OMG, Adele is adorable!

Pardon my gush, but it’s true. She really IS a doll. She’s funny, she’s unpretentious, she’s blessedly drama-free in spite of everything she’s been through (how many pop stars can you say THAT about?), and she’s smart and nice, too. Oh, and she’s got the cutest accent — says fink and froat for think and throat. She’s feeling and singing better after her health woes of the past year. She’s happily over the dude that wrecked her (and inspired all those songs that make everybody bawl). And she doesn’t want to be “a skinny mini with my tits out”, which just totally flies in the face of everything the industry pushes where women are concerned. She may not have a supermodel figure like the late, lamented Whitney Houston, but she is damn gorgeous. When she sings, she doesn’t go in for high-energy theatrics, she just stands and delivers. And HOW. She puts it all into her voice, her eyes, and the palms of her expressive hands. And then she throws it out there for the world. If that’s not role model material, I don’t know what is.

All in all, Adele is the antidote to my Sartrean nausea where showbiz is concerned. She is one good egg. She deserves her success. She has my wholehearted approval.

And if you’re sick of the constant airplay her songs get (if not the songs themselves, which are just way too genuine to puke at), then my advice is to get away from Top 40 radio, like I do, and instead, listen to them when you NEED them. Save them for those times when nothing else will do. A good cry deserves a great soundtrack, and no one delivers it like she does.

Share this story:
Posted in Artsy-Fartsy Culture Stuff, Merry Old England, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off on OMG, Adele is adorable!

More Music for a Sunday: There are days…

This Luca Mundaca tune reminds me a great deal of this one by Marisa Monte, both in terms of theme and vocal stylings:

Both make loneliness and getting by a little easier, and make them sound downright lovely.

Share this story:
Posted in Brazil is the Bomb!, Music for a Sunday | Comments Off on More Music for a Sunday: There are days…

Music for a Sunday: Whitney Houston, RIP

This isolated vocal track from my favorite song of hers feels ghostly now that she’s suddenly, sadly gone. But it also illustrates just how well her voice stood on its own, with almost none of the melismatic warbling that her later imitators put on. She could have released this one a cappella without any difficulty.

Share this story:
Posted in Music for a Sunday, Obits and 'bobs | Comments Off on Music for a Sunday: Whitney Houston, RIP

Wankers of the Week: Happy Stupid People’s Day!

strychnine.jpg

Crappy weekend, everyone! Are we all looking forward to the discount chocolate sale on the 15th yet? I know I am. I need something to take my mind off all the Stoopid flying thick and fast over the past week. Especially the egregious crapola from the craptastic crappers noted here, in no particular order:

1. Anders Fucking Behring Fucking Breivik. Apparently max-security psych wards in Norway don’t come with mouth restraints. Dreadful oversight. I hope someone over there rectifies that little omission, and soon. Last thing the country needs is for anyone to get the impression that this lunatic has anything serious to say about culture and movements. But hey! If his verbal diarrhea flushes any more gangsters or nutjobs out of the woodwork, it won’t all be for nothing. Round ’em up, lock ’em up, and throw the key in the sea!

2. Cecil Fucking Ash. When every day is White People’s Day (and simply not celebrated as such because obvious privilege requires no further recognition), you’d think some people would be wise enough to keep their mouths shut about it. Not he! Well, there goes that whole Master Race theory, out the window; turns out that white people haz Teh Stoopid like no one else’s business. Perhaps we SHOULD celebrate…Stupid People’s Day. Think it’ll catch on? There’s no shortage of potential celebrants…

3. Rick Fucking Santorum. Yup, Icky Ricky’s still in the running. And still touchingly convinced of some utterly false, yet related, notions: (1) That abortion causes breast cancer; (2) that you can actually ban abortion and birth control and not suffer horrible repercussions, like women dying all over the place, (3) that His Barackness is going to throw the likes of Ass Sploodge to the lions (oh, if only!), (4) that women are too emotional to fight wars (that’s funny — and WHO declares them on the basis of calm cold emotionless logic, again?), (5) that global warming is a myth, and (6) that he stands even a snowball’s chance of winning anything.

