Mongrel Knowledge Drunk Dial: with Heina Dadabhoy on Intersectionality

FUck it

Life is dumb. WHo gives a good goddamn? Sometimes I take shit seriously and sometimes I don't. Mostly when I am drawn to write in this stupid format it's because I've taken shit a bit too seriously. It's something I'm aware of and I wish it weren't so.

I can't fucking spit it out fast enough, ever.

Anyway. So I'll probably write about how I played baseball on mushrooms this past 4th of July and hit the publish button one of these days. I felt compelled to write this with a little reflection on the last thing I just wrote here.

<3 eat a shit you dingleberry pastry motherfuckers <3


i am a conflicted one who fucks mothers.

The Aftermath of the Bahasa Indonesia Experiment

I attempted to learn Bahasa Indonesia on my own for a few months, then traveled around Java for a month. It was amazing and crazy, so I highly suggest it, but it's something you should experience for yourself instead of read about. Onward to the hackish intellectual stuff.

Yes, Bahasa Indonesia really is easy to learn. You can learn enough from just Pimsleur and Anki (or whatever substitutes fit your needs) in 6^th months to feel confident traveling solo in Indonesia (though plenty of people are confident doing so without speaking a word). You do have to study every day. Upon my arrival to the country, I estimate my concrete vocabulary was about 1000 words and I could infer the meaning of maybe a few hundred beyond that. I'm less sure, but I estimate about 1/3 of that vocabulary was not very useful. My grammar was pretty weak, but it got a little better with speaking practice, and most people understood what I was trying to say as long as I got all the right words in some semblance of order.

Summit of Mt. Lawu

And yes, many Indonesians do speak fantastic English. If you're a tourist, you won't learn anything. There's a Tijuana-flavored streamlined path that tourists take through the country, and anyone who wants to make any money from tourists is great at English. It's really interesting to step outside of that, and it's a helluva lot easier to do so with some basic Bahasa Indonesia under your belt. Some days there wasn't a single English speaker around. That being said, some days I went 6 hours at a time clearing my head and not speaking any Indonesian at all, limping along in tourist English. Your brain needs a rest sometimes, or at least mine does.

Here's the best resource I found: The Straight Dope on Bahasa Indonesia, compiled by James Alley. While I was doing Pimsleur and using the Anki decks that are already on the net, I also started reading through the Dope and making an Anki deck out of any words that seemed useful for me personally. I also made a deck of the whole first chapter, even though there was a lot of overlap. I figured the overlap wouldn't be bad to reinforce: I was right, I had the same basic conversation at least twice a day the entire month I was there. Exchanging those basic pleasantries first (“Where you from? What do you study?”) is the only way to get to the challenging stuff that I needed to practice. It would be a great idea to print out the Dope and take it with you on your journey. I met several teachers who had a lot of input on my language learning, but I didn't have the Dope to show them except on my phone. If your intent is to learn, you can be in vacation-mode 90% of the time but it's not a good idea to pass up educational opportunities like that.

If all goes to plan, this winter I'll be taking the second semester of Bahasa Indonesia at a real honest-to-god university, so I'll post about that in a few months. In the mean time, learn whatever the fuck you want without waiting for someone to teach you. I'm already starting on something else for next summer's potential adventure, and maybe you should be too.

Fuel, air, and spark

“Fuel, air, and spark are all it needs to run. Which one isn’t it getting?” was something my dad would say when we’d confront a car that wouldn’t start. It’s an oversimplification, but an excellent starting point. From here, you start checking if enough air is getting in (usually is). You might pull a spark plug and see crank it over while grounding against the engine block to see if it sparks. Or make sure you do indeed have gasoline, and then check if the fuel pump is functioning. I’ve successfully used the formula to get my old motorcycle going by discovering a spark plug cable was shorting out, meaning no spark inside the cylinder, where I need it.

Recently, my girlfriend’s Honda was having some problems. Subtle problems, like the check engine light intermittently coming on and occasional hesitations. It was a thorn in her side, so needless to say it was a thorn in mine, too. I looked around for any obvious problems and found none of the usual suspects. The spark plugs had a lot of soot on them, figured I might as well change them. Despite shiny new plugs, the problem remained and this did not impress the lady friend.

