Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in tim1965's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 28th, 2009
2:58 pm	A new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, relying on a little-noticed 2007 history of the Afghan war by the United States Special Operations Command, has concluded that Osama bin Laden was in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001 -- but the Bush Administration let him go. In mid-December 2001, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were at hiding in the caves of Tora Bora, where bin Laden had operated previously while fighting Soviet forces from 1979 to 1989. The U.S. knew he was there for several reasons: bin Laden's voice was heard over radio transmissions to his fighters. al-Quaeda forces consistenly made reference to "the sheikh" living in the area. An Arabic information, code-named "Jalal," knew bin Laden's voice, and would hear it on al-Quaeda radio traffic in the area. Afghan villagers in the area were given global positioning system devices and told to push a button wherever they saw fighters or arms caches. The GPS signals tracked bin Laden's progress through Tora Bora. But even though military and intelligence sources knew bin Laden was there, General Tommy Franks (then the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan), and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent fewer than 100 Special Operations and CIA forces to battle more than 1,000 al-Quaeda fighters and capture bin Laden. There was a high danger that bin Laden would escape Tora Bora and retreat over the border into Pakistan -- where he would find refuge among extremist Islamic elements, and begin destabilizing the Pakistani government. But General Franks pooh-poohed the reports from the ground, and maintains even to this very day that bin Laden was not there. The official U.S. military history of the operation says differently. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! (Comment on this)
10:54 am	Barry "J.T." Rogers acted under the name "Johnny Rahm" in gay adult film. He committed suicide by hanging himself with a wire on the fence of the Atlanta Botanical Garden in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 7, 2004. He was just 39 years old. Barry was German, Cherokee, Irish, and a couple other things he wasn't very sure about. He often called himself a "mutt." Whatever you call it, he ,was the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my entire life. Barry knew he was gay from a very, very early age. He was cursed with an overwhelming sex drive, and an intense desire to know himself sexually. He did not experiment sexually until he was 16, and he had very little sex until he was 21. He dropped out of the ultra-fundamentalist, ultra-homphobic college he was attending in Virginia, and moved to Los Angeles. Barry was no fool: He knew what sort of body he had, and he knew that his immensely long, 8.5" cock would serve him exceptionally well. He was cast on the basis of his dark handsome looks, his lithe but hard body, and that huge dick. That Barry could also take a cock of any size up his ass, without prep or lube -- and make the most thrilling sounds while doing so -- was a skill that adult film directors only later realized he had. His ultra-conservative "Christian" family rejected him for his homosexuality, and that tore him apart. Family was everything to Barry. Barry loved his parents and brother, even though they rejected him. Barry never lost his faith in his God, despite the un-Christian attitude of the family he loved. In this, he exhibited a more Christ-like attitude than they ever did. Over the years, Barry became lonelier and lonelier. He did not date; he had a knife-sharp wit, a high I.Q., and didn't do drugs or abuse liquor. He was, pretty much, a homebody -- preferring movies, magazines, dining out, and spending time with someone else to parties, bars, parties, dance clubs, and parties like the other adult film stars he knew. Barry (like me) was an insatiable bottom, and a size queen. But the men who could satisfy him physically were either frightened by the intelligent, humor, and soul they saw, or too dumb to realize what it meant. To get what he needed, Barry barebacked and became a passive practitioner of BDSM. Only then did the men with the big cocks step off their ego-centric pedestals and fuck him. Shortly before he died, Barry moved back to Atlanta. He still had faith that he could reconcile with his family, and tried several times. Being close to them, he believed, would make that reconciliation easier. Barry still did an occasional adult film (primarily piss-and-fisting videos for Dick Wadd, filmed at Atlanta's Fort Troff sex club), mostly to create income. He desperately needed income; 15 years as an adult film star doesn't translate well to a resume when you are trying to get a job. Then Barry learned he had HIV. He started to get sick, but being unemployed and lacking health insurance he could not afford any medication. His friends and roommate did what they could, but the Georgia agency in charge of Ryan White Act funds which could buy his meds for him kept delaying and delaying his application for assistance. He grew increasingly ill. In despair, Barry Rogers hung himself. The beauty of the world was the last thing he saw. I miss you Barry Rogers. ( Johnny Rahm ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
