Journal Archives from theDreamworld ... February 2009

February 2009

February 28, 2009

The days are full of roiling emotions these past weeks, cresting in highs, crashing down to darkest low points, all full of incredible turbulence and overshadowed by gloom and storm. At many points I'm amazed I can keep myself aright, astounded I can make any kind of movement at all in a needed direction.

I am awash in the fury of the past and struggling to keep a foothold in the present ... and the future looks dark upon the horizon. There will be no rescuers to offer aid, no safe harbors within close proximity. The only hope for salvation is to weather the fury until it passes, hold strong in the face of the impossible. A week at least more, perhaps two, ... perhaps more still ... and then the storms will lessen ... I hope.

Each year is the same, these tsunami seasons of suffering. Each year equally unendurable and yet each yet somehow survived. Each year I sail clear of the terror of it all, yet each year I wonder if I can find a way to steer through it all again.

Posted at 10:57 PM

February 27, 2009

Gee, debt relief that starts and ends on the same date. If it weren't so completely unfathomable I might laugh. Thanks for the support, oh government of mine (as if we weren't already getting financially fucked enough).

Posted at 12:15 AM

February 26, 2009

I should just slip into a coma from February 1st 'til March 19th. I wouldn't miss out on anything, I'd probably get just as much done, and I'd suffer infinitely less.

Posted at 11:31 PM

February 25, 2009

Mmmm ... quiche ...

Posted at 11:44 PM

February 24, 2009

That's all great, Mr. President, but I still haven't heard when you're sending my personal bailout money.

Posted at 10:16 PM

February 23, 2009

Ever since I first saw Dustin Lance Black I've thought he was amazingly hot. Smoking even. The more I've learned about him the more talented I've realized he is.

A couple days ago, however, I read an intro he had for a newly released book about Harvey Milk (Black wrote the screenplay for the movie Milk). I was touched and impressed by all he had to say. Last night, when he won best Oscar for an Original Screenplay, he briefly mentioned some things in his acceptance speech that had been a part of that book intro. Here's the full text of that earlier statement because it is touching, inspiring, and the root of all that theDreamworld stands for.

30 Years Later

I grew up in a very conservative Mormon military household in San Antonio, Texas. I knew from the age of six what people would call me if they ever discovered my “secret.” Faggot. Deviant. Sinner. I’d heard those words ever since I can remember. I knew that I was going to Hell. I was sure God did not love me. It was clear as day that I was “less than” the other kids, and that if anyone ever found out about my little secret, beyond suffering physical harm, I would surely bring great shame to my family.

So I had two choices: to hide—to go on a Mormon mission, to get married and have a small Mormon family (eight to twelve kids)—or to do what I’d thought about many a time while daydreaming in Texas history class: take my own life. Thankfully, there weren't’t enough pills (fun or otherwise) inside my Mormon mother’s medicine cabinet, so I pretended and I hid and I cried myself to sleep more Sabbath nights than I care to remember.

Then, when I was twelve years old, I had a turn of luck. My mom remarried a Catholic Army soldier who had orders to ship out to Fort Ord in Salinas, California. There I discovered a new family, the theater. . . and soon, San Francisco.

That’s when it happened. I was almost fourteen when I heard a recording of a speech. It had been delivered on June 9, 1978, the same year my biological father had moved my family out to San Antonio. It was delivered by what I was told was an “out” gay man. His name was Harvey Milk.

"Somewhere in Des Moines or San Antonio, there is a young gay person who all of a sudden realizes that she or he is gay. Knows that if the parents find out they’ll be tossed out of the house. The classmates will taunt the child and the Anita Bryants and John Briggs are doing their bit on TV, and that child has several options: staying in the closet, suicide. . . and then one day that child might open up the paper and it says, “homosexual elected in San Francisco,” and there are two new options. One option is to go to California. . . OR stay in San Antonio and fight. You’ve got to elect gay people so that that young child and the thousands upon thousands like that child know that there’s hope for a better world. There’s hope for a better tomorrow."

That moment when I heard Harvey for the first time . . . that was the first time I really knew someone loved me for me. From the grave, over a decade after his assassination, Harvey gave me life. . . he gave me hope.

