Matinee Movie Tuesday

Well it's that time again. Nick is back in town and we are going to see Slum Dog Millionaire.


And just in case you're reading from your RSS Feed, here is the link

I'll be busy in the morning getting presentable, and then there's the movie, and then I'll need to eat, and then, I read a blog or two, but I will get to you later in the day, so don't think I'm not paying attention, or skipping you. I swear before the year is over I will be by.

Thanks for the suggestion Linda Sama, we're taking your advise.

Thank You Stella for Introducing Me to Carmen Tafolla

How Shall I Tell You?
by Carmen Tafolla


after listening to the world news, the U.S. attack,
on Libya, the Soviet accident at Chernobyl, the
firing in the Persian gulf, and wondering... if...

When no soul walks the softened green
and no foot beats the pulse on crumbling brown
and no one lives to sing to rain
or soak to sun the spirit of its golden gown
to weave the many colors of the after-arch
from sky to human skin to wooded wealth
in fiber fabric beads and tusks and seeds
all leading up in rows of beauty drumbeat to black
neck, like venison in stealth

When no one lulls the child to sleep
or takes the wrinkled story's hand
or listens to the news - a wired sound
of tribe on tribe - stet now - man on man
how shall I tell you that I love you then?
how shall I touch your fingers tip to tip
and say that we were blood and human voice and friend?

Statue of

Statue of
Teeming hordes of hungry
Always wanting just a
Time of rest not waiting
Under suffocated souls
Even scared to breathe too loud

Or ask
Freedom from the

MIGRA who will hunt them down
***

Part Two: I'm Now Going to Talk About the Big O After I (Finally) Got Rid of My Uterus

So, I was at war with my uterus. But life goes on even if you do spend two weeks every month PMSing like crazy and then spending one full week doubled over in agony, bleeding your guts out and hating everybody, cause they look at you sideways at just the wrong moment. Headaches, backaches, teeth grinding, nerves on edge all the damn time. Break through bleeding. I can't blame everthing on my uterus, I was after all married three times, and before and after and even during I had lovers, or so they they'd think they were.

But after the third ex-husband, I ended up, at thirty nine with the man I have referred to as first-love/last-love which I will shorten to FL/LL. He and I had the best of times and the worst of times, but most of the time he was a terrific lover. He was a bit of a show off in the love making department. Which sometimes annoyed me--a virtuoso performance is not always what you want. So the O's were big even when I still had my uterus. I prefer clitoral stimulation to bring me to orgasm without a lot of other stimulation to distract me from that singular pleasure. And it's also true that oral sex is not my favorite thing. Too much stimulation and I can't concentrate, can't turn off my mind. I have been able to orgasm with only two men in my entire life by just plain fucking. Old fashioned fucking. FL/LL was one of them, and the other's name I can't recall. It was a brief relationship shall we say. I sort of gave myself the best going away present when I left Santa Monica in late 1970. I had earlier that year terminated my one and only pregnancy for complicated reasons that will be apparent if you read my novel, Maggy. Suffice it to say, I had my reasons. Bad timing (it was one year pre Roe v Wade), wrong man, false positive VDRL, conceived on LSD--it was a pity fuck (I was on my way out the door) gone wrong. I never regretted the abortion. And so once healed, I gave myself the gift of the sexiest man around for a few days. There is such a thing as good chemistry, and the just right anatomical fit to bring forth a thundering liquefaction of a shuddering melting rippling sensation that starts deep and at the very end leaves the thighs wobbly. Uterine or vaginal? I can't tell. I don't know. Full body, yes. Anything other than old fashioned fucking not needed if everything else is going on for me. Did the man in question know what he was good at? Oh yeah. But that's out of, oh I don't know, maybe thirty men give or take... I have had men work so hard to bring me to orgasm, but I knew fairly early on, it wasn't going to happen. You can just tell these things. I could give all the instruction in the world and it wasn't going to happen. I might have loved the man for a day or two or a year or two, still, not so great the sex even with plenty of guidance.

So I'm living with FL/LL and start bleeding all the time. Once I passed day thirty in the long red flood, I went begging to my gynecologist to please, please remove the damed uterus. I was never ever ever going to have a baby. I heard no ticking of my biological clock. But I did have a breaking point with the bleeding problems and the PMS and the expense and mess, and after the last D&C which didn't stop the bleeding for more than a week, and the tests for hormone levels, which were inconclusive, I finally got the go ahead to take the damned uterus out.

