"Oh the Junkie is a Person in Your Neighborhood...

...In Your Neighborhood, In Your Neighborhood. They're the People that you Meet, When You're Walkin' Down the Street. They're the People That You Meet Each Day."
And so it came to pass that Timothy, having narrowly avoided a complicated encounter with the Junkie-Girl at the bus stop last week, runs into her in his apartment building where she is temporarily living. Junkie-Girl happy. Timothy not so much. She asks if she can visit him, he says NO! and explains that things at home for him are chaotic (lie.) but he is glad to see her (lie.)
So on the following day, as he paid his December rent, he explained to the managers of the property what he knew about Junkie-Girl, his fear that she is actively using and his certainty that if she isn't "clean" she's lying and planning to steal if necessary. Nothing personal, Junkie-Girl, but Timothy's been a lying, stealing addict before and well, it really does take one to know one.
Timothy tries to have Junkie-Girl removed from where he lives to establish safe Boundaries, right? They taught him that, he's sure. Still he feels like a coward.

At Least I Only Have One Cat...So Far

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to re-introduce the love of my life, and my only child, Miss Stinkerella Louise Fifi Hogan. She answers to "Stinky," though she has no aroma to speak of, it's far more a description of her personality. "Stinkerella" pays homage to Cinderella since my friend David and I rescued her from a shelter (where I'm sure they had her sweeping out chimneys). She shares my maternal grandmother's middle name "Louise" out of love for my grandmother and the surprising number of personality traits they share. "Fifi" was entirely psychically inspired - I feel she danced at the FOLLIES BERGERE in a past, taller and less hairy incarnation (although I suppose there ARE a lot of small hairy French women?). As her adoptive father, she shares my last name.

Here I could launch into a laundry list of "the wonderful things she does..." but as a single 42 year old gay man I am working really hard on the delusion that I MIGHT still be a man under here somehow.

No laughing.

Temporary Interruption

Due to an accidental overdose of L-tryptophan over the Thanksgiving Holiday, our Blogger will return on Monday, November 27 with his usual mix of pathos, satire, empathy and naked rage. In his current state, he silently weeps over the sound of a muffled "gobble-gobble" in the back of his throat.

Thank You for Your Continued Patience.

Thanks.

After All The Words...Real Life

This is just a story that happens to be true and recent so I'm just going to tell what happened but you will have to indulge me some commentary.

I stood in the November night at the bus depot waiting for the 17 for my final leg home. I was talking to a friend on my cell phone when a skull named Anna pulled nose to nose with me. Maybe 75lbs. at 5'6", she had the paper white face of a heroin addict doing some speed to scare up money for the next heroin fix. Her face was marked with raised sores, staph infection probably spread evenly throughout the street meth and heroin crowd.

I ended my call. Her bruised eyes lit! "Timothy, do you have some money you could spot me?"

For the first second I knew the absolute moral imperitive provided to me. No questions, no doubt. A type of purity of certainty that I had never felt before. I knew I should brush off the money, tell her I had a spare room and plenty of food, dvds, meetings we could go to - invite her in to help her heal. And hope she didn't steal too much from me.

The next second arrived and I reached into my wallet and gave her enough money to stay warm, fed, and high through Thanksgiving without giving blow jobs behind buildings for money. She started to thank me and tell me all of the things she could do with the money - new clothes that she hadn't been sleeping in on the street, a phone card to get ahold of her friend to find a place to crash. I stopped her with my fingers to her lips and kissed the back of my own hand. "I can't save you, Anna." I whispered into the space between us. We knew she'd get her fix and at that moment I couldn't pretend I was rescuing her. I was just prolonging her damnation.

This was no "too close to call" moral dilemma. This was a burning bush backed up by the Heavenly Host and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir pointing at a sign that read "YOU COULD TRY TO SAVE HER" and I chose the Path Of Least Commitment

This Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

A Rabbi, an Imam and an Evangelical Minister stand in the middle of an old house filled wih hungry women and children. Around them, troops from various countries are shooting at each other and taking turns gang raping the women. While Chaos rages, the three "men of God" continue to argue about which of their Faiths is the one true Faith, each of them sincere "true-believers"bent on the conversion of the other two. They smell smoke - the whole house threatens to become a conflagration.

