Tag: rants

Day of Silence

Today, April 18, marks the eleventh annual Day of Silence.

From the web site, The Day of Silence is an annual event held to bring attention to anti-LGBT bullying, harassment, and discrimination in schools. Students and teachers nationwide will observe the day in silence to echo the silence that LGBT and ally students face everyday. In its 11th year, the Day of Silence is one of the largest student-led actions in the country.

This day seems particularly poignant to me during this week when we’ve seen hate shatter the tranquility of a gracious campus in Virginia. All of our children deserve to be safe and feel valued in all of our schools all of the time.

He can speak for me

Here’s, like, Reason 234,112 why I admire Famous Author Rob Byrnes. (NO, not his trivia contests. Scroll down on that link!)

There are many reasons to read fiction and a place on the shelf for all the different kinds of fiction that are written. Please never think that because a novel isn’t riddled with anguish and doesn’t end miserably that its author didn’t put as much love and thought into writing it as any Man Booker Prize winner does his or her novels.

I could say a million things on this subject. I’ll spare you.

But I’ll bet if reviewers could read Rob’s e-mail from readers they’d find out the same thing we discovered from our readers. There’s a large population of gay men (and some straight women, and the occasional lesbian and straight man) who can find a novel meaningful and a character engaging even when a book is so-called Gay Lite.

If there’s a best review, it’s one that lets us know if we did a good job with the kind of story we were writing. If there’s a worst review, it’s one for takes us to task for not writing something else.

As Timothy has been known to say in such cases, “Write your own damn book.”

Grumpy AND Sneezy

It was uncomfortably muggy yesterday, so I loved it that the temperature plunged during the night. The windows were open, and it would have been a perfect morning to snuggle under quilts with my dogs and sleep in. I wouldn’t be QUITE as bitter about all the equipment that cranked up on my street BEFORE SEVEN A.M. if I didn’t know the end result, after months of noise and dust and a tacky blue portable toilet, would be another CRAPPY THREE-UNIT town house in the neighborhood.

Once awake, I embarked on a fly-killing mission. Today’s last body count: 32 34 38. Nice.

Then I took these to the post office to donate them for NO/AIDS’s use in the Easter parade.

Did you know that I can’t Express Mail from Houston to New Orleans? No, I didn’t either. Hope the beads get there in time. Can’t believe the postal service has not recovered adequately from Hurricane Katrina to be able to guarantee mail delivery by a certain day. I wonder if other shipment services can? It’s not like beads are important, but I think of things like medications that often have to be overnighted. Is this not possible?

I asked a question the other day of authors–whether they went back and reread their old work. I asked because I’d decided to read IT HAD TO BE YOU for the first time since 2001. There were a couple of times I TRIED to read it, but I would start seeing so many things I wanted to change that it disturbed me, so I never reread it in its entirety. This time around, I’ve stuck with it. Things I may have wanted to change at one time don’t bother me so much now. Like the way Daniel is initially mired down in his history. That makes sense, considering his circumstances as the novel opens and who he is (big ol’ Virgo). What I’m struck by is how my feelings about Blaine are different. I see him as much more vulnerable now when I’m reading him. I think that’s because I learned so much more about him in I’M YOUR MAN. Now a whole new set of things is affecting me in relation to WHEN YOU DON’T SEE ME. I don’t know. I’m glad I’m rereading it, but there’s something bittersweet about it.

Note to Shannon: I got the photos. More later.

Note to Lindsey and Rhonda: Y’all are sweet. Sorry about the dentist.

Note to Tim and Rex: The CAR! is home.

Things that are being an asshole this morning

The mosquito who has announced that Houston’s Season of Misery has officially arrived by breaking into my office, repeatedly attacking me, and WHO WILL NOT DIE.

Netfirms, which is being wonky and won’t let me send mail to David, Mark, and ‘Nathan. You’ll have to wait a little longer for the promised Beowulf memory. Try not to let this provoke you into going on a quest for some Old English monster of your own to rip limb from limb or behead.

You are welcome, however, to direct your wrath at this mosquito.

Another thing that was on my mind today

This week, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act was re-introduced in the House of Representatives. This legislation seeks to update federal hate crime laws by adding protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

This is NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE. The bill is endorsed by notable individuals and over 210 law enforcement, civil rights, civic and religious organizations, including: President George H.W. Bush’s Attorney General Dick Thornburgh; National Sheriffs’ Association; International Association of Chiefs of Police; U.S. Conference of Mayors; Presbyterian Church; Episcopal Church; and the Parent’s Network on Disabilities. Poll after poll continues to show that the American public supports hate crimes legislation inclusive of sexual orientation, including a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in November 2001 showing 73 percent of Americans supporting hate crimes legislation that includes sexual orientation.

This link on the Human Rights Campaign site will help you find your legislators by using your zip code. Let your representatives and senators know that you want to give local law enforcement agencies the extra tools and resources they need to prevent and combat hate violence.

Thank you.

Most of the text of this post was taken from the HRC Web site.

Just one of the things on my mind today

Years ago, I was in an AOL chat room one night when a newcomer came in. We chatted for a while and he finally told me his “real” name: Mel White. I knew who Mel White was. A former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham, among others, Rev. White had fallen out of favor with his former associates when he came out publicly as a gay man. The reason I knew of him was because he’d written a book about his life called Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, and I’d seen the book advertised and discussed a few years earlier in the GLBT media.
click to read more

At last!

I have spent the last three hours searching for this freaking poem, going through scrapbooks and albums and journals and trying to find it online through the dimmest memories of certain words and phrases from it. Had the poem, in the book where I originally found it about twenty-six years ago, been titled “To Coleridge” instead of “To _________,” my search would have been made a lot easier.

Now that I’ve found it, I’m putting it here so at least the next time I want it, I’ll have a sensible place to look. Other than that, I have nothing to say about it, except this is one of my favorite poems of all time. Oh, and that if I could find that poem by Erica Jong that I barely remember, and my wooden lion pushpuppet from the fourth grade, and my friend Bobby, all the gears of my universe would be meshing properly.

To Coleridge
poem behind cut

Saturday

I was going to do a post about Saturday, which was today, and all the stuff I did, and even put a photo or two in here. But when I sat down at the computer, I saw a post from Lisa with a photo of her icy window. Then Mark wondered how her photo would look in black and white, and I had to be all, “Oh, me me me me” and photoshop the picture to black and white (well, after all, Lisa’s at work and she can’t use up generator power on LiveJournal photoshopping in the middle of an ice storm, so really, I was SAVING PEOPLE’S LIVES by doing it myself). So then David saw the black and white photo and thought it looked creepy, and in his opinion, the only thing missing was a clown. So then I photoshopped in a clown, and the whole thing suddenly freaked me out so much that I couldn’t post it.

Now all I want to do is crawl under the covers and quiver like Margot when she’s imitating a chihuahua, because until tonight, I didn’t realize that clowns are, indeed, SCARY FUCKERS.

That’s all.