why? maybe just because i never post shit like this

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[the fonts are all messed up in this post--god, i hate blogger sometimes]

so i met my colleagues for dinner tonight in the break room as usual, and john showed up on this casual friday in a trendy striped T which looked so great on him that i was moved to say, "oh my god, you're so 'tommy kirk circa 1962'!" (a compliment he not only got, but was inordinately pleased by).

which established the topic for tonight's dinner conversation: who were your formative childhood crushes?

it was a subject i hadn't thought about for years, but once the question was asked, they came back to me almost instantly, each and every one.

and so, without further ado, allow me to present for your delectation, commentary and ridicule, the boys that made me squirmy way back before my balls had even dropped:

1. rick nelson


my first crush--i first became aware of him when i was maybe four or five, and would thereafter sit each week glued to the television, completely oblivious of ozzie, harriet and brother david, coming alive only when ricky graced the screen.

tell me--has a more beautiful, more talented boy ever fuckin' lived? (and don't even start with the zac efron, because i'll have to hurt you.)

2. billy gray


while he couldn't hold a candle to ricky, bud from father knows best still managed to give me that fluttery, squishy feeling in my four-year-old kishkas that i didn't understand but so looked forward to each and every week.

and, for that matter, so did

3. bobby diamond


premise of the show: lonely single rancher adopts troubled teenage boy--i mean, what's not to love?

4. tony dow

leave it to beaver was another of the favored shows of my youth (although mostly in reruns), and i didn't care if it was the young wally who turned up when the show came on each week


or the grown-up one

either way, i was mush.

5. don grady


what can i say--i loved me some robby.


ok, enough tv--let's move on to the big screen.

6. james macarthur


one of my beloved grandmother's all-time favorite movies was spencer's mountain, and as much as i loved henry fonda and maureen o'hara, and no matter how many times i sat through this movie with her, i could never tear my seven-year-old eyes away from the luscious clayboy long enough to appreciate them.

7. tommy kirk


i can't remember which disney movie i saw tommy in first, but it doesn't really matter--from that first frame of film, i knew we were destined to be together.


and last in our parade of objects of my youthful lust, but far from least,



yeah, so i was once in love with a cartoon character. eat me--i was seven.

* * * * *

so there you have it: the full panoply of my prepubescent obsessions. enjoy (or not).

whatever--to close this post we're gonna go full-circle, back to where it all began:



so, tell me--who were yours?

because i am nothing if not a giver

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i've rearranged the furniture a little--added a sidebar on the left in order to make it easier for my legions of readers to find everything i have to say on any given topic with one click.

please--don't all eleven of you thank me at once.

the whole torture thing

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People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

george orwell

as i sit here and watch the torture debate rage back and forth among people who have not the slightest clue as to what they're talking about, three questions seem to keep coming up:

1. what, exactly, constitutes torture;

2. under what circumstances, if any, is torture ever morally justified; and

3. is it ever even effective?

and if you think i'm even gonna try to answer these questions in this post, you're dead wrong, because when it comes to this subject, i have no idea what i'm talking about either--but unlike everybody else, i'm at least willing to admit it.

and that's my point: fuck the politicians, the public and the half-ass opinions they rode in on--effective, efficient intelligence-gathering is best left to the experts, and that's where this matter should've stayed.

see, every nation has two sides: (1) the high-minded face it puts forth to the world; and (2) the dark underside that actually gets shit done. and it's generally understood--by every nation but us, apparently--that that's the way it must be, and the less talked-about, the better.

am i saying i "condone" torture? no. what i'm saying is, as a soft, sheltered american civilian, i haven't clue one as to what it really takes to keep us safe in our beds each night--and neither do you. as such, i give about as much credibility to someone who says they'd never under any circumstances condone torture as i do to someone who makes the same claim about abortion. because, seriously, folks--it's a rough, tough world out there, and if you really think omelettes get made without breaking a few eggs, then you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

then, you might ask, am i saying our intelligence services should be allowed carte blanche in terms of how they operate? again, no--there should be oversight, but it should be managed discreetly and at the highest levels of government, and not be made a political football to be kicked about in the public arena as is being currently done.

having said all that--and putting aside for the moment the above three questions--i'll now give you my thoughts on this mess:

1. the bush administration was wrong. i believe the CIA was probably pushed into waterboarding those guys by a bush administration so desperate to tie al qaeda to iraq that they'd take any link they could get by any means, no matter how faulty it might turn out to be later. and i'll further bet the CIA knew at the time "garbage in, garbage out," but couldn't get anybody in power at the time to listen.