At that very same moment, without knowing it, I became a pawn in a game of political power wrangling that is still shedding blood from DC to Sacramento, El Paso to Altoona.

In the following years, I watched careers, political and otherwise, cut short through revelations of this or that official’s sexuality. And in 2004, I looked on with horror as a President won re-election by pitting homophobes against gays and lesbians. If there had been a Harvey Milk, if there had been a movement of great hope and change, I certainly couldn’t see it from where I stood four and a half years ago when I started this journey to tell Harvey’s story.

Thirty years after Harvey Milk was assassinated, in the summer of 2008, with antigay measures on the ballot in several states, I tuned in to the Democratic National Convention to see how his message had fared. Back in 1972, Jim Foster, an openly gay man, stood up in front of the convention and on prime-time national television said, “We do not come to you pleading your understanding or begging your tolerance, we come to you affirming our pride in our life-style, affirming the validity to seek and maintain meaningful emotional relationships and affirming our right to participate in the life of this country on an equal basis with every citizen.” What did I hear at the DNC in 2008? Almost nothing. And then there was the Republican National Convention: Sarah Palin, John McCain, flashy, divisive, patriotic speeches. And even there, not a mention of gay or lesbian people. . . bigoted or otherwise.

I left those conventions with a deep, sinking fear. They’ve found the surefire way to kill the gay and lesbian movement for good. They’ll make us invisible. They’ll make us all disappear. It’s happened before. Reagan did it in the 80s with six years of silence about the AIDS crisis.

You see, one of the biggest hurdles for the gay community has always been invisibility. Unlike the black movement and the women’s movement, gays and lesbians are not always immediately identifiable. People still go their entire careers without coming out to their co-workers, not to mention their relatives or their neighbors. Harvey Milk saw this problem, and shouted out the solution, “You must come OUT!”

The entire concept of coming out was devised and pushed for by leaders like Harvey Milk back in 1978 as a way to counter this visibility problem. If people don’t know who they are hurting, they don’t mind discriminating against them. Watching these two conventions, I got a sinking feeling that Milk’s beloved gay and lesbian movement was off the table. I felt myself slowly vanishing, and for gay and lesbian people, invisibility equals death.

Thirty years after Harvey began his fight for GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) equality, I am still “less than” a heterosexual when it comes to my civil rights in America. If I fall in love with someone in a foreign country, I can’t marry him and bring him home. I can’t be out in the military, there are inheritance rights issues, adoption rights, social security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing, and access to health care rights, social services, and education rights, and on and on. The message to gay and lesbian youth today is that they are still inferior.

Today, in 2008, The Gay and Lesbian Task Force reports that a third of all gay youth attempt suicide, that gay youth are four times more likely than straights to try to take their own lives, and if a kid does survive, 26 percent are told to leave home when they come out. It’s estimated that 20 to 40 percent of the 1.6 million homeless youth in America today identify as gay or lesbian. Harvey Milk’s message is needed now more than ever.

So much of what I’ve done in this business up to this point has been to make myself ready to take on the overwhelming responsibility of retelling Harvey’s story. It took many years of research, digging through archives, driving up to San Francisco in search of Harvey’s old friends and foes, charging a couple of nights at the Becks motor lodge on Market and Castro with my principal source, Harvey’s political protégé, Cleve Jones.

What I discovered on those trips wasn’t the legend of the man that I’d heard in adolescence. What I discovered was a deeply flawed man, a man who had grown up closeted, a man who failed in business and in his relationships, a man who got a very late start. Through Harvey’s friends, foes, lovers, and opponents, I met the real Harvey Milk.

Those I interviewed also shared stories of a time in San Francisco when it seemed anything was possible. The Castro was booming. Gay and lesbian people were making headway in the battle for equal rights. And from the ashes of defeats in Florida, Kansas, and Oregon rose a big-eared, floppy-footed leader who was able to reach out to other communities, to the disenfranchised, and to unexpected allies. He convinced an entire people to “come out,” and against all odds, he fought back and won on Election Day.

