Miscellaneous: September 2006 Archives

“Ye though I say unto you, they shall raise up the least among them to the highest post and he shall appear as a monkee. The sheep shall follow and the lies shall flow like water from the sea. They shall believe his deceptions and follow him unto war with the wrong nation. And Cheney will shoot a guy in the face too.”

Lobotomy 9:11

Is anyone else becoming annoyed with all this “research” on why gay men are, well, gay? And have you ever wondered why no one is trying to find out why lesbians are, well, lesbian?

I mean, if I were trying to put importance on it, I would lump it in with all the other unimportant things people think about under the label “Who gives a damn?” Honestly, I really do not care about why I am gay or where it came from. I have more important issues on my mind, such as dealing with the reality of my life now without worrying about something that I have no control over (or should care about); why I am gay. Do straight people go around asking themselves, “Why am I straight?” No, of course not, and they shouldn’t.

So why are so many people obsessed with this? Since it keeps coming up in “scientific research” all the time, let’s break it down a bit.

One of the great mysteries of human sexuality is what causes some men to be gay.

Couldn’t the exact same thing be said about heterosexuals? Why are we so obsessed with this? If I were a gay geneticist, I guess I could delve into why straight men are straight, but what would honestly be the point? Unless, of course, I was looking for a way to “correct” the “mutation” (not normal) for future generations to come. If that isn’t your objective, then why waste your time?

Scientists have rejected earlier notions that homosexuality is a mental illness. The thinking now is that sexual orientation is determined by roughly 40 percent genetic factors and 60 percent environmental factors.

And now researchers at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute are hoping to identify one or more genes that help determine sexual orientation.

Again, who cares? I have a pretty good idea that I was born gay. I remember knowing I was gay when I was 6 years old. Back then, we weren’t as savvy with labels as we are today. I didn’t know what “gay” meant (other than “happy”). I just knew that “gay” was a word used in show tunes a lot. I also knew deep inside that I was different. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to put it into words if I were asked about it at that age. So, in all honesty, I cannot tell you if I was born that way, or if something extraordinary happened to me between the ages of 0 to 6 years old. I can only tell you that nothing in my memory would indicate that my childhood up to that point was anything other than normal.

I lost my father when I was six years old, and that was of course traumatic for me, as it would be for any child that age. But then again, many kids that age or younger go through the same thing, and they turn out heterosexual. My brother, for example, was much more traumatized by my father’s death, being four years older than me, and he is heterosexual, as is my sister.

But some gays are wary. They fear discovering gay genes could lead to efforts to “cure” homosexuality, or to prenatal tests for gay genes.

Researchers say that’s not their intent.

Researchers are in no position to make any claims on how their research will be applied in the future. So their good intentions are worthless. It’s the condition of mankind. We will do anything to justify the end if it works to our advantage, just like today we are talking about different degrees of torture that is “acceptable”. What they are really saying is, “How much torture (we prefer to call it ’coercion’) can we put on someone, and still walk away with warm fuzzy feelings (public opinion will accept) inside?” Once we determine that, then we can deal with making the law do what we want it to do to allow us to do that, by bending the rules of the Geneva Convention a bit. It’s easy, since we no longer care what other people in the world think of the United States.

With this research, I could see laws being put on books to force “known homosexuals” to “register” with their state. I can later see that registry being used to round up these individuals to make them straight. Sound crazy? Well, it’s happened before, and it can happen again. This is why we are wary of this kind of research.

First the radial religious right in this country wanted to “defend marriage” so they passed amendments to stop gays from getting marriage. But that wasn’t enough. They also went on to ban gays from having civil unions or domestic partnerships. But that wasn’t enough. They also went on to say that anything that resembles marriage cannot have any rights or privileges in law given to it. That effects a lot of unmarried straight folks as well, but they are willing to live with that as long as gays don’t reap the benefits.

That being said, how much of a reach do you really think it is to say that this research on human sexuality won’t be used to “help” us poor homosexuals who want to change, but we don’t know we want to change?

Homosexuality tends to run in families. While 2 percent to 4 percent of all men are gay, 8 percent to 12 percent of brothers of gay men are gay. [...]

Possible environmental factors include family upbringing, exposure to certain hormones during pregnancy and having older brothers. (source)

Again, who cares? What difference does this all make? None, as far as I can see. I guess we will see in 20-30 years if these statements will turn out to be laughable or not, or if they will turn into something less laughable - human experiments. Why is the gay community so wary of this? Because, it’s happened before.

If you really want to look at something that’s going to bit us in the ass, and soon, you might want to look at this.

Global warming at 12,000-year high

“If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today,” Hansen said. (source)

This is from a conversation I overheard while in line at lunch on Friday.

....we all used to go to this bar close to campus when I was in college. Anyway, we would each put a credit card into this fishbowl. Then, one of the credit cards would be drawn from the fishbowl. Whoever was lucky enough to be selected would pay for all the drinks for that night. So, all the drinks for everyone in the bar would be tallied for the night, and the card would be charged for that amount. The card would be charged discretely with the name of the campus bookstore. That way, when the parents got the bill, they would just think that you had to buy books. It’s kind of underhanded I guess.

You think?