4. John Fucking Fleming. Why?

john-fleming.jpg

That’s why. Teh Stoopid! It BURNS!!! And alas, Louisiana haz it. That’s how this pandering dunderhead got in. He was elected by fucking idiots who can be easily thrown into screaming shit-fits at the mere mention of abortion.

5. Stephen Fucking Woodworth. I don’t care how many times you repeat something, it still doesn’t make you any less full of shit. And honestly, I couldn’t care less whether a fetus is a human being under Canadian law, or whether our law treats it like a petunia or an armadillo. And I don’t want ANY fucking debate on the matter. I just want to make sure that self-righteous old men, even in Parliament, don’t get to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own bleedin’ uterus. Because women are undoubtedly persons under Canadian law, even if it took Parliament as late as 1929 to get that little fact straight.

6. Harvey Fucking Carroll, Jr. Who? I don’t know, but he wants $10 billion, because he thinks he can run the Venezuelan oil industry (and its US affiliate, CITGO) better than the Venezuelans. I also don’t know what he means by “progressive”, since Chavecito IS a progressive, one who has invested oil money into green, renewable energy (wind farms, no less! Solar power, too!), and his use of oil and money for “Geopolitical politics” (sic; translation: SERVING THE VENEZUELAN PEOPLE AND IMPOVERISHED US CITIZENS) has been very effective. But then, anyone who references a Chavecito-hating crackpot like T. Boone Fucking Pickens doesn’t deserve long shrift anyway, so I’ll just stop here, before I laugh myself into a hernia.

7. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. I’m sure there are plenty of worse things to do at a Super Bowl game than be caught on camera sitting in a VIP box, digging for boogers in your schnoz. But still, it’s just so emblematic of what a filthy pig this man really is. Isn’t it?

limbaugh-suppository.jpg

8. Ron Fucking Paul. What the hell is an “honest” rape, and what differentiates it from a “dishonest” one? What the hell difference would an estrogen shot make in preventing pregnancy when everyone who’s ever been on the Pill knows it’s progestin that does the real work? And how did someone who is so vague and so stupid ever manage to get into medical school, never mind graduate? Was his MD from a diploma mill? Sure smells that way. PS: Oh look, it’s Teh Sovereign Stoopid. I knew that was only a matter of time…

9. Karen Fucking Handel. Yep, she’s out. But boy oh boy, is she EVER a bitch about it. Her resignation letter reads more like a sugary, weasel-worded declaration of war. Why do I have the feeling that this vampire is gonna keep coming back until someone puts a stake through her? In any case, not one more cent of mine will ever be going to the Komen Foundation. If they could hire her in the first place, they don’t deserve anything except derision and contempt. PS: Oh look, there she is. On FUX Snooze. Guess this is why she declined a severance package…so she could go on shooting off her big lying yap to the media, and thus dig both her hole and Komen’s just that much deeper. Anti-choice is NOT “neutral ground”, Karen! Next up: a regular commentator slot? If so, she’ll dig FUX’s hole deeper for them, too.

10. Michele Fucking Bachmann. Oh, shut up and go away, you tiresome fucking wingnut.

11. Geert Fucking Wilders. If the shoe fits, SUCK IT, Nazi-boy. I’m especially pleased that it was Germans who handed you your fascist ass.

12. Mitt Fucking Romney. How cute — Mittens thinks the Komen Kommandos “did the right thing”! Isn’t this all a little rich coming from someone who once supported abortion rights, and whose relatives-by-marriage actually requested memorial donations to Planned Parenthood when their daughter died of an illegal abortion? PS: Oh, Mittens. For SHAME!

cut-off-choice.jpg

13. Vic Fucking Toews. While #5 is wanking on about the nonexistent human rights of fetuses, this one is wanking on about the now ALSO nonexistent human rights of the already-born. Apparently torture is once more okay, as long as it’s for CSIS and the state can claim that “public safety” is “at risk”, whatever that might mean. Does the right hand know what the OTHER right hand is doing? PS: Ha, ha. Beware the Jabberwock, kiddies!

