The Spill

As seen from NASA's TERRA satellite yesterday; click on the image to enlarge.

Wikipedia has an extensively detailed article on the catastrophe.

And Portugal Makes Eight

Teh gayz in Portugal can get hitched now:  President Anibal Cavaco Silva has announced he will sign the equal-marriage law passed by that country's parliament earlier this year.  Portugal is the sixth country in Europe and eighth in the world to allow same-sex marriage nationwide, following The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, and Sweden.

Fabuloso! 

Bonus:  Check out His Woofness Excellency, the Prime Minister of Portugal, José Sócrates:

Wikipedia says divorced, two kids.

I say - DILF.

"A Very Isolating Experience"

Via Box Turtle Bulletin, a couple of clips from Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee (- woof -) on what happened when he left that ex-gay outfit, and what he regrets teaching; part of a series you can view in its entirety on YouTube.

First, I can totally relate to his description of being cursed and shunned:



And I understand exactly what he means about "the biggest heresy":



Interestingly, that Stonegate Fellowship Church video I referenced yesterday that Rob Tisinai posted on his blog has now been taken private by the owner; guess the secret of how to turn gay cocksuckers into born-again cuntlickers will have to remain a mystery known only to the saved.

Excuse my language, guys, but this subject really pushes my buttons:  that bullshit theology crucified me all of my teenage years, and came very close to killing me.  I still have the scars.  And they still fucking hurt.

That was the Devil's work, not God's.

Wave and Water

Your Head Trucker isn't very well read in Buddhist theology; but here's something I found over on Sullivan's blog - and I like it a lot.

When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, "Some day I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing."

These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish. A wave can be recognized by signs -- beginning or ending, high or low, beautiful or ugly. In the world of the wave, the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells, and she feels sad as she falls. She may think, "I am high!" or "I am low!' and develop superiority or inferiority complexes, but in the world of the water there are no signs, and when the wave touches her true nature -- which is water -- all of her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Of course instead of saying "return to nonbeing," one could say "return to God" and for my money, arrive at the same place:  the end of all strife and all striving; the perfect fulfillment of every desire in that Love that moves the stars - as Dante put it:  the glorious, eternal Beatific Vision.  Eternal rest.  The peace you long for in the depth of your heart, even though you might call it by another name.

Sullivan says the same thing I'm trying to express, in his own way:

I have two intuitions about what happens when I die. The first is that I cannot know in any way for sure; and I surely know that whatever heaven is, it is so beyond our human understanding that it is perhaps better not to try an answer. The second is that I will continue to exist in my essence but more firmly and completely enveloped in the love and expanse of God, as revealed primarily in the life of Jesus.

I guess you can believe there is nothing there (atheism/agnosticism); or that there is something there into which everything dissolves - human and divine - which is a kind of non-material unity of love and compassion (Buddhism). Faith gives me the hope of the Christian alternative to both, that we will remain who we are, the unique objects of God's love, and yet part of such a miraculous sea of divine love, we will be both ourselves and yet far less limited by ourselves, freed from the sin that keeps us from knowing one another, forgiving one another and loving one another and loving God as parent, child and spirit. . . .

So I do not believe our consciousness is utterly different after death than now. I believe, with Saint Paul, that this is the same divine experience, but through a glass darkly. I believe it is Love, because Jesus showed me so. And I await with great fear because I am human and I await with great hope because of the incarnation and resurrection of God in human history.

To philosophize is to learn how to die.

To believe is to hope for light in the face of "some blackness coming toward us."

The thing is, it's a mystery we can sense but never prove. Guess we'll all find out the straight of it when we get there, huh boys.

The Outlaw of Amherst

Yes, your Head Trucker likes poetry - you got a problem with that, bud?

Holland Cotter's excellent reflections in the NYT on what Emily Dickinson meant to him as a gay teen resonate deeply with me.

Patterson attributed Dickinson’s seclusion and poetry to a thwarted romance. But she proposed that the love object was a woman.

The revelation, true or not, was explosive for a teenager who knew he was gay and was still isolated in that knowledge. As always, I went immediately back to Dickinson’s poetry and discovered there a dynamic I had sensed but hadn’t been able to name: fluidity of gender.

She spoke as a woman, a man, a little girl, a little boy, a lover active and passive. Suddenly she was throwing out a power-of-example lifeline. Not only was she an outsider, she was also, so it seemed, an outlaw, on the margins, where I felt I was too. . . .

The one power Dickinson trusted was the power of language, which she loved. And that love is, I think, the main thing I’ve gained from her, even if I’ve put it to lesser uses. By her own account she experienced an acute physical reaction to words, a euphoric shock.

I know exactly what she meant, because her poetry has that effect. Ambush is its strategy. It knocks the breath out of you and leaves you giddy, like a nanosecond-long roller coaster ride. If you visit the Dickinson show at the New York Botanical Garden, which I recommend, and watch people’s faces as they read the poems posted around the grounds, you may see that power in action.

It’s a power she acquired in part by being, in some essential way, an outsider, but also from seeing that identity, not as a disability, but as a saving grace, and one that carries responsibilities:

               The Province of the Saved
               Should be the Art — to save

Emily has been one of my very favorites since way back in junior high.  Something about the intensity, the flashes of insight, the particular view she took of things, drew me in, fascinated.  When I was in college, I dug around in the library and found her entire collected poems, the scholarly edition:  there are 1,775 of them, if I recollect right.  And I sat right down and read through most of them; delicious, like a fruited table in a walled garden.