2. the obama administration is wrong. i further believe that a dangerously naive new president came into office believing his own campaign bullshit, and, ignoring the fundamental truths i outlined above, piously and mindlessly turned on his (and our) intelligence watchdogs--who, i'm gratified to see, then apparently bit him in the ass and clued him in as to what's really up (what makes me think this? simple: read this--oh, and while you're at it, this).

3. nancy pelosi is an idiot. i'd have respected her more (fine--detested her less) had she had the cojones to forego the craven ass-covering and just say, "yeah, i signed off on the waterboarding because i thought the safety of the country was at stake. judgment call--sue me."

bottom line: as we fall on our collective knees, wailing and rending our garments over laughably minor crap like abu ghraib, guantanamo and a little waterboarding in a futile plea to win the world's forgiveness--not understanding that such appeasement is always perceived, by enemies and friends alike, as weakness--i watch the middle east solidify in its hatred and contempt for the west, north korea starve its people in order to feed its million-man army, russia rattle its newly-sharpened sabers, israel prepare to decimate iran, and the taliban overrun nuclear-armed pakistan.

and me? i dunno whether to laugh, cry or move to australia.

happy day, ma

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love,

your baby

sober update: see? i'm not always a mean drunk.

roy, my joy boy

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i was 19, between high school and college, working as an assistant manager in a chain pizza restaurant in northwest houston [don't ask why--doesn't matter now].

four nights outta five, i ended up closing--miserable work, but i did it for almost a year--and usually at least two of those nights each week, roy was the one who closed with me.

lemme tell you about roy: 17-year-old part-timer--sweet kid, tight little body, smashed-up nose from too much football, loved me to death.

and every night we closed together--and i mean every fuckin' night--when we were done he'd challenge me to a rassle.

and i'd always say "ok," and we'd move the tables and chairs off the freshly-vacuumed carpet and go at it.

and i'm talkin' serious and sweaty all-out wrestling--i was bigger and stronger, but he was quicker and wirier. i was no athlete and had no idea what i was doing, but i went all-out anyway, and the chances of one of us pinning the other on any given night were pretty much 50/50.

either way, one of us would always end up on top, tense bodies grinding against each other, face-to-face, dripping sweat, and that's the way we would remain.

until i said--because it was always me--"that's it, roy--time to go."

at which point we'd release, get up, move the tables back, lock up and head out to my car.

and then i'd drive him home while he hummed along to whatever was on the radio, drop him off at his house and head home myself.

it was maybe fifteen years later i suddenly sat bolt-up from a deep sleep one night with the realization that, holy shit, i so coulda had him.

the whole hate crimes thing

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[in the comments section of my previous post, reader judi asked me for an explanation of the hate crimes legislation which, having slam-dunked its way through our house of representatives, is currently in the process of being rubber-stamped through the senate towards its inevitable obama signage-into-law.

the following is my answer to her question.]


basically, judi, it goes like this: for the past 233 years in america, you fucked somebody up, you did time.

under this bill? let's say you fuck somebody up because they're gay (or a member of any number of other protected minorities covered by said bill), you're gonna do time plus several extra years because, since your crime was motivated by hate, you're obviously an extra-bad person and therefore deserving of far more punishment than had you beat the guy up merely because he dissed your girlfriend or spilled a drink on you or something else perfectly reasonable like that.

