Dancing with Myself

Bill Gates Cracks Open the Door of Heaven

Painting by Mary Henrikson

Bill Gates has apparently donated almost one Billion dollars to provide vaccines for children around the world. 

Jesus said that it's easier for the camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. When asked "Who can be saved, then?" Jesus said, "For men this is impossible; for God, everything is possible."

Well done, Mr. Gates, well done.

Flu Shots

My hmo is Kaiser Permanente. They started giving flu shots today. Kaiser decided to just open the doors and let people get in line. This morning, over five thousand people were waiting when they opened the doors. The crowd, consisting mostly of infirm and elderly, went completely around the block. I didn't stay. I was prepared to invest a couple of hours, but I saw nothing in that mess that reassured me of Kaiser's ability to handle that many people. This isn't a criticism of Kaiser. They do what they do fairly well. This is just one of those shared experiences. This is life in the twenty-first century.

I have to try again, of course. THis is one aspect of reality that is not going to be affected by who wins the Presidency. We're going to continue to stand in lines. I have seriously tried to avoid lines all of my adult life, and I'm pretty good at it. I won't eat at trendy new restaurants that require one to stand in line. I seldom go to movies until the lines have died down. I used to be afraid of going into a post office, because I knew one day just as I was the next customer, the surly clerk would close his window with a feigned indifference practiced by postal service employees, and I would completely lose it and go mad right on the spot. I celebrated the advent of the atm. Its arrival freed me forever of having to stand in a line in a bank.

I will get back in the line. I have a flu bullseye painted on my chest. I have had debilitating asthma as an adult. I am susceptible to chronic bronchitis. I have HIV. The last time I had the flu, I was sick for about a month and the bronchitis didn't completely go away for about another month. It left me with a hacking cough that lasted so long I don't remember when it stopped. Maybe I'm still hacking.

No lines for me today, though. I need to prepare myself mentally. I certainly don't do spontaneous lines. I turned tail and came home so fast you'd have thought I was being pursued. I'm heading to my neighborhood farmers market instead. Persimmons and pears are in abundance now.

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet
all of it, to the heart.

--Li-Young Lee

Happy week-end.

Accepting Diversity

Time to 'fess up. Lately, I've been more tolerant of Moonies and Scientologists than I have been of my own cousins in Texas who are Republican identified and who think George W. Bush is an apostle sent by God himself to lead us from our present condition to salvation. I have a real hard time with that because I don't even think the fucker's a Christian. How do you deal with ignorance and remain loving? My extended family in Texas like me, they really do. I have indulged them over the past thirty years or so by giving them enough of me to like and love, yet keeping the part (my homosexuality) that made them uncomfortable out of sight, so to speak. I am no longer interested in indulging them. I want them to know just how intolerant I have become of their ignorance, their narrow-minded, homophobic, Baptist-laden shit. Why am I so angry at them?

Besides my family, I have friends in Texas to whom I have not spoken in over a year. I tell everyone who asks that I cannot talk to my friend without yelling at her, so I'd rather she think me rude for not speaking than to know me to be rude for screaming at her about how stupid I think she is. Obviously, I am taking this all much too seriously.

I'm more than willing to respect them for having a different opinion than I do, but I'm very disappointed at their low standards for leadership of their side. I don't give a rat's ass if you're liberal or conservative, but lying to people is a violation of the public trust. If they're not lying they're delusional. That does not make me feel any better.

Anyone got any advice on how to get along with idiots and bigots whom you love but whom you can't stand?

People, Get a Grip

A school administrator (probably an assistant principal, they were the most gung-ho idiots when I was in high school) at Grayson High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, took Terrell Jones out of a classroom because he wore a shirt that read: "Hempstead, NY 516." For the geographically challenged, Hempstead is the largest township in the United states. Located on Long Island, it has 759,000 residents spread across 22 villages and more than 142 square miles. From SF Gate. The administrator thought it was some sort of code for marijuana.

As Forrest Gump would have said, "stupid is as stupid does."

Tolerating Hatred

"Arash Miresmaeili of Iran, a two-time world judo champion and a medal contender in the 66-kilogram class, deliberately forfeited his first-round match because his opponent, Ehud Vaks, is an Israeli. News of his refusal to face Vaks was met with jubilation in Iran. The chief of Iran's Olympic delegation, Nassrollah Sajadi, asked the government to give Miresmaeili the $115,000 reward reserved for gold medallists." Front Page Magazine

When John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their black gloved fists in Mexico City, they were barred from any further events.

Anyone refusing to meet his opponent for political reasons ought to be permanently banned from the Olympics. That's my 2 cents worth.

When is it okay to discriminate?

Joan Ryan, in her column in today's San Francisco Chronicle, wants to know why it was okay to ban South Africa from the Olympics for 28 years because its team had no Blacks, but no one mentions the banning of women by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Islam doesn't ban women from sports. Totalitarian regimes who use religion to enforce their own narrow-minded prejudice are the ones who forbid the participation of women in the Olympics. "Are certain types of oppression deserving of tolerance and others not? Is oppression acceptable when it springs from religious beliefs rather than social policy? Or should all oppression be condemned, no matter what the cause?" I'm with Joan on this one. Inquiring minds want to know.

Happy Trails to You

(Photo from SFGate. Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004.

I was not a big fan. He was a complex man despite his simplistic approach to life and politics. Or maybe he wasn't and that was the secret. My condolences to his family. This is going to be a difficult time for Nancy. The Republicans are going to turn this next week into an orgy of deification. They will push it to the point of bad taste. They always do. Shall we make a list of the things they will propose in the next weeks:

1. Changing the picture on one of currency denominations. (Extra points if you guess which one. My bet is the $10 bill. Alexander who?)
2. Renaming Bagdad "Reaganville".
3. Changing the name of South Carolina, to Reagania. Who needs two Carolinas?
4. Changing the name of Bob Jones University to Ron Reagan University. (Bob Jones? 'nuff said)
5. Changing the name of Camp David to Reagan's Ranch.

Rove & Company will make Dubya work this upcoming funeral like a whore welcoming the sailors during Fleet Week. Move over England, watch how America buries its living gods.