Hark the Harold

Short takes, just a few before I go to bed. . . why he was the sweetest, the smartest. . . 

And tomorrow, I may have News.

Cartoon Harold!

Jack of Spades. . . 

A man who deserves to be severely kissed (and kissed, and kissed. . . )

When gay really ISN'T OK

A Mother's Horror Story

From a web site called PFOX:       http://pfox.org/default.html

My precious son was raped by a boy in the neighborhood when he was 9-10 years old.  It happened after he returned home on the bus when I was still at work, an hour or so before I got home. I thought this older, nice teen was giving my son attention, playing ball with him, etc. -- as he never got that attention from his own dad. Even though I spoke to my kids, read books on "bad touch" etc. & was an educator--it didn't "take" with this one son. I've had well meaning Christians condemn me as not doing enough & that I'd not been a good mother or my boy "would have told me" when it happened. But I have peace that this accusation is absurd--as I was in a living hell with an abusive husband & I gave every ounce of love to my children that I could. However, I was married when not a Christian & his blood dad is a non-believer who did drugs & had a huge anger problem, putting us "in fear" in our home.

I came to Christ shortly after our marriage & did all of the Christian training of the kids myself, standing for almost 20 years for the marriage. My other kids are all strong Christians.....but my son fell away from the Lord during high school. This happened when a gay drama "teacher" (not certified but hired under adjunct faculty with other gays) became too "familiar "with my boy---later I found out he proselytized him along with those gay teachers into the hidden world of homosexuality (1990's).

No one listened to me when I complained to the principal & school district about this gay man’s behavior towards my teenage son at school.  Instead, the school began to use my son as a "poster boy," writing articles/editorials on being gay & accepted at their politically correct high school. His dad (who was gone when my son was 15.. ..& divorced me), and a group of liberal parents in the acting/drama world encouraged my son that "he was gay or bi". This, after he broke up with his girlfriend when he was 15--deeply distraught & crying for weeks over the loss.

There are so many stories I could share in retrospect as I ponder "what could I have done differently". Yet, today, I know I did all I could with what I knew as a loving mother---but no one would listen to me at the school. In addition, I knew little about the dark world (& it IS DARK) of homosexuality as I'd not been exposed to anything like this in my life. But now I have spent more time in the gay bars, clubs (as I go with my son, counsel kids over a dinner, have them over to our home, etc) than the average older Christian. My present husband & I have spent countless hours counseling & loving this community of hurting individuals....& it is a privilege--in spite of not always being easy. 

My son, who is now an adult and whose life thus far has been ravaged, had been my strongest Christian kid--shared Christ at school, sang worship with me, was a straight A student, leader & dynamic believer. He is still friends with the gay teacher--who was finally fired with a district cover up--as he apparently was caught doing drugs with his students.

This gay teacher still holds my son captive...stalking and finding him in other states and now back in our city—he had moved my son into his home.  This teacher has gone back on drugs and stolen from my boy (last year). We have rescued my son from this guy's home...& now this man went thru rehab again pulling our boy back into his clutches this year.

Our son is like a "stockholm syndrome child"----feeling sorry for this former teacher & saying. "he was there for me & cared about me when I was young & hurting". Our son has swallowed the whole party line of GAY EVANGELISM & believes it all--even only attending gay AA meetings with his "people". It is similar to a cult. It's all sick/drama/victim mentality & perversity...full of drag queen stuff as well.

(Transcript of text: "I make choices everyday (sic). Where to eat. What to wear. Who to see. But as a gay man I never thought I could change WHO I was. Until I realized change was a choice. . . and I chose to change from gay to straight. It may not be a decision you want to make, but you should know thousands of us already have. Please respect our choice.")

ONLY GOD........

