March 2003 Archives

Breakfast was.... ok. I read the paper... depressing. I came home and worked on cascading style sheets some more. This afternoon I'm going to see Tears in the Sun. I suppose it's appropriate since it's a war movie.

I came across this cool story called "The price of coming out in Jacksonville" about what a 14 year old student is going through in his school. It's pretty scary, but the kid has a lot of heart it seems. At least, it's good to see that kids understand that they have rights and when those rights are violated. We used to take all of that for granted. Heck, in our school, I remember the much publicized public spankings that were given in the lunch room every Friday afternoon. That wouldn't happen today.

I'm up early this morning after a night of really strange dreams. I would wake up, hear the wind outside, go back to sleep only to have another bizarre dream. Not nightmares really but just nonsensical stuff. Now, I hardly remember what any of them are. They probably stem from seeing the movie Dream Catcher. They were dreams like that.

It's another nice day out. It's sunny and suppose to ready mid 60's today. I wish it were late April. There would be more for me to do, such as seeding. Now, there's too much a risk for frost and it's too wet to even walk in my yard. I have spring fever bad this year after so much snow. There's a small patch of snow left on my deck, but that's about it. The ground is saturated and even the short time that shrubs have been freed from the show, they are starting to green up from the warm temperatures and the daily light from the sun. "It's a good thing."

It seems as if the war on Iraq is getting stickier now. The troops are approaching Baghdad and are experiencing more resistance. That was to be expected. I heard this morning that one of our own men threw two grenades into a tent full of soldiers. One died and six were wounded. I guess he is on the enemy's side or sympathizes with them. Or, maybe he just went crazy from the stress of war. He's in custody. One hundred thousand people demonstrated against the war yesterday in New York City in a march that stretched 24 city blocks. This is like a mini repeat of Vietnam it seems.

I'm off to the shower and breakfast... Have a nice day everyone!

Supreme Court Hears Landmark Gay Sex Case This Week. (Washington, D.C.) The Supreme Court will be asked Wednesday to strike down laws against gay sex. The Court has agreed to hear arguments in the case of two Texas men who were charged in 1998 for having sex in the home of one of the men. Sheriff's deputies, responding to a false report of an armed intruder, entered John Lawrence's Houston apartment and found Lawrence and Tyrone Garner having sex. Both were arrested and jailed overnight. The men pleaded no contest to the charges and paid a $200 fine. The Texas sodomy law under which they were charged bans oral and anal sex between consenting adults of the same sex. It does not apply to heterosexual couples.
U.K. extends war pensions to gay spouses. Gay or lesbian partners of British troops serving in the war against Iraq will qualify for pensions should their partners be killed in action, the Ministry of Defense said on Thursday.
Families of US gay soldiers forced into shadows. SLDN (Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) now receives up to 25 calls each week from soldiers concerned about how to stay in touch with their partners, how to select same-gender individuals for benefits and emergency notification, how to report harassment and how to respond to investigations of their sexuality.

I went to see Dream Catcher last night. It was an "ok" movie, if you like movies that play head games with you. I won't even try to describe it, because it wouldn't make much sense if I did. After that I saw Boat Trip. I know, I went movie crazy but I was a bit bored. I ended up walking out on Boat Trip. It's about two straight guys that accidently get on a gay cruise. I suppose it was suppose to be funny, but with all the gay swishy stereotypes displayed in this movie, I was disgusted and frankly above the quality of this movie. If this is what Hollywood thinks the gay community is today, they have serious issues (no surprise there).

It's a nice morning out. I woke at 8:00 and went to Monet's Table for my usual Saturday breakfast a little after 9. After getting home, spring fever got to me and I had to start my pre-spring activity. Nothing laborious - I ended up just blowing out all the winter sand that had accumulated in our garage after many snow storms. I cleaned off the driveway, and realized that I have a fair amount of work to do to get all my spring chores completed. It's too early to start now. I need to do some re-seeding and with the threat of further snow and frost, not even my crocus have shown themselves yet.

