I’m the Juggernaut, bitch! (No nudity, but still prolly NSFW)
Remember that sweet, adorable little boy who played Billy Bob Thornton’s sidekick “Frank” in Slingblade? Yeah, well he grew up. Boy did he ever. And I want to personally thank his Mama & Daddy for the obvious reasons.
Gas prices are exponentially higher every time you turn around. The war in Iraq goes on to the tune of untold amounts of money, lives of Americans and Iraqis, (to say nothing of why the world at large now hates us) and all with no end in sight. We’re fighting insurgents, NOT ‘terrists’. Meanwhile, the Taliban in Afghanistan has never been better! Hurricane season is around the corner and we’re going to be fucked again as FEMA is one giant, nut-filled piece of shit. Did I mention New Orleans is still a complete trainwreck? Knock knock! Who’s there? Osama! YOU MEAN HE’S STILL OUT THERE SOMEWHERE??? Are you fucking kidding me? The motherfucker’s dragging around a godamned dialysis machine and we STILL haven’t caught him? No, wait - Chimpy says catching Bin Laden is not important anymore. Immigration - don’t EVEN get me started. NSA Wiretapping and congressional scandals left, right and center. $225 billion trade deficit, and it keeps swelling. Did someone say Global Warming? The Plame case. I could go on for days about real issues that are affecting us all, real problems that beg to be addressed and hit with real solutions - but the thing is, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has made it clear already - gay marriage and flag burning are highest priorities. Marriage is not the cornerstone of our society, fucknut - the Constitution is. Writing discrimination into it will serve to accomplish nothing for the benefit of society, nothing at all. I give a shit about the flag when what’s really on fire is my equality. Let’s push legislation that makes it a federal crime for Republicans to wipe their shitty asses with the Constitution, how about that?
I suggest making flags out of flame retardant material, enforcing a real penalty against adultery, and outlawing divorce - then problem solved and everybody wins. Of course, if you’ve been divorced already then you don’t get a say on ‘protecting traditional marriage’, you couldn’t manage to get it right on your own watch so you can just fuck right off, hypocritical bastards.
They’re firing up the religious conservatives and the microcephalic windbags that make up their base, they’re all plenty hungry and there’s plenty of them to appease. Midterms are coming up sooner than you think, folks. One more thing. I’m getting dangerously close to inflicting physical harm on anyone who from now on uses the phrase “We’re fighting this war for our freedom”, because that’s a stadium full of bullshit. Nothing could be further from the truth and I’m through being lied to. I say Revolution.
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
— U.S. Supreme Court, Texas v. Johnson, 1989.
From DarkSyde’s Dailykos diary, I give you the brilliant Requiem for a Nightmare
* President George W. Bush - served four years of a six years Nat’l Guard commitment, some say after daddy’s friends pulled some strings to keep him out of Vietnam. The circumstances of his early separation from state-side service are still controversial (details)
* Karl Rove, occasional Deputy Chief of Staff and alleged full time smear artist, escaped the draft and did not serve
* VP Dick Cheney - several deferments, by marriage and timely fatherhood
* Former VP Chief of Staff I. Lewis Scooter Libby - did not serve
* Secretary of State and former NSA Condaleeza Rice - did not serve
* Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve.
* Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - did not serve.
* Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay - did not serve
* House Majority Whip Roy Blunt - did not serve
* Majority Whip Mitch McConnell - did not serve
* Rick Santorum, third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve.
* Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott - did not serveRecently while stammering out a convoluted apology for avoiding service, one budding Yellow Elephant mentioned in part that he ‘can support the Yankees without wearing their uniform.’ Not too far off: Your average Chicken-hawk does not play for the Yankees because they lack the physical skill required to walk out on that field and compete; likewise, maybe they do not serve in Iraq because they lack the simple courage required to walk into a recruiting office and sign up. But how about his role models?
* Rush Limbaugh - did not serve
* Sean Hannity - did not serve
* Pat Buchanan - did not serve
* Ann Coulter - did not serve
* Ralph Reed - did not serve
* Bill O’Reilly - did not serve
* Michael Savage - did not serve
* Bill Kristol - did not serve
Hat tip to
Dos & Don’ts (& More Don’ts) for Gay Boy Refugees
So you made it out of that backwater town in one piece. Now comes the hard part–acclimating to a new place and living an openly gay life. Soon enough you will discover which bars cater to your distorted physical ideals, that meth is very bad, and that a deep tan is ugly and pre-cancerous–but what about the other stuff? Here’s a cheat sheet to save you some time and trouble.
