War And Pieces

It will tax a liberal's patience and commitment to peace when bombs show up in the London Theatre District or detonate at Glasgow's airport. We're generally inclined to be understanding of the circumstances and history that underpin such acts - without condoning them, mind you - but this liberal draws the line at targeting the theatre.

We eschew pre-emptive anything. Pre-emptive attacks are the same as regular attacks. Pre-emptive war is the same as regular war. It's a silly modifier along the lines of "wet" water. But there comes a time when we are willing to take the gloves off and show our teeth. Without invading irrelevant countries and setting up occupying forces for years at a time, here is our inclination when events such as this weekend's occur:

If, in the name of Islam, you blow up a bus, we're going to level a number of mosques - equivalent in number to the passenger capacity of the bus. We're not going to make sure they're empty, we're just going to level them. Not put a hole in them and throw a little rock around... Level them. If, in the name of Islam, you blow up a ship, we're going to level a number of mosques - equivalent in number to the passenger capacity of the ship. Again, we don't care if they're occupied. We're just going to remove them. If, in the name of Islam, you kidnap folks, we're going to level a number of mosques - equivalent in number to the family members of those you kidnap. Get the idea?

We freely admit that we have borrowed liberally from the Israeli Theory Of Dealing With Motherfuckers: You Kill One, We Kill Ten. Your Turn. We aren't anti-Muslim. We suggest that when and if Buddhists lose their zen bent and start blowing shit up in the name of Buddhism, we level temples according to the above formula. We highly recommend that we apply the same principle to dealing with radical Christianity. (We considered whether this particular religion shouldn't be an exception to our No Pre-Emptive Strike rule. Reluctantly, we decided to stick to our principles. For now.) When and if Christians start killing people and blowing things up in the name of Jesus, we're gonna level churches. On Sunday. At 10 a.m.

If, within 7 days, the offending religious extremists don't cease and desist (including apologizing profusely), we're going to dust your crops with Malathion and the most virulent strain of e-coli our scientists can muster. We're going to pour generic dish washing detergent in your drinking water. And we're going to start the longest line of bulldozers you've ever seen on the southern border of the country of our choice that is reasonably considered to be supportive of the terrorist acts. If, on day 8, the crop dusting, water tainting, and roar of bulldozer engines don't inspire a cessation of violence and a profuse apology, we're going to drive the bulldozers north 100 miles. Every day, they will drive 100 miles - knocking down anything in their way: hospitals, schools, mosques, homes, banks, restaurants, daycare centers, people.... By the time we reach the northern border, we will have effectively cleared one country of all infrastructure and, most likely, any inclination to fuck with us.

We won't be sticking around to rebuild anything. Whether you ever write a constitution or get running water is not our concern. Your government is your business. If you live in anarchy, good on you. If you can't get electricity, that's a shame. Too much oil with no way to sell it? Damn. Give us a call when you get back on your feet. We'll do dinner.

Should that method not be effective, we'll throw a dart at a map of terrorist-sympathizing nations and simply start the sequence anew. This should not be construed in any way as support for the current Bush folly in Iraq or the saber rattling toward Iran. We're just saying... if you're going to respond, respond in kind. Much like you can't reason with Ann Coulter, you can't play fair with these religious bombers.

This is why we need openly gay leaders in the military. We will take a certain amount of shit with a smile and a fair amount of dignity. Once you cross the line, however, we are not only going to respond in kind, we're going to disembowel you as a warning to the others you represent. What we give up through patience, we more than make up with vengeance and unrestrained fury. We learned that from our drag queen mothers at the Stonewall Riots.

Enough, already. Don't make us go all Tallulah Bankhead on your asses.

It Took A While, But...

They warned us this would happen. Not on the first day, maybe not the first year or even the first term, but they told us so. We were put on notice that the Supreme Court would tilt just enough to the right to let women, minorities, and the poor slide out of justice's scales and into the gutter.

Maybe next time we'll listen.

Ruling in favor of a group of students who were denied nothing (nothing!), the Supremes eviscerated the legal legacy of diversity in our public schools. Louisville had a policy that classified students as white or non-white for the purposes of allocating available slots in particular high schools. Their goal was to have no school with less than 15% minority enrollment, providing a realistic racial balance within each school regardless of the neighborhood where it was built. Not in this country!!

"Joshua", the boy at the center of the Seattle schools case, didn't so much as ask for a spot in a school and get denied. "Joshua" got everything he wanted. He went to the school of his choice, took the courses of his choice, and got dissed by the cheerleaders of his choice, we imagine. The Supremes seized on this miscarriage of justice to announce (through Bush appointee and Chief Justice John Roberts):

"In design and operation, the plans are directed only to racial balance, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate."

Remember... we did this. No Bush? No Roberts, no Alito (who simply grinned and nodded throughout the decision). Heaven forbid racial balance should ever be achieved. In a predictable, yet sadly ironic, footnote, the lone minority on the court, Clarence "Uncle" Thomas, shuffled and smiled broadly throughout the reading of the opinion. In the most perverse note of all, the opinion compares itself favorably to the landmark school desegregation ruling: Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, noting that it is following in the footsteps of Brown by condemning race-based student classification.

Only the most willfully ignorant and perverse onlooker could compare the exclusion of black students from most schools in Topeka to the Louisville goal of ensuring access to all schools for children of all races. This decision shows the court's eagerness to gut the social advances of the last 50 years and has nothing to do with upholding the goal of a "race-blind" society. Women, Gays, workers of all stripes, the criminally accused, the mentally ill, and any other vulnerable, historically put-upon person has reason to sit up and take frightful notice of the opinion.

Little will change in Seattle or Louisville, in truth. Only a handful of students ever fell into the equation that required identification of their race to resolve a placement question. Rather, this is a shot across the bow, courtesy of the two men who swore before Congress to uphold the Supreme Court's precedents, to anyone who has taken two steps forward since 1964. If the announcement of the Court's decision didn't change your day, you weren't paying attention.

Pay attention, already. You're next.

Six Cards, Two Shirts, Lunch and This....From CNN

What a birthday! Just when we thought we had nothing to say about anything, CNN sent us the most beautifully gift-wrapped package, courtesy of our friends at the Opinion Research Organization. A poll released today shows that for the first time ever, a majority of Americans believe that gay and lesbian people couldn't switch teams, even if they wanted to.

You'll forgive us if we remain seated while we applaud your collective revelation.

(Photo: The Not-Quite-Dead Fritz Capone and Ms. Charity Case)

We believe they asked the wrong question. We want to know if our fellow citizens believe that heterosexuals could change their orientation if they were so inclined. But alas, nobody asks those kinds of questions. Nobody asks because the underlying message of this and similar polls is that there is something wrong that could stand changing.... if one were so inclined. We resent the inference. And we hope your daughter brings home the butchest dyke on campus.

Fully 56% of those surveyed believe we are what we are. Jennifer Holliday might be changin', but we are not. We lift a well-manicured middle finger to the other 44% who, in 2007, do not have ignorance as an excuse (unless they live in Alabama, then we cut them slack). We assume 30% are the same people who think the country is heading in the right direction, so we discount them as Terminally Hopeless.

It's the remaining 14% that concerns us. We issue a challenge to that 14%: Just try it. We hereby volunteer to be the test case for the 14% of America that thinks we can be changed. We're not getting laid anyway. What the hell? If it puts an end to this nonsense, we'll take one (as it were) for the team. We're warning you, though: we get a little panicky in the straight porn section of the video store.

Every single person in the poll had an opinion on the origins of homosexuality. Presumably, none of them were asked about the root of their heterosexuality. We contend that's a far more interesting question - especially given the number of practitioners. Most likely, people who've never even met a Certified Deviant have a definite opinion as to why we like boys. In contrast, we don't have a conclusive thesis on why we like boys. We just like boys. We also like strawberry shortcake. It didn't occur to us to ask why. Mainly, since liking boys and strawberry shortcake has never been a problem for us, we don't see the need to investigate why we like either.

Again, we resent the inference underlying this question: What do you think caused this odd thing to happen? We would like the good people at Opinion Research to call us next time. We have a few thoughts we'd like to share.

On the bright side, fully 51% of those polled favored either marriage or something like it for gay and lesbian people and 57% favored our right to adopt children. We want to meet the 6 percent who said "Yes!" to adopting children and "NO!" to getting married. We don't think they should have telephones, let alone be included in any more polls. I think they're trying to find takers for the kids they don't want, frankly. And we're not biting.

