My brother in Albuquerque got out by joining the air force, and his daddy shouted at him about that decision. My brother in Seattle got out by joining the army; he was expected to join the army as he'd discussed it with his guidance counselor, and came from an army family. My brother in Wichita got out by joining the navy because he simply wanted to see the world; I enlisted in the Corps because I needed a job, and my soon-to-be brothers Don and Mark said I'd make a good Marine. And we all did the same work, felt the same fear, wondered "Did I do the right thing?" as we lay on our cots enduring a humid, no-see-'em night.
Life is all about perception, or so I am told. If you wish to change your life, simply change your perception, and you're gold.
Yeah, it's gonna be one of those essays, bwar har har.
By now, it is old news that young queer folks commit suicide at an alarming rate; several examples appeared recently in the media. There was, of course, a corresponding push fomented by right-thinking people everywhere: tell our youth It Gets Better (Dan Savage, the originator of this push, was naturally awed that So Many People Took It So Much To Heart.) But I am compelled to dissent: It Gets Better is simply another Just Say No (and if you make fun of one variety of Just Say No, you fooken better make fun of every other variety -- Safe Sex is Hot Sex, wherein we Just Say No to condomless sex; the original Just Say No to drugs, guns, gangs, what have you; and Just Say No to suicide). If one Just Say No campaign is specious and simplistic, then all Just Say No campaigns are specious and simplistic. That's kinda the point of Just Saying No; it does not take anything about one's particular life and life circumstances into account. Just Say No is another example of the Positive Thinking (i.e. Magical Thinking) which is so detestable; if one Just Says No, one won't even think about drugs, let alone experiment with drugs, no matter the amount of social pressure, anxiety or self-loathing one experiences. Beset by bullies, wracked with suicidal thoughts? Simply change your perception and you will change your life.
And now, even the San Francisco Giants have contributed to this project. Sigh.
This is the part that sucks: you can't construct another's maturity or reasoning for him. When you do, it's called paternalism, and paternalism destroys another's humanity. What, after all, did Tyler Clementi accomplish when he jumped from the George Washington bridge, if not change his perception?
C'mon: the world is a difficult place (okay, okay -- an indifferent place), but, on the whole, it ain't such a bad place to let your sexual orientation be known (Uganda, duh, but I'm talking about the United States). For every Tyler Clementi, there are hundreds and thousands of non-Tyler Clementis. Personally, I think his suicide had more to do with his privacy being invaded; such invasion is humiliating, regardless of sexual orientation. If our lives are so damned public, as they often are to ridiculous lengths on social networking sites -- let us recall Clementi announced his intention on Facebook -- no wonder his roommate (and his roommate's gal-pal) believed it perfectly legitimate to run a nanny-cam. (And no wonder so many dorks believe they are entitled to grab my ass on the street: after all, baggy Carhartt's, green skivvy shirts and combat boots constitute a highly provocative, tawdry, come-hither look which disables an observer's higher cerebral functioning and positively screams, "My body is community property, and I'll be disappointed if you don't cop a feel.")
Thing is sometimes, it doesn't get better. Sometimes, it just fooken sucks. Frankly, that's okay, too. Personally, I'd rather know people who think and feel than people who do neither, or people who behave as if all their thoughts and feelings are "positive" because such folk are pod people. If it can be said that a feeling is in want of anything, that thing is expression, acknowledgement. Ideas, being ideas, need to be bounced around, cogitated. A buddy's "negativity" won't scare me away; if it ever does, I should hope that buddy would shoot me. Okay, maybe not shoot me, but I sure as fook hope he'd tell me that I've neglected to bring a few of my better angels along, and that I need to sit my sorry ass down and fooken listen to him, let him get some shit off his chest, that it's part of the whole getting-by-with-a-little-help-from-your-friends thing.
Telling the etherized and anonymous world that It Gets Better romanticizes the issue of suicide. It does not lead by example (there's no real hope that such a message may reach one in crisis); it refers too much to oneself ("Look at me; it got better for me, so it'll get better for you, too!"). It smacks of vanity. It may make one feel as though one has done something beneficial -- rather like hordes of fundamentalist Christians believe praying for homosexuals (usually done from the safety of some distance, either geographical, theoretical, or theological) is beneficial. Good for you -- you can tell me you prayed. We shall bow our heads and march in solemn solidarity with the heroically oppressed who murdered themselves. We shall tell them -- after the fact -- of our concern, of our care. The most useful gay man is a dead gay man.
At this point, alas, my thoughts turn to silence, although courtesy dictates a suggestion or two about what else one might do to improve the situation. So -- volunteer for a suicide hotline; get involved with a gay/straight alliance at an area school. Ask young queer folks what they believe they need, what their thoughts are on the issue. (And if they don't have thoughts or opinions, push 'em to have thoughts and opinions; I know, I know, that's my solution for everything.) They may have some good ideas. They may have some thoughts on empty gestures, too.
My brother in Albuquerque: him and his daddy never made amends. My brother in Seattle was killed shortly after an east Texas cowboy driving his Humvee on a routine convoy though the Green Zone spied an innocent and IED-free berm and said, "Hey, y'all, watch this!" My brother in Wichita served a tour in Afghanistan; he's touring the western Pacific now, and I recently had the privilege of reminding myself why I love him like a brother when he visited me on leave. I served a good long time, got more out of it than I ever imagined or wanted, and I learned, among other things, that I make a damn good buddy to myself when I want to, and that I always did enjoy a good, invigorating chase scene. (I've also always wanted to fight an impossible battle against incalculable odds, but that's another story for another time.),
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Bloggish-type Rant
WHAT AMERICA MEANS TO ME:
JARON LANIER WANTS TO BE PARIS HILTON
A Polemical Manifesto
Searching for as Many Subtitles as Possible
In Harper's magazine, February 2010, Jaron Lanier bemoans a certain lack in contemporary life, writing, "I know quite a few people, most of them young adults, who are proud to say that they have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Obviously, their statements can be true only if the idea of friendship is diminished."
Yeah, I know -- I'm starting this rant in media res; sue me.
Lanier fills his precious little manifesto with a host of grievances: the Facebook Kid, the Cloud Lord, the oracle illusion, hive mind. Heck, the only reason to believe they're grievances is cuz he seems pissed about something. I believe Lanier has a point he wishes to communicate, but his language is trenchantly imprecise -- he often introduces terms which he does not define -- and inflates the concepts they seem to be meant to illustrate. "School" reduces to "information system", friends reduce to "social network". The most innately human of jobs is defined in pseudo-scientific terms: a music or book critic is a "filter". But what irks me the most is his insistence that the Interweb is a platonic thing, from which other platonic things are called into being. The Interweb is, of course, the greatest information system ever, seeing as how it liberates information (whatever the fook that means) and gives it to The People. The flaw, Lanier maintains, is in the design of the system; for example, a piece of software that responds as though the writer wants to create an indented outline when such is not what the writer intends is one such flaw, though in this example, Lanier maintains such "flaws" are responsible for fomenting the human idea that the Interweb is a gigantic, superhuman intelligence -- that engineers deem the best software is a software which "anticipates" the user's desires (a user, in this case, being defined as a particular set of characteristics, a demographic assembled by flesh). This is where Lanier goes hideously, horribly wrong, because there is no design for what he truly laments, which seems to be human nature itself.
