Your Call Is Important To Us

The MTA complaint line's recorded you-are-on-hold message actually says this:

A bus weighs 30,000 pounds. Passing in front of a bus can result in serious injury. New York City cares about your safety.

Women, We Are Fucked

When I read The Handmaid's Tale in high school, it seemed like science fiction.

Take a close look at the language of this decision. Here's the ugliest part:

Proposed amendments to the law to create exceptions to specifically protect the health of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest, were voted down. Also defeated was an amendment to put the proposal in the hands of voters.

I'm sickened and speechless. Aren't there laws against hate speech? I find these sentences are more mysogynistic than all the bitch-n-ho rap songs ever sung: they seethe with greater sadism than Jack The Ripper.

Asses Of Evil

Will somebody please tell me why so many so-called Christians are such virulent, hateful, disgusting people? I'm currently reading Harold Bloom's most excellent The American Religion, and it's giving me some insight, but really, I'm flabbergasted on a daily fucking basis.

Not happy with preventing consenting adults from establishing legal unions as should be their right under the 14th Amendment, which provides for equal protection of all citizens under the law, now the new wave of hateful activism is to try to ban gay couples from adopting.

I challenge anyone who opposes adoption by gay couples to spend some time on www.adoption.com -- Read a few of these children's stories.

Cintarius has a lot of unresolved issues regarding the loss of his biological family. Cintarius is a very loving teen who just wants to be loved and accepted. Cintarius hides a lot of his feelings by acting out. He is a little immature for his age but he is extremely bright. He is currently in therapy to help him deal with the loss of his biological family, anger management, self-esteem, grief and separation.

JT’s foster parents says that JT is an exceptional child who has made exceptional progress. He continues to grow and heal with the help of counseling. Everyone agrees that what JT really needs is a supportive and loving home of his very own.

Selena may have some “ups and downs” with her behavior and loss issues, so she needs a family that will be dedicated to helping her work through these issues while continuing to provide her with love and support. Selena really misses her half-sister and an ideal situation would be one where she could continue to have phone contact or some contact with this sister.

These people want to prevent willing families to adopt these and the THOUSANDS more children like them out there, are ready to devote their zeal and time and money to make it that much harder for a kids like Cintarius, who just lost his entire biological family, to be in a home of their own. The only word for this is CRUEL.

The religious right in this country needs to be honest and say, "We feed on misery and self-righteousness. We hate reason, we hate humanity, we hate ourselves, and we hate life itself." Kids don't need to be raised by "one man and one woman." They need to be raised by committed, loving parents. Every gay couple I know is more qualified by a factor of ten million than these bigots. C'est tout.

Self Portrait

Ecphrasis or ekphrasis (from Greek ek out + phrasis speaking, verb ekphrazein, to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name)

Valentines All Around

Why I Love Trey Reason #87: The saleswomen in Agent Provocateur know him by name – yet he had never once crossed their threshold until we were together.

Agent Provocateur, if you are not familiar, makes the most ridiculously beautiful underwear in the world: at once incandescently hot and perfectly elegant. (Not to mention meticulously constructed!)

It was early spring when he took me there the first time. He was most dashing and Alain Delon-like in his trenchcoat; I felt like Anna Karina exiting with my pink and black bag. Another day, he returned to buy me stockings: rose - colored with seam and heel. “She already has those” said the saleslady, looking at my file on the screen. “Not anymore,” said Trey. “You ruined them!” she grinned. Trey, a gentleman, said nothing, which said everything.

A most excellent thing to have a husband who joyfully buys you exquisite underwear! But it isn’t really about the underwear, but about being cherished and understood. With Trey both my femininity and femaleness are a source of creative joy. I like being all the Lillets -- like having no disconnect between his escorting me to the Carlyle in a beaded dress or my painting the kitchen in a wifebeater and his undershorts, between weeping at The Rabbit’s Wedding and my drawer of underthings lifted from L’Histoire D’O. It is like being a cross between an advent calendar and a hypercube, with all the doors open at once.

I was reminded of this last night while making him a Valentine’s present. I can’t tell you what it is – except that I tried something in an untried-for-me medium, which means it’s not a sestina or a collage or a Calin-Genou. In our kitchen nook, listening to music and working on a very silly thing, I felt ridiculously calm and happy, the calm and happy that comes from making something, no matter how silly. But consider the etymology of “silly:” from the Middle English seli, silli, blessed, innocent, from Old English gesælig, blessed. Indeed, blessed and unmediated. Wholly unmediated for the first time in my life.

I am grateful to Trey every day for dissolving what was left of my corpus callosum when he kissed me – I can hear the strange music in an instruction manual, see the poems in the poorly-lettered deli signs. There are valentines all around! What I thought was a beautiful painting in an inaccessible museum in a country I was never good enough to enter turns out to be the window into our very own house.

Something Nice!

Suck My Cock South Dakota

The nice bison is clearly heading East to live with me and Trey! Because a) we won't eat him, and b), to get the hell away from these people!

Yay, Bison!

A Profound Weariness:

being constantly reminded that there is not one iota of difference between this:

[Macalister's boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown back into the sea.] (Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse).

and this.

Now With Extra Fear!

Let's Get This Straight

International Toast Day is neither in March nor in November. It is and has always been 2/2.

Sheesh.