1. You are not a strong black woman. You never will be.
2. I know it was terrible being the fag in your school/small town/own mind, but don’t introduce yourself to people with this information. Being gay is, and should be, the least interesting thing about you.3. If your mother is the greatest woman who ever lived, keep it to yourself. The holiday orphans don’t want to hear it. On the flip side, your family will always be a part of you even if you never speak to them again, but try not to spend your life in reaction to them.
4. Rainbow flags, bumper stickers, and wind socks are no different than Green Bay Packers fans painting their faces green and gold: a complete embarrassment. Pride can be as ugly and warping as shame.
5. Gay life is quite often empty and depressing, but bitching about it outside the confines of a few close friends will get you tagged as bitter. Yes, the gay mainstream is alienating with its cookie-cutter bars, bad dance music, and Queer as Folk. It’s enough to make you turn straight. But electroshock doesn’t work and Jesus is a sci-fi character.
6. Don’t fraternize with people who haven’t come out.*
7. Your masculinity has most likely been called into question. Anything you do in reaction to it will be a failure. Don’t try to prove or disprove anything.
8. There is a difference between being effeminate and being a queen. Being effeminate is just that–being. Being a queen is an affectation. I can’t throw a ball, but I don’t call anyone “girl,” even female children.
9. Avoid she-bonics: referring to each other as Girl, She, and Her. “What’s her problem?” That you are an idiot. This includes: Bitchslap, Girlfriend, Shit pussy, Mangina.
10. Don’t be a misogynist asshole. Leave the tuna jokes back in your small town with your usage of Jew as a verb. If it weren’t for lesbians and feminism, we’d still be sucking cock in truck-stop restrooms. I mean exclusively.
11. I’ve never been to a bathhouse. No, really. So I can’t advise you on it but I do know they are basically a petri dish of STDs. If you are okay with HIV, herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and other STDs, by all means fuck your brains out.
12. Do not have black-and-white photos à la Bruce Weber taken of you and your beloved. And if you must, then don’t hang them up as “art” in your home.
13. Don’t kiss and tell. Or fuck, suck, rim, or fist and tell. Think of your bedroom like Vegas: What happens there stays there. It will keep you from gossiping, which is the true heart of darkness, and will create a sense of mystery. Besides the cruelty of nicknaming someone Princess Tiny Meat (it would make a wonderful DJ name though), it isn’t good karma. And what modestly endowed dude who sucks a mean cock is going to want to go home with you after that?
14. Bros before hos. I learned this the hard way: Do not sleep with a friend’s ex-boyfriend. Ever. Even if they say they don’t care, they do.
15. You are 200 times more likely to be an alcoholic than your straight counterparts.
16. Beauty fades. Develop some inner resources, otherwise when it goes, those of us with less far to fall will laugh at you. To your aging face.
17. Men, like lotto tickets, should not be had every day. The odds are the same.
18. Romantic friendships will end up being neither.
19. Cultivate friendships with straight men. “But we have nothing in common,” you say? Bullshit. You are men. Many straight men are in fact softer and swe
eter than their faggoty brothers.20. Make friends with at least one dyke, you silly faggot. When the shit goes down–for instance your mother dies–fags will drop you in an instant if you aren’t fun. Dykes will come to your house with food.
21. Don’t make friendships based solely around how outrageous you are. It’s a shitty kind of attention.
22. Don’t refer to anyone as a fag hag. It’s rude. Also don’t hang out with fag hags.**
23. Don’t date people who have scars that are older than you.
24. After all of that, you are still not a strong black woman.
* it is a person’s decision when to come out, unless they’re in public office (esp. a Republican) voting to deny equal rights and enshrining the constitution with discrimination - then you drag that motherfucker out kicking and screaming.
** the ones who make it a lifestyle and invariably fall in love with you - you don’t need that kind of drama to make your life tragic.
I cannot stress the importance of this post to me, what it means to me, what it has come to represent. If you have any spine whatsoever, you will read every word of this post. You will suffer each syllable and burn each image into your minds, you will feel the blinding pain of it all, and you will do so in order that homage is paid to all of those who felt it in real time so that we would hopefully never have to, even though we still do to this very day. It is happening right now. As I type this, men, women, and children are being hacked to death with machetes in great numbers in Darfur. I’d never imagined when learning as a child about the holocaust that I would ever feel the experience of shame from the reality of genocide in my lifetime, yet it continues to happen.