Rather than considering myself a shitty mechanic, I imagine myself as House, the tortured, pill popping, TV doctor who tries to figure out what’s wrong with people. Engines aren’t so different from people-they take in fuel (air and gas vs air, water, and food in humans) and produce work. Still, there’s a lot of complicated things going on inside that we don’t see.

The fuel we run on needs to be balanced. For humans, this means that the insulin and blood sugar levels need to be, as Goldilocks said, “just right”. Gasoline engines are the same. In fact, the stoichiometric ratio that an engine likes is 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel. This is pretty precise, and if it’s off be even a little, it usually becomes apparent. On top of that, on car engines with 4-8 cylinders, it should be the exact same between all the different cylinders.

Let’s go back to 1947, when the Japanese economy was in reconstruction after WWII. The U.S. was still occupying the islands, and sent over an expert in statistics and planning named W. Edwards Deming to help. The gist of Deming’s story in Japan is that he helped institute a practice known as “statistical process control” which helped Japanese manufacturers improve the precision of their output. By improving precision, they could cut down on cost by making consistently making fewer mistakes that needed rework. Statistical process control had not yet gained wide acceptance in the U.S., so it was a novel move for Japanese manufacturers. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that Deming began to be recognized as an expert in the U.S.. Meanwhile, the precision and quality of Japanese products skyrocketed. By the early 1970’s, Japanese car makers used this newfound ability to create engines that both used less gas and lowered emissions. When the oil crisis of 1973 struck, new fuel efficiency regulations were imposed and American car companies were caught with their pants down. They couldn’t make small engines that balanced both fuel economy and power. As a result, the American car consumers flocked to buy the Japanese brands, and Detroit has been in decline since. Kaizen is a Japanese word that describes a philosophy of continuous improvement in business, engineering, or manufacturing. Japanese car makers have taken it to heart and continue to lead the pack in regards to quality. This is all well and good for my girlfriend and her Honda. Unfortunately for me, I drive a German car.

While my dad’s assertion that “all an engine needs is air, gas, and spark” is still correct, it doesn’t tell me how much each of those it needs. Learning the stoichiometric ratio needed doesn’t really help me either, as I don’t have the tools to measure what the engine is getting anyway. We gave up and took it to a dealer, who suggested checking the valve clearances, luckily not exploratory open thoracic surgery. With adjustments as small as one or two thousandths of an inch, things were back as they came from the Honda factory within a few hours. And yup, the check engine light has stayed off. The subtle, precise balance of air to fuel across the 4 cylinders has been restored. House brilliantly saved another patient. And my girlfriend has finally stopped bitching about her car.

Boom-loading Hay without Medical Insurance

Thomas, a pseudonymous friend of mine from the military, found himself a job driving a semi-truck full of hay after his enlistment ended. He invited me on a trip to eastern Washington to move a double trailer over Snoqualmie Pass to our neck of the woods near the Puget Sound, a 24-hour trip with a night in the truck cabin. Even though he would only be paying me with dinner, I went along.

I admitted to some reservations before we left. “I’m probably really allergic to hay. I grew up next to a hay field and I was always miserable on days they harvested it.”

“What kind are you allergic to? The first trailer is alfalfa, the second is Timothy.”

Hay fact one: there are different kinds of hay. If you’re allergic, try stacking different kinds in the same day to find out how miserable the right kind can make you.

About nine hours after coffee, we were in a field next to our haystack, waiting for our loader. Thomas doesn’t just drive the truck, he also loads it, usually with just one other person. The air in rural eastern Washington has that agrarian scent to it I usually only experience driving past fields on the freeway. The rich smell is good enough to make up for the smells of cattle shit and diesel exhaust that frequently punctuate it.

