Big Fat Hairy Living

I was at a friend’s birthday party on Saturday, and someone I’d met for the first time that night told me “Hey! You have a cool back of your head!”

I said thanks, not knowing what else to say.

I used to hate them, but I’ve gotten used to them. My first boyfriend said they looked like little fat puppy dog wrinkles. Mark likes petting them. I wonder why the back of my head is strange like that. It’s not just that I’m fat; my actual skull is rippled like that.

Apparently heterosexuals have discovered gaining. And they think they’re somehow special even though they’ve shown up late for the party:

In high school, “Mike” was in the closet. He couldn’t talk to anyone about how he got aroused by fat women. “I’d like a girl and worry that she wouldn’t be into it,” says the 23-year-old environmental-science student and self-proclaimed feeder in northern New Jersey. “But once I got online, I found out that this thing had a name.” (Some in the scene refer to their “feeder-dar”: “A lot of girls who like large men are in the closet,” Rivera says. “It’s like the new gay.”)

Yes, being a straight guy who likes fat chicks is just like being gay. Including the bashing, discrimination, and religious bigotry.

Today Mark and I went to Riverdale farm.

We saw flowers …

… and ducks …

… and cows …

… and piglets …

… and piglets …

… and piglets!

Then we went to the patio of The Black Eagle for the Sunday barbecue to view another kind of domesticated animal.

Logan Clements, an Objectivist kook documentary maker whose claim to fame is his campaign in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, is making a film about the evils of “socialized medicine” and he’s looking for suckers to bankroll him:

Only a few months remain until Michael Moore’s pro-socialized medicine movie “SICKO” is released and spreading infectiously through our culture. We need to raise $995,000 by the end of May in order to meet our deadlines. Our goal is to find 100 people to make a tax-deductible donation of $10,000 each. But if you’d like to donate more, we can start production sooner. As money comes in our camera crews go out.

The only thing missing: “liberty,” “freedom,” and “tyranny,” those words that Libertarians just can’t get enough of. (”The clerk at the post office didn’t smile sincerely enough! Tyranny!”)

Clement promises to focus on Canada and “deal with ideas long suppressed by the mainstream media,” asking all the tough questions:

Should doctors be imprisoned if they accept payment for their services from patients?

Because in Canada, doctors are imprisoned for accepting payment for their services!!!

Should the government determine who gets medical care?

Because in Canada, the government puts you on a list and only people on the list get care!!!

Are big pharmaceutical companies the problem or big government programs?

Because it’s much better to have health care choices dictated by large, unaccountable corporations that are motivated only by profit than have them determined by democratically elected governments!!!

Do individuals in countries with “universal health care” really get better care?

I don’t know… it sounds pretty good to me:

The death and disease rates for patients in Canada are the same or lower than those for people with similar diagnoses treated in the United States — even though per capita health-care spending is higher south of the border, a study suggests.

[...]

“In looking at patients in Canada with a specific diagnosis compared to Americans with the same diagnosis, in Canada patients had at least as good an outcome as their American counterparts — and in many situations, a better health outcome,” said one of the 17 authors, Dr. P.J. Devereaux, a cardiologist and clinical epidemiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Even better, Clements is looking for people “stuck on a waiting list in Canada or any country where the government has taken over the medical profession.” Because in Canada, the government has taken over the medicial profession and doctors are all under government control!!!

As soon as Clements is finished his film about “socialized medicine,” he plans movies on the evils of socialized roads, socialized firefighters, socialized police, socialized sewage systems, and socialized armies.

(Photo courtesy of dstopping)

I worked late today.

At 6:20 PM, the train I was taking home jerked to a stop just as it was pulling into Ellesmere station. After about a minute, the driver came out of his cab, checked the doors, then went back into his cab. A minute later, the driver came back out and told us that someone had jumped in front of the train. The train wasn’t moving anywhere, at least not for a while.

I got out, thinking that I’d catch a bus home. But as I got out, I made the mistake of turning my head and looking. Crumpled under truck of the train was something I shouldn’t have looked at. I didn’t see much, but I saw more than I wanted to. I shouldn’t have looked.

I walked to the corner of Kennedy and Ellesmere to take a cab. I felt numb. Normally I’d have been at that station an hour earlier. I cried a bit there at the corner in front of a Honda dealership and with a few hundred other people streaming out of the station. I tried not to cry.

I hailed a cab.

Looking out the window at the traffic and listening to the dispatch radio, the dispatcher announced that there had been a “jumper” on the subway. “Real nice. Real fun,” he sneered.

The driver spoke up. “Why do they have to do that there? All those people inconvenienced!”

“I’d like a silent ride, please.”

I used to think just like him. Not any more.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Let’s all celebrate.

The usual gay hating lobby groups have banded together to release a new open letter to everyone on the planet apologizing for the fact that homos can get married in Canada. Yes, they’re apologizing to everyone on the planet:

We, the people of Canada who support marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman, apologize to the people of the world for harm done through Canada’s legalization of homosexual marriage.

