Wish I was a fly on the wall

for…

entrepreneurs crafting menacing hip-hop with the perfect booming beat in a New Jersey basement during a dirty snowstorm. Indie-rockers, bug-bitten and sad, pouring their hearts out on an unseasonably warm night in a cobbled-together studio with threadbare sofabeds and used shag carpet smelling of mold and feet. A ‘70s funk big band with sexy backup singers and all those trumpets, oozing libido and humid sensuality in a cramped, makeshift recording space in someone’s dingy apartment above a liquor store. A simple, painfully universal country tune made by cotton-picking good old boys in under five minutes at a storefront Southern hit factory during the Depression. A bouncy, happy, sloppy pop song recorded by three handsome punk rockers in a gargantuan zillion-track fortress under the watchful eyes of a manager, a publicist, a producer, an A&R rep, a studio engineer, a tour manager, two roadies, a caterer, and their girlfriends. An emotionally troubled hermit and his painfully shy best friend working out their demons on an 8-track in mom’s basement.

Early-grave angels like Jeff Buckley, calling the spirit in the tense moments immediately prior to creating a sound recording they know will make their fans see God

Creating art among other artists, in rooms specially made for creating art, with other artists close by, doing the same thing.

All mod cons. City streets. Underground clubs. Generator shows at the BART station. Bluegrass and reggae festivals in Golden Gate Park. Saxophone-tooting street performers in Union Square. Sunday afternoon punk shows at Thee Parkside. Thundering ragga-jungle warehouse-party all-nighters at the 5lowershop.

New World Music.

Sigh.

This is what people did when they used to talk to each other face to face. They usually ended up singing and banging on things. Some of them were very good at it.

This would explain a LOT

Something else I learned from Journey of Man:

When a baby is born … the X chromosomes get mixed together every time they’re passed along. Girls get one X from Mom and one X from Dad. Therefore, the marker with which scientists would’ve been able to trace the matrilineal line geneologically back to the beginning of creation is muddled in the DNA soup. They can’t find who the original mother is — only the original father, the ancient male in Namibia from whom every human on the planet is descended.

But Y chromosomes — girls are XX and boys are XY if yall can’t remember — Y chromosomes are passed from father to son UNCHANGED. Throughout the generations. This is how they found out we’re all from Namibia.

Again: Y chromosomes are passed from father to son UNCHANGED. The X is the variable. The Y is the constant. Not sure how all men on Earth don’t all have the same Y and all look the same, but it’s something like that.

Stuff makes a tiny bit more sense now.

Bible stories about ruthless leaders killing the first-born male of every household in rival kingdoms …

God Himself even threatening the same thing …

The near-worldwide cultural importance males place on bearing a son instead of a daughter …

Why men feel they have a say in women’s sex lives and reproductive rights, and why most everywhere they control it with a chokehold combination of religion and force …

All the way to the old standby headline ‘MAN KILLS WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN BEFORE TURNING GUN ON HIMSELF IN A CROWDED 7-11 PARKING LOT’ …

Yeah.

I guess men are genetically encoded to feel protective of their own blood relatives for a slightly different reason than women are.

I have no point or proclamation. No emotions to superimpose upon this fact-find I stumbled across. Just a profound sense of eureka.

… and each of them harbored their own agenda. The end

——

“That same night I will pass through Egypt and kill the first-born son in every family and the first-born male of all animals. I am the LORD, and I will punish the gods of Egypt. The blood on the houses will show me where you live, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. Then you won’t be bothered by the terrible disasters I will bring on Egypt”. -Exodus 12: 13

p.s. more about the X.

I went down on chem trails (again)

Sept. 29, 007
Black Rock City

Sicky. Cough cough: The sound of gravel. Sweating repeatedly through the sheets as I sleep for 24 hours in a row. Shiver shiver shiver. Lung butter and nose emissions the horrifically unnatural color of a hairstylist’s polyester pants in the ‘60s.

I’m not the only one, by any means. I’ve lost my voice too so can’t really wander around and see yet if my and Russ’s intuitions are correct. But we remember this from 2002. The “monkey pox” was slightly different then — more like spewing out both ends, along with the shivering and sleeping and all — but it “feels” the same. Like they’re changing it up a little every time, just to see what happens.

It always comes when they spray the chem trails.

