I grew up in a country that told me it was the land of the free. This fictional county was founded on freedoms--freedom of religion, freedom of a whole bunch of things. This country had a constitution that was, for the most part, a beautiful thing to read. And all throughout  school, I was told that I was a free individual, that my freedoms had been fought and died for and paid for in blood. 

Lies--all of it. They were lies in the beginning and they are still lies today--and, yet, that shit was preached to me hour after hour day after day in classroom after classroom. And I believed it as the sheep believes the Shepherd, even if the Shepherd is a wolf in disguise. 

Today, I watched a man being gunned down by the police in Pasco, WA--a few minutes ago, actually. This man was causing some kind of disturbance. He was tossing rocks or something stupid like that. There's a theory floating around that he was mentally disturbed. He hadn't hurt anyone. In front of whomever happened to be there to watch (children included) the police shot this man down like a dog--even after he raised his hands in the universal gesture of absolute surrender. 

It was murder most foul that the police did commit against this man. He ran from them, and they killed him. 

Watching the news here is like being trapped in a nightmare on repeat--a nightmare that will not stop, and, sometimes, I can't believe this is my life, or life in general. Trapped here. Subject to this. 

The police are killing people--putting them down like animals--and there are those who would still defend them, that find some reason in all this madness. And I just can't. I have, you see, a big flaw in my character. I think that all people are people equally. I can't justify, in my mind, the murder of a person for superficial reasons.  Comments on this particular shooting run the gamut of people trying to reason out this unthinkable crime into something that they can deal with mentally and emotionally. They put distance between themselves and the victim for all sorts of reasons. 

And I am left wondering how they can do that. 

How they can watch him be riddled with bullets like that, and die like that, and feel ... nothing. 

My thoughts aren't as naive as they may seem. I study history for sport and understanding. I understand that history has a tendency to repeat, and I understand that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. 

I understand, truly, how the people watching justify themselves, what mechanisms they use and why those convenient mechanisms are there deep within them. There is a lack of humanity in it all thought that repeats itself like an ugly song throughout history--again and again and again. 

I watched a murder today by those who are paid to protect us. I watched the callous extinguishing of another life by the guardians of this society. I felt that shit deep down inside and it actually made me a little sick--but I couldn't move, couldn't turn it off, and saw it through to the very end of the short little video. 

And life will go on like it didn't happen. People will stare at Kim Kardasian's ass, they will work their full time jobs for their full time masters, they will continue to be the same way they always are and always have been. Nothing I say here will matter at all, and I'm not really saying it to make any kind of difference. I'm writing here to take that weird queasy feeling out of my stomach--because writing things always makes me feel a little better about whatever's going on. 

But, every once in a while, someone asks me about my tendency toward isolation. A woman who lives across the street from me said that "You are a very private person" and she wanted to know how I can do that -- be this way. 

I wanted to know why she bothered to notice, ya know?

The truth is:

I do not respect stupidity.

I am subject to stupidity on a daily basis in more way that I can ever write down here. I walk around looking like shit on purpose most of the time--and I catch the odd stares and disapproval for my baggy pants and gym-fucking-shoes--relatively cheap ones at that cause I'll be damned if I spend three hundred dollars on a pair of fuckin' kicks. I walk like a thug, talk like a thug when I feel like it and am a thug every mother fucking day of my mother fucking life and I do it on purpose -- not because I want to be hurt or die and certainly not because I have some point to make -- but because I just don't care anymore, ultimately. 

In the end, I will wink out like a match in the wind, and this shit will keep keeping on like it's been keeping on. 

There's hope for the future. *rollz eyes*

One day, there may be a world where a man gets shot down in the street and people demand retribution for the senseless life taken. One day, one man may not feel the burning hot urge to kill another man so casually like its a badge of honor to have 'bagged' another human being. But in the wake of human trophies and gator bait and slavery and human zoos and witch burning and human pillars and human sacrifice -- all condoned by whatever society they were practiced in -- I believe that day is a long time coming. 

Preaching Hatred

"... naked pictures of naked men doing sex to each other..." Pat Robertson

(I couldn't resist the quote actually. It's so pornographic coming out of a preacher's mouth. I had this fucker on repeat for at least a half an hour.)

