too* graphic.) If I do have surgery, there's no more belly-dancing or dancing of any other kind for weeks, and then I have to tiptoe my way back into it. No surfing or swimming for weeks, either. And then there are those activities that I can't do at the gym or beach without getting arrested. But I want this to stop, damn it, just stop. I'm not happy. And I haven't even said this much about it to anyone IRL besides L'Ailee and my closest female friends. L'Ailee isn't happy about it, either, but she was amazing about it five years ago when I needed treatment. She will be again.

Last night, she and her best friend A. had an opportunity to go watch their Detroit Red Wings together at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. They went with other friends of A.'s who are New York Islanders fans. There weren't enough tickets for me. L'Ailee asked me repeatedly whether I was really okay with it, since her work's keeping me from seeing a lot of her and she's been coming home tired. Grudgingly, I kept saying, "Of course it's okay." Even though we'd just recently seen quite a bit of live hockey the week of Yule and Christmas, live games are a fairly rare opportunity for us, and I knew she'd hate to have to watch on TV when she could be sitting next to A. I watched the game myself on TV, just to get a gauge of what to expect when she came home. I think I saw a glimpse of them, too--there weren't many red Winged Wheel jerseys, and probably weren't that many small women with super-short dark hair and red lipstick seated next to huge blond men, either.

The Islanders have been a much better team than they were last year. And, thanks mostly to a revolving door of injuries, the Wings have been somewhat worse. Still, there were some expectations, and those expectations were not met. The Wings didn't just lose. They got shut out by the Isles, 6-0. Or as L'Ailee exclaimed when she held up her fingers to show the numbers, "I need both of my hands for this!" Even though she is an atheist and claims not to believe in such things, she's beginning to believe her presence is nothing but bad luck for her team. This newfound superstition is, of course, my fault.

"Are you all right?" L'Ailee asked me when she was done. "You look like something very bad happened. Something more serious than a game."
"It did." The earthquake in Haiti happened at about 4:20 pm yesterday. L'Ailee went right from work to the game without hearing anything about it. I got her up to speed, and we put on the news for a few minutes. She forgot about her team's humiliation very quickly.

I'd watched news coverage during intermissions, and tried to call my friend Alain in Florida. He emigrated from Haiti as a small boy. I couldn't get through on his landline or his cell. His wife is also a friend of mine, and I couldn't get through on her cell, either. Well, of course. I didn't even try his mother. I wrote e-mails to them instead. Alain answered this morning with a mass e-mail. Since the means of communication (such as they were) are down in Haiti, he and his family don't know much more than anyone else.

My step-grandmother, my paternal grandfather's second wife, says a lot of things. She tells me that "things will look better in the morning." Haiti looked worse, though, so much worse. I find myself grateful for my problems. Grateful that I can get to a gynecologist for a routine physical and contemplate surgery. Grateful that I am basically looking at a few weeks' inconvenience. Grateful that I'm angry about homophobes in California defending their "right" to vote on whether other adult citizens can marry or not. Grateful that I didn't worry about whether my wife would come home, but about her mood after watching her team get their asses handed to them on a night when she paid her hard-earned money for a ticket.

When this news cycle ends and the talking heads forget, I want to remember.

Links, links:

I wrote a small post suggesting places to send money this morning, but MSNBC and Yahoo! both have larger lists, and more needs are coming out. Maegan la Mamita Mala is specifically searching for ways that people in NYC can help, and not just with money.

Since we can't get video from the Proposition 8 trial, Prop8TrialTracker.com is providing a really helpful resource by liveblogging.

A California woman's touching story about her same-sex prison wedding.

Evolution and the human Y chromosome. Really cool.

Finally, while we were watching the Isles humiliate the Wings, Alex Ovechkin's teammate Matt Bradley took a fight for him at the Washington Capitals/Tampa Bay Lightning game. L'Ailee has decided she's found her new dream job: teaching her Russian brothers in the NHL how to fight. And yes, I did snicker a little and say something brief about how "Crosby at least fights for himself sometimes."

Haitian earthquake help

2010-01-13T10:23:00.000-05:00

I wanted to blog about sillier things, and will later. The earthquake in Haiti is weighing heavy on my mind, though. I practiced the Vodoun religion for a few years, alongside European Paganism, because it worked well with the environment in Florida. It still influences me, and I still have two good Haitian-American friends in Florida who are hurting horribly right now. I'm glad they're here and not there. Haiti already had such massive problems and was still recovering from last year's hurricane. Communications systems are down, of course, but TTG aid flights can land at the Port au Prince airport.