Only God will hold your molecules together in the grief of it all. Only God will have every answer to each situation & in those times of confusion, help us continue to walk by faith and not by sight. Only God will comfort us through the deepest of sorrows. Only God can make a way where there is no other way. Only God loves our son, daughter, spouse-- more than we do, as our loved one.  Only God will bring the perfect conclusion of the matter. Only God will bring Peace amid the storm. Only God can take the perversity, insanity and constant death of the homosexual agenda that is ravaging lives, families and our culture to its end game- BECAUSE OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, THE BEGINNING AND THE END, THE FIRST AND THE LAST IS OUR OVERCOMER, AND HE HAS THE FINAL VICTORY.

-- PFOX mom of a sexually abused son

This is a dramatic cutdown of a piece that just went on and on, from a site called PFOX, standing for I-don't-know-what. The other day I posted about Exodus "ex-gay" ministries folding because the founder suddenly realized after 15 years of damaging people with guilt trips that "maybe this ex-gay stuff doesn't work quite as well as we thought it did". But obviously, the agenda hasn't disappeared.

The way gays are demonized in this piece is pretty horrific, but this is a woman who needs someone to blame for the fact that her kid is fucked up. Being gay isn't the problem. She seems to believe he has as much individual will as a jellyfish, so easily is he taken over by demonic influences like high school drama teachers.  She takes no responsibility for how damaged he is and sees her rampant right-wing version of Christianity as the cure for everything that she perceives is wrong with him.

All through reading this amazing rant and tearing out chunk after redundant chunk so I could post it, I was reminded of Sheldon Cooper's fundamentalist Christian mother on The Big Bang Theory. It's never spelled out that Sheldon is gay (though Jim Parsons seems comfortably "out"), so his mother doesn't have too much to work with except his physics-induced atheism and extreme attachment to his Mee Maw (grandmother), who calls him Moon Pie. Now, does that sound heterosexual to you?

Moving on.

In spite of much rhetorical fancy dancing and the legions of gay ministers in the United Church, I don't think the gay/Christian schism will ever entirely heal. In fact, I think it could get wider as the BLT-with-a-side-of-fries community (sorry, I can't ever remember all those initials) becomes more visible. Even "tolerant" Christians (and what does it mean if I "tolerate' you? Really, that I can barely stand you) stop short of believing God is "OK" with all this, that it isn't a sin.  The Bible tells us to stick to the good old model, the Adam-and-Eve, penis-in-vagina, John-Wayne-on-a-horse idea that kept our civilization strong ever since Adam toted his Flintstones lunch pail to the gravel pit.

Supposedly. It has always interested me however that there is not one word against homosexuality in the New Testament. Not one word FOR, either. Jesus must have had more important matters to attend to.

Homosexuality has always been around, persecuted to one extent or another because people don't understand it. Now that a percentage of gays and other BLTs are "out", the more conservative faction of society is even more baffled because they aren't used to seeing men marching in parades with fake boobs and hair extensions. 

I had an issue with drag queens - namely, that they were way more feminine than I am, though I have actual boobs - until I decided to forget my envy and just enjoy their joie de vivre and dazzling fashion sense. I may not get it, I mean really understand why they do it, but why do I have to? I've seen some pre-Stonewall footage of gay protestors, and someone must've told them they all had to wear suits and ties (even the women). It was so dull, passersby probably thought they were just a bunch of disgruntled Rotarians.

At a certain point you have to ask yourself if sexual orientation is really our call, if we have the right to dictate how somebody else "should" feel about other people. I like what my daughter, a TV news reporter, once said. "Why should we disapprove when it's something that has no ill effect on us whatsoever?" What horrific damage will be done if people of the same sex like to hang out together, go to the gym, fall in love, get married, adopt children and. . .WOAH! That's where a lot of people put on the brakes.

But the thing is, as the definition of family becomes more soft-bordered and inclusive, it will happen. In fact, it already is. As usual, celebrities (who are, of course, the epitome of stability intelligence and good taste) lead the way. What will the long-term social impact be? Hell if I know. But it has to be better than having the shit kicked out of you for having Justin Bieber on your lunch pail.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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YouTube at the opera: the bad, the good and the sublime

The things you find while snooping around YouTube. This morning for some reason, maybe because it's Monday and awful out, I found myself digging around in videos of operatic bloopers - just an awful thing to do, sadistic, for opera is like figure skating: one slip of the blade and you're spinning around on your ass.

