Music that made me – Fiona Apple “Pale September”

Fiona Apple is one of my all time favorite singers and song writers. Her music and lyrics can be haunting and empowering in a matter of moments and she has a way of using description that has been long lost on popular music. When people think of Fiona, they imagine the ranting crazy white girl at the MTV VMA’S, but there is so much more to her than that. When listening to her music you can feel that she is deeply emotional, sensitive and wary of the world around her. Something I completely understood as a gay teenager in Bible country. When people tell you that, at times, they crave the misery of a deep depression, this is the music that inspires such lows.

That isn’t to say that she doesn’t have quite a bit of up beat and quick paced music. Some of her best songs are breathless, leaving little place to grasp for air as you find yourself singing along. For anyone who has ever felt lost and disconnected from the world around them, Fiona Apple is there with a song to push you through. This song, is one of my favorites and brings me to a vaguely safe, but unhappy place, long lost to my childhood.

No one wants to relive a war, but we often find ourselves draw to its images.

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Gavin drops gavel on governor grab

Gavin Newsom has announced his withdrawal from the California governors race. I am somewhat disheartened to hear this, because I have always been a fan of Mr Newsom and it has little to do with this support for gay rights. (Obama, take note as to what a fierce advocate really looks like).

Mr. Newsom has cited trouble setting a solid foothold since he started his campaign almost a year ago. Outside of San Francisco, he has had little support and it’s not hard to see why. Most non San Franciscans have little idea what kind of mayor he has been and what they know of him, they associate with LGBT rights. His campaign was off to a rocky start, having trouble raising funds, even from his own home district.

I am sad to see this happen, but I wish Mr Newsom to know that history will judge him fair fairer than any governors seat could provide. Thank you for your great service and don’t stop here.

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who propelled the debate over gay marriage but struggled to find a popular message outside the San Francisco Bay area, dropped his bid for California governor on Friday.

The development leaves Attorney General Jerry Brown, who has formed an exploratory committee, as the only Democrat making a serious bid to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger next year.

A statement issued by Newsom’s campaign said he was unable to devote the time needed to run an effective campaign, citing “a young family and responsibilities at City Hall.”

“This is not an easy decision,” he said. “But it is one made with the best intentions for my wife, my daughter, the residents of the city and county of San Francisco, and California Democrats.”

His announcement was not a surprise to those following the Democratic campaign. Newsom, 42, was unable to find the same popularity throughout California that he enjoys in his home city.

Read the entire article at The Huffington Post

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“One of them”

This is an old opinion piece that I had written back during the 2008 election. It doesn’ hold a tremendous amount of weight, in terms of current events, but it offers an interesting glimpse into my opinions of Obama then, compared to them now. Little has changed, other than my hope in him is slightly less now, than it was then. Never the less, there is frustration in this tongue that often finds few ears who care enough to listen.

Everyone needs to vent.

God doesn’t seem to have time for much of anything anymore, except for random appearances in a food item or stain. Most of the day he is out blessing America, as quickly as our politicians can demand it.

In a world where religion has become a Prada bag and Jesus is the new carry-all, I think we can safely say God is meaningless as a statement of faith. The majority of politicians in office are neither religious, nor concerned with your well being. The con of man in the last 60 years of American politics is the unspoken truth that most Americans are far too lazy and uneducated to be troubled with the truth or even bothered to admit their politicians neither share their values or their concerns. A quick trip to Wal-Mart can net you all of the materials you need to run for office, more so if you plan sliding by on the Republican ticket.

A crucifix to attract the faithful, a pocket Bible to allow quick access to “honest truth” and a few baseball hats to be seen wearing in public. How else are we ever going to know that you are an average Joe,  “Just like us”? Make sure to keep the receipt, as it shows that you shop only American stores, stocked with the best goods China can make!

In an age where religion is trying it’s best to kill its other bastardized cousins, we are lambasted daily by their messages of peace and unconditional love. Barring of course, it’s discovered, you are not one of them.