Everyone in the DPW got sick in 2002. Everyone — even those who never get sick. And again in a couple other cleanup years, I hear. Some go down multiple times. In 2002 we thought we’d just rapid-cycled a bug or two amongst ourselves — I mean, we live in insanely close quarters. Playa restoration for Burning Man is half labor camp and half summer camp for a bunch of hard-drinking, hard-living, forward-thinking misfits.

What freaked me out was finding in 2002 that all of Gerlach and nearby Empire had ALSO gotten sick. With the same thing.

Even on tour with Cyclecide — that’s living on a bus with a dozen dirty bike rodeo klowns for 2-3 months in a row — does “group sickness” never behave this way. Not this violently.

Before yall dismiss me, take a look at this picture and ask yourself: Is this a cloud?

Does God make Xes in the sky above a community’s head when He (of course “He,” right?) disapproves of its sinful behavior?

Do these Xes then slowly fan out to cast a disapproving glare of Heavenly sun-blocking cotton where at breakfast there was not a cloud in the sky? (Is it angel’s hair?)

This is where you say: Silly goose, you’re a paranoid survivalist freak. Commercial planes cross the Black Rock Desert all the time. With such frequency that they make humongous Xes in the sky before their con trails — relatively harmless substances the airlines dump out of their fuselages while they fly — fade away? Yep … lotsa people on their way from Sacramento to Salt Lake City. So much they criss-cross the second largest mass of flat land on Earth at least four times an hour.

Well, do they fly over this particular area of land at around 4am? All together, in FORMATION?

Let me ask you this: Don’t you think the people who control the air — that would be the people who lie to you, invade your privacy, and attack sovereign nations under false pretenses, all for their own best (monetary) interests at heart — also CONTROL THE AIR?

Chem trails don’t always have monkey pox in them. I’m not saying that. Sometimes I think they’re just cloud-seeding, and that global warming is already way worse than anyone in the government wants us to know. The best case scenario I can think of is that sometimes they release small doses of chemical-warfare liquids in order to immunize us for when everyone who hates us tries to attack. But I think that’s giving them too much credit.

My only hope is that they’re training us (part- and full-time) desert rats to morph into some sort of warrior class, resistant to disease and ready to fight when the shit hits the fan. This is a fairy tale I tell myself to counteract the fact that our current administration is only fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan because their buddies in the weapons and oil industries don’t want to lose control, don’t want to give that money to someone else, and don’t want America to turn into an anarchic, murder-happy society too close to the Mad Max series for everyone’s comfort.

Then nobody would go shopping.

—–

Yesterday, Russ and Hollis were cruising out to the hot springs when they saw a creepy, governmental-khaki, shiny-new truck with two collared-shirt dudes inside and a GIANT 20-foot antenna in the truck bed. Russ and Hollis — who are also quite aware of the unfathomably weird things that happen out here — put on their sunglasses, hoods, and game faces and sat still. The other truck, knowing they’d been spotted, pulled up and asked “Is this the way to Frog Pond?” — the same way if you’d found them broken into your house in the middle of the night and they asked “Is Mike home? Oh uh, I must have the wrong address.”

Then they accepted the directions, pulled over to Frog, didn’t go in, and quickly assed out of there and on back across the playa to the highway.

Yes, they could’ve been rocket guys or some other type of nerd. But both Russ and Hollis said that was NOT what was going on. Either those men were listening to us or they were taking readings.

Earlier that day, an enormous black military helicopter flew 40 feet above the MOOP line, across the desert floor, and back up to the airbase in Winnemucca.

Out here, you know when something doesn’t sit right. It’s not fantasy — your intuition turns up to eleven when you come to a flat space the size of Delaware with no buildings or cars or people around. You just know things, even when someone is in your face telling you the exact opposite. Ask anyone who’s ever worked setup or cleanup for Burning Man.

Intuition. Something we as humans have lost among the cacophony of modern living. Something we might should try to find ways to get back.

—–

Some locals say it’s aluminum up in there. That they’re killing us, and/or dumbing us down. I’m not sure about that … but one summed it up thusly: “The government is f**king with us. It’s like the Tuskegee Experiment all over again.”