Whose side is God/Jehovah/Allah on? I bet you think our Creator wants the victims, starving and raped women and children, saved from their torment. Shouldn't we, people of Faith, want the same? While we stand around debating whose God is God our house is in Chaos and catching fire.

Maybe if we spent more time putting our house, the Earth, into Peaceful order, we'd find we have more in common with those we meet in the clearing smoke.

I Would Never Mock A Cancer Survivor...

...unless she was Suzanne Somers. She appeared on LARRY KING LIVE last week and both she and Larry said "vaginal dryness" like some demented old porn queen's dying mantra. To the tune of CAROLINA IN THE MORNIN'

Oh nuthin' could be moister than the oyster that we call Suzanne's Vagina.
Estrogen from yams and yaks to fight the menopausal cracks that line her.

When the Morning's Bloating twines around her form
TORSO-TRAC and THIGHMASTER, timeships to co-ed dorms.

Strollin' with my girlie when the dew is pearly early in her "females"
Bad Endocrinologists! Crissy ain't no Technologist - no emails!

If I had Bionic Tits and Muppet-Blonde hair,
I'd Lipo-suck it in cause who cares?

Oh nuthin' could be finer than the dank in her vagina in the mornin'!

Love Without Agenda

Thanks to my friend, Jason and his wife Rachel for letting me use this picture of their adorable son Lukas. When I look at Lukas in the leaves I see the pretty ideal of happiness and joy with a bit of giggle around the corners of the mouth. Continuing my redux of Religious Paradigms, I'd love to think that this is what I can look like when seen by my Creator or by my fellow people of Faith - smiling, ready, willing, calm, unafraid.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not trying to change anyone's existing Religious Faith. In fact, I suggest that any of the Cornerstones or Behaviors that I have suggested can be performed by anyone of any Faith without being in conflict wih their core beliefs.

Civility, Decency, Tolerance, Respect, Compassion, Willingness - though lacking in current Fundamentalist micro-sects of Islam, Christianity, Judaism - allowing them to Hate - are not part of the greater and more moderate Faiths from which they spring.

Extremist, Fundamentalist, Purist versions of all religions find their genesis in FEAR and the INSECURITY that grows into an ARROGANCE that THEY and ONLY THEY know the way to Paradise. A shaking clenched fist can hold no love.

DOGMA is no product of FAITH. DOGMA is the product of DOUBT. True FAITH is alive, plastic and FEARS no CHANGE.

Our relationship to our Creator has no place for Fear or Isolation. It is our duty to reach out accross lines of Faith, our simple Cornerstone Beliefs giving us "cover" and loveingly help to heal our shared Insecurities. Challenge yourself to allow your Faith beyond the box. God didn't shape your box, you did out of tradition, insecurity and Fear.

Tailoring God's Clothes Out Of The Fabric Of Space-Time

If there was a joke in the title of today's entry, the punchline would go:"..make sure you have a lot of thread..."
Well I'm one day into my New World Religious Paradigm (that REALLY needs a name) and already my Mother is concerned that I not "stray from the teachings of Jesus." To the contrary, not only need I NOT stray from the Christianity I've known all of my life BUT I've designed the basic "Cornerstones" or bullet points of this New Paradigm to be accessible to all regardless of the Faith they bring to the exercise. I have no desire to supplant Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bhuddism, Hindu, Shinto or Druidism. I just want to offer an idea for shared ideals of all people of Faith that should be one-size-fits-all that can facilitate compassionate dialog between the groups, many of whom clash daily, because they trust the sincerity of the Faiths that bring them to the table. An Ecumenical United Nations, dedicated to an end to poverty, oppression and conflict because of the power of all our Faiths combined.