14. Leona Fucking Aglukkaq. Hey, Leona? I think you dropped something. And glory be, it’s a flip-flop! “Regulatory burden”, blah blah, “informed choices”, blah blah blabbity blah blah. A fine “health minister” SHE is! First she says she’s gonna regulate trans fats, then she reneges. Apparently, appeasing the junk-food industry is more important to the Harper Government™ than protecting the lives and well-being of Canadians. Unless, of course, they’re in the fetal stage. Forced birth is gonna happen just so they can be good little mindless junk-food consumers and keep capitalism going. PS: Look who’s beating us at this. Shameful!

15. Andrew Fucking Scheer. So, once more, to recap: Cons — “pro-life” before a child is born, “every man for himself” afterwards, and “women stay home barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen”, no matter what.

16. Bryan Fucking Fischer. Forget carcinogens — lesbianism causes breast cancer, says he. Ellen DeGeneres causes breast cancer! Oh yeah, Bryan? Tell it to my mom, who’s been happily married to my dad for the past 45 years. And she’s had six kids, too, all of them breast-fed. She still somehow managed to contract the disease in spite of doing everything that was supposed to help her avoid it. Gee, do you suppose it’s because she likes Ellen and doesn’t care that she’s gay? I don’t think so, but I bet Bryan does!

tim-thomas-nope.jpg

17. Tim Fucking Teabag, er, THOMAS. AGAIN. Dude, you just keep right on teabagging. And the women in your life will find themselves a replacement penis-tender before you can say “do as I say, not as I do!” BTW, that abuse of Niemöller’s “First they came…” is utterly unforgivable, as everyone knows — or SHOULD — that Hitler was anti-choice and pro-forced-birth. Just like Tim Fucking Teabag Thomas. Oh yeah, and one in every four birth-control users in the US…IS A CATHOLIC. Who has no problem at all squaring reproductive rights with religious freedom, and indeed, feels they go together just fine, thank you.

18. Karl Fucking Lagerfeld. Trust me when I say that this pompous old orange-dyed queen isn’t a bit sorry he called Adele fat. He MEANT that! He’s just sorry his remarks got published and reaped a backlash. And yeah, what IS up with those Chanel clothes that don’t come in a size above 10? Too fucking lazy to design anything that fits and flatters something other than a clotheshanger, I guess. PS: Ha, ha. PPS: What Margaret Cho said.

19. Stephen Fucking Harper. That Davos boner is just gonna go on haunting him for the duration of his non-mandate, eh? And it damn well SHOULD, too. In fact, I hope it haunts him for the rest of his unnatural life. Also, this week, he had his Nixon in China moment. In which he sold us all down the Yangtze River. Awww, eh? And not a word about the atrocious conditions at Foxconn, either! Where’s all his tough talk on human rights when it really matters?

harpo-in-china.jpg

PS: Liar, liar, pants on fire. PPS: Ha, ha. PPPS: Ha, ha, ha!

20. Nancy Fucking Brinker. Still full of Epic Fail. Still not getting one more cent out of me.

21. Garry Fucking Breitkreuz. Another one who dropped a flipflop! Stupid SupposiTory, the Internets never forget. And the Canadian public will never forgive. PS: Got gold-plated pension? Of course you do.

22. John Fucking Hurley. Uh, Yeronner? I don’t think that a bowling date and dinner at Red Lobster is a suitable sentence for domestic violence. Although I’m sure that more than a few shitty husbands think that even small gestures of romance are really a punishment. And this one may well escalate the nasty payback for that alone.

23. Fred Fucking Phelps. Once more, the Fucking Westboro Baptist Church shows its true, classy colors…by protesting a funeral. This time, it’s that of two little boys axe-murdered and torched by their psycho father, who killed himself in the same act of arson. Their deaths clearly have nothing to do with the same-sex marriage rights law that was passed in Washington state this week, but that isn’t going to stop the world’s most sadistic screaming closet case from dragging his cultish clan over there to make asses of themselves at the funeral for two completely innocent kids. And no, “disgusting” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

god-hates-phelps.jpg

24. Cary Fucking Sherman. SOPA is dead; long live the whiny wankers trying to resurrect SOPA. And long may we continue to laugh our asses off over them.

