Maybe it's because I'm weepy today, but the following made my eyes tear up, so here goes

A (super gay) letter to the US President:

Dear President Bush,

Today you called upon Congress to move quickly to amend the US Constitution, and set in Federal stone a legal definition of marriage. I would like to know why.

In your speech, you stated that this Amendment would serve to protect marriage in America, which I must confess confuses me. Like you, I believe in the importance of marriage and I feel that we as a society take the institution far too lightly. In my circle of family, friends and acquaintances, the vast majority have married and divorced -- some more than once. Still, I believe in marriage. I believe that there is something fundamental about finding another person on this planet with whom you want to build a life and family, and make a positive contribution to society. I believe that we need more positive role models for successful marriage in this country -- something to counteract the images we get bombarded with in popular culture.

When we are assaulted with images of celebrities of varying genres, be it actors, sports figures, socialites, or even politicians who shrug marriage on and off like the latest fashion, it is vitally important to the face of our nation, for our children and our future, that we have a balance of commitment and fidelity with which to stave off the negativity. I search for these examples to show my own daughter, so that she can see that marriage is more than a disposable whim, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

As a father, I'm sure you have faced these same concerns and difficulties in raising your own daughters. Therefore I can also imagine that you must understand how thrilled I have been over the past few weeks to come home and turn on the news with my family. To finally have concrete examples of true commitment, honest love, and steadfast fidelity was such a relief and a joy.

Instead of speaking in the hypothetical, I was finally able to point to these men and women, standing together for hours in the pouring rain, and tell my child that this is what its all about. Forget Britney. Forget Kobe. Forget Strom. Forget about all the people that we know who have taken so frivolously the pure and simple beauty of love and tarnished it so consistently. Look instead at the joy in the beautiful faces of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon - 51 years together! I mean, honestly Mr. President - how many couples do you know who are together for 51 years? I'm sure you agree that this love story provides a wonderful opportunity to teach our children about the true meaning and value of marriage. On the steps of San Francisco City Hall, rose petals and champagne, suits and veils, horns honking and elation in the streets; a celebration of love the likes of which this society has never seen.

This morning, however, my joy turned to sadness, my relief transformed into outrage, and my peace became anger. This morning, I watched you stand before this nation and belittle these women, the thousands who stood with them, and the countless millions who wish to follow them. How could you do that, Mr. President? How could you take something so beautiful -- a clear and defining example of the true nature of commitment -- and declare it to be anything less? What is it that validates your marriage which somehow doesn't apply to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon? By what power, what authority are you so divinely imbued that you can stand before me and this nation and hold their love to a higher standard?

Don't speak to me about homosexuality, Mr. President. Don't tell me that the difference lies in the bedroom. I would never presume to ask you or your wife how it is you choose to physically express your love for one another, and I defy you to stand before Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and ask them to do the same. It is none of my business, as it is none of yours, and it has nothing to do with the "sanctity of marriage." I'm sure you would agree that marriage is far more than sexual expression, and its high time we all started focusing on all the other aspects of a relationship which hold it together over the course of a lifetime. Therefore, with the mechanics of sex set aside, I ask you again -- what makes a marriage? I firmly believe that whatever definition you derive, there are thousands upon thousands of shining examples for you to embrace.

You want to protect marriage. I admire and support that, Mr. President. Together, as a nation, let us find and celebrate examples of what a marriage should be. Together, let us take couples who embody the principles of commitment, fidelity, sacrifice and love, and hold them up before our children as role models for their own futures.

Together, let us reinforce the concept that love is about far more than sex, despite what popular culture would like them to believe.

Please, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our society, for the sake of our future, do not take us down this road. Under the guise of protection, do not support divisiveness. Under the guise of unity, do not endorse discrimination. Under the guise of sanctity, do not devalue commitment. Under the guise of democracy, do not encourage this amendment.

And now for a spot of fashion
I was told that after six months, all lesbian couples walk alike. Before that year has elapsed, all lesbian couples will be wearing at least one matching item of apparel. Apparently it’s a law. Ha! Whoever made that law never saw my girlfriend and me together. There is no possibility of us ever walking alike. It’s a physical impossibility. Our respective heights and body shapes are compatible enough to make mutually gratifying sexual positions possible, but we’ll never develop a matching gait. As to owning matching clothes, our respective styles scream very different things, and mainly irreconcilable ones. She wears little woolly hats in various shades of navy blue and what I loosely and generically describe as baseball caps. I own an angora beret. She wears sweatshirts and flannel shirts and 50 cents t-shirts with the names of sports centres written on them. She wears trainers. She wears Yfronts and white socks. Her entire wardrobe could fit onto one of my shelves. Sometimes I stare at her and all I can say is ‘You look so.. American’. I suspect she thinks it’s a bad thing – but it’s not. She gets me to think how much my upbringing had taught me to overvalue clothes and appearance. My idea of casual dress is to wear something that doesn’t involve buttons. I feel scruffy when I wear trainers. I iron my jeans – although I gave up on the crease in the middle in the 90s. The only thing we have in common, strangely enough, is The Pink Bra. Different shade of pink, and, err, different size.

