swamped with work and life... aka the return from boston

this is just a super-quick post to let y'all know i haven't forgotten... i'll be updating SOON SOON SOON on wam! and the super-awesomeness therein.


what a great time! met some cool people and basked in some fantastic discourse.


i'm uber-eager to give you my take on things, as well as recount strange tales from the cambridge marriott, lol. work has me playing mega-catchup, however, and that has to take precedence a ce moment.


anyway, just wanted to give a brief shout out and promise of women, action and the media goodness! cheers!

into you like a train

if i had a dollar for every time i thought i could fall in love...

i'd still be poor.

but maybe i'd have enough for bus fare to get me the fuck out of here.

how much for a smile?

i've been giggling more in the past week than in the last year.

i melt for your smile and touch

that irrepressible flush that so often floods your cheeks

belieing your age.

i can't believe it's for me.

on second thought:

fuck the dollars...

i only need one.

saying goodbye, or death is only a heartbeat away

i was just told that my grandmother passed away. she was 80, i believe. a very strong and determined woman, she raised 5 children, only to outlive three of them. she eloped at the age of 16, marrying my grandfather who was about to enter the navy during world war II. both parents disapproved of their relationship, so he came to her window and she ran away. they remained married for more than 50 years before he passed away a couple of years ago.



i'll never forget her telling me the story of their first meeting. she was playing softball, and my grandfather saw her playing, and ran up, spun her around, and kissed her, right in front of everyone. she punched him in the face. it was love.



most of my earliest and fondest memories involve them. they did the typical grandparent-y things, such as feed me lots of treats and take me shopping. but they were much more than just the typical holidays and special visit relatives.




to say i had a tough childhood would be an understatement, but i'm going to leave it at that. when i was 13, the summer before i was to enter high school, i was kicked out of my house. my grandparents generously took me in, caring for me and supporting me, eventually obtaining guardianship over me. i lived with them through high school, and seasonally during college. i felt so fortunate. my grandmother had diabetes and osteoporosis, which caused her to continually break her hips and legs until finally she was moved to a hospice/nursing home to receive better care. she fought bouts of depression and the eventual onset of alzheimer's before passing away.



her strict and devout baptist faith often caused the two of us to have heated discussions regarding religion and lifestyles. when i was six weeks old, she started taking me to church, and i regularly attended through a good portion of middle school, until puberty hit, and i became questioning and resentful toward a very close-minded faith. my grandmother loved jerry falwell and anita bryant, and i distinctly remember her sitting me down and asking me if i knew what homosexuality was and how it was evil. i never told her i'm gay. she once told me she wanted to live long enough to see me graduate from college and marry a nice boy. i told her that she shouldn't hold her breath, lol.




regardless of our political and personal differences, i admired her greatly. she was a strong woman, and basically raised her children on her own, as my grandfather owned a trucking company and was rarely home. she got a job at a time when women were supposed to stay at home, as a secretary and bookkeeper, and later worked part time at a grocery store, just because she loved to work. she watched one child die of crohn's disease, and buried another in the horrors of vietnam. a third died of alcoholism-induced diabetes, followed shortly by her husband, the single love of her life besides god. she's seen more tragedy and hardship than seems possible.



yet the woman was unshakable, and when angered, angels feared to tread. she was 5'2", and though my grandfather was 6'4" and a tough tattooed naval officer, he stayed out of her way. she was also charitable, loving, generous, and forgiving. i love her very much, and she'll be sorely missed. RIP

how you can help celebrate ian benson's life

a big thank you to all who have linked to my site and given kind words of support re: the unfortunate passing of ian benson. friday night, a candlelight vigil was held in his honor at black river public school in holland, mi, where ian had attended the prior year. (he was home schooled beginning this year.) i lit my candle from home and quietly mourned the loss on my own. amazingly, the holland sentinel published a short piece on the event.

if you'd like to help celebrate ian's memory, and the memory of so many other trans* people whose lives ended much too prematurely, you can join in the amethyst ribbon campaign. donations/purchases can be made here.

**i officially changed ian's name from guarr to benson, per comments at questioning transphobia. ian was to have his name changed officially in the courts on the wednesday following his passing. RIP**

so NOW who's joining dumbledore's army?

this story has me so excited today i can barely concentrate on my work (geekdom, thou hast won!) jk dropped this knowledge on a stunned audience at carnegie hall on sunday: albus dumbledore is gay.