25. Bill Fucking Vander Zalm. I think it’s fair comment to say that he’s a nasty, phony, crooked, corrupt, lying old scuzzball. And guilty of libel, to boot. And if he doesn’t like that, he can sue me. But it’s also fair to say that he’s gonna lose.

26. Cyrus Fucking Sullivan. I smell a class-action lawsuit for defamation of character brewing. And I sincerely hope it pours like hot rain upon your nasty, cyberbullying head. (BTW, shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the accuser, not the accused to demonstrate innocence with a doctor’s certificate, in matters like this?) And since when is an accusation of STD transmission “entertainment”? Or is that just a weasel word to prevent class-action lawsuits? If so, EPIC FAIL.

27. Tommy Fucking Jordan. Yeah, dude, I can see why your daughter turned out as poorly as she did. The chip clearly doesn’t fall far from the old block(head).

computer-crazy.gif

28. Newt Fucking Gingrich. Illegal acts, you say? Things that make you go hmmmmmm!

29. and 30. Steven Fucking Crowder and Chris Fucking Loesch. Surprise! Conservative convention-goers are not only crappy rappers, they’re also completely and utterly fucking RACIST. Thanks, guys, for showing your true colors.

31. Andrew Fucking Breitbart. I don’t know if he’s finally lost his mind in public, or just one more marble from an ever-diminishing bag thereof. But savor, if you can, the irony of him bleating at Occupy to “behaaaaaave yourself” and “stop raaaaaping people”. It will be utterly lost on him, regardless.

32. Ann Fucking Coulter. If I were you, Coultergeist, I wouldn’t go making such broad-brush claims about the relative good looks and/or “realness” of wingnut women vs. the sane majority. For one thing, you ain’t good-looking AT ALL. For another, not even your hair color is real. BTW, nice defence of sexism there. Goes great with your streetwalker uniform. Can’t imagine why you’re still single! PS: Oh wait, maybe I can.

coultergeist-cosmetics.jpg

33. Ed Fucking Holder. Can’t man up and do your governmental job, which is keeping corporations on a short, tight leash, taxing them at the highest rate, and upholding workers’ rights? Then do what the Conservative MP for London West did when Caterpillar locked out the Electro-Motive Diesel workers in London, Ontario, and just blame the usual scapegoat. Yes, that would be the media, for reporting accurately on the whole shitty affair and thus “unnecessarily” stirring public outrage and putting worker issues back in the public eye after decades of scratching dirt over them like good little doggies, while the fat cats laughed all the way to the increasingly bloated bank. Drat that media for no longer doing what Conservatives think is its job, namely reminding the public that resistance is futile and that the corporate Borg are our benevolent overlords and blah blah blabbity blah blah!

34. Larry Fucking Miller. Again with the “registering guns is what Hitler did!” bullshit meme. Aside from the obvious Godwin violation, there’s also the fact that Hitler didn’t force Germans to register guns, much less take them away. It was the Weimar Republic that brought in gun controls, ironically enough — to stem the growing Nazi menace. Hitler actually loosened gun laws. He even thrust guns into the hands of teenagers toward war’s end, when there was a desperate need for warm bodies to feed to his cannons. Feel stupid yet, Larry? You should, because you are. PS: Nice non-apology, too. Can we please kill that “if anyone was offended” bit? Of COURSE people were fucking offended that you called gun-control advocates Nazis! And we’re also offended that you made shit up and put horrible words in mouths that never said them. Larry, you fucking LIED. Apologize for that, you craven coward.

35. Maggie Fucking Gallagher. Yes, I still feel sorry for her. But that feeling-sorry evaporates whenever she opens her mouth and utters something so patently false and ridiculous. If marriage is for procreation, then how does she explain the fact that she managed to procreate without it, and that her doing so did NOT induce her reluctant boyfriend to tie the knot, but to flee her in the end and want nothing more to do with their son, either? Inconvenient truths, I know, but vital toward understanding just how silly and pointless her “defend marriage” agenda really is when you get right down to it.

36. Kay O’Fucking Connor. Why?

kay-oconnor-on-voting.jpg

That’s why. I respectfully suggest that if this is how she REALLY feels, she should live up to her ideals, set an example, and step down. And in future, let her husband do all the talking, voting, thinking and decision-making for her. And if she doesn’t like it, maybe she’d like to rethink that and retract it. Think she will?