So even though these have been posted all over, I'm going to put some information together.

The US State Department has a toll-free number to get information about relatives in Haiti:

1-888-407-4747

The website Ayitinou serves Haitians worldwide. It has up-to-the-minute information. Not surprisingly, it is getting a lot of visitors.

The International Red Cross is getting supplies and other assistance ready to go now. If you text "HAITI" to 90999, a donation of $10 will be automatically given to the Red Cross, charged to your cell phone bill.

Doctors Without Borders is treating victims.

Yele Haiti is a relief organization started by Haitian-American rapper Wyclef Jean. Text "YELE" to 501 501 to donate $5 instantly.

They do not need clothing or construction supplies at the moment, but those needs are coming.

New decade, same ol' bullet points

2010-01-09T00:50:00.001-05:00

Once in a while, I just have to do this. Sorry. It's not gonna be the most enlightening thing you ever read, but there's some fun to be found.

* L'Ailee was so glad to have a vacation at the end of December, and I'm glad she got one, because she desperately needed it. Now she's slammed with work again. Being an instructor at a gym, she sees a lot of New Year's resolution traffic every January. She and other instructors take bets on how many of their new students will be leaving. For right now, I don't get to see much of her, unfortunately.

* This week at work was crazy-busy for me, and it will most likely get very slow next week. I prefer a nice, steady pace all over, but who doesn't? (And who gets that? Almost nobody!)

* I have a performance day with my belly-dancing class coming up on the 24th. This one makes me nervous. It'll be a smaller group than I've performed for before, but a very talented group of women, and I am at the shallow end of that talent pool. I talked my best friend Yemaya O'Reilly into taking up belly dancing at the gym when she moved up here--since she works nights, it's a terrific way for the two of us to see each other and catch up, plus we've been each other's favorite dancing partners since our late teens. She's gotten twice as good as I have in half the time.

My instructor said to choose songs we really love, since we'll be living with them a while, but I am barred from picking anything country this time, and Yemaya and I are both banned for life from picking anything by Sinead O'Connor. (Yemaya loves her as much as I do, which is an awful lot.) So it took us both a long time. We settled on "Galvanize" by the Chemical Brothers for our tandem performance, and my solo will be to the Revels' "Comanche". Now you know what's been blasting through my place all week.

* Portugal gets same-sex marriage. But New Jersey doesn't, though there might be a lawsuit coming. I think of a character in one of Louisa May Alcott's novels that is not Little Women getting upset because English women got the vote before American women: "America should be ahead in all good things!"

* No doubt most of you heard how Fox News' Brit Hume gave Tiger Woods unsolicited advice on air. Apparently if Tiger became Brit's kind of Christian, he'd never ever have another affair again ever, because that is how such noteworthy Christians as Ted Haggard and Mark Sanford roll. Sharing this message makes Brit a hero in some peoples' eyes. Barbara Hoetzu O'Brien, About.com's Buddhism guide, explains why he "doesn't know Buddhism from spinach." And Austin Cline from About.com's atheism subsite explains to anyone who cares to listen why atheists in particular take offense at evangelism. Believe me, non-atheists can relate.

* If I had to learn about this, so do you. There is now such a thing as lipstick for a woman's lips that are *not* on her face. Not even kidding. NSFW, of course.

* Finally, Queers United offers *the* viral video of the year so far. It's a young year, true, but this will be extremely difficult to top. As tennis star Andy Roddick conducts an interview at an Australian nature preserve, a couple of female koalas get very natural right behind him. To quote a YouTube commenter--and I know, they usually aren't this good--"So, Andy...holy shit, koala sex!" I couldn't resist asking L'Ailee if she wanted to "do it koala-style," and she retorted, "I don't think you could stay in the tree."

Praise You

2009-12-31T11:17:00.002-05:00

We've come a long, long way together/through the hard times and the good/I have to celebrate you, baby/I have to praise you like I should.

L'Ailee and I celebrated New Year's Eve 2004/2005 by getting married, timing our vows so we could exchange our first married kiss at the stroke of midnight. We thought it would be cool; we didn't think that our timing would make it a little bit harder than it should be to determine the exact date of our wedding anniversary. We go with December 31st.