79% believed openly gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the military (sure... in time of war... nice of you... assholes). We're looking forward to the next peace-time poll to compare numbers. We have a theory on this one. (See parentheses.)

In sum, we don't think people should go around asking whether or not we a) could be "cured" b) should be "cured" c) deserve children d) deserve spouses e) deserve to join the military or f) were "born that way" or "made that way". We only question the origin and staying power of things we assume someone would want to change. So here's a pin for your pollster's balloon.

On this, the 38th Anniversary of Stonewall (look it up), we raise a glass to Judy, Liza and Barbra and announce in full voice:

I am what I am! I am my own special creation.
So come take a look.
Give me the hook or the ovation.
It's my world that I want to have a little pride in.
My world and it's not a place I have to hide in!
Life's not worth a damn till you can say,
"Hey world - I am what I am!"

I am what I am! I don't want praise. I don't want pity.
I bang my own drum.
Some think it's noise, I think it's pretty!
And so what if I love each feather and each spangle?
Why not try and see things from a different angle?
Your life is a sham till you can say,
"Hey world - I am what I am!"

I am what I am! And what I am needs no excuses!
I deal my own deck!
Sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces.
It's my life and there's no return and no deposit.
One life, so it's time to open up your closet!
Life's not worth a damn till you can say,
"Hey world - I am what I am!"

-Jerry Herman, "La Cage Aux Folles"

Dear Mrs. Edwards...

Dear Elizabeth Edwards,

We just adore you. We stood in the rain for over an hour a few years back to see you and your family. We have credentials when it comes to loving the Edwards family. Because we are so fond of you, we'd like to impose on our one-sided friendship to make a suggestion. Or two.

Before we suggest, we want you to know that we voted for John. Both times. And not just because he's good looking.

OK...mostly because he's good looking. But also because we got that Kennedy vibe. And "Two Americas" resonated with us. And also because as he was leaving the venue in Lawrence, KS, he reached past his phalanx of Chippendales/Secret Service Agents and touched our hand. Right after he had put the same hand to his sweaty brow. And put his sweat on our hand. We didn't speak right for a week after that. So we get John Love. We really do. We really, really do. And how. Nobody that good looking should get brains, too. It's practically unfair.

We read this morning that you picked up the phone to attempt a reasonable dialogue with a woman whose name we have vowed never to type again. Her initials, though, are Ann Coulter. You asked her to stop calling your husband a fag (a dream we gave up on years ago), to stop saying she wished your husband would die in a terrorist attack, and to generally use the brain God allegedly gave her to raise the political conversation in our country, not debase it. Honey... You simply can't talk to these people that way.

You can talk to Greenpeace or PETA or the ACLU like that. But you can't talk to those other people like you would normal human beings. You have to talk to them like you would a black bear ready to drag your kids off into the dark. You have to scream and curse and wave your arms. They won't understand you, but sometimes they do wander away. And that's the goal. Just make them go away. With bears, as a last resort, you should shoot them with some sort of legal firearm purchased only for the purpoes of hunting. We don't dispute that this method also works on the people in question. We don't condone it, mind you. We're just saying. Your understandable expectation that you could reason with this woman as a human being misfired on its premise: she's not a human being.

Given every opportunity to claim satire, "just kidding", "gotta make a buck, I'm not gonna marry well" or anything approaching rationality, she declined. They're all like that. They really are. I know it's hard for our kind to imagine that there are entire packs of people like that, but there are. This is why we have suburbs. It keeps them where we can find them. We put lots of Wal-Marts and Applebee's around them because they're easily distracted. It keeps them out of our own neighborhoods, largely.

They've never liked anybody who wasn't vile. They've never said anything helpful. They have no goals that would improve life for anyone but themselves. Go see "Evan Almighty". (God knows we can't and they have to make their money back somehow.) Imagine that this is the kind of person that prompted God to flood the joint in the first place. Now realize they're all over the place. Thirty percent of America thinks we're heading in the right direction - and they all listen to Ann Coulter. Can you imagine? I know. It fairly boggles the mind.

We sincerely hope your health is excellent and that John inspires us to greatness once again. Thank you for lending him to the process. But please, in the name of all that is holy, stop talking to Ann Coulter. Every time we give her a reason to keep speaking, the Talibanis points to the T.V. and say,

"And they wonder why we have Burqas."

Love,

The After Therapy Gang

Welcome To The Party, Please Remove Your Feet

Sen. Richard Lugar (R - Indiana) has decided that our ongoing military disaster in Iraq is no longer a good idea. He was joined by Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Word is that more from the Party of Lincoln will voice a similar sentiment after their July 4 vacation.

Nothing screams "Independence" Day like waiting for 90 other people to stand up before you can locate your balls. Way to go, boys. Remind us not to call you for anything requiring leadership, sound judgement, or an independent voice. Spineless jugheads, the lot of them. We hope they get gangrene of the nostrils.

In related developments, Lugar and Voinovich called on the South to abandon slavery, Henry the VIII to stop being mean to wives, and the Aztecs to halt human sacrifices.

We now return you to your regular programming: Dick Cheney And The Hijacking Of Two Branches Of Government. Cheney set a record this past week by declaring himself the recipient of Executive Privilege (Executive Branch of Government), which exempts him from disclosing who's been greasing the wheels of government, and by declaring himself a member of the Legislative Branch of Government, exempting him from disclosing anything at all under the rules that apply to the Executive Branch. Handy.

In related developments, Michael Jackson declared himself both Black and White, Mary Cheney proclaimed herself married and single, and Mitt Romney declared himself Mormon and Not-THAT-Mormon.

Now two young girls have been maimed or kiilled in amusement park incidents. This is not our idea of amusement. But this is... Perhaps this is a message from God that amusement parks should be left to adults and not screaming adolescents. Sort of a refuge from teenagers and people who think strollers belong outside their yard. We're tired of being run down in malls, on sidewalks, and - yes - in amusement parks by people who think their stroller-bound child will charm us all by its mere presence. It doesn't. It's annoying as hell. It is a tribute to my kind that we don't push you both into traffic. And that's not just idle chatter. We have discussed it. We are a people on the edge.

Nancy Grace has announced that she was secretly married and impregnated sometime in the last 90 days. While we have never had anything nice to say about the former Ms. Grace, we would like to extend our best wishes to her husband and say that we understand completely the urge to keep this sort of thing quiet. Grace will continue to draw from her deep well of bitterness for her television persona despite her triple blessing: not just a husband and a pregnancy, but twins. Grace promised to defy joy and continue making a pretty penny from her unhappiness.

Inspired by this freedom to be who one wants to be, we are declaring ourselves rich, good looking and famous despite all evidence to the contrary. We expect Senators Lugar and Voinovich will acknowledge our new status somewhere around the year 2073.

Better late than never? Only if you think spraying water on an extinguished fire counts as helpful. Sometimes you don't get credit for just showing up.

One More Time For Old Time's Sake

We hoist a cake and a beverage to the number 42 this weekend. We really thought for a moment that you might be the slot where the roulette ball stopped. Barring any unfortunate encounters with black bears or city buses in the next few days, looks like we were wrong. All the chips go to the house. And we couldn't be more tickled.

We'll flip half the digits in the next few days and put a "3" where the "2" has served us so well. The party will go into the night...and into the fall...and into the New Year, if things go as planned. The travel bug has bitten - hard. We can just barely pass a mass market paperback book without smelling the ocean. This phenomenon has occurred before. This year, it happens to coincide with a birthday, which takes it up to an all-new level. Your dear blogger parts with money about as easily as a quadriplegic does the Macarena. If anyone is sitting near Katie, you might advise her to bar the door. The checkbook is out and we're hitting the road.

We caught a vision of blogging from Puerto Vallarta yesterday. Wi-fi being what it is, we figured it would be a nice change of pace.

BAH! We want to put our toes in water that didn't come from a tap! We want to be winked at by people from other countries! We want to drink Pina Coladas from sun-up to well past sun-down and back again and eat off of Esther's Taco Cart at 4 a.m. just because it's there. We are resort people. Resorts we shall have. Puerto Vallarta is just one. We also have Greece firmly in our sights.

An apartment overlooking the sea, a coolish breeze requiring an authentically next-door knitted wool cardigan over the linen ensemble, a sketch pad and hunk of charcoal just for show, a James Patterson mystery half-opened on the lap, and one of those completely un-self-conscious, open-mouthed, head thrown back naps in front of God 'n everybody. Oh heaven! Take me now. Go haul yourselves all over the Acropolis and back if you must. Just leave me right here by the view and bring back something I recognize for dinner. That's the after-Holidays plan.

