Freedom's Last Halloween

Enjoy your last weekend of slutty freedom before God's chosen candidates—after being elected by a stolen landslide—force you to marry that person you will randomly hook up with this weekend and decree that by American law you must breed for Jesus. Elizabeth Dole will officiate and you will honeymoon in rural Appalachia, where real patriots hatch their offspring and bring them up to happily fight our 100-year-war in Iran.

Scabies: The New Terrorism

I do realize that everyone across this great nation is completely wrapped up in the election and is, like me, spending the day gnawing on their hangnails and otherwise finding new ways to make themselves bleed. But there are some important issues this country is facing that have fallen through the cracks during this campaign season and that absolutely must be addressed and soon. Issues like scabies.

My friend in North Carolina is an Income Maintenance Caseworker II in Food and Nutrition Services (food stamp caseworker, duh) and she recently sent this email to me:

So as I might have mentioned, in the course of my current employment, I have been mocked, ridiculed, screamed at, cussed at, spit on, punched, kicked and had my life threatened, but whatever, all in a day's work.

Also, during that time, I have sat across the table from (countless) liars, thieves, gang bangers, drug dealers, child abusers, prostitutes, drug addicts, woman beaters, rapists, child pornographers, pedophiles, attempted murders and actual murderers, but yesterday I reached my personal limit. A client came in with the worst case of scabies I have ever seen, and I refused to interview her until she had gotten treatment. I mean, seriously, murder is one thing, but bugs...hell, no.

So obviously, my friend has dealt with a LOT of psychotic Republicans on food stamps. But scabies is just a bridge too far (to nowhere!). It's like Rick Warren asked of the two presidential candidates at his retarded self-aggrandizing forum at his stupid Saddleback megachurch last August: "Do scabies exist, and if they do, do we ignore them, do we negotiate with them, do we contain them or do we defeat them?" McCain said we should defeat them, which, duh, we should. But who really thinks that McCain-Palin is going to be able to forcefully yet intelligently deal with the scabies threat?

Obama was once the king of Kenya, where he successfully triumphed during the Great Scabies Infestation of 1998 (which interestingly happened at the same time as Monica-gate) by lowering taxes on the middle class. We can trust him to deal with all our bugs.

Yes he can.

My Cold Dead Heart Beats Again: Singing, Dancing Children

You know, amid all the $150,000 shopping sprees, the new red-baiting McCain campaign narrative, the foiled neo-Nazi murder plots, the increasingly hostile McCain-Palin Nuremberg rallies, and Joe the Pretend Plumber trying to talk foreign policy, I've been trapped under a deluge of political bullshit that stinks to high heaven and have really lost sight of what's really important this campaign season: children dancing! Happily! Without being called commie welfare terrorist sympathizers!

The above video melted my cold bitter heart and allowed it to beat again. It's the kids from the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta performing "You Can Vote However You Like," a parody of the song "Whatever You Like" by some youngster named TI.

The cutest thing is how bipartisan they are in the song, even though you know for a fact that all of them are totally in the tank for Obama.

Busy Signal

Sorry to both of my readers for the lack of activity on this here blog. In preparation for Halloween, I've been fasting and crouched in a downward dog position for three days! It will all be worth it come Friday when I am able to successfully fold myself into my laundry hamper. I'll be attending a very exclusive costume party as a pile of dirty clothes. Jimmy, dressed as Todd Palin, will be carrying me.

More soon!

My Camera Phone Will Not Be Denied: CBS's The Early Show

So I was all over the ratings-challenged Early Show this morning. Because there's nothing I love more than third place. I went there to participate in a work-related promotion (vague enough?) and stood in the freezing cold for about an hour and a half, just to give my public (hi mom!) some face time with me as a random person in the crowd, waving. Carson Kressley was there doing a really dumb segment on how to pose better for photographs while I was waving to my peeps. He's even gayer in person. (Mathematically impossible, but true.) And we got to talk to the host--some tall, handsome, bald-headed guy--about how crazy Bill O'Reilly is. My camera phone was there to capture all the magic.


This is the male host of the program. I can't remember his name.


...and there he is with his female, brown-haired co-host, whose name escapes me.


AND OH MY GOD, IT'S CARSON KRESSLEY!!! CARSON, CAN YOU TEACH ME HOW TO GET A JOB BEING GAY?!