10:12 am	Last night, around 1:30 AM, I woke up -- having dreamt that I saw someone crawling across my floor toward my bed. It was terrifying. I got out of bed, and in my foggy state believed that someone was in my bedroom. I knew I had been dreaming, and I needed to wake up. But I couldn't shake the sleep-fog. I believed that they had arranged things on my floor, organizing them for packing up. I thought that I had to get out of there soon, the next morning. I tried walking around my apartment for a little bit, to shake off the sleepiness, but couldn't. Or, rather, I believed I had... But I kept waking up again and again during the night, convinced I needed to leave and that I had to get out of there in the morning. Premonition? Or dream to be interpreted? Or just silliness? (Comment on this)
Friday, November 27th, 2009
9:14 pm	I made the "Did You Know...?" section on the front page of Wikipedia today. ...that although efforts to create a transportation trades department in the AFL-CIO began in the 1960s, the idea did not gain momentum until after the Teamsters reaffiliated with the AFL-CIO in 1987? (Comment on this)
6:29 pm	Who are these two Bel Ami models? One's blond, one's brunette -- for your pleasure, I guess. ( Who.....are you....oo oo! ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:21 pm	We are at the very end of the decade. It kind of snuck up on me, you know? We went from 9/11 to the Great Recession so fast, and everything seemed like one long struggled just to get to the end of the year and get it over with... and now 2010 is here. I don't think we ever did named the '00s, did we? "The Oughts" never seemed to stick. "The New Millennium" was too tongue-tied. Now we'll be in the "Tens." S'easy. 34 days to go, and it's all over. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:53 pm	I totally believe in doppelgangers now. This guy looks exactly like my grad school roommate Jeff. He has to have his pubes shaved off, his hair about four inches longer, and his dick a little longer. Oh, and add 15 years. But.... Well. Deja vu. It's eerie. . ( Just like Jeff ) (Comment on this)
8:44 am	I read this, but couldn't believe it. And, unsurprisingly, there has been no mention of it since. So what was it? Glitch? Or is it really there??? - - - - - - - Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered; Possibly as Large as Jupiter By Thomas O'Toole Washington Post December 30, 1983 Page A1 A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system has been found in the direction of the constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope aboard the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite. So mysterious is the object that astronomers do not know if it is a planet, a giant comet, a nearby "protostar" that never got hot enough to become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in the process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so shrouded in dust that none of the light cast by its stars ever gets through. "All I can tell you is that we don't know what it is," Dr. Gerry Neugebauer, IRAS chief scientist for California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and director of the Palomar Observatory for the California Institute of Technology, said in an interview. The most fascinating explanation of this mystery body, which is so cold it casts no light and has never been seen by optical telescopes on Earth or in space, is that it is a giant gaseous planet as large as Jupiter and as close to Earth as 50 trillion miles. While that may seem like a great distance in earthbound terms, it is a stone's throw in cosmological terms, so close in fact that it would be the nearest heavenly body to Earth beyond the outermost planet Pluto. "If it is really that close, it would be a part of our solar system," said Dr. James Houck of Cornell University's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research and a member of the IRAS science team. "If it is that close, I don't know how the world's planetary scientists would even begin to classify it." The mystery body was seen twice by the infrared satellite as it scanned the northern sky from last January to November, when the satellite ran out of the supercold helium that allowed its telescope to see the coldest bodies in the heavens. The second observation took place six months after the first and suggested the mystery body had not moved from its spot in the sky near the western edge of the constellation Orion in that time. "This suggests it's not a comet because a comet would not be as large as the one we've observed and a comet would probably have moved," Houck said. "A planet may have moved if it were as close as 50 trillion miles but it could still be a more distant planet and not have moved in six months time." Whatever it is, Houck said, the mystery body is so cold its temperature is no more than 40 degrees above "absolute" zero, which is 456 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The telescope aboard IRAS is cooled so low and is so sensitive it can "see" objects in the heavens that are only 20 degrees above absolute zero. When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body and calculated that it could be as close as 50 trillion miles, there was some speculation that it might be moving toward Earth. "It's not incoming mail," Cal Tech's Neugebauer said. "I want to douse that idea with as much cold water as I