A-Felching We Will Go
The past week has been a busy one here at Björnslottet: my father has been visiting, we did two final performances of "On the Twentieth Century" last weekend, we got the house ready for the cast party this last Friday night, I had my forty-ninth birthday on Saturday, and I was preoccupied all week with thoughts of a possible new job (and career — more as it develops) following an interview only last week. Phew.
I'm also behind: behind on reading, behind on writing, way behind on fiction writing, perpetually behind on e-mail and gardening and sending thank-you notes, which I usually think of but never quite manage to do. I'm just not an "ahead" type of person, I guess.
How fortunate for me, then, that Shakespeare's Sister has spent the week coming up with fabulous posts for her blog, so all I have to do is provide links and say go read her stuff instead. Think of this as an encomium of sorts, a sop to my own residual protestant guilt at not writing as much as I wanted.
A mere weekend ago, the sorry spectacle of Microsoft's betrayal of their gay and lesbian employees, stockholders, and customers was a big story; it seems that it's still simmering, but who can tell whether it will boil over. At any rate, when S'sS saw the news that the LA Gay & Lesbian Center asked Microsoft to return the Corporate Vision Award that the Center can now see in retrospect was given to them in error, she was tickled pink, to judge by her reaction.
She also restates a fact, one that seems almost hackneyed by now but is nevertheless apparently true, that
Creative fields have historically attracted and continue to be disproportionately filled with gays and lesbians: art, film, music, graphic design, architecture, interior design, writing, advertising, marketing, etc.
We can all think of pop-psych reasons why, but it's still true regardless. Unfortunately, it seems that all us internally anguished and tortured homos keep on creatin' no matter how much society gets down on us — I'd really hate to think, though, that oppression by faith-based hate groups makes the music and the painting and the invention better. Alas, we've never all gone on strike (although I do remember an attempt to organize a strike of Hollywood hairdressers to get political wives to put the pressue on their husbands…).
Not to mention that an awful lot of those creative people are the nerdy, antisocial, sometimes femmy geeks that make the Microscoft products work to the extent that they do. What an awful thing, to throw away the goodwill of all those productive employees with such carelessness. Tsk. As I've mentioned elsewhere, that goodwill doesn't come back nearly so quickly as it disperses. Reflect: when Cracker Barrel finally changed it's corporately enforced policy of discriminating against homos, no one really got all that excited about the improvement.
Moments later, S'sS (in "Women, They’re Coming For You Next") relates an irritating little story about misogyny and domestic-violence legislation. The incident itself seems so tiny, so petty, and so trivial that most middle-aged white men would have no trouble whatsoever missing the point entirely — and that's what makes it so very disappointing. It's about women this time, but as we discover, the civil rights of all can quickly be imperiled.
At any rate, it let S'sS ruminate on her answers to the question:
I’ve been asked why I am so passionate about fighting for gay rights when I myself am not gay.
It's poetry and truth. One could only wish that gays and lesbians cared half as much about their own liberty.
In "Women: Soon to be Officially Defined by Their Babymaking Abilities?", S'sS gives a short but precise analysis of a new congressional "definition" of "woman"
WOMAN- The term `woman' means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.
By this point, you might be able to imagine that her commentary will be pointed and sharp.
I don't know that I was ever a big fan of Al Gore, although I was far from a detractor. Perhaps it's because I can see some characteristics in Gore that I see in myself and would prefer to replace with stronger, more assertive characteristics. Regardless, I was grateful for the few hundred words of "I Love Al Gore" that helped me towards an increased appreciation — a positive increase in appreciation of any political figure is rare these days.
Quiet, reasoned discourse momentarily steps aside to let through a high-speed locomotive carrying this emergency message in "Unmitigated Bigotry in Alabama":
Who does this motherfucker think he is?! Censorship isn’t healthy for America. Bigotry isn’t healthy for America. Small-minded, sanctimonious, ignorant, prejudiced, witch-hunting, piece-of-shit dirtbags who bloviate about a fictitious “homosexual agenda” while simultaneously managing to find homosexual undertones in everything he reads aren’t healthy for America.
The answer to the rhetorical question is: Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen. The italics and boldface are original. Sometimes it's necessary to raise one's voice and pound the table to make a point, and so much more effective not to do it all the time!
Finally, I'll end by noting that Ss'S makes all the commentary (and more and better than I) about another collection of moronic remarks about gay people, this time made by
North Carolina County Commissioner, Bill James, whose hatred for homosexuals is only matched by his apparent obsession with their sexual behavior.
The root of the problem: he wants to get a rise out of his listeners by denouncing the horrible, homosexual perversion of "felching", but: 1) he doesn't know what it is; and 2) he can't even spell it correctly. It all makes for a bit of good, clean sport in "Felch You".
For some reason the idea puts me in mind of Isaac's favorite Pennsylvania-Dutch syntactical form which, in this instance, would constuct a sentence along these lines:
Felch me over that gerbil.
But enough already.
Contrary to appearances, this post is not just an excuse to create a half-dozen trackbacks in a double-barreled attempt at self-agrandizement and blog-traffic pump-up-ing, although I admit that that may be a side effect, obviously not unintended now that I've mentioned it. However, if I'm going to do it to anyone, I'll do it to Shakespeare's Sister who is blessed for coming up with the idea that she called "Friday Blog Whorin'", with which I occasionally indulge myself when I think I've been writing something notably, delightfully odd.
Most recently that probably would have been my post about "Chicken Feathers", which I found particualarly satisfying. I liked its combination of interesting facts, reasonably good narrative, and unexpected juxtapositions.
Yesterday, after having accompanied the choir (see the amazing cello-playing atheist!) for the anthem at Isaac's church (i.e., the one where he is the music director), a young (8-year-old) friend asked me some question to which I gave what I thought was a particularly creative answer. She squinted up at me and said "You know, you're very weird." Naturally, I said "Thank you."
She gave her hear a little shake and amended her statement: "No, very, very weird." We made a tacit agreement that that was an even better assessment.
Be that as it may, this started out as a nod of appreciation towards someone whose writing I continue to enjoy, and I think I'll try to let it end that way.
2 Responses
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Monday, 2 May 2005 at 14.11
Permalink
LOL! You make me feel like a real blogger! Yay! :-)
(Do me a favor – on Thursday, email me a reminder to blogroll you next Friday. Mind like a steel sieve, me.)
on Thursday, 19 May 2005 at 21.25
Permalink
[…] n. I thought I would have incisive commentary, but I've found that, even faster than I predicted it would happen, I've lost interest in cheering the evil giant now that they've awakene […]