And here's Ms. Kressley doing her segment. But wait, where's the Asian chick and the black dude from the promotional picture. Is it no racial minorities day at CBS? Such racists.

What Joe the Plumber Hath Wrought

Hey, remember that Joe the Plumber guy from the last presidential debate who wasn't really a plumber and wasn't named Joe and and would benefit from Obama's tax plan (even though he never pays his taxes) so naturally he's voting for McCain because he's patriotic? Yeah, that douche. Anyway, thanks to the success (or not!) of Joe (or Samuel or whatever) the Plumber as a campaign tool (in so many senses of the word), the McCain/Palin ticket just can't stop giving hard working Americans facile nicknames. Today, Sarah Palin gave a shout-out to Tito the Bricklayer, a guy who got in a shouting match with a few members of the media at one of her rallies, earning his moose badge.

And now the McCain campaign is taking that natural next step: allowing good, hardworking Americans to visit its website and nickname themselves in hopes of proving their blue collar cred and winning a lifetime supply of lower taxes! (Offer void if the terrorist wins.)

Breaking: McCain Has Muslim Supporters

Holy sh*t, y'all. This video is all kinds of awesome—so much fun to watch with your eyeballs. I'm still kind of reeling at the idea of McCain having any Muslim supporters left, especially after that "Obama-isn't-an-Arab-he's-a-decent-family-man" gaffe a few weeks ago. 

This video is all about smug hillbillies in Virginia and the Muslims who call their sh*t out (and the cool Christians that back them up). My favorite part is the silly bitch holding the offending Obama bumper sticker—which depicts the word "CHANGE" using the Islamic crescent for the "C" and the Soviet sickle for the "G"—talking about not wanting to speak to the press because of media distortion. Ha, ha. She's dumb.

Been and Gone: Ken Ogata

Sad. Ken Ogata, legendary Japanese actor, has died of liver failure at age 71. He's most famous in America for playing Japanese author Yukio Mishima in Paul Schraeder's impressionistic 1985 biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and a master calligrapher in Peter Greenaway's 1996 film The Pillow Book. Interestingly, Mishima has never been released in Japan because of opposition from Mishima's widow. But it has just been released in a special Criterion Collection box set, so we Americans can watch it all we want.

The Madonna-Guy Ritchie Split Explained, Briefly

If you're anything like me, you are shocked--shocked!--that Madonna and hunky director of pointless movies Guy Ritchie are splitting. It's just hotly unfathomable, like an Elizabeth Taylor divorce. Who would have predicted this?! Not me, obviously, because I'm not as smart as the New York Post. But apparently the signs of trouble have been out there for a while, what with Madonna's rumored romancing of some soccer player (cricket player? bingo nut?) named A-Rod.

Such big news. But how did it happen? How does a marriage built on such solid foundations as vanity, brutal sex appeal, tons and tons of money and servants, and being British fail? My boyfriend Jimmy and I have none of those advantages, and yet somehow we're still together after 11 years. What gives?

No one person is to blame when a relationship goes south. And it appears that this conventional wisdom is rock solid truth in the case of Madonna and Ritchie. They are both equally to blame, for being twitteringly insane f**king a**holes. Britain's Daily Mail reports that Ritchie told Madonna she looked "like a granny" when dancing on stage with her younger, blacker back-up dancers. Which is kind of true, but you just don't say that!

And Madonna--whew, she is a big piece of crazy pie, according to the same paper. No dairy allowed in the house (but what about your morning coffee? And cheese?!); no television; no sugar; no salt; no sausage!; lots of manic exercising, water drinking, miso soup eating, and "retiring at night slathered in £500-a-pot cream and covered in a plastic body-suit to hold back the signs of ageing."

I think it's the sausage that ultimately did it. If Jimmy tried to take away my sausage I would push him out the window.

Obama Sinks McCain's Battleship

Best. Reaction. Shot. Ever.

God bless the split screen.

Picture of the Day

Oh, this photo is just adorable. It's of Bristol Palin's baby daddy and fiance (well done, girl!) Levi Johnston (left) and his hunting buddy Carlrheena. God they remind me so much of me and my girlfriend Lisa in high school back in North Carolina: afternoons spent lying around listening to Love and Rockets, pretending to enjoy making out, covering up our kinky mullets with sideways baseball hats, and, ultimately, pulling out our rifles (one for each hand) for a game of chicken before embarking on a spate of local bank robberies and purse snatchings.