You got to love Molly Ivans. Once in awhile she says something the hit's my funny bone and even gets me to think about issues that never entered my mind. War is good business I suppose, depending on who you are. How do you think President Bush is going to rebuild Iraq? Out source the job to private US companies, of course. According to a Wall Street Journal article, "The Bush administration's audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war's end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies". It's good for business. Read Molly's article today. I think you will enjoy it. An excerpt from the article:

Gay and gray - Growing movement identifies challenges, opportunities specific to gay seniors.
Minnesota Senate tables civil rights repeal. A bill that would have repealed civil rights protections for GLBT citizens in Minnesota was withdrawn from the state Senate on Friday after widespread criticism.
Sonicblue to File for Bankruptcy. It figures... I bought a ReplayTV device and paid for "life time service" for their online service. I wonder what's going to happen to that.

Finally.... I came across this picture and had a question about it. It seems to me that President Bush would be able to see better if he took off the lens caps. Maybe I'm missing something??

It amazes me at times that people who I would consider intelligent can make such stupid comments. I have read other web logs and when the topic of the Iraqi war comes up, people will many times check their brains in at the door. Here is my opinion for what it's worth on the war in Iraq.

First of all, I oppose the war. I oppose any war because war is the end of rational communication and tolerance. But, that doesn't mean that I think we shouldn't be there. There are principles worth fighting for. Freedom is not a concept. It is our reality in the United States, and it didn't come easily! The same freedom that people exercise when they give anti-war demonstrations is the same freedom that has the blood of thousands upon thousands of our brothers and sisters. They did not die in vain. They felt freedom was worth fighting for. They thought that it was worth the risk of sacrificing one's very life to defend. They were right!

Does protesting the war make one "Un-American"? No, it does not. By demonstrating against the war, you are exercising your freedom to express yourself without being put in prison or executed. Think about that for a minute and let it really sink in. There are places in the world (Iraq is one of them), where by simply opening your mouth and saying how much something "sucks", you can be killed, tortured, or have your tongue cut out. There is no court of appeals. There is no one to fight for you. The sentence is absolute and final. The image of a Kurdish woman comes to mind. Her hands were dipped in gasoline and set on fire. She was in a hospital with half her fingers gone and burns all over her arms. Her crime was that she made a remark about the approach of freedom on Kurdish television.

Does bashing and directing derogatory comments towards our troops who are fighting for freedom make you "Un-American"? You damn right it does. If that's the way you feel, you are a hypocrite to enjoy the very freedom that others died defending so you can open your big trap and show the world how stupid and little you are. You should pack your bags and leave America, the Home of the FREE. You should go to a country that has no freedom. Just keep in mind, you probably won't last long. You may get a few words in, and then you will disappear.

I believe in freedom and unlike many Americans, if I were younger and my country asked me to defend freedom for the oppressed, I can think of nothing more noble to fight for. If freedom is kept, it would be worth my life. I solute our troops in Iraq. I believe in what they stand for and I am humbled by their courage. They give me hope that some in the world still have a commitment to the value of life and freedom.

We did not do this to Saddam Hussein. He did it to his people, his country, and to himself. How anyone can say we didn't give diplomacy a chance is beyond me. This war was inevitable. We would eventually had to deal with Saddam Hussein. It's better we get this over with. It was amazing to see the Iraqi people tearing down posters of Saddam Hussein and tasting perhaps the first freedom they have ever had in their lives. They were literally dancing with joy. And many were starving.

Arrogance: "overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors" (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition). The one thing that bothers me most about the Bush Administration is their arrogance towards the rest of the world. Freedom aside, they have been wanting to do this to Iraq for a very long time and September 11th gave them the opportunity to do this. Is Iraq linked to Al qaeda? Maybe - maybe not. There's no smoking gun here. As long as we are talking about immediate threats to the United States, North Korea certainly gets my attention over Iraq. They currently have the capability of delivering a nuclear war head to the west coast of North America. No more Los Angeles. No more San Francisco. Is Iraq more of a threat than that? Our current administration seems to think so. And, whatever happened to Osama bin Ladin? Do we still care? I haven't heard lately how we are pursuing that. Does anyone wonder why the focus of September 11th was changed from bin Ladin and Al qaeda to Iraq? Perhaps Iraq is nothing more than a diversion from our total failure to bring bin Ladin to justice. How easily we forget.