Lanier asserts that Facebook diminishes the idea of friendship, cuz on that site such friends are amassed, one presumes, without any face-to-face interaction in the mundane world; thus, no friendships can be founded on correspondence alone (I'm sure Tchaikovsky and von Meck would be astonished to learn that, by Lanier's standards, their friendship was inauthentic). Facebook diminishes the idea of friendship cuz these friends are amassed, Lanier begs his reader to presume, for the sake of being amassed. Garsh, Lanier -- you're younger than me and you've forgotten high school popularity games already? Alright, I'll quit dancing around my point -- from whom else have we heard recently about a social institution being diminished? From whom have we heard dire warnings that a social institution would be degraded, debased, diminished, if more people partook of it? From those who fight against same-sex marriage. Cuz if those queers get married, it'll make my marriage mean less; it'll change not just the definition of marriage, but the very idea of marriage itself, the platonic ideal of marriage. If Lanier wishes to put himself in bed with such twerps, that's his business; he puts himself there by using the same venomous and monomaniacal logic they use. My friends are true and authentic friends because I know them in the mundane world (which is what god intended); my spouse is a true and authentic spouse because I'm a man and she's a woman (which is what god intended). Thing is, Platonists always raise my hackles. Always. I have a big problem with reification. Oh, fooken look it up; you have a better chance of finding "reification" in Webster's Collegiate than you do of finding "digital peasant". (I got yer digits right here, pal.)
The problem isn't a design flaw. The problem is not, as Lanier claims, that software engineers are trying to create programs which anticipate the user's desires, nor, as he further claims, is it that people willingly make themselves stupid for the sake of a machine. The problem, if such there be, is that there is an information system at all. An information system -- well, any system, really -- is concerned with one thing, and one thing only: flow.
Did your website get two million hits today? Six million? 12 million in the past two hours? Let's say it did; does your site's viability and/or validity increase with the number of hits? No; the number of hits reflects the number of hits. The number does not indicate anyone's opinion of your site, or what their impression was of the stimuli, if any, presented. Your opinions aren't validated simply because you have them. It's just flow. This sort of flow terrifies me, because it unwitting yanks me out of my own being, denies me my personhood, my autonomy. It's chatter, it's white noise, it is the endless errata and minutiae of the mundane world. (We're not talking the Tao here. Neither the Tao nor one's participation in it are forced. Quit trying to find fault; just suck it up and read.)
Okay, off we go on a tangent: Lanier's article (in the print edition, anyway) is called a manifesto; I imagine this is how editors beg us to look for nuanced argument and logic elsewhere, manifestos being, by their nature, something of a cri de coeur. Manifestos argue with passion and imagery. But blowhard lines like, "No one in the pre-digital-cloud era had the mental capacity to lie to himself in the way we routinely are able to now," and, "The limitations of organic human memory and calculation put a cap on the intricacies of self-delusion," reflect either a lack of knowledge regarding general human history, or a ridiculously inflated belief in the on-going guileless of all humanity. Further, there's an oddly anti-intellectual bent built in to this attitude toward the Interweb -- information is free and must be liberated from the strict confines of libraries, and books and medical journals and the DSM IV, and various other scientific papers. Because it's a question of how can someone other than you know better than you what's best for you. Experts are dinosaurs now; I *know* my two-year-old daughter is autistic due to vaccines, I know because I've read other parents say the same thing. There must be something to it, and the medical establishment certainly doesn't care. I am fat because male doctors kept from me information that diet and exercise would help me lose weight. I'm not stalking you; it's your problem if you think inappropriate anonymous and context-less communications indicate sociopathy in a person -- you're the one who put that blog up, so you clearly invite such commentary.
Exsqueeze me? Technology enables us to lie to ourselves to a degree unknown in previous eras? Really? Adam and Eve lied to God according to Genesis; does a greater lie exist than a lie one makes about oneself to the Deity?
Now, I'm hardly the first to say this, much less the first to notice it. We'll say it started with Marshall McLuhan -- "The medium is the message." Television is all about flow. And flow turns humanity into a global village; this is a bad thing. McLuhan spoke of it to warn us. (Kinda like Eisenhower's remark about "the military-industrial complex" -- he didn't mean it was something good. A few scant decades later, it's the greatest thing since, well, some fooken cliche.)
Oops oops oops! Here comes Lanier and the internet. At first, 'It's a global village! YAY!!!' Away with the antediluvian paid experts; after all, how can someone other than you know better than you what's best for you? It's the ultimate marketplace of ideas; the crowd knows best because the crowd will self-correct much as a market will self-correct. (I'm Ayn Rand; pull my finger.) When everyone contributes to the knowledge base, we'll all of us have all the knowledge in the world; when everyone speaks their truth, the truth shall set us all free. My truth is truer than yours, because it is God's truth. But mine sounds truthier. Truthiness -- let's go with the flow. Leonardo da Vinci never got paid; art belongs to all time, to all people, not to a museum or a country (though his code was killer). Mozart didn't get paid; I saw it in that movie. You don't pay for the books at the library, so why should you pay for music? Have you heard this new band? This band's newer. You've never heard of them; they'll change your life. Web 2.0 changed everything; the iPod changed everything (and 9/11 changed everything; it simply did). (And taxes pay for libraries, but, hey, you can use facts to prove anything.)
Yeah, I'm a bit of a snark. Am I the only one who got creeped out at the idea that "paid experts" -- whatever that means -- were antediluvian? That one may devote a lifetime in study of, say, music or philosophy or medicine, only to find it discounted and meaningless simply because one spent one's life studying it? Does that strike no one as anti-intellectual somehow? We have the interweb now. Let everyone be a writer so that no one is a writer. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. It's got a meter that is tricky, a kind of wiki waki wiki...
Okay, I need another tangent -- consider the blogger. How the blogger is hailed as the Great Digital Hope; The Blogger is There when some reporter-cum-callboy is planted in the press room. The Blogger is There when ACORN allegedly gave pointers to a pimp and one of his bitches about how to game the system. The Blogger is There when Joe Stack smashes his plane into the IRS building in Austin. And, uh, the blogger gets many of the facts wrong. But that's okay -- since you can use facts to prove anything, it doesn't matter; what matters is the story. Reagan knew that when he told us about a welfare recipient who bought a Cadillac with food stamps. Facts don't matter; the only thing which matters is the story. Get the story right, and you'll have billyuns and billyuns of friends, kings and potentates will kow-tow, and Pia Zadora herself will break into a rousing version of 'This May Be the Start of Something Big.' Just for you. The most important person in the whole wide world is you, and you hardly even know you.
