In what can only be described as one of the most disgusting displays of bigotry and discrimination stemming from the current anti-gay federal government run by Dubya and his cronies, Texas lawmakers are trying their best to write into law a ban on gay foster parents.

Republican Rep. Robert Talton, the cretin who introduced the amendment, said, "It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children, and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual."

You sicken me, Bob, and I assure you that I will do my best to smear your name all over the media so that others can see what kind of bigot, hypocrite and hateful bastard you really are.  Your place in hell will be especially hot and uncomfortable, I'm afraid, since you know how prisoners dislike those who try to hurt children.

Arkansas tried this very same thing but their law was struck down in December when a judge said it was unconstitutional.  Apparently the clueless idiots in the Texas legislature missed that memo.

If the law passes and is signed by Governor Rick Perry — something he has promised he would do — it's estimated that between 2,000 and 2,500 kids could be affected.  These children are currently in homes where the foster parents are gay and, if enacted, the law would require those children to be removed and placed in other homes.

I simply do not understand how, when our state already has resource problems when it comes to caring for disadvantaged children, we could possibly justify taking them out of loving, stable and decent homes simply because the foster parents aren't heterosexual.  It's been proven time and again through scientific methods that growing up with one or more gay parents has no direct or negative impact on the development of children, yet here we are putting radical fundamentalist religion ahead of science and the Constitution.

Oh, yes, you can rest assured that this won't pass the constitutional test.  As I discussed in the most recent installment of my gay marriage series, the Constitution strictly prohibits these kinds of laws at the state level.  Not only is it discriminatory (you'd think they had learned their lesson with the sodomy law issue), but it recklessly endangers the lives of the children involved (can you justify removing them from good homes based on intolerance?) and specifically forbids a portion of the Texas population from taking part in a government program based solely on what is protected information — their sexual orientation.

One must also consider the fact that foster parents are paid by the state, so Texas will also be taking away state-sponsored benefits from a class of citizens specifically because of their sexual orientation.

No, those in the Texas government are not very smart at all.  Rick Perry, Dubya's whore of a protégé, is intentionally alienating a large portion of the Texas population (yes, "Dick" Perry, there are a lot of us here in Texas) and will most certainly pay politically for that.  The rest of the Repugnicans — and those spineless Democrats who voted for the law (shame on you!) — will also have to fork over some political capital soon.  This will go to the courts, it will be overturned, and Texas will remember how our own lawmakers tried to hurt Texas children by dragging their own religious beliefs into the state capitol and trying to beat Texans into submission with bigotry.

Gay (foster) parents cannot protect their children from the charged and often hateful dialogue that maligns them as immoral and deviant, especially when such attacks come from the very government which is charged with protecting its citizens and ensuring the safety of children.  Anti-gay rhetoric undermines these children's sense of security as they live with an ongoing anxiety that they could be removed from their homes without warning.  Texas' government is proving definitively that it's more than mere rhetoric, that it's actually a coordinated effort on the part of religious zealots at every level of society to undermine freedom and engender hate and prejudice within society in the hopes that a cultural war against non-heterosexuals will begin.

I do realize all of this is a political ploy intended to pander to the Christian cults who now run this country by way of the Dubya régime.  The idea is to look like you're trying to squelch the gay population and diminish their rights in full violation of the Constitution since that is the ploy Dubya uses and engenders — and even promotes — in his fellow cultists and Repugnicans.

The non-heterosexual population of this country is quickly tiring of the whipping-boy position we're being put in, constantly being used as pawns to stir up hatred in America and to violate the Constitution.  I can only hope that we as a class of people wake up soon and get our collective acts together before we find ourselves in "internment camps" like the Japanese did during World War II.

I assure you that Dubya and the rest of the right-wing cultists are trying their very best to make this happen.

I shouldn’t have watched this movie.  It’s almost worse than Dreamcatcher, but not quite (it may be impossible to get that bad).  Still, this is one character that should have remained dead after the debacle that was Daredevil.

I’m not saying Jennifer Garner isn’t hot and doesn’t look good in scant clothing (yes, even as a gay man I can say that — she’s hot, there’s no denying it).

I am saying Elektra sucked worse than a Hoover with a new empty bag and a more than adequate power supply.

It was simply that bad.  Predictable, anticlimactic, long on atmosphere and short on story, lacking any definitive action and ultimately a predictable mess, Elektra is a movie that shouldn’t have been made (amongst a great many others).

Don’t waste your time.

I've always enjoyed Green Day's music.  I've been a fan for many years and couldn't wait to get my hands on American Idiot when it finally came out — especially considering we've been waiting for an album with new music from Green Day since 2000.