And finally, to all the wankers I’ve met on Facebook this last week and had the pleasure of blocking for your misanthropy, your anti-choice misogyny (which is especially pathetic in a woman!), or your stupidity on climate change. I don’t know what’s in your water, but if I were you, I’d get it tested. Clearly SOMETHING is eating your brains. And I do not want to be forced to swallow the same poison, least of all on my friend-feed.

Goodnight, and get fucked!

Share this story:
Posted in Wankers of the Week | Comments Off on Wankers of the Week: Happy Stupid People’s Day!

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Another satellite for Venezuela

Looks like Simón Bolívar will have even more company in orbit. In addition to his Bolivian and Ecuadorian counterparts, he’s going to be joined by another Venezuelan satellite, named after another independence hero:

The new satellite, “Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda”, represents a great leap for the development of technological independence in Venezuela, said president Hugo Chávez.

During a meeting with engineers who will be traveling to China to prepare for the project of building the second Venezuelan satellite, the head of state added that this would also aid scientific, human and economic development in Venezuela.

“When we talk about science and technology, we are talking about an instrument of integral development for the country,” Chávez said.

The Popular Power Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Jorge Arreaza, said that VRSS-1, the new Earth-observation satellite, could enter orbit in September or October of this year.

In October 2008, the Venezuelan government launched its first satellite in the history of the country, Simón Bolívar, which serves in telephonic, information and Internet access among other things, above all in remote locations with low population density. It has also enabled the consolidation of social programs by the National Executive.

Translation mine.

Of course, the lamestream media are probably gonna paint this one as a spy satellite, too, and further evidence that those evil commie Venezuelans are in cahoots with those eviler, commier Chinese. I can only look at their uncritical coverage of Harpo’s latest trade mission over there and shake my head. And note in passing that we so-called freedom-loving North Americans have done absolutely nothing to help our Venezuelan counterparts develop technologically, and that our lovely corporate press really must learn to watch which side of its collective mouth it talks out of.

Share this story:
Posted in All About Evo, All the Tea in China, Canadian Counterpunch, Crapagandarati, Ecuadorable As Can Be, Festive Left Friday Blogging, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Newspeak is Nospeak, She Blinded Me With Science, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Festive Left Friday Blogging: Another satellite for Venezuela

This is what same-sex marriage sanity sounds like

Isn’t it wonderful when human rights win out over simply toeing the party line? This is Maureen Walsh, a Republican state representative from Walla Walla, Washington, speaking out beautifully for same-sex marriage rights both as a widow with happy memories of her own marriage, and as the mother of a lesbian daughter, whose marriage she hopes to one day celebrate in kind. It looks like she will get her wish, as Washington state’s same-sex marriage bill passed 55-43 and will be signed into law next week. She was one of two Republicans who did the right thing and voted in favor. Her daughter must be incredibly proud!

On a related note, today is my best friend’s birthday, and I imagine that hearing news like this must be like an extra-special present for him and his hubby. When same-sex marriage sanity came to Canada, they took advantage after more than a decade of being unable to make their union legal. Happy Birthday, Ben.

Share this story:
Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Law-Law Land, Teh Ghey, The United States of Amnesia, Uppity Wimmin | 3 Comments

Maggie’s melancholy marriage crusade, and me

Ahem. A little mood music, maestro:

Ah, that sets the tone brilliantly for what I’m about to say…

This morning, this Salon link popped up in my Facebook feed. Maggie Gallagher is a frequent wanker on my weekly list, and it’s not hard to see why. She’s said so many stupid things about same-sex marriage that I sometimes think I should just give her an entry to herself.

