A Long Time Coming: Defending LGBT Rights is the Next Great Revolution

It's gross. It's unhygienic. It considerably raises the risk of certain diseases. Only a godless heathen would do it.

I'm taking about eating shellfish, of course. What did you think I meant? Being gay?

Yeah, okay, the old school prohibition against eating lobsters and shrimp doesn't have the eye-catching tag of "abomination" the way other practices do in the Bible, but get to the heart of it and they're all the same: terrible, Satanic, soul-corrupting activities that a "clean" person, a "God-fearing" person, shouldn't do. Oh, and one other thing: it happens to be one of the many, MANY laws (not "customs", but outright "Thou shalt not"s and "Taketh thou"s etc.) that Christians have routinely ignored. What they term the "Old Testament" (I guess even God gets bored every eon or so, right?) is mostly ignored--except for, oh, a handful of eensy-weensy, never-you-mind whatsits. Like "thou shalt not sleep with a man" and "On the third day God created the Heavens and Earth" and other sundries. You know, just odds and ends, Christianity's junk drawer of "ahem"s, "well actually"s, and "as a matter of fact"s. (Except they're not facts.)

Christianity's oddly selective memory is only one of the reasons my blood pressure rises at the sight of missionaries, or every time (and it seems more and more like it's fifteen rimes a day) I hear about some preacher, politician, or right-wing pundit slamming gay marriage. Didn't Jesus, like, come to tell y'all that all that stuff was just the prequel, the smudged blueprint, and God was ordering a reboot? Funny how certain things seem to stick in the collective craw of Christian "civilization" (sorry, almost choked on the irony there) and never seem to fade away? What about slaughtering lambs and burning incense to please God? What about circumcision and the bacon no-no? If all that "Old" stuff can be so easily discarded, what's with the narrowly myopic word-for-word verse-quoting from Leviticus: out of five monster-sized books, y'all can't get over hardly a dozen words?

You know what I think? I think this isn't about Christians following the law laid down by their God. It certainly isn't about the so-called love and grace they claim their Savior came to bring the world. It's about a petty, ridiculous, ugly, brutally old-fashioned grudge against any one who doesn't toe the party line. It's about a diseased and distorted perception of power and gender roles. 

Part of me rages whenever I read about the newest victims: the teens and preteens lost to suicide, the children who are beaten and bullied and ridiculed and threatened--often by their parents, the very people who should be stepping up to defend them to the last. Part of me wants to turn around the rhetoric from that one twisted pastor, and say it's THEM, the bigots and braggarts and bullies and brigands, who should be fenced in and allowed to die off from sheer stupidity and violence. But I can't forget--ever--that my grandmother was fenced in once, starved and enslaved and brutalized, for the sake of "purifying" the higher human race. No matter how bad it gets, we can never stoop so low as that. As tempting as it may be to take that shotgun out of their hands and turn it back on their hate-spewing mouths, once we did--we'd be irredeemable. I don't care if you worship Allah, Christ, Vishnu, or a small green gnome on Saturn: once we try and use the same violence directed at the defenseless for the purpose of punishing the abusers, we cross a line that can never be recrossed. The best thing we can do is stand proud, gay and straight and everything in between or besides, and rise above the hate.

A Quibble, A Question, and A Quest...Yea, Verily

Oh, Blackboard. Thou failest me in my hour of need.

It figures, of course, that the website my teachers rely on for organizing their classes, assigning work, and generally being all fashionably tech-savvy, should stop functioning properly on the first day I have a quiz in one class, and receive a homework assignment in another. To be more precise, in my two hardest and most terrifying courses, the previously-mentioned Physiological Psychology, and, possibly worse, my class on ANOVA. For you lucky uninitiated, that's ANalysis-Of-VAriance, a particular format of upper-level statistical testing used in a number of science-y disciplines, and a required course for me because of my ill-advised Psychology major. Blargh.

Peevish whining aside,what a day! Woke up to three inches of snow and a mischievous nor'wester. Felt the distinct urge, for the first time this semester, to get my hands on a second cup of coffee by midmorning. Didn't act on it, though, being in class and having no money on me and all that jazz. But that brings me to an interesting point that's been nagging me for some time: my blog is entitled "Coffeepot Capers", yet where's the coffee? Where's the caffeine-laced randomness I promised from the start? With that in mind, I promise that my next post, whenever it may be (but hopefully in the next 3-5 days), will finally touch upon the topic of that oh-so-naughty-and-necessary bean that is at the core of the college experience.

Until then, may your scarves stay knotted and your pencils sharp! That your coffee should stay hot goes without saying...aw, shit.

