C-130

While cleaning up the place this morning, I popped this DVD that Brady gave me yesterday. It's a two-hour discussion about Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," and it features commentary (and quite a bit of explanation with an intsrument) from each of them and their engineers. They isolate tracks and talk about the manual analog manipulations they had to perform to acheive cetain characteristics, they show photos of the ladies who wail throughout, and they even speculate on some of the more introspective aspects of the work. My favorite quote came from a grown-up Dave Gilmour:

"Sometimes I wish that I had been able to have one of those moments that people talk about when they first sat down in a darkened room with headphones on to listen to this album all the way through for the first time. I never got to have that."

He smiles as he says the last sentence, and I like Pink Floyd even more.

Subtitle: A wall-muted "I'm helping!"

I've prbably never vocalized how imporatant and meaningful it is to me that, in your presence, I feel a vacuum of judgement. When I have a disgusting thought, I know that I can somehow express it to you and we'll both laugh in the wake of absurd ripples that follow.

Our sicknesses take different forms, yet theyt parallel one another in magnitude. You are my brother.

On travaille,
On essaie toujours,
À trouver l'acceptance
Qu'on a manquer
autrefois.
Vous me donner le miroir
Avec que je me regarde.

Drunkenly yours, always;
JK

I am so afraid of what will happen to us as we start pretending to move into adulthjood that I don even know how to communicate to you guys that it's tearing me up.

Swear to me that we'll get to go to Heber, just the three of us, this summer, at least one night.

Tearing up as I write, this is only for the two of you.

JK

Subtitle: Let's never 'just say no'...

Whether you think about it or not, you are one of the integral components of my Inner Circle. Without your presence, your intellect, I would certainly crumble from disuse, obsolescence.

As such, let me now inform you of my experiment. I am drunk. I am drunk off my ass. I bought two six packs tonight to see how far, without any other adulterants, I could get before losing my will to self-inebriate further. I had to put into perspective the measure that you gave me the other day, and, concurrently, the distance to which I have to go to reach a point at which I no longer fear your potential responses.

And after six beers and two shots (the last two I had, unfortunately) of Jamaican rum, I am drunk off my ass.

This isn't an intervention. This isn't an attempt to make you stop drinking. This isn't an attempt to change your lifestyle. This is a sincere attempt to get to a place thatr you respect, that you enjoy, to tell you, from there, that I want you to be safe and happy, at all costs, for the rest of your life.

Il tremble
devant la figure
de la loi.
Son muse est tombée,
une victime de sa
reveille adulte,
mais il y reste
son fortitude.
C'est, au même fois,
son premier sommeil
et son premier rêve.

Drunkenly yours, always;
JK

Subtitle: Laugh it up, girlie, 'cause you can't measure the moon without me!

Elle me laisse avec de la désarroi;
Les stylos, les crayons,
Les feuilles du papier partout.

Elle me laisse d'une crise de foi
À la caractère humaine
Avec son humeur, sa tendresse.

Thanks for laughing with me as my intestinal stuff reactivated. Especially since, opting for beer as my caloric liquid diet of choice, you pointed out that I probably shouldn't have bought the 'light' brand. Eat a big dinner for me, lady-pie.

Drunkenly (and hungrily) yours, always;
JK

Looking back into the lawbooks from the year before my high school graduation reveals nastiness and evidence of the crumpled sense of citizenship held by the majority of voters in this fair state.

Arkansas Marriage Law: 1997: Anti-Marriage Bill Adopted. Senate Bill 5: Anti-marriage bills passed Senate (1/27) and House (1/22). Signed by Governor Huckabee (R) on February 13.

Domestic Partnership: There are no municipalities offering domestic partner benefits in Arkansas.

As we lose ground on the national circuit, shall we not also forget state sovereignty and the responsible heft that still rests in that smaller theater?

I certainly hope that my descendants will recognize the struggle through the shame of this period in our history, but we are so, so close.

You know you want to know your cyborg name.

and she gonna get married.