I’m not into this sort of thing as a rule. I don’t believe many of the “conspiracy facts” my friend Jesse Wack believes. I just always want to see behind the curtain. So I look. And I see them — the chem trails — out here and back at home in the BayviewSF, and everywhere else in America I’ve been. I’ve heard the planes, seen the planes, and felt the sticky film on my van the morning after some occasions when they’ve crossed. And now I’ve personally gotten the monkey pox TWO TIMES.

Everything important I have come to believe in my time on this planet does not blindly follow people or movements or religions or books or Websites — it comes from observing and gathering empirical evidence. And maybe it is just a bug this time, but we’ll see how many people in Gerlach and Empire report to us about having the monkey pox again.

I think this is pretty important. It’s more likely to be true than not, given the other things our American government has done to its own people in the past century.

I think if you don’t think so, you should look up.

technical difficulties

Please stand by.

Someone knocked over my computer in the Crack Rock last night after accidentally swallowing too much alcohol. My DJ set came to an abrupt end, just at the start of the panic attack. I didn’t lose any data but now the thing won’t close and the charger doesn’t work, so I’ve only got 7 minutes left on my battery. I’d talk more about it but I lost my voice (again) singing along to Journey with everyone.

It was a full moon. That’s all I think I can say about the party without getting killed.

Gerlach High School girls’ volleyball game tonight. DPW is all invited. We’re not allowed to cuss or bring booze but I think it’ll be pretty awesome anyway.

To their credit

No wonder men are so disengaged. Historically, I mean. What, you want to talk about the tea cozy you knitted today when I’ve just blown four men’s heads apart with a musket? Seriously. All I want to do is have some fun. Take off all 14 of your skirts and that ridiculous underwear and bend over, or I’ll find someone else who will.

Burning Man is the new punk (and not in a good way)

August 8, 007
SF bunker

I had no college radio growing up, no cable TV, no computers. My intake of popular culture remained so tightly regulated all the way through late high school that the only gossip I knew of punk rock had been repeated by my parents and their friends, usually after viewing some sensationalistic prime-time news special about how uncontrollable youths in California or Manhattan had grown bored with life and started to and dance angularly while bumping into each other — or to cannibalize babies, depending on the individual’s interpretation of the news story.

Also, everyone at my church thought anyone who would name their band the Dead Kennedys had to be in league with Beelzebub. Also, the handsome, rebellious older son of my mother’s teacher friend at school had been suspended for a week for writing ‘TOO DRUNK TO FUCK’ on the side of his high-top Converse shoe. That’s all I knew about punk.

lil’ angry jello… awww.

The blues is the blues. Not aggressive so much as resigned. Punk rock was the first Western music genre (well, second after Wagnerian opera) to manifest in both lyric and tone the malaise humanity has felt ever since our knuckles scraped the ground, in addition to the blind rage which inevitably lines the underside of any hypocritical, capitalistic society. Punks sang with total fucking honesty and outright aggression, just to stoke people into reacting.

They named their bands after the worst things with which humanity had blighted the earth: The Germs, the Exploited, the Murderers, VKTMS, Agent Orange, Misfits, the Damned, the Dictators, Gang Green, the Skids, the Dead Kennedys, Suicide, Television. Fear didn’t really “destroy the family” as they said — Lee Ving just shouted the words over and over (“We Destroy the Family”) to see what would happen.

He wasn’t screaming about his own apathy as much as everyone else’s. About apathy and desensitization as necessary weapons in an awful world. Along with his shit-kicking peers, Lee Ving was the town crier rudely pointing out a breach in security that needs fixing. The cartoon villian embodying evil and callousness, who forces the bystander to either do something about him or run the other way.

Suddenly, supposedly Satanic bands like KISS meant nothing. Punk’s superheroes were regular people experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion. Keep on the sunny side? No way. Reagan was in office. Too much fucked up shit was going on. Punk rock was merely saying what everybody else was thinking — so naturally, the status quo concentrated not on the social ills depicted in song, but on killing the messenger.

Now, the funny thing is, punk is a commodity. A lifeless echo of all that rage and nihilism. Sure, every three or four years I buy a piece of clothing on sale at Hot Topic too — but … well, they say that once the fashion aspect of any subculture has overcome the meaning behind it, it’s dead.

I for one predict furry legwarmers, blinky LED-light clothing, and watered-down Mad Max attire will be lining the racks at Hot Topic within the next few years…

Noooo… Kill them…

Love in prison

Love writes letters. Love has excellent penmanship. Love is in federal prison.