Thomas, like many hay-throwing Catholic war veterans, has a conservative bent. “The healthcare system is already too easy to abuse. This stupid reform only makes it worse, more of a burden. There should at least be mandatory co-pays or something to keep the ERs from getting clogged. Everyone needs to be covered for life, limb, or eyesight...but my taxes shouldn’t pay for the whole system. It’s full of people that don’t need medical attention beyond a head-examination.”

“I’d rather everyone get taken care of instead anyone getting overlooked.”

“Me too...unless it collapses the economy.”

Our loader, Ryan, showed up and gave me a quick introduction to throwing hay. “Let the hay do the work for you. When I send a bale to you, just control it while it falls into place.” This is not an exact quote. It is nearly that simple, though. Ryan operated the loader by holding a rope in each hand. With what looked like minimal effort, he could manipulate the rope holding the weight of the hay and the rope controlling the speed of the boom and move a bale within about a foot of where it needed to be.

Hay fact two: hay bales are not perfect rectangular cuboids. Four faces of the bale are held together with twine, two are not; of these two sides, one has been cut by the baling machine and is slightly larger. When stacking bales, the larger “cut” side is faced outward. The edges have to be lined up manually. The bales are laid down in alternating patterns like any good Lego construction, and the whole pile leans in on itself. This is how you can stack hay 10 feet high and hold it down with just four ratchet straps.

“Uh, be careful where you step,” Thomas warned me when I sank up to my knee between two bales. “You can break your leg doing that. Or fall off.” The first trailer of alfalfa practically stacked itself. We left the open field, shirtless and covered in hay dust, for a covered haystack to load the Timothy.

Alfalfa

Hay fact three: I’m allergic as fuck to Timothy. I was hoarse, snotty, swollen, itchy, and miserable by the time we neared completion. It had started getting dark, even on the west side of the truck. My vision was understandably blurry.

“You really need to watch where you’re stepping. Those bales near the edge can fall off,” Ryan said from the ground as I sank again near the front of the trailer. I steadied myself and looked down to straighten the bale, then stared at the nauseating 12-foot drop into the coupler connecting the two trailers.

“Yeah, I really don’t want to break my neck, or I’d drown in snot before you got me to the hospital.”

Thomas was stacking the final layer of hay on his side of the truck. “Don’t worry, if you fall, Obama will catch you. Then the taxpayer will cover your clumsy ass.”

“Well, I couldn’t pay for it. Who should? The client? Ryan? The hospital?” We finished and climbed down the hay boom to the ground. Three tired rednecks surrounded by $17 bales, and none of us could pay for a broken neck.

Ryan ignored our ignorant discussion. “Well, you’re not as fast as my 14-year old, but if you’re not careful, you might just get yourself hired.”

“Hope you guys don’t drug test.”

Here is a video of some very fast boom-loaders. I had no idea there were competitions. This is from the “1989 Rural Olympics”. Watch the whole thing, I dare you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN-Doy3Efdc

I'm a Fucking Scatterbrain

 I started writing this bullshit about the weather and decided I got really fucking bored with it. It's fucking nice and hot out and that's the bottom fucking line. It's hard to be in a bad mood. I'm on little more than 3 hours of sleep and the day appears to be dragging on. Fuck it.

There's a new open mic tonight I'm pretty fucking pumped about and I'm going to New York for 9 days starting Friday.

I can't focus on anything and I'm still not sure if it's for lack of sleep or coffee intake. It's certainly a combination of both but I don't know which is tipping the scales more.

Anyway it'd been a while since I wrote anything here and this shit is dope so I figured I'd throw something down. I haven't been to any Juggalo parties or anything so life is obviously too fucking lame to comment on. I did think of an extremely hacky joke about 15 minutes ago and I came to write it down before catching myself.

If this is entertaining at all to read, please send $1 to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace...you too can be happy. Oh fuck. Yeah. I took some fucking pseudoephedrine too. That could be part of this crazy train headtrip I'm on. That shit's no joke, son. Allergies should be long gone by now. It's fully fucking summer. What's the deal? What the fuck could I possibly be allergic to? The fucking sun? My own existence?

Allergies are the biggest negative in my life right now. That I want to post about here.