can." Then, what is it? What if it is as large as Jupiter and so close to the sun it would be part of the solar system? Conceivably, it could be the 10th planet astronomers have searched for in vain. It also might be a Jupiter-like star that started out to become a star eons ago but never got hot enough like the sun to become a star. While they cannot disprove that notion, Neugebauer and Houck are so bedeviled by it that they do not want to accept it. Neugebauer and Houck "hope" the mystery body is a distant galaxy either so young that its stars have not begun to shine or so surrounded by dust that its starlight cannot penetrate the shroud. "I believe it's one of these dark, young galaxies that we have never been able to observe before," Neugebauer said. "If it is, then it is a major step forward in our understanding of the size of the universe, how the universe formed and how it continues to form as time goes on." The next step in pinpointing what the mystery body is, Neuegebauer said, is to search for it with the world's largest optical telescopes. Already, the 100-inch diameter telescope at Cerro del Tololo in Chile has begun its search and the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Mountain in California has earmarked several nights next year to look for it. If the body is close enough and emits even a hint of light, the Palomar telescope should find it since the infrared satellite has pinpointed its position. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
11:57 pm	I was browsing through this book I got a couple months ago on the history of the District of Columbia. I lived in the city almost 15 years before I got a book on the history of D.C. D.C.'s history as a city -- not as a capitol, not as a metonym for the nation -- is really rather fascinating. D.C. was, until the 1940s, really a Southern city, with Southern ideals about honor, slavery, elitism, wealth, and so on. No one ever thought in 1879 that the city of Washington would ever grow so large as to encompass the entire District of Columbia. Indeed, until the mid-1930s, vast swaths of the District remained forest or farmland. Anacostia (where I live) was not even surveyed until 1851, and only a very few blocks of houses and small businesses existed here until 1900. Nearly the entire area north of Nebraska Avenue NW was forest until the 1920s. The federal government's presence in the city was minimal: Only the White House, Capitol, Treasury, Interior, and Agriculture buildings (the northern half, anyway) existed before 1932. The massive federal buildings known as Federal Triangle were, at the time, nothing more than a slum -- the notorious "Murder Bay." Literally on the banks of the Potomac River at the time, this area was a vast network of tar-paper shacks and two-story wood frame hovels separated by dirt footpaths. Nearly every building in this section of the city was a brothel. More than 10,000 people lived in Murder Bay, most of them making a living through crime. Much of D.C., like New York City and Boston, is built on landfill. It's a myth that D.C. was built on a swamp. No such thing existed here. It was true, however, that D.C. was prone to flooding... In 1871, sudden snowmelt in the Adirondack Mountains led to massive flooding of the Potomac River. The Mall right up to the Capitol was inundated by five feet of water, as was all of Federal Triangle and the Ellipse. Pennsylvania Avenue was under three feet of water, and the flood marched right up to the south foundation of the White House. Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes, and sewage, trash, dead animals, and worse washed up against office buildings, over the trolley tracks, and into people's homes. In 1878, the city of Washington decided to do something so that a second "Great Flood" would never occur again. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Potomac River, creating a massive channel which dropped the river's level by more than 10 feet. The fill dirt pulled from the riverbottom was used to push the Potomac's riverbank southwest, to its current location. The Tidal Basin and East Potomac Park were both created, as was most of the National Mall west and south of the Washington Monument. This area was built up to a height of at least six feet, and massive granite tidal walls were built along the shores of the Potomac (you can still see them today) to prevent erosion of the new land. Another thing the city did was bury Tiber Creek. Tiber Creek (you can see the massive tidal inlet in that image to the right) had already been hugely altered once before, in 1836, when the Washington City Canal had been built. This canal led from the foot of the U.S. Capitol down what is now Constitution Avenue NW. It joined the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in Georgetown (the C&O is still there) and proceeded up the Potomac River to Cumberland, Maryland -- a journey of more than 185 miles. The coming of the railroads (already happening when the C&O was being built) made the canal obsolete, but it continued in operation until 1924 when massive flooding along the upper Potomac severely damaged it. As for the Washington City Canal, it was nothing more than a disused, open sewer by the Civil War. After the 1871 flood, the city of Washington decided to bury Tiber Creek and the Canal: It lined Tiber Creek's bed with with brick, and then created a tunnel by roofing the whole damn thing over. Massive