The Misery of Dark Shadows

Last week, I watched Tim Burton take one of my favorite TV shows, “Dark Shadows”, crack it open, gut it of nearly all of its original charms, stuff it with seventies jokes and sex until it was as bloated and corrupt as Last Gasp Elvis, and then he sent it roaring across the silver screen like the leisure-suited horror show monster it was—killing beloved characters, and leaving the original narrative landscape a charred wasteland.  I was horrified.  I was angry.  I was in misery: misery with a capital “M”.  That’s right: I was in Misery, specifically the part where Annie Wilkes, outraged by the shabby script of a cliffhanger, totally flips out right there in the theatre.  As Burton puppeteered the mouth of  Barnabus Collins to recite “I’m a picker/I’m a grinner/I’m a lover/And I’m a sinner”, I was right there with Annie, yelling “Barnabus Collins never quoted a cockadoodie Steve Miller song!!!”

What Is A Gaytheist?

When I read the February, 07 2012 ruling regarding Proposition 8, I knew it was time to finally tell people why I call myself a Gaytheist. There was something in the language of that ruling that seemed to speak directly to me. One moment I was reading the news, the next, I was reading a letter addressed to a self I try to keep quiet inside me; the self that was forged by encounters with people who claim their ignorance and cruelty as God’s will, the self I named “Gaytheist.”

Summer’s Eve of Destruction

Señor Wences is somewhere, screaming his hands off right about now.

They were hobgoblins dispatched from the darkest dungeon of The Patriarchy.  They invented and  played upon women’s insecurities, and then dared to demand payment for protection against them.   They were thugs in that regard; the Muffia, as it were.  Their tactics achieved a level of wretchedness that surprised even long-time observers.  They sparked an outrage so intense and massive, they had to retreat back to the hateful hole from which they came.

I’m talking, of course, about the Summer’s Eve ad campaign known as “Hail To The V.”   

42

The number 42 has been bestowed the twinkle of legend, thanks to Douglas Adams; according to his Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the number represents the “answer to life, the universe, and everything.”  Now that I’m 42, it’s time to spill the beans of wisdom on this, my 42nd blog entry.  The following represents the sum total of 42 years’ worth of cosmic enlightenment…and stuff.

A Marriage Of Mass Destruction

It’s been an exciting week.  In a stunning and historical turn of events, the Illinois Legislature has voted to allow civil unions for gay people.  It’s a law that will soon permit me and every other gay person in the state to destroy the institution of marriage…by entering into an institution very similar to marriage.

I know.  It’s crazy, it’s a little hard to follow, but that’s the conservative line on the issue.  Not being a conservative myself, I can’t pretend to understand their ideology.  I just know that they’ve invested in us a power beyond my puny minority-mindset comprehension: the power to destroy everything for everyone by simply doing it.