So what happened on Election Day, November 4, 2008, thirty years later? When I began this project, I could never have predicted the parallels between Proposition 8 in California in 2008 and Harvey’s fight over Proposition 6 in 1978. Both statewide initiatives sought to take away gay and lesbian rights. By the early hours of November 5, though, it became clear this modern-day fight wouldn’t echo Harvey’s victory in 1978. Only weeks before Milk’s biography would hit the big screen, Proposition 8 in California passed. It changed the state’s constitution to revoke the right of marriage to gay and lesbian citizens who had already been enjoying that right. Thirty years, almost to the day, after Harvey Milk had successfully defeated Proposition 6 in California, the pendulum had swung back.

One week later, Cleve Jones and I picked up the torch of his former mentor and father figure with these words (as published in the San Francisco Chronicle):

We have always been willing to serve our country: in our armed forces, even as we were threatened with courts-martial and dishonor; as teachers, even as we were slandered and libeled; as parents and foster parents struggling to support our children; as doctors and nurses caring for patients in a broken health care system; as artists, writers and musicians; as workers in factories and hotels, on farms and in office buildings; we have always served and loved our country.

We have loved our country even as we have been subjected to discrimination, harassment and violence at the hands of our countrymen. We have loved God, even as we were rejected and abandoned by religious leaders, our churches, synagogues and mosques. We have loved democracy, even as we witnessed the ballot box used to deny us our rights.

We have always kept faith with the American people, our neighbors, co-workers, friends and families. But today that faith is tested and we find ourselves at a crossroad in history.

Will we move forward together? Will we affirm that the American dream is alive and real? Will we finally guarantee full equality under the law for all Americans? Or will we surrender to the worst, most divisive appeals to bigotry, ignorance and fear?

I imagine Harvey would be surprised that words like these would still be needed in 2008. What went wrong? Why did the GLBT community lose a civil rights fight that Harvey could likely have won thirty years ago?

To me, the answers are clear. GLBT leaders today have been asking straight allies to stand up for the gay community instead of encouraging gay and lesbian people to proudly represent themselves. The movement has become closeted again. The movement has lost the message of Harvey Milk. Who is to blame? The philosopher George Santayana said so long ago, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I didn’t grow up with any knowledge of GLBT heroes, but there are many. I didn’t grow up with any instruction about GLBT history, but it is a rich history, filled with valuable, universal lessons. It is only in recent years that Hollywood has agreed to risk its dollars on films that depict gay protagonists, and only now, thirty years after Milk’s assassination, that Hollywood has agreed to risk its dollars to depict one of the gay movement’s greatest heroes.

Now, thanks to the bravery of directors like Gus Van Sant, producers like Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, and companies like Michael London’s Groundswell and Focus Features, I was given a shot at creating a popularized history that young people, GLBT leaders, and our future straight allies can look at and learn from. With this and the many other films I hope will follow, perhaps we are not doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes of our past.

But even in these difficult times, all is not lost. By example, Harvey taught us that from our darkest hours comes “Hope.” The night after this year’s election, I attended a rally against the passage of Proposition 8, and the speakers onstage were mostly the folks who had waged the failed, closeted “No on 8” campaign. Yes, they were saying inspiring, fiery words about the injustice. Yes, there were some cheers, but mostly the mood was restless. And then something magical happened.

The young people in the crowd started to move. Perhaps it was instinct, perhaps they knew more about their own movement’s history than the folks onstage, perhaps they just weren’t willing to continue the current leadership’s policy of closeting and good behavior. They started to move. They marched away from the stage. They started to march out of the gay ghetto of West Hollywood and up to a straight neighborhood. Within minutes a public march, eight thousand strong, had begun. It looked almost identical to Harvey’s marches up Market Street in San Francisco in 1977. Young people, old people, gay people, lesbians, bisexual folks, transgender ones, and many, many straight allies marched up to Sunset Boulevard, took over the city, and started doing what Harvey had talked about. They started giving a face to GLBT people again. They showed the world who was hurt at the ballot box the night before. They came out. They weren’t asking straight people to advocate for their rights. In their chants and on their signs, they demanded equality themselves.

In 1977, Harvey Milk claimed Anita Bryant didn’t win in Dade County when she overturned all of their gay rights laws. He claimed that the defeat in Florida had brought his people together. It seemed the same thing had happened thirty years later.

