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Gay Maine

I know a lot of my liberal friends are distraught over the latest vote on gay marriage. The citizens of Maine, in an unusually high turnout for a minor election, voted against homosexual unions in that state this Tuesday past. What I would like to say to both my liberal and conservative friends and readers is that this matters not at all in the greater scheme of things.

Allow me to expound.

In nearly all two-sided arguments there are four positions. Your position (+), their position (-), your position from their point of view (-), their position from their point of view (+) and, of course, the mirror image if you are them and they is you. As the graphic below illustrates.

In the case of gay marriage, those positions are approximately:
A. Marriage is a right that should be available to all persons regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, number of limbs or facial warts.
B. Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman only; despite the fact that over 50% of marriages piss on this sacred bond in the foam of divorce.
C. You are godless, soulless heathens who seek to destroy the very fabric of the nation; somehow that fabric is not freedom, but is in fact marriage.
D. You are close-minded bigots, who couldn't handle freedom if it came gift wrapped and delivered on a rainbow bus.

I believe I have captured the essence of the various positions. But as I said before, it doesn't matter. Why you ask?

Every state in the nation, yes even Arkansas and Mississippi will eventually vote to legalize gay marriage. Every single one. What? Why? How?

Well folks, I hope this doesn't come as a shock to all you breeders out there, but you have birthed and raised a generation of children who are not bigots. They don't care who is gay or straight or even who is black, yellow, white or brown. While they may still believe that heterosexual marriage is sacred, they don't believe they should impose those beliefs on others. Yes, even you right-wing fascists are donating sperm and ovum to children who actually believe in liberty and justice for all.

I know, I know that kid down the street is just as big a red-neck as his daddy; but he is a member of a dwindling minority. The attitudes on gay marriage will change as these children become voters and express their will that basically adheres to a policy that they should not legislatively impose their will on others. And don't look now but many of those kids are already eighteen and they are registered to vote.

Now I realize that I have once again slammed social conservatives here, by defaming them with words like bigot and red-neck; I have also defamed Mississippi and Arkansas, when it was Maine which prompted today's rant. So allow me to balance the scale.

You liberals, particularly you gay liberals. You are now going to point out that this change will be too late for you. You want to be married now. Actually what you really want is to have the societal recognition of your union and the accrued benefits of marriage. But! I do not have those rights available to me. You see I am a single-American. I chose not to marry, so I will never receive the tax advantages, health care benefits and other social protections of a married person.

But wait you say! I at least have the choice, as a heterosexual single-American I could get married. False logic! Freedom of choice should not give rise to specialized freedoms available only to those who make the politically or socially correct choice. Certainly I think you should have the right to marry but stop your whining about inequality unless or until you tell me that you will renounce the unequal benefits that arise to marriage persons. Go ahead and marry the person of your hearts choosing but renounce the elevated status that marriage gives you over those who make a different choice. You understand the words "different choice" right? The words are: with liberty and justice for all. It doesn't say marriage makes you special or privileged.

We are all equal and free when there are no more down-trodden minorities but also when no group is a privileged minority.
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photo credit: glca.com
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Writin' 'Bout Writin'





That is actually a very recent quote from an opinion piece in the NYTimes by Olivia Judson. I like the way she writes, although recently I have been reading books and articles with styles I do not care for. It seems that like John Cage music there are some disconnected writing modes that really ring some reader's cerebral chimes. I am discovering that reading the discordant makes it oh so much easier to analyze the style if not the attraction. Right now I am plowing through Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon with it's over 1100 pages. Back when I was working in the cyber-reality, I enjoyed the darkness of his virtual world in Snow Crash, but his herky-jerky story line in this work is distracting. Yet, I persevere because I am trying to master the craft of reading a work I truly admire without getting lost in the author's world.