Recently, I've talked with some people both in real life and online about how a relationship takes work, lots of good hard work. People almost inevitably say that's depressing. I don't get it. Maybe the sticking point is that most people think of "work" as something they hate doing at their jobs, especially given the state of this economy. I don't mean that a relationship should be tedious and joyless with little to no reward, not at all. I definitely don't mean that only one person should be doing the work while the other just coasts through the relationship! In those cases, of course something is wrong and you need help, or escape.

What I mean is that you should apply yourself to it as you do a hobby or skill or, if you are very lucky, a job that you love. I don't expect, for example, my belly-dancing or furniture restoration to be perfect all the time with no practice or development on my part. It's amazing to me how sometimes, really intelligent people who know how to devote themselves to things and activities expect relationships to just fall into place...and act surprised when they just fall apart instead.

I want to become an expert at being the woman L'Ailee needs me to be one day, and to get better at it every year--every *day* if I can! Some days I fall really, really short. Some days, she does, too. We pick up. We move on. We learn and are better for it. We have changed each other without even trying.

I thought about posting my usual lists of links, since I didn't for the last post. But I think I'll hold off until the next post. You know where to find all the depressing news you need anyway--some of it is to the right of this post, in links. (And I'm glad to have information available, so don't get me wrong on that, either.)

Today, as I feel amazingly blessed to be able to go to the Brooklyn Bowl party tonight (Bowling! And Q-Tip DJ'ing!) and hang out with friends and leave probably at 12:05 with the person I love more than life itself, I feel like posting only one link. This is the song my brother played for us on that magickal New Year's Eve for our first dance as a married couple. Q-Tip and the other DJs at Brooklyn Bowl will be awesome, but they won't get it as right as my brother did.

"Praise You", Fatboy Slim

Happy 2010 to all y'all!!!!

Awesome anyway

2009-12-28T20:34:00.001-05:00

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"--Kurt Vonnegut

So we're back. Security was awful, thanks to the young Nigerian man who tried to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas day. (By the way, we were driving into Detroit from Ontario on the 26th and leaving it for Pittsburgh on the 27th. The Nigerian terrorist added all kinds of extra layers of fun, especially after another passenger got sick on the exact same flight yesterday.) We had to clean our first hotel room in Pittsburgh ourselves. The Penguins lost *both* of the two games we saw, and the Red Wings won one of the two. In the first two games we saw, both of our teams actually got shut out by the opposing goalie--that's right, we saw absolutely *no* goals scored by anyone on either of our favorite teams. And you know what? It was still a better trip than going to Florida to see my family would've been! I'm not even kidding!

Due to the snowstorms, we had to leave late Monday morning for Pittsburgh, as opposed to Sunday night as we'd originally planned. We are so thankful that we didn't have to try sleeping at the airport, though, and we could negotiate with both the airline and our hotel. A lot of people didn't leave when they'd originally planned. Several of my relatives called to ~~crow about the weather~~ express their concern. One of my aunts actually had the nerve to try telling me that "Maybe God is telling you something." So, he's punishing a whole bunch of other airline passengers to get to us? Maybe he's punishing thousands of so-called sinners at one go? "Oh, *please*," I replied. She didn't like that. It was actually kind of a relief when another aunt chirped, "It's nice and sunny here in Florida!" At least she was trying to tempt us into going there, rather than reminding us of why we were staying away.

We got to Pittsburgh eventually, in time to clean our allegedly "clean" room and change into Penguins fangirl attire and get to Mellon Arena. I met Bill Guerin!!!! Mind you, it lasted all of thirty seconds. He autographed my T-shirt. He looks better in person, and a bit paler than I'd thought--I guess winter will do that to anybody. I suppose I can tell people I saw history happen. Martin Brodeur, goalie for the New Jersey Devils, set the all-time record for shutouts against the Penguins on the 21st. Good for him. Wish he'd made history against any other team instead. "Fuck history," I hissed to L'Ailee, much the way I did when Jimmie Johnson got his fourth championship, but I applauded tepidly like other Penguins fans. You know, because we're classy like that.