Gay people should be able to get married. I think its a stupid issue, actually. It is, to me, arguing about nothing. The whole world holding its collective breath to see the outcome of ... nothing. It is an 'of course' kind of thing. It may seem as if I am downplaying the issue on some level by saying this. I have never seen the big ole hairy ass deal, yo. The cost of suffering and pain outweighs any thought to the contrary of letting people who want to marry ... marry. People are dying over this shit. People are being denied the ability to LOVE whomever they want in this cruel and rather loveless world. If a person can find happiness, then I want them to grab it and hold it for all its worth and as long as they can. 

Jim Veach, a pastor from Georgia went on a rant against gay marriage that I watched today. He is the inspiration for this, my own, mini-rant. He says that god created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve -- a popular dumb ass thing to say by those who do not support love between consenting adults. And one I am sick of hearing considering god 'created' Adam and Eve and Steve and everyfuckingthingandbodyelse, according to that book. This person went on and on about what is and what is not normal. He spoke with a certain measure of hatred and mockery that is not supposed to be the message of his book, and I could only think while listening to him that a few hundred years ago, he would have been just as passionate about the dissolution of the state of slavery that held this country in its grips for four hundred miserable, inhumane, fucking years.

Hatred and disrespect always sounds the same, shouted loud, from the pulpit. Its sad, really. In all truth, he is outmatched by James Manning and his Manning Report on Starbucks spreading ebola -- EBOWLAAAAH!!!-- via gay sex and semen or something ridiculous like that. Manning is a black man and he's written a couple of books, I guess, since they're up on the screen while he's ranting. I don't know what those books are about, and I don't want to know. What I wonder, instead, is whether Mr. Manning is aware that a lot of people are blaming The Dreaded Ebwolaaaah on black people--African's specifically, and there was a period where A students from Africa weren't allowed to attend American universities because of the Ebowlaaah! Meaning that hatred is circular and it is always going to swing around and bite you in the ass in the end. 

I do not understand a concept of god that allows for hatred. People like those I mentioned above are funny to me -- except for the fact that they are dangerous. They preach love on one hand and fear and hatred on another -- all the while passing that collection plate. They feed fear and collect dollars. And it is obvious to the unafraid. And, most importantly, they don't care who they hurt in the process. There are people who believe them and go out and hurt other people based on the things they say. It is both irresponsible and predatory.

I can not be grateful for the simple common sense and human decency that has a lot of people laughing at the men I mentioned above. I worry instead that it takes humanity so long to do the right thing in almost all cases. For me, gay marriage isn't even an issue. I didn't have to waste five minutes in consideration as to whether it was right or wrong. Love between consenting adults is NEVER wrong--the fucking end. The fact that it needs to be fretted over and picked at like it is ... is, truly, beyond me on spiritual levels. And, anything that stands against love, I have to question. Srsly.   

It's one of the few good things we have in this -- coporatized, work-yourself-to-death, dignity for your dreams, pay this bill and that bill, we are better than them, cut down the trees and build more shopping malls, poison the water, spray pesticides on the food, cancerous, Ebowlaaaah!, everybody's got that one creepy uncle -- motherfucker. 

_____

STORYTIME

'cause ... why not?

I wrote Chosen for a contest on a gay website. I didn't think anything of it at the time. A story is a story. There was no monetary prize, but, at the time, I didn't care about things like that. I wanted the challenge of creating something that the individual who ran the site would like. He seemed picky and selective. I can't resist that. 

Anyway, the rules were simple: 2,500 word count and the story had to take place in outer space. There was a naughtier rule about it all -- but I won't write it down here. I wrote the story in one night the night before the entries were due ' cause that's how I ROLL. I sent it in and let it be. 

About a week later, I got a response from the site's owner who told me that he loved the story but asked a lot of personal questions -- mostly in regards to my name. Ultimately, I will never actually know what the problem was but he seemed to be in awe that I had hung out on his site without running the fuck away the second that I could see it ... let alone had written a story for his contest. 

I found him, truthfully, mesmerizing, and, likely, always will for that conversation. In the end, he never could bring himself to reject the story, but, instead, closed the entire contest. I couldn't really feel bad about it as I published the story -- at least for a little while -- elsewhere. 