The surgery was hardly a surgery at all. No scar as it was removed vaginally, and they took the cervix as well. I was told that cervical cancer is pretty risky, so why leave it if you don't need it. They did leave my ovaries in case they were still able to produce estrogen. They weren't, so I started having hot flashes fairly soon after the operation. I was put on low dose hormone replacement therapy. It immediately cured the hot flashes and has allowed me to miss almost all the worst of menopause, though I am now very post menopausal in terms of years.

The doctors orders post surgery was six weeks of no sex and taking it easy. I healed perfectly, scarless. And when next FL/LL and I had sex it was maybe the best we ever had, slow, gentle, languid. Abstinence had something to do with it. But also I felt happier more of the time, and no PMS. None. Fewer headaches, and better everything. Might have been all in my head, but I don't think so. I bloomed. I was freer in my sexual skin, more at home in my body. It not only worked as well as before, but somehow better. We had more fun in bed.

I have been asked the question if I felt uterine contractions during orgasm, and the honest to god answer is not really. I have felt pain from pounding penetration that was too deep and pushing on my uterus. I think the physiology of the orgasm for me involves my clitoris, vaginal walls, legs, and the full engagement of my mind. If I'm preoccupied, or overly tired, or worried about any little thing, it won't happen. So for this reason, I loved lazy morning sex best. Before the stress of the day had a chance to fill my head. I liked to take advantage of a morning hard-on.

I have had a three-some that involved a female friend of mine who had the hots for me. It made for great sex, but had terrible consequences for all three of us emotionally. I wanted to see if I was bisexual. Sadly, I'm not, really. But it was a thoughtless, careless way to find that out.

I have found that once you have sex with anyone it changes your relationship in a way that means you can't go back and pretend it didn't happen or that it meant nothing. I do believe that almost all sex has emotional consequences for at least one or the other of you if not both or all three.

I have never for an instant regretted the removal of my uterus, and see? No scar.

But I have had a friend or two who have had a hysterectomy because of some dire medical reason and once it was gone, they have claimed to feel less womanly, less feminine. That was not my experience. Quite the contrary. So you cannot generalize from my experience. Nor can you claim to know for sure how you would feel without a uterus if you still have a uterus. Any questions?

I'm Surprised I Did So Well

-19 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Part One: I'm Now Going to Talk About My Missing Uterus

If this idea is horrifying to you, then now is the time to cover your eyes or run screaming from the room. But a friend of mine, Freida of the Bees, asked me a question in her comments on a recent post of hers, and a hell of a post it is by the way, about the quality of orgasm with a uterus and without a uterus. I'm in one very good position to speak about this, since there has been a before and an after. I have heard women for whom there is not an after or at least not yet, claim some expertise in this area, and I question the claimants credentials here. How can you compare something you have yet to experience from the now you know of? This is, I do believe, the very essence of existentialism.

Anyway, my uterus was always difficult. I started menstruating on the very young side of the young norm for my day and age. I was just barely eleven. And the whole thing was traumatic for a number of reasons not the least of which was that I was not expecting it. If you are curious about my menses inauspicious beginning and the big public deal made of it, and the loss I suffered as a consequence, I will refer you to the Chapter called Too Old in the novel, Maggy, linked for your convenience on my side bar But the upshot of the whole thing was years and years of pain so severe it made me throw up, and have horrible headaches, sensitivity to noise and light, and hemorrhage-like flow. So I did ask for a hysterectomy for my sixteenth birthday. Cheapskates gave me clothes that I hated, of course. I was sixteen after all. What sixteen year old girl in her right mind and rebellious stage ever likes the clothes her parents buy for her? But no way on the hysterectomy. Then my gynecologist prescribed hormones. They helped with the pain, but were not a good thing to have done in the long run. Very high dose of Premarin which cause me to have what the doctors called "break through bleeding." In other words, I bled fifteen days instead of the usual seven. And it was always a hemorrhage that left me with a great deal of embarrassment, ruined clothes, and lost days of work and school.