For the rest of you Americans who do not know the name Eureka Springs by heart, this will be a revelation that could destroy the entire culture of the place. But there is a little gay mountain mecca in Arkansas that will make you thank your founding fathers you didn't have to hire a sherpa to get there. We went a couple years ago to enjoy the under-priced luxury of an in-room jacuzzi, porch-settin' as a viable recreational option, and shopping on real cobblestone streets that would make Brussels herself jealous. That we made the trip in September, come leaf-changing time, was pure kismet. God herself never envisioned a scene so beautiful.

The B&B was run by two straight women who were completely lesbian in appearance, demeanor, style, and living quarters. This is the kind of eclecticism that keeps Eureka Springs, AR on its toes. We approve. The porch and upper balconies go all the way - no alllll the way around the house to where they meet the cliff against which the house is built to keep it just barely off the street. Access to the room is behind a door that was disguised with a mounted water fountain to throw off the casual lurker - a nice Batman Touch.

Breakfast is served daily every evening in the room. A basket appears from nowhere with scones and croissants, jellies and butter so cold that it's just spreadable come morning. Impeccable timing. There's a fridge inside that dresser where the TV hides. They don't keep track of what you eat or drink. If you need any more, just holler. The house is at the top of the winding street that is home to the hysterically diverse mom and pop shops that crowd against one another in good neighbor charm. Across the street is The Post Office, which means you see everybody at least once. It seems folks don't much like having the mail brought to them in Eureka Springs. It's nicer to get out and meet somebody when you need to collect your own, I suppose.

A few doors down from The Post Office is the Tobacco Shop. Anywhere else, it would be a Head Shop. In Eureka Springs, it's a Tobacco Shop. No winks. No nods. It just is. But you can get a hookah, a bong, rolling papers and the most amazing vanilla-flavored cigarettes you ever died smoking. They have them in cinnamon and chocolate and a variety of other death-defying flavors, too. We plan to try them all this time. Tempis Fugit and all that.

Don't tell any questionable characters you know, but the joint we laud is The Elmwood House. You can see a bit of it online at http://www.eurekaelmwoodhouse.com/. Don't forget to mention "After Therapy". You won't get a discount. We just appreciate the publicity.

We're in high Carpe Diem as we finish this lap. We invite you to hang on, tag along and follow closely. We sit down a lot nowadays - just to look around and make sure we haven't missed anything. But we're still going places. This year...literally. Thanks for a fine year.

And a note to Whoever Makes These Things Happen: We'll take another one about this time next year, too.

The Mid-Year Pot/Kettle Review

We're always amused and occasionally enraged when we find people who inhabit glass homes lobbing rocks at people who may or may not deserve a head wound. So many instances occurred today that we decided to compile a half-way point review of 2007 for some of the finer examples.

In no particular order:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck on Being A Good Friend - "Truthfully, I think a friend is someone who you have positive communications with, so I don't know if I would define us as friends right now." We offer as an example of positive, friendly communication Hasselbeck's tacit agreement with the assertion that Rosie O'Donnell is a traitorous whore for Al Qaeda. If that ain't friendship, we need a Dionne Warwick intervention. Can someone get ahold of Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder and Elton John, too?

Fatah on Hamas Being Bad For Palestinians - "There is no dialogue with those murderous terrorists." - Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President. Far be it from us to remember that Abbas leads the party of the late Yassir Arafat, that towering figure of peaceful resistance and anti-terrorism. We almost forgot that Abbas, known by his Palestinian Mob nickname "Abu Mazen", took the reigns of the terrorist P.L.O. upon Arafat's death. We submit that the only true gripe Abbas has is that he didn't throw the first punch and that there weren't several hundred Israeli tour buses collaterally damaged in the process. Abbas is also nominated for the Takes One To Know One Lifetime Achievement Award.

George W. Bush on Stem Cell Research - "America is also a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred." We can't help but point out that not all human life is sacred to this administration. At the same time, we don't want to be impolite by pointing out the sacred Iraqi elephant in the living room. Or the suffering sacred lives that won't be helped by stem cells. Or the sacred human lives we've left in trailers across the Gulf Coast. Or.... We'll let others put the puzzle pieces together. Bush's mother appeared bug-eyed at her son's decision to veto legislation allowing expanded stem cell research. Upon learning that Graves Disease, which afflicts the 82 year-old, is among those diseases with cure potential from stem cells, Barbara Bush called her boy with a brief message: "Thanks, asshole."

Donald Trump on Rosie O'Donnell - "The ratings for her show were terrible. They basically threw her off the air. ... " We enjoyed seeing Donald's ex, Marla Maples, on a practically unwatchable program earlier in the week. Mostly, we enjoyed it knowing that The Apprentice - Trump's only remaining foray into TV (his Martha Stewart version of the show tanked in less than a season) was already in the dumpster pantheon of shows that didn't last as long as anything Rosie ever touched. We clearly recall running gags on the Ro Show what lasted more seasons than The Apprentice. You'd think Trump would realize that his greatest TV hit was being a punching bag for America's Favorite Lesbian on The View.

Ann Coulter on Civil Discourse - "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot'..." Using the ugly, dyke-y, cunty, emaciated, stringy-haired name calling approach would probably give Ann multiple orgasms. So we won't do that. But you get our drift. We have a firm policy against aiding and abetting Republican orgasms. If we ever learn that Bill Maher is schtupping her - even with marijuana as an excuse - we're cancelling our HBO.

So there you have it... The first five finalists for the 2007 Pot/Kettle Award are in - and we didn't have to blow Simon Cowell (not that there's anything wrong with that), Ryan Seacrest (not that there's anything wrong with that), or David Hasselhoff (there are TOO many things wrong with that) to get here. Here's a toast and crossed fingers for an equally enjoyable second-half of the year.

Getting Googled In Your Jammies

Back up several months, if you will, and recall the humble - no, humiliating - roots of one dear rural blogger. Old friend becomes new flame becomes manipulating, lying, son-of-a-bitch. Shell of a human being washes into a therapist's office against his best judgement. Indignant exit to follow.

Caught up? OK. There was never any plan for a blog. There wasn't even a plan for a journal. We didn't own a note pad, for that matter. Had we wanted to document any aspect of the experience, we would have been stealing our own toilet paper for the title page. Or, we could have broken the No Wal-Mart pledge we'd just signed, driven 25 miles each way, and bought paper. Then it occurred... This is (was) 2006. There's a computer in the house.

At the computer, the goal was to snap ourselves out of the unprecedented funk by making fun of the entire therapy experience. We had laid down a number of rules for the journey: 1) We are not going to lie down on that couch. Too cliche. Besides, we get reflux. 2) We are not going to blame our mother for how we interacted with a 6'5" hairy oaf. 3) We are not going to pay a therapist for the privilege of an erotic relationship. (See? We can clean it up when required. You'll see why briefly.)

So we started repeating and revising, in 90% truth style, the experience and found a helpful way to participate in the Clinic while clinging to our Cynic. It worked. Funk dumped. Sense of humor restored. New-found lease on life, if not love, established. Thank you for your time and, for the record, "No, we are not interested in expanding this paid relationship into the erotic arena. Flattery duly noted."

What helped it work was a healthy dose of exhibitionism. By pure accident, we stumbled across the free blogging site, perused a number of the posts, and generally decided that our ego would allow us to document this experience - anonymously - in the public eye. The self-imposed commitment to keep it running was helpful in the extreme. If nothing else, it kept us from sinking inward toward that black hole of self-absorption - the bad kind, not the kind we peddle here on an almost daily basis. Never, never, never did we have any ambitions toward becoming the next Erica Jong, David Sedaris, William Burroughs or Schmoe Jablonsky, the weekly newspaper letter writer.

Then came the strokes, feedback, snarky responses, and the occasional cat-call. Instant addiction. And not just a couple minor delusions of grandeur. We were our very own Huffington Post - if to no one else but the dog and the guy in New Jersey who never fails to read a post. We've tottered along that way for months now. Following the therapy, we changed our name a tad, changed the focus a lot, and started talking more about the world and less about ourselves. Some called that evolution. Others just wanted to know where all the dirt about our personal life went. (Note: It went back where it came from with a cross-eyed man. We never said it didn't still rankle us.)