We were going to stay longer in Pittsburgh, but given the opportunity, we figured we'd be better off taking an earlier flight to Detroit. There was tons of snow in the Midwest. We knew Detroit, and all of Michigan, was depressed, but it still struck us to see just how much was boarded up and closed up. We felt especially good about spending some money there. The morning of the 23rd, we got manicures and pedicures. We found a tattoo parlor very close to the nail salon. We'd each sort of had an idea for a tattoo knocking around in our heads. It looked clean, and the two tattoo artists inside looked bored. So we got tattoos there. L'Ailee got her 13th and, she swears, final little black bat on her left arm. (She's gotten them one at a time, all over the East Coast and the Midwest, and she likes that there are small variations between individual bats. So do I.) I got an excerpt of the Vonnegut quote above just below my right wrist, in tiny deep turquoise letters: "Please notice when you are happy." We're both pleased with them--the only drawback is we can't donate blood for a year now. We think we're done getting tattoos anyway, at least for a very long time.

That night, we went to Joe Louis Arena. As a Penguins fan, it holds a special significance for me--it's the venue where the team won the Stanley Cup last season. L'Ailee's eyes got big and glittery. We'd joked about how she wasn't going to tell Pavel Datsyuk how much she liked him. When we went to the autumn 2008 race at Dover, L'Ailee stunned Kyle Busch by telling him he was "brilliant," and he quickly crashed out of the race to finish, like, 42nd. Datsyuk was one of the few star players on the Red Wings who wasn't injured. Well, she seized the opportunity to catch up to him and get her jersey autographed and tell him, in their native Russian, how much she liked him.

Then the Wings got their asses handed to them by the Chicago Blackhawks. "I am starting to get as superstitious as you are," she told me. "I almost worried that I gave him bad luck." We agreed that both the Wings and the Hawks are stupid to have Jimmy Howard and Antti Niemi, respectively, as their backup goalies rather than their main goalies--they are so clearly superior to Chris Osgood and Cristobal Huet it ain't even funny. Meanwhile, over in Pittsburgh, the Penguins were walking all over the Ottawa Senators, 8-2.
"Why the fuck didn't we go to *that* game?" I whined.
"Our timing is very bad," L'Ailee replied. Then we both looked at my tattoo, and burst out laughing.

On the 24th, we went to my great-aunt's house. She is 89, and we don't think she has many more Christmases or anything else in front of her. She's such a sweet and funny woman, though, and she loves having company over. Her daughter is well into her 60s and has her own health issues. It was good to be able to help them out a little bit. My...I suppose I call her my cousin, though it's somewhat odd when she's older than my mother...is a very conservative Evangelical Christian, like so many of the Florida relatives. However, my great-aunt cut any attempts at "witnessing" or otherwise baiting us short. "They've heard," she said gently. The daughter's tune changed pretty quickly.

We talk on the phone at least every other week, but there were still so many stories to tell. She showed us pictures of my great-grandmother (her sister) and my great-great-grandmother. We left with real treasures. I have a photograph of my great-grandmother and great-aunt as very young women now, that I will frame and display with pride, and a recipe for rugelach. My great-great-grandmother supported the family through the 1920s by making and bottling her own liquor--that's right, she was a bootlegger. My brother and I already have her whiskey recipe. Now I, and soon my brother, have her recipes for gin, red wine, and berry wine, all neatly handwritten. She made the berry wine for herself based on whatever she had handy, even after Prohibition ended and it was no longer a money-maker for her.

We drove to Ontario (they asked me not to share the name of the town) to be with L'Ailee's uncle, aunt, five of their six children, and their families on Christmas Day. It was a mostly Jewish/Pagan/atheist Christmas, and even the Christians there were far less, well, aggressive about it than we were used to on Christmas. My own relatives have told me that we're welcome to sleep in their homes, but emphasized that we'd have to sleep in separate rooms because, you know, they can't allow sinful behavior to go on under their own roofs. (Even if we're too tired to do anything but crash on the bed together, that's sinful.) So we sleep in hotels. L'Ailee's uncle and aunt had urged us to spend the night at their home when we were planning this trip, and she actually laughed when I asked, "Same room?" I am a little embarrassed to say that I teared up slightly as they showed us the guest room, with one full bed, where we would sleep. But one of L'Ailee's cousins is a gay man, and another is a bi woman, and both brought same-sex partners. I'm the only openly queer person in my family.

