INTERNATIONAL ROCK CITY

PROUD TO BE A 'GRUP'

Fascinating article on why gays and lesbians 'refuse to grow up', whatever that means. It does have a label, however, and that's 'GRUP' - for gay refusing to grow up. For us, according to the article, success is defined by freedom.

Slice:

So we wake up in the morning and our choices include not just what we’re going to wear or make for dinner, but whether we’re going to quit today, whether we should move across country and take up snowboarding, whether we should be single again or move in with our girlfriend and whether we should go back to school and try something completely new.

We grups are a people without a map. Especially we gay and lesbian grups, who don’t have the traditional heterosexual plan to follow, who may not be asked by our families when we’re going to have kids or get married or settle down.

Even if we are settled down—even if we have kids—we likely don’t have a plan. Instead, we are literally unsettled, insecure in the knowledge that we can leave anything at any time.

We chose this shedding of obligations and requirements because it’s how our generation defines freedom. We don’t want to be the company men or women. We don’t want to be trapped in gender or social roles. We don’t want to be the person with a lifelong regret that we had never tried to make it as a rock musician or a novelist.

So we’ve immersed ourselves in youth culture—and not even our own youth culture but the culture of the millennials (whose music, admittedly, is very similar to the Gen X music that we played on our Walkmans growing up). We have immersed ourselves in a youth culture where, like in all youth cultures, the driving force is the individual pursuit of our own passions, whatever passions those happen to be at the moment.

This differentiates us, I suppose, from the “Greed-is-Good” corporate types of the 1980s. If that’s what being grown-up is, we don’t want it—and good for us.

* * * *

That I could leave anything at any time actually is a source of security for me. And I feel quite grown up, no serious interest in dating a 22 year old (sleeping with one is another matter), but of course I haven't given up my pursuit of being a rock star. Never will, now that i can do it on my own with my new in-bedroom recording studio. To be free and not 'settled' isn't a bad thing, especially when you keep in mind the fact you're gonna die someday, and that day could be today. Buy that ticket to Barcelona, I say!

But there's a caveat to personal freedom. Don't we have a responsibilty to contribute? That's where the article gracefully concludes:

I suspect that...contentment will come when we start devoting ourselves to our community—our communities—instead of the latest band.

* * * *

Indeed.

Fire Howard Dean!

FAT DENNIS HASTERT

That fat white bloated amoral fuck head is hopefully going D.O.W.N.

Ah ha.

FLAGGED

This is definitely a candidate for Craigslist's 'best of' section.

SOMEONE 'HEARTS' US

I was randomly googling 24 Hours On Craigslist and was delighted to find this post about us:

For a very current scattershot perspective of the city, try 24 hours on Craigslist, which has a film crew chasing down as many posts from a single day as they can. It's pretty good at showing the incredible range of people that live in the Bay Area - meth addicts and generous hippies and musicians of all sorts and over-consumers and psychos and the most adorable couple ever (I heart Mike and Lee!). People with stories, basically.

posted by yentruoc at 02:12PM UTC on May 12, 2006

* * * *

I heart you too! BTW - KQED channel 9, our SF PBS station, is airing the movie at 6pm this Sunday evening.

...AND THEN WE WIN

Some hope from Daily Kos today.

A NICE QUOTE

War, corruption, disease, natural disaster, Donald Rumsfeld... in times like these, isn't a quote like the following really very nice to consider?

Part of what we're talking about is whether death is a clear black border or whether there is a blurring from life into death. And a story that I tell all the time is the story of twins in the womb. Two twins in a womb, one believes that there's a world outside this womb. The other one says, that's ridiculous. We've never seen another world, we've never heard of another world, all our needs are taken care of here. Now imagine that the one who believes in another world is born. Back in the womb his brother is mourning a death, but outside, they're celebrating a birth. And that is, at least one traditional way of looking at this world and the next world. That in fact it's a death here is a birth elsewhere. In other words, the lines and the categories that we fix things in are not nearly so clear as we've been taught.

-Rabbi David Wolpe

Have a great weekend.

IMPEACH

I think it's quite clear.

UPDATE:

"This is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."

Frankly, I have nothing to hide, so who gives a shit if the government is listening? The problem is, what might I say or do that will invite some kind of investigation of me, and an eventual incarceration as an "enemy combatant," where I will be held without any rights whatsoever? On what basis can we trust this administration with that kind of power?

AMERICAN IDOL SHOCKER!

Ruben finally demands, "Someone get this fag off me!"

Seriously, though... Chris instead of Catherine? WTF? I only ask that if Elliot wins please spare us a video - his ain't easy on the eyes, know what i'm sayin'?

WHO CARES?

At least the killing of child for being gay in Iraq, which is a response to the "fatwa" issued by Iraq's top Shiite leader to murder gay people in the worst possible way, is being reported.

Slice:

The killing of Ahmed is one of a series of alleged homophobic murders. There is mounting evidence that fundamentalists have infiltrated government security forces to commit homophobic murders while wearing police uniforms.

Human rights groups are particularly concerned that the Sadr and Badr militias, both Shia, have stepped up their attacks on the gay community after a string of religious rulings, since the US-led invasion, calling for the eradication of homosexuals.

* * * *

Horrifying. Of course, all kinds of people are being murdered in Iraq for all kinds of reasons, thanks to the U.S. invasion. While Andrew Sullivan rightly exposes and condemns this murderous policy of a U.S. ally in Iraq, he needs to accept that his support for this invasion was misguided - and he just doesn't. Who did he expect to take power in Iraq, anyway? Will and Grace?

GOD HATES JUPITER

Evidence of punishment.