Why I Took Part In The NO H8 Campaign

As some of you know I went along to partake in the NOH8 campaign this week. I would have thought that the reasoning behind it was obvious, but clearly not, given I was asked by someone “why?” however it wasn’t in that “what motivated you, that’s great”, way. NO, it was  more in a “God why bother?’ kind of way.  In this day and age I am shocked by how desensitized we have become to the world around us... so I thought I’d list a few reason why some of us need to take our heads out of our (      .  ) – please inset an appropriate body part!

Whilst the initial stimulus for this campaign was in response to Proposition 8, which eliminated the rights of same-sex couples’ to marry in California, NO H8 is about hate in all forms as you can hear Adam and Jeff state on the videotape.  Displaying no innate prejudice itself, hate wears a ubiquitous face of feral virulence that discriminates against no-one in particular as it crosses all racial, sexual, religious or social- economic barriers, which ironically means that we can all be victims of its super glue grip.

Thankfully I have never experienced physical violence because of hate per se but I have been called a “nigger” in my home city of Coventry, a “honky bitch” in Jamaica, a “half breed mutt” in Vermont, and that’s only the insults related to my color. I wrote a song/poem about those events called “The Color of Hate” basically stating that color is only skin deep, but, that just below the skin is the color of blood, which is the same for everyone.

As advanced as we are, sometimes I can’t help but think we are living in a contemporary version of the dark ages. So…to the “one” who asked why,  read the following press excerpts from that last year or so:

 14 Reasons Why We Need Campaigns Like No H8:

1.         The annual report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission showed hate crimes rose by 28%, to 763, with vandalism and assault leading the way....” an alarming trend, hate crimes based on race, religion and sexual orientation all rose, increasing against nearly all groups -- including blacks, gays, Jews, Mexicans, whites and Asian” ( LA times/ July 08)

2.         The deaths of Nicolas Pablo Corp-Torres age 23 and Racine Balbontin-Aragondona, age 22, and the critical wounding of three — Fransisco Javier Cofre-Fernande, age 25, in critical condition; Sebastian Mauricio Arizaga-Suarez, age 27 and David Alonzo Bilbao-Meza, age 21, was motivated by hatred of immigrants..... The accused killer, Dannie Roy Baker, is a self-proclaimed minister who apparently was moved by Republican hate speech against immigrants (Chile 09)

3.         Women in townships in Johannesburg and Cape Town are reporting a rising tide of brutal homophobic attacks and murders and the widespread use of “corrective” rape as a form of punishment. ( action aid 08)

4.        Three adults charged in the torturing a 22-year-old man, described as “mentally disabled” and “vulnerable,” who was held captive and brutally abused for several weeks (- Hamilton, ON, Canada February 2009)

5.         Federal prosecutors today accused three New York men of randomly attacking African-Americans on election night in retaliation for Barack Obama's victory. (Port Richmond)

6.         A man tried to hit a Pakistani woman with his car. The suspect was reported to have "screamed that he was 'doing this for his country' and was 'going to kill her.'" The article noted that this was one of several reported "incidents of violence directed toward Middle Easterners, or those perceived to be Muslim."

7.         Hate Crimes. A 30% increase in New York last year; a 10-year study published last fall found that hate crimes in New York began to increase two years ago after declining over several years.

8.         According to a police report, on March 31st, a 52-year-old Real Change vendor—who is black—was finishing his newspaper sales shift at 4th and Virginia when he was grabbed by two men wearing ski masks and pulled into an alley.  “The masked men began kicking and punching the vendor, knocking him into a concrete wall. The vendor told police that during the attack, one of the masked men told him "this is what you get for fucking with a white man." The report notes that the masked men made no attempt to rob the vendor. ( seattle 09)

9.         An armed group vandalized Caracas' oldest synagogue, shattering religious objects and spray-painting walls in what Jewish leaders called the worst attack ever on their community in Venezuela.( feb 09)

10.       The mother whose questioning of a Thanksgiving kindergarten tradition in Claremont resulted in the elimination of the children's handmade pilgrim and Native American costumes last month has received more than 250 hate e-mails, filled with misogynistic epithets, racist jeers and other abuse. ( nov 08)

11.       As 14-year-old Brandon McInerney prepares to be arraigned today in the slaying of 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, McInerney felt King was gay, his lawyer is advancing a defense that at least partly blames school officials for the tragedy.   (May o8)

12.       GREELEY, Colo. — Angie Zapata was killed two weeks shy of her 19th birthday last summer, beaten to death with a flurry of fists and a fire extinguisher. (Angie was transgender)- April 23^rd 09