People are strange 

When you're a stranger... 

Especially me. 

Veteran of a Thousand Psychic Wars

So, I am writing this little dirty bit of fan fiction. And. Frankly. It's pissing me off. Some things take longer to write than others. Some things are mad complicated. And some things are just downright annoying. It doesn't help that everything has to be right by my standard. When I say that, I don't mean the writing has to be flawless and perfect--I couldn't judge that if I wanted to, and I tend to make hilarious mistakes that I find later. What has to be 'right' is the feel of the thing.

These two people really like each other. However, they both have hostile, combative personalities to some degree. I've never been one to make people do things--which, sorta, flies in the face of writing. These two are difficult to maneuver. And, I suppose, my concern with them isn't even them. It is that I won't finish the story and find out what happens in the end. That's a terrible place to be. I have several stories like that, fanfic or original, with characters that I really like--unfinished. It's like watching a good movie half way through. Here's to hoping that I finish this one and find out how it turns out. And, since I have to talk about something in this space in a reasonably regular fashion, I'll talk about what it means when I say that I enjoy writing fanfiction.

REASONS I LOVE DIS STUFF

Writing original fiction is a lawless places, and, normally, I enjoy living in that space a lot. There, I set up the rules. In a life that has been set up for me, with rules I do not often agree with but am forced to comply with, within the realm of writing I am free. I make the rules. The sky is whatever color that I say that it is. The trees are the size that I want them to be. I can eliminate racial prejudice or accelerate it. In my worlds, gender and sexuality may or may not matter. A lot of people say that writers have a god complex. I disagree with the arrogance implied in a god complex. I don't like the world as it is. I color it in ways that I can understand and that make sense to me. My motivation is desperation, not ego. That is why I write. You will rarely catch me penning original contemporary stuff unless asked/forced. I just don't care for it, and I leave that kind of thing to other people better suited to the task. 

The lawless land of originality is tempered by fanfiction. Fanfiction, by it's very nature, is not an original piece of work. Here are lands with carefully constructed rules already in place. The difference is, I like the worlds, and I can choose to linger about in them. The characters are people already. Every once in a while, I can deepen their personas, but I can't change them. Herein, lies the challenge in writing fanfiction. 

Do not alter the world unreasonably. 

Do not alter the character of someone else's creation. 

Having read a lot of fanfiction prior to writing it, I can honestly say that most of the writers do not adhere to the couple of rules set above. Of the two, the second one, I have found, is the most damning. If an author sets up a character's personality in a certain way, and you love that character enough to write about him/her, what is the point of changing their character? The person becomes different, unrecognizable as themselves, and the story changes from something of an homage to something maddening and laughable. 

I think of it like a test personally--a test with rules that determine pass or fail. The rules are the construct of the world and the people I am working with. To fail, is to alter them. To pass, is to sneak a story into that world that could have believably happened within it. It is, in this way, harder than being original. And I love that. The challenge. 

In the end, it's only really about how one plays the game.

_____

A friend recently reminded me of this song, and since I definitely feel like this, this miserably plagued kind of night, I'm gonna put it up. 

Thank you, Jamie.

You see me now 

A veteran 

Of a thousand psychic wars

I've been living on the edge so long

Where the winds of limbo roar

And I'm young enough to look at

And far too old to see

All the scars are on the inside

I'm not sure that there's anything left of me

Sidenote: to say  that I don't know who put Light Yagami's uber-sexy, murderous ass in that there dress. But, if that person happens upon this and wants me to credit them all they have to do is say so. 

I can't draw. I don't take photographs/paint. etc. All the work of other marvelous people. 

The Accepted And Condoned Serial Murders That Society Commits

Leelah Alcorn killed herself. She stepped in front of a truck the Sunday after Christmas. I looked at a picture of her face and found her to be both sad and beautiful all at once. She was born a boy in a Christian household. In the face of telling her parents that she felt like a girl born into a boy's body, she was told that: God does not make mistakes.

I am not a reporter. I talk about the things that bother me in this online place that I call my own. I am not telling this story for any other reason than I heard it and it bothered me. It hurt me. You can read it if you want, you can sympathize, disagree or go away.