We got a little giddy about the world-wide stumbles that just having a blog will get you. Spain, Venezuela, Sweden, England, France, Vietnam- even places they don't speak English!! Like Arkansas! Somebody searches for "Judy" and whether it was Garland or Blume, if you mentioned either, you're going on the list of clicks they can make. One time we typed "Sirhan Sirhan" into a post and it has generated more visits than anything else in over a year of typing. Go figure. Someone googled "women's prolapsed (rectums)" and found us. We cannot begin to explain that phenomenon. Such is the Internet. You don't get too giddy about who's reading because half the time they didn't mean to find you anyway. That was until last night.

The House of Representatives found me. The real one. Ours. Three times in twenty-four hours. I'm sure they're not conducting a job search. I happened to mention my congresswoman in passing. Someone on The Hill googled said lady, and by whatever happenstance ended up between the covers of (if not with) YOURS FRIGGIN' TRULY! Now, this may be the standard protocol for Congress, but when you live in Mayberry and anybody in the hallowed halls of Congress has reason to know you're alive... Words fail.

Our drunk friend** in New York City has pimped some of the writing here to New York Magazine, made us flirt with CNN staffers, and generally shoved us off on a number of his dates via telephone - most of whom had some editorial title for some major magazine you've either read or from which you've cut pictures. But nothing.... nothing... prepares you for the day when you're sitting in your underwear eating Frosted Flakes and you see "Unites States House Of Representatives" among the footprints to and from your potty-mouthed rambling about everything and nothing. (**Ed. Note: By "Our Drunk Friend" we mean "Our Only Friend" in New York City. Due to heightened sensitivities on the Island of Manhattan, we take this rare step to clarify that we have never seen this unnamed person drunk. In fact, we have never seen this person. To our knowledge, he may not exist. We also cannot confirm that he has ever had a drink of anything, including water. Neither can we confirm that he is a he. We cannot confirm that he is in New York City for that matter. We take complete license to characterize him as we see fit and leave his friends to have a sense of humor about the matter or to spend more time at the gym. If they took as many well-lubricated phone calls in the middle of the night as we had, they would enjoy taking the occasional jab at one of their favorite people, as well. No aspersions are cast on the quality of this individual - which we assert to be well above average. Aspersions are heaped on those who would take such an off-hand, mostly loving characterization and turn it into a Whodunnit. Now...back to our story.)

We want to just take this chance to give a big shout out to the folks in D.C. for the hard work they do, for making a nobody's day, and.... since we have your attention, at least fleetingly... You're doing the Lord's work. Thank you for helping us get rid of the last guy. And thank you for being smart enough not to do the job like we would - with flaming torches, nooses and midnight raids. You seem to be hitting all the right notes with a broad swath of the constituency - even though we'd prefer a Jihadi Democrat Congress that pulls wigs off little old Republican ladies. And men.

We're smart enough to know that getting everything you want usually isn't good for you.

And please.... Google more often. Next time, call ahead and we'll fix punch.

Finally, Something That's Really Mom's Fault

Monica Emmerson's Travel Day To-Do List

Sippy cup, sippy cup... Hold toddler, look harried, contact media, get in front of the story before somebody with a Blackberry emails CNN with a tale that you threw a hissy in the airport that required half the U.S. domestic armed forces to address.

Make sure you're not the bad gal from the get-go. Everybody's going to initially buy the Security People Gone Mad angle. Forty-eight hours of publicity, let it slip that you were a Secret Service employee to bolster your credibility, wrangle an ill-deserved apology and free flights for life for you and the kid.

Contact one of those sippy cup manufacturers and hint that when this all blows over you'd be willing to do one of those ironic wink-and-a-nod commercials to push their product. Jot down a few notes for how I explain to the tot that I used him as a prop in what became an international sham job. We all hate our parents by the age of 16 anyway. What the hell? He'll have a better excuse than most.

"After Therapy" Goes.....Print

The newspaper picked up a few paragraphs of After Therapy thought and printed them in the OpEd pages today. Needless to say, "tickled" doesn't begin to describe our reaction.

They printed a slightly cleaned-up version of our thoughts on a local issue that got some national play. Kelsey Smith, a murdered Midwest teen, has been the focus of many letters to the editor since her story reached its apex. Most of them were decrying the obvious. A few were seizing the chance to score points for their caucus of choice.

On the same day, one letter was from a pro-death penalty minister seeking to spread the love of Jesus at the end of a noose for the murderer. Another was from a man who cut-and-pasted the When Someone Gets Shot paragraph from the N.R.A. newsletter that excuses the sin while lamenting the sinner.

And I thought we just had a case of crazy kid kills pretty girl.

We fired off this email to the editor:

Some days you’re reminded that common courtesy is neither, to paraphrase someone.

I pray for Kelsey Smith’s family in the face of unimaginable pain. That’s not what Patrick McWilliams (6/12, “Using a gun for defense”) or the Rev. David McKinley (6/12, “Kelsey Smith”) did. No, these letter writers approached the loss of a mother and daddy’s little girl with agendas rolled up in one hand and placards in the other: one to push his pro-death penalty view, the other to shill for the National Rifle Association. This kind of parasitic opportunism is stomach-turning.

If their parents are around, they have reason to disclaim responsibility for having raised someone to use a child’s death to praise their political pets. A pox on both their houses.

If no one else has told you, the rule is, “Shut up and mourn.” This is not your side-show.

The appearance above is slightly edited by the Powers That Be. I called them "boobs", not letter writers. I would never call someone a letter writer if I had the chance to call them a boob. But I guess that's the daily print business for you. The paper's Web site gives ample opportunity for the more weak-livered among us to fire back anonymously. This is the part we liked best.

We got one only slightly veiled invitation to join a racist rant that seems rooted in the belief that missing white girls make better TV than black ones do. And that their families' tireless efforts earn their plight the coverage it gets. Someone actually gave us an "Amen." Same person. One racist "Amen" for the After Therapy train of thought. We might need to retrace our steps.

So... hyped by the sheer exhilaration of having at least one thought on thousands of front lawns and at least one crazy person closely scrutinizing (and agreeing, frightfully enough) we decided to return the favor and post a comment of our own - as a karmic Thank You for adding ink to our inclinations. I picked out a letter from a Vietnam Vet still crying in his oatmeal over the ass-kicking handed to my former congressman, the Olympic runner Jim Ryun (R- KS), by Democrat Nancy Boyda in the 2006 cycle. Of late, the recriminations have focused on Ryun's absence from Vietnam for a "disability" (a 50% hearing loss at age 4 from high fever) - fine fodder for poking fun, given his rise to fame was based on his physical fitness.

So we jotted:

"Our thanks go to (the vet) for finally offering the one sensible explanation for Ryun's congressional service: He simply didn't hear what was going on.

To be so consistently wrong on such a wide variety of issues that you actually glide to the right of your rural Kansas constituents is a colossal achievement. To realize that it was accidental and a result of hearing loss is just... well... sad.

Interestingly, we know a number of hearing-impaired individuals who seem to be right on the issues most of the time. Perhaps attributing Ryun's poor judgement to his poor hearing is unfair to his ears. More often than not, the problem is between the ears, not in them.

Our modest education taught us that when an issue arises about which you have no reason to speak with clarity, reason or sound judgement, one ought to keep one's hand in the pocket when the vote is taken. Mr. Ryun, despite his lamentable hearing loss, was all too giddy to rush to the floor to cast his misguided votes to our collective detriment. His loss in '06 was among the most jaw-droppingly improbable of them all.

His hearing may be the lone, true explanation for how he slithered out of one war-time sacrifice. It does nothing but further our condemnation of him for pushing others down the same road he's never even sniffed. His defeat was too long in coming.

You can't say he didn't earn it. You can't say it wasn't a good idea. And you can't say we haven't already done better for ourselves."

Well... you'd think I'd called someone's grandmother a whore. I was poking sticks at a long-gone Representative from the part of Kansas most people don't know exists. Here's a sampling of the reaction:

"The party of tolerance marches on!!!"
"...irrational moonbats like yourself."
"...miserable partisan diatribe..."

Us! Moi! Your local funny/cranky/quirky/dirty talker! If there was a word to describe the thrill of being called nasty names by people you don't know, I would like it put on a t-shirt, a bumper sticker, and a line of condoms. This must be what love feels like!!

We may never again see ourselves in "real" print, but this time was a hell of a lot of fun! Our boobs may have become letter writers, we may have inadvertently given off a receptive racist vibe, but all in all, we discovered that getting called names in public is a HUGE turn-on.