I made a post a few weeks ago on faith in God, and asked why you believe or do not believe. That post led me to this one. I’m curious about how the faithful can maintain their belief in the face of things like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Mauthausen, Sobibor. It was all I could do to not hate the idea of God after finding out about these things when I tried in vain to believe so many years ago, but I’ve learned not to hate something that holds no value within me in the first place. Instead, I want to use a loud voice in opposition to injustice and inhumanity. This is what gave birth to this, written for this Memorial Day, an extension of the Auschwitz memorial post I made last year. It will hopefully serve as a reminder for the shame I hope is felt every time you complain about something, anything insignificant. The guilt I hope eats you alive whenever you throw away your energy on something stupid, or whenver you don’t hold the people you love in the highest value and esteem. The shame you should feel for not living a better life as a better person; a giving, selfless, humble being that is worth knowing. So who are you?
This is what happened when the God of the faithful closed his eyes and turned his back and yet the eyes of the faithful remained open.
When goodness and justice cease to exist when the world stops paying attention to entire cities that just vanish off the face of the earth forever.
You were robbed of your possessions, of your identity, your dignity, even of your prayer shawls and at times your beard in public squares.
All of your neighbors and all of your extended family shuffled down the street to the taunts of SS officers, humiliated with the branding of yellow stars and German spittle.
It is early in the 1940’s, and the location is the platform at the Austerlitz train station.
Before all are lengths of trains brimming with the walking dead, all unaware of an already chosen fate, and they have no idea.
Cattle cars for the human cattle, all packed in from floor to ceiling, human tears, shit, piss, blood, and vomit covering the memory of bovine tears, shit, piss, blood, and vomit etched into the wooden floor.
The days before marked halfway to the systematic dehumanization, children taunted in schools, synago
gues destroyed in the Kristallnacht (Night Of Breaking Glass) and the bodies of Jews left to hang in the open air as a warning.
From home to single room, to street, to cattle car overfilled with broken fragments of what a day before were intact, healthy families.
Children separated from parents gazing out of the window of a moving train, witnessing the last time they see their families, and they have no idea why.
The heat inside the cattle car is stifling, the stench overpowering, the fear and apprehension of what lay ahead unimaginable, and you are there with little room to move, no food, no water, no toilet - for days and days.
And the moans and screams, the constant, harrowing, maddened, unrelenting screams which go on for days - and still they have no idea.
The train stops abruptly, in an unknown place and the doors slide open.
“Everybody out! Leave everything inside! Hurry up!
Men to the left! Women to the right!“ shout the strange, hollow eyed men.
In the blink of an eye, what remains of your family goes one way and the rest go another along lengths of barbed wire and under a smoke filled sky.
Giant smokestacks belching thick black smoke, ashes like grey-white tears vomited from the sky and coming down like snow, snow made of entire families.
You have no idea that this will be the last time you will ever see them alive again.
All possessions are taken - clothes, shoes, suitcases, jewelry, ever hair which is violently shorn off of everyone’s head and collected for later use in making yarn and rope.
You are given a pair of thin, striped cotton pants and a matching jacket identifying you as a prisoner, though you’ve done nothing wrong and have no idea why, but that is what you are - no trial, no justice.
YOU ARE UNWORTHY - YOU DO NOT MATTER - YOUR LIFE IS LESS THAN NOTHING.
The beatings continue, the assaults on anyone for any reason, and all confounded by the utter confusion.
You see groups of people -men - women - children - all marched into different areas, all terrified and clueless, and they do not come back.
You are crammed into a barrack with row upon row of wooden bunks, a single blanket, no mattress, straw if you are lucky, and up to nine other bunkmates on a single platform.
You are forced to perform hard labor, you work in warehouses where the SS guards have free reign to kill anyone at any time for any reason.
You sort through enormous stacks of possessions - clothing, eyeglasses, shoes, jewelry.
You work with pliers pulling the gold and silver teeth from the dead and from the living.
You watch the living in the final seconds before death on th
e edge of a mass grave.
You work digging enormous pits to be filled with the stacks of bodies of other prisoners, some still alive.
You witness people marched into the woods and told that they were about to finally get a shower, then marched into a gas chamber and gawked at in their agonizing deaths by laughing SS soldiers looking through special peepholes.