Crystal was my first girlfriend. Cystal is the only girl with whom I've been photographed kissing, on the playground in the sixth grade (Ms. Perry's class at College Station). Crystal picked up a tarantula when we were eleven. Crystal and I went to the same preschool, moved apart, then rediscovered one another in the fifth grade when she brought our mutual preschool class photo to class one day and asked me, "Is this you?" Crystal took me to Sally's Beauty Supply for the first time and showed me the huge row of non-natural hair dyes. Crystal and I chickened out of the teen pride dance in D.C. (which looked totally shitty from the outside) in favor of going shopping for futuristic clothes in Georgetown.

Crystal was the first person, the first person, to privately ask me if I was gay. I give her a lot of credit for that.

We were tight. I never thought we would drift apart but, as we chose different universities and moved out of regular contact range, life, mimicking geography, divergently continued. I hadn't spoken with her in almost two years (two years?!), not since before I graduated from college, when I cam home to a message on my answering machine: "Jeff? Hey, this is Crystal--I hope this is your number, or if it isn't I hope whomever gets this message will be able to get this message to you. Here's my number, give me a call. It's been forever, man, it's been forever."

So, a day later, I call her. She's getting married. She's getting married to that guy, that guy who tried jiujitsu on me. That guy who, having quit smoking, adopted a strong anti-smoker attitude. She's getting married to him, this June. This June.

All homos unionize and collectively move to a large, rural state with plenty of fertile land and a long growing season (Arkansas, for instance). Once there, all resources are pooled and used as a collective fund to corner the market in one or two areas. For this example we'll take the local agricultural staples of rice and soybeans. All the bears team up and man the soy fields while all the twinks stick to the rice paddies (the moist environment is much better for the skin). Assuming that gays make up between ten and thirty percent of the population of the United States, and knowing that all of Arkansas contains fewer than three million inhabitants, that puts us at an influx of a solid thirty to ninety million gays, an adjusted state population density of ninety to ninety seven percent. As a distinct majority, and with a corner on two agricultural markets, our representation in D.C. would increase (at our election, of course), and, due to the influx of capital from, say, selling rice at cheaper rates to Japan than to the rest of the United States, we could become a national social force.

Yeah, but then after we get the right to the same insurance and taxation priveleges you know that the leather bears will team together to take control of the entire bear camp, overthrowing the chubs and chasers outright. Then the twinks would revolt against a fourteen hour workday and, in all liklihood, be easily pushed over by the reigning leather bears. Actually, they might invite it. Then the twinks will spend all that money on clothes, the bears will get pissed, and an outrageous civil war will start. Finally, the US at large will realize their opportunity and just "accidentally" nuke the entire state.

Maybe it isn't such a good idea.

Thanks to Brady for helping me realize the fiscal and diplomatic possibilities of a national gay state. When it happens we'll make you mayor of our token straight village.

That "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" show came up in conversation today and, in spite of my best efforts, I couldn't put into words the exact reasons for which that show makes me uncomfortable.

To begin I offer the confession that, yes, I've watched it a few times and, more often than not, I've enjoyed watching. For it or against it the bitch is there, so I might as well enjoy it. That main guy, Carsten (?) is an absolute riot. His flamboyance (which has been turned up to eleven) makes me feel a little comfortable on my more fey days. His humor may be biting, but in a faggishly teasing kind of way. He plays off of the effette stereotype by summarily acknowledging it with his limp-wristed gait and sassy mouth. He backs up his couture-oriented braggishness with actual style--I loved that skinny-tie-belt idea, and he has singlehandedly brought the unstructured blazer to middle America (I now see them on professors on campus, here in Little Rock of all places!). All of the other guys are similarly good-natured and eager to satisfy the most gentlemanly of heterosexual palettes. The eager optimism of the show at large is an aspect of the show that is often lauded in the press, and rightfully so. It is refreshing to see gays on t.v. who aren't summarily self-absorbed circuit sluts, husking it up with a leather daddy at the Folsom Street Fair.