The dysmenorrhea and heavy bleeding led to D&C after D&C. No known cause. But everyone who treated me assumed, despite my protestations to the contrary, that I would need to keep my uterus as I would one day want children. Oh Yeah? Fat fucking chance!

So with menorrhagia and dysmenorrhea my uterus was making my hellish life worse.

To be continued...

So This Is The Real Me?

The link to this test is in the title

I did read the Ring Trilogy eons ago and loved the books, but hated the movies. Really really hated them. I'm neither a big fan of fantasy or Science Fiction. I think Ray Bradbury was the last SiFi writer I really liked. I read him when I was a kid. I have no real idea who this "me" is, but I'm assuming it/he is the "real me" even if I don't know how. I just take certain things at face value. Not like the falling dollar. I have no idea what that poor devalued currency is worth these days. It sure doesn't buy much anymore.

A naturally skilled companion to those around you, you earnestly use your prowess out of concern to those you care about.

This forest is old. Very old. Full of memory... and anger.

Legolas is a character from the Middle-Earth universe. A biography is available at Aliases: Greenleaf
Date of Birth: ?
Race: Sindarin Elf
Height: around 6 feet or more
Date of Death: N/A
Alignment: Good
Parents: Thranduil - Father, ???-Mother
Spouse: None
Date of Marriage: N/A
Children: N/A

Physical description: Tall and fair, bright eyes, hair color is debated, some say dark, others say blonde, sufficient evidence as to either is not available. He wore the attire of the Silvan elves of Mirkwood, chiefly green and brown.

Biography: Sindarin elf of the woodland realm, in the year 3019, Legolas journeyed to Rivendell to sit on the Council of Elrond, and was chosen to represent the Elves in the Fellowship. In Lorien, Legolas and Gimli became close friends, a friendship that lasted the rest of their lives. Legolas' keen sight and archery skills were his greatest asset to the Fellowship. After the Breaking of the Fellowship, Legolas went with Gimli and Aragorn in search of Merry and Pippin, and fought in the battle of Hornburg. He eventually went to Gondor, and fought in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields; while in Gondor, he had his first glimpse of the sea, and was overcome by a deep desire to sail from that moment on. After the War of the Ring, he journeyed with Gimli to visit the Glittering Caves and Fangorn Forest. In the Year 120 FO, after the death of Aragorn, Legolas sailed over the sea, taking Gimli the dwarf with him, the last of the Fellowship.


Legolas
MOvie Notes

• Cast in this role is Orlando Bloom
Orlando Bloom as Legolas


Favorite Quotes

• He stands not alone " ... "...you would be dead before your stroke fell," to Eomer about Gimli

Thank You Liberality

Daddy
by: Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.



From "Ariel", 1966

Happy Holidays Tom Wherever You Are

And as you may have guessed, my feet are freezing. Hope the water pipes don't.

Time Traveling

This is why a dream life is so important. I go back to places I've been before and loved. It is like time traveling. I am the young woman I was and the old woman I've become. I'm the best of both women in my dreams.

But when I was twenty one I drove down the Dalmatian Coast of Yugoslavia. Yes children, there was once a Yugoslavia. Those where the days of Tito, and every home had a framed photograph of the glorious leader near the front door. The Dalmatian Coast has now been divvied up into bits and pieces, but when I was there it was all Yugoslavia. In my real young life I traveled with two young Italian men from Rome to Trieste, the northern gulf port city on the Adriatic sea, and then followed the Yugoslavian coastline down to a small town south of Debrovnik called Split.

Dubrovnik

All the way down the coast we stayed in homes, not hotels. It was a wonderful way to get to know the people of Yugoslavia, and they were lovely, kind, generous and incredibly beautiful. The homes we stayed in were probably fairly prosperous, but still a bit primitive. I don't remember a single home with real indoor plumbing. Bedrooms had chamber pots, and showers were taken in the outdoors standing in an enclosure with a hose providing the soft cold water that I came to believe was the reason every Yugoslavian I met had shiny hair and beautiful skin and healthy, lovely teeth and smiles. And every home had at least three generations of a family living together. And still they shared what they had with us, giving up one room with several beds.

