The Pre-Read

Veteran's Day

Thank you to my father, and all those who served and continue to serve in our armed forces.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

Funktionide

So the premise is that, in time, we (and by we I mean those people who invent things) will create non living "things" that act or react like living things.  One such example is the video below. Not to be unusually negative, but I can't imagine buying anything with the word Funk in it, or following a line of products that are listed as being Funktion-able...Func as in Functional, sure, Funk as in .... well Funktionide among other words. Well I don't think so.

And yes, it's been a very long time since I've had a long term relationship. But as cold as I expect the winter nights to be this season I just can't imagine me running out and ordering this thingy. In fact, it's a little creepy.

And while the guy in the video is attractive enough, his attraction to his blob is ... well it just doesn't look very healthy.

Anyway, I'm sure you've seen it before, but I couldn't let it go without comment.

Ladies and germs, Funktionide:

Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.

Defense of Marriage

Okay, I've been mulling over the Governors situation in my last post.

If he wants to deny others the right to marry because he believes that their act of commitment would destroy the institute of marriage, well, I guess he has the right to believe what he wants.

But I have that right as well.

My thought is if he is so concerned about the stability, the very sanctity of marriage and yet is a personal warrior in its destruction, then perhaps it is he who should be denied marriage.

Maybe we should fight our opponents who say we are not deserving of marriage and turn around and destroy their own gift by pressing for their divorce.

Silly? yes, probably, but so is their hypocrisy.

Change

"Change is rarely easy, even when it's right," California Assemblymember Marty Block said today.

The California Supreme Court's decision to uphold California's Proposition 8 and letting stand that marriage should be between opposite sex couples while, at the same time, upholding the marriages of roughly 18,000 same sex couples is an odd compromise at best. While I understand their belief that the wishes of the public must be respected, the truth is that the public isn't always on the right side of what is right. This is why we have a justice system that is supposed to be blind.

Let me say here that I am still a supporter of the president. I think he's making great strides in a variety of areas. But with the Don't Ask, Don't Tell issue put on the back burner, little comment on today's California decision. It doesn't' surprise me that images like the one below appear.

Compromise is important. Compromise is necessary. But compromise must never be used to elevate one group of people over another. 

The comment from the White House was not inspiring. Especially when it was asked nearly three hours after the ruling.

It's lost on no one that this is a divisive issue. But just because issues are divisive doesn't mean they should be ignored.

I don't expect everything to happen at once. I don't expect it all to happen within a week, or month or year even. But we need to move in the right direction or at least be given the hope that we are moving in the right direction.

I hope this administration doesn't bungle the gay issue the way the Clinton administration did. Yes, President Clinton brought gay issues to the forefront and we are all better for it. But that was over 15 years ago. It's time to move forward on this issue.

Comments like the one below don't offer me inspiration for change or hope. And I, for one, voted for this president becuase I want change, and I need hope!

Gay Marriage

Call it internalized homophobia, but I had doubts about gay marriage some years back.

My thoughts were simple on the issue and pretty much centered around the thought of 'why rock the boat." Back then I thought that was a good answer. I would have also thought that the answer Miss California gave in the beauty pageant was her own beliefs and she shouldn't be chastised for them.

Granted everyone has the right to think or believe what they want, but as a friend commented, had she declared support for segregation, she would have, and should have expected the same amount of criticism.

Of course not rocking the boat is rarely a good excuse for preventing liberty. But way back when it may have been that my thoughts on gay marriage were formed pretty much the same way my thoughts on gays were. From public portrayal.

Gays were portrayed as fragile, or criminal or any number of other negatives. But when heterosexuals were portrayed in the same manner in movies or television I never defined the entire heterosexual community based upon those perceptions.

Sure there were straight murderers, but to think all straights were murderers was ridiculous. The same is true for any other negative portrayal.

As I ventured "out" I discovered as many diverse members of the gay community as in the non gay world. I was happy to make friends with couples who had been involved in their relationship for as many years as my parents. I made friends with a man who was the first gay man to run for local political office. I made friends with a woman who worked as a lawyer and one who worked for the city.

Basically, they were gay, and lived just as normal a life as anyone else on television or the movies who wasn't gay. I was young, but it was an eye opening experience for me. And to think that my prevailing thought, before this revelation, was that I was somehow the gay aberration. . That I somehow may be the only gay person who wasn't fragile or a criminal.

The reason I bring all this up is because the old saying of "we are everywhere" really is true. We are everywhere and we have been for a very, very long time. Being gay isn't a new thing. And we should be allowed the same rights and liberties granted others in our nation.

I came across an interesting website recently. It features a whole lot of different things. But one of the areas that really intrigued me was the photos of male couples from... well from about as long ago as there have been photos.

Whether every person in these pictures are gay is anyone's guess but it is safe to assume that at least some are.

We, in the United States, are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness. Until such time as I am treated as my fellow citizens and allowed to marry the person I love, I will not be able to attain my unalienable right granted to me by the Creator as set forth by our Declaration of Independence.

Thanks to GayTwoGether for posting some great photos. And reminding us all, love is eternal; regardless of who it is you love.

Judging A Book

It may be because I'm gay that I have always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. By that I mean to say that growing up, I knew that who people saw in me was really only a part of who I was/am.

So I tried and still try to see a person not for just their appearance, but for who they are on the inside. Of course life is life, and we all make assumptions. But I really try not to.