13.       Moss poured a flammable liquid on the front lawn of the victims’ residence in the shape of a cross and the letters "KKK". Klausegger handed Moss a small explosive device that Moss used to ignite the flammable liquid (victim was African American)

14.       Two Pennsylvania teenagers in the fatal beating of an illegal immigrant from Mexico. (April 2009)

 

Maybe I'm Wrong, But Secrecy Sometimes Needs To Trump Transparency

Let me be clear, wars are a terrible waste of human life, usually predicated on some chaps perverse need for power, and yes when they occur it would be great if all parties played by the Geneva convention rules, but for the most part that’s not the real world. Wars are by definition the very abhorrence of fair play.

Withholding food, forcing prisoners to stand in uncomfortable positions for long periods, confinement in cramped boxes, putting insects into a box with a prisoner who has a strong fear of insects and simulated drowning are of course, all forms of torture to a lesser or greater degree. But forgive my sarcasm, what does releasing classified torture memos achieve....

I’m not questioning Barack’s well intentioned sense of right or wrong, but I think its naïve on his part to believe that this idea of transparency will lead to Abu Zubaydah or the likes realizing the error of their ways. Somehow I doubt they’ll be releasing Al-Qaeda torture memos later on today, or rewriting a new Al-Qaeda rules of engagement pamphlet; suicide bombings -out, putting kids in the line of fire - out ...oh and executing westerners on national TV, -out.

I wish it was easy to rise above the lowest common denominator of humanity, but when you are dealing with people who are cutting off heads, to make a point I’m not sure how giving up the intelligence playbook and making terrorists completely aware of the absolute limits to which we can go during interrogation, is a good thing.

Call me quirky, but I don’t think the “Oh please sir could you tell me where your fellow cohorts keep the soldiers you captured last week?” approach is going to work...

Some People REALLY Suck

I apologize in advance for the venting I’m about to inflict upon you.

Today I met 2 pathetic low-life excuses for breathing space...or more to the point, 2 pieces of walking/talking excrement masquerading as human beings ... strong I know but I am soooo beyond being pissed of right now....

A little back story.... just so you understand where I’m coming from...

Last night as some friends and I were driving to dinner, we noticed a collarless stray dog, which to our horror was darting in and out of traffic, as he ran from one side of the street to another. So we parked the car, and tried to coax him over to us but, sadly, he was scared, lost and clearly confused, and as such was too skittish to let any of us near enough to get a leash on him. A few lovely people in the area helped, and told us that he had running wild for 2 days, and that they had also tried to catch him- the general consensus was that he had been dumped and given the burn marks on his body most likely abused.

Obviously we couldn't’t just let the little mite wander the streets, so for an hour or so we tried all types of gentle persuasion. But again he wasn’t having any of it so we opted to follow him at a distance, on foot and by car, hoping at some point he would tire out or wander into an area where we could corner him. Unfortunately, neither of those outcomes happened, as he was startled by a car alarm going off, and tore off, disappearing out of sight down an alleyway. We drove around the neighborhood to no avail. He was gone, and there was nothing we could do. Of course, we hoped by some miracle that he’d found his way back home, and was safe and sound...

Cut to this morning....

I was driving my down the same hill, and saw the same dog walking on the sidewalk, seemingly tired and limping. So I called the same friends, and yet again we tried to get him. We tried water, dog food, treats, In fact one of people helping was a dog whisperer,
but even tired, he wasn’t allowing anyone close. After a couple of hours we decided that it was time to call a local NO KILL shelter to get the dog-catchers in, however even that proved fruitless as we were told that he wasn’t a priory, not to mention there were 8 dogs in front of him. The earliest they could come out was early evening. To be honest, at this point none of us knew what to do, but the little mite was clearly tired, and in pain, so we kept trying.

For another hr of so we followed him, and as luck would have it, just as we thinking we were getting nowhere he walked into a garden...a garden that had a gate and no other means of escape...obviously we thought we had him. We closed the gate and went to the car, out came the leash, and with food in hand, we approached the gate slowly. Just as were just about to reopen the gate a man starts yelling from behind us, telling me to politely move my “fucking car” which in fairness to him was partly blocking his drive. As I tried to reverse the car I had to stop to let a SUV go by and despite taking at most, less that a minute to maneuver out of his way, it wasn’t fast enough for him, so as he got off of his car he kept going on about me being in his “fucking driveway”. Clearly, eloquence is not his first, second or third language

My friends tried to calm him down and explained what happened, but he didn’t give a flying monkey, oh no he walked over to the gate, opened it and walked in, cursing up a storm about us trespassing and the like…which by the way we wern’t, unless touching a gate is considered trespassing in the US. By now the dog is cowering in the corner, clearly petrified. We tried again to explain the situation, hoping only that he would let us in to put a leash on the dog, but being a complete wanker he ignored us. Just when it couldn’t get any worse his wife came out on to the porch, holding what I can only assume was an unfortunate child of theirs... apparently the dog was scaring her “diabetic cat”. I kid you not...yes, the same dog who had gone nowhere near the house and was cowering in the furthest corner of the garden.