Love is the homeless guy who found my phone on the street not too long ago and returned it to me. I’ve been looking for him when the bus rolls by the convenience store where we met, but he hasn’t been there. Now I know why.

I’ve got a P.O. box, so no mail ever comes to me at my house. But a letter arrived in the post the other day. My housemate delivered it in the kitchen as I stood at the stove and made Hobo Crack. I looked at the return address.

“What’s CSP – S.Q.’?” I asked her.

“Baby,” she said. “That’s San Quentin.”

Who the hell? I know my share of ex-petty ex-criminals … but none of them are in prison right now. Are they?

It was Love. Love is in San Quentin.

Love remembered my address from when I told it to him when he said he’d deliver my phone after finding it. I thought better of this plan and met him at the convenience store. And now he knows my address. Scary, a little. But I’ve never had a pen pal, and as a friend said about all this: Maybe it’s another piece in some weird puzzle.

Hopefully he won’t mind if I reprint some of it here. He is a writer, after all.

I think I’ll go see him. I’ve never visited someone in prison before.

San Quentin? Yeesh.

July 2, 2007
7:45 p.m.

Summer … (indeed you are…),

As you continue to live the magic of life, I hope each separate contentment will make your dreams come true. I pray my letter reaches you at a period where all is well with life … and you have not lost your phone again.

I was happy to be a part of something right and well in the quest to return your phone. Every outcome of troubles ahead may not be as rewarding, but always give your best … and learn your lessons well.

Before I continue, I hope and pray you don’t mind my writing to you from dire straights [sic], but remember most of all this unfortunate circumstance does not define who I am, what I believe, or what I will continue to achieve with life.

Just as a matter of information I like to write letters, as well as short stories and poems relative to my life experience. Currently I have 14 writings published in the book called Only the Dead Can Kill. The title is expressive of how we as human beings let or allow past negative happenings rule and/or dictate our lives, and we don’t have to. The book is currently available at Barnes and Noble, as well as on the internet (I don’t know the web-site). The auther [sic] who compiled and collected all the writings from many different poets and artists is Margo Perin (who also has another book published, on a national level, about mother-daughter relationships titled “How I Learned to Cook.”)

Please know I am accountable for my actions and I believe in paying my dues. Even though I won’t be here for a long period of time, I’d appreciate hearing from you until “I’ll see you in the ‘hood.” If you don’t have time I’ll respectfully understand. Until then, I’ve reached that area of life where I’m tired of living the collision of self-destruction and I am more than ready to commit not just to making new decisions, but rather I have decided to adhere to the truth of realistic commitment to a more rewarding life.

In the meantime, between time … please take care of yourself. Keep track of your phone and don’t make your mother worry.

In music time,
Love

ooooo, Bohemian Grove

July 20, 007
NorCal

Right now, just an hour and 15 minutes North of my house, the richest men on the planet are partying with a whole lot of the world’s leaders.

It’s the legendary two-week, midsummer, all-male, all-powerful campout at Bohemian Grove. Homeland Security has stepped up in the tiny towns of Guerneville and Monte Rio, where nobody ever wears a suit and tie. Clint Eastwood flew in on his private helicopter yesterday. Paranoid tweakers are running to their basements to re-tape the tin foil on the walls and send Mayday signals over ham radios.

Most years, one of the artists hired to entertain the Bohemian Club gathering plays a show in Monte Rio at the park for the Little People in town. It’s a nice annual gift from the men who run the planet to the hamlets they fly over on their way to their own square and pampered version of Burning Man.

They even immolate an owl. They call it the “Cremation of Care.” And like frat boys, this mensclub conducts all manner of bizarre rituals that are probably far less interesting than the purported daisy-chain robe party and Satanic abortions one hears about. Mainly they just chill out in the redwoods.

I know a performer who was hired to do his act for all the pasty white dudes up there a couple years back at their massive outdoor amphitheatre (featuring the second-largest pipe organ in the world). He went fishing with Henry Kissinger and smoked some of Steve Miller’s homegrown. He gave me a matchbox from the campout, glossy red, embossed simply in gold with the words “Bohemian Club.” I still have it.

Once, while dining at the Russian River Pub on River Road, I met two chefs who had flown in from four-star restaurants in other cities to cook for the guys who decide how resources are fought over and lives are lost.