You witness mothers and children stripped bare, marched into a small valley, and systematically massacred in a matter of minutes - the lingering shot again.
You witness babies and small children being thrown dead and alive into fire pits by the hundreds.
You witness the newly turned dirt squirming with the movement of those buried alive, hear their muffled underground screams.
You witness naked prisoners being forced to lie face down in mass graves before being shot execution style.
What little food is given is inedible to most, a banquet to the starving, emaciated masses.
You live in death, it is all around you - in the snow lies the body of the first person you ever kissed, the first person you ever danced with, the last person who ever made you feel beautiful and loved and validated, now a relic of life in mud and snow, rotting away.
You are forced to carry wagonloads of naked, emaciated bodies from gas chamber to crematorium - perhaps that of your mother, father, sister, brother, or child - it is all the same.
You load the lifeless bodies of your families and friends, neighbors, teachers, perhaps the young man you had a crush on but were too shy to talk to onto the hot steel of the crematory stretcher and consign them to fire and ash, in the last seconds of their physical being it was you that slammed the iron door and reduced them to cinders and bones.
You work alongside a bone crushing machine that grinds away the bones of the newly dead to absolutely nothing.
Onto the walls of the gas chambers, desperate etchings scratched into the thick concrete walls and wooden beams, cryptic messages from the dying to let you know they were here.
Everywhere, skeletal remains of the dead and dying - that one is dead - that one must be dead, but is not dead.
Days become weeks, weeks become months, you come to hope and pray for quick death to end your long, slow suffering.
You dare not think
of what has become of your family, to do so is mental suicide.
Perhaps that is what the prisoners who throw themselves into the barbed wire and electrified fences think of until they can no longer bear it.
The fear, the anguished suffering, the loss - it has all taken root in the fragments of your rotting, destroyed soul - it will never go away.
If you survive this hell, if you make it out alive at the time of liberation, you will never truly escape this place.
You will never really get to leave it because it will never ever leave you.
“Work Brings Freedom” © Jude Bennett, 2002
On this Memorial Day, which is observed to remember those military service members who died in honor and service of our country, I ask that you also remember those who died for no reason whatsoever, who were not afforded any choice, all around the world - even as I type this last sentence. Remember them, honor their lives, never forget they were here.
Cole, Brantley (cousin), and Avery in our front yard
Big business on a hot summer day, they made over
$5 at .25¢ per cup in the first 45 minutes!
Man throws 2 kids, self off 15th floor of hotel
Family vacation ends tragically for children, ages 4 and 8; mom unhurt
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - A man killed his two young children by throwing them off the 15th floor of a landmark South Beach hotel and then jumped to his own death Saturday, police said.The children were 4- and 8-years-old and the family was vacationing from Alton, Ill., said Bobby Hernandez, Miami Beach police spokesman.
The children’s mother was not physically injured, Hernandez said.
The identities of the family members were not immediately released by police.
The family was staying at the Loews Hotel in South Beach on Saturday morning, when the mother heard one of her children screaming from an adjacent hotel room. When she walked into the room she saw her husband going over the balcony, Hernandez said.
When the woman looked over the railing she saw her husband and her two children lying on the mezzanine roof, which is about two floors off the ground.
The woman told police that the couple had been having marital problems for the past six months, Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the family had been celebrating the couple’s 10th wedding anniversary.
“It’s a terrible tragedy. It’s unfortunate that this gentleman was so selfish and in an effort to get back at his wife he took the two most loved people in the world away from her,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the woman does not know why her husband did this.
“There was no indication that he would be capable of doing something as horrible as this,” Hernandez said. “She’s totally in shock that this has happened and doesn’t know why he did what he did.”
People in neighboring rooms told police they didn’t hear anything.
The three bodies were still on the scene, but will be transported to the medical examiner’s office, said Cynthia Larson, a medical examiner’s office investigator.
Police wheeled the bodies into the hotel on gurneys covered in red sheets and took down a white tent, which had previously been placed over them on the roof. Outside the hotel there few indications of the events, except two police cars parked in the front.
Hotel guest Christopher Carreras of New York, who is staying on the 14th floor, said he could see where the victims had fallen.
“They already had tents covering the bodies. You can’t see nothing. It’s like a big awning,” said Carreras.
A Loews Hotel spokeswoman in Miami would not comment but said there was an ongoing police investigation.
