<$BlogRSDUrl$>

These words are the last testament of Jesus Christ in the New World.

Monday, September 08, 2003

Conspicuous Consumption

I live in this really yuppie part of oakland that's full of young, successful professionals who are always jogging and buying overpriced cruelty free meat and pushing around their designer strollers. I hate them and their godforsaken bourgious spawn. Dude, I'm 28, I went to grad school, and I don't know anyone who can afford a one bedroom apartment, let alone a baby. do you know how much a baby costs? they're more expensive than a jack russel terrier. And these aren't just normal babies these yuppies have, these aren't little kids who wear bathing suits and flip flops nine months of the year until they're old enough to go on Jerry Springer, no they're designer babies. They have bugaboo strollers and disney clothes and prada shoes. And you're probably saying Guy, you're just complaining like that because you're still telemarketing and you're jealous of the Rich, successful yuppie parents. But that's totally not true. I'm jealous of the babies. They don't know how to walk and they have better shoes than I do. I want a rich couple to work 17 hours a day so that they can afford to buy me things to make up for their neglect. I want someone to carry me. But mostly I want to be able to shit myself. any. time. i . please.
Class

In case you hadn't noticed, I am overweight, bald, dress poorly and am socially awkward, so I'm sure you can guess that for me, homosexual life is a dream. Because, if you can count on any one group to look past shallow issues of appearance, it's gay men. Yeah, everything's coming up Milhouse. When you say "inner beauty" to a gay man, he thinks you mean your prada suit has a lining. They think emotional complexity means liking cher and maddonna. TV probably taught you to think gay men were more intelligent and artistic than straight men. TV lied. A gay bar is like a playground where absolutely every person is a 13 year old girl. "Eww, did you see what she's wearing?" "OMG, I Can't BELIEVE she's talking to him" Yeah, if you can make out with a guy, that's cool, but the main reason you go to a gay bar is to try to gang up on someone and try to make him cry.
So when I came out, it was so wierd, because my whole life I felt like I didn't belong, then I said I was gay, and finally, finally my life was supposed to make sense... and I walked into a world where everyone was well dressed, and had great bodies and only cared about how attractive I was, and I wondered god, what the fuck have you done to me, I upturned my whole life to come out of the closet only to find out gay guys would really prefer it if I'd stay in there. But then I said to myself "Hey guy, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself. You may be fat, you may not be pretty, and other gay men may denigrate and mock your insecurities in those areas. but you're a smart, sensitive human being, and that means you're way better at mocking and denigrating people for their sensitivities. You can be a success in the gay community, guy, because if there's anything gay men value almost as much as beauty, it's cattiness. And if you were any cattier, guy, you'd have to shit in a litter box. And i have been able to become a successful gay man despite my appearance, because i'm a heartless tumult of rage and invective, but mainly because I have a huge penis.
Mo

There's a new show on bravo, it's called "queer eye for the straight guy". It involves a straight man get his wardrobe, house and personal life made over by a band of culture savvy gay men. I think it's great, it shows people that gay men are nothing to be scared of. I think they should have a similar show where african americans teach white people how to dance well, and steal things, and be lazy. Because, by god, our differences as people shouldn't be a source for anger and hatred, they should be a source for mockery and condescention. I would call this show either "funk eye for the jive honkey" or "rap videos". Because america loves a minstrel show.

Isn't it lovely that as america gets caught up in faggot fever, but somehow they seem to think what makes men gay is leopard prints and track lighting. the one thing we seem to actually be ignoring is the one thing that actually makes gays gay. We fuck each other. That's the area where gay men actually CAN provide a great deal of technical knowlege, but it's being ignored: what bravo needs is a show where gay men give ladies blowjob tips. Because if there is one way to defeat homophobia, it's heterosexual men realizing that our knowledge and expertise can help them get more satisfying head, and teach their ladies how to take it up the tailpipe like a pro.