Then again, every member of the Queer cast does head up some sort of makeover/redecorating charge, all the while clad in nothing less than the most over-the-top turquoise-and-daffodil leather motorcycle jackets or asscentric printed-and-tattered denim. This isn't bad, but it's also far from progressive and, jesus, sometimes those guys get fucking snippy about peoples' personal styles. Namely that Tom, oh I'm sorry, Thom fellow who is in charge of the lucky straight man's homestead. He oozes pretension and displays an obvious distaste for most people's characters. At one point I saw him comment on a shower curtain with the television-worthy critique, "[t]his is just stupid." Ah, thanks, Thom, for such a great reason to choose a striped curtain over a spotted one. You're right, that hetero should've known better.

True, people apparently do volunteer for the show and ought to know what they're in for, but is all courtesy lost when one signs a waiver? Turn down the catty you nancies, it's making us rural fags hate you. I remember watching the first episode, starring a yound New York City artist named, appropriately, Butch. Butch was practically denuded by the Queer Eye team, hands pawing and comparing in some intrinsically space-invading manners. Poor Butch would get that look, that obvious facial contortion that says, "I am a modern man in a megalopolis and I can make myself accept these fags touching my nethers on television." Just as the gay image, that overarching image of the lisping nelly, was once employed to capitalize on the cultural fear of sodomy, we've now stepped up to the next level in which the focus is rather the tension that comes about when gays and heterosexuals are brought together. It's social diffusion paraded up as a gag, carnavalesque in the combination of sin and righteousness, the binge before the purge.

Now, this isn't inherently unsettled. On the contrary, this show has proven to be pretty entertaining to a broad segment of the American population. The question remains, though, whether or not this tolerance will continue even when the shield of big advertising money is lowered as economic strain builds and the capital market teeters on the brink of disarray. I guess we'll see.

Trade name of a laxative tea I saw at the grocery store. I couldn't help it: I saw the title, read its function, and started laughing uncontrollably. I tried to just walk away from it, thinking that my proximity to the box was the problem, but nothing would work. I'd be halfway across the store grabbing some pasta when, face still all red and sticky from tears, "Smooth Move" would spontaneously pop (poop?) into my mind, seending me reeling again, doubled over with so-hard-it's-silent painlaughter and resting my basket of food on the floor while I paused to recover, panting. I don't know if I looked more like a loon or some twittering jackass when, surrounded by people scrutinizing pastries in the bakery section, it happened again and I just had to keep pretending to look at bread like nothing was even happening. After that I even thought about buying a box as a conversation piece.

It's good to know that product design officials have the balls (bowels?) and a healthy enough sense of humor to print and market this. God bless you, the makers of Smooth Move Laxative Tea.

Last night I watched Noam Chomsky speak on continental opinion, the press, and public sources of valid information. If it hadn't been on C-SPAN at two in the morning I would have felt comforted that Mr. Chomsky had at least been given some air time to point out discrepancies, especially, in American attitudes. Thankfully, though, he gave excellent references during his telecast (almost as if he knew that it was a good chance to quickly spew out links to multitudes of information).

His most valuable reference was that of a study released in October of last year by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) entitled, "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War." In it, respondents who have been asked questions concerning attitudes towards specific presupposed facts (and party allegiances). The most interesting aspect of the study is in its organization of resultant information, which generally describes participants with respect to preferred news source. It's awfully predictable which viewers said what, but the depth of some of these questions and responses will amaze you. It will also frek the fuck out of you because, jesus, this all means Leo Strauss was not a passing fad. Media and advertising are now seriously shaping global policy, quite simply because we're too weak-willed, as a nation, to accept news as plain information. Our increasingly advertising-driven market economy has taught us all to be picky sons of bitches, able to decide to trust NBC news over the rest of the media outlets with the stylistic criteria that Jessica Simpson uses to choose one pair of shoes from a wall of gorgeous competitors. Personal tastes are filtering into objective media and killing it (with a trademarked 'swoosh,' I imagine).

Oddly enough, Chomsky pointed out that a disturbing trend had been observed in that people in the 18-24 range are increasingly citing "late night political comedy shows" as primary sources of news on the world. Come on, even I laugh at the Daily Show and, yes, they are flirting with integrity, but this trend freaks me out. What's worse is that the Daily Show sometimes does have more international news (if we're talking cumulative airtime) than the terrible op-ed shows that are now de rigeur.