The death of Leelah Alcorn is murder to me. And while I realize that this is an odd thing to say, I mean it with every fiber of my being. Our society murders innocent people, and it begins with a death of the soul that oftentimes transfers itself into a death of the body--a senseless kind of death. This person did not have cancer. This person wasn't shot in the commission of some terrible crime. This person was murdered from the inside out, and, I guess, what I want people to do is TALK about it--admit that we do this to one another. Hopefully, if we speak on it, we can stop killing our future doctors and scientists and poets for stupid reasons that don't matter at all in the great scheme of things that are ... human.

People are killing their own children. And this is something cold and cruel that I simply do not understand. While I get the fact that some people kill their children every day and the jails and prisons are stocked full of those kinds of people, this isn't quite that. 'Good' people, 'decent' people--not cold blooded psychopaths are committing the acts that I am talking about here. People very close to this benevolent 'god' that they claim to believe in. If these parents truly believed that 'God does not make mistakes' then it stands to reason, by their own account, that they wouldn't find anything wrong with their child to begin with. Their god made their child the way they are in the first place, correct?

Instead, they take this poor kid off to be tortured by fanatics (Christian 'therapists') who think they can change the child's inner make up to fit better into some bullshit 'standard' of what society calls 'correct' and 'true'. Tortured, the child tries to conform and when the child can not the child is rejected. A lot of the time, these children are put out of their households and forced out onto the streets -- defenseless against the predators that are out there waiting for them. A lot of the time, these children just up and kill themselves unable to be what is wanted--unable to be anything other than who they are.

I'd like to say that I can't imagine the pain, etc., but I can. It only takes being human to put yourself in the shoes of a person like this. It's not as hard as some people try to make it out to be. We are all people and we all have empathy. Imagine what it is like to be like this person, imagine the kind of rejection one would feel being cast off from one's family, reviled, discussed like there's something wrong with you all the time, talked down to, belittled...

Imagine the hurt ... and change.

This murdered kid could be the person that cures cancer for us all. And, yet, this life is snuffed out for the stupidest reason imaginable -- an ideology, a fucking idea of how things are 'supposed' to be.

I despise labels--and the way human beings have of putting things into neat little boxes that are, more often than not, labeled incorrectly and for convenience. My convenience is not more important than someone's LIFE.

Please don't be sad, it's for the better. The life I would've lived isn't worth living in... because I'm transgender..." 

She would never truly be a girl, her mother said, because God doesn't make mistakes.

"If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids, even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid...That won't do anything but make them hate them self. That's exactly what it did to me."

"All I have to do is jump, and then everything is over."

Maybe I'm wrong and my imagination is not good enough. There is a school of thought that seems to believe that you can't understand a thing unless you are that thing yourself. I have my own demons, and while they are not the same, they are similar--because I'm a fucking person and we are not as different as we'd like to claim. I can not even imagine doing something like this to my own. The agony in this kid's death note is palatable, and I wouldn't want to make my child feel that way about anything, especially something they can't change like: WHO THEY ARE. 

I wouldn't want to be responsible for that kind of pain, and then claim, somehow, to love that person. These are things you do to someone you hate, and, even then, only if you are a monster. 

Then again, if Da Lord told me to slit my son's throat on the top of a mountain, I'd have told him to go fuck himself. 

End Transgender Conversion Therapy
_____

Currently in my kitchen making Lean just like Trayvon Martin--even though you can't make Lean with Skittles and Iced Tea. With this new hate driven recipe, I'm going to create that Imaginary Lean that's just as tasty as Walter White's Blue Sky and I'm going to get so fucked up that I float right off this shitty little planet with its judgmental, cave-thinking, twisted humans who think they are sooo much better than the animals around them but put the animals to shame for the horrific, selfish, bullshit they do to one another like its NOTHING ...

Merry Christmas

Dez Nuts roasting on an open fire

Jack Frost in an erotic pose ...

Merry Christmas 

to you ...

_____

Another year gone and what's bugging me today?

