Worlds & Time

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Gay Governor of Florida

Yeah, this is Florida, so I guess I'm not allowed to be surprised or anything, but the guy that they're about to elect to be Governor is gay . . . maybe.

The Broward-Palm Beach New Times is reporting . . . which will probably go unnoticed in most of the rest of the country. <link one> <link two>

Why am I writing about this? Because if you go to the print link on the second story, there's a picture of the 21 year old that is rumored to have slept with the soon-to-be Governor of Florida. The 21 year old Jason Wetherington is super-Republican, super-Christian, and sleeping with older men. And he's gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous.

Darn it. I'm way more upset about that than I am about the closeted gay guy that once again may be lying to people to get elected.

P.S. Update on me. I'm doing okay, I guess, but just leaning forward to research and write this is hurting my neck and shoulders. I'm not supposed to be typing. And I've been getting a lot of support, from Elliot (is that three "t"s?), from my extended family, and everyone, basically. It's been . . . 3 weeks since the accident, and I'm already in a mindnumbing place.

Labels: , ,

Friday, October 13, 2006

Satellite Internet & BSG

So, what's happened this week?

I suppose the big thing is that I got an satallite based internet connection. Finally.

I'm sitting at my desk, doing this from my home computer, which is so odd, because for months I've been forced to write during a few stolen minutes at work, or from a public hotspot or from a friend's connection.

The other big thing is that I finally saw the BSG premiere, and I loved it. They twisted everything. It's all about political satire and commentary. This should be required viewing for Poly-Sci people, it's just that good.

There was one more thing that I wanted to mention . . . what was it?

Oh, right, I broke my neck.

Specifically, I fractured my C-2 vertebrae last Saturday while I was driving to work. I was coming up Old Pecos Trail, and a woman in an SUV pulled out in front of me from my left.

I didn't have time to react. I think there may have been a car in the left turn lane that blocked both our views. I didn't have time to turn or slam on my break, or anything.

I think I remember the SUV. I think it was greenish. I'm not entirely sure. I know for sure that somewhere in there I thought about relaxing, trying to keep from being further hurt.

And then I rolled into the stoplight pole.

The driver's side window was completely shattered. I remember the glass was scattered over everything. I also immediately knew that something was wrong with my neck. It hurt, and so did my knee. When I had the Chiuaua accident, I had whiplash, so I immediately thought it was whiplash.

There was a guy standing there, with a cell phone, telling me not to move. There was smoke in the cab of the car. I didn't know it at the time, but it was from the air bag charge. Oh, the airbags had gone off. Had I mentioned that?

He asked if I wanted someone called, and I realized that this would be my first major accident where my mother wasn't right behind me. So I asked him to call her, but we couldn't reach her at the house, and I couldn't remember her cell phone number (We'd been joking about that, only last week).

Finally, the paramedics came. They had a lot of trouble moving me out because all my doors were locked. Finally, I pulled my keys from the ignition and gave them to the paramedic. She looked at them uncomprehendingly, and tossed them on the front seat.

I had to give her one of those looks, where you've been talking about the key to a lock, and someone hands you the key and you say, "What is this?"

"The key for the doors," I managed, and she finally understood, and crawled over me for the keys.

So I got a fun Ambulance ride to St. Vincint's. On the way, I kept replaying what had happened over and over in my head. I couldn't remember if the light had been red or green.

And I cried. I was sobbing, because I didn't know if it was my fault or not.

At St. Vincents a nurse asked me a couple of questions. What my name was. What my birthday was, and how old I was. And then the question I was dreading. "Do you have insurance?"

I didn't. I don't, I mean. I lost it Sept 30, and this was Oct 7. Ouch.

I started to cry again. With a broken neck, crying is very, very painful.

Then the cop came in. He asked me a couple of questions too, but I was pretty vague about everything. But he gave me good news. Very good news. It had been a redlight. For her. She'd been cited. It wasn't my fault.

So, then they left me alone. They'd put me in a box neck brace, and they had me on a hard backboard, and they left me alone.

And that was painful, and it got more painful over time. At first, I thought I could handle it, so I stayed quiet. A few minutes later I was quietly mewing. A few minutes later, I was calling for help, and then I was crying out as loudly as I could. No one came to check.

That was one of the worst moments of my life. I sat there, screaming out with pain, and no one even came in. I couldn't move because I was strapped to the bed, but I was testing the straps. I knew my neck was hurt, but at the time, I was willing to hurt it more, just to get out of the room. Pain is much easier to deal with when you have other people there.

When a doctor finally came in, I was just screaming. I don't think there was much real thought left. I do remember that I couldn't breath the oxygen through my nose because mucus was filling them from the crying.

He moved me around, and things began to get better right away, thankfully. The pain went away, partially, but somewhere in there they told me that I had a broken neck.

I wasn't drugged for the longest time, but what happened at St. Vincent's is still very unclear.

I got my first helicopter ride to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. I was drugged up quite significantally for that, but apparently I'm still too tall, because they had trouble fitting me into the helicopter.