In america's sprint to embrace homosexuality we've got queer eye and boy meets boy and queer as folk and will and grace. Have you noticed one thing we haven't seen on any of these shows. Hardcore anal action, yes, but I'm actually talking about something else. Lesbians. Oh, america will show you hot, hot girl-on-girl action, it'll give you straight girls kissing each other and slutty bisexuals, but the last thing you're going to see on prime time television is actual dykes. This is for one simple reason: lesbians are ugly. Now you're probably saying to yourself "but guy, that's just a stereotype, it's not..." THen you have to admit to yourself, yeah, you've met a couple of really pretty ones, but most lesbians you've met are pretty dowdy, but you know what, more power to any woman who's got enough self respect to reject the tyrrany of the male gaze. The problem isn't lesbians being ugly, which they are, it's living in a society that's so shallow that gay men are treated like rock stars for being vain and slutty, but refuses to admit there are women on the planet whose purpose in life isn't to induce boners. And if you think i'm being condescending or excessively reductionist in my appraisal of my sapphic sisters, please take a good long look at me. I'm fat, hairy, and i spend more time thinking than i do picking out my clothes. I'm a vulva away from being an Indigo Girl.
Psychosemitic

My mother is the largest five foot two woman on the planet. I don't mean that in the physical sense, sure, she's gained weight since the hysterectomy, but I mean it in more of a psychological sense. Sometimes I wonder if my mother was actually a soviet sleeper agent sent into the united states to engineer a fifth column army of agents so psychologically bound to her that they would die for any cause she espoused. But she's probably just a small jewish woman. I'm probably not the best person to have perspective on that issue.
Query II

I hate answering machines, they're such an odd chunk of cultural space. Like, everyone leaves a message that says "leave your name and number, but, um, who doesn't know what to do when an answering machine answers it's just a regular, rote drill we all know? but the only thing more annoying than "leave your name and number" is "you know the drill". "You know the drill" like you're some hep, shoot from the cuff culture surfer who doesn't need to perform the rote instructions but instead collapses into another set of rote instructions. I find the prospect of leaving an answering message astoundingly daunting because in all probability in trying to eclipse the specter of knowing the drill i will, in fact create a new drill that will be just as pointless and barren as any other. So my answering machine message is mostly silence with the quiet sound of me sobbing near the end.
Query

When I leave messages on my answering machine, I always realize how faggy my voice sounds. A more actuallized person than me would say to himself "Guy, you are gay, your voice sounding gay isn't wrong, it's simply appropriate." But I am not such a person. Emotional maturity is for chumps. So I generally spend an entire afternoon trying to make my voice sound "normal," and by the time I'm done it sounds nothing like me. Some people think my answering machine voice sounds sexy, but most people think it sounds like 1980's novelty rapper Ton Loc. "Let's do it" Finally I just erased the message and let the automated computer voice answer my messages. But i've listened to it... and i think my answering machine might be gay.
Spoils

I work across the street from the Oakland federal bulding and last week there was a sign that siad "End the Iraqi occupation. Stop the killing of Iraqi children." You know, I'm about as big a critic of the occupation of Iraq as the next guy, but if we are going to be over there, we might as well be killing Iraqi children.
I mean, what's the point in trying to convince ourselves we're some kinder, gentler empire anyway. Do you think iraqi kids are over there saying "Oh, our nation is being overrun by an unstopable space-age military who torture and humiliate our parents, but it's all being tempered by liberal good intentions." No, they're getting pissed off and waiting until they're old enough to carry a bomb. We should really should kill them now while they're still convenient and fun-sized. (instead: why wait 18 years to kill them.)
Plus, who wants to be part of some pussy empire? And we are an empire now, we're no longer just invading countries socially, we've got a problem, and the first step is admitting it. We've got Afghanistan, now Iraq, all we have to do is connect the dots and conquer Iran and we've got a brand new country I can only assume will be called Pepsi Presets America II: Petrolium Boogaloo. If we're going to be imperial warlords, we've got to start acting like it. Do you want to end up some pussy touchy feely empire like Khazaria? Never heard of Khazaria, yeah, that's because they were a touchy feely pussy empire who respected everyone's feelings and tried to protect eveyone's rights. You've heard of the Turks, right, and the aztecs and the mongols. Yeah, because they raped and pillaged and ate human flesh and fucked the world up old-school.
So if we're going to declare war on countries for no reason and occupy them for years and turn them into puppets for the benefit of corporate oil interests, you better have the balls to admit it's not a war of liberation and kids are getting killed for your SUV. Hell, if my tax dollars are paying for it, i think they should ship their corpses back tot eh US of A, have em stuffed and put one on my mantle with a smile. Because, goddamnit, I'm proud to be an american.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

My email is guyball@yahoo.com. I don't know how to put it in here as a magical link thingy