I for one am glad to see that teenagers are still as harmlessly mischievous as we were back then.

Gail Collins Has a Smart Little Mouth

I know her colleague and fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman just won the Nobel Prize for economics, but Miss Gail Collins should have won for Hilarity. Her latest column is another collection of one-liners for the ages.

On McCain and the crazy:
Now, [McCain]’s beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll. During that last debate, while he was wandering around the stage, you almost expected to hear him start muttering: 'We wants it. We needs it.'

On Palin's Nuremburg rallies full of racist innuendoes and actual threats of violence:
The rest of the country is supposed to watch and conclude that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the next four years.

On the choice of Palin as veep:
I miss MItt Romney...when we got bored, we could always talk about how he drove to Canada with his Irish setter strapped to the car roof.

On the current president:
I miss the old George W. Bush. When he came out of the White House and made an announcement, you would usually think that whatever he wanted to do was a terrible idea. But at least you thought he could actually make the terrible idea happen.

On Cindy McCain:
I miss the old Cindy McCain. The one who used to go to rallies and sit huddled in the corner looking as if she thought the audience had a communicable disease.

On Sarah Palin:
Palin has been pressing the line that people don’t really know “the real Barack Obama,” and who could make the argument better than a woman who we’ve already known for almost six weeks? Really, she’s like one of the family.

I want this woman at my next family reunion.

An Open Letter to Rachel Maddow

Ok, here we go, Rachel. I'm pleased as punch with the success of your new MSNBC program and I have high hopes that you will rise to the occasion every night and maybe even become the country's best ever cable pundit. My admiration and respect for you is documented on this very blog. So I'm saying this out of love: what the flip are you doing dressed like Harry freakin' Potter on the Tonight Show?!

We get it, Rachel. You're a lesbian. I love that. We all love that. America is slowly but surely falling for the charms of the Sapphic set, what with Ellen dancing her way into the entire country's heart and Clay Aiken recently coming out as a total dyke, but Rachel. Come. On. You look like you just peeled yourself off of your lesbian couch, where you sat eating lesbian Doritos and sipping lesbian Remy Martin while watching lesbian DVD sets of The L Word. This is The Tonight Show, woman! Make an effort!

It's like my colleague/friend (froleague?) Hilary said: "Hey Rachel, kd lang called, she needs her shirt back...from 1990! This is Big Girl Television--act like it."

In closing this open letter, I'd just like to say that I kind of admire your willingness to go on television looking like a big ole dyke scrub. That's kind of cool in a way. But, you know, it's about time high profile lesbians displayed a little bit of glamour. No one's asking you to be Portia di Rossi. But....sneakers? Really? A cowboy shirt? Are you going to clear brush after the show? Is it too much to ask you to just put on a pair of sensible flats, a nice blazer, and some slacks? And, uh, contacts?

Jesus, it shouldn't be this hard.

Laydeez I Love: Betty White

Those of you who know me know that it has been a lifelong goal of mine to lunch with Betty White, Dolly Parton, and Siouxsie Sioux at the Russian Tea Room. The older I get the less likely it is, I think, that this happy event will ever come to pass, but every time I see a video like the above I shed a tear of regret that I'm just not connected enough to make this lunch date happen. Aren't there any gays out there that can help me?!

But I'm glad to know that Betty White and I are at least on the same page with regard to Obama and our profound, even primal need to see him naked.

Picture of the Day

Siouxsie recently played the Koko Club in Camden, London, but you guys wouldn't know that because you have no book learnin'. You're proud of your ignorance, like an Ohio mob just leaving a Palin speech. You are also elitists, somehow. How do you live with yourselves?

Anyway, it's been way too long since we've seen Ms. Sioux dressed as a tarantula. Way too long. And though I was really digging the harlequin outfit she's been strutting around in all year, I do think it was time for something else. She made the right decision. This is a wardrobe change we can believe in.

Now, Siouxsie, could you please do something about Sarah Palin?

Camille Paglia is Hilarious

Some of you may need a refresher on who Camille Paglia is. It's been a while since she came out with her signature book Sexual Personae, which posited that "the history of western civilization has been a constant struggle between ... two
impulses, an unending tennis match between cold, Apollonian categorization and Dionysian lust and chaos.'' Exactly, Camille. Wait, what?