When I heard "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" on the radio for the first time, I realized something had happened to Green Day, some kind of change, some kind of maturation if you will.  Their music had definitely taken a new spin, so I was a bit reluctant to buy American Idiot based on the expectation that they had somehow changed.  I like the song though, so I bought it during a shopping trip with Rick.

I wasn't disappointed.

This is good stuff.  Green Day has definitely matured.

Rest assured there's vintage Green Day here.  "St. Jimmy" and "She's a Rebel" are perfect examples.  But there's something else here.

The band seems to have expanded their horizons by including their normal punk rock music along with elaborate melodies, odd tempo changes, and a collection of songs that freely reference classic rock.  From power ballads to Indian strings to a hushed, almost pop-ish sound, Green Day has taken a step forward with this album, a step in the right direction.

From the political machinations of "American Idiot" to the "Wake Me Up When September Ends" which wouldn't sound entirely out of place on a Jessica Simpson record, this album offers everything that Green Day has to offer and a whole lot more.

Yes, this album is less punk that their previous work.  This still represents a significant step forward for the band, so keep that in mind.  If you like Dookie, listen to it instead.  If you want to hear how Green Day has matured and what new surprises this has wrought in their music, then I strongly suggest American Idiot.

The longest recorded tapeworm found in the human body was 33 meters (108.27 feet) in length (that’s 36 yards long for all of you mindless idiots who need a football reference to understand length).  The longest recorded life span of a tapeworm was 35 years.

The typical gut has 1.36 kilograms (3 pounds) of over 400 different strains of bacteria which aid in the digestion of food.  This bacteria is very harmful to the inside of the body.  If your body’s natural defenses fail, these germs would consume you from the inside out within about 48 hours.

What is one of the most difficult items for sewage works to handle?  It’s insoluble and is so fine it passes right through most filtration systems.  Every month water treatment companies all over the world remove more than a ton of it from their water treatment plants and take it to landfills to be buried.  You guessed it: pubic hair.

The best recorded distance for projectile vomiting is 8.23 meters (about 27 feet).

The germs present in human feces can pass through up to ten layers of toilet paper.

It is physically possible to cough your guts up.

A woman who safaried on her visit to South America began to experience severe pains in her left ear, accompanied by headaches, dizziness and constant rustling sounds.  She assumed it was tinnitus.  It became so serious that exploratory surgery was required.  Doctors found a spider which had become trapped in her ear and had eventually eaten through her eardrum and was living within the aural cavity.  The rustling sounds were from the spider crawling around inside her skull.  An egg sac was also removed.

Parasites count for 0.01% of your body weight.

Despite what your mother told you, if you swallow chewing gum it doesn’t stay in the intestines for seven years.  It normally passes through the system and is excreted without incident.  Several cases have been reported, however, where the gum has stuck in the rectum, causing the unfortunate sufferer to excrete long sticky trails of gum.

A man in Australia was concerned about a growing lump on his nose, was examining it in the mirror and saw a redback spider crawl out.  Doctors found an entire redback nest inside his nose.

A woman in Queensland who had lost a lot of weight went to the doctor with a big, hard, horn-like object protruding from her abdomen.  Closer examination determined that it was years of compacted belly-button fluff.

My friend Brett had some bad news this week.  She had to have one of her dogs put to sleep early Sunday morning.  This is Zoe and here’s what Brett had to say.

Do you remember me mentioning my sick dog last week?  I had to put her down Sun morning at 3 am.  Needless to say, I have been suffering from a SERIOUS broken heart since then.  She was a German Shep and she was 10.  I adopted her from the human [sic] society when she was 8 weeks old.  Her stomach twisted and bloated.  They had to do emergency surgery on her.  When they opened her up, she was diagnosed with liver cancer and she would never have made it out of surgery.  They were having trouble regulating her heartbeat the whole time.

We as humans accept the fact that we will outlive almost all of our pets.  Our lifespan is longer than theirs and we understand from the beginning that we’ll see them grow from babies into adulthood and eventually into death.  It’s a measure of a person’s character when they can go through that and still have enough love and affection for animals to do it again and again.  Rescues like her are even more difficult in that sense as we adopted them to save their lives.

At least Zoe is no longer in pain.

Yawn.

I’d write more but I honestly don’t remember anything from this movie that caught my attention or made me take notice.  What a waste of time.  Basically all of the funny parts were what you saw in the previews.  Yes, that was it.  The rest of it was tiresome, garbled and tedious shit.

Don’t waste your time.