Here we are, years later, and Lanier rants about how cheapened society and the social contract have become, how meaningless, how inauthentic and fraudulent. What is the difference now, when at first you worked to encourage these crowds, Jaron? And now that the clouds have formed and you don't like the formation, being more a cumulonimbus than stratus kind of guy, what do you do? What do you do when the issue becomes one of Creator revolting against creation? Does the Creator search for his Noah and try to spare creation, redeem it somehow? Does the Creator foment another revolution, using his status of Creator to lend street cred to his pronouncements? Lanier writes, "We... entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will escape it only when we kill the hive." To kill the hive mind, we must kill the hive? Dude, the hive is merely a messenger, and you do not look good on wood.
And this is where things get weird. Cuz this is how the set known as Paris Hilton intersects with the set known as Jaron Lanier -- Hilton encouraging her 'fans' (her FaceySpace friends, enemies, etc. -- insert your label here cuz the fact that you define yourself in relation to Hilton makes you part of the flow); Lanier encouraging his 'fans' (anyone who has an affinity for his writing and ideas, FaceySpace friend or no, again defines oneself in terms of relation to Lanier, making one part of the flow). Flow flows; you can't ask what its function is -- that's like asking what the function of a galaxy is, what the function of a grain is. Inquiring anent the function of some thing which simply is begs for a wrathful and vengeful god. (Just trust me on this one; I cut a whole bunch of really good shit as to why this is so, but it just ain't germane. If you feel compelled to discuss it, drop me a line.)
And this is why I'm irked about popping the ripe, red zit which is Armistead Maupin's head. In so doing, I call attention to him when the last thing I wish to do is call attention to him. The meaning behind my desire to pop the ripe, red zit which is his head is a desire to highlight how poor his writing is, and what a sad place the world is that it encourages such poor, delusional, craptastic writing. Alas, there will always be an abundance of intellectual rubbish, unquote. (I am reminded of a week-long writing workshop in which I participated. Toward the end of the workshop, the leader shared a story which was told to encourage us in our writing careers -- he spoke of a student writer whom he knew, who faithfully attended class, who wrote and re-wrote and persisted until she was not just published, but published to much acclaim. At the end of this anecdote, our leader revealed the writer -- Amy Tan -- and this was his point: that if a twit as brazenly pedestrian, as boldly hackneyed as Tan can get published, so can you. It was another illustration of Flannery O'Connor's quote about writing programs: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." So perhaps I can't muster anything original, but I can muster a solid, idiosyncratic text. Fook knows, discouragement has its place in education; it is a tool.
Lanier's hive mind has existed for millennia; the World Wide Woo-Woo didn't create it, or foster it, or caress it like a warrior caresses his beloved. Lanier does nothing but contribute an unfortunate vocabulary; he fusses and fumes, militates and obfuscates, then reinvents the word "wheel", and for this we are to pay him heed? There is only one way to destroy the hive, and that is to shut up.
Now, be a good little acolyte -- point to the moon just like you believe I showed you, so that I may chop off your hand.
"Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it." -- Flannery O'Connor, 'Mystery and Manners'
JARON LANIER WANTS TO BE PARIS HILTON
A Polemical Manifesto
Searching for as Many Subtitles as Possible
In Harper's magazine, February 2010, Jaron Lanier bemoans a certain lack in contemporary life, writing, "I know quite a few people, most of them young adults, who are proud to say that they have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Obviously, their statements can be true only if the idea of friendship is diminished."
Yeah, I know -- I'm starting this rant in media res; sue me.
Lanier fills his precious little manifesto with a host of grievances: the Facebook Kid, the Cloud Lord, the oracle illusion, hive mind. Heck, the only reason to believe they're grievances is cuz he seems pissed about something. I believe Lanier has a point he wishes to communicate, but his language is trenchantly imprecise -- he often introduces terms which he does not define -- and inflates the concepts they seem to be meant to illustrate. "School" reduces to "information system", friends reduce to "social network". The most innately human of jobs is defined in pseudo-scientific terms: a music or book critic is a "filter". But what irks me the most is his insistence that the Interweb is a platonic thing, from which other platonic things are called into being. The Interweb is, of course, the greatest information system ever, seeing as how it liberates information (whatever the fook that means) and gives it to The People. The flaw, Lanier maintains, is in the design of the system; for example, a piece of software that responds as though the writer wants to create an indented outline when such is not what the writer intends is one such flaw, though in this example, Lanier maintains such "flaws" are responsible for fomenting the human idea that the Interweb is a gigantic, superhuman intelligence -- that engineers deem the best software is a software which "anticipates" the user's desires (a user, in this case, being defined as a particular set of characteristics, a demographic assembled by flesh). This is where Lanier goes hideously, horribly wrong, because there is no design for what he truly laments, which seems to be human nature itself.
Lanier asserts that Facebook diminishes the idea of friendship, cuz on that site such friends are amassed, one presumes, without any face-to-face interaction in the mundane world; thus, no friendships can be founded on correspondence alone (I'm sure Tchaikovsky and von Meck would be astonished to learn that, by Lanier's standards, their friendship was inauthentic). Facebook diminishes the idea of friendship cuz these friends are amassed, Lanier begs his reader to presume, for the sake of being amassed. Garsh, Lanier -- you're younger than me and you've forgotten high school popularity games already? Alright, I'll quit dancing around my point -- from whom else have we heard recently about a social institution being diminished? From whom have we heard dire warnings that a social institution would be degraded, debased, diminished, if more people partook of it? From those who fight against same-sex marriage. Cuz if those queers get married, it'll make my marriage mean less; it'll change not just the definition of marriage, but the very idea of marriage itself, the platonic ideal of marriage. If Lanier wishes to put himself in bed with such twerps, that's his business; he puts himself there by using the same venomous and monomaniacal logic they use. My friends are true and authentic friends because I know them in the mundane world (which is what god intended); my spouse is a true and authentic spouse because I'm a man and she's a woman (which is what god intended). Thing is, Platonists always raise my hackles. Always. I have a big problem with reification. Oh, fooken look it up; you have a better chance of finding "reification" in Webster's Collegiate than you do of finding "digital peasant". (I got yer digits right here, pal.)
The problem isn't a design flaw. The problem is not, as Lanier claims, that software engineers are trying to create programs which anticipate the user's desires, nor, as he further claims, is it that people willingly make themselves stupid for the sake of a machine. The problem, if such there be, is that there is an information system at all. An information system -- well, any system, really -- is concerned with one thing, and one thing only: flow.