And yes, those demonstrators on television, and Harvey’s message in theaters, are exceedingly important in the continued fight over Proposition 8, but they are important to me for another, more personal reason. . . because I feel certain there is another kid out there in San Antonio tonight who woke up on November 5, 2008, and heard that gay people had lost their rights in California, that they were still “less than,” and I know all too well the dire solutions that may have flashed through his or her head.

Those demonstrators on television sets all across the country aren’t just making a statement against the bigotry of Prop 8; they are sending a message of hope to that child in San Antonio: “You are not less than,” “You have brothers and sisters and friends, thousands of them,” “There is hope for a better tomorrow,” and like Harvey said, “You can come to California. . . or you can stay in San Antonio and FIGHT.”

These photos and the accompanying quotes from my research interviews in this book don’t tell the story of a man born to lead, but of a regular man with many flaws who did what many others wouldn’t . . . he did what his people need to do again today, thirty years later . . . Harvey Milk stood up and fought back.

Dustin Lance Black
November 2008
Los Angeles

Posted at 8:48 PM

February 22, 2009

Are there people that are really happy or are some people just able to lie to themselves better than others?

Posted at 8:12 PM

February 21, 2009

Sometimes I hate having this website.

Posted at 10:27 PM

February 20, 2009

Is it actually possible to make realistic plans for more than one or two days into the future and have any remote hope that things might work the way you planned? And if that's so questionable, what about plans for even one or two months in the future? And just forget about anything farther forward than that.

Posted at 12:05 AM

February 19, 2009

Yes, Forrest, 'Life is a bowl of cherries' - and they're all rotten.

Posted at 8:16 PM

February 18, 2009

"Yes grandma, you do have to eat - and not just cookies."

Should I just record this and put it on a continually repeating loop?

Posted at 11:21 PM

February 17, 2009

The stronger depression I've been struggling with the last week or so is bad enough, but with this incessant migraine (which seems to have been plaguing me morning, noon, and night for weeks now) it's requiring a Herculean effort to do anything at all.

I'd love to be able to lie down, rest my eyes, and have some peace and quiet. I have to care for a 94-year old woman, though, so none of that's remotely possible. Wah. : (

Posted at 9:41 PM

February 16, 2009

Oh no!

Peter's mother on Family Guy looks and dresses like Mrs. Finster from Recess. Is that disturbing or what?

Seriously - why aren't you more disturbed by this?

Posted at 11:32 PM

February 15, 2009

Squee!!

Well ... maybe I'm not that excited ... but it was certainly enjoyable to get away from my grandma for a few hours and have some intelligent, coherent conversations with my friends over dinner. It's sad that I have to drive nearly three hours round trip to do that - particularly when I only stay for about four or five hours - but I do really need the break from the drudgery of my life. And after nearly a month since my last visit (and a month further back from that visit to our next most recent visit) I was really well overdue for some prime relaxation and conversation.

See? I'm not that hard to please. It's just sad that even this simple of a pleasure is so hard to come by. Sad indeed.

Posted at 12:39 PM

February 14, 2009

One

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one

No is the saddest experience you'll ever know
Yes, it's the saddest experience you'll ever know
`Cause one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
One is the loneliest number, worse than two

It's just no good anymore since she went away
Now I spend my time just making rhymes of yesterday

One is the loneliest, number one is the loneliest
Number one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
One is the loneliest, one is the loneliest
One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
It's just no good anymore since she went away
(Number) One is the loneliest
(Number) One is the loneliest
(Number) One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
(Number) One is the loneliest
(Number) One is the loneliest
(Number) One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do

- Three Dog Night

Posted at 8:54 PM

February 13, 2009

Ki Ki Ki, ma ma ma ...

Posted at 7:41 PM

February 12, 2009

Brain .. melting .. pain .. pain .. pain ..

Posted at 10:34 PM

February 11, 2009

What are you doing, Dave?

Posted at 10:31 PM

February 10, 2009

Steve passed this to me via e.mail, and it was a wonderfully amusing way to start the day. And it's not only funny, it's true! It's brilliant, in fact!