The reason the Italians were traveling to Split was to work at a Club Mediterranean on a small island off the coast. The only way to get to the island was by ferry boat that traveled between the island and Split twice a day. I stayed in town rooming in a small home close to the ferry landing. And I often spent the day on the island playing with the other world travelers while being catered to by my Italian friends and meeting travelers from all over the world. It was like a very good dream. The waters of the Adriatic sea were warm and salty soft. Every kind of water sport was available. The meals were great and the parties in the evening were fun with live music, lots of dancing and good wine and beer. And the only passport I needed there was my lovely face and form. Sad but true, the pretty can lead charmed lives. At meals I was invited to Isreal by a beautiful fierce Sabra, to Spain by a lovely Spaniard, to France by a handsome Frenchman, and so on. In the end, I decided to continue traveling with my Italian friends to Greece.

When we got to the Albanian border I was refused admittance because of my American passport. So we drove back to Dubrovnik and I took a ferry from Dubrovnik to Bari Italy. I could tell you more of this adventure, but I'll save that for another day.

The reason for this trip down memory lane was the lovely, very sexy dream I had last night. I believe I was either in Dubrovnik or Split. I was helping out in a restaurant and fell in lust with the eldest son of the owner. We were about to leave the restaurant to go to his home, but first I needed to do something that took me into one of the old streets, medieval architecture, winding passages, and then I found my way back to find this lovely man still waiting patiently. As we were about to leave, I awoke. I wanted to go back to sleep to continue this dream but my dog was standing beside the bed, waiting patiently for me to take him outside, into the frigid, snowy back yard to... Well you know.

Even now two hours later my nipples are still erect and I still feel the power of the attraction to this particularly gorgeous Yugoslavian man, waiting patiently.

Yesterday I was a Monk, Today I'm a Druid, But I'll Always Be a Gemini

The link is in the title
And that's not my best picture.
The Druid

Druids are filled with a dramatic sense of wonder, viewing the world through rose-colored glasses as they watch everything come to life, from flora and fauna to mundane objects. They see the good in almost everyone and everything, yet struggle with the idea of ethical perfection (or lack thereof). They tend to turn away from the world and toward essence and ideal, and while they are concerned with all people and creatures, those things are valued only in that they are part of a greater whole; in this, they often struggle to find their place in things, and need to feel a part of whatever they are involved with. Fluent with language, they are keen to pick out patterns in people and things, although their somewhat otherworldly focus on the larger picture can lead them to seem somewhat absentminded. Nevertheless, they have a knack for explaining complex things quite simply.

Druids are often beset by Histrionic behavior, craving attention, reassurance and praise in everything they do. Emotionally exaggerated and often sexually charged, they become concerned with physical appearance, and grow uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention. Their emotions are subject to rapid shifts, and their actions are entirely self-centered, with no tolerance for delay in getting what they want. Their speech often lacks detail as their shallow emotions carry across into their dealings with others.

Oh my this does make me seem a perfect asshole, but the company is good.

Famous druid types include Homer, Shakespeare, Dick Clark, Jackie Onasis and Julia Roberts.

Hell Has Now Officially Frozen Over

Oh yeah, it looks all picture postcard pretty and everything, but it's no picnic. Ten inches of heavy white stuff that looks like cotton and weights thirty pounds a shovel full on top of rain that froze minutes after it fell and was preceded by a loud crack of thunder and a blinding flash of lightening on Christmas evening... Well it's just hell.

I tried to sleep most of the morning, but it was a challenge what with the whine of snowblowers and all. You'd think my snowblowing neighbors would be kind enough to help the Old One out with a little snowblowing help, but it seems that the only neighbors with the infernal machines are of the Mormon persuasion, and word travels fast in the cult. Once you scare the crazy old ones in group "therapy" with the two most fearsome words in Utah--Atheist and Gay, they cut you off and shun you. Oh yes they do. Charity thy name is not Mormon.

So I have just about broken my back today. And all the children of hiring age are off to the movies or hiding out pretending to be off to the movies, so I couldn't even bribe one of them to shovel this heavy load.

I bet next time "therapy" comes around the only group available to me will be a group of therapists armed with tranquilizer guns and fully ready to take me down. Oh yes. Nothing worse than a "gay atheist" on the 23 of December in a group of old Mormon's with bipolar disorder all loaded with the blessings of Jesus and Joseph Smith and thinking themselves among "friends" to find the devil in their midst and not all compliant like a good Mormon woman should be to shake their faith just a tiny bit, just enough to get out the word that no snowblowing help shall be given. Amen.

