But of course, the recent hysteria over long-ago incidents of sexual molestation is preposterous;

nonetheless, what astonishing piggery the charges reveal.  Today yet another of the old farts (I frankly forget which one) admitted to having molested a much younger woman ten or a dozen years ago:  "I patted her on the back--and discovered that her dress was backless. Then I realized the front of her dress was open, and I stuck my hand up it, six inches above the hemline."  WHAT!?  "I remember apologizing to her at the the time, and her saying, 'Think nothing of it.  It's perfectly all right.'"  The hell she did.  The point is, the old fart in question (I wish I could remember who it was) seems never to have realized what an utterly swinish--and, I should think, embarrassing and creepy--thing it is to stick your hand up a lady's dress when you're not exactly on mutually explicitly erotic terms with her.  And yet this, I'm beginning to think, really is (or has been) the zombie-robot world of the Heterosexual Tyranny, where such things have happened, and the grossly insulted women have said, 'That's all right.  Think nothing of it.'  I really do think I'm glad I'm gay.

Denying the Holocaust?

First of all, I do not and I cannot deny the horrific cruelties, atrocities and murders of the Nazis and the Third Reich--I just don't think that "holocaust" is an especially good name for it.  For one thing, the implication of of the word "holocaust" is that it (which I think might better be called simply World War II) was visited on only one segment of humanity, the Jews.  Which it certainly was not. I think it has been calculated that, of the ten million who perished in the Nazi death camps, six million were Jews; which leaves four million assorted homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, and so on; the point being that these hapless victims--an appalling number of whom were children--were just people.  And if numbers, as such, are important, then the unthinkable twenty millions of Russians who were murdered by the Nazis must have pre-eminence--and I like the stoïc dignity and brevity of the Russians' "Great War" as the name for the horrors that they endured.  And again, the Greek word "holocaust" has a peculiarly religious etymology (an offering which is wholly consumed) which, frankly, I find offensively extraneous, euphemistic and cowardly.

Exhausting day shopping with nearly unlimited funds (thanks to my insurance settlement):

I see, I think, why frivolous beings take it so seriously.  After purchase of clothes and computer gauds and musical instruments, what lies heaviest on my spirit is a pair of Italian shoes that I didn't buy because I wasn't sure they'd fit me, and the price of which ($200) was ridiculous, but which transcended mere shoeness in their perfect Italian elegance and beauty.  Anyway, I'm nearly set for Thanksgiving in Spokane--and for the next couple of years here in Honolulu.  What special fun it was  consulting with the vintner and the liquor people in Spokane; settling on a case (a case!) of the best  local Washington State Riesling ("Poet's Leap" from Walla Walla), four bottles of Taittinger's (blanc de blancs) champagne (half-price at $60 a bottle) to go with caviar for apéritifs, and one bottle of Calvados ($60) for after dinner with coffee.  Silly, silly fun.

I have never seen "Shakespeare in Love," nor, before God I swear, will I ever....

Not to acknowledge that Shakespeare never saw an actress in his life shows abject ignorance, moral cowardice--and  something worse: inveterate, stupid and stupefying heteronormativity.  And it quite obfuscates the much more profitable and intriguing, and more plausible, plot-line that, had Shakespeare fallen inamorato of one of his real-life personifiers of Rosalind or Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth or Juliet, he'd have been (may well, in fact, have been) head over heals in love with a boy; or even more likely, in light of the Sonnets, which celebrate Shakespeare's mature bisexuality (compared to, say, Marlowe's fervent, juvenile pederasty), with a young man.

Whilst the Queen, double-translator of Greek tragedies that she was, and well aware of the various, conflicting minds and hearts of her loving subjects--and used by long practice to overlooking and not passing judgement on what she perceived in them--had she been asked her opinion of the evident, indeed flagrant, homoeroticism of her favorite all-male theater companies, might very conceivably have answered, "It's none of my business--or yours."

And question: Do you really, now, think that Harvey Weinstein's being the Producer of Shakespeare in Love had no influence on it of, perhaps, vulgar, predatory heteronormativity?  Or might it have simply passed unnoticed in the cozy relaxation of the movie's unabashedly illiterate anachronism?

One thing we can, or should, all agree on is an admittedly elusive something called variously, Moral or Social Equality:

Whoever we're sitting next to, or across from, or even round the corner from--whatever their age, sex or condition--while they share with us a common table, all are our moral and social (even intellectual) equals, and our friends.  We hold religiously to this, or else, with our food untasted and our wine unsipped, we must excuse ourselves as unobtrusively as possible to our host, and, without making any fuss whatever, depart, both from the hospitable board and from the house that offers it.  For the honors of the table and the hearth are sacred, and he who violates them, and even he who only neglects to hold them in due respect, deserves exile and death.

It is to the Greeks, that I know of, that we owe the first codification of the laws of Hospitality, but, certainly, they are as old as mankind, and may be seen, meticulously though wordlessly observed, in the ordinarily civil behavior of our nearest relative the Bonobo Chimpanzee.