And was she gay?  I don't know, I doubt that anyone can ever know for certain.  But it was a wonderful life, whatever the case may be, to produce such sparkling gems of words and thought that still speak to the heart of those who don't fit in with the crowd, who see the world from another perspective than the ordinary:  who march to a different drum.

A favorite that I know by heart:

          Much madness is divinest sense
          To a discerning eye;
          Much sense the starkest madness.
          ’Tis the majority
          In this, as all, prevails.
          Assent, and you are sane;
          Demur,—you’re straightway dangerous,
          And handled with a chain.

Browse more of Emily's poems here.  It's okay:  I won't tell anyone at the Eagle if you won't.

Casualities of the Culture Wars

Hey guys, you have to check out Frank Rich's brilliant summation of George Reker's obscene hypocrisy in the NYT, along with some very perceptive observations on sex, hypocrisy, and the culture wars.  Excerpt:

OF all wars, only culture wars offer the hope of sheer, unadulterated hilarity. Sex and hypocrisy were staples of farce long before America became a nation, and they never go out of style. Just listen to the roaring audience at the new hit Broadway revival of the perennial “La Cage aux Folles,” where a family-values politician gets his comeuppance in drag. Or check out the real-life closet case of George Rekers, who has been fodder for late-night television comics all month. . . .

But once we stop laughing, we must remember that culture wars are called wars for a reason. For all the farcical shenanigans they can generate, they do inflict real casualties — both at the micro level, on the lives of ordinary people, and at the national level, where, as we’re seeing right now, a Supreme Court nominee’s entire record can be reduced to a poisonous and distorted debate over her stand on the single culture-war issue of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” . . .

By late last week, double-entendre wisecracks about Kagan’s softball prowess were all the rage on Fox News and MSNBC. These dying gasps of our culture wars, like Rekers’s farcical pratfall, might be funnier if millions of gay Americans and their families were not still denied their full civil rights.

Lovelight: Cada Día (Every Day)

The song's in Spanish; but even if you don't speak the lingo, there's some really cool pics here.  A neat job.



Buenas noches muchachos, and sweet dreams.

Flutterbyes

My front porch, 3:30 p.m. today:  a truckload of company dropped by.  Click on any picture to enlarge.

Butterfly to bee: 

Hey, beat it, bud - I'm working this side of the street!

Of course you expect this from me - some gratuitous sex skin petunias:

And finally, the last shot I caught turned out to be the perfect shot.  Enlarge to appreciate the very fine details.

Okay, at least one of you guys must know what make and model butterflies these are.  They're all just 2"-3" across, max.  Little help here?

Update:  The ex-roommate called last night and thinks it's a painted lady, but I'm inclined to go with a red admiral.  What do you think?

Second Gay Episcopal Bishop Ordained

From Episcopal News Service:

Two historic ministries were welcomed in a huge and joyous celebration May 15 as thousands witnessed Diane Jardine Bruce and Mary Douglas Glasspool being consecrated bishops suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

During the three-hour service at the Long Beach Arena, themed 'Rejoice!' Bruce and Glasspool were ordained and consecrated the 16th and 17th women bishops in the Episcopal Church. Bruce is the first woman to be elected a bishop in the Los Angeles diocese. Glasspool, elected Dec. 5, a day after Bruce, is the diocese's first—and the Episcopal Church's second—gay, partnered bishop.

About 30 bishops, including the Rt. Rev. Martin DeJesus Barahona of El Salvador and retired Ugandan bishop Christopher Senyonjo, attended the service.  Retired Massachusetts suffragan bishop Barbara Harris, who in 1988 became the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church and worldwide Anglican Communion, served as one of seven co-consecrating bishops. She received sustained applause and a standing ovation when Bruno paid tribute to her in his sermon. 

"It's a joy to participate in her consecration," Harris later said of Glasspool, who in 1988 nominated Harris for bishop. "We're great friends. Little did either of us know that both of us would be sitting in the House of Bishops."

"She is going to make a very good bishop," Harris added. "She's a wonderful, caring, loving, pastoral person."  New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, who in 2003 became the first openly gay, partnered bishop in the Episcopal Church, was among the bishops attending the service.

Sunday Drive: Dust in the Wind

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

So make the most of it.

Help for You Homos

Dear friend, have you been impacted by same-sex attraction issues?

Are you struggling with homosexuality?*

Do you think God doesn't want an abomination like you in church?

Do you secretly yearn to be married indissolubly to a nice, wholesome, middle-aged lady who reminds you of your mother, and have two-and-a-half kids, a picket fence, and musty-damp control-top desert-tan pantyhose draped across the shower rod every blessed morning of the rest of your life?

Well, brother, in that case get your faggot ass down to West Texas because Stonegate Fellowship, a "plant" of the Southern Baptist Church in Midland, Texas - hometown of that great American patriot, President George W. Bush - has got a real hope for you:  be a Christian, not a cocksucker. 

Golly gee, fellas, wouldn't that be swell?  You too can be a practicing heterosexual just like George Rekers Ted Haggard Larry Craig dear old Mom and Dad.

Cruise on over to Rob Tisinai's blog and catch the video now.  Be sure to read Rob's dead-on-target analysis of it while you're there.

Oh, and take a barf bag with you.  I'm just saying.

P.S. - My late husband, a native Texan himself, used to say the reason they call West Texas "God's Country" is because nobody else wants it.


* - It may be you're just not doing it right.  If unsure, call your Head Trucker for expert mentoring and, um, guidance.  Special rate for regular Blue Truck readers . . . group discounts also available.