flood gates were put in place at the point where the Tiber emptied into the Potomac, to prevent backwash, tidal water, or flooding from pushing back up the Tiber. (About a mile of Tiber Creek is affected by tidal flows from the Potomac.) Most of D.C.'s downtown sewer system was hooked up to the Tiber Creek sewer, and the Tiber's own flow helps move sewage out of the city. Tiber Creek is still there, flowing away. B Street NW was built on top of it. You don't know B Street NW???? Maybe you know it by its new name: Constitution Avenue. The lock-keeper's house is still there at Constitution and 17th. B Street existed from 1878 until 1932 as a two-lane dirt road. It was paved and tripled in width in 1926-1927, and renamed Constitution Avenue in 1931. The Discovery Channel recently filmed an episode of "Secrets of the Underworld" inside the Tiber Creek tunnel. The D.C. government intends to re-line the tunnel between now and 2017 to the tune of $23 million. As for the National Mall..... Pierre L'Enfant's original plan was for the Mall to be a park. And indeed it was for about 130 years. It was densely forested, with only a few meadows here and there. Here's the Mall in 1900: During World War I, however, extensive numbers of trees on the Mall were cut down and four-story temporary buildings built from 6th Street to the foot of the Washington Monument. Here's what the Mall looked like in 1917: Those are all Department of War buildings, primarily for the Navy and the Division of Munitions. They did it all again in 1943. Those World War I buildings had been torn down, but they were rebuilt in order to accommodate the Department of War in the prosecution of World War II: Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy...................... Did you notice anything about that 1900 photo? Let's take a second look: What the fuck is that??? That monstrous .... thing ..... sticking out into the middle of the National Mall? It's a train station. No shit. Just to the right of it you can see the Baltimore & Potomac Rail Road train station. Built in 1872 on the site that today is the National Gallery of Art, this was D.C.'s biggest and most modern train station. The Victorian-style building had brilliantly colored terra cotta roof tiles, and looked like a little bit of fancy cake smack in the heart of the District of Colubmia: Its train shed stuck out a quarter-mile onto the National Mall. On either side were huge piles of coal, used to fuel the engines. Called the "Pennsylvania Station," President James A. Garfield was assassinated there on July 2, 1881, by Charles Guiteau while waiting for a train. The station was demolished in 1908 after the current Union Station was built. (Yes, that's the Union Station which still exists in D.C.) For years afterward, the huge piles of coal continued to sit on the Mall, a huge eyesore, leaking acid whenever it rained. By the way, you realize that this means that passenger and freight trains used to regularly cross the Mall, right? Yes, they did: Why, here's one now! Yes, that is a regular-sized passenger train crossing the National Mall in broad daylight. It's traveling up what used to be 6th Street (it's now just a pedestrian path). The train tracks to this day follow Maryland Avenue SW to 6th Street SW, and then either go into the tunnel under the Capitol to reach Union Station or divert southeast along Virginia Avenue SW to head into southern Maryland. The tracks used to cross the Mall to reach the B&P Pennsylvania Station. In fact, upwards of 20 major rail lines criss-crossed Washington, D.C., from the 1830s to about 1920. Fifty people a year were struck and killed by these trains as they rushed through the city. There were no fences to keep people safe, no crossing guards to come down when a train was coming, no ringing bells or flashing lights. You just had to watch out, and if it ran you over....well, tough. This is all just amazing. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:38 pm	1 pint oysters 1 cup cream 1/4 cup butter 1/4 tsp. salt Sherry Toast (about six to eight slices) Toast the bread, set aside on a plate. Lightly butter a pan. Cook the oysters on medium-high heat until browned on both sides. Place oysters on toast. Add butter, salt, and cream to the pan. Deglaze the pan, cooking mixture until brown oyster bits have come off the bottom of the pan and the salt is dissolved. Remove from heat. Add sherry to mixture to taste. Pour over the oysters on toast. * * * This is my appetizer today. It's actually an ancient Roman dish, in a recipe I discovered in a newspaper article in 1932 (of all things). VERY VERY TASTY. (Comment on this)