"If he can die for his country, he should be able to hug the person he loves and say good-bye, just like all the other soldiers do. But we had to say good-bye in private and behind closed doors; no emotion can be shown or you can be court-marshaled."

When the love of his life prepared to leave home for deployment to the Middle East just days after Valentine's Day, J.R. packed a bible, a rosary and the St. Michaels medal, symbol of the patron saint of the warrior. "We talked for over an hour that night," J.R. recalled. "I said, if you ever get scared, you talk to the big man upstairs. He'll listen and He'll take care of you."

But as families from across the nation traveled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to hug and pray for their personal heroes from the 82nd Airborne, J.R. sat at home alone. He and his partner are gay, and the ban on openly gay soldiers in the military makes a teary good-bye an impossible risk at the moment when, by all accounts, it is needed most.

It is hard to imagine what a 20-year-old soldier feels when facing deployment for war. Besides contemplating the unimaginable loss of life or limb, he must confront the possibility of killing another human being, the prospect of profound physical discomfort from harsh weather and hostile terrain, and the loss of leaving loved ones behind.

But most can at least talk about whom they'll miss back home. For gay soldiers, this is not an option, because the military's ten-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibits gay and bisexual soldiers from saying anything which would reveal their sexuality. And so, as couples and families throughout America engage in a classic-and often very public-wartime separation ritual, gay soldiers show up for departure alone, sometimes forced to spin wild tales to explain the absence of significant others to bid them farewell.

J.R., who insisted his full name not be used to protect his partner's identity, and W.F., whose partner was deployed to Kuwait in January from Good Fellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, agreed recently to speak with researchers at the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSMM), a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara, that studies gay troops.

It is impossible to know how many gay soldiers currently serve in the U.S. military. Aaron Belkin, director of CSSMM, says a conservative estimate is 60,000, but the number could be much higher. According to Steve Ralls, director of communications at the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a legal aid and advocacy group that supports gay soldiers, his staff has received an increase in calls from concerned service members since mobilization began. SLDN now receives up to 25 calls each week from soldiers concerned about how to stay in touch with their partners, how to select same-gender individuals for benefits and emergency notification, how to report harassment and how to respond to investigations of their sexuality.

The calls coming into SLDN are a reminder that abiding by "don't ask, don't tell" requires much more of gays than simply remaining quiet about their sexual orientation. Elaborate charades must often be carried out just to ensure that suspicions do not arise. "If a straight soldier gets a letter from his girlfriend," says J.R., "he can tell his buddies, pass the letter around, show them pictures. If you're gay or bi, you can't. If you get a letter or photo, you rip it up or burn it; you can't keep it." Before W.F. saw his partner off, he was told to strip his letters of any hints that the two were involved. "Writing him letters, I have to be sort of careful what I say," he explained. "I have to be reserved and act like we're just good friends." Though W.F.'s partner is out to nearly his entire platoon, letters to and from deployed soldiers are often screened, so gay soldiers face discharge if they are honest in even their most intimate correspondences.

For this reason, J.R. has helped his partner establish a sophisticated cover for his homosexuality during deployment. After explaining away a hickey by fabricating dates with women, they had to make up stories to carry the fiction overseas. "It would be very unusual for him to see girls every week and then not get any letters," says J.R. So two female friends have offered to help write letters, to lend their names, photos, even their handwriting (as a conservative American male, J.R. says, his handwriting is clearly a male's) to their effort to delude comrades and superiors into thinking he is heterosexual. The team just sent off its first fabricated letter.

But it is not only discharge that J.R.'s partner faces if the truth is revealed. He also faces violence. "In the 82nd," J.R. explains, "if it gets out, you're going to get beat up. That threat is always there because of the amount of homophobic remarks made in the barracks." Last year, SLDN reported that both gay discharges and reports of anti-gay harassment reached record levels. In 2001, the latest year for which figures are available, 1250 troops were fired for being gay, lesbian or bisexual and 1075 complaints of anti-gay harassment were reported.

