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.”   

My Daughter, The Tortured Artist

If you’re this brilliant, you can smirk all you want.

Mabel turns 4 this week.  When she was first born, it did indeed seem like yesterday.  All parents say this, and it’s absolutely true.  I remember her; all slick-faced, her squirming little body swaddled up tight in a hospital blanket, screamingscreamingscreaming like a banshee burrito.  She was clearly pissed, and who could blame her?  To start out as a sparkly dream of life, flitting about the infinite cosmos, only to end up cold, wet, and naked in the burbs is pretty much the let down to end all let downs.

Gaytheist Xmas Album 2010!

I like to pretend that song “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” was written as the sarcastic suicide note of some poor Seasonal Affective Disordered smartass who just couldn’t take it anymore. 

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.

Red Sonja and the Allure of Female Badassery

Any feminist can tell you who set off the flash point on the fuse of their worldview.  Some women will point to Gloria Steinem as their matriarch, or point to a quote from Bella Abzug, or a passage from Gertrude Stein or she might even reference some crack (word choice: deliberate) made by Madonna at some point, fer chrissake.  Me, I bow to the mighty, mighty Red Sonja. Red Sonja: “She-Devil With A Sword.”  Red Sonja: “The Warrior Woman of Hyrkania.”  Red Sonja: the Ultimate Badass.  Red Sonja came to me, folded delicately within the staple-bound pulpy leaves of “Savage Sword of Conan” #78.  Her story was one of brutality and transcendence.  As I am primarily a humorist (and therefore a secretly sensitive pillow-biter of a pussocrat), I don’t have the intestinal fortitude to discuss how she was horrendously robbed of both her family and her innocence by a gang of mercenaries.  But as the horror that was inflicted upon Sonja is pivotal to Red Sonja’s story, and bearing in mind there’s no laughing in feminism–clunk, there it is.  Sonja’s prayer for vengeance is answered by an androgynous representative from the League of Made-Up Sword And Sorcery Gods who offers Sonja invincibility in exchange for her chastity.  The only man who can have her is the one who bests her in swordplay. I was 14 years old when I discovered Red Sonja.  I’d grown up in a cultural climate in which women with aviator glasses and long straight hair burned bras on the news, so aside from a vague inkling that I’d been born into the losing team, (and the fact I hadn’t even developed a reason to own a bra, let alone burn one) I wasn’t much of a feminist at the time.  There was something about Sonja, though, encrypted within the contradicting combination of her voluptuous curves and deadly sword, trembled the sort of seismic shock to the consciousness that precipitates a quaking awakening.