3:02 pm	It's Thanksgiving in the United States, and most people have today off. As much as a third of the country drove or flew to be with other members of their family in the past 72 hours, and another quarter are going to someone else's home today for the holiday. Nearly all businesses are closed, although a few (grocery stores, police, fire, cable companies, news media, gas stations, electrical companies, etc.) have skeleton staffs in order to accommodate needs. Increasingly, some business -- notably movie theaters, bars, and nightclubs -- are open Thanksgiving Night. Americans desperately want to be with their families, and yet they can't stand to be with one another for more than a few hours. The stress needs to be alleviated and conflict avoided, so they go to the movies or go drinking or go shopping -- anything to get away from one another as quickly as they got close to one another. But it's not a holiday in any other country of the world today. And, quite frankly, the so-called "American experience" about Thanksgiving (and other holidays) is not nearly as universal as some people would have us believe. In my home town of Great Falls, Montana, Thanksgiving was a day when the entire city of 60,000 shut down. Perhaps a few large grocery stores would be open for last-minute food needs ("honey, we forgot to buy cranberry sauce!"), but that was it. If you drove around the city, no cars would be on the streets. No people would be walking about. Every house would be well-lit from the inside, and you could see people congregating, laughing, eating, drinking, entertaining. In households with teenage boys, you might see a touch football game in the back or front yard. Around twilight, you might see some eager-beaver fathers and their bored sons putting up Christmas lights. Even in a large city of a half million like Washington, D.C., much of the city is shut down. There are cars on the road, but they are rushing to get where they are going and tend to be full of people. Some businesses are open, but that's to be expected: It's been 20 years since my experiences in Montana, and more businesses tend to be open now (even in pokey ol' Great Falls). Movie theaters are going gangbusters already (and it's only noon). Even restaurants and a few shops are open, trying to lure in the extremist Christmas shopper or family that can't stand to be together. In America's largest cities, like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles and Seattle, in some ways it is almost a normal day. Small and medium towns, like Great Falls and Washington, are far more homogeneous and thus tend to socially enforce the idea that Thanksgiving is a day for rest. But in large cities, homogeneity breaks down. New York City has 8 million inhabitants within the city limits alone. If only 1 percent of them want to go clubbing today, that's 80,000 people to accommodate. There are another 11 million people in the metro area. If only one half of one percent of them wish to go clubbing, that's another 55,000 people to accommodate -- a total of 135,000 needing food, drink, transportation, entertainment. I remember the first time that a Jewish friend from New York City described his year-end revelries there. It surprised me beyond belief. He told how his secular Jewish family basically treated the Christmas holiday like a two-day vacation. He and his Jewish friends would go out on Christmas Eve and go bar-hopping -- since there were so few other patrons in the bars, they got great service. The bartenders were thrilled to have someone to talk to (and tip them). The subway ran on time, you always got a seat, and you could explore bars and clubs you might not normally go to (like all-black dance clubs) because the crowds and distrustful people would not be there in great numbers this night. As a complete secularist, I was strongly attracted to that sort of approach to the holidays. There's a certain thrill to going places and doing things without the physical pressure of crowds or the constant knowledge that you have to compete and push to get what you want. I've spent Christmas in an adult book store, having sex. I know how satisfying it can be to finally be the object of attention, and not have men go zombie and follow drooling after the muscle-bound hottie who just walked in (the one with no sex skills and no erotic imagination). I like the idea that traditions are those you make yourself, not those which are handed down generation after generation without meaning. As a gay man who understands that "family" is defined by those who love you and not just those who, by biological accident, happen to be around you, I'm enticed by the idea that you don't have to spend the holidays doing "holiday things." Not many people associate "prostitution" and "Thanksgiving." I do. Quite honestly, there are a lot of people who simply see bringing sex into any holiday a sick, twisted thing to do. "Can't you stop thinking about that for just a few minutes??? Geeeeez!" No. I don't appreciate people imposing their value system on me, first of all. I don't appreciate people with normal sex lives assuming I have a normal one, or don't suffer from sexual problems I can't change (like being a bottom and a size queen). And there are people in this world who don't have the luxury of being a white, middle-class male. I'm talking about sex workers -- prostitutes, essentially, people who don't have a lot of income, don't have families or close friends to spend the holiday with, and people who don't have the luxury of taking a day off. And besides -- it's only a holiday here in the U.S. And for more and more people, this "holiday" isn't the sacred, religious, santified (even sanctimonious) holiday it used to be. . ( Sex and the holidays ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:13 am	OOOOOERS!!!! We have exceptionally heavy fog here in D.C. on this Thanksgiving morning. I love it! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