At UNM Hospital, I was checked into the Trauma ER under the name "TRAUMA-ALERT, PAINT." Later, I found out that that was normal for helicoptered patients. They asign them names ending in "TRAUMA-ALERT" so that they can keep records on them, and they assign a first name that sounds vaguely like "patient" to differentiate them. Apparently one of the popular ones is "petunia." They didn't change my name to my real name until the night that I checked out.

Most of my time at the hopsital was spent waiting for tests or waiting for results. I had maybe four completely different sets of X-rays, two CT scans, and a MRI.

After all of that, they didn't even do any surgery. They just gave me a "Miami J" neck brace, and let me go home. Granted, I'm not all that happy about that. I'm still in considerably large amounts of pain. I took two Hydrocodone two hours ago, and I'm not having fun dreams, and I still have pain.

That's as much as I can remember at the moment. I'll check in when typing isn't quite so painful.

Labels: , ,

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Predictions

I was watching MSNBC this morning for a couple of minutes, and the President of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, talked about the Foley scandal.

His basic claims were that the liberalization of culture had allowed this to happen, and that people that score low on the Family Research Council's morality scorecard should be avoided.

Neither of those claims are really worth responding to, because Tony Perkins is an agent of the current culture of corruption in Washington. It's not about going after groups, because all groups need review, it's about looking at every person on a case by case basis, regardless of their group affiliation. It doesn't matter whether Foley is a Republican, a Floridian, or a gay man: he sent sexual advances to 16 years old. If he was a Democrat (like apparently Fox News tried to imply yesterday), I'd still be calling for his resignation.

So, when Tony Perkins says that we should look at a group, he's obfuscating what we really should be doing, and that's looking at individuals. He's trying to make people look at the big picture so that they can't see the little bits of cancer that are creeping in.

Anyway, a political talking head came on MSNBC somewhere in there and said that voters are getting tired of the entire congress, and than instead of seeing a shift toward the Democrat ticket, you'd simply see a huge turnover among the incumbents.

I disagree.

That's a prediction. I suspect that we'll only see a minor turnover. Democrats may retake the House, but whether they do or not, it probably won't be as great a change as MSNBC's talking head suggests.

Perhaps it's just the pessimism, but why do we think that things will change. Have you ever looked at the history of politics? Back when Jefferson was running for president, we still had smear campaigns and attack ads. As any government grows older, the power structures tend to become entrenched.

Real change happens with revolution, it always has. I'm not advocating revolution, not in the traditional sense, but I am suggesting electing a comedian to office. What's that new movie called? Right, Man of the Year.

That would be a change up, and a step in the right direction, because you need someone that's used to dealing with the crap, and not hiding it.

That's not going to happen though. It's the great wet dream of young Middle America, and that's exactly why it's not going to happen. We can barely get the gay community to talk about sex, how are we going to get Middle America to talk about their masturbatory fantasies?

So, I think that in 8 years, we're going to be in the same place, probably with a Democrat President that doesn't really represent the Democrats, the same way Bush doesn't represent the Republicans, but whoever they are, they're just going to represent the entrenched elitist crap that we see now.

Whoohoo. What a fun ride. It's like a rollercoaster with no bumps anymore. See you at the unloading zone.

Labels: , ,

Monday, October 02, 2006

Hunter or Hunted

So, the first psuedo relationship that I had, aparently I was overwhelming the guy that I was psuedo-seeing. I wanted to hang out with him, I wanted to know how he lived, I wanted to spend time with his friends.

Within about a month of our first date, we fought over me spending too much time with him twice, and then we psuedo-broke up from our psuedo-relationship.

So, then with my second relationship, I tried to stand off and not spend all of my time with the guy, but then he was upset and told me that I didn't want to be seeing him. Which wasn't true at the time, but about an hour later, when I called his phone and he had one of his friends blow me off, that's about when I started not wanting to see him any more.

Which brings me to this week's duality, whether to be hunter or the hunted.

I would much rather be hunted. Even if I say no, I would like to know that someone out there is paying attention to me. It's nice to feel wanted.

Except, what pursues me when I'm hunted is . . . always the same. Bad lines, nothing to back them up. I don't care about intelligence necessarily, because I bring enough of that to the table for both of us.

But dedication is something that I find amazing, and the dedication to take care of one's self is the sexiest thing, because I don't have it.

So, yes. I'm shallow. I care about the way guys look.

Neither of the guys that I mentioned above were gym bunnies. They were just normal guys, and I'm okay with that. But if you ask me what I like, I'm going to point to the jocks. That is what I like.

Someone once said that our tastes are influenced by our aculturation, and those sort of people would probably just sneer and say that:

1) I'm shallow, which I've already admitted to.

2) I've been influenced by Falcon and Jet Set and Bel Ami.

Which I may have been, but regardless of whether I've been influenced by the porn I watch, I like jocks. Argue with me all you want, but I like jocks, and you're not going to change my mind.

All of this talk about porn has a point. I act nearly predatory toward those kinds of guys, but really, it's just a sort of counterpoint to the way that straight guys act toward women. I don't actually chase them. My lack of sexual experience, and lack thereof, testifies to that.

Anyway, that's all beside the point. I like to be chased. I like being approached. That's what I'm down to now: You tell me. I'll be happy to spend all of my time with you, or not, but you have to actually tell me now, because aparently I can't read the clues.

Just so you know.

Labels: , ,