On a disturbing note, we caught an unwelcome glimpse of understanding for the Ann Coulters of the planet. We don't like that part of the realization, but it apparently comes with Media Whore territory. As the French say,

"Tant pis."

If You Come, They Will Build It... Sort Of

The line was instant movie history when the seminal moment of Field of Dreams flickered across the screen. "If you build it, they will come." The removal of air from the room was palpable as hopes and dreams were distilled into seven syllables. Today, Kansas City teeters between slack-jawed horror and that giddiness that comes with waiting for an explosive to do its thing. The National Right To Life Committee has sanctified the local Hyatt for a few days. Liquor sales are reported to be up 30% over a year ago.

This group of Stop Right There thinkers has converged upon our middle-of-nowhere serenity with their unique brand of half-baked assumptions and half-assed conclusions. And less than half of the Republican candidates for president bothered to book a flight for the event. We call this progress.

The basis of the Know Nothing wing of the party - they are to American Politics what snake parts are to a can of green beans - is the conviction that caring at all the wrong times exempts you from giving a damn at all the right times. In a delightful display of insanity, they contend just the opposite. That's why we haven't gone out of our way to make a big deal over their presence. If the circus wants to set up down the street, who can argue with the convenience of a decent show on the block - elephant shit notwithstanding? We spent long minutes wondering whether the Committee believes itself to be furthering the Nation, Rights or Life. The conclusion? Like most committees, it now simply exists to announce its existence. Committees all go that direction eventually.

To understand these well-dressed lunatics requires a basic knowledge of tactics more than platforms. First, they speak a language that sounds like English but isn't. They take words from the language but use them in a way so that they mean the opposite of what the casual listener might assume. We dated a guy like that. It's where we got familiar with the term "Congenital Liar". They are so convinced in their misuse of the language that they forget just when and where they made the decision to lie in he first place.

The right to life is a sure thing. It's right there in the Declaration of Indepedence next to liberty and the ever-popular pursuit of happiness. But these wing nuts don't mean life like you mean life. They don't mean breathing. They mean the obligation to breed. You think a right to life means a right to be alive. They think the same right means you may get to the starting line, but you're on your own from there. From conception through the frying of the placenta at your family gathering, they insist you finish what you started. Once it cries, their job is done. They have no plans or desire to feed, clothe, care, or otherwise give a good goddamn about that hideous creature until they congratulate it in heaven some years hence.

This Right To Life bunch is anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-gun, anti-welfare, and generally anti-bothering them with any of the details of a life they insisted be commenced. They are notoriously opposed to the idea that everyone should have simple health care. Keep your eye on the dashboard Jesus: This is about getting life started, which has nothing to do with keeping it going. Look at their complete abstinence in the last 25 years on AIDS: If you got it domestically, shame on you; if you got it internationally, they'll pray for you. One of our favorite Ann Richards quotes refers to the elder Bush's identical position on all of the above: "Spoken like a true fisherman: Throw 'em back and kill 'em when they're grown." If that doesn't sum it up, we may need to have the Good Lord send Ann back for an encore.

The Right To Life bunch is thrilled to see your fryable ass in an electric chair, your veins popping with poison at your final moment of a death sentence, or your neck snapping from a good hanging. The Right To Life bunch doesn't acknowledge anything between vaginal birth and funeral rites as worthy of their attention. They have one goal and one goal only.

Make sure the sperm takes.

That's it. Nothing else. Once the orgasm hits, you are on the hook, in their book. Better you should aim for a tree than a fertile womb, although when Dr. Joycelyn Elders (nominated by President Clinton as Surgeon General) suggested that masturbation was a pretty good contraceptive measure, these same nut bags went berserk. They subscribe to the Loaded Gun Theory of the penis. You're not supposed to use it except in emergencies. If it's not an emergency, you don't have any business even touching it. Funny people, this bunch. They should get a sitcom. They already have a news network.

Mitt Romney showed up to kiss their ass as did the local yahoo, Sen. Sam Brownback - the only Kansan we could find who makes Bob Dole look chipper. Our favorite crazy person du jour: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas - the Libertarian who can't seem to find the exit door of the Republican Party - also showed up. The delegates had to be told as much after he spoke. They barely noticed. You can imagine the popularity of a Libertarian message ("Hey...what are you doing legislating in my womb?") among this crowd. It is lost on the Know Nothings that Rep. Paul is the only one of the bunch to ever deliver a baby (he's a 70 year-old retired obstetrician). The man who has really delivered (forgive the pun) on their only issue is the one they can't seem to find in the crowd. This, too, gives us hope.

We have a "Fuck 'Em Award" for Rep. Duncan Hunter, with whom our grandmother is running even in early presidential polls. He said he would come and then didn't. We appreciate that sort of a thumb in they eye. We have nothing else nice to say about Duncan Hunter, but would be remiss to let this good deed go unnoticed. The others? Please. This is 2007. The Christian Right has been revealed as neither. Nobody with a serious chance of being President will go near these people. T.B. boy has more high-profile visitors than this bunch can muster.

Giuliani, McCain, Gilmore, The Reverend Governor Huckabee(!), Tommy Thompson and the other nameless, hopeless few Republican candidates had the entire Midwest declared a No Fly Zone just so no one thought they were headed in the direction of this conference. The top two candidates have spent the last few days walking with their backs to Kansas City just to be sure no photo op would show them facing in Missouri's general direction. We hate that they're wising up. But we love seeing loathsome philosophies marginalized in publicly humiliating ways. It makes us all tingly.

In case you were wondering, Brownback was the hit of the show. If that doesn't give you hope for our future, you may just need to go take pills and lie down.

My Space Goes All Dateline NBC On Their Ass

In a republic such as this, it is often difficult to decide which group of miscreants one will side with when the gauntlets get thrown. Usually, your choices are between the cock fighters and the woman who keeps her children locked in the chicken coops during matches. Sometimes, it's even stickier.

We learn today that Texas (that bastion of fair play and good governance - the late Ann Richards notwithstanding) put a number of registered sex offenders in the pokey for having My Space profiles when the terms of their release forbade internet activity. We certainly understand the urge. The policy among After Therapy executives is "No One Under 35 - Preferably Over 40". We have no compassion, sympathy or arguments available to those who do harm to children.

We think NAMBLA is an unnecessary evil, those who pimp their kids for a meal are the lowest of the low, and if you touch a child inappropriately before their 21st birthday, you should get whatever the cosmos - let alone the justice system - has coming for you. We are unequivocal about our distaste for child molesters, pornographers and those who enable the same through their action or ignorance.

However.... And in a constitutionally-established Republic, there is allllways a "however"....

Absent more details, which ought to be forthcoming if Paris stays put, Lindsay stays dry and Britney pulls her dress down, we are hard-pressed to figure out under what theory of law these mishaps of humanity are being detained. One of the group was singled out for failing to register as a sex offender. Fair enough. Lock him up. Hide the key. But today's reports indicate that merely being wired is sufficient to re-incarcerate these heinous creatures. We argue, unpopularly no doubt, that it isn't. It's identical to saying, "Thou shalt not go to Texas. We will now remove your legs to minimize your mobility." It's banning a person from a bar for over-indulging, then arresting them months later for being able to swallow liquids. Sometimes, in the name of common sense, we get frighteningly close to nonsense.

And that's not just our liberal law degree talkin'.

We have a system in this part of the world that says, in essence, we reserve the right to restrict what you do as a result of what you've done. We accept that as part of the social contract. No guns for felons. No voting for cons. No food stamps if you've misused the system. What we don't have is a Pariah Provision in our constitution that makes it illegal for a person to exist in the same space (virtual or otherwise) where they have previously abused the privilege. Granted, we reserve the right, under the law, to tell predators not to live within a prescribed perimeter of a school. We don't tell them they can never go to the grocery store on the off-chance they will run into a kid.

My Space certainly got its corporate legs running with the younger set. Kids dominate the scene - but aren't the only legitimate users of the service. We recently tracked down a music artist from our youth via his My Space page. The man is in his 60's and still recording gospel music. On his friends page were photos and links to the pages of many of today's better-known musicians. We attempted to shoot him an email through the site and got the message, "You Can't Do That" because we haven't created a My Space page of our own. Nice touch. The point is, this is not a sandbox filled with free candy where one expects to be able to walk away with the blonde 6 year-old of his choice. It's a public forum where people of all sorts now gather to exhibit themselves.

God knows we aren't against that.