Did your website get two million hits today? Six million? 12 million in the past two hours? Let's say it did; does your site's viability and/or validity increase with the number of hits? No; the number of hits reflects the number of hits. The number does not indicate anyone's opinion of your site, or what their impression was of the stimuli, if any, presented. Your opinions aren't validated simply because you have them. It's just flow. This sort of flow terrifies me, because it unwitting yanks me out of my own being, denies me my personhood, my autonomy. It's chatter, it's white noise, it is the endless errata and minutiae of the mundane world. (We're not talking the Tao here. Neither the Tao nor one's participation in it are forced. Quit trying to find fault; just suck it up and read.)
Okay, off we go on a tangent: Lanier's article (in the print edition, anyway) is called a manifesto; I imagine this is how editors beg us to look for nuanced argument and logic elsewhere, manifestos being, by their nature, something of a cri de coeur. Manifestos argue with passion and imagery. But blowhard lines like, "No one in the pre-digital-cloud era had the mental capacity to lie to himself in the way we routinely are able to now," and, "The limitations of organic human memory and calculation put a cap on the intricacies of self-delusion," reflect either a lack of knowledge regarding general human history, or a ridiculously inflated belief in the on-going guileless of all humanity. Further, there's an oddly anti-intellectual bent built in to this attitude toward the Interweb -- information is free and must be liberated from the strict confines of libraries, and books and medical journals and the DSM IV, and various other scientific papers. Because it's a question of how can someone other than you know better than you what's best for you. Experts are dinosaurs now; I *know* my two-year-old daughter is autistic due to vaccines, I know because I've read other parents say the same thing. There must be something to it, and the medical establishment certainly doesn't care. I am fat because male doctors kept from me information that diet and exercise would help me lose weight. I'm not stalking you; it's your problem if you think inappropriate anonymous and context-less communications indicate sociopathy in a person -- you're the one who put that blog up, so you clearly invite such commentary.
Exsqueeze me? Technology enables us to lie to ourselves to a degree unknown in previous eras? Really? Adam and Eve lied to God according to Genesis; does a greater lie exist than a lie one makes about oneself to the Deity?
Now, I'm hardly the first to say this, much less the first to notice it. We'll say it started with Marshall McLuhan -- "The medium is the message." Television is all about flow. And flow turns humanity into a global village; this is a bad thing. McLuhan spoke of it to warn us. (Kinda like Eisenhower's remark about "the military-industrial complex" -- he didn't mean it was something good. A few scant decades later, it's the greatest thing since, well, some fooken cliche.)
Oops oops oops! Here comes Lanier and the internet. At first, 'It's a global village! YAY!!!' Away with the antediluvian paid experts; after all, how can someone other than you know better than you what's best for you? It's the ultimate marketplace of ideas; the crowd knows best because the crowd will self-correct much as a market will self-correct. (I'm Ayn Rand; pull my finger.) When everyone contributes to the knowledge base, we'll all of us have all the knowledge in the world; when everyone speaks their truth, the truth shall set us all free. My truth is truer than yours, because it is God's truth. But mine sounds truthier. Truthiness -- let's go with the flow. Leonardo da Vinci never got paid; art belongs to all time, to all people, not to a museum or a country (though his code was killer). Mozart didn't get paid; I saw it in that movie. You don't pay for the books at the library, so why should you pay for music? Have you heard this new band? This band's newer. You've never heard of them; they'll change your life. Web 2.0 changed everything; the iPod changed everything (and 9/11 changed everything; it simply did). (And taxes pay for libraries, but, hey, you can use facts to prove anything.)
Yeah, I'm a bit of a snark. Am I the only one who got creeped out at the idea that "paid experts" -- whatever that means -- were antediluvian? That one may devote a lifetime in study of, say, music or philosophy or medicine, only to find it discounted and meaningless simply because one spent one's life studying it? Does that strike no one as anti-intellectual somehow? We have the interweb now. Let everyone be a writer so that no one is a writer. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. It's got a meter that is tricky, a kind of wiki waki wiki...
Okay, I need another tangent -- consider the blogger. How the blogger is hailed as the Great Digital Hope; The Blogger is There when some reporter-cum-callboy is planted in the press room. The Blogger is There when ACORN allegedly gave pointers to a pimp and one of his bitches about how to game the system. The Blogger is There when Joe Stack smashes his plane into the IRS building in Austin. And, uh, the blogger gets many of the facts wrong. But that's okay -- since you can use facts to prove anything, it doesn't matter; what matters is the story. Reagan knew that when he told us about a welfare recipient who bought a Cadillac with food stamps. Facts don't matter; the only thing which matters is the story. Get the story right, and you'll have billyuns and billyuns of friends, kings and potentates will kow-tow, and Pia Zadora herself will break into a rousing version of 'This May Be the Start of Something Big.' Just for you. The most important person in the whole wide world is you, and you hardly even know you.
Here we are, years later, and Lanier rants about how cheapened society and the social contract have become, how meaningless, how inauthentic and fraudulent. What is the difference now, when at first you worked to encourage these crowds, Jaron? And now that the clouds have formed and you don't like the formation, being more a cumulonimbus than stratus kind of guy, what do you do? What do you do when the issue becomes one of Creator revolting against creation? Does the Creator search for his Noah and try to spare creation, redeem it somehow? Does the Creator foment another revolution, using his status of Creator to lend street cred to his pronouncements? Lanier writes, "We... entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will escape it only when we kill the hive." To kill the hive mind, we must kill the hive? Dude, the hive is merely a messenger, and you do not look good on wood.
And this is where things get weird. Cuz this is how the set known as Paris Hilton intersects with the set known as Jaron Lanier -- Hilton encouraging her 'fans' (her FaceySpace friends, enemies, etc. -- insert your label here cuz the fact that you define yourself in relation to Hilton makes you part of the flow); Lanier encouraging his 'fans' (anyone who has an affinity for his writing and ideas, FaceySpace friend or no, again defines oneself in terms of relation to Lanier, making one part of the flow). Flow flows; you can't ask what its function is -- that's like asking what the function of a galaxy is, what the function of a grain is. Inquiring anent the function of some thing which simply is begs for a wrathful and vengeful god. (Just trust me on this one; I cut a whole bunch of really good shit as to why this is so, but it just ain't germane. If you feel compelled to discuss it, drop me a line.)
And this is why I'm irked about popping the ripe, red zit which is Armistead Maupin's head. In so doing, I call attention to him when the last thing I wish to do is call attention to him. The meaning behind my desire to pop the ripe, red zit which is his head is a desire to highlight how poor his writing is, and what a sad place the world is that it encourages such poor, delusional, craptastic writing. Alas, there will always be an abundance of intellectual rubbish, unquote. (I am reminded of a week-long writing workshop in which I participated. Toward the end of the workshop, the leader shared a story which was told to encourage us in our writing careers -- he spoke of a student writer whom he knew, who faithfully attended class, who wrote and re-wrote and persisted until she was not just published, but published to much acclaim. At the end of this anecdote, our leader revealed the writer -- Amy Tan -- and this was his point: that if a twit as brazenly pedestrian, as boldly hackneyed as Tan can get published, so can you. It was another illustration of Flannery O'Connor's quote about writing programs: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." So perhaps I can't muster anything original, but I can muster a solid, idiosyncratic text. Fook knows, discouragement has its place in education; it is a tool.