Read yesterday's entry. Contribute. Be shocked. Or just "get it."

We need more Cornerstones, we STILL need a name* and it's about time we win a few believers.


*Name the Religion and become it's first SAINT, word.

It's Time For A New World Religious Paradigm

At least I think so...
Lately, I have found myself confronted by aspects of Legacy World religions that seem archaic, out of place. Prohecies written by the oppressed and enslaved that could only hope for an end to their tortured existence. They prophesied what they most desired.
But in our times, though many still suffer, billions of us live lives that are pleasant, creative, filled with family of all sorts, compassion that extends to include the whole natural world. We need new paradigms in our beliefs that pull away from milenia of praying for release from this life and instead leave us yearning to improve this life for everyone. It's not about doing time on Earth waiting for the prize of Heavan. It's about the capacity for Heaven, a real Kingdom of God on this Earth.

Here are a few of the cornerstones of my New World Religion. Feel free to COMMENT, email, REPLY, complain or even think about what you may read. I'll value your input.

1. We are the most sentient fruit of our Creator that we know but the Universe is vast and our eyesight finite.
2. Our Creator's perfection is displayed in our Diversity. Six Billion independent thoughts every second.
3. What appears to be Fate or Destiny is a simple limitation of our Perception as we try to find Meaning outside ourselves.
4. Though we are never without our Creator's love, we live in an impersonal Universe in which Events will occur to us at random.
5. Any Lesson learned from Events that occur in our lives begins in Grace or how we respond to the occurrences.
6. We owe others (regardless of their beliefs) Respect, Love, Tolerance

Well, that seems like a good start. A little New Age-y to tell the truth. I swear I smell patchouli oil. Does that mean my new religion will include hippie nuns and monks? Cool, good wines, breads and weed.

Anywho, helpout a budding late day prophet buy adding your suggestions to either our "Cornerstones," or how I should start raising money, my outfit for spreading the word...forget that! My New Religion needs a NAME!

NAME MY RELIGION!*

* The winner is our first Saint!

"Connect The Dots! La La La La!"

I love Peewee Herman. Since the DAWN OF MAN (ooh, how pompous!) humanity has sought to understand his world better by seeking the patterns that appear to surround us. The length of days and seasons, repetitive patterns had to be predicted for our hunter gatherer forebears to evolve an agricultural society which gave them enough freetime to form civilization. Pretty important stuff and by and large reliable. Just by observing the slow progression of the sun moon and stars in the sky, primitives who lacked the wheel created observatories and mathematics so that each season's planting and harvest could be maximized. So it stands to reason that the human knack for identifying patterns is hard wired into us all.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work so neatly. Take the constellations - also the creation of early astronomers - they are basically "connect the dots" in the night sky. Patterns we impose making pictures from the available peices. But the picture, the order in which the dots are connected is arbitrary and totally individual. Where you may see a bear, a goddess or a hunter, I can connect the dots to make a gorilla, a flight attendant and an aardvark. We make something from the dots when in the end they were just dots.

Our love of patterns, how they comfort and assure us, really gets us into trouble when we apply it to life events. We think that if only we can assemble the events correctly, connect them like so many dots, we can find some overall meaning - the picture of our lives that will make some sense. I labored under that assumption for most of my life. If only I could figure out how all of the events could be connected I would understand the theme or lesson that my life contained and would be all the wiser for it.

Now I'm pretty sure they're just dots, the events that have occurred - the shit that has happened. The meaning of my life is not the result of external events but something I have to make from who I am and what I'm made of. The MEANING OF LIFE (pompous again!) won't ever be given to me. I have to make it for myself.

I'm Just A Science Geek at Heart...Thanks Hubble

These are the so-called PILLARS OF CREATION courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. The image is a computer enhanced photograph of clouds of hydrogen and dust, thousands of light-years across, that act as the incubators of stars. Sometimes when I tire of war and politics, I lose myself in the beautiful Universe.