My Space is simply a designated attraction spot on what we once called the Information Superhighway. All of us here gathered know that you can be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously in cyberspace. It is the realization of everything Star Trek promised us with its particle-beaming from one reality to another. If the computer is on, the Wi-Fi isn't glitching, and we have one eye on the screen, the entire world can welcome itself into the living room and insinuate itself in the 6th inning of a tight ballgame. If My Space is forbidden territory for those who have done others harm, how is the Internet itself any less verboten by virtue of its vast possibilities for impromptu visitation and mere chance meetings?

What is the rule Texas is seeking to articulate? No My Space for convicted sex predators because kids go there? What about just logging on to Google the ethmoid bone? Would receiving a blanket spam email from some enterprising 10 year old in Vegas put you on the hook for another 10-20 of Non-Paris Time? We know that My Space is an attractive nuisance, if you will, where young people are likely to gather. So is the mall. To my knowledge, we don't have any rules of incarceration as it pertains to patronizing Crabtree and Evelyn, though. This pendulum is swinging a bit too far into the civil liberties arena and it's going to take someone unassailable in character - or so vile they fail to register as human - to stop it.

Lock up these bastards and throw away the key - permanently - if our public policy is going to be that they are incapable of rehabilitation and proper societal functioning. If, however, we pursue a policy that allows for and encourages the restoration of these - and others - to their place in society (restricted though it may be), then the My Space Case must be settled once and for all. It is no crime to be in the same universe as those whom once you harmed.

It is a great crime to sit back and watch the majority go mad with malice and unhinge us from our constitutional moorings in the process.

(Staff note: We would like to congratulate our Editor-in-Chief for not overriding our veto when he suggested that parents "Watch those fucking troglodyte kids you're always blathering about everybody else protecting." His trust in our judgement is why we love him.)

Not Dead. Good

Guinea Pig and all... It seems the experimental route turned out to be beneficial for yours truly. We will not be posting from the great golden (or fiery) beyond in the near future - barring any bus mishaps.

After a month of grueling acclimation to the new regimen and a myriad of maladies that had us fairly well convinced we would only just outlast Jerry Falwell in the Dead Pool, the reports are in, the effects are waning, and we are about ready to climb back on the proverbial horse. AIDS will not get us this week.

Fevers pushing 105 degrees, digestive difficulty at both ends of the tract, insides that felt charred, a mind that betrayed us on occasion, malaise well-documented, fatigue indescribable, and even a hint of depression all made our acquaintance here in the "office" over the last few weeks. But thanks to the good judgement of the medical community and a God we have not sufficiently offended (yet), we have emerged on the other side with nothing but good news.

The Virus is once again undetectable in the blood stream. The fevers and aforementioned issues were simple evidence of a body doing unholy battle against invaders new and familiar. Steroids became part of our lexicon as we actually had to apply the brakes to our newly revved immune system. When the latter started to play with our mind, we called a halt to that portion of the handful of pills and began a step-down program that will play out over the next month. The fevers have all but abated, the appetite has returned with a vengeance, energy is rushing back in at the most inopportune times (3 a.m, 4 a.m., etc.) and everyone on the clinical side of the team is thrilled with the results. We considered getting fitted for appropriate burial garments on at least one occasion. The best laid plans, as they say....

The goal of aggressive treatment in people with HIV and AIDS is to see a reduction in the amount of virus to an undetectable (though not non-existent) level within 3-6 months. We crossed that hurdle just shy of the first month. Over-achieving has always been something of a knack for us. Unless, of course, we're talking about anything mechanical or interpersonal - then we defer to those with a much more convincing resume of achievement.

Thanks goes to our beloved physician, for whom we will not shill. He makes his money. But he also knows it's a price well-paid in our opinion. The other medical staff, legion of family, those who brought spaghetti and watermelon and all manner of potato products (the only food that we would eat for days), our "Aidsy Group" in The City who manages to make the most abnormal physical experience seem not that remarkable or frightening, and What's Her Name in NYC for providing much needed distraction and being a lightning rod for nastiness when it was needed all get our public, though anonymous, gratitude.

And not least of all, we thank that faithful handful of blog-readers who nudge occasionally and let us know that whatever the hell we're saying, someone is listening. And that's what life on the Big Blue Ball is really about, isn't it? Just knowing somebody heard you.

The bounce back is in full swing. Who knows? By the time we turn the page on another age in a couple of weeks, we may be stronger than ever and more sharp-tongued than one would wish. But we'll be here. Plans are in the works for an international edition of After Therapy. We're researching with our crack staff the logistics of lodging in Greece for part of the winter. We would look forward to posting from the Aegean paradise for a number of weeks. It's been something we've long thought to do and never got around to realizing.

So on we go. The future is unknowable, but at least we can plan to be flapping our gums in the midst of the most immediate part of it. And that's enough for today.

Tom

She Could Have Chuckled

We took our own advice and phoned our Senator from the Senate HELP Commitee (Pat Roberts, R-Kansas) to voice our toned-down opinion about the nomination of one Surgeon General nominee previously excoriated herein.

This is the rough draft of our conversation:

(Pleasant, slightly conservative hold music...)

Her: Senator Roberts' office! This is Wilma (name changed because we forgot to write it down).

Me: Hi! I'm a reluctant constituent of Senator Roberts and I'm calling to oppose the nomination of James "Scissors" Holsinger as Surgeon General.

Her: OK. (We think the rustling we heard sounded like a Bible, but it could have been a phone book.)

Me: Despite every indication the Senator has given of his intentions - since birth, really - we want to go on record as being vociferously opposed to this nomination. We also want to say that we don't know anybody who didn't laugh out loud when we read portions of Mr. Holsinger's White Paper from the Methodist Church as it pertained to gay people. This is not the kind of leadership we need at the top of the Health Care System in our country at this critical juncture. Amen.

Her: So you're opposed to the nomination?

Me: Yes. Should I repeat the rest?

Her: No. I got the rest.

Me: If you got the rest, how did you end up undecided as to whether I supported the nomination? (I'm on Prednisone. I'm testy by nature nowadays.)

Her: I was distracted. I'm sorry. You were saying? (More rustling.)

Me: I was done saying, actually, but since you opened the door: Holsinger suggests that we run around with scissors up our butts and I want to be the Kansas Gay Person who goes on record as saying that is NOT true. I don't know anybody who can manage anything faster than a saunter when doing the Scissor Squinch.

Her: Are you serious?

Me: No. But you stopped listening when I said I opposed the nomination. I figured I had carte blanche from there.

Her: So the scissor thing happens?

Me: NO, the scissor thing does not happen. Do you remember the whole Richard Gere/gerbil thing from the 80's?

Her: I'm not that old.

Me: Of course you're not. How did you get this jaded so early? Normally, working for a Republican is the urge that hits you right after the Violet Rinse Syndrome.

Her: Huh?

Me: Never mind. We don't put scissors or gerbils up our butts, but Holsinger wrote down that he thinks we do! Furthermore, he thinks AIDS comes from bad plumbing.

Her: Like the sewer?

Me: No, like how it's a parts problem, not a disease problem. He thinks people get sick because they put their parts in the wrong places. And the scissors. That's just over-the-top. This nomination is the height of lunacy and I want to be documented as having nothing to do with it when people find out my Senator voted for it.

Her: What's your name, again?

Me: Oy. Do you know any gay people?

Her: We're not allowed to say.

Me: You work in Topeka, I can see by the phone number. There are a couple of gay bars there. Before you go to another staff meeting, I would like you to send someone over and physically check for scissors in buttholes. If you find one, I'll fly to Washington and cast the Senator's vote for him - however he likes.

Her: I don't think we have anybody assigned to do that sort of thing.

Me: Neither do we, honey. Neither do we.

(donation of my name, phone and address to the Republican Hit List ensued and call was ended with...)

Her: I'll tell him.

Me: What?

Her: Huh?

Me: What part are you going to tell him?

Her: That you don't care for the nomination.

Me: But that's not the good part! I blog, I wrote it all down a week ago. Can I send it to you?

Her: We're not allowed to do that.

Me: Because I think you're good at remembering things like this, I want you to remember this about gay people and scissors:

We're not allowed to do that, either.

Andrew Sullivan: Pan Fried

You may know the name or the mug of this prolific columnist, editor, author, blogger and all-'round opinion flinger. We hold such outspoken types in high esteem around here. Truth told, if we had our druthers, we'd have his audience and he'd have our Kansas bungalow.