They couldn’t recount any strange rituals or how-we’ll-destroy-the-world seminars, since staff is strictly sequestered from most social activity — but they did talk about the hand scan they needed to gain entry to their jobs each morning.

Hand scan, yall. How Blade Runner is that?

Earlier, they had served pancakes to our governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. Was he nice?, I asked. I dunno, the dude said. We’re not allowed to look them in the eye.

There are a few quiet protests at the gate, but no black-block demonstrations, no media infestations, no righteous liberal town meetings. Hardly even any complaining — mostly just a Zen-like resignation to the Way Things Are. Why? Well, whether because of the main crops up there (wine and weed) or the druggily pastoral landscapes, the people of West County are more laid back than a collapsed folding chair.

Folks in Northern California tend to live and let live, and to lead by example — policies the highly influential men vacationing in their area might do well to heed more often.

I mean hey, this is America. Even the people who engage in un-winnable wars with economically downtrodden countries to make money off the pain and suffering of others — and their movie-star friends — should be able to enjoy their inalienable right to relax and forget about their worries and decide which $30,000 bottle of wine they’re going to drink with dinner in peace.

Dammit. I wanna see a hand-scan machine in real life.

(goes back to business as usual)

O, to be punk like colonialists

Back in the days of our country’s revolution, England’s government officials tried to instate levies like the Stamp Act and the Townshend Act to rein in the colonies before they got too big for their britches. In addition to plenty of letter-writing and newspaper-promulgating and speech-giving, colonialists responded with other badass maneuvers: They sacrificed and made do with locally-produced goods. They wore homespun clothing and found substitutes for tea. They preferred to leave their houses unpainted to purchasing paint, or any other goods, floated over from the other side of the pond.

England also granted the East India Tea Company a parliament-sanctioned monopoly on importing tea to the Americas, thereby stopping up the supply of England’s favorite drug and temporarily destroying free trade in that arena. So at the world’s most famous tea party, Samuel Adams and his merry band of homeboys dressed like Mohawks, boarded the ship in the night, and dumped the offending leaves into the Boston Harbor.

These were only some of the civil-rebellion events that led up to the revolutionary war.

Samuel Adams in particular campaigned tirelessly to disabuse people of the notion that their social and political “superiors” were anything of the sort. He did all he could to make the common people aware of their own power and importance, granted both in American law and in human nature. Thus, he aimed to propel his new country-mates to organized acts of democracy and rights-standing-up-for, all the time, forever.

(One wonders why there hasn’t been an action movie made starring Bruce Willis as Samuel Adams. A real shoot-’em-up where all the historical facts are re-arranged for dramatic purposes and little tiny whale-oil lamps cause barn-levelling explosions. Hey, I’d watch it.)

i got my betsey ross clan of the cave bear deadwood hooker outfit, where’s yours?

Nowadays, the enemy is not asking for money from all the way overseas or standing around in red coats. So it might seem harder for the “little people” to do these things in the present day, to pinpoint problems and invoke rights and rabble-rouse and and constantly claim and reclaim what it means to be an American. Or maybe it IS easy to do those things, but it just feels cliche. Or like the country’s gotten too big for us to matter individually any more.

Well, the government’s gotten too big to have a heart.

So in the interest of our founders’ ideas about a non-interfering government — one which now resembles the Reichstag more than the free-wheeling DIYers of old — rejecting the capitalistic lifestyle, making do with local products, and riding bicycles more often seems like a good start.

do it for America, and to needlessly burn propane cuz it’s pretty

It’s hard to feel patriotic if you think at all for yourself. Some say George W.’s cousin was in charge of security for the World Trade Center when the towers came down, and that if you watch the video in slow motion you can see the controlled-demo squibs exploding in succession. And Building 7, the rumored HQ of lotsa bad shit, collapsed later that day — when a plane hadn’t even hit it. Whether or not that’s all true, it doesn’t make people want to wave the stars and stripes around when they live under a duplicitous, sanctimonious, authoritarian, morally bereft regime I personally wouldn’t put anything past.

Yep. America’s pretty bad ass. But if the wolves within the White House right now were the husband in a film, and the American people were the wife, the movie would be a Lifetime Channel tearjerker about domestic abuse and mental cruelty and lying to your spouse … and the audience — the world — would be begging for Farrah Fawcett to set the bed on fire.