For many, all this is a slap in the face to the brave men and women who are willing to defend their country to the death. "If he can die for his country," says J.R., "he should be able to hug the person he loves and say good-bye, just like all the other soldiers do. But we had to say good-bye in private and behind closed doors; no emotion can be shown or you can be court-marshaled."

In the meantime, J.R. has hung a flag in his living room in honor of his partner. The American Legion has made the flags available with blue stars representing active service members. And he prays for him every day. "What I pray for is for him to come home, to come home safely and unharmed, and for his fellow soldiers to come home safely and unharmed also."

The Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military is an official research unit of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Center is governed by a distinguished board of advisors including the Honorable Lawrence J. Korb of the Council on Foreign Relations, Honorable Coit Blacker of Stanford University and Professor Janet Halley of Harvard Law School. Its mission is to promote the study of gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities in the armed forces. More information is available at http://www.gaymilitary.ucsb.edu.

Exciting night last night. We managed to set our burglary alarm off twice. We didn't get the basement door completely closed and around 2:00am it came open (I think with the help of a cat - but no one is claiming responsibility). The police were called and they did a check up on the house. This morning, there was a bright green notice on our door that said they visited. I had the phones forwarded to voice mail so we never even got a call. Then I was awakened again at 6:30 with the alarm going off. It sucked. At least now I have the police number on our fridge door so I don't have to go looking it up.

We went to Friendly's this morning for breakfast. As we were leaving I got a call from Sean. He wanted me to see if I could find where his old girlfriend was working. I'm not really sure how I would go about doing that. I can usually find where people are living now, but work is a different story. At any rate, she is married now and has a child. I told him that I didn't think it was a good idea to contact her. She was the one that cut off communications with Sean. I'm sure she had her reasons. It's probably a case that she has a family now and her husband doesn't feel comfortable with her writing to Sean. I can understand that. I just hope I can convince Sean to let it go.

It's a beautiful day today. It's 60 degrees out, and to use that seems like spring! To celebrate, I'm in my short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt. I want to encourage it all I can, and it's my small way of saying "Spring, get here already!!". We are having Brandi, Jeremy, and Nicholas over today around 4:00pm. It will be nice to catch up with them again. We've all been so busy and Kent has been traveling so much that we haven't seen each other in well over a month now. We are going to have filet mignon, bernaise sauce, green salad, green beans... ok ok I'll stop. I know I'm going on now about stuff that no one in their right minds would care about.

We went to see the opera Salome by Richard Strauss last night. Of course, a very bloody and totally gross opera dealing with deception, death, necrophilia, etc... Needless to say, Salome had issues! We went with Greg and Mona. It was nice to see them again. Greg is recovering from knee surgery. After we got home, we had a dessert that Mona prepared, with tea. As background music, we listened to Richard Strauss (Ein Heldenleben)... yes, somewhat heavy for background music. We lightened it up with herb tea though. Finally got to bed around 1:00am.

That's all for now. Let's hope we aren't at war by the time I make my next entry.

Conservative Jews reopen debate on gay clergy. The second-largest Jewish denomination in the United States is reconsidering its prohibition against ordaining gays and lesbians and blessing same-sex unions.
Gay Con Sues Over Prison Kiss. (London) A gay convict is suing the British prison system for banning him from kissing his partner during jailhouse visits.
Gareth Evans, 29, claims prison guards ordered him to stop kissing his boyfriend even though no effort was made to prevent straight prisoners from kissing their female mates during visits.
ATM technology remains relevant. After more than a decade of development and deployment, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) has entered middle-age in the life cycle of technology. But, analysts and vendors believe ATM still has years to go before retirement. ATM is a network technology for both local and wide area networks (LANs and WANs) that support real-time voice, video and data.
Technology turning GIs into soldiers of stealth.

Good morning! For those of you reading this, I've decided to take a month or so off from signing on to any messaging service (such as AIM, Yahoo, Trillian, etc.). I'm going to continue to post here as often as the spirit moves me, but I need to take some time off from online relationships for a bit. Anyone who has been online a fair amount will understand that. I'll probably come back on with all new screen names as well (major change for me). We'll see what happens.