Lanier's hive mind has existed for millennia; the World Wide Woo-Woo didn't create it, or foster it, or caress it like a warrior caresses his beloved. Lanier does nothing but contribute an unfortunate vocabulary; he fusses and fumes, militates and obfuscates, then reinvents the word "wheel", and for this we are to pay him heed? There is only one way to destroy the hive, and that is to shut up.
Now, be a good little acolyte -- point to the moon just like you believe I showed you, so that I may chop off your hand.
"Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it." -- Flannery O'Connor, 'Mystery and Manners'
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Zombies
I grew tired of looking for the good in others. I used to, but I can't now. I am told that if I look for the bad, I will find the bad, that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, so is looking for the good -- it, too, is self-fulfilling. Either way, one ends up ignoring part of what actually is. Is that any way to live? Is that truly the best way to engage the world one lives in?
I do not understand the relativistic hell in which fags want to live. Maybe it is for this reason that they commonly call themselves 'evolved'. This odd streak of relativism seems to have its origin in Eastern thought, but the 'mos give a glorious misinterpretation of it. There was one queen on an online discussion recently, who took me to task cuz I never referred to the gay community as "my" community; I always addressed gay people in the third person. Now, prior to this, I made the argument that there is no gay community; that this erstwhile community is a mob rather than a community, or, as my friend Goatlor puts it, a demographic with issues. So the queens come after me, damning the origin of the argument. Well, why the fook should I say I have anything in common with a people when I maintain they do not have a community? That they have done much to shun me? That it is not my problem, that I do not need to change myself, that I do not subscribe to the idea that one's environment and one are the same thing. (Curiously, one guy on the string defined our environment as "the guys we meet, date, and have sex with," essentially reducing environment to a dating pool. That was just fooken weird.)
Again, no response. No response at all. Abandonment of argument; I am suspect, I am negative, I will harsh the collective's mellow.
Took down two online profiles today. This leaves two others, both of which read, "I don't want to hear it. I am not the man for you." In answer to 'what I'm looking for', I say, "It ain't you." I have a faceyspace profile; used primarily to keep in touch with military buddies.
I want to grab these jackholes and scream, "ANSWER ME!" All I want 'em to do is answer the questions put to 'em. I mean, it's a fooken argument; one guy presents his piece, and we analyze it by reason and logic to determine whether the points are valid. If his proposition is full of shit, we question the shitty part; we do not call him names. We refute him. It's a social contract sort of thing.
Anyway, so this one doofus tells me, in an oddly oblique way, that I must 'detach' myself from 'expectations'. (Oblique approaches suggesting self-improvement always strike me as particularly passive-aggressive.)That this requires much "spiritual work" and that he oughta know. Well, this leads me to question what expectation is. What is expectation-over-time? Is that what we commonly call optimism? That if I am angry with others, it is a reflection of myself -- in other words, I am not angry with others so much as I am angry with myself. Uh, no, I believe it is entirely possible to be angry with others cuz of the shit they pull. Yeah, I expect adults to comport themselves in a mature way. If some guy pulls shit which is damaging to my community, I expect to be allowed to call him on his shit without anyone calling me names or otherwise speaking or thinking ill of me. Would have been interesting to ask the aforementioned doofus what feelings he experienced during the Bush administration -- cuz all those feelings were reflections of himself.
Have you heard the Good News? You can detach from your environment!
I do not understand the relativistic hell in which fags want to live. Maybe it is for this reason that they commonly call themselves 'evolved'. This odd streak of relativism seems to have its origin in Eastern thought, but the 'mos give a glorious misinterpretation of it. There was one queen on an online discussion recently, who took me to task cuz I never referred to the gay community as "my" community; I always addressed gay people in the third person. Now, prior to this, I made the argument that there is no gay community; that this erstwhile community is a mob rather than a community, or, as my friend Goatlor puts it, a demographic with issues. So the queens come after me, damning the origin of the argument. Well, why the fook should I say I have anything in common with a people when I maintain they do not have a community? That they have done much to shun me? That it is not my problem, that I do not need to change myself, that I do not subscribe to the idea that one's environment and one are the same thing. (Curiously, one guy on the string defined our environment as "the guys we meet, date, and have sex with," essentially reducing environment to a dating pool. That was just fooken weird.)
Again, no response. No response at all. Abandonment of argument; I am suspect, I am negative, I will harsh the collective's mellow.
Took down two online profiles today. This leaves two others, both of which read, "I don't want to hear it. I am not the man for you." In answer to 'what I'm looking for', I say, "It ain't you." I have a faceyspace profile; used primarily to keep in touch with military buddies.
I want to grab these jackholes and scream, "ANSWER ME!" All I want 'em to do is answer the questions put to 'em. I mean, it's a fooken argument; one guy presents his piece, and we analyze it by reason and logic to determine whether the points are valid. If his proposition is full of shit, we question the shitty part; we do not call him names. We refute him. It's a social contract sort of thing.
Anyway, so this one doofus tells me, in an oddly oblique way, that I must 'detach' myself from 'expectations'. (Oblique approaches suggesting self-improvement always strike me as particularly passive-aggressive.)That this requires much "spiritual work" and that he oughta know. Well, this leads me to question what expectation is. What is expectation-over-time? Is that what we commonly call optimism? That if I am angry with others, it is a reflection of myself -- in other words, I am not angry with others so much as I am angry with myself. Uh, no, I believe it is entirely possible to be angry with others cuz of the shit they pull. Yeah, I expect adults to comport themselves in a mature way. If some guy pulls shit which is damaging to my community, I expect to be allowed to call him on his shit without anyone calling me names or otherwise speaking or thinking ill of me. Would have been interesting to ask the aforementioned doofus what feelings he experienced during the Bush administration -- cuz all those feelings were reflections of himself.
Have you heard the Good News? You can detach from your environment!
Friday, May 29, 2009
VOX CLAMAVIS IN DESERTO
I've been biding my time and holding my tongue. Odd approach for a blog, sure, but I like to think of myself as a man who applies reason to his opinions, works them through, a man who challenges himself. And it's time to let loose.
I am sick and fooken tired of the way the gay community -- not LGBT community, not GLBT-which-mysteriously-transitioned-to-LGBT-for-an-unspecified-reason-in-the-'80s, not LGBTTQQ cuz, well, go fook yourself -- comports itself. Particularly in the case of public sex and same-sex marriage. Alas, the two topics are related. (If you choose to take umbrage at what you label uninclusive language, go to hell. Here's a label for ya: narcissist.)