We all listened to John McCain talk endlessly of the horrors he endured as a P.O.W, so much to the point that some of us wish he had gone mute from the trauma. We get it John, torture is a horrible thing that no one should ever endure, unless of course its “one of them”. McCain is so against torture in fact that he has said many times how wrong and inhumane it is, that no one using such devises should be allowed sanctuary. That hasn’t stopped him from being close friends of Senor Bush, who thinks simulated drowning is a kin to a ride in Hurricane Harbors “Lazy River”. Will McCain head any counsels demanding that Bush and his officials be held accountable for their actions? Of course not. No one wants to ridicule the retarded cousin, that’s just cruel. If only Obama had Karl Rove on his side, maybe then we would see ads in which a deep and troubling voice would say, ‘John McCain doesn’t even have the common sense not to get tortured. Is this the man you want running your country?”

If the tables were turned, you can be damn sure that would be the case.

It’s also ironic that the “party of God” holds so dearly to their crosses and religious iconography. Most of them completely unaware that the word crucifix is derived from the Latin word cruciare, meaning to torture. Named after the crosses the Romans used to torture their victims upon, leaving them to die. The same crosses Jesus had supposedly been killed upon himself. Now the party tries desperately to distance itself from those pathetic acts of torture perpetuated by the president (a member of their party), while their candidate speaks as a victim of torture himself. All this, while speaking of their great faith of the man who was tortured on the cross. McCain wouldn’t dare hold Bush accountable for this breach of the Geneva Convention because red necks across the country applaud him for “doing what had to be done.” Never mind the fact that a heinous act anywhere is an affront to god and their “faith” or the fact that those who tortured John McCain felt they had just as much right to do so as the Romans who killed Jesus. Something tells me all sides are covered in ideological shit.

In two hundred years, people will look back on this and judge us with a heightened sense of awareness and compassion towards our fellow man. They will see the short sided and selfish acts of half a nation desperately trying to secure its own safety at the cost of the rest of the world, the environment and human rights. The party of immediate results at the cost of the future.

Any woman who is voting for McCain primarily because he chose a woman as his VP, should never be allowed to vote again, just as any minority doing the same because Obama is black. People in this country tend to forget what an awesome right voting is and they throw it away. We vote on who has the best hair, the prettiest wife and who looks the most faithful. People talk about Obama and say he is elitist and too educated. I am not sure what strain of Stupidia they contracted, but the president of the United States should be well educated and if he comes off as elitist to you, it’s only because you are poorly uneducated, intellectually lazy and hold no command of your native language. I understand the last 8 years have lead you to believe the President is supposed to be an international joke, but I assure you, even dumb asses get lucky once in a while. While the Democrats are not offering leaps and bounds better compared to the Republicans, at least they expect to do the work themselves, instead of foolishly “giving it to god.” or blaming everything on “one of them.”
Once, in my life, I would love to see a candidate with more integrity than faith, more truth than talking points and more us than them.

Here’s to hoping.

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It’s not racism, if you’re ugly.

Can we please stop screaming racism when someone expresses they are not attracted to people of a particular ethnicity?

I just finished reading an article from a gay Asian man (gaysian?),upset because white and Hispanic men are not often times attracted to him. A two page pity party about euro centric standards of beauty taking over the gay community and how he had had enough of it, ensued. Rawrrr!

It wasn’t the due to the fact that he was visibly unattractive or just not physically the type of those particular men, it was obviously because he was Asian and the world was engaged in a secret plot with Ralph Lauren, designed to make him feel ugly. Paranoid much?

He honestly thinks that, because the gay advertising world doesn’t place enough Asian models in their ads, that this somehow influences people to suddenly find Asian men unattractive? It’s magic! It’s odd too, because I see images of skinny twinks all the time and I wouldn’t make out with a twink with Charlie Crist’s lips.

When was the last time you found yourself attracted to an entire race of people, because some model in some random magazine filled out his boxers nicely? That’s like hating scientologists, but then wanting to bone the whole cult, because you thought Gionvanni Ribisi looked hot as a stuffed animal in “The Other Sister.” (Which he totally did)  Or suddenly being overtaken by the urge to become homosexual because you saw how well I filled out a pair of jeans.

Please. You know I fill them out well.

The majority of gay magazines are dripping with images of twinky, starving, emaciated men (of all races) and yet I have somehow never found myself attracted to walking skeletons. Apparently I am the only person who derives my sexual attraction from my own personal choices, as it seems every other gay man in the world is forced to find only the men in gay magazines as acceptable standards of beauty. Apparently, my attraction to white and Hispanic men is based on repressed racism and it has nothing to do at all with the fact that I just like lighter skin and curly pubic hair. Great, for all my civil rights struggles, I come to find I am a racist because I don’t want to bone someone from every continent. It’s a small world after all.