Andrew Sullivan (photo: http://www.roycecarlton.com/) is a self-described "libertarian conservative". He's gay and Catholic. He's pro-gay marriage but Vatican-committed. He's British-born and obsessed with the American cultural and political landscape. He's authored "Virtually Normal", an apologetics manual for homosexuality in an adverse climate. He's also pined about the loss of the Conservative Soul (The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back). He's Pan - everything to everyone, thus not enough to anyone. You might say Andrew Sullivan stands as a beacon in the darkness for Gay/Lesbian people everywhere. Or you might say he's the ultimate half-assed excuse for a Gay public figure we've seen since Abraham Lincoln.

Well... we might.

Today, the paper brings word that Sullivan suggests Democrats dump Hillary due to her negative perception ratings (about double those of Barack Obama in a recent poll). He leaps at the opportunity to quote a "critic" (there's a deep well for you) who calls her a liar, rigid, and possessive of a divine sense of electability. Fair enough. We love name calling. We got good at it in grade school and honed the skill in Law School. What we want to know is where Sullivan bought the glass for that rock-launching pad of a mansion he inhabits.

If lying, rigidity, and divine sensibilities aren't hallmarks of the Right Wing that Sullivan has so tirelessly enabled to his own detriment (not least of all from his perch atop The New Republic), then we haven't been watching the same wing flap lo these many years. We don't have to go back to Nixon (Watergate), Reagan (take your pick - let's go with Iran/Contra to mix things up), Bush I ("read my lips"), or even call up Bush II (again...the well is deep) to talk about lying.

We don't have to call up the 6 year history of this administration in refusing to change course until the road was blown out from under them - and even then insisting on using the same dirt, the same asphalt, the same personnel and the same tire tracks to re-lay the same road to the same failure only for new reasons. Rigid, indeed.

We don't have to point out the rise of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell (may peace escape his rest), William (Let It Ride) Bennett, Ralph Reed, Don Wildmon, Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson, Lindsay Graham or the myriad other religious zealots who took the reigns of his beloved Republican Party in the 80's and only now are being forced to loose their grip - by way of amputation.

So our question to Mr. Sullivan is: Was it a compliment or a curse that you were hurling at Senator Clinton, who has done more to serve her country in the public eye than most of the Sullivans in history combined? Is lying now anathema to your cabal on the Right? We'd like the memo for proof. We're assuming it isn't in Scooter Libby's or Karl Rove's briefcase any longer. Is rigidity now a bad thing after 6 years of Stay The Course - regardless of the consequences to people we'll never meet? Is God a registered Republican when it comes to lending divine touch to vain political ambition or genuine service? Do tell. We're protestant over here. We don't have a pointy-hatted man with great shoes to tell us what God thinks.

Perhaps Mr. Sullivan would like to pack in his Prada Pope, his Tiger-By-The-Tail pro-gay, pro-marriage, pro-Right compote and his keyboard and go somewhere to rest a while. What used to look like hopelessly sucking up to assholes in power now just looks inane. We liked having a smart, gay man out there stirring the pot - whether we agreed with him or not.

Now, we'd just as soon he go home and focus on England post-Blair. We're sure his mix is a hoot over there. We'll make up our own mind about Hillary and company without wading through the imported self-loathing, thank you.

Battlefield Promotion: The Gay Bomb

He was right.

I assumed this was a recycled, years-old, urban myth with high entertainment value. It's not. It made the news. They really had a plan. That we were in the front of their minds when they sought how to protect this land brings a tear to the eye, really.

In case you're the person who isn't connected by six-degrees of e-mail to everyone else in the world, here's the snippet:


"I don't know whether to laugh at the stupidity, or cry because a bunch of morons got it in their pea-brains that such a scheme might work. 'A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.'"
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html (Link worked at time of posting. If not, just figure it out like the rest of us do.)

We went to the Web site of the Berkeley CBS affiliate and confirmed that they ran the report this week. A brief scan of the 'Net shows this is not even necessarily "new" news. The CBS site quotes Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, who used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get a copy of the proposal from the Laboratory at Wright Air Force Base in Dayton Ohio. We will now pause for a moment of reflection while you try to formulate that line trapped at the back of your throat.

As we've said before, it is usually hard to be so outrageous that you surpass the story and become the story. The original story is that Berkeley is weird. It is. We are as liberal as they come and Berkeley made us feel like we were walking around sucking face with our own hidden Nazi while we harbored slave laborers in our modest 2-bedroom suburban apartment where we raised non-free-range chickens to feed third world dictators in exchange for assault weapons we would use to further the crack trade in minority-dominated inner cities. There is nothing more stress-inducing than ordering food in Berkeley. Or considering a cigarette afterward. Or deciding to have sex with someone.

Everything - but everything - is fraught with political drama in Berkeley. Where did the beans for the coffee come from? Were the bean pickers provided coffee breaks, deodorant, and a 401(k) in a currency secure from government tampering? Is the cup biodegradable to a degree that would actually stimulate new growth forestation in an area at least 75 miles from where it is disposed? Are the frocks on the coffee-slingers made in such a manner as to guarantee that no slaves were harmed in the delivery of your cappuccino? Oy. This is how so many of us left The Movement in the 60's and became Bob Dole in the 80's. It wasn't a change of heart. It was sheer exhaustion.

Now, maintain your focus, because you're going to remember that Berkeley is not the story - when they should have been. It was Berkeley - mad, crazy, whacked-out, certifiably abnormal Berkeley - that uncovered a real Pentagon plan to develop a bomb that would Homosexualize an opposing army to a degree that would ensure their defeat. See how the Pentagon trumps Berkeley a thousand times over? No more alpaca, coffee-bean, sweat-shop aspect to the story. Now, it's all just sucking dick 'til death do we part. Taxpayer-funded, government-approved, Rumsfeld-signed, Bush-briefed, Rove-spun, Libby-hidden Induced Gayness.

Don't Ask Don't Tell on this side of the Mosque. But baby, have we got a thrill for you tonight on your side. All American troops are required to be in their bunks - alone and with gas masks mounted - before the You-Know-What goes off on the other side of the Green Zone. Any fondling, groping, or other possible "leakage" effects from the artillery will be investigated by a military tribunal conducted during your stay at Guantanamo. No requests will be processed from 2300 on this evening as top military brass will be watching what we hope to be a swarthy, Middle-Eastern orgy a few blocks from here. Our thanks to those of you who participated in pre-war studies on this weaponry. Your country thanks you for the sacrifice of your rectum, dignity, and three pay grades.

The very notion. A bomb. That makes people gay. Brought to you by the manufacturers of No Fags In My Foxhole - one of the Falwell Companies. Remember what they told us around 1990? Gay folks = unit cohesion problem? I'm guessing when their own study disproved that assertion, they took it one step further. If lack of cohesion doesn't result, then maybe super cohesion could be used to our advantage - assuming we just foist it on the other side, of course.

Somebody call Rummy back. I want to see him triple-speak his way around this one. Just once. For old time's sake.

Look - here's the truth. We who carry The Agenda in our pockets have known this for years and it's time we blew the whistle and put a stop to all the madness. There is no gay bomb. If there were a gay bomb, we would have already purchased an island with our considerable disposable income and moved there en masse - leaving you all to a world of heterosexual hairstylists and actors who really DO have to "play" gay in movies. (Shudder.) We would drop the bomb every day at brunch, tea, dinner and 1 a.m., just to keep the vibe even.

You would know we had it, because we would be a tan, oblivious, sex-obsessed people with lots of money, no interest in war, an interest in politics only when it protruded into our bedrooms....
.........

Well, no matter the similarities, we have no bomb. There is no bomb. There will never be a bomb. You cannot make someone gay with a bomb anymore than you can make them gay with an overbearing mother. You need show tunes.

Write congress and demand they uncover the philosophy and the plan behind this travesty.

And meet us at Tea Dance. You know where.

You Need To Go Home Now

Because we don't have enough people who have an appropriate response to shame, today brings word that Colin Powell would like us to hear his opinion on the next President Of The United States.

We still haven't found all the pieces of our jaw from when we dropped it over his activities with the current one. It's going to be a long, long time before we consider Gen. Powell to be a reliable advisor in the voting booth. In an attempt to be tantalizing and seem relevant, years after his cellular-level integrity meltdown on the floor of the United Nations, The Guy Who Knew Saddam Back When says he isn't entirely sure he'd support a Republican for president.

