JamesSavik

That's not really true. Hate crimes have a specific signature that I described in the blacked out part of my post above. Hate crimes differ from other crimes in ways that betray their motive and constitute an ongoing terrorist threat against a gay people. The REAL problem, as I see it, is that law enforcement (police, sheriffs offices) are often less than diligent in investigating and prosecuting crimes against gay people. Honestly- I don't care if you call it a hate crime or not. I would settle for a federal law that would prosecute local law enforcement officials who "file 13" criminal complaints involving bias crimes against gay people as a violation of the equal protection clause.

I am a right brained guy for whom logic, reason and empirical evidence are what I look for in making a conclusion. After studying string theory and its many dimensions, quantum mechanics/the uncertainty principle and theories concerning the multi verse, I am of the opinion that we are, in our understanding, like amoeba contemplating the space shuttle. While the body of knowledge that humanity has amassed is respectable, we don't know nearly as much as we think that we do.

Razor G&L people have more anxiety problems than the general population. The reasons for it are pretty clear. When you've got a bunch of religious kooks damning you and psychos bashing other gay people, there is a basis in reality for that fear. Talk therapy is usually pretty good about easing anxiety but it can escalate to panic or anxiety attacks. Anxiety disorders are tricky. Plain Jane anxiety is as common as rain. Everyone suffers from it at some point. It usually goes with depression and is often treated with the same drugs. The problem is that anxiety problems can become layered. If you were to experience serious trauma like an assault, you could possibly develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is a real booger to diagnose and treat. In many people, PTSD is often mistaken for situational anxiety- or that you are worried about something specific. PTSD is at the extreme end of the spectra of anxiety disorders. It is state of extreme anxiety that doesn't go away. It is characterized by a state called hyperviligence which is like expecting an attack at any moment. People might call a person suffering from hyperviligence as jumpy or twitchy. People with PTSD have all their defenses "turned on". PTSD sufferers usually have sleep problems and chemical dependency is almost to be expected. PTSD is classified as simple or complex. Simple PTSD is precipitated by a single traumatic event like an assault, accident or disaster. A good example is the thousands of New Yorkers still suffer from PTSD as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Many people locally have Katrina related PTSD. Complex PTSD is caused by a series of traumatic events that occur over an extended period of time. You see this in soldiers who have been in combat for extended periods, prison inmates or people who were emotionally, physically or sexually abused as children for some time. Many gay people end up with PTSD that they acquire because of abuse that they suffer in primary and middle school. Anxiety disorders are almost always at the root of chemical dependency problems. People that suffer from PTSD often self-medicate with drugs or alcohol in an effort to "feel normal". PTSD sufferers are high on their own Adrenalin- sometimes for years at a time. The only time that they can "turn-off", their only relief from that state, is to be drunk or high. In PTSD sufferers, drug and alcohol use very quickly becomes chronic. Typically we see addicted PTSD sufferers who get smashed at night to "turn off" so that they can sleep. Otherwise, some PTSD sufferers go for days at a time without sleep until they collapse of exhaustion. PTSD can become dangerous. In most cases the victim will have flashbacks of the trauma that triggered their condition. Sometimes with sleep deprivation and other cumulative effects of the disorder, PTSD sufferers can experience visual and auditory hallucinations. If the original trauma had the victim fighting for their life, they will be fighting for their life with the same gusto in the flashback. Perhaps that's more than you wanted to know about anxiety problems but you see, I'm kind of an expert in them. I was outed in 7th grade and my whole high school experience was a constant battle. I picked up a hard drug habit that lasted until I was 21 when I kicked coke. The drugs were gone but PTSD was still there. In the eighties and nineties, I watched helplessly as so many of the people I grew up with, including the love of my life, died horribly of AIDS. I started drinking and using soft drugs ~97 to cope. I've been clean now 3 years in October. Putting myself back together again hasn't been at all easy. I'm working hard with my shrink but its a given, I'll probably never be completely be free of PTSD. I still have long sleepless nights. I grieve over who and what was lost. I seethe in anger. I wonder if I can ever come back and fight the urge just to quit. This place that I'm in is purgatory- just on the outskirts of hell. All gray, all day, everyday. Not quite dead, not exactly alive. Crazy enough to want to forget, too sane to remember. Fighting to remove the curse. Praying that it isn't replaced with something worse.