And if any government official is reading this, leave me alone. I’m not asking anyone to do anything violent. Poor artists who like to rant can do so, because this is the United States of Kiss My Ass.

As long as we take precautions not to hurt anybody else or damage their things, we can say and write and paint and draw and sing and create and destroy and carry a poster around about whatever we want.

For the moment.

Sodom and Gomorrah; Pride and prejudice

June 27, 007
Yay Area

Several polyamorous people currently orbit my world at the moment.

One homey from the wayback resides in the in-law apartment of his five-year girlfriend’s house, where she lives with her agreeable husband and child. One couple opened up their monogamous relationship after 2 years and regularly hosts kinky parties and rope-tying classes. One snagged a new part-time boyfriend, who has a full-time girlfriend, who has a part-time girlfriend, who has a full-time boyfriend. One is finally dating the first non-bisexual man she’s been with in a decade, and wondering if she herself will now be able to date around. Then there’s those nasty, beautiful, honk-if-you’re-horny Porn Clowns.

Polyamory! Woo, spread the germs! I’ll have the staph with a side of herpes

And let’s not forget the gay one who, at Pride last weekend, theatrically banged his two (committed) boyfriends in a hallway full of men fucking, while several other single men looked on and pleased themselves. He said the best moment of Pride (besides that one) was wandering into a hotel room at the pool party to find two incredibly attractive women — one Amy Winehouse clone and one winsome blond-rocker chick — banging each other while couples of various down-south anatomies made out all around them. The Amy Winehouse one actually almost made my gay-man friend hot for women for a second there, he said, when she looked up from what she was doing, straight at him, and winked.

While I as a Southern girl lean more toward standard dating fare, I’m like Elizabeth Edwards — it makes no difference to me, if it’s all consensual. No difference at all what you stick where, inside of who and in front of who. In fact, it’s fun to hear about people exploring themselves and others that openly. Weirds me out sometimes, but other than that, I say do as thou wilt and harm no-one. (Wait, isn’t that what the pagans say? Am I going to be burned at the stake now with all the other degenerates?…)

I didn’t go to Pride this year, but have been witness in the past to the outpouring of love in all directions — thoroughly amazed and overjoyed at the multicolored, drum-beating love of a million people finally being able to be exactly who they are and shout it to the hilltops on their BirthGay.

That kind of behavior scares the fuck out of some people.

Yes, in other American towns where The Gay might try to display their pink triangle — originally a Nazi emblem, it’s worth pointing out — on the side of a dry grassy mountain … well, the judge would probably let the arsonists off easy. But this is the World Capital of Gay, and it’s rad. Once, while hosting a friend from Germany, I took a walk with her through the Castro, and the first time she saw two men greet and make out in the open on the street, she literally burst into tears of joy.

Obvious Statement of the Day: It’s not like this everywhere.

What about a couple hours southeast of the Bay, where the drunk, just-released prisoner at the bullfight in rural California attacked a straight but male friend of mine on the dance floor for being too effeminate in his movements — for “tryin’ to make [the prisoner] gay” just by existing? … That’s some hard-core gay-makin’, if a straight man can work another “straight” convict up enough to make him “angry” enough to break parole.

There’s also the much darker story — whispered DPW lore or buried truth? — about the time at Burning Man when the perimeter guards caught a few guys trying to sneak through the outer fence, crawling on their bellies all military-style, dressed entirely in nighttime camo and ski masks, armed to the teeth with guns and explosives. The rumor states that for hours, Gate crew detained these guys and sort of interrogated them with the authorities, but they refused to say word one about why they were there. Since it was Nevada and the Soldiers of Fortune hadn’t done anything yet except try to sneak into the event with their personal caches of scarily sophisticated weaponry, the Gate crew had to let them go.

So. Sodom and Gomorrah, they say. San Francisco — and Black Rock City, by extension: Teeming buckets o’ sin.

I’ll be a warrior for Christ, the Soldiers of Fortune think. Or Allah, or whoever other dude probably never commanded me to kill fags in the first place, but I’ll just skip the research and tell myself he did cuz really, I just hate that I want to fuc– er, LOVE TO KILL fags. GOD HATES FAGS. He told me so. Just like Son of Sam’s dog.