Clean Coal Snow Job

Tennessee Valley Coal Ash Spill Buries 400 Acres, Damages Homes
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee, December 23, 2008 (ENS) - A retaining wall at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-fired power plant collapsed early Monday morning, causing 2.6 million cubic yards of fly ash to be spilled across hundreds of acres.

The Kingston Steam Plant in Harriman, about 50 miles west of Knoxville, at the confluence of the Emory and Clinch Rivers is owned and operated by the nation's largest public utility.

The wet gray sludge buried about 400 acres six feet deep. One house was torn from its foundations, and 11 other homes were damaged and evacuated. No injuries or fatalities have been reported.

TVA estimates that the cleanup could take weeks to complete and says long-term plans are being developed. Environmentalists warn that fly ash contains toxins - mercury, arsenic, and lead among others - that could seep into the ground and flow downriver.
The wet fly ash engulfed this house, one of 12 damaged in the spill. (Photo courtesy Tennessee Valley Authority)

TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore said today, "Protecting the public, our employees, and the environment is TVA's primary concern as we supply electric power for the people of Tennessee Valley region."

"We deeply regret that a retention wall for ash containment at our Kingston Fossil Plant failed, resulting in an ash slide and damage to nearby homes," said Kilgore. "We are grateful no injuries have been reported, and we will take all appropriate actions to assist those affected by this situation."

TVA provided hotel rooms, meals, transportation and other immediate needs for affected residents who were not able to occupy their homes Monday night. Additional assistance is being provided by TVA as needed by affected residents. Electricity, gas and water have been restored to all homes in the area that are habitable, the TVA said.

The Swan Pond Road past the Kingston plant remains closed except for residents who live in the area whose homes are habitable. There is no estimated timeline for when the road will be reopened.

TVA Police are assisting local law enforcement with maintaining security for the homes in the affected area.

Heavy equipment including bulldozers, dump trucks, and backhoes have been brought to the site and some clearing of debris has started.

Kingston is one of TVA's larger fossil plants. It generates 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to supply the needs of about 670,000 homes in the Tennessee Valley. An adequate supply of coal is available and all nine units at Kingston continue to operate.

"This holiday disaster shows that there really isn't such a thing as a clean coal plant," said Chandra Taylor, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

"From mountaintop removal mining to smokestacks spewing soot and smog to ash ponds full of toxins, coal power is dirty - plain and simple. Nobody wants to find coal in their Christmas stocking, let alone coming through their home and polluting their river," she said.

TVA says sampling of water downstream of the plant will continue to assess the possible effects on water quality. TVA continues to manage river flows on the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers to minimize downstream movement of the ash. There are no expected impacts to any other TVA facilities downstream.

Staff at TVA's other 10 coal-fired power plants have made visual inspections of the ash retention dikes to note any changes in conditions. The ash containment areas at all TVA's plants undergo a formal inspection annually and other inspections on a quarterly and daily basis, said the government company.

"The United States Environmental Protection Agency should immediately establish national safeguards for the disposal of coal wastes and enforceable regulations," said Taylor. "At a minimum, these safeguards should include siting restrictions, structural requirements and long-term financial assurance to clean up any resulting pollution."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

Nobel Prize Winning Playwright Harold Pinter Dies

Harold Pinter, prospector of 24-karat drama in the tension-racked spaces between words, died in London on Wednesday, at age 78. With his death, the pool of contemporary playwrights of international literary stature has been all but drained dry.

Although he expressed the views of a pacifist, Pinter wrote as if he held his finger on the pin of a grenade. In modernist classics such as "The Homecoming," "Old Times" and "No Man's Land," he devised characters who spoke in elliptical asides and enigmatic bursts. Violence of some nature was never out of the realm of possibility, even in his quietest plays. For Pinter was a connoisseur of subtext, of letting a story unfold on a living room set while a more savage one simmered in the crawl spaces of the mind. His characters routinely rattle each other with what never gains utterance.