Here's the thing. If you're always saying, "I always really wanted to..."--fucking stop. Get on with it. If you wanna learn to play guitar you won't learn a fucking thing by not picking up a guitar. I don't know why I just got on this inspirational shit line but today is the fucking day to punch your boss in the dick and go on a road trip.

Change. Of. Fucking. Scenery. We all fucking need it and most of us don't get it in this stupid slave society. Your career is stupid and so are your work buddies.

Oh, I saw a fucking burning car last night and that shit was crrrraaaaazy. This fuckin hooptie was parked right up against this garage wall and the entire front end area was ablaze. It was pretty rad. Anyway I'll close out this retard posting with that.

Shotgun a beer, tear some shit up. It's too nice out not to. Fucking finito.

Cowardice of an Anti-Mormon Mormon

“Anti-Mormon” is a funny phrase. In the mid-1800s, when there was a kill order out on Mormons in Missouri, I’m sure it still held some meaning. I was raised in the Mormon church, but I was raised without a clear definition for it. I've always heard its shortened form “anti-” used as a slur for anyone critical of the church, including ex-Mormons, to color them bitter, hateful, misled, under the influence of Satan, and ultimately, wrong. It's synonymous with "evil" with more than a hint of "obnoxious". Most recently, it’s become a source of bored annoyance for Mormons, who sometimes dismiss even their own prophets’ words from their own sources as “anti-Mormon” if used to teach anything not in a heavily-edited Mormon lesson manual.

This use as a slur has completely defanged the word, but the prefix "anti-" still gives victim status to anything following it.  It's like calling the Mormon church "anti-science", which it certainly has been, but this type of wordplay muddies the waters. My entire family is still on the rolls of the church. I'm not anti-myself or anti- my mother, so if you’re a Mormon and you want to throw a label on me to make yourself feel like a martyr, kindly piss up a rope. No one has a fatwa against you that doesn’t have two or three against me.

Which brings me to my next point. No one has to fear being called anti-Mormon. The Book of Mormon Musical, as hilariously “anti-” as it gets, features official LDS church ads in the playbill. Members of the LDS church don’t bomb the meetinghouses of the polygamous FLDS or any other mormon sects. Cracking jokes about the racism and multiple wives of Brigham Young might be boorish, but I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous.

There’s a scarier slur related to more dangerous criticism: Islamophobic. I don’t know what Islamophobic means, because nobody seems to agree on a definition. Breaking the word down to its roots is taking a step backward in an age where even ex-Muslims living with their Muslim family can be sprayed down with the term on the internet.

When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I fought alongside and slept in the same tent as practicing Muslims in the Afghan National Army, at the same time as nearby Mullahs called for our deaths. I let my co-workers assume I was Christian. Even now, when I express my distaste for religion, I avoid calling out Islam specifically. I trusted our Afghan partners, but straining relationships with locals is never wise. It was especially foolhardy in SW Afghanistan at the time. Before I deployed, I bought a Quran with translation; I took it overseas with me, but carefully wrapped it up in a pillowcase and hid it. We were told to, out of respect, never touch a Quran. I still don’t know if my caution was justified.

So am I Islamophobic? That’s, unfortunately, not for me to decide. In this reactionary age when shouting down ideas with words like “ignorant” or “misinformed” has failed to attract enough advertisers or retweets, crying “Islamophobic” sounds both extreme and strangely liberal. It’s as if just the accusation draws enough attention. This might be convenient for now, but think of the consequences.

I self-apply the term “anti-Mormon” to de-fang it further than practicing Mormons already have. I think Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were either liars or delusional, just as racist and sexist as anyone else at the time, and certainly not worth listening to. I think they church they set up is patently false, occasionally abusive, and I discourage anyone from making the same mistake my 8-year-old self did. Those are my beliefs, and it doesn’t make anyone my enemy. It doesn’t make me hateful or scared of anything.

Giving “Islamophobia” the “anti-Mormon” treatment is dangerous in two ways. One, it hurts people to whom the term is misapplied, but it also distracts from actual (even institutionalized) discrimination that Muslims still face in much of the Anglophone world.