We just got home from Monet's Table. We had a wonderful breakfast, as usual, and picked up some interesting tidbits in the Hartford Courant. One article that really stood out was one written by Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist in Boston. It's a very well written and thought provoking article on the state of laws criminalizing certain types of sex in this country.
U.S. Has Resembled Taliban On Gay Rights.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.... If you are a gay man and entertaining the idea of taking a vacation to Egypt, you might want to re-think that idea. It is illegal to be gay in Egypt. The sentence is one to five years of hard labor in prison. I think I will stick to Maine for my vacations and maybe an occasional trip to Canada. I think my days of travel overseas is over.
Egypt - Men jailed over 'gay sex party'.

It's a quiet Friday night. Kent is on his way home from Washington, D.C., and I'm surfing the web. In the other room the TV is on making noise in what appears to be Jurassic Park III. It's not a bad movie actually, but I felt like writing. It's been a decent week and I got a lot done as far as work goes. It's difficult to stay focused on work and my personal life when the rest of the world seems to be falling apart. Within weeks, I would think that we would be at war with Iraq for the second time. It seems that most of the world hates the United States at times. I think we are arrogant to think that we can force the world to be as we are. I'm proud of our country and I know what we believe is worth fighting for, but at some point we have to realize that every nation has to plot it's own course through history. We are but one of many.

Life is a strange animal. At times I feel like I'm just going along for the ride, without much control on which direction I'm going. There's so much you can't control - the attitudes of people, the relationships that you have with family, or friends. We live in a world that does not foster trust. I just had a friend ask me for money. And, against everything that I am and everything I feel inside for him, I turned him down. Not because that I wouldn't do anything for a friend, but I'm not sure if he is a friend. You see, I've never met him. I know him from online only. We have talked for a couple of years. I have offered at times to meet him with Kent. He would bring his girlfriend (they have since broken up). The point is, he's never shown much interest in meeting with us to get to know us. This raises a couple of questions or issues. The obvious one is coming to terms with the doubt that one has in this world over who is trying to mess with you and who is a true friend. It's sad that I have had friends in the past who have taken advantage of me and thrown my friendship in my face as though it were a worthless piece of garbage. Unfortunately for me, friendship is the highest form of endearment that one can realize in this world that we live in. I can offer money to this friend of mine that I've never met. He praises that because he needs money so very badly. I've spent most of my life in self loathing and thinking that my friendship is worthless - indeed thinking that I am worthless. It's taken me this long to realize that it's not me. This friend who wants money may indeed be a friend, but he has had time to show it in so many ways. Why now must I step up to the plate and prove that I am a friend with something as cheap as money? Has the world gotten to a place that friendship has a price tag? Is my friendship worth $450? Is that all it's worth? Maybe I should auction it off on EBay. "Selling FRIENDSHIP. Asking price: $450!". For all I know, he would use it for drug money. I don't know what his situation is.

I'm going to bed now. I've had enough for today. There's a few items I thought I'd share with you all. One is the typical thing that happens day in and day out... another boring story about how two gay men are being kept out of a "married only" housing unit. Hell, they should be glad that were have beaten to death, as was the case if my other two stories. I promise, I'll try harder to find some brighter news next time. Good night.

Boca Raton, FL - Lawsuit alleges Boca Raton apartment complex excluded gay men. Denver, CO - Gay Colorado Teen Awarded $1.2 Million. Knoxville, TN - Man Severely Beaten by Attackers Who Thought He was Gay.

I'm spending time learning about CSS (cascading style sheets). The more I learn the more I love them. I now know how much work it's going to be to convert my site to style sheets, but that's how you learn. I bought two books. One is a reference:
Cascading Style Sheets, The Definitive Guide, by Eric A. Meyer, publisher O'Reilly
Cascading Style Sheets, Designing for the Web, by Hokon Wium Lie and Bert Bos. This is an excellent book to just read through. It's more of a step by step guide on the principles and "do's and dont's" of good style. I'm having a lot of fun with this stuff. My goal is to get through the entire book by Wednesday morning - all 380 pages of it! I know.... I'm a slow reader...