We talked about family and the weather. We got worried when the reports about the aborted bombing on the Detroit-bound flight came up via texts on several cell phones, and turned on the news long enough to learn the details. We shared stories and ate a lot. It's a damn good thing L'Ailee got me into hockey, because the roster for the Russian Olympic mens' team was announced that day and the World Juniors championship was coming up on the 26th. Surprisingly enough, this Russian-Canadian family was excited about both these things. Everyone but me was a Wings, Senators, or Toronto Maple Leafs fan. I made L'Ailee's aunt--actually, her whole family--laugh out loud without trying again. She jokingly asked L'Ailee, "How did you let her become a Penguins fan?," as if this was a grievous lapse in my hockey education. The redneck girl in me bubbled up: "Let, hell! Nobody *lets* me do anything." I guess it was all in keeping with the theme of our vacation. L'Ailee's uncle urged us to consider alternating between their home and my family for the holidays. We're definitely considering it.

Getting back over the border was trickier than coming up, of course. There was a lot more questioning and searching, and the line was longer. Eventually, however, we got to our hotel in Detroit, then back to Joe Louis. They played the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first part of a home-and-home series. L'Ailee didn't like the Wings' signing Todd Bertuzzi this summer--he has a justifiably bad reputation. However, she grudgingly admitted that she didn't hate him quite so much after he scored the only two Wings goals and gave the team the win. We enjoyed our only winning sports team sex of the trip because of him, so, thank you, Todd Bertuzzi.

We flew to Pittsburgh in the morning, tired but happy. The Leafs were a much better team than they had been earlier in the season. Still, it wasn't a shutout. Such a pleasure to watch Sidney Crosby score a goal in person, just feet away from me. (I did that during the New York Islanders season opener, too, but I don't get bored with it. At least I could holler out "Hell yeah!" without people around me looking homicidal this time.) The teams traded leads throughout the game. With a minute and a half to spare, our own Mike Rupp tied the game, and I whispered to L'Ailee, "Cool! We *own* overtime!" Then a Leafs player, Ian Fucking White, had to go and ruin things by scoring a winning goal in the last minute of regulation. Oh, well. I got to experience the Mellon Arena during its last season as the home of the Penguins, before the team moves to the new Consol Energy arena across the street. I got to look at Consol, too. I've said this before in other venues, but I love seeing places that I've only seen on TV come to life before my eyes. That in itself was an experience.

This morning, we skipped the free continental breakfast at the hotel in favor of breakfast at Sheetz, then dashed to the airport. We went through far more security than we liked. We weren't permitted to go to the lav or have anything on our laps in the last hour of the flight, but we'd been warned about that, so we timed things accordingly. I don't see how this or most of the other security measures enacted in response to terrorist attacks actually help--I would prefer that our government, you know, catches this shit before it happens and punishes the people who deserve it.

Then we were home. Oh, we were happy. Our cats will forgive us eventually, but they know and like the teenage boy who fed and played with them. (We don't know what we'll do when he starts college in a couple years.) We rested and took care of things and answered phone calls. We're actually kinda looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Right now, L'Ailee is watching the Wings play the Jackets in the second part of that home-and-home series. As I type, apparently they're more interested in killing each other than scoring.

"I got to see these teams live two nights ago," L'Ailee said. "That is so great!"
"Wanna go back?"
"Oh, I would love to. But I also like to be home on my own sofa."

If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Compromising with my family

2009-12-19T14:26:00.000-05:00

Can't believe I've gone over a week without blogging. Well, technically that isn't true. I actually launched a new project: Cocktails With the Penguins. It combines the (mostly very casual) cocktail recipes I've fixed myself in the kitchen when most people are getting beer, which I hate, with commentary about the Pittsburgh Penguins. I intend to name one after each member of this year's team, plus do things like red, white and blue cocktails for Team USA during the Olympics.

This is the first time I ever wrote a blog about something besides, well, me, and I'm finding that interesting--the focus becomes more narrow, in that I have to mostly keep it to the intended subject and not go into tangents, but wider, in that I'm keeping more people in mind besides myself. It's weird that I could apply myself to that blog and not this one. But, you know, cocktails and sports are easy. Smarter people than me usually beat me to current events. It's life that can get hard to write.

Right now, life is very, very cold and very, very white. It's snowed, and more is coming. Winter officially starts two days from now, but I'd say it's here already. We're supposed to be leaving Sunday night. We think we're still good to go to Pittsburgh. We're good even if we have to leave in the daytime on Monday--the first of the four games we're seeing isn't until 7 pm. Hopefully the snow won't be more than an inconvenience for anybody, but I know that won't be the case. I'm grateful that's what it is for us. Right now, behind glass and brick with the power on (knock on wood), it's beautiful. I love how snow makes everything look like it's been frosted. The cats have decided they want our bed and our blankets, even though they have fur coats. L'Ailee and I know how they feel.