Sodom and Gomorrah. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase in church growing up — usually paired with the words “San” and “Francisco” — I’d have collected enough money to build my own GOD LOVES FAGS float at the Pride parade. Shit man, the Yay Area is the place where the creative, sensitive, misunderstood, and picked-on outcasts of America (and the planet) come to escape the tyranny of oppressive xenophobia. Something about all that stuff makes the people here pretty nice and open.

My friend, the Mayor of Awesometown, actually HAS researched the Bible. He’s a known Jew who also swings “that way,” so he’s studied heavily on what actually went down in those twin cities of despicability:

Sodom and Gomorrah had spiraled out of control. Not with gay-ness, but with lawlessness. Complete and utter chaos. Not the good kind. Ttotal disregard for human life. So God sent two angels to Sodom to talk to Lot, who was supposedly the last good man in Sodom.

Lot welcomed the angels into his home, and in the night, the men of the city surrounded the house and demanded Lot send the strangers out so the men could rape them. Fresh meat!, they cried. Give it over! … Lot refused. Funnily enough, he even offered his DAUGHTERS in place of the strangers so the crowd could rape THEM instead.

Don’t even get me started on that shit or I’ll get WAY off-topic.

So, the Mayor says, the real sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality, brutality, and the betrayal of strangers’ trust. Wolves preying on sheep. God didn’t take kindly to his angels being cornered by a wild pack of predators, so he raised Lot and his family up on out of there and then smote the fuck out of everyone else.

So the Christians who say San Francisco is the next Sodom and Gomorrah, doomed to be the first to get smote — they don’t really read stuff so much as they listen to the preacher’s hearsay and interpret it through a thick layer of their own sexual discomfort.

But be that as it may, Otto once told me the best time to attack the enemy was at pre-dawn — when they’re asleep, drunk, or otherwise partied out.

Sex and play are vulnerable states. So is the debauchery of wine, pharmaceuticals, and song. Thus, within our explorations, it might do us well to remember that while good and self-realized people are busy enjoying life and trying not to harm anyone … evil, petty, insecure, angry people are lurking, watching jealously in the dark, plotting ways to take advantage of the big-hearted and unsuspecting.

So I’m kinda thinking maybe we COULD be doomed unless the peaceful degenerates start learning how to strap up more.

No, the OTHER kind of strapping up. See? This is what I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter, people. Pay attention. Lesser beings want you dead.

(Wow, my brain just got really dark back there. Sorry about the bring-down. I think I need to eat some ice cream and watch Andy Kaufman videos.)

This is your brain on a legal, readily available substance

June 25, 007
Yay Area

I’m not racist against booze or anything. In fact I think it’s written somewhere in the Cyclecide Bike Rodeo bylaws that members aren’t allowed to talk smack about fermented beverages. But some friends and I were discussing public health issues over the weekend, and this topic came up.

Remember those “This Is Your Brain On Drugs” commercials with the egg and the frying pan? As stupid as they were, they kind of worked. At least on all the kids I knew growing up. Between public service announcements like that and a stiflingly restrictive Southern Baptist upbringing, we stayed pretty innocent until pretty late.

On the other hand, there is an ugly truth to alcohol that is never told in the media. Never. Why? I’d guess because unlike your local Bolivian marching powder salesman or mushroom dealer, alcohol companies buy metric shit-tons of advertising space.

Drunk-driving accidents are listed off as rote in the news, but other than that, alcohol is a land where strikingly gorgeous women in low-cut clothing flirt heavily, giggling at everything you say with straws cocked seductively in their laser-whitened teeth. Two girls for every boy.

Nobody shows the “after” picture, where the dude in the background’s got his face in the toilet and his pants around his ankles, horfing up his dinner while shitting uncontrollably on the tile floor and drunk-dialing his ex-girlfriend from college. Or one of the laser-teeth ladies blacking out and distributing messy blowjobs backstage while her cleavage-heavy companion falls off her barstool unconscious, and the security guard trying to kick her out reaches to help her and accidentally grabs her boob, and the guy who’s been trying to slurrily hit on her all night punches the security guard in the neck, and it all degenerates into a pile of broken bones and vomit.

Not that that happens every time. But I’ve been a bartender for a decade.

I’d watch the hell out of that commercial.