Watering these definitions down wasn’t wise, but it’s done. Violent groups, both secular and religious, actually do mean people harm based on how they pray, their heritage, or what they look like. Some blow people up or recruit child soldiers to stand behind, nowadays they even film it with cell phones for an internet audience. The last thing anyone wants to be mixed up in hate motivated by belief, so why are we throwing writers and Youtube commenters into the pile with actual fucking scumbags?

So here it is: I'm anti-Mormon. Here are some other names you can call me, if you get bored of that one: heretic, infidel, gentile, kafir. I'll answer to any of them. Unfortunately, I’m still afraid of being branded Islamophobic, though I’m starting to see that fear as irrational. It’s confusing being an anti-Mormon Mormon and an Islamophobic-phobic at the same time.

Does any of that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me.

Podcast #1: Fuck Church, Let's Podcast

Hear me baby hold together, fanboy.

Some say it's best if you never meet your idols, lest you be disappointed. I've met several of mine in various states of being...usually in the mindset of staying consciously aware of myself enough not to fanboy out on them. Lucky for me the few times I really have the people have been gracious as fuck.

Tonight I'm seeing the band forgetters. Through my young adult life I've been something of a Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil fan and I never got to see either. Blake's new band is now playing in such a setting where I'm almost certain a level of closeness I'm not sure I trust my inner fanboy not to lose his shit in. I'm generally a pretty boundary-less person so this will require exercising maximum self control to keep cool. Mega pumped for the show no matter what happens... I'll keep y'all updated. Ha. I'll fix the formatting later.

UPDATE

You know what? I'm not going to fuck with the format. All I can say is that the dude was fucking awesome. He doesn't do pictures with fans anymore but he offered up a hug and was nothing but charming as fuck. Best dude ever. The show was great.  I didn't TOTALLY fanboy out but I gave more than a few heavy compliments. Great band and great folks. Buy their record, see them. Do all that.

I wish I had bought a button. Unfortunately I'm an idiot and I didn't.

The end.

I Went to a Ratchet Party

I asked my guides for a definition of “ratchet” several times, but never understood it until I experienced it. I was told there would be drink, smoke, loud music, and lovely ladies dancing dirty, all in a location unknown until a few hours before everything kicked off. Intriguing I know, but to me it sounded like some sort of sting operation. I decided to beat traffic to Los Angeles and spend the afternoon awkwardly playing with my phone for a few hours to mentally prepare.

I did not imbibe. After all, this was my introduction to what cool people do and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Some of the ladies in our expedition stopped at the corner store to buy small cans of sake to smuggle in. As the sun went down, we finally got an email with the address. It was a known hangout: a disused warehouse in an industrial part of town. Armed with $10 each and the most modest of fanny packs, we departed.

Security had set up on the sidewalk and were doing a good job of keeping the front of the warehouse looking dark and unremarkable. The females of the expedition did not pay their entry or stop at the door, but the males were pat down before being ushered down a twisting, crowded bottleneck of an entryway. My inner self, speaking in the voice of a gruff fire marshall, wondered how many partiers would get trampled in an emergency. Most of the debris was kicked into the corners, and most of the wires and pipes were out of reach, but this didn’t appear to be intentional.

But the beats were loud enough to shake the exposed rafters. A rotating cast of women danced on a shoddy plywood stage surrounded by imitators and admirers.  Two or three DJs stood behind, spinning 2 Chainz and other possibly-satirical rap mingled with textural EDM. The crowd was largely college-aged, attractive, and very reflective of LA’s ethnic and stylistic diversity. Even auptight blogger in running shoes didn’t look out of place. It felt like the only thing we all had in common was our willingness to show up to a poorly-planned party in this part of town.

The security was thick, but they all had a Rottweiler-esque fixation on watching for confrontation. Indeed, the sake was passed around openly, and there was enough smoke for the flashing lasers to get trapped in sticky clouds floating over our heads. We had to step over a tangle of unrestrained cables (safety first!) and navigate past hastily-constructed barriers to get behind the main event, where the crowd jostled directly with the DJs and girls. A conservatively-dressed man concentrating on a tangle of audio equipment ignored the beamingly proud woman who began to grind on him.