Last weekend, I went to DC to spend a weekend with my mother. She tried to guilt me into spending Christmas in Florida with the entire family, but I meant it about skipping it this year and needing a break, so that was our compromise. L'Ailee didn't come. She had some classes to teach at her gym, and she was perfectly okay with that. I think my mother was, too. She didn't accept L'Ailee and her place in my life for a very long time, and then she embraced her like a second daughter, and now she's running cold again. She goes in cycles like that. She's that way with (conservative Christian) religion, too, and right now she's in a super-religious mode. Bonus. I tried to stay far away from the topic of religion; she's wanted to run to it. After almost 14 years, though, I'm a pretty committed Pagan. I don't think she gets that.

She used to just hate L'Ailee's guts consistently, though, so I'll take improvement wherever I can get it. I took sightseeing around DC with just her over a huge family reunion at someone's house, too. We both love DC. She loved showing me all the monuments (again) and taking me to a restaurant she knew and liked. We talked some, and it wasn't bad. Plus, of course we went to say goodbye to sweet Tai Shan, the National Zoo's panda boy who's bound for China. The security guard smiled and said, "Follow the trail of tears." Neither of us cried, though. He's so sweet and playful, and we'll miss seeing him on the PandaCam, but we think he'll be better off in a big Chinese preserve among peers.

Of all the Cousins, a/k/a my generation, of my family, I am the oldest by eons. (Actually, 7 years, because my brother was born when I was 7, and then my first cousin came along when I was 11. I'm 35 now.) I have always loved bringing L'Ailee to the reunions with me not only for moral support, not just because she's my spouse as much as anyone else's, but because it's so wonderful to have one other person my age in the place. One of the Cousins is 17 years old, and he called last night.

I think he's hurt that we're not coming. He says he understands in words, but his tone of voice said something else. I do feel bad about that. L'Ailee and I like the Cousins a lot. The 17-year-old is a really thoughtful, bright, kind boy, and whenever his parents annoy me, I always remind myself that whatever else my uncle and aunt have done, they've raised *him*.

He wanted a few tips on beading. I used to bead a lot, except that now me and L'Ailee and several female friends and relatives have tons of jewelry. Years ago, I brought my beading box while I was babysitting him and his younger brother. Mother's Day was coming up, and they asked me if I could make their mother something. I knew an activity when I saw it! Instead of making her something, I had the younger one string a bracelet for her and the older one making earrings. Our grandmother asked if I planned to "turn them gay, too." I told her that eventually, they'd probably have girlfriends and need to make something for them. Well, it happened. The 17-year-old is making earrings and a necklace for his girlfriend. I won't lie; it felt good to know that I'd inspired that a long time ago.

He asked me if we could "at least" be there for his high school graduation in June. "Of course!" I blurted out. "I wouldn't miss it for the world! I know [L'Ailee] feels the same way." It's true. She's always exhausted on Friday nights because she has a huge class load that day, so she was asleep while we talked. This morning, I had to tell her she wants to go to Florida for a couple days in June. (The festivities will be on a weekend, TTG--only one vacation day needed!) When I told her who it was for, she had no problem at all. I had him put his mother on the phone, and she's fine with it. She should be--we've given him homework help by phone and e-mail more than once! Besides, he's on track to be salutatorian. He deserves lots of cheering.

So many of my relatives have, like, black belts in guilt. For so long, I've let them turn me 13 again. I feel much more adult in the way I'm dealing with them, even if my methods involve a lot of avoidance at the moment. (And hockey! We're looking forward to those games even though her Red Wings are as decimated by injuries as...my Penguins were last month.) I'll have to learn other methods. But I've already said quite strongly, "I no longer respond to guilt or manipulation. If you want me around, you're going to have to act like it!" I made the woman I love, who loves me back, happy in the process. Maybe some of you don't get what I'm going on about or why that's such a big deal to me. But I feel pretty damned good right now.

Whatever you have celebrated or will be celebrating, may winter be good to you.

Links, links:

New Jersey Republicans are promoting a strengthened same-sex civil unions law as a consolation prize for its LGBT citizens. I remember when the civil unions were strongly protested.

Also from Box Turtle Bulletin, a British rugby legend comes out.