So imagine my shock when I found out the real reason for Maggie’s antipathy to same-sex marriage, which turns out NOT to be plain old homophobia like you’d expect. It’s something much murkier, and sadder, and it almost makes me sympathetic toward her at times. Not Maggie the professional homophobe, but Maggie the sad and lonely woman who got dumped:

As a freshman, Gallagher joined the Party of the Right, a debating society affiliated with the Yale Political Union. The YPU is a very large campus organization, with hundreds of members, whose main activity is to bring speakers to campus several times a month. But it is organized into “parties,” smaller clubs that meet for meals, pub nights and informal debates. Each party has its own flavor, political and cultural. The Tory Party is right-of-center and high Anglophile (the men wear tweed, the women plan to take their future husbands’ last names); the Liberal Party is left-of-center, earnest and wonkish. The Party of the Right has the deepest culture of the half-dozen or so parties. Its membership is diverse, comprising libertarians and monarchists, Catholic traditionalists and Objectivists, monetarists and distributivists. But they share a passionate, if often pretentious, reverence for the life of the mind. Members of the Party of the Right often major in philosophy, and they prefer debating questions about God or the Good to mundane matters of policy.

The party’s intentional eccentricity — when I was at Yale, in the 1990s, several Party of the Right men affected hats and trench coats — helps explain its reputation for cultishness. For many members, the party becomes their entire social world, and so it is not surprising that party romances are common. As a senior, Gallagher began seeing a fellow party member, a sophomore who wrote conservative editorials for a campus magazine and dreamed of being a doctor.

Today, they have different memories of the relationship — how long they had been dating, how close they were — but on one fact they agree: 30 years ago this spring, months before she was supposed to graduate, Gallagher discovered she was pregnant. Then, as now, Yale students did not get pregnant — or if they did, no baby came of it. But Gallagher knew she would have this baby. At first, she planned to give the baby up for adoption, but she soon changed her mind. The father, however, was not interested in being a father. Or so she says.

On a mild November day, Gallagher and I are upstairs at City Bakery, near Union Square in Manhattan, where after months of requests she has agreed to meet me. As Gallagher tells it, she and the baby’s father were close; they had been together “on the order of one year,” she says, so he might have been expected to stand by her. “My son’s father was my boyfriend at Yale,” is how she describes their relationship. But when she told him she was pregnant, right before spring break in 1982, he vanished on her. “I was in his room and he had to go do something, and I was going to fly out in a couple of hours, had to get to the airport. And the last thing he said to me was, ‘I’ll be back in 30 minutes.’ And then he wasn’t.”

He just left her sitting in his room. And that was the end of them. When summer came, Gallagher moved home to Oregon and took some classes to finish her degree. In the fall, she gave birth to a baby boy, Patrick.

The next year, Gallagher says, she and the father reconciled and moved in together. He was still in school, and they shared a house by the Connecticut shore with some other undergraduates. “It was one of those things that you have to be pretty young and stupid to think is going to work, because it was a very collegiate environment and, you know, basically my parents were supporting me. And so, you know, we, we broke up. I moved into a separate apartment, and he came by occasionally.” He graduated, and soon they were living near one another — she was commuting from Jersey City to Manhattan, to work at National Review, the conservative magazine, and he was in Harlem. He occasionally baby-sat for Patrick, until one day, after staying with his son while she attended a conference, he decided he wanted out. “He called me up the next day, or the next, and said that he couldn’t do it anymore, and that he didn’t really want to have anything to do with either of us,” Gallagher says. “And that was it.”

And that’s it. That’s the root, right there, of Maggie’s obsession with saving marriage. It has nothing to do with the queers at all. It has nothing to do with her two OTHER pet hates, liberalism and feminism, either. It has everything to do with the fact that her college boyfriend — a right-winger, just like herself — would not marry her, as she had hoped, when she revealed to him that she was pregnant with his child.

Now, I said I could sympathize with Maggie up to a point, and here’s why:

I too fell in love at university. It happened right in my first year. He was just what I wanted in a guy: smart, cute, funny, kind. He was so wonderfully different from all the other guys, although I couldn’t put my finger on why. He just was. And for a while there, I honestly believed he loved me too.

And he did love me…but.

In second year we were housemates (along with four engineering students), and that’s when our relationship took off. Or so I hoped. It was strangely chaste even for two 20-year-old virgins, which we were. We kissed rarely. He wouldn’t look at me when he touched me. He did remark, once, that I had “the most amazing skin”. I didn’t ask him what he meant by that. He had the strangest far-away look in his eyes when he said it, and I thought how odd it was that he could look so troubled when paying me such a sweet compliment.