As the late great Texan Molly Ivins said when her editor asked her to write about Ms. Paglia, "And who the hell might
she be?'' Yes, our Camille has not been hogging the spotlight for quite a while, not since the Democratic primary, when, as a famous Hillary-hater, she wrote an article for the UK's Telegraph (in her own blood!) entitled "Why Women Shouldn't Vote for Hillary Clinton" in which she called Senator Clinton "frumpy, stumpy, and myopic" (sounds like the name of a great cartoon, maybe a sequel to Ren and Stimpy?). Because it's totally legitimate to vote for someone based on their looks.

Anyway, the lesbian noob is sure back with a bang. In a recent Salon piece that is just teeming with classic Camille, especially for anyone that is familiar with her oeuvre (such an elitist word), she wets herself over Sarah Palin the way she used to over Madonna (before the reliably Erotic one had the nerve to get old; Camille likes her powerful women young and smooth), calling her an "Amazon Warrior". Yes. That. More hilarious, she says she doesn’t think of sex when she sees Palin. Riiiiight. Because there’s so much else going on there. Also, she brings up this whole Xena fantasy thing in the context of Ms. Palin's possibly being of Native American ancestry. Don’t you wish Camille would just cut the crap and quit justifying her wet panties with stoopid, tired fantasy tropes? Camille, you've obviously got a ladyboner. Just say you want her in your bed because she wears fuck-me boots, talks tough, and looks like a hot Cinemax heroine. (You can be that common.) Then move on. Give us a break.

But the dumbest thing Camille does in her ode to Dr. Palin is her defense of Palin’s English speaking abilities:

As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English — beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.


Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse — which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.

Yes, Sarah Palin is…..syncopated. Her discourse has……structure. She’s answering policy questions with iambic pentameter. She’s a poet, and she’s responding to the snooty media in the only way she knows how: free-flowing verse.

Also, that dump my cat just took in the litter box? Pure milk chocolate. Mmmmmmm.

Laydeez I Love: Donna Brazil

Oh, Donna. How you move me. Not only do you have the coolest name in politics (it just rolls off the tongue), but you really come through when your public needs you. I was feeling pretty angry and low on Monday after the Grand Wizardress of the GOP, Sarah Palin, held a bunch of Klan rallies over the weekend encouraging all her angry followers to act on their illogical hatred of the smart black guy running against her and her dangerous and aggressively stupid grandpa. No doubt Donna, the best Democratic strategist there ever was, was angry too. But look at her in this clip, sitting on a panel at the New Yorker festival, classing up the joint with her homespun wisdom and flashes of earthy anger at the direction this election has taken.

You made my day, Ms. Brazil, and I love you for it. I love your power suits. I love your food metaphors. I love your freaking gorgeous silver hair. I love your steadiness in the face of the gathering retard storm swelling around you.

And sometime soon, somehow, somewhere, I want you to allow yourself the privilege of rolling up those sleeves, cracking those stiff knuckles, winding up that powerful forearm, and smacking the living sh*t out of that uppity flaming c*nt pretending to be a real vice presidential candidate. You've earned it.

Oh Shut Up, Cindy

Cindy McCain, shut the f**k up, please. Nobody cares. Barack Obama has "waged the dirtiest campaign in American history" you say? Riiiiight.

Aren't there some poor legless orphans you should be stealing medication from? Recipes to steal and claim as your own? Yeah, go do that.

Linguistix Lesson: Is Sarah Palin a B*tch or an A**hole?

Readers, this is a question that has been plaguing me ever since I first had the impulse to call Sarah Palin an expletive, which, let's face it, was not long after hearing that stupid "lipstick" joke at the Republican Convention. But that first impulse was, if I were being honest, utterly childish and completely lacking any reasonable defense. I hated her because she seemed like the architypal "mean girl" who was getting rewarded by an appreciative crowd simply for being good looking and hateful. And, at that moment, I called her a "f**king b*tch." It seemed the most appropriate thing to call her.

But I soon questioned whether or not it was kosher to keep calling her that in public, loudly, what with the backlash against the media for its supposed sexism and the "angry left" piling onto the poor dumb woman. So: Bitch--is it sexist? God knows I don't want to be seen as that. Some of my best friends are b*tches. Total b*tches. F**king b*tches, even. But, as a gay man, I've always held that it is my God-given right to use this word in any way I feel is necessary, be it toward a chick or a dude. So this hesitation to use the word was new territory for me. Hillary Clinton was always a b*tch, in my opinion, often in a good way. (As Tina Fey said last spring, "B*tches get things done."). Joe Lieberman? Total b*tch, n a bad way. Robert Novak: dicky b*tch.

