Category Archives: Rant

VANCOUVER!

Vancouver! Hang your head in shame!
I’m Canuckian but I know,
It’s just a bloody game!
There are many other things,
Worth protesting in the street,
But not because your home team,
Went down to defeat,
You win some and you lose some,
Advice ya’ll might want to save,
Now you’ve set Lord Stanley,
Spinning in his grave,
Your team lost in honour,
Despite the season’s works,
And you go and repay them by
Being pathetic jerks.

Those people…

Have you ever bought a newspaper and then forget to read it?  This happens to me all the time, especially with my favorite Sunday Editions of The New York Times.   At $6 dollars each, they are as expensive as a paperback novel, and probably contain as much writing.  I enjoy the Sunday New York Times, even though a lot of my peers give me grief for its liberal bias.  So what?  I watch Fox News too, and you can’t say that they don’t have a conservative bias.  You see, there’s two sides to every story, and I enjoy reading, listening, and watching both the liberals and the conservatives.  This entire country was founded on discourse, debate, and heaven forbid, compromise.

At any rate, last night I was cleaning up the man cave and I stumbled across the March 13, 2011 edition of The New York Times.  Good grief, that was a while ago.  The paper is already fading as some papers tend to do under the elements and time.  I’m now catching up on the past if you will.

Turning the pages I come to the Weddings/Celebrations pages in the Sunday Styles section.  I don’t know why, but I read the fabulous wedding announcements and I can’t help wonder, who the hell are those people, or is it, these people?  They look great, and reading their short bios I’m intrigued by how the majority of them come from wealthy families and places, have super awesome jobs, and are genuinely, not like us.  I’m lucky if I find a good deal at an outlet store, and these people are sporting the finest linens.

Not that I’m jealous, I’m just wondering what it would take for my sons to make it to the back pages of The New York Times Style section.  This fills me with a certain amount of dread that perhaps I’m not providing enough for my family in order to have this kind of lavish lifestyle.  I am partially comforted by the fact that I am able to provide for my family, we have clothes on our back, food on the table, a roof over our heads, health insurance, and books, oh yes, lots of books.  And yet I wonder about those people…

Alaska’s Finest

Ever since you went down south,
Not once have you ever shut your mouth.
You say so much and yet say nothing.
Meaningless words that just keep coming.

Which papers do you read daily?
How difficult can that question be?
Evade it. Avoid it. Talk around.
No direct answers to be found.

I really try but can’t figure out,
Just what on earth you’re talking about.
So please stop talking, take a breather.
Cause I don’t think that you know either.

You do not represent nor speak for me,
Former governor of Alaska, Sarah P.

Rip the lid off…..

I don’t know if I should even be writing this really. I just don’t know what else to do, and I don’t think I can sleep at the moment.
I don’t have the right to cry really, and yet I do. He’s a friend of a friend, from San Francisco. I’ve never met him. Don’t know him. Don’t have any connection. But my friend knows/knew him well.
24 years old. A young, beautiful gay man. Filled with joy de vivre, a true lust for life, perhaps to the point of naiveté about his own safety. Mexican born, he liked to dress up in drag and go out. Not the flamboyant over-the-top kind of drag queen, but just transsexually; to dress up so he looked like a young Mexican girl. He would go out and have fun, mostly at a local club, where he was known for being fun and flirtacious.
He has been missing now for 2 days. The FBI have come by to talk to the family. They have recovered a burned body found in a garbage bag. The body fits his description, but they have to do dna tests because of its state to identify it.
The family is religious, and hopeful, but it doesn’t look good.