Hmmn:

A movie called Free Fall, which was about this dude with a pregnant girlfriend falling in love with another dude. I read a review of the movie that I resent because due to the review I didn't watch the movie for a very long time. I hate sad shit. Life is sad enough, really. I don't need to watch sad films. The review I read said a lot of things and none of them good about this movie. I took the reviewer at their word, and, honestly, this was the last time I'll do something like that. I can't even call the review a misrepresentation of fact. In my humble opinion, the reviewer just kind of lied. Like they didn't want to like the movie when they sat down to watch it and picked it apart for everything that could possibly be even remotely considered wrong with it. 

Free Fall was kind of beautiful in an ugly way. It ended sadly but it ended in a very real kind of way. The main character, Marc, didn't know he was gay exactly, and his love interest, Kay, was just pretty damn sweet. They could have been happy together if other people hadn't kept getting in the way. I felt sorry for Marc's girlfriend on some level, but the truth of the matter was that they were two people who didn't need to be together. Shit happens. 

The reviewer said that Marc had a picture perfect life before he met Kay. What I saw was a man in a trap. He was bored and unhappy and honor bound to stay that way. There was nothing 'picture perfect' about it. The reviewer said that Kay was predatory. What I saw was Kay reacting to the things that Marc did. Marc hit on Kay first -- and literally, even if subconsciously. The reviewer said that Kay was into drugs and dragged Marc down into a drug induced life of sex and ... well ... drugs. Uhm, Marc popped two pills the whole time -- at least on screen. The reviewer said that Kay left Marc like leaving him was the goal of this predatory person from the jump. Kay left after Marc gave him back the key to his place -- saying, pretty much, the he didn't want him. I don't know too many people who would stick around after that, honestly. 

I don't like sad movies, but this one, at least, wasn't sad for the sake of being sad. It wasn't a judgement call. It was a movie about what happens in a situation like this sometimes. I think the movie handled itself well. I'd like to smash that reviewer in the mouth with a hammer. And learned, for the final time, not to listen to anyone else's opinion about anything -- but to judge for myself. 

I suggest that the movie should be seen by anyone who happens to read this. The guys are beautiful, and there's chemistry between them, and, while sad, it's sad for a good reason. And there's still hope if Marc decides to go searching for what he lost... 

...which he definitely should do. 

*

I'm writing quite a bit of horror fiction as it was my first love. I am remembering what it was like to scare the shit out of people instead of trying to arouse them. For me, it feels the same, you know. Lost in words, and pictures, and phrases, and screams. I missed this. And it took doing it a couple of times to remember that. 

I'm pseudonym (ing) my way through life these days and it's satisfying in its way. I enjoy being the creepy thing under the bed and in the closet. 

*

I have nothing else to report. I just really wanted to counter that shitty review actually. It was all in depth and serious and I took it seriously-- and after I watched the movie, under duress, I was mad about that. 

So that is all, try to remember what Bill and Ted said that fateful day in 1988:

aka

Try not to be a cunt.

This love song's for you, Santa Claus... 

... for all that you do...

BLACK MIRROR

I have to recommend this television program. I feel obligated to share it with those who, perhaps, may have missed its ... wonderfulness. I watched this whole thing in one sitting. Well, after episode 2 I had to sit back and take a break from it, but then, I was right back at it. It's a strange kind of horror this, and this is not a horror show, not really. It's description reads: 

Suspenseful satire with a techno-paranoia bent, the `Black Mirror' is all personal technology.

I suppose that's rather apt. I loved this show enough to talk about it here. There were only six episodes available on Netflix, though I could have stayed down this particularly horrific rabbit hole forever. I hope they make more and I hope that continue to produce good material like this episode to episode. My favorite episodes of the six were: 

1. The National Anthem

All about the Prime Minister of England and a ... pig. And a kidnapped princess. And the price of a life. And social pressure. And empathy, I think. Or the lack thereof. 

Would you fuck a pig on national television in order to save the princess? Would you have a choice?

2. 15 Million Merits

This one was my personal favorite. It is indescribably horrific and must be seen to understood. I won't even try to ruin it for anyone by describing the world -- because it's THIS one. 

There's a show that you can go on if you earn enough credits and the show ( American Idol -ish) will make you rich and famous. 

This one is about the death of beauty. The purposeful, malicious destruction of honestly beautiful things/people in order that we can relate to those things/people. Reducing them. 

3. White Bear

 I love the actress that played this part. But I couldn't sympathize with her in this world, which, I think makes her a better actress. 