I want to see beneath the fiction and discover the structure that allows a reader to fall so deeply into the created world. I have read the Mars Trilogy at least three times trying to follow the seamless character transitions. I strive to some day be able to read Blake and understand how his hallucinations can become mine. Until then I will scribble away at my several nascent books and articles, hoping they will someday emerge into the light of public scrutiny and paint worlds yet unseen for my readers.
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A Mix and Match Rant


Two items cross my path in the last forty-eight. Hmm, perhaps it was their paths that crossed. Whatever, I have been putting in a clump of hours on the Matusow screenplay and in that light I was interested in an article link sent to me by three separate friends. The title is: No I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script. If you are considering a screenplay, novel, short story or even a blog; I cordially invite you to read it. To my friends, buddies, pals and family members who will be getting our screenplay in a few weeks, thanks in advance and if you read this psot, maybe please thank-you also read the article.

Item two is a quotation from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:

There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.

Now I'm no Luddite, my life has been dramatically changed by the personal computer and the internet. But all great advances have a dark underbelly. OK, most of them do; I haven't done an exhaustive list. And it is not just reasonable outcomes that can fail to be accretive to the good of humanity. There are simply less than satisfactory non-accomplishments that abound because of our really big technocracy. The primary culprit in today's rant is writing. Sure start a blog, write every day or twice a year; good for you, get it out, say it, write. But that does not make you a writer.

As the article says: "It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't. By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers."

Mind you I say this as an apprentice writer. No not a writer yet, despite having a book and a couple of hundred articles on poker out there plus several fiction pieces floating about the interwebs. But I am an aspiring, apprentice writer. Nasty (unpublished) comments I get on this blog regularly remind me of my shortcomings, real or imagined by my faithful if cranky readers.
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photo credit: FlickrPhotos
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Hollow Weenie


I am traveling today because my religion does not allow me to travel on a double holy day tomorrow. Nov. 1 is both All Saints Day and my sainted mother's birthday. And while that is not as significant as April 1st being my wedding day, well you get the idea.

Halloween plans include giving sugar infused trinkets to cold, wet youngsters and imbibing hot, alcohol infused toddies for the adults. But not until I make yet another geographic move. So short and distorted is the blog today. I need to build my Wii holiday avatar before I hit the open road yet again.

Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,
Voices whisper in the trees,
"Tonight is Halloween!"
---Dexter Kozen


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Lisa Scream from Simpsons.com; The Scream by Edvard Munch
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Tenebrous Audio

I have to thank my good friend David for this dark musical interlude. This CD compilation is justly called Going Down. I offered them as my penultimate wrap to this dark week (w/ appropriate videos where available).

-when I saw the opening song, I knew this was going to be a great mix
2. Moody Blues Melancholy Man
-the standard rendition with some uplifting but dark winter scenes for mood(y)
3. Three Dog Night Easy To Be Hard
-1970 version with long hair and no smoothed out big band trappings
4. Police King Of Pain
-reunion tour version from Rio 2007
5. Van Morrison Melancholia
-a real hidden gem but hard to find on the net, only a thirty second snippet
6. M*A*S*H Theme Suicide Is Painless
-video is the funeral scene from the movie
7. Steppenwolf Desperation
-from the album Rest In Piece
8. Natalie Merchant Break Your Heart
-I know that it will hurt, I know that it will break your heart
-with apologies, but the video is nearly the point of no return Otis
10. Sting Fragile
-listening to Sting and watching him are different experiences colored by gender
11. Peter Gabriel Don't Give Up
-if he had never left Genesis, you wouldn't know who Phil Collins is
12. The Who Behind Blue Eyes
-for something a little different, the Limp Bizkit cover
13. Van Morrison Underlying Depression
-the best I can do is the lyrics; too bad because the two Morrison songs on this list are brilliant
-a truly great cover by Annie Lennox
15. The Doors The End
-from the iconic opening of Apocalypse Now
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photo credit: archives


Main Entry: ten·e·brous
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French tenebreus, from Latin tenebrosus, from tenebrae
Date: 15th century
1 : shut off from the light : dark, murky
2 : hard to understand : obscure
3 : causing gloom
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A Late Night Double Feature Picture Show


The darkness must go down the river of nights dreaming
Flow morphia slow, let the sun and light come streaming
Into my life, into my life.