The writer goes on to claim he is going to join his” queer Asian brothers in arms” and fight against the racism of the gay community and spark a revolution. All the while, reminding everyone that he is no longer dating guys based entirely on whether or not they are white. So, in other words, it’s OK for him to blatantly turn away men because of their skin color, but not OK for you or I to have a physical preference.

At this point I had to step away from the computer and look out the window, making sure the earth was still in fact rotating around the sun and not this man’s head.

I am also an ass man, should I slap myself every time someone without an ass hits on me and I graciously decline? Assicist!

I find myself attracted to deaf and blind folks, so does that mean I am reverse racist? No no, because those things are not based on race, they run the whole gamut. Kind of like… gee I don’t know… SEXUAL ATTRACTION? (Do you see how I put that in caps there? That’s how you know it was super serious.)

So now I am a sexist because I don’t find woman attractive, racist because I don’t like Asian guys, insensitive because I don’t like obese men, warped by pop culture because I find white men attractive and perverted because I like my men with a big ass and muscles. I can not even begin to imagine my therapy.

So after all of this, I came to the conclusion that this is not even related to racism, not even on a fundamental level. It’s actually quite simple. This guy was probably not that attractive, or to put it bluntly, he was ugly. Its OK dude, I get it. I have mediocre skin, some extra weight on me and my beard grows half ass-ed, but that doesn’t mean I am entitled to call everyone a racist because they don’t want to fuck my whiteness. Maybe its OK to be ugly, or just not everyone’s cup of tea.

Every time someone pulls out this nonsense, the ACTUAL acts of racism loose all of their power. You want something to bitch about?

Bitch about the fact that I never see people like me in magazines, people with massive eyebrows and man tits. Or better yet, get over yourself.

Burn bitch… burn.

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The internet isn’t gay enough. Less clicks, more dicks!

Oh you silly gays….

Should there be a .gay Internet suffix?

Two for-profit groups are pushing for one. The Dot Gay Alliance (dotgay.org), out of New York City, is being led by a longtime gay activist. And dotGay (dotgay.com) is being spearheaded by a heterosexual German man in Riga, Latvia, who has incorporated a company in San Francisco.

In other words, there could be hotels.gay, provincetown.gay, match.gay and pride.gay Web sites. (Question: What would the popular Web site gay.com have as its .gay counterpart? Gay.gay? Gaydotcom.gay? Or does it not get a .gay counterpart?)

While both groups have left open the possibility of cooperating, they haven’t yet joined forces. Both groups say they plan on starting the application process with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, to create top-level domains, akin to .com, .edu, .org and .net.

Isn’t this the same nonsense that fat girls do when they walk around with shirts that say “Yeah, I am fat. Fuck you!”?

We get it… you are overly sensitive about your weight so you create this persona of someone who is, not only proud of their obesity, but hell bent on making sure you see how much they love it.

I have enough issues already. I really don’t want to feel like a fat girl when I visit my daily websites and blogs.

The problem with this idea is this. What do young gay men and woman do when they want to visit sites that may give them help or resources about homosexuality? If they happen to live with their parents or are searching from a location that considers homosexuality a topic worthy of being banned, they will have no access to these sites. I can imagine what would have happened if my parents had sat down and found out I had been looking at “Help-I think I may be gay.gay”. My mothers eyes would have exploded and she would have convinced herself my sexuality had everything to do with not going fishing enough as a child.

That actually happened…. oh  the shame.

Wouldn’t this kind of domain push revenue away from the non.gay domains? I don’t see how this kind of service will benefit anyone, besides those making money off of the registration fees. Not only does this seem a trivial issue, but it opens the doors for the Internet to become a maze of specialized domains and niche markets. (More so than it already is) It’s bad enough that we have to share the internet with Canada, now this? Two years from now we are going to be doing all of our research and Internet funnery from .fat, . bbw, .blackguy and .fistmeplease. When does the madness stop!

We even have the straights doing it now, as one of the two parties pushing for this, is a heterosexual man from Germany. You know he is just doing this so that he can make a list of all the gays… and you know what happens when Germans make lists of people they consider social deviants. It rhymes with schmallocaust.