That puts him in the shocking company of about 65% of the country. This man has not only lost his moral compass, he's lost all sense of irony, any remnant of history, and the inborn instinct we all have that tells us to just shut up and go home.

Gen. Powell lied to the world, either by his own will or by his own failure to verify the words coming out of his mouth. He didn't do it in the bathroom under his breath with the water running. He did it into a microphone on the floor of the United Nations. He did it in furtherance of a perverted plan to bring open-ended war to a country about which George Bush was willing to say anything to get the key to the Bomb Box. Many of us have misspoken in our day. Many of us have realized down life's winding road that something we decided previously was erroneous. Hardly any of us have blood on our hands to this degree as a direct result of our dereliction of duty. From those to whom much is given, much is required. Somebody important said that once. Want a big job? Take the big consequences.

The consequences of being colossally wrong - if not a degenerate liar - when your star is on the rise and you are in all likelihood the heir-apparent to the throne of all 50 states - is that we no longer take your word on anything. Colin Powell could tell us that oil and water don't mix and we would doubt his intentions, let alone his facts. The truly grating part of this media assault today, however, is Powell's overtures to my party - the one that sat on its hands while Bush, Inc. wreaked havoc on the planet.

We have paid dearly on the Left for not speaking up in the months prior to war. We were afraid of being right again - like during the Vietnam years. Being right, however, did not work to our political gain during Vietnam. Being wrong this time hasn't gone so hot, either. We don't learn lessons quickly on the Left. We get bogged down in seeing all sides of issues and would require a 12-point diversified caucus to decide to leave a sinking lifeboat - with appropriate membership weighting in favor of those least able to represent themselves and who, by virtue of history's cruelty, may no longer be around to be in the lifeboat. It's our Big Flaw. It comes with Grand Intentions, like most big flaws do. What we need is a spine, not a General.

So thanks, Gen. Powell. We hear you loud and clear. The dance is coming and you have no date. May we suggest that you vacation in Albania this year? We understand they're huge Bush fans over there - and we don't even care enough to ask why. They can have him. You're sure to be a huge hit there yourself. Take Alma. She's probably ready to get away.

Remember... she told you not to get involved in this stuff in the first place. Sometimes Mama knows best.

Sopranos Finale: Whaddayagonnado?

So-PRA'-nos: (n)(pl)(It) A period of 86 hours spread over 10 years (8 seasons) at the end of which is revealed that there are no fat women who sing.

Eighty-six episodes I committed myself to this hour. Eighty-six. I knew better than to expect ribbons and conclusions and what we used to call Closure. I had heard that HBO wouldn't cut off any future earnings by whacking the absolute core of a possible movie or spin-off. Dis Ting of Ours is nuttin' if not bizness savvy.

But I did have higher expectations for a series that soared above its own story lines for most of its life. Disproved was the notion that after 3 hours of Brando, DeNiro, Pacino, Caan and the other usual suspects mugging and cheap-shottting people, the vehicle would wear out and you'd be left with broken, bloodied, shells of people. It just ain't like that. Tony told us so.

Tony did therapy, for chrissakes! Carmela wallowed in Catholic angst just long enough to get her eyes on the grift from a spec house and off the rosary. Bless her heart. No sense in the one with the ziti getting left out in the cold. Meadow had every synapse firing to lend piercing intelligence, thwarted by her mother's "why bother" ascent to wealth, to the female underground role. Meadow's was THE original Sopranos character - underutilized as it was. And A.J. - the fuck-up from birth. Take away actor Robert Iler's brush with the law over the last couple of years and one wonders why Chase would even try introducing this character to post-adolescence in the final season. If there was an expendable family character - fatherly reflection or not - this was the one.

"Uncle" Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri, one of Da Family's senior members, could never quite let his two parts Al Pacino veto his three parts Eva Gabor. Handed the world on a platter in the season finale, his prostate colors his mood on the offer. Perhaps the most annoying character on television - ever - but one of the great David Chase creations left fleshless in the story's unwinding. Tony's sister, Janice, while designed as a caricature and constant memory of their toxic mother, lost her bite when she found her ovaries. Or so we thought. What a deliciously conniving, entitled, self-important piece of work, that one. Alas, she's rendered the other of the great original female characters pushed to the margins in a march toward, evidently, nowhere.

We understand that the new rule is "No Rules" for finales. If you have rules, you lessen expectations, your viewership may suffer (after 86 episodes over 8 years), and the advertising dollar you command for that final hour is knee-capped by predictability. But this ain't TV, as they remind us on the hour. It's HB friggin' O. What advertisers? Tell the freakin' story, already!

We don't have to know that Carmela finds a lump in 2019 or that Meadow marries more times than Liz Taylor. We don't necessarily care whether A.J. had a mob-enabling revelation as he watched his SUV burn, but a peek is nice. Whither Silvio Dante? Dr. Melfi? Once off the schedule, you're literally... off... the schedule? Look, we know Ms. Bracco isn't really a therapist. She's an actress. Melfi is a character. Don't go all literal on us now and call us names for being naive. We're the ones who sat here and watched her fall for him, cross all the boundaries, then pretend like nothing happened. Is Janice's star still on the ascendant? What does Uncle Junior know about the money he may or may not have that Janice may or may not be trying to scrounge? And is he realllly crazy? Does Ginny Sacrimoni get so large in her grief that she literally explodes like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float or does she re-appear in a couple of seasons in a size 6 looking like Eydie Gorme? Are Chris and Adrianna dead-dead? Or are they TV dead? And if they're TV dead, are they Six Feet Under TV Dead or are they Dallas TV Dead?

I am not so disappointed that I don't know what happened when Meadow hit the diner's front door in the series' finale. I am in deep mourning, however, for both the sublime and the infernal mark The Sopranos will leave on television series-making. This program was among the first to test audience loyalty with the Will They or Won't They proposition of shooting sixteen episodes and seeing who cares next year. Feed them some re-runs. Tease them with a new season beginning at month eight. Let the Internet jabber do its part to keep interest and speculation alive. Then use all of the above to throw damn near anything at the wall the following season. For sixteen weeks. Then let the next 36 weeks be about how worth the wait might have been. Rinse. And repeat.

We see it now on network TV. ABC (Another Bad Comedy) tried its best to bury Lost that way. Episodic drama relies on the pull from one moment to the next to spur our continued investment in the story. The ensemble network TV drama does not have the luxury of jerking around its ever-dwindling audience the way pay-television (HBO) does. Whether another HBO customer watches John From Cincinnati or not, they will make their money. If The Italian Job had been heavier on story - even as a brief movie - you wouldn't remember the Mini Coopers first when you think of it and it would be a better product. Because The Story Is The Thing.

HBO has stories in spades. This network cuts short series that had another good five years in them because no American audience could ever endure the twin tasks of thinking and escaping simultaneously (Carnivale, Rome). It knows how to let audiences down easy with fanfare, good-bye kisses, balloon bouquets and taffeta... lots and lots of taffeta when the story has been told (Sex In The City, Six Feet Under). It knows how to whack a series with as much courtesy as a butcher with a pork chop (Deadwood, anyone?) when it has buggies-full of story left. And it apparently knows how to blow an ending that even non-fans watched out of morbid curiosity.

The complaint is not closure. The cry is not "MORE!" although there is much left on the table. We're not ignorant of artistic device, dangling participles, unopened doors, cliff-hangers or creator's prerogative. We just expected more from the people who turned mob life inside out and proved there are insides. We stand and whistle for these artists who took on caricatures and made them three-dimensional, but not more sympathetic. Our insight into their hearts did nothing to excuse their choices - a novel story-telling device if ever there was one. "If you knew me, you would love me," became, "Hey, babe... even when you know me... I gotta tell ya.... ". Pure character genius.

People with this much creative talent had more within them than thumbing their nose at convention. They had much for which to apologize (what with the 9 month annual hiatus concept and all). They had 8 seasons and God-Only-Knows how many hours of time to think about where this might go. What might the statement be? What's the perfect ending - not for Tony or The Family - but for this artistic gem that will absolutely be among the Top Fifty TV Series of All Time?

Top 50? No Top 10? They told you this when you were nine, bay-bee.... The story's got to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can leave out any part you want, as the author, but it will absolutely affect your grade. Any guy will tell you: Buying flowers is cool, buying dinner is fun, the movie is delightful, the dancing is a ball, and the drinks are the best. But at the end of the date if you don't offer up something resembling a kiss, we're going home to think less of you.

And youse can take that to Satriale's.