If you’re running out of breath in your blog, get out there and get active. Read other posts and engage in the conversation. Talking with other readers of other sites will help develop your ideas.
My writer’s block hasn’t kept me from reading, and there are a lot of people who don’t appear to be blocked at the moment. Here’s some of the best of what I’ve read lately.
In case it hasn’t been apparent lately, I’m running a little low on blog mojo these days. Or maybe I’m running a little low on sleep. Maybe both. Lately I find myself still up at 2:30am or even 3:00am, often catching up on blog reading or writing a post that’s been knocking around in my head for a while but that’s too long and/or too deeply linked to write between breaks at work or at home. (You’d be amazed at the number of posts that are published during daylight hours were actually written in the wee hours of the night/morning.) Thats fine, in a way. I’ve always been a night owl, staying up past everyone else’s bed time because that’s time that’s almost guaranteed to belong to me. I can indulge my own interests without worrying about stealing time from something else. At least until my body rebels and starts shutting down.
Of course, if you work and have kids, you know what I’m talking about. You clock out and go home, but you don’t really clock out until well after the kids have gone to bed and you’ve caught up with your spouse or partner (because, if you want to have a healthy relationship you kinda hafta talk to each other once in a while). So, round about 10:00 pm, in my case, is when I can really focus on some stuff I want to do.The problem is, I’m often physically and mentally exhausted. Plus the stuff that keeps my brain functioning in almost-normal mode wears off by then. So, there’s the problem of being able to focus when I finally have the time.
But I’m not getting enough sleep. (Guess where I’m stealing time from now) I end up getting 4 - 5 hours of sleep a night. Six would be optimal for me. But I can’t manage to get in everything I want to get in — read everything I want to read, write everything I want to write, etc. — and get enough sleep. So, I end up with a backlog. For example, I meant to blog about all of this when I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that there are a lot people who are sleepless in D.C.
In the Washington area, there are a lot of highly educated white-collar workers who have come from all over to get ahead.
Dr. David Gross, a pulmonologist who specializes in sleep issues, said there are three keys to good health: diet, exercise, and sleep.
“Americans are very aware of the fact that exercise is important and diet is important. They don’t do it necessarily, but they know they should do it,” Gross said. “Sleep is something special because they don’t even realize that sleep is important. And they don’t do it.”
According to Gross, lack of sleep is a problem. He said it’s a contributor to diabetes, high blood pressure, weight gain, and to depression.
Gross said not getting enough sleep can dull your performance, make you a lot less efficient and it can make you irritable.
To get enough sleep Gross said people have to change their priorities.
Dull performance? Yeah, probably. Irritable? Definitely. Change my priorities? There’s a lot more than that to change if I’m going to get more sleep.
I haven't read Al Gore's latest book, The Assault on Reason, but what I read of the excerpt has convinced me to go out and buy the book. I may buy it sooner rather than later after reading this Washington Post review. Not because the review is all that positive. But because I want to support Gore in his career as an author, in hopes that he will seriously consider not running for the White House in 2008. Not because I disagree with his ideas. Not at all. I think the country could benefit immensely from having someone in the White House who thinks as deeply about issues as Gore does.
But, and perhaps this is because I read it after reading several depressing headlines, the Post Review convinced me that All Gore shouldn't run for the White House in 2008 because for the most part America doesn't deserve a president with his qualifications for the job, and most probably wouldn't understand what the man was saying half the time. And when they did, they'd get pissed off, not because he's wrong, but more likely because he's right and — to break it down to grade school level — "He thinks he's so smart." At least that's what the Post reviewer seems to be saying.
One girl said she started living on the streets after her mother beat her for dressing like a boy. Another said she ran away from home after her father pulled a gun on her for hanging around with so many “tomboys.” A third said she left home after a family acquaintance raped her because she was a lesbian and he wanted to “straighten her out.”
But gathered at Ruth’s House, a 10-bed emergency shelter for gay homeless youths here in east Detroit, they all said that for the first time they felt safe.
Ruth’s House is one of a small number of shelters for gay youths that have opened around the nation in the past four years, reflecting an increasing awareness among child welfare advocates of the disproportionately high number of gay youths in the homeless population and the special problems they face.
