Category: Sexuality & Gender

Finally made it to the Orange Room

It’s a restaurant / bar in New West I’ve known about for some time but I’ve never been.  Véronique and I had a bit to eat and a little something-something to drink, and it was very yummy and convivial.  I am hoping at some point to get custody of the church website, currently her bailiwick, so we worked through my extreme rudeness in asking for it when I wasn’t really authorized by the Board to do that (sorry!) and how any handoff will be handled in this ‘real life’ we keep hearing about.

I recommend  the Orange Room; pricey but really nice and comfy.

We also talked about some trends in second wave feminism which includes a culture war with transpeople, which I had been dimly aware of but not really up on, and candidly it’s appalling, but it’s hard for me to entirely sort out how icky it is because I’m not in possession of some background.  Anyway, I need more reading material, so I asked for it.  I do think gender essentialism, unless you’re talking about the mechanics of getting and bearing children, needs an enema.

Katie has moved into a place with the help of her father.  I came home and the top mattress off my bunk bed was gone – so that’s done.

Saturday round up, occasionally unsafe for work

Religious persecution quiz, scanged from a facebook/filking buddy.  Who himself was reposting it.

Statins have much worse potential side effects than was previously believed.

Wretched excess meets explosive cuteness.

I’m not posting a link, but one of the church women posted a youtube link to her toddler doing the Hokey Pokey with her, and I just wanted to mention that that’s what it’s all about.

We live in a culture which has little use for our basic instincts, and is thus breeding / punishing their existence out of us as fast as it can.  One can only wonder what the hell will take its place.  These days I wonder how some people manage to feed themselves.  As long as we are where our instincts don’t serve us, many of us will feel alienated.  I think church is a kind of hamfisted way of addressing that alienation. I can’t help thinking that we’re a step away from ‘customized religious experiences’ and I’m not just talking about going to rural Peru to have a drunken shaman pour ayahuasca down your throat and then count his money while you trip endlessly into a brightly painted bucket of existential horror.  I’m talking about thinking, “I want a religious experience that includes singing and labyrinth walking and drums this Sunday,” and if you live in a big town, actually being able to get it.  Virtually, perhaps.                  but if we do not breathe together…. if we do not conspire….. what are we?  That’s why we live from con to con, from dance to dance, from concert to concert, from gig to gig, from (please do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AT WORK or IF YOU THINK Lesbian or BDSM sexuality is icky) hookpull to hookpull, from Sunday to Sunday (or whatever your religiously mandated gathering day is).  Re hookpulls, I personally know two people who have attended and participated in these events, and I like ’em fine, so if you want to remonstrate with me about how sick it is I’m just gonna make a sad face and change the subject. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of them though, I ain’t going anywhere like that just to be a voyeur and I don’t need any additional pain in my body at the moment, thanks.  My complete incomprehension does not include disgust.

Extra solar planets for the win. Every time I look at it, there’s more.  Everything is on fast forward.

Of course, if I fail to mention the artificial life, people will wonder if I dropped off to sleep.

As I type this I am looking at the handwriting of my ancestor Henry Thomas Wake, and wishing I could have handwriting like that.  Copperplate. He actually made money from designing lettering.  mOm says he would be a blogger if he was alive today.  He records in his diary, March 1859, that we went to Euston Square Station to determine the cheapest way to go visit Carlisle, and also that a friend has kindly lent him a book on double entry bookkeeping.  (He was demoniac about self-improvement).

I’m going to take my chalky and somewhat premigraineous brain out for a drive now.  I want a drum.

Paul and Keith are back today

kira REALLY misses them.

(Cat and Parrot video.)  When they are little I just eat them.  When they’re big, they’re kinda hawt.

I sometimes wish I could make money out of my fetishes, but then I read things like this and decide to stick with regular paid employment.

This story about Libyan freedom fighters, Gadhafi’s kid (Saif al Islam al Gadhafi) and a challenge to the moral leadership of al-Qaeda is remarkable, if true.

In a Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber says I don’t mean to be crude, but it appears that testosterone basically has two, and only two, major drives: f*** it or kill it. Perhaps that is true, but I would add three items to that list: “Be First” and “Be Best” and “Submit your will to no one else”.  That is certainly how I have seen testosterone, properly utilized, play out in a man’s life.

On this Remembrance Day, let us remember the fallen dead, the falling dead, in all the past, present and future wars.  As the candles are lit, as the hiss of the wicks and the warm smell of beeswax fills the shrine, remember the dead.

Dominion Day Roundup

Stop gay marriage or straight women will have no husbands!!!! Eeek.

Folks, even if that is all true, how can the accompanying drop in the birthrate be bad for the planet? I love how bigotry gets dressed in ‘utilitarian’ arguments.  That said, any time I detect bigotry in others, I allow myself a quiet moment to reflect on my own.  Sigh.  It is hard to be a grownup.  PS, Mr. Berman (as reprinted by Mr. Klinghoffer), sex toy technology has come a long way since the Roman Empire.  Your concern for my satisfaction and prospect of landing a sperm donor is touching, but completely unnecessary.  After all, the POINT of marriage (the cart, after all, needing to come behind the horse) is BABIES.  And those I can get – did get – without recourse to marriage at ALL.

Oh look, Dan Savage linked to the above noted link and Klinghoffer says that Dan Savage can’t be a good father because he uses bad language!

One of these days I’ll have to find that bit of writing “How to Teach Your Children to Swear.”  What we didn’t teach the kids, back when, was that swearing is a class issue.  The very most self-controlled and self-willed people do not curse, because it shows either lack of breeding or lack of self-control. And self-control, narrowly defined, is a necessary precursor to maintaining control over others.  That’s what it’s all there for.  Swearing as far as I’m concerned is part of the palette of human communication; blunt, uncompromising, emotional, limbic, genuine.  Disgusting, disturbing, vile, creepy and disrespectful, too.  Swearing is a signpost toward the things we find most frightening and, let’s face it, human. As blasphemy, it is anti-hierarchical and owns of no master; as language charged with sexuality and excretions, it voices what we strive to keep silent in daily life; as racial and ethnic slur it speaks to how easily we fall back into our emotional enclaves to lash out at a world of strange/different/smelly&rude.

Best things about Canada.  Apart from Hockey, mea culpa, I’m in.

Look at that… Miss Margot has decided to like raspberry jam.  This is a cat from MARS.

I can now see large swathes of my bedroom floor, but more cleaning and laundry delights await me.  Later I hope to go to the Burnaby Village Museum – it’s free today, and in homage to John, who never paid for a damned thing he could get for free, and to celebrate being Canadian, I thought a step back into the days of my foremothers might not go amiss.

Cinnamon buns are medicinal.

Having said that, I’d better get a batch of bread dough on…. Jeff is highly suggestible about any hinted-at treats.  And I have to sign off so he can update wordpress.  Have a great Canada Day, everyone!

I have finally listened to John and Brooke’s album.  It’s really, really good.  It’s also, coincidentally, among the top sellers on CDbaby right now!  Katie and I listened in the CanCar yesterday.

pr0n night in Canada

In honour of Marilyn Chamber’s  untimely death, I watched Behind the Green Door for the first time last night.

Yanno, that was not a bad movie at all – I have to admit I like the old fashioned stuff way better than the new.  I watched with the sound off while there was any dialogue, and when the dialogue quit I turned the sound up and learned that the soundtrack (yes, I mean the music) is awesome.  Who knew?  Anyway, she will always be my favourite pr0n star, and I hope she lives forever on celluloid.  I could go on at great length about the costume Johnny Keyes is wearing (O…. My….Flying Spaghetti Monster), the variety of body types in the audience (unbelievable, by contemporary standards), and various other things about the film, but the thing that really got me is how damned CHEERFUL it was.  Srsly.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

One of the many useful internet acronyms is TL;DR.  That’s when your truncated attention span decides to step out for a soda.

Continue reading Too Long; Didn’t Read