Attention gay people, stop the madness! Not everything needs to be about our sexualiy. Let’s tone it down a bit and focus on important matters… we are starting to look more and more like Torrid shoppers everyday.

(I apologize for offending any fat chicks. I too share your shame. Cake?)

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Obama defends DOMA – Irony still lost on him.

Someday, whether it be far into the future or relatively soon, Obama will feel great shame for his part in such a repulsive civil rights abuse. A man, who knows himself the sting of prejudice and yet he can not find the balls to do what is right and constitutionally sound. Its amazing to think he had once supported full marriage equality, until of course, he ran for president. It is odd  how the glow of power can shred integrity like cheesecloth to a knife. However, I digress.

The Massachusetts Attorney General, Martha Coakley, who filed the suit, is currently running for the seat of late Edward Kennedy. Her office received word of the administrations filing and said they would file a response in court. Her office claims that the nearly 16,000 couples in Mass are being unfairly denied their federal marriage rights.

The Justice Department is at odds with Massachusetts — the first state to allow gay marriage — over a 1996 federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Massachusetts sued in July, saying that law is discriminatory and deprives gay couples in the state of some federal spousal benefits.

The Obama administration agrees the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is discriminatory and wants it repealed, but says it has an obligation to defend laws enacted by Congress while they are on the books and can be reasonably defended.

The law “does not prohibit gay and lesbian couples from marrying, nor does it prohibit the states from acknowledging same-sex marriages,” according to the court filing by Assistant Attorney General Tony West.

Massachusetts, the filing continues, is trying to claim individuals have a right to federal benefits based on marital status.

“There is, however, no fundamental right to marriage-based federal benefits,” according to the 36-page filing.

It is easy to argue that there is no fundamental right to federal marriage based benefits, if no one had access to them. However, you allow one group of people access to marriage benefits, you lose credibility when discussing things as vague concepts that have no weight in the real world. Once a peron or group is given special treatment over another, it seems the height of offense to claim no one has the right to such a thing. I understand that Obama has said he must defend the law while it is on the books, but I wonder what the case would be were it a law that affected blacks in a negative way. Would the law deserve his support then? I have a feeling, if this were the case, he would have no problem claiming the law to be racist or prejudice and thus, unworthy of continuation. That is, however, all speculation and none of us may ever know.

Read the full story at Boston.com

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Section 8 – A lot of potential, but just short of landfall.

Section 8 (6 out of 10)

In a blazing pillar of fire, futuristic marines are shot from the stratosphere and sent spiraling to the ground at 80 miles per hour. Somehow, through the use of space magic or some unknown technology, they are able to land every time with no physical damage. Naturally I blame witches. Futuristic space witches.

Section 8 has been out for a while now and I recently got my hands on it. I have seen the commercials on TV and was oddly curious as to how the game would turn out. I don’t play an awful lot of PC games, but I have been trying to change that as of late. Section 8 was not exactly what I had imagined, but it did have some strong points. Before we go into great detail about space witches and the sort, take a gander at the trailer below. Take a moment to listen for the ultra macho voice over guy. “We always watch each others six.”  I wonder what the space equivalent of “no-homo” is.

So, it looks pretty action packed, right? The graphics look sharp, while the visual imagery is close to photo realism, and just look at that space armor! You could place a laptop behind you, turn your back on it,  stare into the reflection of that armor and enjoy your pornography in crystal clear clarity. It’s sad that I found a way to work that line into this review. What is even more sad, is that you took a second to visually imagine that scene.

Visually, the game is stunning, but that ends up being its strongest point. I would like to say that the concept is equally impressive, but it feels like the designers only ventured forward with it for a short distance, then abandoned it entirely. When I play a FPS, I usually find the most joy in playing with all the amazing weapons. If you add to that, the idea that this game takes place in the future, you can imagine my excitement when I imagined all the space weapons and laser guns and what nots. Unfortunately, Section 8 comes with a sparse number of weapons and they are all lack luster. The Halo franchise found itself loaded with cool toys and trinkets, but Section 8 dropped the ball when it came to weaponology. You are telling me that you have conquered space, but pistols are still the marine standby?  Boo, I say… simply boo.