… Once on the streets, advocates and researchers said, gay youths may be avoiding group homes, shelters and the foster care system because they are afraid they will face violence and harassment.
Some gay youths have said they were beaten in full view of shelter staff members who did nothing to help. Others said they were forced to wear distinctly colored jumpsuits so they could be identified easily in the shelter population.
“What that means is that these youth are an extremely vulnerable population,” said Jamie Van Leeuwen, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado.
But nothing’s more effective than hearing the kids tell their own stories.
I’ve been knocking around on web video sites this weekend, and I was on Veoh when I came across this video. It’s part of a series called My Address: A Look at Gay Youth Homelessness.
I have a confession to make. I love Google. I also fear Google. But I can’t leave Google. We’ve been together for so many years, and shared so much. It’s given me so much, but it can take even more away. Don’t get me wrong. Google’s been very good to me. But I’ve heard that there are some people in its past, before me, that it didn’t treat very well. And, to be honest, I’m not sure I like some of its friends. I’m know some of its friends don’t like me, and I hate to think of Google telling them everything it knows about me. And, I never know if it will turn on me or not. So I can’t walk out. Google has way too much on me. In a sense, you might say Google owns me. And what Google owns, Google can sell out.
It started out so well. When we met, Google was just a simple little search engine. Kind of plain, but willing to get just about anything for me, and all I had to do was ask. And it had a kind of charm about it, complete with a rags-to-riches success story. Yet, it stayed simple in spite of its success. On the surface anyway. Things aren’t so simple now.
He has been since 1979; about 28 years. But even just a casual observation of American culture and society suggests that he still ain’t buried. Never has that been more evident then now, as we approach the day (tomorrow) when he was born,100 years ago in Winterset, Iowa. And his momma named him Marion.
I probably shouldn’t have brought that up. but then I probably shouldn’t bring up any of the stuff I’m about to, because I’m sure “now is not the time.” But Marion (John?) isn’t going to have a centennial next week. And it’s not about him anyway. It’s about us.
I grew up with Ebony. My parents subscribed to both Ebony, and I can recall grabbing each new issue and reading it cover to cover when it arrived. But eventually I stopped rushing to pick it up, and rarely read it as an adult. The reason is because I so rarely saw myself reflected in its pages. I felt invisible.
I am a black gay man. I am also a father. So when I saw your cover story, “The New Black Father,” I bought a copy and was as anxious to read it as I had been when I was growing up. Again, I was disappointed.
Maybe it’s because your feature seemed to focus on fathers who were celebrities (or whose children were celebrities), executives or organization heads, but I was dismayed to find that not only were no black gay fathers profiled in your feature article, but the article itself failed to even mention that we exist. Neither does the National Fatherhood Initiative, which was mentioned in your article. Their website makes no mention of our families either. It’s as if we don’t exist.
And I don’t mean the nuts behind the wheel. This is the kind of thing you file under “You’ve gotta be frickin’ kidding me.”
As a guy myself, and the parent of a four-year-old boy, I’m aware that the relationship between a man and a particular part of his body start young, is passionate, sometimes obsessive, and (usually) life-long. Entire books have been written about it. I’d recommend A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis for serious reading on the subject, Talking Cock for a more humorous take, and Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America for a different take. (And, yes, I’ve read them all.)
For a little boy, it’s like getting a new toy that you can take with you everywhere you go. But almost immediately after that initial discovery, people start telling you that (a) you can’t play with it everywhere and (b) everyone doesn’t need to see it. (At last, a toy that it’s OK not to share.) It’s not something that grown men should have to be told. It’s one thing for a little boy to run around saying to everyone “Look what I got!” It’s another altogether for a grown man to constantly remind everyone of what he’s got. In fact, it’s enough to make anyone wonder if a guy like that’s got something to prove. Or is trying to compensate for what he hasn’t got, or what he really thinks he hasn’t got enough of.
Needless to say, Freud would have a field day with guys like that. And after checking out the pictures below and reading about the phenomenon that spawned them, he’d probably want to get these guys on the couch for some analysis. After he lit a cigar, of course. (The pics, BTW, may not be quite SFW, so I put them below the fold.)