What are the union dues in California like?

Joe- You can't be a slut. You are never at the meetings.

Any good detective or prosecutor should be able to look at the evidence, medical and otherwise, and get some idea about the motive. Especially when all fags must die is carved into the poor bastards chest. Below I discuss the hallmarks of anti-gay hate crimes. If you've got a weak stomach, don't look. Warning: the stuff that I discuss below- you probably don't want to know.

Hopefully you have had all of this summers drama up front so you can go about enjoying the rest of it with gusto. :crosses fingers: JS

Or did she give everybody a rash!? Inquiring minds want to know. Me personally, I couldn't give a rat's raw ass.

There is a quote from a guy named Lincoln (maybe you've heard of him) that is very similar: "It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." In way too many people, their mouth runs a lot faster than their brain. Bucking this trend is a virtue , not a vice.

Erotica is what it is: a story that is primarily about sex. We all know it when we see it and quite frankly, I have very little use for it. With gay erotica in particular, the end is going to be the same: messy, sticky and most probably requiring a shower. Like any good sailor, I know how to find and have sex. The great mystery IMHO is how to find affection and love. One-handed stories as I call them lack depth, dimension and character. They focus on action, not character, plot or emotion. You can read a hundred of them and I doubt you will remember the names or details of more than just a few after a week. You probably won't remember any of them after a month. Don't get me wrong: Sex has its place in a story: where it is appropriate, logical and advances the plot. Sex is a perfectly legitimate element of a story. It is a very poor foundation for a story. Sex must be handled carefully and tastefully. The difference in erotica and a genre story is that in erotica, the author tells you more than you want to know about the various bits and sticky, technical details. In a genre story, the rules of the genre apply [romance, mystery, sci-fi]. There is a plot which is more or less independent from the sex. Plot drives the story. Sex does not. It is entirely possible to write a story with white-hot parts and not be completely gross about it. Let the reader do some of the work. Leave the sticky bits to the readers imagination. It is not necessary to write about the grinding of throbbing, turgid organs. In fact you probably shouldn't. If you allude to a sexual act, it is hotter, more dignified and lets the reader fill in the gaps and blanks with their imagination. Do we rely on sex too much? The good, experienced writers know how to balance their stories, sell their characters and create a plot that you can buy into. Learning how to do that takes time and effort to grow as a writer. Read A LOT and see how it is done both well and poorly. Just off the top of my head, authors that do a very good job of acheiving this sort of balance are Driver 9, Comsie, Dom Luka, Dewey, Graeme and EleCivil.

Thanks Steve! Ending Jericho with a cliffhanger was just sooo wrong. I promise never to do that to anyone who reads my stuff.

I would to Razor but they said my next one would be a felony so I'm saving my next beating for someone real special. It's funny how the different strokes for different folks thing works. Big as I am, I could be owned by a cute redhead. Some people can't stand all the things I think are so cute about redheads like freckles, light skin and so on. Long hair on the right guy is hawt IMHO. I have dated a very handsome guy off and on who is mulatto. There is a theory about the how & whys of what turns people on. The science geeks say that we're programmed that way for genetic diversity. Even if we are gay, we're still human.

>>there's too much emphasis on looks in the Gay community, at least in my opinion. Says the way hot guy with the mid-rift shot for an avatar. I am a Beast. I know it, everybody knows it. Couldn't hide it if I wanted to. The blue fur is a dead giveaway. I am sooo large that I can't fit in some cars. I can easily bench 300+ and have maxed out around 500 pounds. My thighs are 32" waste 34, arms 30, chest 55. Only those people that are not so superficial to judge by mere appearence get to know the person inside. I find that it works better that way. Superficial almost always equals annoying so I'm not missing a thing.