Republicanism Explained

In the last few months, as the scavengers have picked at the carcass of the Republican party, I've heard a lot of people talk about what "conservatism" means. Most recently, the New York Times saw fit to address the issue in this waste of virtual space.

Well, I can't definitively say what "conservatism" means. I possess no advanced degrees, am not a philosopher, and have almost no knowledge of political science.

However.

I can tell you what Republicanism means, and that, I think, is a more germane issue. As I'm sure you've noticed, we don't have a "Conservative" party on our ballots. No. We have a "Republican" one. So figuring out what they stand for seems to be a much more useful endeavor than attempting to define "conservatism."

Well, I've done a lot of observing and thinking, and it seems to me that the Republican party stands for two things.

Tax cuts are the cure for everything, including the common cold.
Fuck you.
And that's pretty much it. All of the shit that the Republicans do flows from those two points.

I know what you're thinking. "What about the religious right?" "What about the anti-science stand?" "What about the neocons?" "What about all of the other cherished bullshit of the GOP?"

They can all be explained by number two. The Republicans don't really care about God. They just like to use him to tell people "fuck you." Women want to control their own reproductive systems? Fuck you. People want to get married to whatever other adult they want? Fuck you. There's overwhelming evidence that life on earth is billions of years old? Fuck you.

The same applies to their foreign policy. What, you aren't happy with us starting a war with a country that never attacked us? Fuck you. Don't like our carbon emissions or bullshit missile defense? Fuck you. Pissed off that we abducted and tortured your citizens? Fuck you.

And on and on it goes. These people aren't interested in cutting spending or in limited government--they spend like drunken sailors (I would know) and want to regulate who, when, and where you can fuck. That's about as fiscally irresponsible and intrusive as government can get. They don't care about patriotism or families. And "drill, baby, drill" was just a "fuck you" that was acceptable to the FCC.

As for # 1, they keep parroting that insane fucking line no matter what. Got a surplus? Cut taxes. In a deficit? Cut taxes. Booming times? Cut taxes. Worst economy since the Great Depression? We need to--you guessed it--cut taxes. They never explain how it would work. It's an article of faith. I mean, when a group of imaginary creatures from a cardboard cut-out cartoon show has a better economic model than a major political party, things are really fucked up. Yet, somehow, they still get taken seriously. There are a lot of things I don't understand about the world. That fact is about forty of those things.

So it comes down to this: Republicanism is an ideology by and for bullies. But not the kind of bullies who have the guts to get in actual fights, even if the deck is stacked in their favor. No. They hire people to do their fighting for them. Even in their grand and glorious overseas crusades, the ones where they denounce everyone who opposes them as cowards and appeasers, these cocksuckers stay on the sidelines. How many prominent Republicans ran out and enlisted after 9/11? How about before the Iraq war? Which major Republican pundits were cops? Not a goddamn one. Why? All talk, no action.

They're the kind of bullies who love to pick on anyone at the lower end of the economic ladder. It's what weak, shitty people do. What, you want health care you can afford? Fuck you. Your kids need better schools? Fuck you. Workers want to be able to form unions to get better pay and benefits? Oh, fuck you.

That tax cut shit is bullying, too. Because they don't really care about cutting your taxes. No. They want to cut rich people's taxes. It's like they read the story of Robin Hood and thought he was robbing the wrong people. And, since somebody eventually has to pay the bill for all the costs the government incurs when it's out invading sovereign countries that have never threatened us, who do you think gets left with the tab? That's right. The people who can least afford it.

Why?

Because fuck you.

So I guess Republicanism has just one premise after all.

Posted at 8:47 PM

February 9, 2009

Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine ...

Posted at 7:47 PM

February 8, 2009

Well crap, Steve. Crap.

I really would have liked a chance to get away after this long and painful week.

Posted at 6:28 PM

February 6, 2009

To quote Dr. Smith, "The pain, the pain."

Posted at 8:53 PM

February 6, 2009

Thanks, grandma. Surely the migraine wasn't bad enough.

Your ability to make me crazy and drive up my blood pressure was pure genius. I mean - who else can do that to me? Nobody, that's who.

Congratulations. Who would have guessed that my migraine could possibly get any worse?