Semester Six: The Showdown

Well! It's been a whole week since my last post, and believe me, I can feel it in the creaking of every one of my joints, and the way diagrams of the human brain keep floating in front of my eyes. I've only had one class of Physiological Psychology so far, and read the first two chapters of the textbook--as evidenced by the 150 virtual flashcards I've made. Last semester I made the foolish mistake of imagining I had a photographic memory, and made half-assed attempts at studying for the tests in my two psychology courses. Definitely not doing that again. Our first test in Physio's almost two weeks off, but I am all up in that shit. Bring it on, basal ganglia. I'm watching you, apical dendrites. I'm fairly certain that by the end of this semester, I'll have at least 1,000 flashcards for this class, maybe even closer to 1,500. While I'm at it, I'd like to give a shout out to the website http://www.flashcardexchange.com/ for being such a valuable student's resource.

In other, non-neurological news, I'm brainstorming story and poem ideas for my two workshop classes. This is it, ladies and gentlemen: this is the test. If I don't come out of this semester with at least two or three polished, mature pieces in each genre, I may as well crumple up my aspirations of becoming a writer and toss it in the corner like a t-shirt your cat was just sick on. I'll cash in my chips--metaphorically, I mean, cause if I had anything to turn in for real cash, I'd do it in a heartbeat--and concentrate on getting into a decent graduate program for clinical or counseling psychology.

On that front, too, I'm a little wary as I begin my work as one of six undergraduate students assisting a psychology professor with his research. It seems like pretty basic stuff--mostly clerical, data-entry stuff--but the level and quality of my involvement with the team may very well be the double-edged sword that either clinches my acceptance into a good graduate psych program, or nicks that hope neatly in the symbolic nuts. It's particularly intimidating to hear that everyone else on the team, aside from myself and one other, is already neck-deep in some kind of extracurricular psychology research on their own.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so interested in two different majors/programs/careers. Yeesh.

Once Upon A Typical Teen Ambition

What do an alcoholic werewolf, a zombie-raising orphan, a gender-confused and archery-obsessed princess, and a one-armed pyromaniac have in common? Well, apart from the obvious (i.e. they all belong in a clinical psychologist's wet dream), they're all characters in my fantasy story. Yes, that one. The story I started when I was seventeen, scrapped at eighteen, and have been revising, loathing, re-imagining, reassembling like a giant jigsaw puzzle of narrative loops and dead-ends, and generally fussing over ever since. A third of my life has been given to this behemoth of cliches and tropes and commonalities that we fantasy fanatics just love about the genre.

What is it about a fantasy story that so fires the imagination, to the point where even the most sordidly pessimistic, un-blinkered skeptic still longs for it, still craves that adventure, that newness and strangeness, that epic pseudo-historical ambiance? Why do I think that I can write something sufficiently innovative and interesting enough to warrant publication?

It's a tough question to answer, and if I had a milligram of sense, I'd have given up on the notion of ever finishing my story, and settled down to make a comfortable living doing technical writing. Fortunately, I haven't an ounce of sense, and so I continue to dream of vampire demigods, vengeful dragons, continent-hugging glaciers, and mist-wrapped ancient cities straddling the snaking wetlands of a mighty estuary. And I dream of being the next Tolkien or Jordan or Martin, and opening the gates of imagination for a new generation of outcasts and lonely teens.

Or maybe I'll just settle for paying the gas bill with my writing. That'd be nice.

A Bad Joke A Day Keeps Sanity At Bay

An Elf and a Man walk into a bar. A Dwarf walks under it.

Buh-DUM-Bum-BUM.

Thank you, no, really, thank you...thank you so much...it's been a wonderful night...

Have you ever wondered how your own ordinary life might be turned into a stand-up comedy routine? Or a snappy sitcom?

Yeah, neither have I. No, my fingers aren't crossed, that's just a medical condition. Yeah, seriously. Phalanges phuckupus. Trust me: "I'm the Doctor."

Speaking of the madman with a box, I'll bet there are girls out there who are eager to get their hands on a sonic screwdriver...and not to save the universe, oh no.

Too much? Yeah...that's what she said, too.

Buh-dum-bum-bum.

Just Some Thoughts on Commerce, Nature, and Other Forms of Bullshit

I'd be the first to admit I don't really understand economics. Money, as an idea, baffles me completely. But the notion of a narrow circle made up of mostly male, Type-A personalities holding onto most of the green stuff via bonuses and kickbacks simply by being cutthroat enough to slash employees' wages and cut product quality is, to be honest, rather buggeringly irritating. "Profits", i.e. the maximum share of a company's earnings that can be diverted to fill the CEO's and a handful of wealthy investors' offshore accounts, is more important than the working conditions and remuneration of the workers. Not to mention (though of course, I will) the impact that the mass production of almost any item has on the natural environment from which the company extracts its necessary materials. And wrapped up in this big sticky mess called "economics" is the serpentine whisperings of that entity known as "advertising", playing on people's innate tendency for social comparison and their intrinsic desire to be esteemed, wanted, admired, respected.