What was the matter? Why wasn’t he happy, like me? And then came the awful question that girls ask themselves when a guy is acting all weird on them: What am I doing wrong?

And then it was over. And he was seeing another girl, and then another.

I lost my shit and confronted him after several weeks of this torture, which had made living in the same house with him all but impossible for me. I asked the self-blaming question and several others just as pointed, accusing him of treating me atrociously. Which indeed he was, although not for the reasons most guys jerk their girlfriends around. He was keeping something from me, I just knew it, and his evasive answers weren’t cutting it. I was too clingy, he said. That was a lie. I was hiding from him most of the time, often leaving a room as soon as he entered it, because I couldn’t bear the sight of him anymore. It just hurt too much. I began to spend a lot of time alone in my room, sulking and moping and trying not to cry.

And I was not the only bewildered female he’d left in his wake. By then he’d dumped the two girls who came after me, and while we couldn’t talk to each other for jealousy (or rather, I couldn’t talk to them), I sensed that they were just as confused by his mercurial behavior as I was. And he didn’t seem the fickle type; if he were, I’d never have let him get as close to me as he did. If he could dump not only me, but two other nice, bright girls, something had to be up.

So I stepped up the confrontation. That was uncharacteristic of me; like all introverts, I prefer to avoid conflict until it becomes inevitable. At last I exploded. It was like I’d become a whole different person, and I was: angry, distraught, constantly demanding answers he did not want to give. Only now, I wasn’t asking what I had done wrong, because if it was me, it must have been the other two girls as well, and we were all so different from one another. So I finally demanded: What was the matter with him?

And he looked at me very grimly and told me that he could tell me in two words what it was. But he didn’t say those two words. So I blurted out the most ridiculous thing I could think of, which was: “What — are you trying to tell me you’re gay, or something?”

He didn’t say a word, just looked at me with that horrible, unreadable expression. And then he turned away.

And that was his big coming-out moment, although I remained in denial for weeks after. Even when he shoved my nose in it, bringing around one prospective boyfriend after another, I couldn’t accept it, couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Until finally I had to.

And then I crashed.

For the first time in my life, I seriously contemplated suicide. I took long walks on the grey Kingston waterfront all that winter, wishing for a cliff to throw myself from. There was none. There was not a single elevated, isolated spot where I could quietly do away with myself and cease to trouble this world with my unwanted presence. So I sat on a park bench staring morosely out at Wolfe Island and wishing I knew how to just die. I sat there so long that an elderly gentleman passing by asked me if anything was wrong. I shook my head and went home, biting back tears all the way.

I climbed out of my depression gradually, in what would later become a pattern for me: by avoiding him, and immersing myself desperately in other pursuits, no matter how little pleasure I could eke out of them. I took photos with the Zeiss camera and telephoto lens that I’d gotten for Christmas, of the ice breaking up along the shore. They turned out badly: dark and bleak with a distant pinprick sun, and none of the cool crystalline beauty I was hoping to capture. An omen? It sure felt like it.

I also wrote a novella that I didn’t really know how to finish. And no wonder: The events that sparked that burst of cathartic creativity were far from over. I tentatively titled it The Breaking, which was a transparent view of my own state of mind. It was a first-person narrative from the viewpoint of a second-year university girl dying of cancer. It was my death wish, pure and simple. When I read it aloud at the local writers’ group meeting, my voice trembled and would not stop. It felt like confession, not fiction. One of the older ladies remarked that my hero, a nursing student who ended up looking after his sick friend because she couldn’t or wouldn’t care for herself, seemed too good to be true. “He sounds almost like a homosexual, dear!”

I thought I would die of shame, but it never happened. To my utter disgust, I lived.

Eventually my grief ran out of steam. By then I was living in a new place, a two-bedroom basement apartment on a quiet side street. I put the melodramatic manuscript away; I think I lost it. If it is still among my papers, I am not going to dig it out, unless I’m really starving for something to laugh at. I came to grips with the fact that my friend would always be my friend, never my boyfriend. I resumed my on-again-off-again long-distance relationship with another guy I’d been tentatively seeing, and whom I would finally and definitively dump four years later, after numerous infidelities, most of them on his part. I found myself crushing harmlessly on various other unavailable guys in my classes. And I got over the homophobia I hadn’t known I had until my buddy rubbed my nose in it.

