JOHN

You know it's going to be a good day when you wake up, look at your cellphone and see that your boyfriend has sent you this picture message. It's John Waters. John Waters is the hideous, gay love of my life. More John Waters:



John made the original Hairspray, back when general audiences weren't excited to have transvestites in the movies.

www.eji.org : Equal Justice Initiative

That's www.eji.org. Check it out.

Savannah is ...

... where I've been staying for the past two days and the murder capital of the American south. My Mom relayed that factoid to me after she read it in Zagats ... just kidding: She relayed it trying to scare me out of lonely roaming. She forwarded me an email roughly a week ago about serial killers. I have developed a habit of giving rides to harmless-looking strangers, but it's safe because each stranger only qualifies for the ride by promising to have no intentions of robbing or assaulting me. So far, three out of three strangers have been honest about having no pernicious intentions. The last stranger to ask for a ride looked 25 and was very pregnant, hot, sweating and tired; she had just finished meeting her probation officer, and she asked for a ride so she wouldn't have to walk the two miles to her house in 95 degree heat: How could I refuse? I made the mistake of telling my Mom about the incident and she lectured and then sent the email I started this side-story about: The message warned about serial killers pretending to be injured and appealing for the help of a trusting individual, all as a trap to get said individual into his (or, less often, her) car and drive the about-to-be victim to a dungeon where he (the killer, or, sometimes, she) will starve, rape, maim and ultimately kill the trusting person. To refuse a ride to someone who truly seems to need it because there's a something like 1 in 10 million (complete guess) chance that he or she is a serial killer is an assault of its own: against logic. BOO-YA. And guess what! I haven't been murdered in the south's murder capital.

The only thing that upset me about Savannah being "the murder capital of the south" was that it gave me high hopes: When I heard "Savannah is the murder capital of", I waited eagerly for "the world" to follow, and when it was only, "the south", I frowned. Maybe the rape rates are more impressive. (Story of a close call to follow.)

I paid $15 to go on a horrifyingly boring ghost tour that touted every death that has ever occurred in historic Savannah as proof of the existence of evil. Had I died of boredom on the 7:00 p.m. tour, they probably would've bragged about it twenty minutes into the 9:00 p.m. tour. The tour's highlight was the little bit of Civil War History it included. $15 was the perfect price: It was just interesting enough so that the 15 didn't feel like a COMPLETE waste but not so interesting that a tourist would be willing to devote another 15 dollars and 90 more minutes to repeat the tour and determine if the "scary stories" and "recent corroborations" were told verbatim or in any other way which would reveal them as total bullstreet.

(The Hyatt, where I've been staying, in my own lovely, lonely room with windows overlooking River Street for walls, is on Bull Street. I've spent part of my trip with children, around whom I won't won't won't cuss; instead, I've replaced cuss words and phrases with non-foul Savannah words: "What the fuck?!" became "Riverfront?!" ... and nobody knows it but me.)

I'm in Savannah in my capacity as a certified paralegal ... even though I'm not a certified paralegal. The purpose of the trip is conferencing of the NACC (National Association of Counsel for Children). Most attendees are lawyers for children, and their work is really inspiring. Today, I attended two conferences: my boss' on "What Does 'Best Interests' Mean, Anyway?" and another about racial disproportionality in the foster care system. Tomorrow, at 9:00, I'll attend this depressing lecture: "Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Sentencing 13 & 14 Year-Old Children to Die in Prison". It'll make me cry, but the conference's coffee and muffin supply is boundless.

Ethical dilemma: Should I buy Baby Mama to watch before bed? It costs $12.99, BUT my boss, who makes $200 an hour, is paying for my room and all related expenses. What I should be asking is if I should order creme brulee to go with my midnight entertainment ... or the chocolate pate.

UM, WHAT?