9:01 pm	In 1956, a little musical play titled "Joy Comes to Deadhorse" was performed at the University of New Mexico. Three years later, it was performed at Barnard College. The authors reworked it a bit, and renamed it....... The Fantasticks. The Fantasticks premiered off-Broadway on May 3, 1960. The production closed on January 13, 2002 -- after a jaw-dropping 17,162 performances. It is the world's longest-running musical, and the longest-running uninterrupted show of any kind in the United States. The Fantasticks is a love story, and something of a madcap comedy. It has feuds and fake feuds, an innocent boy, a silly girl, a dastardly villain, good choices, bad choices, a fight for honor -- and in the end true love wins out. The play is considered one of the best musicals of all time. The Fantasticks just opened at the Lincoln Theatre here in D.C. Tickets are a cheap cheap cheap $25. I'm going! The Fantasticks was revived off-Broadway in 2006. Below is a cast recording of the signature tune from the musical, "Try to Remember." You've heard it before, I'm sure. ( The plot of The Fantasticks is behind here, if you care ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:30 pm	Any pretty twink-boi with full, untrimmed pubes AND whose genitalia can dangle on the floor when seated on the buttocks is a real man in my book. REAL man. ( Don't tread on me ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
6:56 pm	2 cups cranberries 1 cup water 1 cup sugar Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes. Add cranberries. Reduce heat, and boil gently for four minutes. Cool. Chill for 24 hours to let the flavors meld and become subtle. Enjoy your little slice of heaven. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:51 pm	I overheard the most horrific story of workplace abuse today, while standing in line at the grocery store....... Person #1: I've been on vacation since Friday. Today, I got a frantic call from work at 1:30 PM. Person #2: What sort of crisis was it? Person #1: They had two "periods" at the end of a sentence, and didn't know what to do. Person #2: Ha ha ha! No, really, what was it. Person #1: That was it. For real. That was their crisis. My CFO called me to find out what to do. Jesus Buddha God. I would hate to work in that place!!! (Comment on this)
2:59 pm	I was reminded today (again) of how awful a place D.C. can be if you are artistic, gay, and sexual. Back In The Day, when I was advertising for nude models for my photography hobby, I got zilch response. Today, someone said, "Gee, I'm getting such good response to my call for nude models in [Insert Other City Here] that I have to bar the door." I whine about D.C. The reply: "Well, your pool of potential applicants is smaller." Not true. [Insert Other City Here] has a local metro population of 3 million. D.C. has a local metro population of 5 million. *sigh* Just a bunch of fucked up, asexual, inhibited, emotion-clogged assholes interested in climbing to a high social status (or preserving position therein) is all they are, really. Nothing avant garde. Nothing original. Nothing committed. Charis Wilson died this week at the age of 95. She was the wife of the legendary late photograph Edward Weston. Weston took numerous photos of her in the nude. Today, these images sell for as much as $1.6 million (although Weston sold them for $7-$10 each during his lifetime). You will never, under any circumstances whatsoever, find a gay man willing to photograph his lover or husband in D.C. and sell the images commercially. The last great gay artist to live in Washington, D.C., was George Quaintance, and he left in 1932. 1932!!! I dare anyone to identify a great gay artist living in this city since. (Comment on this)
12:31 pm	Stop what you are doing, and read this: It's a fascianting article by a lesbian African American who reflects on family and acceptance at Thanksgiving. Here's just a portion of this great piece: Over the past 20 years, my mother has moved from standing over me and shouting, "You are NOT gay because no daughter of mine would ever be a lesbian," to assuming her place at the head of the large and colorful network that we call our family. This Thanksgiving, she will preside over our crowded table like the stately queen of a small country. Our family includes my sister and me; my partner, Jana, and our 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter; Lorry, the gay man who fathered the children; and an assortment of friends, exes, aunties and god-children. I am thankful that when my mother bows her head and blesses our family, she means it. Still, as I looked at my mother’s face that evening, trying to read the emotion I saw flicker across her brow, I wondered, "Does my mother really accept me for who I am?" (Comment on this)
10:58 am	The Washington Post has closed all its offices in the U.S. to cut costs. No longer will the Post have reporters on-site in cities around the United States. Instead, reporters will be flown out to cover stories; cover them by phone or Internet; rewrite Associated Press stories (while perhaps adding some additional information received by phone or email); or buy on-the-spot reports from freelancers. The Post has more than a dozen "bureaus" around the world, but now it will have none in the U.S. U.S. bureaus which will be closing include those in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Most importantly, Lisa DeMoraes -- who runs the "TV Column" -- will no longer be able to cover television from Los Angeles. (Dumb, real dumb.) The Washington Post Companies (WPC) is a holding company which owns the Post. WPC also owns the weekly newsmagazine Newsweek; Kaplan, a