Despite my distance from the situation, it rips my fucking soul out. Absolutely crushing. I want to cry, and scream, and wail things like what is wrong with this world, but that’s not enough. Maybe they will catch who did this. Maybe they will even go to prison. However that won’t change the fact that a large percentage of the people in power, in the very system that might actually put the perpetrators in prison, right down the line to your average Joe, from top to bottom in society, will still either not give a shit at all because of this persons gender, appearance, and sexual preference. Some will even laugh and joke privately with each other, saying things like one less queer, or he got what he deserved, etc, etc.
To say it infuriates me is a massive understatement. The people who do these things walk among us. Live among us. Ride the bus with us. Okay, put them in prison, but don’t let it stop there. Post their pictures, and their whole life stories publicly. Let people know who they are, where they come from, where they worked. Spread the information in everyway possible about what kind of people do this. Show that they are not just freaks and outsiders and good ole boy rednecks. They are connected to segments in society and that should be shown, and magnified, put under the goddamned microscope and examined. Go further than that. Where are the massive public education programs that emphasize the right to be different, and show the cowardice that the fear of that difference is based on? Where is the public outcry?

This is a hatecrime, a pure and simple bald-faced disgusting hate crime. Every such crime should be thrust into the light. No secrets. When people murder because they are just afraid of anyone who is different, society needs to react with its full force. But it does not. Not by a long shot.
We need to rip the lid off.

It’s A Good Life

It’s a good life,
Cuz I said it is,
And it’ll be the way I see it,
Anything I want to be,
I’m gonna damn well be it,
No time to waste on people who
are whining in frustration,
Too blind to know the seeds they sow,
affect their situation,
It’s a good life,
Cuz I see it.

It’s a good life,
Cuz I’ve decided
Decided that’s the way I want it,
No negativity drawing shit to me,
If I’ve trouble, I don’t flaunt it,
What I believe, how I perceive,
Counts most I’m well aware,
That’s why the well-known victim badge,
Is one that I don’t wear,
It’s a good life,
Cuz I’ve decided!

BANKING BASTARDS

Wheelers and dealers,
Bankers with knives,
Slicing and dicing up,
Every day lives,
Buying and selling,
As much as they’re able,
With nary a clue,
About my kitchen table,
No ounce of concern,
About who gets burned,
Just their own bottom line,
Does a profit get turned?
No ethical squirms,
As they rape and they pillage,
Just financial concerns,
As they sell off each village,
Families out borrowing,
Just to buy milk,
While they lay around,
Counting threads in their silk,
Gambling and playing,
With everyday savings,
All steered by the market’s
Random psychotic ravings,
People so powerful,
Yet incredibly dumb,
Who need to be finally,
Brought under our thumb.

The Original Random Misanthrope

If anyone lives up to the title of “random misanthrope,” it’s my dad. I got a letter in the mail from him a couple of days ago. It contained a personal check for $300 and a piece of paper (dated May 5) upon which was written the most…well, I suppose the right word is random, nonsensical unrelated ideas. These are not the thoughts of a rational mind. The most lucid thing he wrote was the last line, “Please do not cash the check until after the 1st of June.”

No worries there. There’s no way I can “cash” anything. The only way to deal with checks sent from the United States is to send them right back and have them deposited in my Wells Fargo bank account. A few years ago I did some freelance writing work for a website and was paid $50 per article. I was paid by check and the checks were sent to my address in Sweden, where I would endorse them and send them to my mom in California, where she’d deposit them in my bank account. Then I could withdraw the funds here using my Wells Fargo ATM card. I considered just having them sent directly to my mom’s house, but then I wouldn’t be able to endorse them.

At least he remembered to use the correct address this time. I never got last year’s annual check and letter because he sent it to my old address and then it disappeared. It was never returned or forwarded. I tried to explain this to him when I saw him in February but I wasn’t sure if he understood. He did after all. It just took him almost four months to do anything about it.

One thing you have to understand about my dad is that he moves very slowly. Snails seem like cheetahs in comparison.

 

…where I have been

Ah bless.

Between the stomach virus that will not leave our house, the abortion of a project from hell and usual mental malaise, I have been absent. I am terribly sorry.

Where I have I been, you ask?  Scraping stuff on my body that does not belong there.  Be it bodily fluids of varying types or food, I have been scrubbing myself raw.  Tonight’s joy was applesauce.

In order to maintain a pleasant demeanor and not take my frustrations out on a toddler with zero understanding of the world, I put myself in time out when I’m frustrated.  I have been in time out a lot these days.  I really wish time out was in a bar.