but what if it's not so clear-cut? what if you maintain you fucked him up for reasons totally unrelated to his being gay? well, in the good old days, it wouldn't matter why you did it; all the court would care about is if you did it or not.

but not anymore, judi. in this brave new post-"hate crimes" world, the mere fact of your crime won't matter nearly so much as WHY you did the crime--never mind that the object of your rage would still be a puddle of bloody goo on the sidewalk either way, the law will now tell us that, if the victim happens to find himself in a class of citizen protected by this new hate-crimes statute, then he's far more injured--and thus, you're far more guilty--than had he not been so protected.

but that's ok, because homophobes are worse than bad, and they need an extra-special incentive like a "hate crimes" law to keep them from beating up on poor, hapless faggots, right?

thing that kills me is, the folks arguing this position are usually the same ones who can reliably be counted upon to scornfully laugh at the "death penalty as deterrent" folks.

[imagine the following scenario:

billy bob: "hey bobby joe, let's grab our baseball bats and go out and fuck us up some faggots, ok?"

bobby joe: "well, billy bob, as much as i love to fuck me up some faggots, that new extra-added "hate crimes" enhancement on top of the ordinary ol' assault-and-battery makes me think twice, so maybe we better not."

because that's the way it'll work, right?

yeah, right.]

of course, being as smart as i know you are, judi, i'm sure you will immediately see the other problem with this new order of things.

because if you're anything like me, you might believe that the objective, material and provable evidence of what you actually DID should be what matters in a court of law, rather than the subjective supposition of the thoughts which were presumably in your head AS you did what you did.

but in the end, no worries--the thought police will sort it all out for us and all will be well, right?

yeah, right.

* * * * *

had you asked almost any fag in america, judi, they'd have told you this "hate crimes" law is basically the greatest thing since sliced bread, since it's gonna save us all from homophobic hate and all.

but you? you had to ask me.

[next: the problem with creating protected classes in america--and boy, do i have a few things to say about that]

and i'll bet when it passed, his mama stood up and cheered

two months ago, this 16-year-old kid was dragged, handcuffed, outta his house and thrown into lock-up on suspicion of making a threat from his home computer. since then, he's been held virtually incommunicado at a juvie detention center far from his home, his future murky and uncertain.

his mother claims that her son--conservative, flag-waving, church-going and home-schooled--had never been in trouble, there was no evidence to support the arresting officers' claim recovered from their home, and that someone must've hacked the kid's ip address and made the threats in his name.

is the kid guilty of the charge? who knows--maybe, maybe not.

point is, in this case it doesn't really matter, because the feds aren't interested in any defense he might offer, nor are they required to be; hell, they can hold this kid in a kafkaesque limbo--no charges, no communication with the outside, no lawyers, no hearing, no arraignment, no defense--forever if they want.

"but this is america," i hear you say, "land of habeas corpus and rule of law--how could this be?"

simple: the patriot act makes it so.

see, the "threat" in question was apparently a bomb threat, thus making this a potential act of terror--and thus giving the feds, via said patriot act, virtual unchecked, unquestioned power over this american citizen's life.

kid's mother is mystified, wailing and wondering what happened to due process in america.

this story makes me chuckle darkly to myself for two reasons:

first, because at the same time the obama administration is falling all over itself trying to close guantanamo, free many of its prisoners and downgrade middle-eastern "terrorists" to mere "extremists," it's now using the patriot act (among other things) to target conservative "terrorists" in the heartland of america; and

second, because i'm sure that, as long as the previous administration was in power and the patriot act seemed only to apply to towelheads, liberal librarians and similar other pinko troublemakers, most conservatives (such as the mother in question here) were perfectly fine with it.

see what happens when you pass dangerous, poorly-thought-out, emotionally-charged legislation and then the tables turn?

[and yeah, of course there's a message here; let this be a cautionary tale for all my friends out there who so passionately favor the hate-crimes legislation currently making its way through congress--think for a minute what might happen when the other side once again gains power (because it'll happen--it always does), and starts using that thought-police bullshit against you.]