test-score improvement company (best known for its classes to help you pass the GRE, MCAT, etc.); Slate.com, the online magazine; television stations in Detroit, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, and San Antonio; El Tiempo Latino, a Spanish-language newspaper in the D.C. area; several small newspapers in Southern Maryland; the Everett Herald (in Washington state); and CableOne (a very tiny cable and highspeed Internet provider operating in the Midwest and South). The Washington Post Companies is immensely profitable, primarily due to its TV stations and Kaplan. Slate.com is rumored to break even, while its newspapers and magazines are hemorraghing money. Nonetheless, the Washington Post Companies posted a record profit this past year. Katharine Weymouth, the Washington Post's inept publisher, has said that the Post's mission is to cover Washington, D.C. as the most important capital city in the world, and D.C.'s impact on the world. This does not mean the Post will cover the city government, or city's people. It does mean it will cover national and international politics. If you want to know about D.C. city government, you have to read the "Loose Lips" column in the now-bankrupt Washington City Paper. (Another highly profitable local newspaper taken over by an outside conglomerate, run into the ground, and forced into bankruptcy; Washington Blade, anyone?) The Post somehow thinks that people in D.C. will continue to want to buy the newspaper when it doesn't cover their lives. (The Washington Times and D.C. Examiner -- both right-wing rag sheets -- are laughing all the way to the bank. So much for the vasty influential "liberal media"!) To restructure its operations along Weymouth's brain-dead strategy, in the past six years the Post has closed two-thirds of its U.S. bureaus, and shed a quarter of its newsroom staff -- losing most of its top reporters and columnists in the process. (Weymouth has happily waved goodbye at them as they walked out the door. "Good riddance to expensive trash!" she's said. "Easily replaced with new college graduates!" she's exclaimed. "No one has cut my salary, ha ha!" she's drunkenly spouted as she reached for the Chapter 7 filing.) (Comment on this)
9:39 am	There's a very cool article about this actor in New York City with cerebral palsy who went to dance class, and learned ways to compensate for his body's malfunctions by using dance techniques. In fact, it was so successful, that he and his dance teacher have done an hour-long modern dance piece in which he performs Oh, and the guy is sizzling hot. I've had sex with two guys who've had CP, and it was immensely fun and sexy. In my experience, each person with CP reacts to sex in very unique ways. CP affects the brain's ability to send and receive instructions to muscles. It can be very mild, or very severe (to the point where people have to use wheelchairs). The first boy I slept with who had it had a somewhat medium case. His body reacted to certain stimuli in an overwhelming fashion, to the point where he was ejaculating very frequently. It was not premature ejaculation, it was repetitive ejaculation. His orgasms were also quite violent, and (frankly) thrilling. The second boy with CP I slept with had a somewhat mild case. He had a whopper of a dick, and was a top. But his ability to fuck was impaired, because he had to concentrate so hard just to get into a rhythm. So he fucked slow, very slow. And, as with most guys with exceptionally large penises, he needed a lot of stimulation. So he took about 90 minutes to ejaculation. (Masturbation, for him, was his preferred sex act because his CP didn't affect his hand or arms and he could cum in about 15 minutes.) Since I love huge dick, and love to be fucked endlessly, having sex with him was wonderful! Interestingly, both guys with CP had cumshots that rivalled a Yellowstone geyers: Massive amounts of semen, pumped three or four feet per shot, and somewhere between 12 and 20 shots per orgasm. There was a third guy with CP I knew who I never had sex with but who had the most amazing reaction to certain stimuli. His CP had re-wired his body and brain to the point where any sudden, powerful, short, sharp stimulus created a similar response to him. In other words: Sneeze, and he got erect. Sneeze two or three times, he had an uncontrollable ejaculation. I am not making this up. The sound of a jackhammer could, in under 30 seconds, not only bring him to a severely painful erection but also make him ejaculate. His condition was blessing and curse. He had a wonderful sex life. But he could also be in class, on the bus, or at work, and suddenly someone would sneeze three or four times and his tongue would loll out of his mouth, his body would arch backward, and he'd shake as he orgasmed in his pants. Telling people "Oh, I have a sort of epileptic reaction to my CP" only worked so far, because people would see the wet spot in his pants and smell the semen and assume... Yeah. I actually saw him react like this several times. Once, as he lay in bed naked, I sneeze and watched his dick rise to full flaming dripping erection in about 15 seconds. ("Go out of the room if you're going to do that again!" he howled at me.) Interestingly, he had a totally average, regular sex life aside from this. He just had this one, very odd, very amazing, very queer (hee hee) reaction to sneezes and "ejaculatory" sounds. (Comment on this)