My girlfriends were invited on-stage to briefly twerk to the music. I stood in my corner with some guys who looked like landscapers and thought about the definition of “ratchet”, which at this point seemed more of a superlative than anything. A metaphor did come to mind, but it had something to do with socket wrenches, so I pushed it aside.

The mood evolved with the beat. The dancing became less spastic and more sensual, though it still took place on all elevated plywood surfaces in the place. Twitter-length conversations were shouted into ears. I lost all concept of time, and then when the house lights came on, people obediently began to filter out. We were some of the last of them, and even the sidewalk crowd had thinned as people stepped over broken pallets and trash to their cars, packed in tight LA fashion for a few blocks.

By the time we were waited in the car for our driver, deafly reflecting on the night, it was well after last call. My metaphor returned: ratchet. Turn it one way, it noisily gives way, turn it the other, it locks. The shaking asses, dilapidated structure, and skunky smell seemed completely unrestrained, but a Californian serenity accompanied it. Ratchet felt like unidirectional, focused craziness, and tightening nuts and bolts never felt so good.

Free Lunches, Education, and Bahasa Indonesia

In my culture, everything is commoditized. We buy a lot of bottled water here in the US for a country with clean water from the tap. We’re constantly advertised to and told we need things, and that consumerism has spread to education. It isn’t just for-profit colleges that are guilty: even a state-funded university costs too fucking much to get through without some sort of financial aid. Huge libraries and sports programs are examples of universities spending on things to increase prestige or attract students, which makes us sound more like customers than anything.

Education costs are going up even though employers are complaining about the quality of grads. Too many grads need to intern to find work at all after dumping cash into a university education, which must really feel like paying the Pied Piper. Some say our country needs to revamp education. I agree.

But if the times are a’changin’, it makes more sense for that change to start with students.To that end I’m looking for cheap, easy ways to learn Bahasa Indonesia on my own. From the wiki:

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the official language of Indonesia. It is a standardized register of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Of its large population, the number of people who speak Indonesian fluently is fast approaching 100%, making Indonesian one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

So here’s something else commoditized: language learning. Rosetta Stone makes a software, but they’re also selling a yellow box with a DVD in it: a physical and financial sacrifice to the gods of language and travel. Some of us, myself included, need some sort of tangible commitment to make that soulless consumer part of our brain shut up. I had Rosetta Stone in the military and I hated it, so I threw some money at Pimsleur. I also bought a white board and a small phrasebook, but that’s it, I swear. I’m not trying to spend money on things other than beer.

Lucky for everyone, educational resources have become dirt cheap to free everywhere but the campus bookstore. Free resources like Anki, Babbel, and Livemocha are more than enough to get started learning a language. Forums like Reddit’s /r/languagelearning catalogue the resources and answer any other questions wikipedia can’t.

And here’s what your high school guidance counselor might not tell you: you’re gonna be poor, and you’re not going to want to buy the APA style guide for English 101. When I needed formatting help, I Googled “apa paper format” and the top result was always that Purdue website that explains it. I plead guilty to doing homework on my smartphone. I’m a vulture picking at the skeletons of primary sources, yet I’m a well-fed vulture.

To learn Bahasa Indonesia in a classroom with a teacher and a textbook, I’d have to transfer to a university. I’d have to drive about an hour every day, or move, and still shell out $700 a semester. I’d have to start giving a shit about things that aren’t learning. And I guess I don’t see the point in that.

There are no free lunches, but man does not live by bread alone.

I Went to a Juggalo Party

I went to a Juggalo Party. On purpose actually.

What I was certain of was that I'd be uncomfortable. What I wasn't certain of was what I would see. I expected a lot of creepy facepaint, ICP/Kottonmouth Kings/Twiztid shirts. Hatchetmen as far as the eye could see. Kind of went into it with a dickish, judging mentality. Admittedly so.