There's a light over at the Frankenstein Place
There's a light burning in the fireplace
There's a light, light in the darkness of everybody's life.

Thirty-three years ago, on a wet winter's eve at the Bijou in Hermosa Beach. She simply said I had to see this film and she was to taking me; nothing more was offered nor needed. I suppose there are people who find Rocky actually dark, not campy dark or artsy dark but dark dark. I have no truck with such humanoids but for the rest. . . It's just a jump to the left.

On a personal, but widely unremembered bit of trivia. This was not Susan Sarandon's first film role. She was by this time a 25 year old veteran actor, having appeared in several movies and some television, including a role on Search for Tomorrow. Her debut, was at nineteen, as the young hippy, drug-addict daughter of the killer in Joe (1970). Joe being the break-through performance for Peter Boyle.

But enough of that, back to the dark...

Eddie's Teddy

From the day he was born, he was trouble.
He was the thorn in his mother's side.

She tried in vain, but he never caused her nothing but shame.
He left home the day she died...

From the day she was gone, all he wanted
Was rock'n'roll, porn and a motorbike
Shooting up junk
He was a low-down, cheap little punk.
Taking everyone for a ride...


Rocky Horror Picture Show Official Fan Site.




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photo: Meatloaf as Eddie
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Days of Future Passed Revisited

Sometimes the darkness is all in our heads or our fogged memories.

I came across the lyrics to the Moody Blues Days of Future Passed and found the opening spoken verses tinged darkness. When the album first came out (1967-68) I do not remember it being so dark, but then again, darkness and light, indeed darkness and love were a swirling mix in those years; at least where I was hanging my psyche.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from out sight
Red is gray and yellow, white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion

Pinprick holes in a colourless sky
Let insipid figures of light pass by
The mighty light of ten thousand suns
Challenges infinity and is soon gone
Night time, to some a brief interlude
To others the fear of solitude

I began to wonder if Days of Future Passed was indeed as dark as my memory hinted or was this another case of time and place where lyrics were refocused by the listener. Would this be an appropriate offering for Halloween week or another muddled memory. You decide which is right, but I would offer than this feeling does justice to the dark week.

First, I read the lyrics for the entire album and discovered that I had never done that before. I wondered why such a seminal album that had a huge impact when it was released never got a liner notes read from me. Most albums back then certainly were so inspected and resurrected. It turns out that it may have been the orchestration that had the impact and not the words.

This from CDUniverse.com:

Days of Future Passed is the Moody Blues' true contribution to rock history: the most cohesive integration of rock songs with orchestral music ever produced. Asked by Deram Records to create a rock reworking of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, the Moodies instead wrote their own symphony, a song cycle that describes the emotions that accompany each part of the day, from dawn ("Dawn Is A Feeling") to night (the classic "Nights In White Satin"). The songs are connected by lush orchestral passages in which the basic musical themes are reworked.

The Moody Blues: Justin Hayward (vocals, guitar); Ray Thomas (flute, harmonica); Mike Pinder (keyboards); John Lodge (bass); Graeme Edge (drums). Additional personnel: London Festival Orchestra. Peter Knight (conductor).

Not so dark, these many years later. It was interesting to me to discover that the album really didn't hit big time until five years after its release (1967-1972). My memories are of a dark, rainy night on Lovell Street. Warm and snug in the attic with the album, several joints and fine friends from days of future past.

Maybe I should have gone with Slippin' Into Darkness as the anthem for this week, but you gotta remember, Timothy Leary's dead. He's outside looking in. All of these thoughts on a Tuesday Afternoon.
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Original Album Art
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