...

can you believe it? dumbledore's gay?!? no wonder his grindelwald disdain was so tainted with hurt and emotion. he threw his genius heart to the only person with the potential to match him, only to realize that the object of his affection had such an evil side. how bittersweet and tortuous to have to fight and defeat his love. could there have ever been a more suitable match for albus? suddenly, his self-ostracism, sacrifice, and the way in which he threw himself into his work makes so much more sense. holing himself up in hogwart's, turning down the ministry of magic position, delving exclusively into his work: confusion and eventually acceptance of his sexuality would've been preying on his mind throughout everything he did.


so i can't WAIT for the evangelical christian backlash on this one. they already condemn potter and the entire series for the wicked, wicked use of witchcraft, potions, spells and the like. i mean, i wasn't allowed to watch the smurfs as a child because the church said the spell casting was evil! so can you imagine adding the evils of HOMOSEXUALITY to their profuse hatred of all things rowling? i can't wait... and i tip my pink hat to albus dumbledore.

lesbian pirates... for a change?!?

in honor of international talk like a pirate day (huzzah!), i figured i'd join in the spirit and link to a few articles celebrating the (constestably sexual) relationship between anne bonny and mary read.

two of the most famous pirates in history, they fight, fought and fucked like pirates, alternately dressing as men and women, and pleading whichever gender suited them to the particular moment. how very androgynous of them. hot.

there is much speculation as to whether or not the relationship was actual, implied, or invented, mostly hotly debated by 35 year old male history geeks that still live in their mom's basements and eat cap'n crunch for dinner in their bathrobes.

this one believes the relationship to be actual, and this article opposes it.

as for me, especially the beer swilling, swash-buckling, eye-patch wearing, homosexual leaning types. Ahoy!

in addition, let me just add that it's hella annoying how trendy pirates are right now. i've pretty much been a pirate since before i was caught taking my little brother's eyepatches at the age of 6. (he had sight issues, okay? and he kept flushing his patches down the toilet ~ i was doing him and our plumbing a favor by taking them off his hands!)

bloody XOXO in love and thievery

Victoria Violence, Corsair Extraordinaire

whatever happened to julie ruin?

lately i've been feeling nostalgic for the riot grrls of yesteryear.

queercore is practically mainstream nowadays, and it kinda takes the fun and subversive nature out of gay punk/indie music. queer punk is suffering from the same downfall of original punk music... with notoriety and publicity comes a sort of grudging recognition and acceptance. which is exactly what punk tries NOT to achieve. rebelling ceases to exist when it's done en masse. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying it's a bad thing that queer rock has made its mark, it's fantastic! that's a central goal (among others, of course) of the marginalized, right? to get your voice heard, make some changes, stir up issues, shift the current ways of thinking? it makes me smile to turn on a radio station and hear, say, tegan & sara.

BUT I WANT MORE.

it's queer-lite nowadays, if you will. what next? where has the spark gone? issues haven't quelled, but the diy spirit kinda has. sure, there are some great groups out there today, such as scream club, boyskout, girl in a coma and the dead betties. but they don't come around here. hiding in the safeland of the west coast and vancouver, if they tour, they skip right over detroit and hide away in nyc.

NOT VERY SUBVERSIVE OF YOU.

those little 80s/90s homocore pioneers traveled all over and would play wherever to just get heard. groups today have it much easier and seem to only be playing where it's comfortable. how un-punk.

and how unfair to these groups that fought for you to even get gigs. i want some riotous, angry, fun, tongue-in-cheek, black eye-inducing, laugh-out-loud, fuck your mother, 'recruit them all' queer kind of music! and i know i'm not alone. where are the pansy divisions, bikini kills, hedwigs, team dresches, and vaginal creme davises of today? staying away from the midwest, for sure... my little homo heart is aching for some REVOLUTION! and if you're one of these groups scared of big, bad michigan ~ you can all crash at my place, i'll book you and show you it's not so bad.

let me end this short little rant with the lyrics from classic bikini kill song by ms julie ruin herself, kathleen hanna. this track is called 'i like fucking':

Hey! do you believe there's anything

Beyond troll guy reality?

I do, I do, I do

It gets so hard

Just to be okay

Sometimes being happy baby

Is what I'm most afraid of

Baby, you know,

It gets so hard for me to fight

I don't know how

I guess I never did

Why don't you show me how

How to lose control?

She's so very, 'I don't care'

Just cuz my world, sweet sister

Is so fucking goddamn full of rape

Does that mean my body must always be

a source of pain?

No, no, no

She's so very 'I don't care.'

Just cuz I named it right here sweet Chickadee

Don't mean for a minute you should think

I'm opposite of anything

But if you wanna know for sure I'll tell you

We're not gonna prove nothing nothing

Sittin around watching each other starve

What we need is action/strategy

I want, I want, I want

I want it now

I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe

I do, I do, I do