The reason I went WAS all the uncertainty. My in was that my friends' band was playing there.

I figured if any crowd of folks could handle my MS Paint created self made iron on SKULL FUCKER shirt it would have to be a bunch of wicked clowns, so I dressed accordingly.

On arrival we were carded at the door which was already a bit weird. Some loud hip hop was blaring from the basement. So I went down there and a guy I can only say perfectly fits the description of Lil Kev from the episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia "Dee is Dating a Retarded Person" is tearing shit up. He's wearing a lime green jersey of a sort, football if my memory serves me, and a backwards visor. Dead ringer for Lil Kev.

Mere minutes passed when I decided I wanted to hit up the wop that was promised...and they fucking delivered. Grab a cup, start boozing. I didn't drive so I figured to booze hard.

At one point when I took my hoodie off an acquaintance said I may wanna be careful with my T-shirt, displaying a guy shoving his cartoon dick into the eye socket of a skull in his hands--there was a girl with one eye at the party. My first thought was that he was fucking with me and my second thought was...even if there IS a fucking one eyed girl the odds of her having lost her eye in a dick related incident had to be extremely low. When I went upstairs to see if the pizza also promised in the event description was there I not only saw the girl with one eye, I saw that there was no pizza. Bummer, I guess. One eyed chick. Righteous.

So we spent the night parting with these folks who were all pretty rad. A guy with a cleaver hanging on his chain wallet may have been the weirdest thing about these folks besides one eyed girl. In any event the show went off without a hitch. A few of us sat behind the bar reaching into a giant box of gumballs there to fill the many gumball machines the host had in his basement, throwing them over the drummer's head into the middle of the room. As they fell to the floor they'd roll until they were crushed or hit something.

By nights end the wop was gone and I was plowed but it wasn't enough. Filling a cup with fruit from the wop jug I went to down on really boozy, not so tasty fruit.

The show promised much female nudity. While it was largely a sausage fest, something the event description explicitly stated was unfavorable, it did actually deliver female nudity. My friends did shots off a larger set Juggalette's tits...and best of all...designated "Titty Commander" brought all the females out for quite possibly the sleaziest most ridiculous Titty Competition ever. Cyclops and about 5 other women all bared their breasts to a small crowd of cheering retards (let's be honest--in this moment we were all being absolutely retarded) and some even got Faygo showered.

By the end of the night people were lazing about and I grabbed the mic for a freestyle sesh with some friends taking up drums and it went downhill and I stupidly decided to run jokes on the 10 people left in the basement. I got a few laughs but it was mostly a horrendous idea. I spent the last 15 minutes in the house trying to get one girl to share in some c-c-c-co-caaaaaiiiiiiine to no avail.

We left, all a little shocked at what a great time we had at the Juggalo Party.

--Gumby

Gay Boy Scouts, Social Dramaturgy, and Name Calling

I don’t frequent the Mormon blog scene, but its probably having some sort of Renaissance. As I've mentioned, Mormonism has a weird track record for institutionalizing divisiveness. It’s been a bigoted organization for most of it’s history. Nowadays, there are tons of thoughtful, highly educated Mormons that are working to change that from the inside. And they’re succeeding, which is pretty cool.

So when a link got posted on Reddit and I started to skim it, I almost spit out the cheap red wine I was drinking. It’s about a Boy Scout that probably isn't going to get his Eagle Scout award because he’s gay. Surely Mormons are a little uptight, but uncaring and cold? This needs investigating.

Thomas Montgomery is an active, believing Mormon who has a gay teenage son. Even the most liberal of men can feel lost in a situation like that, because sexuality is complicated and growing up sucks in any case. Now, Thomas’ son is at the age where he can see institutionalized discrimination, and he’s also in the awkward position where it affects him. This is the part where good dads have have the duty to shuffle the deck a little bit, and Thomas does his due to shuffle ‘em.