But besides the whole question of sexism (which I got over pretty quickly), word choice is important, especially in political campaigns, and I must wonder: does "b*tch" go far enough in conveying the utter nastiness of the person in question? Is it too playful, too pedestrian, too much of a compliment? Giuliani isn’t a b*tch. Romney isn’t a b*tch. Rove isn’t a b*tch. McCain certainly isn’t a b*tch. These guys are obviously full-on douchebag f*cktards. So why should Palin be saddled with such a tepid epithet? Even the word “f**king” in front of it doesn’t do the job.

With her recent debate performance (and, speaking of word choice, there is no more appropriate word for that pitiful display than "performance") during which she winked at the camera at least four times, flirting with the country like an Applebee’s waitress, and totally avoided answering any questions substantively, I realized once and for all that the word b*tch just doesn’t cut it. At the very least, she’s an a**hole. At the very least.

So it's decided. Palin is an a**hole. Right? But then she went and, out on the stump, started talking about Obama’s (tenuous) connection to 60s radical William Ayers and the hilarious religious comedian Jeremiah Wright, breathtakingly oblivious to her own questionable associations (the Alaskan Independence Party, for one; a Jews For Jesus religious maniac for another). She knows her questionable associations don't matter, because they're not affiliated with scary black folks. Her utilization of this convenient double standard makes her a f**king a**hole. (Again, at the least.)

So, case closed. Linguistics lesson over. But wait. Then yesterday Palin went further, saying that Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and used racially tinged language to imply his “otherness” because she and McCain are desperate losers who have absolutely no new ideas. So how does one improve on the “f**king a**hole” moniker when pressed to do so by Gwen Ifill?

I posed this question to a (female!) friend of mine and in answering she didn’t skip a beat. “Palin” she said, “is neither a f**king a**hole nor a f**king b*tch. She’s a flaming c*nt.”

"Damn," I thought. "Why is my friend such a sexist b*tch?"

A Vice Presidential Debate Reaction in Song

Golly gosh darn it, you guys, did Sarah Palin's aggressive and relentless folksy charm in the debate last night kinda make ya wanna claw your eyes out, jab rusty nails into your ears, and projectile vomit all at once? You betcha! Jeepers, did she even answer a single question, d'ya think? Or, holy cow, did she just say whatever her notecards had written on them regardless of the question, boy howdy? Git 'er done, Sarah!

Another woman with an undeniable folksy charm is Siouxsie Sioux, doggone it, from the 52nd state of the Banshees. Here she performs the song "Eve White/Eve Black" in 1983 and pretty much sums up my emotional state after sitting through the twittering of Palin's eyelashes for two hours or whatever last night.

Why is Sarah Palin afraid to debate Siouxsie Sioux?

Jukebox: Saint Etienne

This one goes out to all of you out there who will spend the entire day slowly and repeatedly dry heaving at the thought that Sarah Palin is actually going to pull it off at the debate tonight. (It could so happen!) You need succor, I know. Because I do too. That's where Saint Etienne come in. This London trio has been making blissed out pop for over 15 years now, so they know what they're doing. They released their first three albums during the God-awful grunge era of the early '90s. Yes, while hordes of unwashed whiny American doods were shitting out awful songs like "Jeremy" and "Plush" and Courtney Love was publicly menstruating all over her baby doll dresses, Saint Etienne were busy being slick and classy, releasing polished singles like this one, "You're in a Bad Way," from their second record So Tough.

So don't worry. Sarah Cracknell and her back-up dancers are here to help. And I reserve the right to bring them back tomorrow, depending on how things go tonight.

Why Does Germany's Der Spiegel Hate the Freedom Agenda?

Good news for all you America-haters out there. Der Spiegel has a pretty depressing article about the flatlining of American supremacy, yay! Entitled "The End of Arrogance" (yeah right; Germans are so naive), it starts by saying George W. Bush is a tired little monkey with no clout or shit to throw around and then sets out a blistering indictment of every single thing the United States has done wrong in the recent past, according to representatives of every other country on the planet. Also, it details how much every single person at the United Nations just haaaaaaaates George Bush. Oh, also, Asia will eventually swallow America whole, so get out those English-to-Chinese dictionaries, flunkies.

Obviously, it's a very long article.


George W. Bush is adorable when he's exhausted and impotent.