The Feathered Boa doesn't hurt...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Gaywatch - Peter Vadala & William Phillips
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
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This clip made me cry.

Why, you ask? It's clearly meant to be quite humorous.

Well let me tell you something.

When I was a ten year old boy, being pushed around and called a "Gaywad", I would have done anything to have a huge man like Mick Foley threaten my classmates. This little boy has the media on his side because he stood up for something that doesn't even affect him - I, on the other hand, hid from the bullying and cried and let it tear me down.

Basically, in this clip from the Daily Show, Jon Stewart and Mick Foley, two grown, adult, straight males, not only defend gay rights, but also take a stand against bullying of any sort.

This is definitely cry-worthy.

(Sorry for the horrible formatting around the video - whatever embedding code the video provides is fucked six ways to sunday, so I had to go back to the source code from the original page where I found the video, and poke around until I found the right code.)

Sweet Dreams are made of This

So the Dream Roundup from last night is one of the most interesting ones in a while - I can't cover the whole thing on Twitter or Facebook alone, so it gets it's own blog post.

In the first dream, I'd taken up Customer Service at Target, which was apparently around the corner from my house. As this dream progressed, it seamlessly turned from Target into an Adoption agency. I dunno. But anyways, I was late coming back from one of my breaks because Ali and I went to the local yard sales to buy Christmas cards. I had to write out a handwritten apology to management for coming back so late.

This was not the stranger dream.

I only remember about the second half of dream two. I think I was doing something interplanetary, I'm not sure, but I eventually got an invitation to use a warp hole thingie to go to another planet - but in order to do so, I had to pass through the ring with a mind clear of thought. No problem. I think I've been to this planet in another dream though, because I have a memory of going there and realizing the inhabitants were delicious and eating a bunch of them. It's not my fault that some of their species are made of Sloppy Joes! (for you Canadian/other types of international readers, just Wikipedia it.) So this time when I went down, I promised I'd abide by their vegetarian lifestyle for the duration of my stay... though I did bring a turkey sandwich that I ate, but at least it was an earth animal and not one of them.
So, after a song and dance routine (yes, we had a song and dance routine, and yes, I embarrassingly forgot some of the words) I learned that these delicious aliens were about to be attacked by a different tribe of non-delicious aliens. A non-delicious alien named Zoltar had come to let us know, and wanted to be on our side. I offered to help in this fight, since Zoltar's race of people were about a foot tall, and I could just kick them really far.
Well, it turned out to be even easier, because the delicious aliens used toothpicks with marshmallows on the ends as weapons, and the non-delicious aliens are apparently susceptible to this.
So, after some adorable marshmallow pokes and a barrage of kicking, we determined that it was time for me to go home. I offered for some of the delicious aliens to come with me, but the second we arrived back on earth at Scotland's interplanetary airport, he was eaten up. ...whoops.


I have such strange freakin' dreams, but I wouldn't change it for anything. I'm clearly having more fun while sleeping than most people! :-)

Heteronormative

So I think there's this big misconception that gay guys either hate straight men or want to fuck them.

That's not 100% true, but there is an aspect of truth to it.

You see, gay men and women don't make fun of us for being gay. For the most part, straight women don't either. Straight men, however, are generally the ones making fun of gay people for being gay. Sure, not all of you do it, but it's still members of your population. It'd be like if only some bears eat people, but you're never sure which bears eat people, or which will say they don't eat people to your face but then have a people-roast behind your back when hanging out with other bears.

Maybe I shouldn't have used "Bears," I might have just made that paragraph really confusing.

"But you're taking out specific frustrations on the whole of a population" a straight person may say. We all do it, it's nature. It's conditioning. I had a black teacher once who told me that she legit has a phobia of white men in business suits because one time, she got fired by three of them for being "too ambitious." (Frankly, I think they were just trying to let her down easy - this woman was dumb az.) There was a man that once brought a gun into a gay bar and killed a good chunk of the patrons. Why? His last name was "Gay", and because of how the term is used today, all of his sons changed their last name, which upset this man to the point that he shot up a gay bar. Because, you know, it's our fault. (Personally, I very rarely say I'm "Gay" - I say "I like guys" or "I'm into dudes," something like that, unless people are very confused. Yes, people get confused. "So wait... you're bi?" "...no, like all-the-way gay." "Really?" "...yes? You... didn't know?" "...huh. no, I guess not." Some people can tell from a mile away, some have no idea. Maybe those people just think I'm weird.)