The Boy Scouts of America doesn't allow openly gay scouts or openly gay leaders. No, they don’t test you, or double-dog dare you to make out with Molly Mormon under the bleachers, this is an entirely symbolic form of discrimination. You can stay in the club as long as you stay in the closet. I don’t have a problem with closets, I have a problem with forcing kids into them.

But that’s how the Boy Scouts and most Mormons prefer it. You can hang around us, but not the “you” you...the “you” that this environment has made for you. Just be that person we talked about earlier, and everyone will be happy. Anything else upsets the flow we've got going. Being your genuine self brings meaningful discussion, requires me to think critically and empathize with my peers, and tests my openness to experience.

Isn't that what “scouting” is about?

Well, if the BSA discriminates against people because of their sexuality, how could it be about that? I could rag on the BSA all day for this very reason. It’s styled to look like it’s about individual growth, community citizenship and service. Their highest award? You and your parents do some work to earn it, but the real requirement is to pretend to respect god and act like you’re only going to love vagina, eventually, when you’re older.

What really spells success in scouting (or school, or life in general) are more important things, like parenting. My parents encouraged me in scouting or I would have never even showed up. The Montgomerys must encourage their son, or he wouldn't even be even close to the Eagle award. Good parenting, check. But, their son just happens to be both gay and honest. Honesty is only encouraged for straight boys, apparently.

For example, Jordan will have all his qualifications for Eagle within the year.  I have brought up the issue with Boy Scout leaders, our Bishop and our Stake President.  We are met with cool tolerance.  Everyone acknowledges that Jordan has earned and deserves his Eagle and that it would be a tragedy if he were refused (acceptance), but no one is advocating for him (support).

These parents are just trying to raise their kid right, and of course are taking advantage of the built-in community and leadership that Mormon communities put into scouting. That’s just common sense. They also don't want their son to grow up feeling threatened or pigeonholed. And they’re getting a lot of lukewarm responses from Mormons, a people who claim to be the most well-behaved people on earth.

When we link national articles via Facebook and email to family and friends about an issue directly relevant to Jordan, there are no replies of support.  Here and there, some of our “supporters” have asked to not be contacted with such information or at least to be blind copied so as to not be associated with a group that could possibly support such things.

Which brings me to the real issue, which is not Mormonism or Scouting: social dramaturgy. Life is a theatrical production, and you have to act a certain way on-stage or the drama just doesn’t work. On-stage is where most of the action happens, so imagine it to be any conversation where other people are around. Luckily, you also have a backstage area you can decompress, and even invite other actors to hang out or commiserate.That’s sort of like sitting in your room and listening to ABBA. There is a lot more to it than that, but I’m not sure how much is applicable so I’ll get to the point.

If your life’s playwright is Joseph Smith, discussing certain topics is going to anger and confuse the other actors. Asking them to care about something that isn’t in the script is going to raise eyebrows. There just isn’t a part for gay teens in this script. They don’t feel comfortable on stage, so they’re kind of on the fringe, where nobody wants to be. Even though most people don’t have any animosity for outsiders, they aren’t main characters, and they probably never will be.

I’m going to repeat this part, because it really stings:

...some of our “supporters” have asked to not be contacted with such information or at least to be blind copied so as to not be associated with a group that could possibly support such things.

Translation: Some people aren’t just scared of empathizing, they’re scared of other people thinking they empathize with something unpopular. So yeah, send your spam emails about your son as long as my peers can’t see that I’m involved.

Denying yourself sexual enjoyment in life is fine, go for it. I've already talked more shit about Mormons and sexuality than anyone is comfortable with. But scouting isn't about sex: there is nothing in scouting that involves sex. This is about an organization that treats kids badly for how they feel. If I had a gay son, I wouldn't want him to be around other people that systematically exclude him.

So here’s the name-calling. People who are unwilling to step outside the usual dramaturgical everyday existence? Those people are lame. People who do that, but also pretend to follow Jesus Christ, and also distance themselves from an adolescent boy in need of support? Yeah, those people are fucking pussies. Avoid them at all cost.

Do the Girl Scouts have a Boy’s Auxiliary or something? Raising kids is hard enough these days.