His stark black-comic sensibility and economical use of language owed much to Samuel Beckett, the father of existential 20th-century drama. It was a debt that Pinter, who got his start as an actor in postwar Britain, readily acknowledged. When the Nobel Academy gave him the prize for literature in 2005, the act affirmed his link to Beckett, who had won it 36 years earlier. That they are among the few English-speaking dramatists to have received the award speaks to the nonpareil influence they both wielded over the style and force of the modern theater.

Power and turf are always at issue in Pinter. You get to see in his plays how much the anatomy of our emotional entanglements is built on ever-shifting questions of who's up and who's down.
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Whether the conflict is over primacy in a Darwinian family struggle ("The Homecoming"), control of the memories of long-ago events ("Old Times") or the psychological upper hand in a metamorphosing love triangle ("Betrayal"), his works are taut battlefields. Unlike Beckett, though, whose seminal plays such as "Waiting for Godot" are placed in barren, metaphysical landscapes, Pinter's tend toward cozier, bourgeois surroundings. In his hands these spaces seem as raw and terrifying as any heath.

Audiences do, at times, engage in head-scratching over Pinter's peculiar rhythms. As noted by Peter Hall, a friend who directed many of his 30 works for the stage, the playwright's eccentric cadences were challenging for actors, too: the long silences, shorter pauses and brief hesitations were ubiquitous features of his scripts. "The actors had to understand why there were these differences," Hall explained in his 1993 autobiography. "They chafed a little, but finally accepted that what was not said often spoke as forcefully as the words themselves."

Over time, Pinter's work became more overtly political, and his vehemence drew controversy. (As a young man, he claimed status as a conscientious objector.) He was outspoken in his outrage at the invasion of Iraq, and described in a speech in 2005 his reaction to the policies of the Bush and Blair administrations as arousing nausea.

Pinter saved his subtlety for his dramatic voice. His blink-of-an-eye 1988 play "Mountain Language" painted in four short scenes the terrors of a regime that stripped a minority population of its freedom, its dignity and finally, in banning the speaking of its language, even its words. To one who used them to such captivating effect, this truly would have seemed a crime against humanity.

The Young Turks Talk About Ethics in Journalism

That Rachel, she's got class.

I'm a Monk, Who Knew?

Your result for The Pop Culture Archetype Personality Test...

The Monk

Ninja, Monkey, Zombie, Cowboy

Quizzy tests are fun for the shut ins.

Eartha Mea Kitt Dies Today

Thank you Eartha for all the good times, the earthy voice, the sassy style. We loved you, babe.



Born January 17, 1927
Died December 25, 2008

Kelso's Nuts Have Asked Me To Out Myself

I'm only too happy to comply, only I thought I did that yesterday or the day before--I'll have to look. I certainly outed myself for the entertainment of the old folks at Group Therapy on the 23rd, but Christmas seems like as good a day as any, and I never plan to get any hot male action again, so why not? I'm out.

Kelso's Nuts suggest that we all out ourselves in protest over Rev(sic) Rick Warren's appearance at the Inauguration. Fine with me. I'm not thrilled about Rick Warren getting so much free press, because I don't like what he stands for--the homophobia, the suppression of women with his anti choice (wide) stance, he's just like all the rest of them, and I'm thinking he might be a little gay himself. So, yea, I'm gay. Gay all the way.

Come out, come out, where ever you are. Speak up. Let's have a day or several of solidarity. Doesn't matter whether you're married or not. Think of yourselves as two gay people making the best of it. What'll the kids think? I don't know. They'll probably hate it. But you can explain it's for a good cause. It's in support of all our gay friends and neighbors, our gay relatives though closeted they too may be. There's a little gay in all of us, as well as a little woman living inside all you men. Yes there is. So, come out!

A Present From My Friend Stella of Swiftspeech

Stella, my first reader willing to comment, has compared my writing to that of the inimitable Dorothy Parker. I hadn't read Parker, an omission I cannot account for. But last birthday I asked for and received from my friend, Nick, The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker. And now, this Christmas, Stella has given me the Poetry of Dorothy Parker. And I will dole them out when I'm ready. But for today, I give you the one that included a very important link, and the poem that might make Stella think of me.

Neither Bloody Nor Bowed
Dorothy Parker

They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come-
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

While Visiting The Ageless Hippie Chick, I "Borrowed" This

We could pretend she gave it to me, but I really stole it. Shhhh!

A Real Christmas Present from The lovely Unconventional Conventionist