And about gay guys having this obsession with wanting to fuck a straight guy?
Don't get me wrong, I've crushed on a few of my straight friends - but not because they're straight. It's because of who they are. I like their personalities, or I think they're really pretty. It's sort of like the concept that men and women can't be friends because that sexual attraction will always be there - except you can think of it more like a straight guy being friends with an ugly chick. Sure, she may be attracted to him, but he'll never be into her so you just don't worry about it. Now, there are some gay men that feel that all straight guys are just closet cases just dying to come out, but trust me, it's all just wishful thinking. (Bee tee dubs, I am not one of those guys.) However, you can see why we're sometimes hesitant to get close to a straight guy - we don't want to fall for you and know we'll get rejected before we even think of making a move.

So, straight guys - we don't hate you! ...we just find you kind of intimidating. We don't know if you'll hate on us or if we'll fall in love with you. But for the most part, we don't always know what to talk about with you guys. I don't know if I'm supposed to stifle how gay I am, if I can talk about guys I like or ex-boyfriends or celebs I think are attractive. I can talk about this stuff with my girl friends, but I always have this nagging thought of "does this maybe actually gross him out?"
Because you see, in a heteronormative society, talking about guys you think are hot is "flaunting [our] homosexuality in [your] faces." If we kiss in public, it's flaunting our gayness. Holding hands. Buying the Rent special edition DVD. Ordering a vodka cranberry. It's all flaunting our gayness.
Of course, chances are, if you're a straight guy and reading this blog on purpose, then you probably don't feel that way at all, however there is a large faction of the country that does.

Do you wanna know what it's like being in our world though?

I was at a bar the other night with a friend of mine who also likes guys. This was not in any sense of the word, a gay bar. Let me show you a picture I took on my shitty phone!

Who's flaunting what-now? Yes, those are LED stripper poles. Yes, that's five drunk girls and what appears to be an alien with a glow-stick necklace. Mind you, my favorite bar band Go Go Gadjet was playing, which is the main reason I was at this bar in the first place... but this was drunk couple was flaunting their heterosexuality all up in my face. Of course by that I mean they were heavily making out, knocking into everyone around them, especially me, and nearly knocked me in the face with a beer bottle. They were so on top of me it might have been considered a threesome in some cultures. Later, they did this awkward to-the-floor back-bend makeout thing. Luckily, all the straight people around me were just as "WTF???" as I was. Yet here I was, making sure not to dance too much in order not to flaunt my homosexuality. When Go Go Gadjet started playing a few familiar chords, they said "We'd like to apologize to you if you have a penis. I mean, don't get us wrong, we love having penises. But if you have a penis, you will hate us." As they sang Party in the USA, they changed a few words around. Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah, it's a Party in the USA. Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah, this song makes me feel gay. I'm sure they didn't mean to offend anyone... they probably don't know that me, their biggest fan, is gay. ...then again, I sang along to the whole thing... so maybe they do know. Not the point. The point is that heterosexuality is constantly flaunted in our faces, so people can stop pretending like they're innocent.

I can't count the number of times I've heard "I don't care what you do or who you are, as long as you don't do it around me." What the hell kind of an attitude is that? I'll tell you what. That's the face of tolerance, people. Yes, I'm serious - that's "tolerance". Can you imagine telling a straight guy that he can't ever talk about girls or football in front of me, but I don't care what he does at home?

Long story short, there's a reason that sometimes we're a little awkward around you guys. Society has taught us that we're kinda supposed to fear or respect you or something. We're taught that Heterosexuality is superior to Homosexuality, and therefore we should be humbled to even be allowed in your presence. Granted, there's a good chance you don't actually feel that way... but that doesn't mean it's not ingrained in our heads.

Passive-Aggression 101

My new goal is to be a complete dick on facebook.





Oh man, I wish I could take credit for that one, but Tyler beat me to it.
(Britni is a big girl, so this is hysterical.)

Okay, so I'm a total dick. But I'm sorry, if people are going to do stupid shit on facebook, isn't it only fair for people to call them out on it? seriously.

Dating Advice:

Girls: He just might be out of your league. Don't bother.

Guys: Let women figure out why they won't sleep with you, don't do it for them.

Gay Men and Women: You guys are stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Make better decisions.

::edit::

okay so I know I posted this five seconds ago, but I realized it might maybe make me sound like a dick.
...which I kind of am.
But I'm like a really nice dick, wrapped up in a tortilla of awesome.

So let me elaborate.

I've had the misfortune in high school of having some very unfortunate looking girls tell me about their crushes on football players. I mean really unfortunate looking. I was president of the japanese club. Trust me on this one.