For those of you who love William Blake, here's your thought for the day. This is from a poem called Auguries of Innocence:

I'm being lazy today. Yesterday I worked all day long so today I'm doing nothing but surfing the web, and watching movies. I was going through the paper this morning to check out show times. Just when I see a movie that gets "two thumbs up", I can turn right around and read a critique of the movie on our Clie' that is very negative. I was interested in Daredevil, but the review said it was lamer than a cheap Marvel comics magazine. The I was going to see The Life of David Gale, a story of a man on death row who is telling his story to a newspaper reporter. She believes him and has three days to get him off death row and save his life. Isn't that what the movie Bloodwork with Clint Eastwood was all about? Anyway, it also got "two thumbs up", but other reviews were not as positive. Confused and bewildered, I went to Borders to seek refuge.

Internet speed record smashed: Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center used fiber-optic cables to transfer 6.7 gigabytes of data -- the equivalent of two DVD movies -- across 6,800 miles in less than a minute. Ahhh what the internet should be!
Macromedia Warns Of Flash Security Flaw. Macromedia Inc. is warning its users of what it calls a critical security flaw found in the latest version of its Flash animation player. It is advising customers to immediately install a new version just released on its Web site which should fix the security hole. You can get download the new patch here.
Judges: FBI's child-porn search illegal. I think, along with most everyone, that child pornography should not exist what so ever and that those who are caught should be brought to justice. This article gave me a lot to think about though, concerning the line that is drawn on the rights of unwitting people. "Thousands of individuals would be subject to search, their homes invaded and their property seized, in one fell swoop, even though their only activity consisted of entering an e-mail address into a Web site from a computer located in the confines of their own home...".

A couple of weeks ago, there was a hearing held at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, Connecticut. Three bills were discussed at the time. One concerned allowing same-sex couples full marriage rights. This bill would actually call the union a "marriage" and would be recognized as such. The merits of this bill would (it was hoped), be transferable or enforceable in another state should the couple decide to move. If the couple was traveling in another state where one required hospitalization, it was hoped that this bill would be honored in that state as it was a full-fledged marriage in the state of Connecticut, and the partner would be allowed visitation rights as granted by marriage.

The other bill concerned not giving same sex couples a "marriage", but would allow what's called a "civil union". This would in effect give same-sex couples the rights of marriage at the state level without redefining "marriage", per se. This met with less opposition from religious leaders than the first bill that would grant marriage to same-sex couples. There were of course many religious organizations there that didn't want same-sex couples recognized in any way, shape, or form.

The third bill was DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act. It would define "marriage" as being only between one man and one woman in the state of Connecticut. It wouldn't specifically rule out in the future allowing "civil unions", but it would define marriage as the union of two individuals of the opposite sex.

The discussion that took place was an open discussion about all three bills. It allowed different speakers for the community to come before the Judiciary Committee. Many arguments were heard, and in all fairness, the committee did try to look at the argument from a civil and not religious angle, despite what many speakers said. At stake are 588 state benefits that are afforded the institution of marriage.

I was thinking this morning about many of the speakers (mostly religious in nature) saying how, if we as a society recognize same-sex unions as married, we are "eroding" the very thing that defines marriage - that we must keep it pure and protect it. Let's assume for the sake of argument that their concern has nothing to do with homophobia or gay issues. Let's also assume that their motives are pure and that all they want to do is to protect marriage. My issues are these:

Where were they when Tiny Tim married Miss Vicky on the Johnny Carson Show? The whole thing was obviously a publicity stunt.
What about all the shows on TV where a guy will date from a number of girls all at the same time, gradually weeding them out. When he is down to two left, he will pick the one he will marry. Don't you think that degrades marriage? I do, but no one seems to complain about that. These two people have known each other for what, two weeks? Then they get married and that's ok? Strange world.
The current survival rate for a marriage today is less than 50%. Why don't they spend their energies on trying to improve that figure? Isn't marriage worth it?
What about "Joe Millionaire"? It's somewhat like the other shows like Temptation Island.