Posted at 9:41 PM

February 5, 2009

I hate days where you have to suck it up and do a bunch of things you'd rather keep putting off ... but just can't put off any longer.

Between this lasting, sever migraine and my limited amount of sleep the last few nights, today would have been unpleasant on its own. Add in the half-dozen things I have been avoiding for days or weeks (all of which simply couldn't wait any longer) and it made for a truly rotten day.

Now I'm either thinking of nothing but the throbbing pain in my head (because I can't think of anything else) or I'm struggling to stay awake instead of falling asleep in my dinner or on my laptop as I'm typing this Journal entry.

Posted at 6:55 PM

February 4, 2009

Ah! So this is what it feels like to have someone crush their thumbs into your skull through your eye sockets!

No, wait! That's just the migraine still ...

Posted at 11:29 PM

February 3, 2009

I feel like I'm slogging my way through a pit of quicksand, trying not to sink and drown but also trying to move ahead since I can't go back and I need to make some progress.

Ain't depression just the best thing ever? Just think how easy it would be to live life without depression. And then I'd miss experiences like this ...

Posted at 12:02 AM

February 2, 2009

If we only have six more weeks of winter I'd say we should count ourselves lucky. Mid-April is probably more like it, and we might even still see snow after that (if past years have been any indication).

But then again, we're going on an old superstition based on the actions of a glorified rodent, so the fact that I'm even commenting on the accuracy of this prediction is patently absurd.

Groundhog Forecasts Run Hot and Cold

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Punxsutawney Phil says bundle up.

The world's most famous groundhog saw his shadow during the annual ritual here Saturday morning, meaning lousy weather is in store for another six weeks.

But if you're not partial to Phil's prognostication, his counterpart in Georgia has some more promising news.

At the Yellow River Game Ranch near Atlanta, Gen. Beauregard Lee did not see his shadow, telling the Southeast that spring was just around the corner.

Lee awoke well before the official bell-ringing at sunrise and was reluctant to step out of his red-trimmed, groundhog-sized mansion. But with loud encouragement from the crowd -- shouting "Beau knows" -- the furry fellow finally left the house.

Groundhog predictions originated with European Celts, who believed that certain animals had special powers on certain days.

Folklore also has it that hibernating animals who left their burrows too early would be frightened by their shadows, so they hid back inside for another four to six weeks.

Experts, though, say the groundhog has a very different reason for emerging from his hole.

"They're not interested in the game right now," said Stam Zervanos, associate professor of biology at Penn State University's Berks-Lehigh Valley College in Reading. "Basically, they arouse to mate."

Zervanos has another explanation for the groundhog's behavior this time of year. The animals awaken in January or February to mate, then return to their holes to resume their long winter's nap.

"They're going to mate, and they're going to go back into hibernation for about four weeks before they start feeding and having their young," Zervanos told the Associated Press.

Still, Phil may not have been too far off the mark. State College-based AccuWeather Inc. predicts that February and March will be slightly colder than usual around the Great Lakes and for much of the East Coast, while above-normal temperatures are expected in northern plains.

In Punxsutawney, AccuWeather's long-range forecast calls for "near to slightly below normal," senior meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. "I suspect that that translates into six more weeks of winter."

Posted at 9:18 PM

February 1, 2009

I got away today for a visit to Toledo to see Steve, and briefly see Mark and his family and also briefly (but separately) see Paul and his family. It's the first I've been able to have a relaxed get-together with my friends in over a month (due to weather or health issues or some other unexpected issue with one or more of us), and while the evening was a bit broken up it was still a nice chance to see my friends and have some enjoyable conversation and joking.

Next week Steve wants to move a lot of his belongings from his apartment, so it will likely be another couple of weeks at least before a relaxed evening with the guys (helping Steve move for two days will hardly count as a relaxed evening).

I need these breaks from the stress and relentlessness of caring for my grandma, and after such a long time with no socializing, tonight was well-needed. This week looks to be a busy one for me, so the break tonight will hopefully pull me through the stress.

Isn't it frightening that less than three hours broken up into three different visits (and in the middle of three hours of round-trip driving) is the highlight of my existence right now?

Posted at 11:49 PM