They'd ask them out, and be bitterly upset when rejected. And their friends just let them do it. Shouldn't they know better? I mean nothing against the unfortunate girls, y'all can't control it... but don't go for football players! You should probably know better.

I remember one time, my friend Sherry* gave this girl Megatron* my screenname.
(*names changed)

Megatron wanted to let me know that she was into me. And by "into me" I mean "repeatedly tell me I was sexy".

Megatron was one of these unfortunate looking girls. Granted, I'm not the most fortunate looking guy on the planet, but really? Not only that, but Sherry knew that I was gay. Why didn't she let Megatron know? Why do girls constantly egg each other on, allowing them to ask out people that are way out of their leagues. It just sets them up for heartache. Isn't that was the movie He's Just not that into You was about? Stop it. Get real!

Next, I've seen a lot of guys give up on a girl in five seconds flat. And I don't mean out-of-their-league girls, I mean they would actually probably work out pretty well. Of course, I'm not talking about your typical bro who thinks he can get every girl, there's a good chance that my male friends have a lot less gumption than your male friends.

As for my gay friends of which I do not have many of, and yes, I'm including myself, I feel like we have this talent of combining all these problems into one huge lump of stupid. That bit of dating advice was as much for myself as anyone else.
We all assume that everyone is out of our leagues, yet we fall for them anyway. We ask out people that totally suck and ignore guys that could potentially be way into us. Because we're stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid.

Let's make a Verbal Agreement to only kiss Each other

You know, it's a very strange thing getting older.
Sure, I'm only 22... but isn't aging weird?
I mean, we clearly don't all age the same way.
If we did, all 22 year olds would act and feel one way, and all 33 year olds would feel a different way.

But we all know that's not true.

We're all fucking messes.

My friend Dan who used to be my boss Dan has known me since I started college, and one day he told me that I wasn't the same "doe-eyed alex" he met as a freshman.
Do you ever wonder if you've already been the best you'll ever be? If it's all downhill from here?
Maybe freshman me was the best me - doe-eyed, confused, adorable.
Now I have all the answers - yes, all of them. ...are my eyes dead?
Sometimes I feel a little dead. A little fake. A little Narcissistic. A little Histrionic. A few other problems in there.
Other times I feel like I'm the only one that knows how to feel, how to think, how to... be.
I know that's silly... but it happens.

I can only hope I'm doing this right.

Vote No on One

::sigh::

As you guys probably know by now, we've won domestic partnerships in Washington, but lost equal marriage in Maine.

This was my reaction:



Sad, but I mean... am I surprised? No. We don't live in the most tolerant of nations, for those that haven't noticed. I wish I was more angry, but in all reality, the only thing I'm feeling is disappointed. That's really the only reaction any of us can have at this point, isn't it? Every goddamn year it's the same thing, we just get farther and farther away from equality.

Something everyone needs to understand right now though, is that we're not fighting the same fight. We're not.

In their mind, we are a subversive subculture that's weird and we're doing this because we hate our parents. In their mind, outlawing same-sex marriage will make us say "Wow, I guess I should really marry a woman and make millions of milkshakes babies." In their mind, two men together is actually just as strange as a man with a dog. In their minds, hitting a gay man with a bat because he's gay is the same as hitting a rich man with a bat because you want his money.

It's sort of like how someone who doesn't drink and is against drinking assumes that one beer means you're wasted, and if you have more than one beer a week you are an alcoholic. Or how your friends that weigh 115 lbs can't understand why you, at 200 lbs need a bit more food than they do. "It's just twitter."

We're not fighting the same battle. These people that don't get us likely never will - there's a reason they're still so full of intolerance and ignorance. Sometimes there's just nothing we can do about it. There will always be that guy that says "well if you're so pro-gay then you must be a lesbian!" And then you have to halt your intelligent argument to explain how you can be a heterosexual ally.

In reference to the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1968, this isn't the same fight either. It is, however, an extreme parallel. Just like how black people didn't have a chance until white people finally started realizing the error of their ways, Gay people won't go anywhere with this movement without the support of Straight people. They fought to get water fountains in the first place, then they fought to use the same ones as white people. We're fighting for civil unions/domestic partnerships as a first step - we will get marriage, it just may take a little bit more time. They fought to be seen as equals, we're fighting to be seen as equals.

There are a few differences though.

Black people had to fight for the right to marry white people. We don't really wanna marry straight people, I feel like it wouldn't work out well. As far as I'm aware though, during the civil rights movement, black people were still allowed to marry each other. We're not allowed to marry each other right now. Hmm, actually, we're allowed to marry straight people, as long as they're the opposite gender. So maybe that argument gets thrown out.