I'm sure there are many more examples. It seems to me that all of these degrade marriage, all for the sake of entertainment. Maybe it's ok to degrade marriage for the sake of all the advertising dollars? Maybe our tactics are wrong. Maybe we gay people should just offer up money and see if we can get hitched. Hey, worth a try.

In some ways, it's like the issue of the "Gay Olympics". In the early 1980's, a group of gay athletes gathered and had the first Gay Olympics. The International Opympic Committee had a fit. They said they had special rights to the word "opympics" and that the gay athletes could not use it. They did anyway, and were taken to court. The gay athletes lost the case and The Gay Olympics had to be renamed to the Gay Games, which to this day is the name they still use. In the meantime, we have the Special Olympics, the Frog Olympics, the K-9 Olympics, Linguistic Olympics, among many others. In all of these cases, the use of the word olympics was never challenged, except for the Gay Olympics.

What am I doing up on a Saturday morning at 5:30?!?? I don't know. I woke up and had to do that bathroom thing. Came back to bed, and Kent asked if I wanted to go for bagels. "At 5:30 in the morning?", I asked. Then he told me that he had some function at school, which I didn't know about, that he had to be to at 9:00. I had hoped for a nice breakfast at Monet's Table. I suppose bagels will have to do. So, he's in the shower now and I'll take my turn next. Be right back... coffee maker says that coffee is ready!!

Back... The snow melted a bit yesterday, but today it's below freezing again and I hear that we are going to get another snow storm. Too bad I'm a "tropical person". Florida would suit me just fine now, except for the reptiles (that's just WRONG!). I'm going to wait until May to take a few days off though. I'm going to Ogunquit, Maine for a few days. Kent will be going on a business trip and either coming or going, will stop by Idaho where his Dad is getting an award for "lifetime achievement" from the college we all went to. That's when I will be in Maine. Hopefully, it will be warm enough to go on the beach and get some nice photos. When Kent get's back, we may go up again in June. I guess he has a few days off so we could go together.

Work is going pretty well and we are working on a new project. We are putting together a new version of the company website. I think it will be fun and we will learn a lot from it. I'm glad that I put this site together. There were parts of it that were tough to figure out, but sometimes that's the best way to learn. If you figure out a problem from the ground up you never forget it. My turn for the shower... Ta Ta....

Just woke up. Kent will be home somewhere around 11:30. I will wait for breakfast until he gets home and we can go somewhere. It's been a slow weekend. I had thought earlier in the week of getting together with some friends, but it never happened. So, I'm playing solo this weekend. Last night they televised the hearings the Connecticut Judiciary had on arguments supporting DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), an act supporting "Civil Unions", and an act supporting full fledged "gay marriages". I debated awhile ago if I should go to show my support. Now, I'm glad I didn't. It amazes me how an argument can go from wanting to marry the one you love to "if this gay marriage act gets passed, we are on a very slippery slope... who's to say that people won't next want to marry their mother, father, brother, cousin, or even their dog". It discussed me. Honestly, I'm getting soured on the entire idea of marriage anymore. I suppose if anyone tries hard enough and for long enough, they will wear you down. I'd like to say to them, "ok, you win. Do whatever you want. I don't care anymore.".

It's a gray day out and raining a bit, but at least it's warmer and the snow is slowly melting. Kent just called. His plane has been delayed for maintenance. I'm not sure I would feel like getting on a plane that needs maintenance, but that's just me. I suppose I will go ahead to breakfast and we'll have dinner tonight.

I have made some references in my online diary to Sylvia Plath. In my opinion, she is without a doubt one of the greatest American poets who ever lived, if not the greatest. I write this entry, because of a private entry to my guestbook regarding Sylvia Plath. It read: "yeah i just wanted to say that this was supposed to do with sylvia plath well i didn't think it was funny i thought you were making fun of her for killing herself so i wouldn't do that that is really disrepectful". It was a private entry, so I won't reveal the writer, but, it has prompted me to clarify my feelings on Sylvia Plath. I also would like to suggest to the writer of the guestbook entry the need for punctuation. Thoughts don't run together endlessly and randomly. James Joyce made this an art form, using punctuation (or lack of) to convey very powerful images:

The monologue at the conclusion of Ulysses - James Joyce
(In) Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain
yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used
or shall I wear a red yes
and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall
and I thought, well as well, him as another
and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes
and then he asked me, would I yes to say yes, my mountain flower
and first I put my arms around him, yes
and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfumed, yes
and his heart was going like mad and yes I said, yes I will, Yes.

