Things You Can Only Say At Thanksgiving?

An old friend just sent this list of Thanksgiving witticisms to me. The funny thing is, I've heard the majority of these in the last two weeks, and it had absolutely nothing to do with food. I guess I'm running with a different crowd these days. Oh, well. Submitted for your approval:

Things you can apparently say only at Thanksgiving and get away with it:

1. Talk about a huge breast!
2. Tying the legs together keeps the inside moist.
3. It`s Cool Whip time!
4. If I don't undo my pants, I'll burst!
5. Whew, that's one terrific spread!
6. I`m in the mood for a little dark meat.
7. Are you ready for seconds yet?
8. It's a little dry. Do you still want to eat that?
9. Just wait your turn, you'll get some!
10. Don`t play with your meat.
11. Just spread the legs open and stuff it in.
12. Do you think you'll be able to handle all these people at once?
13. I didn't expect everyone to come at once!
14. You still have a little bit on your chin.
15. How long will it take after you stick it in.
16. You`ll know it's ready when it pops up.
17. Wow, I didn't think I could handle all of that!
18. That's the biggest one I've ever seen!
19. How long do I beat it before it's ready?

Guest My Ass!

To clarify for the record, I am not a real person. I am but one of the MANY voices running around in the Master's head. He only thinks I am a 6'1" blue-eyed, blonde-haired poster child for the Aryan nation. Personification of an alter-ego in a Ken Doll's body? I think I wrote a paper on this in abnormal psych...

Pats has always been a legend in hur own mind--MoD

Queer Tensions in Middle America

I admit, I have, on occasion, harbored some sexual attraction to my friend The Counselor, but I don't know that I've ever really considered him as a prospect for a long-term relationship of greater depth than a casual friendship, largely because over the past few years I've found him to be preachy...and condescending...and arrogant. Which isn't to say that I don't occasionally succumb to those same impulses, but damn it I'm right when I do. I suppose I'm just frustrated with the direction he's taking the little gay young-adult community outreach/ AIDS awareness group he directs. Admittedly, we haven't spoken in depth about the program or the constraints placed upon the directors by their funding agency, but in a nutshell they seem to be teaching that gay is bad, and then they wonder why they can't get anybody over 22 to participate in their events.

This may be an unfair characterization, but damnit, this is my forum and I'll vent my spleen as I see fit. The message that queer kids get from the dominant culture is, largely, that being gay is bad. Gay sex is bad. Alcohol is bad. Drugs are bad. Queer cultures and communities that engage in sex and the use of alcohol and other drugs are bad. Nobody should do those things, and if they didn't the world would be a safer, happier, better place and we could all live in one big, happy, culturally homogenized, whitebread world where we all believe in one theology about one god and had one sexual partner because sex is good and appropriate only when it's used to make babies, and nobody ever uses any drugs. That's the message the dominant culture pumps into schools, advertising, radio, TV, motion pictures and any normalizing social scientific training program, like medicine, education, psychology and law, it can get its hands on. And with a minor variation, that's the same bullshit the funding agency is pumping out through this community group my friend directs (instead of sex only being about babies it becomes a statement about love and affection for one partner).

The message is all wrong, and it's impossible to market an AIDS awareness program to young men when it's predicated on abstinence. That, and the fact that their demographic is 18-30. How many 18-year-olds do you know that have anything in common with a 29-year-old, other than the fact that they both like to have sex with men and share a statistical likelihood for contracting HIV? The entire system just pisses me, and it bothers the hell out of me that I feel powerless to participate in it, let alone change it.

Getting Started, Part 2

You know me, I take absolutely nothing seriously…

You have just met Yin, so I guess I should introduce myself – I am Yang. Often, I am the flip side of the Master’s brain, so when we work together, it always makes for an interesting ride. I play the Patsy to his Edina. I am the college roommate that drove him crazy. I facilitated his “library cubicle oasis” born research with questions such as, “So, what you are saying is that St. Augustine is really a black man?” I made him fight his way out of the funk that is commonly known as the “growing up” of our formative college years. I drove him fruit. And he deserved it. The bitch outed me at a graduation party. And I thank him daily for doing so, as I cannot even begin to fathom what my life would be like without him. He is one my best friends. And you know that you have a good life when you have a good friend.

In most major religious constructs, there is always a balance. A harmonious “good cop – bad cop” relation between Supreme Beings, if you will. God and Satan. Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Allah and George W. Bush (but you will have to figure out which is the bad guy in that diametric). If you take one of these players away, the other will throw the balance of the universe off, creating havoc that will surely end the world. That is how I feel about Eds. Surely, if he ever went away, I would immediately self implode in an act of karma keeping the universe in it’s chaotic balance. That being said, while it is my duty to play the antagonist, egging him on to achieve brilliance (and having to point it out to him when he does, cuz he isn’t too quick on recognizing his own self worth, damnit. I am still working on that.) – it is also my duty to protect him, because without him, I would cease to exist. And that wouldn’t be a lot of fun for me.

Please have your tickets ready, and enjoy the ride.

Guests On the Edge

From time to time, a few of my friends may drop in to share their thoughts. It looks like one just did!

Getting Started

You know me, I take everything so seriously...

Okay, so I've spent the last three hours tinkering with the blog's appearance and teaching myself the rudiments of HTML. It's an interesting language, really, as far as these things go. It's got its vocabulary, grammar and syntax, and I'm sure that if I give it enough time I can find a way to insult someone with it, so it's alright in my book.

As to why anyone should be interested in my misadventures in artificial linguistics, I don't suppose that anyone else is. I am. Read the description: it's all about me. And really, I've been running out of diversions, so this gives me another opportunity to practice thesis-avoidance behavior. So now, when I should be laboring on my Master's Thesis I can labor on this electronic journal instead. Who knows: maybe it'll help me get off my can and start to work again.

Ya see, I've been a little blocked lately--in the literary sense, that is (trust me, I get plenty of fiber). I study religion, and until about two years ago, I was able to use my academic interests as a sort of pressure valve; throwing myself into my research got me out of the house when the roommates were driving me crazy, examining the past and the lives of the persons who lived then got me out of my head and helped me to forget about the crises in my own life, and I basically got to disappear into fantastic worlds of gods and monsters that bore little resemblance to my own world of anxiety, chaos and fear. That worked because for me at that point religion wasn't about persons, and it sure as hell wasn't about me. Yes, the work that I was doing bore some vague resemblance to my life--I had a penchant for researching guys with father issues and self-esteem trouble--but those are hardly unusual interests for any guy in his early twenties, let alone one who was just coming out.

So I was content in my little cubicle in the library, sometimes forgetting to eat, never forgetting to bathe, always having a great time. I was somewhat aware of what I was doing, but I hadn't learned to ask the big questions about motive and significance. But now that I am learning to ask those questions I've begun to recognize my centrality to my work, and I've come to the conviction that religion is necessarily about persons, and that we are in fact the very gods and monsters about whom we tell stories. So I selected an incredibly personal research topic for my thesis project, one that would allow me to advocate those convictions. Now that I've been working with it for close to two years, I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable being under my own microscope. I'm not particularly comfortable being either a god or a monster, and I'm still getting used to the idea I'm responsible for making them.

And, of course, I'm scared to death of failure. I know damned well that it's not over yet, but I feel like I've made a lot of mistakes in the last few years, professionally and personally, and I'm beginning to realise just how much of my edge--my bravado, my desire and my self-confidence--that I've lost.

So, hopefully this will be the record of an ongoing journey through who I've become to whom I wish to be. So expect a whole lot of self-important nonsense, and hopefully the occasional witty observation of life's infinite risibility.