People can always tell that you're black. People can't always tell that you're gay. We can hide... but why would we? Sure, to them, being gay is the same as being a pedophile, or needing to choke yourself to get off - why would you tell people about that? To us, it's not a "lifestyle" - that implies that on weekends, we dance to Madonna and snort poppers in the hopes of catching aids, but on the weekdays we're mild-mannered accountants. I'm homosexual in the same way that you're heterosexual - I want to fall in love, get married, grow old, maybe have kids somewhere in there. And I want to do it in my hometown of Philadelphia. I want to be 70 years old and crawl into the same bed with the same guy that I've been crawling into bed with for the past 30-40 years, and nag him for not taking out the trash - again!
We are a real group of people, a real minority, with real problems. And we're no different than you.

Also, almost every black child grows up with a black parent. When the other kids make fun of them for being black, they come home to their black mom and/or black dad and can cry, and their black mom and/or black dad understands what they're going through, because they've been through it before.

Every Gay child grows up alone.

I didn't have anyone to understand why I was crying. I didn't have gay moms and/or gay dads to tell me why the other kids were calling me "fairy" and "daisy" and "queer". I didn't have gay moms and/or gay dads to support my decision to take Home Economics instead of Shop. I didn't have gay moms and/or gay dads to support me when I had my first breakup, or my second, or my third. I didn't have gay moms and/or gay dads who understood my gay problems.

I still don't.

My parents don't like gay people. They think it's gross. I think they think I'm asexual. From what I've been told by my friends that know Chris, my younger brother, he knows, and he blames my occasional bitchiness on it (not, of course, on the fact that we've been fighting since he was born.)

This is one of the reasons I don't really "get" families - I've had to build a wall up between myself and my family. It's safer that way. I don't know what would happen if I told them. Would they learn to think differently? Or would I be kicked out of the house? Would I be disowned? I'm too afraid to find out.

These aren't things black children have to grow up worrying about. Their black parents won't disown them for being black. Being Black won't cause them to be the black sheep of the family.

...so to speak.

I'm not saying they aren't similar fights. They are. But there are some differences that tell me we a whole lot to fight for.

But people will always hate us, no matter what we do. And that just disappoints me. I'd rather people hate me because of the bad things I do, rather than the people I love.



I met a protester once who told me that what she was doing was out of love, not hate. How do you tell someone that you don't want their love? How do you tell someone that their idea of love is a wrongful, misguided idea of love? I'll always respect their conviction, but what they don't understand is that we're not capable of change... but the world around us is. What we are doing is not wrong, neither in our own eyes or in the eyes of the law. We must be treated equally, with equal protection rights and equal marriage rights. One day, we'll look back on all this and laugh. In the meantime, the most we can do is shake our heads.

A History Lesson...

I've learned some very interesting things in my time that have shattered certain ideas.

For instance.

Did you know that Rosa Parks was a plant? That she wasn't just some poor, sad, tired black lady, but a civil rights activist that had planned the entire event out?

Did you know that Harvey Milk wasn't just a gay rights activist, but a marijuana activist? He thought they were the same war. Also, he was incredibly polyamorous, sexing just about everyone around him.

Do you know why we allowed slavery to be in practice? At the time, there was no such concept as "the human race" - we didn't think africans were like animals, we thought they were animals. Considering the social culture and knowledge barriers at the time, it almost made sense.

Did you know that Lincoln only abolished Slavery so that the south couldn't send the slaves in as soldiers, because if they did the North would quickly lose?

Did you know that most historians believe that without eastern interference, Native Americans / American Indians were likely to have killed each other off anyway because they, too, thought of the other tribes as animals?

Did you know that in the South, the Civil War is taught as "Northern Aggression"? Or that in Europe and other countries, they teach the American Revolution as if they'd just said "alright, colonies. Whatever. We don't even want you. Have fun!" instead of the ruthless bloodbath that we're taught here in the states.


History is only as it is taught. If everyone in the world believes something happened a certain way, did it really happen that way? In the novel 1984, this concept is explored. "We were at war with Eastasia. We were always at war with Eastasia." Do things only happen as we remember them or as they affect us, or is there really something more to it? If you tell everyone in the world that we've always been at war with Eastasia, and the entire world believes that we've always been at war with Eastasia, then have we always been at war with Eastasia? Is there such thing as an absolute truth? Or is it all easily manipulated in the minds of the beholder? That's something to think about the next time you hear that Rosa Parks was a sad, little old lady who'd had a long day at work, because maybe, just maybe, history was rewritten.

...So, in the end... who's right?