Now, about Sylvia Plath...
One of the most remarkable things about Plath was, as precisely as her anger was directed at men, she could still mourn this silence and note its catastrophic effects. Silence speaks louder than inaction. Silence is worse than apathy. Silence is the real cancer. Silence is the absence of a response. As one of the groups for AIDS activism put it, "SILENCE = DEATH!". She could make so finely focused a connection between men's silence and nations gathering or regathering the worst of their strengths:

Now similar clouds
Are spreading their vacuous sheets.
Do you say nothing?
I am lame in the memory.

The quandary for Plath's poetry is: what does it mean for the woman poet to claim to defy the history of man's making when defiance at its most self-blinding is the problem? Too many men, with too much power, do this to themselves. People focus on the dramatic act of her suicide in 1963. Sadly, that has overshadowed much of the study of her poetry. It's too easy to say "she was crazy". Actually, she was absolutely brilliant. I have read many of her poems coming away in tears from the power of her anger and despair and absolute hopelessness. And, toward the time of her death, a reconciliation that death was an absolute, that there was nothing left worth staying for in this terrible world.

Don't for one second assume that is insanity just because of our society's issues with death. My feeling is, Sylvia, as an artist, was acutely in tune with the reality of the situation. In our lives, we compensate for unfortunate situations. When someone dies close to us, we say things to one another to make it somehow "ok" and that "life must go on". It's all crap. The way I have tried to deal with having friends die of AIDS is only my example. They died, I cried and cried and cried, and went on. The worse was the silence. For the entire eight-year term of President Reagan, he never once uttered the word "AIDS" in public. That was during the 1980's when the disease was killing off much of the gay community. Our government and President didn't give a damn because we were after all a fringe and undesirable group that was being exterminated, or is the term genocide? It was even open season for comics to make jokes about AIDS. One sticks in my mind like a knife slicing through flesh: "AIDS is a miracle - it can turn fruits into vegetables", and the very popular "thank God for AIDS". I have looked at the search results of this site and still have people coming to my site to search for "AIDS jokes". This is the world we live in. I have told myself time and time again, that I will make my own family of friends and surround myself with people I love, as a mote surrounds a castle. Have I been successful? You tell me. I have been treated for depression more than I can count. I won't go into the darker details of my past life in trying to deal with this cruel and hopeless world we live in, driven by fools with no compassion for the world. I take pills to help me deal with reality - lots and lots of pills. It effects my life in negative ways, but I live. Sometimes I shake with tremors uncontrollably, I have "drug fever" a lot, and the worst part is the pixelation of my memory that comes and goes and the inability at times to focus with my eyes. I joke about it with friends when they are feeling down... need some Prozac... need some Zoloft.... need some Vicodin? These are my tools. I see what Sylvia saw, a world absolutely void of redemption. If I were God, all of this would be gone because it would have no merit.

Sylvia and I are alike in many ways. We are both artists. We see reality for what it is. She chose to confront it head on with the power or words. She was brave. She was brilliant. She killed herself. I chose a different path. I chose to try to live and be happy with the help of chemicals. I'm not as brave as Sylvia Plath, and because I deliberately take drugs to suppress the feelings of depression, will I ever be expressing my true self? Are any of these words actually mine, or are they the result of chemicals that have altered my thinking? Today, I'm sure we would want to medicate Sylvia out of some sense of helping her to be "happy". The issue is, it wasn't her who needed help.

I have great respect for people like Sylvia Plath, who were able to confront their demons. Most of the time, they lose. There are many like her. The anguish that their art subjects them to is the very thing we put on a pedestal whenever that anguish allows brilliance to shine through. It makes us weep and for a second, we think we feel what the artist must be feeling. We leave. We go back to our homes, our worlds. We escape it. It is still with the artist - they live it - it is their reality. That's just the ugly truth of it.