The levels start out enjoyable, but you quickly find that they involve a lot of running around and very little interactivity. There is no organic nature to the enemy and the maps feel as if they were simply created to place objectives in. If that doesn’t make sense, imagine going through a haunted house. Sure, it’s scary at first, but after a while yoreu’ able to tell where all the masked high school kids are hiding, based on the bloody heads and claw marks. We all act scared, but in truth, we all die a little.

 

You spend a large part of the game hacking into access points, only to defend those points from enemy forces.  The enemy will often stand and watch you hack away, going out of their way to run around the complex before they make a b line for you. Unless the base was stocked with meth addicts, you would expect a little more direct action. This is enjoyable for a short amount of time, but after a while you start to feel like a hacker who has managed to stuff his fat ass into space armor. No one wants to undress a fat nerd… I would know.

At one pint, early on, they introduce the idea of dropping purchased weapons and resources into the game. Through your visual HUD, you are able to order “deploy-ables” straight into the battle. This concept works out great during a heated battle, but sadly the battles never get that heated and by the time they do, you realize you are fighting the final fight of the game. You also have to order these deploy-ables with space credits, which begs the questions, “Why would the army make you pay for the tools you are using to fight their wars?” Cheap bastards.

In the end, the game is entiely too short. It took me a breath taking 6 hours to finish and that was with a 2 hour break in between playing. Just as the game was starting to develop a plot, it was over. Now, I know I tend to be overly sarcastic, but I really was shocked at how short this game was. When I saw the credits rolling, my first thought was, “Oh.. I want my money back.”

Then I realized I borrowed the game from a friend. So naturally I  demanded they give me their receipt so I could return the game and claim the money.

All in all, Section 8 was a sparse 6 out of 10. If they had added more content, put some effort into the weapons and spiced up the game play, I would have been a lot happier in the end. The concept was great and it had a lot of potential, but even with it’s delays, the game felt rushed.

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Gayest person in the world says to Adam Lambert, “That’s so gay.”

Yes, yes I am well aware that this is my second Adam Lambert post in so many days and I promise you that I am not stalking him. Before I discuss the bounty that is this image, let me preface by saying this. I do not know Adam Lambert personaly and he seems to be a very genuine, sweet and sincere guy. He is obviously vocally talented and almost won Cake Boss for a reason. I just wanted to make this very clear, so no one accused me of being a douche bag or homophobic. My critique, as follows, is addressed towards this image and in no way to him. That being said…

Holy crap, this is the gayest thing I have ever seen and I have been to a Charlie Crist campaign dinner.

This is one of the ugliest album covers I have seen, since they allowed Janet Jackson’s fans to design her new album.

First of all, the album looks like it was created in a time machine. At the start of the design process, someone had accidentally brushed up against one of the levers and caused the machine to jolt to a start. Before anyone knew what was going on, they had found themselves inexplicably trapped in 1986. However, the horror didn’t end there. Once they escaped the time machine, they realized they where locked inside that large warehouse from Indian Jones, where all the old artifacts where being stored. To make matters worse, they were in the “Hideous ideas from the 80′s” wing, a wing that very few people dare to enter. Realizing they were on a deadline, they gathered as much inspiration as they could from their surroundings and then shot some glitter and stereotype juice all over the finished product. It’s alive, it’s alive!

Now, I know Adam was going for a Ziggy Stardust look and that’s great and all.  In this picture, Adam’s shoulders have vanished, to make way for a horribly styled album title, with some tacky gradient falling a top it. The gloves, hairs and the eyes… well I don’t even know what to say.

Of course, the gay blogosphere is in delight over this “edgy” and “no apologies” look. Adam is causing a stir by standing up for his sexuality and proclaiming it to the world. Apparently, tacky, gaudy and glitter are the national colors of queer town. I have yet to receive my brochure, but after seeing the national flag, I may move to closet ville. I hear their colors are a little less “ewwww”. Why is it that so many gay men and woman hate, even the briefest moment, in which they are seen as subdued and dare I say, simply average or plain? Must we always be about glitter and our drive to be the center of attention?

I have a feeling that Adam actually did this cover, or at least approved it, because he wanted to be a glam rock idol, along the lines of Ziggy Stardust. I doubt that his sexuality had very much to do with it, because if that had been a deciding factor, why would he portray his sexuality as such a tacky and stereotypical venture into hyper color?

Add me to the list of people who think this cover is hideous. Gay or not, any one with a eye for design will tell you to run.

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