But almost immediately, the discussion turns to the various issues related to reproduction (abortion, illegitimacy, etc.). That was interesting to me because one of the main responses to the Washington state initiative has been that the only the proponents of same-sex marriage are arguing that procreation is the purpose of marriage.
Yet the very same concept is just beneath the surface of most concerns expressed by opponents to marriage equality, which in this case get down to questions about the very purpose of sexuality. No surprise, since it’s something that’s inherent in their response to a host of other issues. In fact, it goes back centuries, all the way back to the earliest changes in marriage, and Christianity’s response to them.
But to be honest, I always felt that I never really finished that post. There was a comment I intended to respond to, and some things that hadn’t quite fallen into place yet; things that hadn’t yet gelled in my brain until a day or so ago, when I read Chris Hedges’ Alternet piece about “the Christian right’s fear of pleasure.”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
And this.
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
This is a rather amazing picture. At least, it is to me. And after reading the story behind it, I can’t help wondering if, under the same circumstances, we’d see pictures like this in the U.S. And if we we did, how long would it take?
Actually, I shouldn’t use the word “physician” here, because she’s not an M.D., but it appears that Laura Schlessinger has some work to do on her family if reports of her son Deryk Schlessinger’s MySpace page is any indication.
The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called “repulsive.”
The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned “My Sweet Little Habib”; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.
The site is credited to and includes many photographs of Deryk Schlessinger, the 21-year-old son of the talk radio personality known simply as Dr. Laura. Broadcast locally on 570 KNRS, “Family Values Talk Radio,” the former family counselor spends three hours daily taking calls and offering advice on morals, ethics and values. She broadcast a show from Fort Douglas, in Salt Lake City, last week.
…”Yes . . . F—ING Yes!!!” said one blog entry on the Schlessinger site. “I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don’t.”
…The site indicated Schlessinger’s team has survived numerous mortar, rocket and roadside bomb attacks. It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child’s mother pleads for her son’s life.
It’s unclear who created the cartoons, but Army spokesman Robert Tallman said the drawings “are repulsive and not anywhere near being acceptable,” for a soldier’s personal Web page.
The Tribune learned of the Web page earlier this week from a former schoolmate of Deryk Schlessinger. Army officials said they were unaware of the site until alerted to its presence by the newspaper Thursday.
For someone who hands out family advice like she does, Laura Schlessinger seems to have some pretty twisted familial relationships.
Well, I'd hope so. Anyone stupid or careless enough to put an uzi inthe hands of an eight-year-old ought to be charged with something. The D.A. looking into "whether anyone committed a reckless or wanton act" by allowing the child to fire a weapon. Oh, I'd say that qualifies as reckless and wanton. If it doesn't, then nothing does.
I admit it. My first thought when I saw this was, "Honest, officer. I don't know what happened. I totally meant to hit the brakes. I guess my foot just slipped."
I'm not saying its the kind of thing that anyone should base their vote on, but I gotta admire a campaign when I find out about the candidate's economic plan on an LGBT social network, and then get a link to read or download the entire plan on Scribd. It tells me that a campaign is making a special effort to reach out to people like me, and that the campaign is up to date on the latest ways to disseminate information.
If you haven't yet, take the time to stop by Box Turtle Bulletin, where they have been doing a great series of day-by-day posts on the Matthew Shepard murder. Today's post is a particularly heartbreaking one, about the moment ten years ago when Dennis and Judy Shepard walked into their son's intensive care room and saw him for the first time since the attack. It also links to the earlier posts in the series.
Its sounds like a joke, but it's true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
Big news. Clay Aiken is gay. Bigger news. So is Lindsey Lohan. Or, at least, she's been dating a woman "for a really long time." I don't know what counts as "a really long time" for Lohan. But kudos to Aiken, at least, for finally coming out. The closet is no place to raise a kid.
See, stuff like this is the reason I don't use Google Ads already. I tried it for a while, but I kept getting advertisements for James Dobsons' books on my posts, and I never found an easy way to block them other than entering the URL into the Google Ads filter every time I discovered one. No thanks.
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