Because of original material for public consumption ...

I GOT NOTHIN'!

And because while watching this guy's routine, the Mexican side of me cracked up while the Filipino side said "WHAT THE PUCK?!" -- and vice versa, enjoy (oh yeah, FYI: plenty of blue language):

Part 1


Part 2

Well hello again, criminally neglected public blog !

No, I didn't spontaneously combust from election landslide shock on November 4th. I survived the pounding nerves and lived to tell, albeit two weeks late and a dollar short as usual. The NaNoWriMo project has hit a wall, too, but I'm not as worried as I was in the beginning with keeping up with the daily word quota. It's as if the story is napping for a spell, still there, and I'm relishing sketching back story for my three characters for now.

So back to Super Tuesday 2008. Continuing this blog's tradition of shitastic photography by yours truly, here are shots taken from my new cell phone -- taken before I noticed that there was a lens-protecting plastic film still covering the lens.

At local Democratic Party HQ, the wonderful people I met calling Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida for 8 hours nonstop:



If you live in either of those three states and voted Obama-Biden: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

If you hung up on, "fuck off"-ed, or barked "I'm voting for McSAME" and then hung up on me or my cohorts: FUCK ALL Y'ALLS! I kid, I kid! ...sort of.

After my spit ran dry and I hit the break room for the Sam Adams lager donated by one of Big Guy's neighbors, I handed my cell phone and its 1500 free weekday minutes over to my relief and refused to look at the live feed from the precincts that were just closing in the east coast. My nerves were a mess and I just could not bear to watch after hearing that Kenucky went to McCain. DH picked me up soon after and we headed to the Agua Caliente casino where the post-election banquet was scheduled for 8 p.m. We killed time feeding the video bandits on the main floor. DH made sure I didn't wander to the sports lounge on the way to the restroom in the meantime and tear my hair out while watching the news crawls on the flat screens all set on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc.

Neither one of us dared to check our cells for news either; we turned them off. We turned them back on once we were approaching the ball room at about half past seven...oh wow, we heard thunderous noise, and when we entered the projector above read "PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA..." and around that point I started shaking -- maybe it was all the Sam Adams and pots of coffee for the last two days, and sugary snacks from the volunteers but oh man, I really didn't see this emotional freight train coming at me.

Ever since that long night before the nomination, when he appeared to be losing to Hillary Clinton, I've been just not wanting to hope for so much, so afraid of waking up to another razor thin margin that allowed for Diebold voting machines and "hanging chad" means of stealing another election. We hugged, and then the people around us starting jumping up and down -- was booming and with everyone's jumping and wailing and next thing we know we're in the middle of this massive group/ballroom-sized hug. Words fail me. And when I looked up at the screen and saw the student in blue live from Spellman College, on her knees crying, I lost it.





Then it was the party-of-the-year-time:



That tiny casino staffer serving the cake looked terrified: over 500 drunk, laughing, crying, sugared to all shit liberals who hadn't slept a full night in weeks all converging around her, drooling over that blueberry and strawberry-bedazzled cake, with more pouring in from the valet entrance.

Locally the Democratic candidate and party HQ chocolate chip cookie snatcher Manuel Perez won the State Assembly seat but Julie Bornstein couldn't pry the US Senate seat from Mary Bono Mack's clutches. But at least Gary "Race Baiter" Jeandron is now just an ugly campaign memory.

Oh yes, regarding the razor-thin margin that allowed that bigoted piece of filth Proposition 8 -- that's a whole other post, and there's no time to do justice to how disgusting it is that my sister and my uncle's civil rights are being stomped on by "evangelicals" and Mormons who are run by the biggest closet cases -- Ted Haggard anyone?

I also have a Blogger-related experience to share regarding this issue. One of those closeted Christians who turned out to be deeply sucked into this Australian-based fundie scam sect was one of my first favorited bloggers when I started this blog. He appeared sweet, intelligent, and open-minded as far as his professed missionary work seemed to allow. But from what I gathered from my last visit to his blog, he disappeared for about 2 months then had a church-issued bride when he posted again.

What first pinged my gaydar was his frequent pitches for and links to Hillsong sites, but also this feeling from some of the pictures -- he was a pretty skilled amateur photographer -- but some of the pictures taken of him had this vibe, like I was looking but not looking at him, and one photo in particular where he was in front of one of Hillsong's ugly office building mega churches with a caption about what a thrill it was and a chance of a lifetime to be their with multiple exclamation points, as if he was meeting a rock star instead of "reverend" Brian Houston with the child molestor dad and homosexual "therapy" projects. His eyes looked so sad and it was jarring with the big pasted-on grin he flashed.

(OK,here comes a New Age California moment, you've been warned!). I've learned to heed that third-eye sense I get from people's faces, expressions, postures in pictures, because I've ignored it before to my detriment and it's never lead me astray. Which is probably the core reason I hate to be photographed myself unless I have full editorial control of the finished product. I think the native Americans were right in that a little bit of your soul in that moment in time is captured by film no matter what you do or wear to hide your true self/state of mind.

So this fills me with deep gratitude that my family, while originally conservative Catholics, were not as maniacal as to coerce my gay uncle or my sister into one of these "gay reprogramming" programs. It looks like I'm scrunching weeks' worth of posts again, so I'll stop there.

Anyway, I was also here last Thursday night, walking alongside my sister Josie and the love of her life, whom I've considered my sister-in-law since before they entered a domestic partnership.

Oh, and while we were screaming/crying/hugging in the ballroom somehow I managed to answer my cell to the Big Guy calling from Ohio yelling "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!"

Definitely not a WHOOOOOOO YEEEAAAH kind of guy on any given normal day. And when he returned last week he was still ruddy and beaming. And a lot of backed up work sucked us all up since then. And oy, I still haven't told him about the return-to-sort-of-teaching tentative offer. That's just too much in the air right now due to budget shortfalls-wrangling; and yes, I'm feeling a bit guilty putting out feelers for a new job but playing like I'm sticking around for another year or so.

Here are some photos from the Desert Sun:







Finally, Sylmar, you are in my heart tonight.

I'm really missing my old chillaxing blogger reading days now :(

Hope to catch up with y'all soon, but came to drop by to say I'm going to try to capture and post some of the anxiety/drama/fun/VICTORY (!!!) of tomorrow night's local Democratic election party at the Agua Caliente casino. Will be spending all day with the rest of the legal crew at the Dem HQ again. Our Big Guy won't be with us; he has bigger fish to fry in Ohio. Yep, he's a Democratic Party Voter Protection Program volunteer.

Makes me cringe at all the assumptions I used to have about lawyers. Not all of them are completely craven weasels :)

I have never seen the big guy like this. His brother said last week that it's like the sixties again and he's that young "Kennedy Democrat," risking a perma-file with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI in civil rights demonstrations. A couple of layers of world-weary cynicism seems to have been peeled away. So from now on, no matter the outcome, it's all or nothing, he said. Finally, the walking-deadness of the Bush-Cheney-Rove-FauxChristian tyranny is shattering. Let's hope.