Gnaw

May your Thanksgiving be a celebration of life and loved ones and hope.

First, if you drove a black Lincoln Navigator over the West Seattle bridge in the last couple weeks and cannot for the life of you figure out why EVERYONE was so frikking mad at you, well, here are some clues…  You came up on everyone’s ass like a Titan IVb rocket and then passed-and-cut-them-off (without so much as a turn signal) at 72 frikking miles per hour in a 45 MPH zone.  I was doing 50 at the time.  Your Lincoln Navigator is NOT a sports car and the West Seattle bridge is NOT the Bonneville salt flats a highway/freeway.

Second, if you feed the raccoons in my neighborhood then you are a part of the problem.  I hope to get some of their shit from around the trees in my yard and spread the wealth with you.  Raccoons are not cute, not sweet, not cuddly and are definitely not friendly to people or their yards.  Meanwhile, my Hellfire missiles are at the ready for the next Raccoon Night of Terror.  You’ve been warned.

Third, and this is to the shits who made-off with ALL the black figs (about 17-pounds worth) from a tree that is clearly NOT YOURS, stay on the frikking sidewalk or get your photo/video posted on YouTube.  Yepper, I’ve trained some motion-activated, wireless, IP-addressed cameras on the fruit trees and it is only a matter of time until you give me the video that you so richly deserve.  I would have gladly shared those figs if you had only asked.  Oh, and start picking up your doggy crap!

Fourth, if you are non-gay and a visitor at your friendly, local gay bar do NOT start talking smack like, “I totally HATE the Dixie Chicks and everything that they stand for!”  First, it makes you look like a Benito Mussolini puppet (read:  a fucking fascist).  Second, the Dixie Chicks were totally within their constitutionally-protected rights to speak their mind about the politics of the day (tea party rhetoric, anyone?).  And, finally, I will totally rake you over the constitutional coals and then give you a swirly…in the bathroom of that gay bar (and I won’t be nice about it).  “Hate” is for VD, bleu cheese, 8-track stereos and neo-nazi twits.

EDIT (24 Sept 09):  I don’t care if you don’t like the music made by the Dixie Chicks, or even if you don’t like them (as a band/as people)…you even have the right to HATE them outright.  Just know that words mean things, have consequences, and you have a certain amount of social responsibility in this SOCIETY of ours.  Remember, the operational part of SOCIETY is SOCIAL.  M’kay?

It’s 101.8 outside in Packwood, Washington (the STATE), and I’m playing Sweat (Oingo Boingo).

Sweat is one of the things I do best…

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I was clueless about sexuality for the majority of my life…including the twelve years I spent in the Coast Guard.  I could not figure it out, so I didn’t question, didn’t worry and didn’t think about it.  Besides, I had a job to do and I was totally married to the mission and my job(s).

So it was that I was a virgin at the tender age of 35-years, and I’d never questioned it.  Ignorance is such a tenacious thing.  And, not even six months out of the Coast Guard I realized exactly how gay I really was.  I was shocked (but not incredibly dumbfounded, mind you), I cried, I resolved to confide in the one person I could truly trust (my best friend in the hole world).

I felt pretty good about this because she had a couple of gay friends that she always talked about, and it was clear that she loved them to death.  I’ll call her M.A., and I make no pretense about her or her friends not knowing exactly who she is with that reference (not out of spite, only out of a need for honesty).  You see, it is time to get this off my chest.  Set it loose so that I can be free of it.  No, this is not a warm-fuzzy of a story (and this is the abridged version).

So, we (me and M.A.) are sitting at a lunch (I pre-arranged with her to talk about “something” because I lived in Fall City and she lived in Tacoma, or approximately 100 miles), and I told her that I was gay.  She, a bit angrily, exclaims “Well this is a bit sudden!”  Is awful, is kinda, is sorta, you get the idea, but it was hugely exclamatory in a large restaurant containing many more than two people.  I nearly died; she wasn’t done with it yet.

Her next, very-ruffled outburst was, “Well, don’t expect me to help you tell my parents!”  I totally did not get any of it.  It amounted to two, complete non sequiturs coming out of her mouth.  I got up and left, and I only ever talked with her again when I went down to get my things out of her garage (remember; abridged version).  At that time she was barely civil with me, much less communicative.

It is only well after the fact that I have realized that she was very likely throwing off clues like porcupine quills for many years; I never noticed.  I was incapable of noticing.  Nevertheless, the utter-and-complete betrayal of trust I felt has never gone away no matter how much benefit of the doubt I throw at M.A. and the equation.  I was crushed by someone whom I trusted without question, and my trust isn’t something that I have ever thrown around with any amount of abandon.  Multiply that flattening with the absolute invalidation of my person that I felt, and you come close to explaining the impact this made upon me.

I’m not inclined to want to go back and attempt a re-trusting (and re-friending) of M.A.  The entirety of our “friend” relationship was based upon perilous assumptions that we both made and never actually talked about.  I had never told her that she was the only person in the world that I felt I could trust in every measurable capacity.  Every reason she ever gave me to believe she was the person I could trust was totally destroyed by her own hand within thirty minutes in one restaurant.  And with that, M.A., I bid you good bye forever, you set me free with the “shocker” reality check that I truly needed.  The world is not always a kind place, but I can choose kind friends.

I encountered an interesting message-digest of activity (very, very short) from my Weblog today…

A new comment (surprising enough as that is)…  And in plain ol’ text with only a domain.com mention (no tags).

It sailed through my Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma filter with 4pts to spare (a feat not achieved ’til now (oh, yes, and uber-small-timey-yet-refreshingly-and-affectedly-pretentious)).

Retro is the new cutting edge.

Oh, and I’m saying this (others are too, likely) right now…today’s-date-(2009-0430 @ 0258 -8GMT) right-now (just because).

::yargh!::  By all rights I should create and upload a new GPG key tonight and sign this right now, darnit!

Did I mention “uber-small-timey-yet-pretentious?”  ::snickering/laughing::

I’m JUST saying…

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