A copier-fax combo at work crapped out last week, so we ordered a new one and then had to set up a time for FedEx to pick up the faulty machine and return it to its manufacturer (OKI-Data machines have the habit of failing to function, just so you know, in case you're in the market for a $450.00 fax machine with a three-week life expectancy). When I spoke with FedEx the day before the pick-up, a representative asked what time I'd be in the office, and I said, "Between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m." This picture shows my disposition when, at 3:30 on the day of the scheduled pick-up, I had a conversation with another FedEx worker who said, "Oh, you have to give them until 5:00 p.m. to show up. They can't really make it when they say they will. The drivers don't really do pick-up times." UM, WHAT? I truly am (generally) a patient and easy-going person, but it frustrates me immensely that FedEx would specifically ask me for a pick-up time and then, the next day, after I've waited six hours and through lunch, tell me they "don't really do pick-up times". I guess they only sort of do pick-up times. It's not as if I asked them to show up between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. They had six hours. And I'd really like to complain about automated answering services and the impossibility of communicating with a recorded voice that has neither the ability to actually hear nor the capacity to actually reason … but you know how that is already. "I'm not in love with the modern world."

McDonough isn't Gotham.

Lately, it has been really hard for me to want to do anything other than swim and watch The Dark Knight. Nothing (seriously: nothing) else comes even close to being as good as The Dark Knight and swimming. Books are dull. TV sucks. McDonough isn't Gotham ... goddamnit. If it rains tomorrow, my only hope for happiness will be spending another nine dollars at the theater.

Just kidding! I certainly have sources of happiness beyond movie theaters and holes full of water; they are ...

A vegetarian's beef

… "beef" as in "issue".

The U.S. Army shoots live pigs and has soldiers stitch the wounds as part of their (the soldiers', not the pigs') training before deployment to Iraq. Seriously. It's called a "medical trauma exercise". I read this news story Saturday, in Sunday's early-released Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and my reaction to the news has seemed to resemble the stages of grieving, because I'm just now beginning to believe it's actually true the Army shoots pigs just to stitch them up again. The two meat-eaters I discussed this with expressed disgust over the practice.

A few months ago, CNN showed a video of a U.S. soldier in Iraq hurling a puppy over the edge of a cliff. The presenting newscaster warned watchers that the footage she was about to show was something like incredibly or extremely or painfully or devastatingly disturbing, and to omnivorous humans everywhere, it was.

In a way, these pieces of news are wonderful: They show how fickle and ridiculous our sensitivities are.

To the puppy-hurling soldier, the public response was shock and outrage; the military's response was purportedly to dishonorably discharge the hurler and the filmer of the hurling experience. The Army defends its shooting of pigs (to PETA, of course) by asserting that the exercise will likely save the lives of soldiers. The utilitarian logic used to defend the torture of Guantanamo detainees is similar: The suffering of one (presumably "bad" or "guilty") person is acceptable if it might help prevent the suffering of many (presumably "good" or "innocent") people. The math appears hard to argue with, until you realize the ideological foundations of the claim - which are the sanctity of life and infinite worth of the individual - and the inherent contradiction of the ideologies and the practices they inspire: Our belief in the sanctity of human life compels us to commit the ultimate degradation. (This contradiction also appears in capital punishment cases.) The difference with the pigs is that no one presumes they're guilty of anything. Would it be stupid to suppose that pigs, and other non-polluting animals, are victims of human ecological destruction (as well as our militaristically-accomplished imperialism)? Would sympathy for their inability to construct their way out of both destructions be ridiculous?

If I were to create career superlatives, under "Most Likely to Kill Animals", I'd probably list "soldier" somewhere around "police officer" and "professional wrestler". While it's definitely disturbing to see a solider hurl a puppy off a cliff, it makes a certain kind of sense. If the Army is supposed to be able to protect our country, its members should be able to easily kill a puppy or a pig. Aren't the interests of our country exceedingly more important than the life of a puppy? The interests of our country aren't served by killing a puppy, but apparently the interests of our country are served by shooting pigs. And it doesn’t seem like it should be easier to kill a human than to hurl a puppy if shooting pigs is part of military training and hurling a puppy is grounds for dishonorable discharge. We're confused.

