bucketful of gee bees

i thought it was time for my first topical subject line... gay blood, camp GB, and the great brainwash. my lack of blogging lately has not correlated with a lack of shit i have to blather on about.

first on the list is the brainwash -- the insanely pervasive myth about vaccines. an episode of frontline focused on the debate (info and episode here). i have several friends currently pregnant and wondered what their views on this are. it all started when one (now known to be suspicious) study found a possible link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. since that study, its claims have been debunked by over a dozen other studies, and it has been shown that it cannot be replicated - a sign of a poor study. there is no link between MMR and autism.

jenny mcarthy took her son in for vaccination, and within days he had autism. that is how she remembers it, and there is no denying how someone choses to remember things. when the argument becomes "i am his mother, i know that something changed after he got that shot" it becomes irrefutable. even oprah couldn't counter that. that single flimsy study is the entire backbone of mcarthy's argument. she has enough celebrity power to make her own ridiculous fears and delusions "true" for suburban moms everywhere. she and her army keep changing their hypothesis - first, it was MMR, then it was an additive (derived from mercury), and on and on. what we are left with is pockets of the country where too many children are not immunized, thus creating the possibility of an outbreak. the concept of herd immunity was fascinating to learn about; when we all get our shots, we all are safer.

second topic - gay blood. did you know that in the US gay men cannot donate blood? if a man has had winkwink relations with another man since 1974, he is disqualified. they don't want his/my blood. since 1983, the FDA has banned gay blood. even the red cross called the ban "medically and scientifically unwarranted". this may finally be changing...

finally -- the day after returning from san diego, i went to winona, mn, for the 8th annual camp GB, a gathering of some of the most beautiful souls i have ever been lucky enough to know. we had 5 days of hot summer fun.

we rented a pontoon and went on the river, watched a backyard movie projected on a garage, painted, released the kracken, rocked some small town karokee (and got the girls all riled up), floated in the lake, and lounged as much as possible. such a gorgeous way to wrap up the summer.

don't even get me started

just heard that scientists found an enormous underwater plume of oil in the gulf (surely just one of countless others) which measures one mile by 22 miles and is sitting 1/2 a mile below the surface, just waiting for a good time to lube the beach.

i'm deep in to the back swing of school, whatever that jumble of words means. i am instantly overwhelmed but not getting stressed about it. my mind flies to recent summer memories to escape. like the day i was flying back to mpls, got to my seat on the plane to find a fussy baby in exhausted mom's lap in the middle seat and a very crabby old lady on the other side of him. i had the aisle, but after only 3 minutes of the baby kicking my leg, i leapt from my seat and tackled the flight attendant so i could upgrade to first class. holy shit was it worth it. i have only flown first class a couple of other times, magical upgrades, but only on short flights. the nearly 4-hour flight was a dream. i had not even sat in my luxurious seat when i was offered a bailey's to go with my coffee. we got cheese & crackers, a full meal, warm cookies, endless booze, actual leg room, and NO babies.

another notable from the california trip was one night when we went to hillcrest and the hilarious bar, urban mo's. we went seeking a specific purple drink that b had discovered there, but we were foiled, no such purple joy was to be found. we enjoyed our replacement drinks, then wandered inside to watch the dance floor. there was a way too fabulous queen OWNing the dance floor, we would sashay to one side flip and snap and hip bang around then take another corner. he was amazing to watch. then - beyonce's single ladies came on, and i knew he was going to rip it up. holy crap -- he started doing the video dance, the floor cleared and within seconds, he magically had 2 backup dancers. the entire bar watched hypnotized by the camp. i tried to film it, but must have double-tapped because only 2 seconds recorded...

to make it up to you, here is my nephew performing the same song...

while sprawled out in first class, enjoying my complimentary everything, the USA Today taught me that the delightful "dr" laura is an ignorant bigot and that a man in massachusetts got good news when the biopsy from the mass in his lung came back; it turned out it wasn't cancer. he had a pea sprouting in his lung.

learning is delicious

let them say we're crazy

The day of the march was the decision day for Prop 8. Judge Walker ruled prop 8 unconstitutional, ending the ban on gay marriage. After the decision, the judge was attacked in the media because he is openly gay, implying bias and personal activism (I can just hear Sarah Palin meowing about it). When reality is that this judge was appointed by Reagan and was accused of being *too* conservative during his confirmation.