I know I’ve been MIA lately.  We’re so busy at work that I’ve been putting in way too many hours and completely missing any semblance of a personal life.  We have more than a handful of large projects going on while we’re still trying to solidify a reorganization from January, train staff on a myriad of systems they’ve never seen and never worked with but now have to support, try to support five very different infrastructures while calling ourselves “integrated” and survive a hiring freeze and sudden tightening of the financial belt — all without disrupting business operations, something that really isn’t working too well at the moment.

My boss’ boss held a conference call with all of us a few weeks ago to try and help.  He failed miserably.  His idea of help was to shoot morale right between the eyes.  He provided absolutely no guidance or answers outside of essentially telling us that we’re doing a bad job and that he’d get rid of us if we didn’t shape up (”if it’s bad for the company, it’s bad for the employee” was the way he put it).

For a man who’s so out of touch with what the hell is going on, he sure thinks he’s in charge.  He may have the authority, but he has no clue.

Typical business, I know, as it requires de-learning to move up in management.  It simply amazes me, however, that, knowing the strain we’re under and how ready the employees are to walk, he at no point tried to hide the fact that the phone call was to take us to task and to put his foot down.  Most of the conversation was meaningless gibberish and management double talk.  He tossed out a few complimentary kudos then promptly squelched any joy from that experience by smacking us all around and treating us like insignificant nothings.

Even he said that one complaint can destroy a hundred “atta boys” — and he proved it right there on the call by giving a few compliments before he pulled out the knife and began, one by one, stabbing us all in the front (I’d say back but he did it directly to our faces).

Suffice it to say that at least two people have left the company since then and I know many more are looking to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as they can.

I certainly can’t blame them.

"One can pick a cat to fit almost any kind of decor, color scheme, income, personality, mood.  But under the fur, whatever color it may be, there still lies, essentially unchanged, one of the world's free souls."

— Eric Gurney

[top to bottom: Kako, Loki, Kazon and Grendel]

This is an elegy I wrote in 1991.  I had been dating a "straight" boy who, as I learned much later in our relationship, had never actually been with anyone — boy or girl.  Much to my surprise I found that I was his first sexual encounter and his first romantic relationship.  This is the same person I wrote love lives here about (yes, I was more than smitten).

Because I was out and he was not (again I stress he was "straight"), we had a difficult time over the year and so many months that we dated.  I was so madly in love with him and wanted to express it in any way that I could.  This clashed terribly with his closeted point of view and extreme fear of being labeled anything but heterosexual.

We broke up several times during our relationship because he couldn't "deal with" being in love with another man, but he always came back and proclaimed his love for me even more passionately than the last time.  Each time we separated and rejoined one another, our relationship would become even more powerful, more passionate, more encompassing than it had ever been.

Yet we never got to our second anniversary.  He decided he would join the US Army and marry a sweet hometown girl, although perhaps not in that order.  His desire to be a father to her child (who really knows who the biological father was…) and sincere anguish at what he felt in his relationship with me certainly pushed him to make the decision to leave.

We spoke a few times over the two or three years after we parted in silence and tears, but my hopes, expressed as longing in this childish little poem, were never realized.

This is a daft and almost ingenuous — dare I say juvenile? — attempt to put into words what I felt when we said our final goodbyes.

he leaves again
I weep for him
I love him so
please don't go
he cannot stay
don't go away
my love for him
does not dim
will he come back
until then lack
my empty heart
becomes dark
the space he left
is so unkempt
he cannot leave
to him I cleave
left all alone
the tears are gone
for what I weep
I cannot keep
is it meant to be
I will see
I hope it is
but fear still lives

[circa 1991]

Once again I'm going to verbally bash SBC for being unresponsive, deceitful and uncaring.

On Sunday (April 3) at 09:42 I sent a complaint to abuse@sbcglobal.net regarding DNS injection attempts from adsl-68-251-141-190.dsl.covlil.ameritech.net (68.251.141.190).  The person who has that DSL connection has been attempting — since March 20 — to force updates to my DNS servers for one of the domains I own.

I grepped the logs and sent all of the pertinent info to SBC so they could stop this person.  No harm has been done but it is an ongoing attack on my DNS servers and, since I get daily reports telling me about anything out of the ordinary, I finally decided to have it stopped.

I received a response from SBC just a few short minutes after I sent the complaint which said, among other things, "If you do not receive any contact within 48 hours of this acknowledgment please consider your case closed with action."

Today is April 6 and it is now 18:08, clearly more than 48 hours after my first report of the problem, and the DNS injection attempts are continuing.  In fact, the last one was only a few short minutes ago.

After all of the issues I've had with SBC (you can read about all of those issues here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), this is just icing on the cake.  They've finally proven to me that they just don't give a shit about their customers or about dealing with people who are being attacked by their customers.

Obviously SBC believes that inaction is an action unto itself.  Pathetic little weasle of a company.