When the fella in charge of Up Your Alley (AKA Dore Alley Street Fair) and Folsom Street Fair recently stated that he had no idea of public sex acts taking place during the events, he lied. Just like Clarence Thomas lied when he said he had no opinion on Roe v. Wade. Indeed, one of the major reasons for Dore Alley and Folsom Street is the opportunity both present for public sex acts. (Those who attend these events naked are just as disingenuous and dissembling; they maintain that "the human body is a beautiful thing", "the law says I may be nude in public as long as I do not behave in a lewd and lascivious manner", "if you say I can't be nude in public, you're sex-negative and judgmental", but one never sees them nude in the frozen food aisle at Safeway -- only street fairs. If one limits one's exposure thusly, if one limits one's exposure solely to adult-themed street fairs, where there is no opportunity for others to avert their eyes if they do not wish to be unwitting voyeurs, one makes oneself, de facto, an exhibitionist, which is lewd and lascivious. In other words, if you yank out your dick in public simply so that others may see it, you're behaving in what is, de facto, a lewd and lascivious manner. You force others into a voyeuristic role; you deny them their right to refrain from participation; indeed, you deny them their right to choose to participate. It ain't like they can change the channel.)
Writers in the gay press commonly celebrate the availability of public sex at the Dore Alley and Folsom Street Fairs; as Eric Rofes writes in 'Reviving the Tribe', "Gay liberation was ignited by a drive to free the erotic power between men. Activist pioneers were advocating not solely affection and 'domestic partnerships,' but the right to be fucked." Sadly, gay liberation has not truly evolved to encompass relationship. (Though it is not germane, one of my favorite quotes from 'Reviving the Tribe' relates another highlight of those early gay lib years, that they heralded " the discovery of vast, uncharted erotic zones (e.g., the nipple as sex organ)". Thank god those queens came along to discover nipples on men; clearly four million years of human sexual expression had forced them into hiding.)
Same-sex marriage aims to set a standard for relationship. That standard is not heterosexual (if one believes so, one succumbs to various fallacies of reification). It is not heterosexual because no one can own marriage. Marriage is a legal contract; it does not exist in some Platonic heaven, high atop a marble pedestal. Marriage has always been a civil matter; the church didn't have a written record of a marriage ceremony until well into the fifth century. Marriage remains a civil matter; a clergyman does not marry a couple -- that clergyman is merely deputized by the state to sign the marriage license that state issues. Marriage, as a sacrament, is an understanding wholly invented by the church, and has nothing to do with any civil law regarding marriage. So there's yer separation of church and state; shut the fook up and read on.
But the gay community eschews standards of any kind, save for one, and it may be expressed in a multitude of egocentric slogans: Don't judge me, I'm only speaking my truth, I am who I am, I am my own greatest creation. When a bloc of people eschew standards on principle, when, as a group, they decry and belittle any self-examination or self-critique, they are not a community; they are a mob. Communities require standards; communities are built upon standards. Mobs behave as they choose and justify their acts with jingoism and slogans. Say NO to Prop H8. Thirteenly not. AIDS changed everything. This is clearly a lesson queers learned from those who oppose them.
Whenever you behave in a manner which calls attention to yourself rather than your cause, you are narcissistic. Activism -- any activism -- requires a certain transparency of self, a certain modesty, a setting aside of oneself in order to serve one's cause. If, in your call to activism, you call attention to yourself instead of your cause, you create a spectacle, not a movement. You glory in your martyrdom -- how put upon you are! Paranoia becomes your community, as everything is translated into terms of Us versus Them.
Those evil Republicans. They hate us. I want to wear mascara and lipstick, and parade around in a merry widow, fishnet stockings and platform shoes while they watch just to show them how much I don't care. Those hypocritical Christians. They hate us. I want to dress as a nun in white face and fright wig, essentially disguising myself, and beg communion from the archbishop and endure his refusal just to show them how much they hate us. Those wretched, sex-negative, self-loathing queens. They hate us and themselves. I want to suck as much dick as I can just to show them how much I don't care. Because I am only speaking my truth, I am who I am, I am my own greatest creation, don't you judge me.
Clearly this writer has issues. And by this writer, I mean me. Just keep reading.
Now, if gay folks want same-sex marriage, really and truly want marriage, they must, as a class, grow up. They must realize that fast-food sex is not liberation. They must set and abide by community standards. Now, I'm not saying that if one wishes to discern the number of cocks he can take in his ass in rapid succession, he must avoid doing so. I am saying that he must stop fooling himself with the excuse that taking 27 cocks up his ass in a matter of hours is a celebration of his sexuality. It is not a celebration of one's sexuality; it is a celebration of one's Teflon butthole.
If liberation is to mean anything, then gay men must, as a class, treat their partners, sexual and lifetime, with simple respect. That, as a class, they must no longer say, "If your boyfriend isn't working out, you just find a new one." That treating a sexual partner with simple respect means screening yourself for STDs, that the rules for common human interaction don't change when you visit Key West or Palm Springs (where the syphilis rate is 38 percent), that said rules don't change when you walk in to a gay bar, that walking in to a gay bar doesn't mean you may grab or grope anyone you please (it's not a compliment; it's sexual harassment). That the steam room at your gym is not a venue for sex. That, upon learning the man you're speaking to is partnered, it is juvenile (not to mention outright rude) to ask, "Do you guys mess around?"
Here's the biggest reason why: if a gay person believes that the sex one has is related to liberation, he defines himself as his enemy does -- that he is defined by his behavior, by the acts he commits. That would mean there truly are no homosexual persons, only homosexual acts, homosexual behaviors. If sex were all there is to liberation, then the more sex one gets, the more liberated one is. How liberated is a closet case in a bathhouse? He gets what he wants without having to answer to the greater community; does such a one deserve my respect? Deserve my support? Deserve my brotherhood? No, such a one does not, because he demands I indulge him while making excuses for him. A closet case asks that one assist him in the maintenance of his lie. Near as I can tell, that's pretty fooken codependent.
The call to liberation did not change with AIDS. Saying "AIDS changed everything" is just like saying "9/11 changed everything." The World Trade Center tragedy did not change a damn thing; you may look elsewhere for details of this argument. Similarly, AIDS did not change a damn thing; the gay yet Puritanical party-party-party ethic (the belief that somehow, somewhere, someone may not be having a good time) started by Stonewall didn't change; ultimately, queers were simply bummed that the party had been interrupted. Similarly, the World Trade Center tragedy merely interrupted the go-go-go-let-the-good-times-roll-dot-com craze. How dare anyone rain on our parade. How dare those terrorists kill our buzz. OMG, what if they blow up the Golden Gate Bridge? What would I do? What would happen to me? Such questions demonstrate how limited your thinking is, how limited by your own prejudices and judgments. Bigots (i.e. terrorists, fags, fundamentalists of every stripe, anyone who rationalizes his opinions by use of fallacy) will be us always. When one fights against discrimination, one does not work to enlarge the circle of what is acceptable; one works to erase the circle entirely. One works to ensure that everyone has his humanity recognized.