I remember the story (which I may have written about before) told by the wonderful author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams.

It went something like this: While waiting at a station for the train that would take him home. He purchased a package of biscuits (cookies for us Americans) and sat down at a small booth to eat them. Realizing he needed napkins, he got up, walked across to the counter and returned to find someone sitting in his booth with his biscuits in hand.

So appalled was he, but being terribly British, didn't know what to do. He stared at the man, who stared back. Seeing this as a challenge he decided to reclaim his booth, if not his biscuits.

The man looked on as Adams sat down and both men said nothing. Finally, the man with the biscuits opened the package, set it on the table and grabbed one.

Not to be outdone, Adams then grab one for himself.  This apparently went on until all the biscuits were gone and finally, the man left to catch his train.

Adams told the story as an example of how the British tend to be non confrontational.  Of course, the kicker to the story was that when Adams got up to catch his own train, he noticed in the booth next to his, were an unopened package of biscuits....

This is a very long way of saying that sometimes things are not what they might appear. Here is another fantastic example. Not able to embed, but check out the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PPlkOyaqaQ

Random Acts ...

I am such a sucker for this type of thing, so much so that it brings tears to my eyes.

When my day is filled with managing the stuff in life that I would rather not manage. When I turn on the television, or computer, or turn the page in the paper and it's story after story of some horrible act of violence or injustice, it's nice to know that good things still happen.

Do As I Say ...

Someone once asked me what gets my blood to boil. The answer was easy; Injustice.

If there were a second, it would probably be hypocracy...well, maybe not second, but hypocracy would be on the list.

So there's news today that Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol and her fiancee Levi have called off their wedding. Remember the kids? They of the unmarried, barely out of school with a kid on the way variety?

To say I'm not surprised is ... well not surprising. I think the situation would have been much different if Ms. Palin were living at One Observatory Circle now instead of Vice President and Dr. Biden.  Where Palin living there, I have no doubt the wedding would still be on the books, and a lavish wedding it would have been.

What agrivates me about this is the attitude some on the right had when it was announced that the vice presidential candidate's daughter was pregnant ... out of wedlock.

They lavished a great deal of support on the family Palin. We were told the issue was a family matter and not for public debate or discussion. Never mind it was the office of the grandmother-to-be who issued the notice.

This closing of ranks, this unyeilding support flew in the face of the Right Wing's attacks on other unmarried couples. I honestly couldn't help wonder what Palin herself would have said had someone told her that a young woman of color was pregnant but the mother to be had decided not hold off on a wedding.

I am angry at Palin who handled the situation publicly, supporting her child and soon to be grandchild, while at the same time attacking liberals for their lack of family values and patriotism.

Of course the irony in all of this is Palin was partially right. She should have suporter her daughter once she knew about the situation. And while I don't know that the kids were forced into a future marriage, I can't imagine that they both planned this and then decided to wait to be married.

If Palin and the rest of the republican party showed as much compassion for other unwed mothers or struggling families in general, then maybe they'd be in the White House and we'd be happily looking forward to a national wedding. Not because they were forced into it, but because their parents truly supported it...and them.

Has It Been That Long?

While I have an uncanny ability to remember a great many things from long ago, apparently I also have an uncanny ability to remember things as being in different frames of time than they actually occurred.

Ask me about television shows from the 70s and, for the most part, I can generally tell you what night of the week they broadcast, who starred in them and maybe even how long they ran. But as I got older, being able to lock things down to even a five year span seems to have eluded me.

Maybe it was because I spent so much time watching TV when I was a kid. It's funny, and I may have written about this before, but while I enjoyed watching TV, movies were my main love. I subscribed to the notion that TV, being free, couldn't be better than a movie which you actually had to go out and buy a ticket for. So I find it kind of ironic that I have such a memory for television.

I wish I had the same memory for music. I mean I do have specific recollections of songs and have written about them here. But more and more I find myself thinking some artists and songs appears much later than they actually did.

Example is the great song from the Go Go's below. For whatever reason I was convinced it had to have been late 80s. There was no way that the cute Belinda Carlisle and friends could have started that band in 1978. But guess what? They did.

And while one of my favorite songs is the one below, I was certain it was one of their first. Not one that would appear on one of their last albums together.

It occurs to me that memories of the early 80s, or maybe all of the 80s are a little more cloudy than I realized. And no, it's not because I smoked pot and lost some of the time, I never really got into that. I imagine it's just that I had so much fun having fun that taking account of the who's, the what's, the when's didn't seem to matter much.

My memory, watching this video, is of a very fun time. I look at the young women in the band and find them terribly hip, and terribly attractive. I have to remind myself, however, that this video was release 25 years ago and the clothes, the dance, and even the music is dated. But it doesn't stop my love for the song, and doesn't stop me from smiling. Remembering the times I listed to this music feeling, if not actually being, terribly cool.

So, in the end, as the girls say, maybe I've been running so long, I've nearly lost all track of time. But for this song, and ultimately for them, I'm still head over heels.

Happy Birthday Mr. President

A great deal has been written about Abraham Lincoln. And no doubt a great deal more will be written.

But it is, perhaps, his writings, his oratory that I find myself most enthralled.  Below is one such example.There is so much to say about this great man. But others have said it better no doubt. This is reference, to me, says more than the words themselves.

At the dedication of the cemetery where the great battle took place. Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, or long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish fro the earth."