Talking with Phil last night,

He called me to tell me, among other things, that he has been singing, professionally, Richard Wagner's five songs (for Mathilde Wesendonck, as I recall), and that they are "fucking wonderful and beautiful--like Tristan und Isolde without the orchestra."  Jeez, more Wagner conundrums.  I still can't forgive our UrNazi his animadversions on Schumann's perfect songs--and to have to credit him with kunstliche Liedergeschaftnis (I made it up) as well is almost indigestible.  But, oh well, I recall the Siegfried Idyll, two hands of which I have learned to play almost perfectly in its piano 4-hand reduction--and I roll my eyes toward Heaven, and say "Whatever!"

Anyway (this is a good place to announce it) I've called Walter and Kristen, and inveigled her to invite us to Thanksgiving dinner in Spokane, promising to help pay for it and to bring the wine.  So, I've bought my roundtrip plane ticket (and am in the process of buying Walter's), and I've got a double room at the Davenport (downtown Spokane) for Walter and me, booked for the evening of the 21st, through the morning of the 26th--lots of time for me and Kirsten to play through several dozen Haydn symphonies, along with some Mozart and Handel and, of course, Bach.

And also, I should say, this all points towards the end of life, my continued residence at this pleasant and paisible address, and to an utterly thrilling and fulfilling trip to Europe--hopefully from May through July of next year.  Phil has already sent me brochures for Flüssenreise--the temptingest of which, so far, is a 13-day voyage from Budapest to Prague, (via, I suppose, the Danube and then die Moldau) on a kind of a luxury barge, with meals provided by a two-star Michelin chef.  Mmm. Mm.

Louis, Louis

C. K., whose thing is masturbating in front of people (women), is accused, on the front page of today's NY Times, of having done so, in the year 2002, in front of a couple of female "comics," Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov, of whom I have never (of course) before heard.  So fucking what?

Actually I have noticed that in some of his monologues (?), Louis C.K., in mentioning masturbation, sort of mimes it--and I have thought his miming distastefully like the real thing.  I can imagine that, for a couple of already hysterical Comédiennes, the real thing would indeed be shattering.

Let us hope that this late-recognized proclivity of Louis C.K. does not detract from his having, on a time, asked Donald Rumsfeld, repeatedly, if he (Rumsfeld) were a "flesh-eating lizard from outer space...with a predilection for Mexican babies à la bave et au sang?" 'Twould indeed be pity.

Child Development Psychology, is perhaps the Single most Fraudulently Pontificated-about Pseudo-Science in the Modern World,

Beginning with an utterly false basic premise--the similarity of pre-adolescent boys and girls--extrapolated with total disregard for statistical analysis or empirical evidence, derived from the worst, least scientific nebulosities of Viennese "Depth" Psychology, it completely denaturizes the psychology of children within a generally mistaken and false-to-fact framework of "social constructionism," and, in particular,  grotesquely misconceives the psychology of boys.

How Many Heart-Transplants Has Dick Cheney Had?

Did he deserve even one?

Shooting Kids

My late mentor/guru, William Weaver, who, come to think of it, died just thirty years ago, was an active member of the Heroic Generation, and fought in the Good War against Fascism, serving as a reconnaissance scout behind enemy lines in France and Germany.  Towards the end of the war he helped to liberate two or three of the more infamous Nazi death camps by sniping out the SS guards.  I asked him once, formally, what exactly was the reality of the Nazis and their death camps. Of the latter he said, "Never believe that those stories you hear about hot-lead enemas are not true." Of the former, he said, "A space I could not make was how they could pick a baby up by the heels and dash its brains out against a wall." 

When you see in the news that a little ol' church in Texas has been shot up--26 dead, men, women and children (and even one 18 month old baby)--like I think it was St. Jerome who said, when he heard about the fall of Rome, your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth.  But when you read of one five-year-old boy shot five times (miraculously, at last hearing, he was still alive in the hospital, though in critical condition), you weep.  Five times--in the name of God, why?

Gay Rights and Legalized Marijuana

Somehow, mysteriously and unaccountably, these have, in the past couple of decades, ceased to be an issue (legally and socially) in First World countries.  France, of course, is the ultimate, representative First World country, where laws against "immorality and public indecency" and marijuana remain on the books, and/but where being gay is, if anything more socially approved than being straight, and where marijuana use, within certain limits of discretion, is virtually without legal consequence. 

9/11 and the Cheney Conspiracy with Michael Ruppert (pt.2/2)

I liked Mike Ruppert, since the first I saw him, in a very persuasive presentation of the The Conspiracy Theory on the campus of the University of Oregon some sixteen years ago.  Nor will I ever forget him (in his character of an LAPD officer) presenting evidence (on video camera) of the CIA's total management of the distribution and sale of cocaine in Los Angeles.  I was heart-stricken to learn that he had been murdered ("suicided")--like Bruce Ivins, Aaron Swartz, and so many others--a mere three years ago.