In short: I got over myself, and him, and the gay. And what saved me were the very things that Maggie Gallagher has taken it upon herself to eradicate: left-wing politics, feminism, and homophilia.

I could so easily have become a Maggie Gallagher myself, making a lucrative cottage industry of my own unhealed wound. But I chose to go a more constructive way. Today, I’m a happily unmarried woman who still dares to hope for a sweet, smart, sensitive Mr. Right, but who obviously isn’t in any rush. I don’t have any abstract, immutable ideals of Marriage-with-a-capital-M, only realistic (and gender-inclusive) concepts of small-m marriage. And I’m certainly NOT about to force any gay guys onto that Procrustean bed. I have no desire to be any man’s beard, and I do not believe that our society is being destroyed by the forces of progress and social change. In fact, I’m working among those forces to make it better, even if that means that the Maggies of this world can’t accept it. I can, and so can a growing number of others. Just as I accepted my friend’s orientation and my own solitude, eventually embracing both, so I have become a very different, and much happier, woman.

Meanwhile, my buddy found the love of his life. He and his partner had a Holy Union ceremony, the first (unofficial) gay wedding ever performed by the Queen’s University chaplain. And when I danced with my best friend’s dad at the reception, the father-of-the-groom murmured sadly to me: “I wish it was YOU he was marrying.”

I didn’t say a word. I just smiled back at him a little ruefully and thought: Yeah, me too. But we can’t always get what we wish for, can we?

Share this story:
Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Confessions of a Bad German, Isn't It Ironic?, Law-Law Land, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Teh Ghey, Teh Heterostoopid, The United States of Amnesia, Writer Lady Sings the Blues | 2 Comments

WTF is going on in Panama?

Anonymous Panama has declared war on the Martinelli Government™. Why?

Well, for starters, Martinelli & Co. are corporatist to the teeth. Yes, kiddies, the F-word applies. Fascism has come to Panama. And with it come all the usual horrors we associate with that word. Including, you guessed it, GENOCIDE:

Ricardo Martinelli has rarely shown his face during the crisis, but he did send out his surrogates to justify the previous day’s crackdown. This, however, turned against the administration when Security Minister José Raúl Mulino, who was attempting to make the case that he had to lie about the government turning off the cell phones (he alleged sabotage) in order to thwart “extreme leftists” when he was confronted with a series of photographs taken by La Estrella’s Eliezer Oses. These pictures of an officer drawing and firing a pistol contradicted Mulino’s claims that an indigenous student who was killed in San Felix the previous day could not have been killed by police because the cops at the scene had no lethal weapons. The Martinelistas deployed their “call center” propagandists to allege that the photos were photoshopped fakes, but eventually they backed down and said that the officer would face disciplinary proceedings. While Mulino backed down on that issue, the Augustinian Friars in Tole issued a statement responding to his allegations of the previous day that they had engaged in inciting violence. The day turned into a public relations rout for the government.

Memo to Martinelli & Co.: Lying about your fascism is not a good idea in the age of the Internets. You will be found out. And the photographic proof will be published.

And really, do you want to take your chances with Anonymous?

Share this story:
Posted in A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Fascism Without Swastikas | Comments Off on WTF is going on in Panama?

Goodbye and good riddance

Two obnoxious, hateful, right-wing “family” things went bye-bye today: Karen Fucking Handel from the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and the last faint flicker of hope for Prop Hate in California.

I’m sure neither will be sadly missed.

Share this story:
Posted in Crapagandarati, Fascism Without Swastikas, Fetus Fetishists, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Law-Law Land, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Schadenfreude, Teh Ghey, Teh Heterostoopid, The United States of Amnesia, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off on Goodbye and good riddance

Bradley Manning: NOMINATED!

A group of Icelandic parliamentarians has nominated the world’s most famous whistleblower for one of the world’s most prestigious prizes. Undoubtedly he deserves it, but that probably means he won’t get it. After all, look who got it before him.

Share this story:
Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Cool Beans, Isn't It Ironic?, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Bradley Manning: NOMINATED!