On purpose
Today I wondered why I started this blog.

No, I’m not saying I regret starting this; far from it in fact. But I did wonder about its purpose and whether or not it was fulfilling any of it.

Originally, besides giving me some form of regular focus, my plan was to use it to put across some things that maybe the people I know have no time to hear, or that I am too embarrassed to say. To publish facts about what I’m up to, reassurance that I’m still around if reassurance was needed; and leave it there, for when there is time, maybe in-between googling and browsing for porn. What I am finding is that it is getting less and less personal;. I have even resorted to copying edited emails, for the sake of Pete. My problem is that I read Other Blogs, and if some of them bore me with endless, mundane, jaw-stretching crap, infuriate me with their self-righteous stupidity, some dazzle me with their style, impress me with their strongly expressed political opinions (even when I don’t agree with them) and that I start to worry about Competition. Competition was the furthest thing from my mind when I signed up for this. This was not meant as a contribution, not a part of anything, since I wanted it isolated, unpublicised, ignored as much as possible, and that I considered making it password-protected. Since I hold few strongly expressed political views, that my style is rarely scintillating, I am afraid of slipping into the same kind of jaw-stretching crap. As a result my constant internal monologue does not make it onto this page and I cut myself further away from the very people I wanted to make this for. And trust me, I monologue a lot.

The morale of the story is this: brace yourself for some more personal shit, cos I love you all.


Hug this
Today, fresh with my new resolution, I would like to talk about the Power of the Cuddle.

When I was a teenager, it was customary for us blasé secondary school kids to air-kiss all our classmates, starting with the left cheek, four times. Mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah.
I say the left cheek, but that was a topological variant: in some parts of the country it started on the right one, which, as can easily be imagined, was at best confusing, at worst embarrassing when meeting someone form a different part of the country. In such a case, you tended to meet in the middle.
When meeting a distant acquaintance in town, the same ritual would apply. Mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah. Even if you had nothing to say to each other. Even if you secretly disliked each other. Politics came after the mwah.
The time it took every morning before class!
The leering boys who lingered on your cheeks!
I soon developed a complete loathing of the whole thing.

Then, with my fist job in a bank, I graduated to the Handshake. This ritual of ‘look, I hold no weapon, let’s join our palms together and exert pressure as proof of our commitment to peace’ is a must in circles which do not count the quadruple mwah as part of their daily ritual. It should be accompanied by eye contact. It does take time before school work, but I hold it in great esteem. On many occasions have I registered a sudden, positive shift in a customerparent’s predisposition to me when I grab his hand and shake it. Not for me the limp fish, the clammy cold hand, the slippery palm. Mine is a proud handshake. It means business.

And finally, I would like to propose a eulogy to the cuddle. A hail to the hug.
At the onset of my introduction to the big H, I was suspicious. I thought it was at best exaggerated. Too much. Too short of exchanging bodily fluids. Ambiguous. I didn’t trust the hug. Also, some people don’t wash so well.
Now I’m a thorough convert. Hugs are my sustenance. I hug my dad against his will, in fact once I broke his glasses. I hug my mum. This takes place in a family where people do not touch. I mean my hugs.
It’s only some of my French friends that won’t let me. I don’t know what they’re afraid of.

Eurydice is a whiner
The BFI is having a Jean Cocteau festival, so yesterday afternoon, in another derisory attempt at getting myself out of my present pit of greyness, I gratefully let J propel us towards the Ciné lumière to watch Orphée.
I knew and love La belle et la bête, the enigmatic, oneiric illustration of the fairy tale, with all its dark twists preserved, long before it was pushed through the Disney grinder. In that film too, Cocteau had cast his life-time lover Jean Marais. In both films Cocteau’s camera lingers lovingly over his Aryan mane and sculpted torso, over his sharp cheekbones and strong virile jaw; in both films Jean Marais delivers his lines, rolls his eyes, throws tantrums with the OTT treatment of the 50s. In la belle et la bête it didn’t matter so much though – one of his two parts was very short, and the other involved a furry mask. In Orphée, his delivery is painfully dated, but you have to forgive him; he does look so good.
Much in the film, long hailed as the masterpiece of magical film-making, is disjointed; I found myself constantly reaching into my memory for long-forgotten details of the original Greek myth as a guide. On leaving the cinema I was slightly disappointed; I didn’t expect, in a Cocteau film, to find myself laughing at the washing-up gloves used as keys to the underworld. But when the dated acting and props fade away- because they do, what remains is this : Orphée wants to get beyond the limits of human experience, he wants to reach the unknowable - the mystery beyond mortality. Orphée in Cocteau’s world is his alter ego, the successful, popular poet who is envied by the younger poets; his conflicts, his desire to renew himself, his feverish listening for signals from the source of mystery, are the substance of the film. I was also fascinated to see dark, troubled, passionate Maria Casares as his Death; attended by her oaring, leather-clad motorcyclists - the hooded messengers of death - she is mystery incarnate.
Maybe some of those 50s films, like Les enfants du paradis, should only been seen when fairly young, less dismissive, not yet jaded or spoiled; when cinematography and acting still mean nothing to you, when you know nothing of the director’s love life, and when magical keys into the underworld look nothing like rubber washing-up gloves.

