The fan in my fridge

Happy New Year! (Start this mix @ exactly 12:30!)

Weareyou - 2010 - The Moon Is A Crowded Place by Vruberlin on Mixcloud

Freaks!

Freaks from Billy Blaze on Vimeo.
FREAKS
Tod Browning (1932)

American horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by MGM, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnies. The film was based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs". Browning had been a member of a traveling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers.

The central story is of a self-serving trapeze artist named Cleopatra, who seduces and eventually marries Hans, a sideshow midget, after learning of his large inheritance. At their wedding reception the other "freaks" resolve that they will accept her in spite of being a "normal" outsider, and hold an initiation ceremony which frightens Cleopatra, who accidentally reveals that she has been having an affair with Hercules, the strong man. Shortly thereafter, Hans is taken ill and Cleopatra begins slipping poison into his medicine to kill him so she can run away with Hercules. One of the circus performers overhears Cleopatra talking about the murder plot and tells the others. In the film's climax, the freaks attack Cleopatra and Hercules with guns, knives, and various sharp-edged weapons, hideously mutilating them during a bad storm. The film concludes with a revelation of Cleopatra's fate: she herself has been turned into a freak, reduced to performing in a sideshow as the squawking "human duck". The flesh of her hands has been melted and deformed to look like duck feet and her lower half has been permanently tarred and feathered.

Because its deformed cast was shocking to moviegoers of the time, the film was banned for 30 years. In the early 1960s it was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings at several movie theaters in the United States. In 1994, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".

Yes, please.

Gay American Saint

With the legislative repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, thankfully future generations of gays in the military will not find themselves living in fear of outings and expulsion from careers that many of them truly love. Likewise, the military will not be foolishly loosing great talent and expertise solely to satisfy the religion-based bigotry of a segment of society that daily proves itself to be anything but Christian in the true sense of the Gospel message.
It's important, however to remember that the religion-based bigotry against gays existed long before the passage of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and goes back many, many decades. In the mid-1970's Leonard Matlovich, recipient of a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, received much publicity when he was forced from the military. His tombstone bears the epitaph "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." But there were notable gays before Matlovich who likewise lost their military careers.
Thanks to a post by straight ally Bob Felton at Civil Commotion, I was reminded of another such past high profile gay in the military. This man received a Congressional Gold Medal, the Legion of Merit and National Order of Vietnam, yet was forced to resign from the Navy because of his sexual orientation. The man's name?

Dr. Thomas Anthony Dooley (pictured above left in center), a man some Catholics even wanted canonized after his untimely early death at age 34 because of his world renown humanitarian efforts. Ironically, though forced to leave the military, he was given a military funeral with a U.S. Navy Honor Guard. Here's some highlights from Dooley's life and career:

[I]n 1944 [he] enlisted in the United States Navy's corpsman program, serving in a naval hospital in New York . . . In 1953 . . . he reenlisted in the Navy. He completed his residency at Camp Pendleton, California and then at Yokosuka, Japan. In 1954 he was assigned to the USS Montague which was traveling to Vietnam to evacuate refugees.
While Dooley was working in refugee camps in Haiphong, some have alleged that he came to the attention of Lieutenant Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, head of the CIA detail in Saigon. According to these allegations, Dooley was chosen as a symbol of Vietnamese-American cooperation, and was encouraged to write about his experiences in the refugee camps. Some other unsubstantiated reports indicate that he collected intelligence for the CIA. In 1956 his book Deliver Us from Evil was released, establishing Dooley as a strong humanitarian. While on a promotional tour for the book, Dooley was investigated for participating in homosexual activities and was forced to resign from the Navy in March 1956.
After leaving the Navy, Dooley went to Laos to establish medical clinics and hospitals under the sponsorship of the International Rescue Committee. Dooley founded the Medical International Cooperation Organization (MEDICO) under the auspices of which he built hospitals at Nam Tha, Muong Sing, and Ban Houei Sa. During this same time period he wrote two books, The Edge of Tomorrow and The Night They Burned the Mountain about his experience in Laos.
In 1959 Dooley returned to the United States for cancer treatment; he died in 1961 from malignant melanoma. Following his death John F. Kennedy cited Dooley's example when he launched the Peace Corps. He was also awarded a Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. There have been efforts following his death to have him canonized as a Roman Catholic saint.

Dooley's life was an example of what real Christians are about (more information can be found here)- unlike today's professional hate merchants such as Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, James Dobson and others of their ilk. Just think what could be accomplished if the funds spent to stigmatize gays and deprive us of legal equality were applied in a manner such as what Dooley did with his short life.

Ditto!

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died


And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world


Came people singing, dancing,


To drive the dark away.


They lighted candles in the winter trees;


They hung their homes with evergreen;


They burned beseeching fires all night long


To keep the year alive.


And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake


They shouted, revelling.


Through all the frosty ages you can hear them


Echoing behind us – listen!


All the long echoes, sing the same delight,


This Shortest Day,


As promise wakens in the sleeping land:


They carol, feast, give thanks,


And dearly love their friends,


And hope for peace.


And now so do we, here, now,


This year and every year.


Welcome Yule!

Fun kid-friendly holiday mixes. Download and play!

1. DJ Rotten Robbie’s Holiday Mix 2010 Funktastic
2. DJ Rotten Robbie’s Holiday Mix 2010 Cartoon-rific
3. DJ Rotten Robbie’s Holiday Mix 2010 Dance-y Dance
4. DJ Rotten Robbie’s Holiday Mix 2010 Fantastical
5. DJ Rotten Robbie’s Holiday Mix 2010 Alt-y Indie

Daffodil

Don’t you know, sweetheart,
less is more?
Giving yourself away
so quickly
with your eager trumpet,
April’s rentboy
in your flock of clones,
unreasonably cheerful, cellulose,
as yellow as a crow’s foot—please.
I don’t get you.
Maybe it’s me,
always loving what I can’t have,
the bulb refusing itself,
perennial challenge.
I’ve never learned
how to handle kindness
from strangers.
It’s uncomfortable, uncalled-for.
I’d rather have mulch
than three blithe sepals from you.
I’m into piss and vinegar,
brazen disregard,
the minimum-wage indifference
of bark, prickly pear.
Flirtation’s tension:
I dare, don’t dare.
But what would you know
about restraint,
binge-drinking
your way through spring,
botany’s twink bucked
by lycorine, lethal self-esteem?
You who come and go
with the seasons,
bridge and tunnel.
You’re all milk and no cow—
intimacy for beginners.
The blonde-eyed boy stumbling home.
If I were you, I’d pipe down.
Believe me,
I’ve bloomed like you before.

It's cold outside.

Skeleton Smile