Dio! Mi amigo! You couldn't be an asshat if you tried. You were young, pokemons were cute and shiney. You came to your senses and got over it. That's perfectly understandable. Now- if you internalized the Pokemon hatred, adgitated for a war with Japan, got your own doofy, easily led candidate elected, the war happened and turned out to be a bigger mess than you thought AND THEN you change your mind and decide that the war is a bad idea after all while bullets are flying, people on both sides are dying... then you would meet the criteria of an asshat. There are senators and represenatives on both sides of the political spectrum who openly supported deposing Saddam Hussien for over a decade. Some even critized President Bush senior for "not finishing the job." They had their reasons ranging from getting rid of a blood thirsty tyrant, thinking that a democratic state in the Middle East might be a good for the reigon, thinking that the US would be in the drivers seat when it came to Iraqi oil contracts- there were as many reasons as there were members of the house and senate that went along with the War. We were lied to about WMDs had nothing to do with those reasons. "There comes a time when you can't hide from the things that you have done." Commander Adama, Colonial Fleet

I never really liked Voyager like Next Generation but it did have its moments. I always wanted Kim and Perez to get drunk and play where is the tricorder.

I enjoy a political discussion. Really- I do but so many people are going off half-cocked that if you've got half a brain, you overqualified to debate with these asshats.. err I mean people. I find the ignorance of historical facts and the assumption of a certain ideology to be the most damning offenses. Often you find yourself debating with someone who has nothing more substantial to base their argument on than mama sez... Let us examine Asshat #1 >>To rightwing moderates.... There is no such thing. Right-wingers are what they are. Moderates believe in a middle way that avoids the excesses of left or right. To address either group in such a manner is offensive. If you wonder where I sit, I'm a moderate. I don't belong to either side and despise them equally. Asshat #1 continued >>I used to vote rightwing a few years ago... Then it's your fault. Quit your bitching and take your medicine. You voted for these asshats. I did NOT. Like peace symbols, lava lamps and mid-grade pot, it seems that it has become fashionable to be anti-war again. At one point the war in Iraq had a approval rating of over seventy percent. I wonder how many of the anti-war posters on the net crying about "the illicit war in Iraq" changed their mind about the war AFTER they voted for it? After it became apparent that it was NOT going to be the antiseptic video game than the first Gulf War. Apparently there are a lot of them. Ahh- you say you were lied to? You were fooled? You wanted to be fooled. You wanted Iraq in a bag and Saddam's head on a pole. You wanted to drive your SUV and not worry about it. You wanted a stable economy with predictable energy. The only thing is that you didn't figure on was the cost. These Asshats disgust me: supporting a war when its popular, joining the peace-niks when it gets boring or unpopular. What's the problem? No smart bomb pictures on TV this time? Did little Timmy's daddy from next door come home in separate bags? This is REAL WAR boys and girls. An ugly, wretched affair that takes place in the mud and the blood and consumes humanity like a wild fire consumes a forest. Once you start a war like this, there is no easy way to stop it. Like a fire it will burn completely out of of anyones control and there is no way that 70% of Americans can avoid the responsibility for it. It's just not right or fair to the men that have to fight this war to change your mind while they sacrifice in our name. When the current War in Iraq started, it had an approval rating of over 70%. Now, almost 5 years and thousands of casualties later, that approval rating is down to the mid-twenties. That means just about 50% of Americans are ASSHATS: asshat voters who thought it would be easy and lead to cheap gas. Asshat politicians who jump on bandwagons when they are popular and are quick to jump off when they go bad. Just plain asshats that base their opinion on what is popular at the moment.

Me too. I liked the show and it would be exceptionally rude to end it with a cliffhanger.

Sounds terrifying. Where does this happen and where can I get a ticket? To study us, aliens will probably use stealthy orbiters or maybe a lander like Viking. I doubt that they will cause any damages unless their lander lands on your patio or one of their satellites falls on your foot. The only force strong enough to propel any civilization to the stars is curiosity. If they come, I doubt they'll be packing anything more dangerous than a camera. Our idea of aliens as invaders is fueled by 50's B movies that had toxic levels of Cold War paranoia. Any smart aliens would pass us by and leave a sign that says: dangerous natives with paranoia and nuclear weapons...