I know, I know, it's a classic, but in these slightly depressed days anything that makes me giggle is worth sharing.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a US radio personality who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show. On her radio show recently, she said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet.

Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend
the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. The passage clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan

Cute.

More Transatlantic politics
So the spotlight is now firmly on John Kerry as the Democratic contender in the US elections,and the Americans are starting to find out who he is. It will be interesting to know about their reaction when they find out that he has the absolute support of their bête noire - the French. Yay!
The truth is that France strongly wants anyone but Shrub as president so that they can turn the page on the damaging relationship with their amis américains. The French press is now gleefully revealing that Brice Lalonde, the former environment minister of the socialist president François Mitterrand, is a first cousin of John Kerry (their mothers were sisters.) Monsieur Lalonde is now recounting how close he is to his cousin, which dates back to their many happy vacations together in the family home in Brittany. Loaded bastards (that’s my voice, not the one of the French press.) Not only does JFK speak fluent French, but he is a dedicated ecologist and a strong supporter of the Kyoto protocol, which Bush has not signed - believing it to be detrimental to the interests of the US economy. The French are understandably happy with the idea of a strong Francophile at the White House who might thaw the current glacial relations. Meanwhile, I suspect the people in charge of Kerry’s campaign will keep his French connection quiet, lest he should be branded yet another anti-war cheese-eater.

A fleeting moment of incoherence

From the otherwise highly addictive grouphug site:

Entry 408186234
It irritates me that natural selection has not weeded out gay people yet. There are people out there who I would really like if they weren't gay, but because they are I keep away from them. Rock on, Charles Darwin.

Huh?
Natural selection certainly takes its sweet time weeding out complete morons.

Unlikely people I’ve dreamt I was having sex with
A colleague. (Unlikely, because she’s blonde.)
My High school philosophy teacher, in full skiing gear.
My ex boss – in the dream she had tattooed wings on her back and was riding a motorbike. As far from reality as could be.
My stepfather. Quadruple eek.

(Not to be confused with people I dream of having sex with.)

People I’m surprised I haven’t dreamt I was having sex with
Any of my friends – but it’s a relief.
My shrink – he’s quite cute really.

All fired up

I’m considering applying for Belgian citizenship. Or Luxemburger. Or even Swiss. Things are getting that bad.

It’s getting too tiring owning a French passport. I’m not even talking about the systematic you-have-been-randomly-selected-for-secondary-security-search in airports. I’ve got used to those, as I said they are systematic- systematically me out of the 20 possible punters. French passport, anyone? Yeah, that one there, let’s randomly select her, shall we? As a result, I put on easy-to-remove shoes before going to Heathrow and as little jewellery as possible, because I will have to remove the former and stand there in my cute stripy socks while the latter beeps suspiciously. As a result I have learnt to not have a runny nose when my belongings/person are being searched by zealous airport officials. Trust me, they don’t let you get a tissue out of your pocket without pouncing on you.
No, the airport shenanigans I’ve got used to. It helps pass the time, actually. It just worries me when I think how much of their time they waste on me while possible terrorists with non-French passports ,lots of jewelery and socks with holes in them, might be free to roam the departure lounge. Pff.
What bothers me is how much people have been using the war and its diplomatic repercussions to reinforce their xenophobia. On a bad day, I am getting an inkling of what it might have been like to be German in the 50s. On a good day, I am sick of hearing that the French are arrogant – oh, really. I’m pissed off at that out-of-the blue boycott of French food (for hygiene reasons, sure, sure) that has been going on. And if I hear again ‘we saved your ass in WWII’, even as a joke, I think I’ll explode.
So, anyway. I do get heated up.
My point was.. oh yeah. All that backlash in the (serious) British press these last few days about the government lying to the public about the war; good, I say, about time.
What makes me sad is that no matter what happens now regarding public opinion on the war itself, one thing will not go back : xenophobia gained more ammunition; as invalid or unfounded as this ammunition will prove to have been, the xenophobia will remain. Along with being arrogant, the French government –as well as every passport-bearer henceforth– will also be a confederacy of cowards. Stylish, yes, but not to be trusted. Oh, and, French women don't shave their armpits, did you know?

Gratefully and shamelessly quoted from Me talk pretty one day :
‘The French have decided to ignore our self-proclaimed superiority, and this is translated as arrogance. To my knowledge, they’ve never said that they were better than us; they’ve just never said that we’re the best. Big deal. Americans are raised to believe that the citizens of Europe should be grateful for all the wonderful things that we’ve done. Movies stereotype the people of France as boors and petty snobs. Every day we are told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it is always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos were born between July 23 and august 22, fitted sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it’s startling to realize than other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are ‘We’re number two!’
David Sedaris


Before I make my application, I’ll need to make some careful research ; what’s the stereotype for Belgians?

In the meantime, I will endeavour to take pictures of all my French female relatives' and friends' armpits and post them here. They all shave.