I was wondering at the time if he was exaggerating when he said that the drinks for everyone in the bar would be tallied, or just for those in his group. He wasn’t clear on that point. He made it sound like it was for all the patrons of the bar for the evening from the point the card was selected.

At any rate, it’s a hell of a way to treat people who are putting you through college. It left me wondering if this was a common behavior.

Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, a reverse portrait of an Iraq allied with Osama bin Laden painted by the Bush White House, a Senate panel has found. [...]

The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward” al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should “imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein” with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and “who had relations with Zarqawi.” [...]

The administration “exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe -- contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time -- that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. (source)

I suppose this is no surprise to most Americans by now. We’ve been hearing more and more that there was no connection between what happened to America on September 11, 2001 and Iraq. I can understand how we could have made some conclusion based on faulty data five years ago. What I find most astounding is that as recently as August 21 of this year, President Bush was still relying on this faulty data as if it’s fact.

It’s hard for me to say anything positive about this. The security of this nation has been seriously compromised because we elected a fool to be our President. Where do we go from here? Well, President Bush has lost all credibility with both parties. Even the Republicans are distancing themselves from him. A Bush endorsement for the Novembers elections is not what these Republicans want. That want nothing from Bush, and both parties are hard pressed to justify the endorsement of this war.

I suppose the lesson to be learned here is the extraordinary power the President of the United States holds, especially with the sweeping powers the Patriot Act affords him, and how that power can be abused. It’s downright scary when you think about it. I’m not sure this nation will ever be able to go back to what we were. Has too much damage been done?

I’m not here to smear the President any longer. Honestly, we are way past that. Every time he opens his mouth, he does that all by himself. We have to try to think of what’s best for the future of our country. We’ve lost so much. We have actually lost much more since the 9/11 attacks, than from the attacks themselves.

I think that’s why I’ve changed a lot of my focus on what I write about. I feel helpless to change anything. I will vote this November, but for what? I don’t know if it will really matter in the long run. I guess I’m just as lost as everyone else. I’m mad as hell at our government because I believe that they deceived us and led us down this path. But now that we are on this path, how do we get off this path? How do we leave Iraq without ending up in a worse place?

I miss the world that I grew up in. A simpler world.

I received this in my mailbox a few days ago from a friend of mine. I guess I should say, an EX-friend at this point. I was extremely offended by this photo. In the email, she went on to make further fun of people of Arabs heritage, or “towel heads”, as she called them. At first I was shocked. Then, I just got pissed off.

What is so wrong with this photo? If you don’t know, you are just like 70% of the rest of the arrogant-as-hell American population who just don’t get it. We are not going to win this “war on terror” and win the “hearts and minds of the Arab world” by making fun of their lives and their beliefs. And who the hell are we to make a judgment against an entire population of people who have a history many times longer than American History?

We love to tell ourselves that we’ve learned lessons in the past about how persecuting people was wrong. We love to tell the children of this country how slavery was wrong. We love to tell the children of this country that what we did to the American Indian population was wrong. It’s all a bunch of crap because as a nation, we are only saying that to feel good about ourselves. Try selling it to someone else, because I’m not buying it.

If people keep circulating this kind of crap around the Internet, you really have no room to bitch when we get hit again with another “9/11”. You helped to make this happen.

To the Arab-American citizens of this country, this is one American who will apologize for this degrading display upon your people. To the Arab nations, I would hope that you don’t judge us completely on this kind of display. We are not all arrogant, self-righteous bigots who hold ourselves higher than other peoples of the world.

As for my friend, I am now refusing any further email from her. She’s on my block list. I have zero tolerance for this kind of crap.

I think my flirtation with martini’s is over. I used to really enjoy them. But, with so many things in life, if you over do a good thing, it becomes ordinary. Don’t get me wrong. I never over did the martini thing in the sense of drinking one or two every night. I would have maybe two a week. I’m not a heavy drinker but when I do have a drink, I want to enjoy it.

My favorite martini is from Acqua Oyster Bar in Vernon, Connecticut. It’s called the Blue Goose Martini. It’s made with Grey Goose Vodka, a splash of vermouth, and served absolutely ice cold, accompanied with four large olives, stuffed with fresh blue cheese. For those of you who are gagging because you hate blue cheese - or just the idea of having that in your olives, it really is a treat. You’ll just have to trust me on that one. It used to be my weekly treat to myself to stop by every Thursday after work to treat myself to a Blue Goose martini, with an appetizer (they have wonderful appetizers), and just relax for a bit. But, I’m over that now.

Now, I’m into doing something good for myself every single day. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It can be something that brings joy to myself, or to my body (get your minds out of the gutter!). Today, for my body, I had a spinach salad with no cheese, and no meat. Just assorted vegetables with a red wine vinaigrette. Yes, it was absolutely delicious. And the best part, zero FAT! The dressing was fat free. My body will thank me!

On my way back to work, I checked out the news on XM, only to hear three words from the old wind bag (Bush) talking about something. Like who cares what he has to say? I can’t stand to even hear the man talk anymore. His voice has the appeal to me of.... vomiting. Radio off!!!

Other than that, I’m looking forward to the long weekend. Cheers!