Sex crime cases are always disturbing. Worse- we are hearing of more and more false accusations1 which makes the issue as clear as mud. 13 year old children must be protected and after such an incident doubtlessly needs much therapy and healing. That the perp is also so young at 21 (and probably intoxicated) makes the case epically difficult. In many states, such a crime would call for a life sentence. Visitation isn't the only or even the most difficult issue here. I am glad that I have nothing to do with the law because making such decisions on a regular basis would surely destroy me. Those of you that do- I would hope that you have someone to talk to regulary and take frequent vacations. The work that you do is nobel but it demands its pound of flesh. I urge you to take care of yourself. You have my admiration and gratitude for the service that you perform for society. It is one of those dirty jobs that someone has to do- preferably someone with a soul. -JS _____________________ 1- Kobe Bryant, Duke Lacross team, Divorce court "relevations".... the FBI is now warning prosecutors that as many as a quarter or more of sex crime accusations may be false.

Relationships, as we define them here, are a mythical state of being that exist between two people. I say mythical because every society creates and defines its own myths and reinforces them with its art, literature and music. In some ways everyone tries to model their relationships and their expectations for them on cultural archetypes that may or may not fit for either partner. In some ways our language [English] betrays us. My dictionary lists three synonyms for the word relationship: family relationship, human relationship and kinship and all of those fall far short of the mark. In English we have one word for love. In classical Greek there are twelve. There is a story about Captian Cook discovering Pacific islanders who had hundreds of words for the different sorts and types of love-- some of them quite shocking for his English sensibilities! As gay people, there are no societal archetypes for our relationships. There is no gay Romeo and Juliet, Gone With the Wind or Casablanca. When Lou Reed sang I'm Just Waiting for the Man, "the Man" sure wasn't his boyfriend. What art that does depict gay love/relationships is carefully hidden away in the adult wing of most galleries like a copy of Hustler in a convenience store. We don't do ourselves any favors by trying to adopt hetero archetypes. Society does its best to slam the door on any attempt to do so. Gay Marriage faces a possible constutional ban-- an unprecidented political strategy in the history of civil rights. Gay Adoption faces similar difficulties: outright bans in some states or laws that make gay adption so legally constrictive and difficult that only the very rich need even try. Nor do we do ourselves justice when we go to the other extreme of one night stands, sex as a sport, score early and often. The difficulty that we face is that we are on a dark, moonless highway and can see only as far as our headlights. There are no signs or maps and we have to be careful of curves. We face the unknown, even the unknowable, with alien expectations from a world that we have no part or say in. We must navigate this road without getting lost in the dark, side-tracked or detoured. We must find this way with character and courage and not shrink from difficulty or pain. If this sounds hard, that's because it is. Most people get lost along the way or give up. When a path is smooth, flat and well worn, anyone can follow it. It is the untried path that tests and challenges the very limits of our courage, passion and resolve.

Maturity is over-rated. I don't see many mature people who like to play in summer rain ...but I do! Mature people look on in disgust and wish they could remember how to have a good time.

Whenever you hear a politician say that he is protecting children or whatever he is doing is for the children you can be sure that he is going to be in your pocket and you have lost some civil liberty. Stop buying their grandstanding and FUD because some costs go beyond money.

I confess... since the statute of limitations has passed, that I blew up our arch-rival high schools plumbing with sticks of potassium. To give myself enough time to get away, I had coated them in melted sugar (like peanut brittle). I flushed and given a few minutes, the water dissolved the sugar. The potassium then reacted with the water and exploded. The best one left a 3 foot crater but I was over a half mile away in full view of a coach and principal.

Two groups have traditionally been against gay rights: fundamentalists and conservatives. Fundamentalists because of their religious dogma and Conservatives because they are opposed to reform on general principles (and because they kiss fundamentalist ass). The reason that it took so long is that after granting rights to all the other minorities, who else could they claim moral superiority over? Now that fundamentalists preachers can't rail against the evils of blacks, foreigners, Asians, Muslims or homosexuals without looking like total bigots and to prove how superior their little religious cult/clan is. In the absence of a straw man to scapegoat all their problems, they'll have to look at themselves, their own actions and motives. Once they do that, I doubt they'll last a decade.

Once upon a time, I drew a face on me boyfriends behind. We took it into a photobooth and took three pics of his adorned backside. One we slipped into the annual under the name: Harry Cheeks. The second, we attached to Harry Cheek's application for enrollment to Ole Miss. The third replaced our principals face on a big picture of the student body in the schools entry hall.