Yay porn! Part II

While halfheartedly trying to formulate something like a convincing opposition to unsimulated sex in narrative film, a certain barrier kept appearing. Part of what lead me to oppose unsimulated sex in film was how deeply repulsed I was by 9 Songs, and the barrier that prevents my developing any reasonable opposition to real sex in cinema is my absolute adoration for the movie Shortbus. The sex in Shortbus is exponentially kinkier and more explicit (and not any more simulated) than the sex in 9 Songs. First, the trailer for Shortbus:



Shortbus' tagline: "You've got to get on to get off." I proffer the tears I shed during my first viewing of Shortbus as evidence that the film is the following: endearing, inspiring, and funny as fuck. (Of course I'm kidding when I pretend my emotional reaction to fiction serves as a basis for evaluation. Actually, I'm not kidding, and critical theorists can laugh, but their laughing won't make them right.) Shortbus - in its direct presentations of violent sex, group sex, auto-fellatio (with consummation, for real!), gay sex, accessorized sex - is wholesome in a way I can't really convey ... but I'll try: Shortbus is as wholesome as the fictions of Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember, The Notebook) are emotionally dishonest and depraved, and if you agree with the latter evaluation, just trust me on the former (and also, I love you!).

So if Shortbus strikes me as so wholesome, what's wrong with 9 Songs? The entire movie is a man's fantasy. During the sex scenes, the female lead, Lisa, tells the male lead that she's "so wet" and then begs, "Fuck me, Matt", which Matt, after having Lisa beg a few more times, does. It's so porno-rrific. At least Lisa's boobs aren't huge, I guess … but that makes her even less of a presence.

So whether 9 Songs and Shortbus are "art" obviously depends on what art is, which sounds (and probably is) really pretentious. If I were to claim that unsimuatled sex in a movie is not art, I'd need to know what I was refuting, but because I'm not that ambitious and don't feel like looking up really flummoxing quotes by Picasso and Michelangelo and Bergman on the subject, my feelings on the films will have to suffice. It's all about the margins: They're so much more exciting. Shortbus, a movie about "the gifted and challenged" is poly-vocal and, for that reason, ends up being more of a challenge and a gift than the simple, unsimuated vanilla kink (belts, blindfolds - B.F.D.) of the two lovers of 9 Songs who, in between fucks, listen to live London rock.

Or maybe it's all about the auto-fellatio.

Will a solar prominence expand, tickle earth's surface and set all the rainforests ablaze if I'm allowed to utter a complete, uninterrupted sentence?

It had better not be …

(waiting for the cut-off, continuing with caution)

chanced.

Signs my cat might not be a genius:

Earlier today, I wore two Biore strips on my face to clean out my pores, and my brilliant kitty didn't seem to register the difference at all; she showed no alarm when I appeared to her with two huge, white stips on my face where my nose and chin normally are. Maybe she's so smart that she understands human dermatological problems and their at-home remedies. Maybe she'll write in her blog later about the signs that indicate her human isn't very smart, and maybe she'll post the same sideways, thumb-obstructed picture as evidence.

Yay porn!

While watching 9 Songs (a, to misquote David Dondero, "pornographic love story") tonight, I heard a most wonderful song. The song is probably wildly popular, but since I'm musically ignorant, my first exposure to it was via smut. So tonight, I celebrate porn for introducing me to my new favorite song, "C'Mon C'Mon" by The Von Bondies (very awesome music video below). One of the main issues of contemporary cinema is whether a film which contains very explicit, unsimulated sex (like 9 Songs) can be considered art rather than pornography, and the correct and hip answer is always: Yes, of course it's ART. If I ever felt like taking on a big intellectual project (teehee), it would be the project of proving that unsimulated sex in film is NOT art, for two reasons: 1. It doesn't strike me as art (but maybe that's due to my asexuality); 2. It deprives aspiring filmmakers of an entire frontier (i.e., it makes me feel creatively impotent). After a movie shows actual penetration, actual oral sex and actual orgasms, what's left? It's not an opening (not meant punnily), it's an end (again, not a pun). It has a monopolizing effect. Anyway! Here's the song/video: