Babygirl, unpack yr sweaters and get FABULOUS in FALL gay homo queer &c 2012

a lot of people hate them. i love them.

i will say they are a bit of a pain to make but that is like 1/4 of a strike against such a buttery, cinnamon-y delicious treat

damn it now i want to bake, let's all live in a gingerbread house lewdly spattered with icing

i think i still have leaf lard in the freezer that is super for crusts but WHAT DO I PUT INSIDE. there are so many options.

Oof! Something about this time of year!

Visiting my parents to watch my niece trick or treat, Dad and I managed to get in a violent political argument. He's a small business owner intelligent enough to acknowledge (many times) how Reagan's deregulatory policies fucked the airline industry and have reduced his business, thirty years after those policies took affect, to ashes ("I've got five years left," this sixty-one-year old said). Yet Obama is Beelzebub and must be driven out of office. Every time I raised a point he cut me off and dismissed it as irrelevant. "If you think your employer is screwing you, find another job" distills his beliefs. Some people deserve to belong, some don't. It is, as I've said here and elsewhere, the ethos of the self-made man -- the person who has no sympathy for any mortal who didn't rise from rags as definitively as he.

When he said, in front of my bewildered and embarrassed brother in law, "So I take it you voted for Obama," I explained why I did now as opposed to 2008 when I left the prez field blank: the stimulus saved hundreds of university jobs, I've got friends with pre-existing conditions with access to private insurance now, and as a gay man he's encouraged my independence of movement. He turned purple. He said "fuck you" and it's my "choice" to want to live this way despite the president's "extra-constitutional" (his words) attempts to make things bearable for me. "So have the last four years changed nothing?" I asked (it's been four years since I came out). "No," he said firmly. Whereupon I shook my bro in law's hand, said "Have a nice life!" and walked out.

I'm not given to spiritual confessions of any sort, whether here or on my blog or on Twitter, but it was a relief to have things spelled out so monochromatically. I suspected this confrontation was coming; here it was. It was an exchange of such ugliness that it's made it easier to walk away without regret. No tears shed on my part -- it had to happen. Amazing, though, that exactly four years ago, on the eve of another election, we had a similar confrontation over sexuality and politics...and the results were the same. I'm thinking the only hope now is to wait for a phone call and a plenary session.

Meanwhile I'm blasting Kendrick Lamar and going to my lover's apartment in a bit.

I post this here only to know whether I did the right thing. I cringe too that I've been so confessional. Sorry, guys!

dangling modifier in first sentence!

god alfred, i'm sorry. you did the right thing.

sometimes i wonder if families are anything more than a crucible for perpetuating bigotry and distorted worldviews

Jesus Christ, Alfred, that is totally horrible and awful. I don't think situations like that present a binary of "right thing"/"wrong thing" but I definitely agree with others in that what you did was one of the better things you could have done. How is your mom going to react to all of this?

shit, alfred

hey btw i'm in miami, let's try and grab a drink or two... saturday night (later) might be best for me but i'll get in touch

i don't wanna be all like "i check in on the gay thread" but i'm really sorry alfred, don't know what else you could have done. really feeling the post by clouds re: family, and my family is mostly harmless.

If I could meet some of you all halfway in the middle ... exchanging some of my parents' all-consuming tolerance for some of your libidos.

That sucks but also sounds oddly uplifting, Alfred. I hope you bit off the end of an onion at him on your way out.

Alfred you are a man

Hmm.

I think it's sad and telling that an argument over Obama and labour politics turns into this. I wonder what is at the root of what here.

You did the right thing, though (that said, I'm hoping yr niece wasn't witness to any of this). Just sucks that it had to happen. And as for being too confessional, I thought that's what we did here!

sorry you had to go through that Alfred. Nobody like that in my family, at least that I ever see or know of.

Some of you will have to change your attitude about desserts when you pass 40. And the rest I curse.

Had 5 trick or treaters, I gave out all but one of my fun-size Twix bars. (3 each)

You guys are sweet. No, niece had gone home with tired mom a while before: just Dad, bro in law, and I smoking and drinking wine.

My parents are actually delicious company! Avoid sex and politics though.

sarge, that'd be cool.

alfred you definitely did the right thing, and it'll be beneficial in the long run, even if it feels like a shock now. a status quo of awkwardly not mentioning things is easy but not very satisfactory and more stressful than you think; sometimes you need a catalyst, a bombshell to lay your cards on the table and deliver a needed ultimatum. a bit of personal experience there: i had a similar status quo going on whereby my being gay was just Not Acknowledged; i always knew this would need to be shattered at some point, and i knew what my position would be, but it's hard to actually do that until forced into it. my parents now know that they either accept and acknowledge it or they will not see me again, and i am 100% prepared to cut them off for good. the ball is in their court.

sometimes i wonder if families are anything more than a crucible for perpetuating bigotry and distorted worldviews

― happy little (clouds), Thursday, November 1, 2012 2:24 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^i feel this

. a status quo of awkwardly not mentioning things is easy but not very satisfactory and more stressful than you think; sometimes you need a catalyst, a bombshell to lay your cards on the table and deliver a needed ultimatum.

That's why I was so relieved! No tears shed. A sort of clarity.

xpost I disagree sharply with that post.

yeah. families are different. sometimes even the same ones at different times.

there also comes an age when you are responsible for your own worldview.

i dunno. i am probably just projecting (even though my family is not an extreme example).

kind of agree w/ marx that at the least, our conception of the family unit would change drastically in an actually equal society.

Maybe Marx was just like his mother. She was never satisfied.

why do we engage ourselves in a master/slave dialectic? / this is what is sounds like when doves cry

Karl?
Yes, Friedrich?
Is the water warm enough?
Yes, Friedrich.
Shall we begin?
Yes, Freidrich.

oh fukkkk it's M's birthday next week, I need to think of a suitable present ://///////

also, he called me a "good eater" last week; I pointed out that, as someone who can't cook, whenever I have a decent meal in front of me I eat the fuck out of it because I generally have no idea when the next one will be

aw geez, alfred, that's rough. you handled it more coolly than i would've tho so kudos

Yes, it bears mentioning that although, or perhaps because, my family is nothing like this, I dunno how I would have handled such a thing.

adding my sympathies to those already offered, alfred. those conversations are so stressful they literally make me sick to my stomach. (i don't deal well with familial confrontation.)

on a somewhat related note: i think we are on track for d. to FINALLY (finally) meet my mom after 5 years. and there is talk of possible inclusion in thanksgiving festivities. i can't help but be nervous about it but i know it's an important and necessary step for all of us to take together. i only regret it hadn't happened sooner.

Oh man I loooove "Free"

why do we engage ourselves in a master/slave dialectic? / this is what is sounds like when doves cry

beep beep beep boop / boop beep beep boop

"Free"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgRBkjgXHro

eric otm

Oh oops that was a Zing glitch

hey i saw 'what ever happened to baby jane?' last night and wow what an unpleasant movie

"He hates me."

http://sanchezdetoro.webcindario.com/JANE7.jpg

xp "How nice for you"

Really though that film's cred rests waaaay too much on the novelty of JOAN + BETTE 2GETHER @ LAST and isn't actually that great of a film. I mean it's pretty fun and campy but so are a lot of other things. Also it's too long.

It is a totally great film and relatively sui generis at the time iirc. It is, admittedly, a tad too long tho, you're right about that.

glad i saw it as some kind of gay rite of passage i guess but i don't think i'd ever want to see it again

yeah it's junk and Victor Buono is awful

Wd say I felt that was about Brokeback Mountain, but that's more of a stuff straight people like rite of passage.

nothing more horrifying than a "restrained" Joan Crawford.

Thinking about Davis and Buono trading underthings, maybe.

i wonder why it's always women who are basically train wrecks that become gay icons (dietrich, garland, et al)

Because men who are train wrecks would cut too close to the bone.

Not a huge fan of Baby Jane, but I've Written a Letter to Daddy always cracks me up just thinking abt it.

Have been wracking my brain trying to think of examples of gay cult movie classics that I don't like, but it turns out I at least like almost all of them. *shrugs*

. a status quo of awkwardly not mentioning things is easy but not very satisfactory and more stressful than you think; sometimes you need a catalyst, a bombshell to lay your cards on the table and deliver a needed ultimatum.

That's why I was so relieved! No tears shed. A sort of clarity.

― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 1, 2012 8:27 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ this is a generally true statement about relationships generally not just families (like - i read this while skimming backwards to the beginning of posts I hadn't read and before I saw what it was actually about I identified with it very strongly)

um. most of my family is totally wonderful and all know, but the three remaining 70+ year olds in my mom's family (the elderly egyptian matriarchs/patriarchs) don't know, though their more tolerant/less harsh spouses do. there's an uncomfortable detente where we just kind of dance around the issue when they're around but i don't know what I would do if it ever came to a head. if JF had ended up being around for the next big family event in march, it would have turned into a confrontation, but i've dodged a bullet there. so, yeah, i'm not sure what i would do if the unpleasantness was that close to home i.e. immediate family.

hugs alfred. I think you did what you needed to do, and hopefully he'll come around once reality sets in for him a bit. we care about you!

xp Oh, what's the one I like the best? Oh yeah, "Boom!" That movie is great.

The Apple is the only Al0nso Durald3 approved title that I can think of that I outright hate.

Five years ago I was staying at a gay friend's house while he was away, a cool Londoner, and looking through his DVDs, I said "oh they made a film version of Myra Breckenridge, I didn't know that". I watched it, loved it, thought, "huh! who would've thought that cool book would've made such a great film!" Then I googled it ("worst movie of all time!" etc.) and was confused