and the reviews are in (continued)

when i wrote the first part of this post, it was with the full intention of coming back in part 2 and doing a point-by-point response to the reviews of this blog referenced therein.

thankfully, i'm sober now and back to my usual semi-indifference to the opinions of others, so i'll spare you most of it.  but i did wanna address a couple things.

first, one of paulo's readers weighs in:

what strikes me most about gregory's review of my blog--aside, of course, from its typical compassionate-liberal viciousness--is how it completely misses the point.  no sense of humor?!  this whole goddam blog is nothing but a dark cosmic joke, and i thought i'd made that fairly clear.  so either gregory's an idiot, or i've been deluding myself as to the extent of my supposed cleverness.  god, i hope it's the former.

as for paulo himself, while he professes to love the blog, he seems to see its author as nothing more than an amoral, aging lothario drunkenly crowing about all the boys he's nailed.  to this, i can only respond with the following, from an email i once wrote to faithful commenter noblesavage:

the reason you cringe at my trick stories, rob--in fact, the reason so much of what i write is cringeworthy--is because that is the intention of this long, five-year gutter-morality tale.  or, to put it another way,

oh mother, tell your children, not to do what i have done

(and yeah, will, i know--the animals did that one, too.)

where paulo nails me to the wall, however, is with the following observation:

I believe that even though one should have some courtesy to the person reading their drivel, paying a reader too much mind can fuck with your head as a writer.

boy, is he right about that.  i'm starting to care about what you assholes think, and it's clearly fucking with my head.

and the reviews are in

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

                                                       some old song

i've been writing guttermorality for almost five years, and have nearly called it quits as many times.  while i wouldn't trade the experience for anything, it's been in many ways a long and lonely slog.  i have few readers and even fewer commenters, and those commenters i do have--and i love you guys, don't get me wrong--tend to focus on the surface of whatever i've written, rather than the substance.

consequently, in the absence of any real criticism and feedback, i've been basically writing in a vacuum all this time.  believe it or not, i agonize over every one of these posts, try to distill 'em down to their bare essence, make 'em look offhand, layer in all sorts of subtle meaning--you know, say what i wanna say without actually saying it, and hope somebody gets it.  but i'm usually left to wonder if anybody ever does.

well, tonight i got an answer, of sorts--from not only one writer, but two.

lemme talk about paulo a minute.  i first came across his column many years ago whilst flipping through a new, cheap-newsprint biweekly weho rag called fab!, and, after lingering for probably too long over his picture,

gritted my teeth and steeled myself for whatever inane, crayon-scrawled prattlings with which this pretty-boy had managed to fill the space below.  because, clearly, he couldn't possibly be anything but a desperate, gay-affirmative action hire to draw readers to a struggling new paper with eye candy, right?

wrong.  this boy had the chops--his writing was brazen, honest, shameless, street-articulate, hideously un-PC, not to mention dead-on and funny as hell, and he had me from word one.  and i came back issue after issue not only to see what gay sacred cow he'd be (usually accurately) skewering this time--and, often as not, and to his credit, that included himself--but to snicker at how the peanut gallery had reacted to his last incendiary blast.  because lemme tellya, there was nothing more entertaining to ol' mkf than a buncha clutching-their-pearls, outraged fags writing letters to the editor week after week who couldn't decide what they needed more--to hate paulo or to fuck him.  (me?  i was conflicted too--i couldn't decide whether i wanted to fuck him or be his best girlfriend.  i settled for neither.)

sadly, fab! eventually went the way of all truly interesting gay publications--i.e., outta business--and i lost track of paulo. but i never forgot him.  i'd eventually launch guttermorality as a political blog, and, when one drunken night i tired of that shit and decided to get a little personal but wondered how far i should push it, i thought of him and how he'd owned his shit and decided, "fuck, if he could do it, i guess i can, too."

which brings us (almost) to today.  see, a few weeks ago, i got a hair up my ass to google ol' paulo, see what he was up to, and found his blog.  turns out he'd been through a lot in the ensuing years--through the ol' meth rabbit hole and out the other side, victorious--and the experience had tempered and matured his writing.  gone was the boy who had so ruthlessly lashed out at those gay stereotypes he had feared becoming, replaced by a man who had every reason to be proud of who he had actually become.

so i referenced him in a post, sent him the link.  and not only did he write me back, he actually wrote a post about my goddam blog, urging his readers (who number far more than mine) to check it out.  at least one of 'em did--a writer himself--and gave me his own mini-review.

so, do they get me?  check out the link above, compare their impressions to yours, and come back next time to see what i have to say about it.  because, after five years, i think it's time i quit laying it between the lines, and explained a few things straight-up, straight-out.

somewhere down in hell, karl marx is high-fiving freddy engels whilst doing the "i told you so" dance

happy thanksgiving, everyone.

not to mention it told me a few things about myself, too

for those regular readers of this blog who know how i live to unlock people, lemme just say that this little video gave me the master key to about 75% of the guys i've slept with over the last 15 years.

as i've said here before, unlike most guys, i really don't have much use for porn--to me, most of it looks a lot more like work than any kinda sex i'd wanna have--but i think what's presented here holds true for most any activity in which people tend to overindulge.

or put another way, it just reinforces my long-held belief that the human brain handles scarcity so much better than it does abundance--it really, really, does.

give it a watch--i think you'll find it enlightening.

have i mentioned i have one of those voices that carries?

so tonight at work:

"hey mike, you wanna come in on sunday?"

"no."

"you sure?  it's for [toothsome young first-year associate]."

"look, the only reason i'd drag my hungover ass in here on a sunday morning is to see how [toothsome young first-year associate] looks in sweatpants.  that'd be good for an hour or so, but if he wanted to keep me here any longer than that he'd have to start taking shit off."

i watch my co-worker's guffaw in response to this brilliance freeze into a wide-eyed, fixed smile, and i know without even turning around that...fuck.

and, sure as shit, here his pretty lil' ass comes, studiously looking down at the document he's holding, through the open door.

did he hear me?  dunno, couldn't tell.  but i expect that if he did, i'll probably hear about it.

excuse me, now--i need to go count my fuck-you money again.

another day in congress

1.  the last honest man

representative ron paul of texas delivered his farewell address to the house today, using fifty minutes of the hour alloted to him for that purpose to summarize his core philosophy concerning the role of government--a philosophy and message which has varied little in the 36 years since he first set foot in that chamber--and to leave his fellow members, and his fellow americans, to consider some very pointed questions.

his speech--which i watched in its entirety, and will watch again--can be found starting at about 2:08 in the below CSPAN clip, and i would encourage every reader of this blog, whether you think you agree with dr. paul about anything or not, to listen to every word of it.  because this isn't cheap political rhetoric designed to play to the masses, folks--this is hard truth from a man who can't be bought, and i don't know of anything coming out of washington more rare or more precious than that.




and now, moving to the other end of the spectrum, we have

2.  the least honest men

today, the house financial services subcommittee concluded its yearlong investigation into the MF Global collapse and concurrent outright theft of $1.6 billion of customer funds by announcing it will issue a report tomorrow essentially assigning principal blame for said epic criminal incompetence to its wholly rightful owner, MF's CEO, jon corzine.  the report was unanimously endorsed by every member of the subcommittee--every one, that is, except for the democrats, not a single one of which felt there was sufficient evidence pointing to the guilt of their good friend (and top democratic bundler) mr. corzine to warrant such drastic action.*

the corruption, the conflict of interest--they don't even try to hide it anymore, because they know that, after all these years of it, we're so passively numbed and accepting of whatever it is they choose to foist on us, they can pretty much do whatever they want.  and so they will.

scroll back up there, click play, and cue up dr. paul--it'll be an hour well spent, i promise you.

__________________
* and please don't imagine that i'm painting the republicans as the heroes here by any means.  if mr. corzine had been one of theirs, you can be assured that the vote would've been exactly opposite

it's because we see

they'd asked me, i coulda saved 'em some research money.  it's nice to put the booze goggles on and view the world through the same pinhole that everybody else does; there's comfort in that sometimes.

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