Marriage, in part, recognizes that fundamental humanity. Wanting marriage while maintaining that public sex is one's social and historical prerogative is counter-productive, mendacious, fallacious and dumb. Believing that straight folks somehow subvert the system, that straight folks get away with public sex -- spring break, for example -- is off-topic. If you truly do not care what straight folks do or think of you, why bring 'em up? If you want same-sex marriage, fooken stay focused.
Politics is the art of the possible, unquote. Bigots will be with you always; the point is to ensure equal protection and consideration under the law. That's tolerance. If you want a homophobe to love yer queer li'l ass, a-shimmer with lip gloss and body glitter, you are hopeless. Under civil law, there is no reason for a government to compel one to love another; indeed, such a law should never exist. To believe that one should be loved by the world at large for who one is, is to engage in thought so selfish, so monomaniacal, that it's monstrous.
Now, there is a solution -- present a united front against those who back Prop 8 in California. If you say to yourself, "I don't know why any self-respecting gay person would even want to get married," shut the hell up and join the effort. Realize that you need to do more than just rally the flags in your neighborhood. You gotta go from Frisco to the Central Valley, to Fresno, to Inyokern, to El Centro, and meet, talk to the actual voting public. So you stopped traffic at Van Ness and Golden Gate; I'm sure Obama noticed you personally. For once in your life, pretend there's an existence larger than yours, and admit that waiting for someone else to do the good work on your behalf is the same as doing nothing at all.
Quit lying to yourself about those nights spent at Blow Buddies. "I just had to have cock after cock after cock after cock; it had been building inside me all day long; the pressure was too strong, and I had to have it," paints you as a victim of your own desires, desires which you can control (unless you get some sort of bizarre kick out of believing you, as a homosexual, are pathological, though the DSM IV says otherwise). Quit lying to yourself about the nature of lies; quit lying to yourself that everyone lies in bars and online; quit using that as justification for your own mendacity. Quit thinking that you are your own greatest creation. You did not create yourself; something much larger than you did. All you're capable of is adorning yourself. That something much larger than you created you is all the reason one need in order to deserve respect and equality.
Okay, I'm done, at least for now. No doubt similar entries will follow. This is not a particularly happy end for me; this is more like a manifesto than an essay. So take what works, leave the rest and keep thinking about it for a few more days; if you're lucky, it'll make sense to you. One must never underestimate the audience of the confused.
For those who hated this post from the git-go, congratulations on reading this far. Tell us all about your hate, all about your life of fear and sacrifice. Then walk onto southbound 101, sit, and wait for a yuppie-filled SUV to hit you. I can think of no better demise for one who went through his life in abject terror of not being misunderstood.
I am sick and fooken tired of the way the gay community -- not LGBT community, not GLBT-which-mysteriously-transitioned-to-LGBT-for-an-unspecified-reason-in-the-'80s, not LGBTTQQ cuz, well, go fook yourself -- comports itself. Particularly in the case of public sex and same-sex marriage. Alas, the two topics are related. (If you choose to take umbrage at what you label uninclusive language, go to hell. Here's a label for ya: narcissist.)
When the fella in charge of Up Your Alley (AKA Dore Alley Street Fair) and Folsom Street Fair recently stated that he had no idea of public sex acts taking place during the events, he lied. Just like Clarence Thomas lied when he said he had no opinion on Roe v. Wade. Indeed, one of the major reasons for Dore Alley and Folsom Street is the opportunity both present for public sex acts. (Those who attend these events naked are just as disingenuous and dissembling; they maintain that "the human body is a beautiful thing", "the law says I may be nude in public as long as I do not behave in a lewd and lascivious manner", "if you say I can't be nude in public, you're sex-negative and judgmental", but one never sees them nude in the frozen food aisle at Safeway -- only street fairs. If one limits one's exposure thusly, if one limits one's exposure solely to adult-themed street fairs, where there is no opportunity for others to avert their eyes if they do not wish to be unwitting voyeurs, one makes oneself, de facto, an exhibitionist, which is lewd and lascivious. In other words, if you yank out your dick in public simply so that others may see it, you're behaving in what is, de facto, a lewd and lascivious manner. You force others into a voyeuristic role; you deny them their right to refrain from participation; indeed, you deny them their right to choose to participate. It ain't like they can change the channel.)
Writers in the gay press commonly celebrate the availability of public sex at the Dore Alley and Folsom Street Fairs; as Eric Rofes writes in 'Reviving the Tribe', "Gay liberation was ignited by a drive to free the erotic power between men. Activist pioneers were advocating not solely affection and 'domestic partnerships,' but the right to be fucked." Sadly, gay liberation has not truly evolved to encompass relationship. (Though it is not germane, one of my favorite quotes from 'Reviving the Tribe' relates another highlight of those early gay lib years, that they heralded " the discovery of vast, uncharted erotic zones (e.g., the nipple as sex organ)". Thank god those queens came along to discover nipples on men; clearly four million years of human sexual expression had forced them into hiding.)
Same-sex marriage aims to set a standard for relationship. That standard is not heterosexual (if one believes so, one succumbs to various fallacies of reification). It is not heterosexual because no one can own marriage. Marriage is a legal contract; it does not exist in some Platonic heaven, high atop a marble pedestal. Marriage has always been a civil matter; the church didn't have a written record of a marriage ceremony until well into the fifth century. Marriage remains a civil matter; a clergyman does not marry a couple -- that clergyman is merely deputized by the state to sign the marriage license that state issues. Marriage, as a sacrament, is an understanding wholly invented by the church, and has nothing to do with any civil law regarding marriage. So there's yer separation of church and state; shut the fook up and read on.
But the gay community eschews standards of any kind, save for one, and it may be expressed in a multitude of egocentric slogans: Don't judge me, I'm only speaking my truth, I am who I am, I am my own greatest creation. When a bloc of people eschew standards on principle, when, as a group, they decry and belittle any self-examination or self-critique, they are not a community; they are a mob. Communities require standards; communities are built upon standards. Mobs behave as they choose and justify their acts with jingoism and slogans. Say NO to Prop H8. Thirteenly not. AIDS changed everything. This is clearly a lesson queers learned from those who oppose them.
Whenever you behave in a manner which calls attention to yourself rather than your cause, you are narcissistic. Activism -- any activism -- requires a certain transparency of self, a certain modesty, a setting aside of oneself in order to serve one's cause. If, in your call to activism, you call attention to yourself instead of your cause, you create a spectacle, not a movement. You glory in your martyrdom -- how put upon you are! Paranoia becomes your community, as everything is translated into terms of Us versus Them.
Those evil Republicans. They hate us. I want to wear mascara and lipstick, and parade around in a merry widow, fishnet stockings and platform shoes while they watch just to show them how much I don't care. Those hypocritical Christians. They hate us. I want to dress as a nun in white face and fright wig, essentially disguising myself, and beg communion from the archbishop and endure his refusal just to show them how much they hate us. Those wretched, sex-negative, self-loathing queens. They hate us and themselves. I want to suck as much dick as I can just to show them how much I don't care. Because I am only speaking my truth, I am who I am, I am my own greatest creation, don't you judge me.