Everyone should read the open letter to see how bizarre it is. There are gems like this : (emphasis added)

The impact on children’s rights, children’s education, parental rights, religious rights, adoption, the economy and family law were never fully considered.

“I told ya, Martha! The fuckin’ queers are ruinin’ the goddamn economy!”

I think it’s the rest of us that should be apologizing — for these idiots. (Click for the juicy PDF goodness.)

A few weeks ago I got close to abandoning this thing and shutting it down. Sometimes I get discouraged by how few people seem to comment and wonder whether more than just a few people actually read what I have to say. Other times I feel as though too many people are reading it for me to be honest about anything any more. Contradictory, I know.

A few days ago, I received this moving e-mail (edited for anonymity and with a few minor grammatical changes):

I am 19 years old and have known I was gay for a while. I recently found a link to your blog the other day. I have been reading it quite a lot today and couldn’t help but feel appreciation for your blog. I live in a small country town where there are only two gay couples, both of which stay to themselves so they don’t get stoned by the local religious freaks. So, being fat and gay in this town is not exactly the most thrilling thing in the world. I have stayed partially sane for the past few years looking at hot bears on the internet and having fantasies about a guy at my old work (much like your “Uncut Bear Director”). Of all the blogs I have read, a total of four, yours has not only turned me the most, but it has shown me that there are others out there like myself. Your posts are informative, encouraging and overall a beacon of hope for me to be happy.

I e-mailed him and asked him if he would give me permission to post his letter. He gave me his permission and added something else (link added):

I have just finished reading, for the fifth time, your “I never had a daddy” post from May 2002. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye. A relationship like yours shows that there truly is a “one” for everyone. The love and compassion that you write about, I’m sure, gives hope to everyone who reads it.

I’d like to thank everyone who reads my writing, silent or not. Thank you.

Update: And then I get e-mails like this one: “can u send me a pctres of ur cock”

Someone writes about studies showing that circumcision may prevent HIV, and interesting discussion ensues until one person comments:

Now we got gay men rattling their diva crowns because now the city suggests another possible manner to prevent the spread of HIV that touches too close to home (i.e. the sacred foreskin cult).

Homophobic imagery (”diva crowns”): check. Implying that gay men are obsessed with cock: check. Mocking people who hold an opposing point of view (”sacred foreskin cult”): check. All that in one sentence.

Then the original author adds:

Thank you for naming the “foreskin cult” what it is. I’ve always been struck by (again) the level of hysteria in some gay men around the issue of circumcision. I don’t believe that elective circumcision of newborns is warranted in the developed world. I’ll share that belief with others. But when I’ve read what some gay men have written about it I’ve been bothered by the degree of interest some men take in little boys’ penises.

What’s bothersome about men being interested in the allowing boys to keep their penises in one piece until they’re old enough to choose on their own? What degree of interest in little boys’ penises would be acceptable? And wouldn’t a career studying the epidemiology of HIV be the perfect occupation to provide cover for an AIDS gift-giver with a circumcision fetish?

See how that works? See how easy it is for one to make a vague, unrefutable implication to attack someone one disagrees with? See how little it does to help one’s argument? See how it’s wrong and irrelevant?

Notably missing amongst the vague, plausibly deniable implications and the name-calling is any exploration of the ethical implications of routinely circumcising baby boys at birth. Maybe it’s easier to accuse people who don’t want boys to have part of their penises automatically cut off at birth of being part of a “cult” and of being possibly pedophilic than to deal with the question of whether cutting off a functioning body part at birth is ethically acceptable simply because it reduces one possible risk factor.

Here’s what medical ethicist Margaret Somerville has to say:

Even assuming that circumcision gave men additional protection from becoming infected with HIV, baby boys do not immediately need such protection and can choose for themselves, at a later stage, if they want it. To carry out circumcision for such a future health protection reason (assuming for the moment that circumcision is protective) would be analogous to testing a baby girl for the gene for breast cancer and, if it is present, trying to remove all her immature breast tissue in order to eliminate the risk of her developing breast cancer as an adult woman. I believe that most of us would be shocked at undertaking such a procedure on a baby girl, but some of us might not have the same reaction to infant male circumcision. Why is this? Quite simply we value breasts-we see it as a serious harm to a woman to lose them-and we do not value foreskins, in fact they are often devalued-spoken of as ugly, unaesthetic and unclean. Yet both are part of the intact human body and both have sexual and other functions. Consequently, to summarize, routine infant male circumcision cannot be ethically and legally justified on the grounds that it is medically required.

There’s a big difference between providing information to an adult and allowing him to choose whether to remove part of his penis and doing it routinely to baby boys in the name of prevention. The author writes that he doesn’t “believe that elective circumcision of newborns is warranted in the developed world.” It’s not ethical no matter what country it’s done in.