While we were begging him to let us in, or to take the leash and bring the dog to us, his wife walked over to him, handed him the baby and then walked up to the gate and without so much as a backward glance flung the gate wide open ... both her and her lovely specimen of a husband thought it was very amusing and stood back laughing as the dog flew out of the garden at full speed.... and disappeared.

So I’m really pissed right now...I have no idea where the dog is I, but I do know that if these ‘vomit buckets’ had helped, or at the very least not hindered our attempt to help, the dog would be somewhere safe and sound.

How could anyone with any degree of humanity behave in such an utterly repugnant manner is beyond me. Neither one of them had any qualms, about what they’d done... in fact he seemed quite chuffed with his maggot macho self as he told us “bitches“(his words not mine) “to fuck off” all the while holding the baby.

As I said at the top of this page.... today I met 2 pathetic excuses for breathing space...or more to the point, 2 pieces of walking/talking excrement masquerading as human beings

Again to be fair, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t return the favor with some choice words of my own...but anything I may have said wasn’t enough.

LESSON # 517- Don’t Believe Everything You See!

Life is a funny old thing, funny bizarre, funny peculiar…. The National Enquirer – now all of us have, at some point found ourselves strangely drawn to the magazine racks at Wal- Greens on tabloid Thursday…oh don’t even bother trying to deny it – who can resist such salubrious bottom-feeding front-page exclusives about Angelina and Brad supposed break-up, president former Bush’s assumed drinking problems Lindsay Lohan's rehab vacations, or Paris Hilton's losing her prison diaries…

Now it’s one thing to read outlandish gossip - quite another to think that you’re the subject of page 19…Photo insert and all!

Before carrying on I should mention, that I have had numerous cornea replacements, and as such, I am notorious for not recognizing famous people, or completely mistaking their identities…Case in point, would be thinking that I was asking Emilio Estevan, how Gloria was, only to be informed that I was in fact taking to Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Mayor of L.A.

Then there was the time I find myself talking with a woman at a rather swish Vanity Fair party… Attempting to engage in party small talk, I asked her what she does for a living?
To which she replies, “I’m a singer” …“Fab,” say I,” What kind of music do you do?”
Musing for a moment she says, “Oh, I like classical, but I guess I’m known as rockish.”

Realizing that I hadn’t asked her what her name was, I of course proceed to ask…she replies “Sheryl”…To which I say-“ Oh that’s so cool, you have the same name as one of my favorite singers, Sheryl Crow…. she’s great…I saw her perform at Lilth…. she was amazing…amazing songwriter” Then, me being me, I merrily launch into a tequila influenced, off- key rendition of “All I want to do is have some fun”. As if that wasn’t enough I unintentionally compound the situation by asking “Do you like her?” To which came the earth-please-swallow-me-whole words “I am Sheryl Crow!”

As of yet, I haven’t mistaken Denzil Washington for Madonna – but I suspect it’s only a matter of time.

Anyway back to the Enquirer story…so there I am turning the pages, when I see a picture of myself, seemingly engaged in a full on kiss. Going thought my mental rolodex, I try to recall who/ when/where, but no-one, springs to mind that looks vaguely familiar- Gasping, I put my hand to my lips, and whisper “Jesus H Christ…I’m in the Enquirer!”

Halle (who you’ll hear lots about as time goes on – because she’s the business one who keeps my scatter-brain together!) rips the magazine out of my hands, looks down, and proceeds to seemingly paraphrase the article, ”Oh my good god they say you dated for 2 years …that you broke up a 7 year marriage …that you just up and left the relationship last month to become a nun”

Then, bursting into to hysterical laughter, and says “ Oh for gods sake, It’s not you, its Mel B you idiot!!!”

I’d like to say that I realized the error of my ways, put the tabloid down, and vowed never to read another gossip rag again – alas, that would be an out and out lie. Euphoric, that it wasn’t a close up of me swapping spit with someone I didn’t even remember kissing, I simply continued reading…. sad but true!

As I write this I am thinking contact lenses might be a good option…