Clearly this writer has issues. And by this writer, I mean me. Just keep reading.
Now, if gay folks want same-sex marriage, really and truly want marriage, they must, as a class, grow up. They must realize that fast-food sex is not liberation. They must set and abide by community standards. Now, I'm not saying that if one wishes to discern the number of cocks he can take in his ass in rapid succession, he must avoid doing so. I am saying that he must stop fooling himself with the excuse that taking 27 cocks up his ass in a matter of hours is a celebration of his sexuality. It is not a celebration of one's sexuality; it is a celebration of one's Teflon butthole.
If liberation is to mean anything, then gay men must, as a class, treat their partners, sexual and lifetime, with simple respect. That, as a class, they must no longer say, "If your boyfriend isn't working out, you just find a new one." That treating a sexual partner with simple respect means screening yourself for STDs, that the rules for common human interaction don't change when you visit Key West or Palm Springs (where the syphilis rate is 38 percent), that said rules don't change when you walk in to a gay bar, that walking in to a gay bar doesn't mean you may grab or grope anyone you please (it's not a compliment; it's sexual harassment). That the steam room at your gym is not a venue for sex. That, upon learning the man you're speaking to is partnered, it is juvenile (not to mention outright rude) to ask, "Do you guys mess around?"
Here's the biggest reason why: if a gay person believes that the sex one has is related to liberation, he defines himself as his enemy does -- that he is defined by his behavior, by the acts he commits. That would mean there truly are no homosexual persons, only homosexual acts, homosexual behaviors. If sex were all there is to liberation, then the more sex one gets, the more liberated one is. How liberated is a closet case in a bathhouse? He gets what he wants without having to answer to the greater community; does such a one deserve my respect? Deserve my support? Deserve my brotherhood? No, such a one does not, because he demands I indulge him while making excuses for him. A closet case asks that one assist him in the maintenance of his lie. Near as I can tell, that's pretty fooken codependent.
The call to liberation did not change with AIDS. Saying "AIDS changed everything" is just like saying "9/11 changed everything." The World Trade Center tragedy did not change a damn thing; you may look elsewhere for details of this argument. Similarly, AIDS did not change a damn thing; the gay yet Puritanical party-party-party ethic (the belief that somehow, somewhere, someone may not be having a good time) started by Stonewall didn't change; ultimately, queers were simply bummed that the party had been interrupted. Similarly, the World Trade Center tragedy merely interrupted the go-go-go-let-the-good-times-roll-dot-com craze. How dare anyone rain on our parade. How dare those terrorists kill our buzz. OMG, what if they blow up the Golden Gate Bridge? What would I do? What would happen to me? Such questions demonstrate how limited your thinking is, how limited by your own prejudices and judgments. Bigots (i.e. terrorists, fags, fundamentalists of every stripe, anyone who rationalizes his opinions by use of fallacy) will be us always. When one fights against discrimination, one does not work to enlarge the circle of what is acceptable; one works to erase the circle entirely. One works to ensure that everyone has his humanity recognized.
Marriage, in part, recognizes that fundamental humanity. Wanting marriage while maintaining that public sex is one's social and historical prerogative is counter-productive, mendacious, fallacious and dumb. Believing that straight folks somehow subvert the system, that straight folks get away with public sex -- spring break, for example -- is off-topic. If you truly do not care what straight folks do or think of you, why bring 'em up? If you want same-sex marriage, fooken stay focused.
Politics is the art of the possible, unquote. Bigots will be with you always; the point is to ensure equal protection and consideration under the law. That's tolerance. If you want a homophobe to love yer queer li'l ass, a-shimmer with lip gloss and body glitter, you are hopeless. Under civil law, there is no reason for a government to compel one to love another; indeed, such a law should never exist. To believe that one should be loved by the world at large for who one is, is to engage in thought so selfish, so monomaniacal, that it's monstrous.
Now, there is a solution -- present a united front against those who back Prop 8 in California. If you say to yourself, "I don't know why any self-respecting gay person would even want to get married," shut the hell up and join the effort. Realize that you need to do more than just rally the flags in your neighborhood. You gotta go from Frisco to the Central Valley, to Fresno, to Inyokern, to El Centro, and meet, talk to the actual voting public. So you stopped traffic at Van Ness and Golden Gate; I'm sure Obama noticed you personally. For once in your life, pretend there's an existence larger than yours, and admit that waiting for someone else to do the good work on your behalf is the same as doing nothing at all.
Quit lying to yourself about those nights spent at Blow Buddies. "I just had to have cock after cock after cock after cock; it had been building inside me all day long; the pressure was too strong, and I had to have it," paints you as a victim of your own desires, desires which you can control (unless you get some sort of bizarre kick out of believing you, as a homosexual, are pathological, though the DSM IV says otherwise). Quit lying to yourself about the nature of lies; quit lying to yourself that everyone lies in bars and online; quit using that as justification for your own mendacity. Quit thinking that you are your own greatest creation. You did not create yourself; something much larger than you did. All you're capable of is adorning yourself. That something much larger than you created you is all the reason one need in order to deserve respect and equality.
Okay, I'm done, at least for now. No doubt similar entries will follow. This is not a particularly happy end for me; this is more like a manifesto than an essay. So take what works, leave the rest and keep thinking about it for a few more days; if you're lucky, it'll make sense to you. One must never underestimate the audience of the confused.
For those who hated this post from the git-go, congratulations on reading this far. Tell us all about your hate, all about your life of fear and sacrifice. Then walk onto southbound 101, sit, and wait for a yuppie-filled SUV to hit you. I can think of no better demise for one who went through his life in abject terror of not being misunderstood.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
August Edema
Am currently recuperating from hernia repair. Two things:
Thing 1 -- I really fooken hate demerol. Makes me moody for about a week.
Thing 2 -- I could use a good houseboy. I fooken hate it when chores get away from me; this place is a fooken dump.
Thing 1 -- I really fooken hate demerol. Makes me moody for about a week.
Thing 2 -- I could use a good houseboy. I fooken hate it when chores get away from me; this place is a fooken dump.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Exsqueeze Me?
This just in:
getmeguy
(04/11 03:06 pm)
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww man you and that dog soooooo cute hooo you cough my soft side of me
Whisky tango foxtrot, over.
getmeguy
(04/11 03:06 pm)
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww man you and that dog soooooo cute hooo you cough my soft side of me
Whisky tango foxtrot, over.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Two Days Ago in History
My buddy Links deployed to Afghanistan on Saturday. I miss him like hell. He's with my former unit, so I know he's in excellent hands. But godfookendammit, I'm getting real fooken tired of this shit.
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