That being said, even if it weren't for the overtones of economic parasitism and fabricated elitism that seems to be a core tenet of most if not all of the Republican presidential nominees, I'd still be more strongly motivated to oppose them at any cost for the sake of far more clear-cut issues, such as legalizing same-sex marriage and preventing school bullying. I can plead ignorance of how finances and capitalism work, but when it comes to two consenting adults' rights to love and marry regardless of their sex/gender, I have no such qualms. The same goes for bullying: it's not just "a phase" or "a part of childhood" (for one, bullying often continues past high school), but rather, it is just plain wrong. Sick, twisted, disgusting, and evil. Natural? One could make that argument, but I say to that: a lot of things could be construed as "natural" (like shitting on someone's manicured lawn, say, or inter-ethnic violence), but that doesn't mean they should all be condoned. "Natural", or even "normal" (that favorite word of pop psychologists) does not necessarily equal make something right or unchangeable. We're only human, sure, but we can at least try to be better than simply acting out on every violent, rude, selfish, anti-social, impulsive urge we get from our Australopithecine ancestors.

Oh, but what about being gay? I hear some imaginary Baptist yelling from the back of the pack. Why, yes, it's true, part of my argument for tolerating gay marriage and lifestyles is that it is perfectly natural; every other primate species commonly shows, at the very least, bisexual behavior, and many more species afford examples of purely homosexual unions (look it up!). So, yes, homosexuality is a natural occurrence--but the difference between it and bullying is that the latter is undeniably and inexcusably harmful, while the other is not.The reason I stress homosexuality's "natural" origins is because of all the rhetoric, going back millennia, about it being "unnatural", "unhealthy", "abominable", "perverted". But it's none of those things, whereas bullying (as "natural" as it may be, springing from our innate primate competitiveness and desire for dominance) is both abominable and unhealthy. Our human nature has given us a lot to work with and work around--like our unfortunate innate drive to bully and tease and ostracize unlucky peers--but homosexuality is not one of them, and certainly not the demonic corruption some die-hard Bible-thumpers would have us believe.

Of course, nothing I say here is likely to change the way most committed social conservatives view gay marriage. They're "believers", they're "faithful", they shun the idea of "change". For four thousand years or more, the majority of our species has looked backward instead of forward, holding onto concepts and superstitions that, while we now understand where and how they may have arisen, no longer serve any function, and are in fact holding us back from achieving an unheard-of social unity. They've drawn a line in the sand and vowed to never cross it, even as the ground gives way beneath them. What exactly are they accomplishing?

The Great Popsicle Stick, and Other Fanciful Oddities

Oh, hey! Look, it's me again! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm back online, ready to bore you all with the predictably pallid details of my unbelievably dull existence. Here, have some of my inane thoughts and aimless reflections, all for free!

Okay, I'll cut the ironical crap. But it's still something worth considering, at least from my point of view. Why should I bother with this? Why do I plant myself in front of a computer every couple of days, grit my teeth, and force myself to empty the erstwhile contents of my brain onto a webpage that no one (apart from my girlfriend) appears to read? And even if someone were to read one of my posts, why should they come back for more of my paralyzingly dull prose? What's the point in trying to write about the most random, silly, stupid, boring bits of drivel that I know of--namely, my life?

I'm no Orwell or Hemingway or even a Sedaris; I've never hunted an elephant, or smoked with travelers in a Parisian cafe, or created artwork out of human hair and cardboard while snorting cocaine. I've hardly done anything noteworthy or been anywhere exotic. I can't even offer readers the dubious fascination of hearing about life as a schizophrenic, manic-depressive, or obsessive-compulsive (not yet, at least). Who would want to listen to what I have to say, and what exactly is there for me to say?

But maybe that's just it. Maybe some people don't want to read about other people doing things that they, the readers, would never actually dream of doing. Sure, we all like to fantasize to some extent, we all need to, sometimes--but we also don't like being made to feel as if we're not really living, like we're not doing it right, like we're just not having as much fun or excitement as others get to have. Maybe what we want, some of us, sometimes, is to hear about someone like us--someone just as confused, as petty, as envious, as ordinary and uncertain as we are. Think of it as an ice cream Popsicle on a stick--there's only so much ice cream to go around for the Hemingways and Orwells of the worlds, but once that sugary sweetness is all gone, it's gone. Only the stick, a flat, bland, stubbornly splintery bit of ordinary wood, remains to tell the tale. Only some people get to have adventures--but human life in all its gloriously splintery blandness remains, foibles and baubles and all.

Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just trying to project onto all of you, the seven billion plus people out there, all of my awkward peevishness and fragile philosophizing. Maybe it's just me who fondly wishes that the world wants to hear a college student ramble on about the value of family, life, and archaic words. Maybe the only personal essays that anyone wants to read are the ones filled with wild foreign adventures, random sexual encounters, and reckless substance abuse.

But if not, and there is a demand for the ordinary, for the day-to-day headaches and epiphanies, even if it's from only one person in the whole chaotic shuffle of humankind--then I'll be here, watching my caffeine intake with a wary eye, dreaming of a professorship with tenure, and continuing to jot down astonishing revelations and absurd redundancies concerning life on my end of the Great Popsicle Stick of Ordinariness.