Why it's okay for atheists to celebrate the winter holidays

Queen Victoria was a far more ambitious and passionate woman than many people would guess, and the movie The Young Victoria shows it. Check this review out, then check the movie out!

Finally, also from Salon, here is an extremely fun and interesting cocktail recipe that's nothing like the stuff on my Cocktails With the Penguins site. I wish I was this creative, and yet I'm sort of grateful I'm not this creative. I know L'Ailee is, too!

Hot links for a cold night

2009-12-10T00:31:00.001-05:00

While my wife is definitely more than hot enough, there has been some other hotness burning through my computer wires the past couple days, and so I'll be sharing it. I'm starting off with sports--hey, don't you groan at me! I'm ending with other subjects, and anyway, at least there will be no mention of any golf players named after big cats here. (Well, after that one.)

* The Pittsburgh Penguins made their annual trip to a local children's hospital bearing gifts for kids who can't go home for the holidays. Awww. The only thing cuter would be *real* penguins in Santa hats. You know the Pens are secure in their masculinity just by looking at their sweaters. How about their big, bad enforcer Eric Godard (center) and their tough winger Bill Guerin (right) playing tea party in pretty tiaras? You wouldn't see any Flyers doing that!

* The beautiful and talented Tony Stewart presented his Stewie Awards to other drivers. It's mostly an opportunity to joke and swap stories. Smoke and Juan Pablo Montoya, who I also rather enjoy looking at, ended the season at Homestead on a mature, classy note by deliberately spinning each other out and ruining each others' cars. But, as you can see from this clip of Montoya accepting his award for best in-car radio communication, they really don't hate each other at all! Hope they remember that at Daytona next year! And if they don't, I hope they have the decency to have their fist fight in front of a camera, 'cause that will replace the sea goddess above as my blog logo.

* Speaking of racing, the story of the year is finally settled. Danica Patrick will be racing part-time with JR Motorsports, a/k/a Dale Earnhardt, Jr's company. Honestly, I have not been as impressed with her as, um, some of my readers. But she isn't at all bad to look at in a fireproof suit, and I hope she opens the door for other women. (Not just because that would be a fantastic day for a bi NASCAR fan, either.) I'd love to see her win Nationwide races!

* Sinead O'Connor celebrated her 43rd birthday yesterday by getting angry at the Pope. Again. But this time, she used her words. Good words, too, though she needs a proofreader. (I'll volunteer! I've got lots of experience with proofreading for smart, gorgeous women who can't spell or punctu...OW, damn it!) There's also this interview about her feelings toward the Church and her new single for the GEMS charity.

* Like every other woman-loving femme in NYC, I adore Rachel Maddow. It's easy when you see things like her awesome takedown of an ex-gay ministry promoter who had it coming.

* In Uganda, a bill is currently being debated that would force gay and lesbian people to undergo conversion "therapy." That is actually sort of good news, sadly enough. I am extremely interested in how American "pro-family" groups will respond to this modification.

* I thought Pottery Barn's ultra-neutral Christmas trees were awful. Then I saw this War-on-Christmas, or "CHRISTmas", tree for people who think regular trees just aren't Christian enough. No, it is not a joke. Yes, it's ugly and tacky and joyless and even, um, not really appropriate for celebrating the *birth* of Jesus. Consider the people who'd buy such a thing! See more, if you dare, at Boss Creations' website.

* How about something to put under that CHRIST-mas tree? Cory Silverberg at About.com Sexuality came up with this illustrated luxury sex toy gift list, and then another list with a more realistic budget. You know, for that hard-to-buy-for relative. I don't have to tell you these are completely and totally NSFW, right?

* There was actually some good panda news! When I saw the subject line "Zoo Atlanta panda announcement", I clicked with fear and dread in light of DC's beautiful boy Tai Shan leaving us soon. But only Mei Lan, their three-year-old girl, is leaving soon, and like Tai's departure, it's on schedule. The parents are staying five more years!!!! I'm *very* happy about this, because this bodes well for the DC panda parents sticking around, too.

* Finally, the inevitable happened. Christmas carol burnout hit my office. Here is a cure. I discovered this last year and made an entire department howl "That is SO WRONG!" by sending the MP3 file to my work husband. Now you can appall, astonish, and delight someone else with this YouTube rendition of the infamous "Chipmunks Roasting On An Open Fire," complete with lyrics.