The point is - the ban was unconstitutional. ALL people are created equal, is what they meant to say. Plus, this should never have been put to a popular vote; the result of scare campaigns and idiotic reasoning does not reflect what is right. Allowing interracial marriages would not have been approved by popular vote, but it was the right thing, the "American" thing to do.

is that a name or an intersection?

We have one more night at a fancy resort in the desert of Palm Springs. The mountain views are inspiring and the cake is delicious. We have a cool little villa with a private patio (our view is the 2nd pic). Yesterday we sat thru a 90-minute "time-share sales pitch" knowing we could only say NO but they gave us $200 in gift certificates for attending. It actually is a tempting deal, despite us not having the extra $10,000 to throw around and not really wanting to own a desert villa in the middle of a golf course. Fortunately it was pretty painless, and was fun (?) to do it as a couple. The last person to try to sell us shit had the greatest name Grant Broadway.

this whistle is on

i'm reveling in the time i have in san diego with my love, trying to absorb every milligram of joy in each moment. we've filled ourselves with delicious meals, insanely strong drinks, bad movies, and giggles. yesterday we went to the zoo -- my favorite moment was seeing the baby gorilla (baby frank) thumping his adorable little chest. it's a far stupider behavior when humans do it. as george bush so often proved.

there are moments at the zoo when you become trapped between baby strollers and families of fatties who apparently always have to stop and spread out in the middle of the pathway (not trying to get out of others' way) to tie their shoe, hoist up pants, or search for that lost snickers bar at the bottom of the oversize wicker bag; when trapped in these countless pockets, i can truly identify with the zoo animals.

after the zoo, we decided to go out to eat before rescuing micah from his kennel. we went to the hillcrest neighborhood - the gayborhood, if you will, and i will. we tried a newer place called Gossip Grill. as we were enjoying our drinks, we learned that there was a "march for marriage" (to protest the beyond retarded prop. 8) that would be coming down the street just outside our window. after we ate and sucked down several more drinks, we could see crowds start to gather. across the street, a guy in an upstairs apartment turned on a bubble machine. and the marchers started to come into sight. it was beautiful. there were so many people marching and cheering, and maybe the margaritas had a little to do with it, but i couldn't help myself from getting weepy. (i love my straight friends, but f*ck you for a minute) it is both awesome and awful to be in an area like that, where it is normal to see gay couples holding hands as they walk down the street. when the rare straight couple on the sidewalk makes you do a double-take. these beautiful pockets of the world in all the cities where they thrive (and the liberating joy i feel) are not about excluding the breeders, but instead they are a swing of the pendulum away from what we live every day.

if there is anything in this country that should be free, it is love.

you tall drink of bitch

another step in the purge completed -- the destruction of years and years worth of files; of bank & credit card statements, bills, and miscellaneous paperwork. saved every year with the intention that i would someday sort thru it, but instead, over the years i just got bigger file crates and kept stuffing more and more in... i finally went thru it all and filled a box with 25 pounds of pages to destroy. i found a company that does secure shredding with a drop off location near my house - hurrah. i tried buying a cheap shredder a few months ago, but it would get jammed with 2 pages at a time. not worth my time. now i just have to trust that the person at the drop off location actually kept my shit secure until the shredders came later today.

these are miniature horses, miniature horse ponies to be exact. my sister raises and sells them on her farm. they are insanely cute. yet i cannot imagine having one as a pet.

put a cork in it

it is Day 100 of BP's spectacular oil spill in the gulf. our brains cannot comprehend the scale of this gift...
interactive map here
yesterday those poor sweethearts at BP announced over $17 billion in losses this quarter, after having set aside $32 billion to pay for the spill. article here. as expected, Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, will step aside in October. but don't worry about that sweet little earthfucker. he'll no doubt get a fat severance and his pension is worth $17 million. the well has been capped for 12 days, but the massive underwater plumes will bring sludge to beaches for years...

images of the catastrophe make me think of waterfronts i love, like the bay bridge above. i like to think that humans are so hypnotized by water because we subconsciously connect with knowing that we are from water, that we are water. at the cell level, all life is aquatic. we yearn to return.

today brought the Veterans' association to pick up bags and boxes of discards from the great purge. just noticed that the stuff is gone! the project is nearly complete.

so funny (in that sad, "oh my god, i have become my hoarding grandma" way) to see some of the crap that i had stored -- mounds of VHS and audio tapes, notebooks and handouts from high school classes, a tub full of stuffed animals, oh my. all gone.