What is the price of killing a six year old? Are people like that animals? Do they belong in zoos? Should we take field trips?

My interpretation of the events unfolding in the program may be off from yours, but I can guarantee you that this show will make you THINK.

It's brilliant, in my humble opinion, and while watching made me uncomfortable more than once, I'm glad I got to see this. I hope there's more. 

I suppose that's all I have to say today. I could blather on about the injustices of the world, but I just don't feel like it. From senselessly racist Youtube comments to women who allow their significant others to beat their children to death and cry that they just couldn't see fit to do what was necessary to protect them, to stupid ass wars to murdered East Indian female infants ... I'm just tired...

Eric Martin, Monster

I was a bullied kid. Nerdly. Read too many books. Didn't date. Didn't wear make-up. Had the wrong clothes (poor people clothes). I talked 'funny' -- meaning I loved words and the way they were pronounced and knew some really big words and incorporated them into my ordinary sentences. I was a weird kid, and I got tortured for it. Teachers didn't do anything because they didn't care. I love learning, but hated school with the burning passion of a thousand suns. My answer to that was to stop going for long periods of time--months if I could swing it.

In reading the story of Eric Martin and his battle with the Henrico School district, I feel nothing but sympathy for this kid. Beaten senseless for defending himself from a constant and relentless barrage of abuse that included gay slurs, Eric probably has brain damage now from being stomped half to death by his peers. He was hospitalized last time I looked. His face was swollen. He's a cute kid naturally--the skinny, basically defenseless kind--and seeing what they did to him is absolutely heartbreaking in this cold way that I have developed for looking into the microscopic lens of mans inhumanity to man.

The fact that these kids beat the shit out of Eric doesn't surprise or horrify me the way it should anymore. I am not as indignant and rage-filled as I would like to be over it. It's wrong, but so are a lot of things. What does manage to break through the ice chips that comprise my heart is the fact that charges were brought against Eric for defending himself against this constant abuse. A group of savage animals is one thing. I expect to see that. Historically, if humans were ever good for anything they have always been good at making the lives of other humans as miserable as possible. From slavery to the Holocaust, we are good at the torture of others for any excuse, the most common being "that one is not like us'.

My problem becomes the fact that the school is standing by those who committed this atrocious act. After having been told repeatedly about the abuse that Eric was receiving on a daily basis and doing nothing to help him, when this kid finally stands up for himself, they want to punish him for doing so--like getting his ass kicked like that wasn't enough pain for him. They are actually going to make him the bad guy in this scenario. A little skinny kid who got brain damage by being bullied and beaten is the bad guy here. He is the monster.

If Eric has killed himself like so many kids are doing these days then he would be considered weak and wrong.

There is no win.

Here is what things like this are teaching people:

Bow down. 

If you're being called a faggot or a nigger or anything else. If you're being pushed prodded and beaten, bow down and change yourself to suit the larger body of the aggressor. Become what you are told to become.

Black and wearing baggy clothes? Put on a button up shirt and speak real proper like -- or we'll fucking kill you.

Gay, look gay (whatever the fuck that means)? -- straighten up -- or we'll fucking kill you.

Have thoughts of your own, want to be left alone -- join us -- or we'll fucking kill you.

This is what we're teaching our children and then we sit back and wonder why the world is so fucked up, love is practically dead and if not completely dead definitely and individualized, sexualized and very personal kind of thing. Example: I love Tommy because he looks the way I want, takes care of me, and meets my physical and emotional needs.

Love is supposed to be so much greater than what it has been reduced to.

I can't really think of anything else to say. It's not like I'm the only person that sees this shit. I really hope that Eric receives some justice for what happened to him. I really hope that school becomes a place of learning and not a place where kids who don't fit the cookie cutter plastic mold of how they are 'supposed' to be get the shit kicked out of them and hospitalized. And their beatings and torture don't get cosigned by the adults that are supposed to be there to protect them.

If not, the world will just get meaner and uglier, day by day and year by year because the people who actually make it through school and get in positions of power will be the same people who thought it was okay to torture and beat Eric Martin.

And this stupid, ugly, worthless, senseless, incredibly cruel shit will just keep on...

...keeping on...