There were several categories. Quite a few, actually. An obvious one was singing off-pitch, invariably flat, and usually all the way through the piece. One wonders how someone with a trained singer's ear can do such a thing, but there they were (professionals, I mean, like Pavarotti, Roberto Alagna, and even the legendary Callas), slipping farther and farther off the wire like some floundering Wallenda.

There were the gargled or yodelled high notes, usually afflicting tenors who probably should have realized they were off their game. Sometimes that little bit of muscle at the back of the throat just won't cooperate, and can't be coerced.  Sopranos tended to shriek like squeezed chickens. There were elaborate choruses which were completely incoherent: SOMEONE had started off on the wrong foot, thus making proper entrances impossible while the conductor tried frantically to get everyone back on board. In one case, I swear I heard him skip several bars, but to no avail. 

There were complete silences. I mean, stunned and stunning silences in which the singer just stopped what they were doing in total disorientation. In a couple of cases the tenor (it was always a tenor) would shout out an excuse to the audience, something like, "Don't blame me, blame Puccini!" Almost worse were the "saves", the singer deciding to skip the triple-axel and sing something far less challenging.

The lyrics to these disasters all translated to approximately the same thing: "I should have cancelled, I should have cancelled. . . " Knowing when to cancel is a fine art in itself, but too many performers seem to want to go on with the show even as the ship sinks under their feet.

Though the videos contained their usual near-complete lack of information (where, when, even WHO), you could sure tell what theatre you were in. It was not hard to get the good folks at La Scala going, not just shrill whistling and booing but standing up and yelling things like, "Dog!", "This is murder!" and "Off the stage, charlatan!" North American audiences seem to be a little more restrained, but there is something limp and even baffled about the applause after such a fiasco. And definitely disappointed.

Having said all that, I'm not posting any bloopers today. I've had enough of them and felt a high degree of schadenfreude (thank you, Matt Paust) while listening to them. I suddenly thought of the glorious Flower Duet from Lakme by Delibes, once worked to death on airline commercials and elsewhere, but now beginning to heal and regain its lustre. And I found this one, and within two seconds I was crying, all thought of bloopers erased.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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Ex-gay is NOT OKAY

I read the news today, oh boy. . . that the misguided creeps at Exodus International, one of those "pray the gay away" internment camps, have finally seen the light.

Or could it be that they have been threatened with lawsuits after families have lost sons and daughters to shame-induced depression, addiction and suicide? We'll never know.

So I had mixed feelings when I heard about Exodus CEO Alan Chambers' penitent speech and his special interview with Oprah's comely vassal, Lisa Ling, on her side-show-like news journal Our America. Haven't seen it yet, but plan to tune in tonight with lots of popcorn. I know it will be compelling in that godawful way that most religious items tend to be. We live in a society that loves apologies, loves admissions of mea culpa, not just because it makes the person look like an emotionally-evolved and all-around swell guy (which he usually isn't), but because we secretly smack our lips over another person's squirming humiliation. There's a word for that, but I can't spell it right at the moment.

I remember - in fact, I'm trying hard to forget - Oral Roberts (whom my husband un-affectionately calls Anal Roberts) sobbing and sniffling and streaming with snot because he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Oh Lord, forgive me! I had a sweet patootie on the side! He seems to have won back most of his flock (that is, if he's still alive - does anybody really care?)in spite of, or maybe because of, his nasty little transgression.

Anyway, here's the basic lowdown on Alan Chambers, one of the founders of Exodus International - a man who was fully aware that he himself was gay when he took on the sacred task of de-gay-ifying legions of vulnerable, spiritually-confused young people.

In a poignant blog post, Exodus International president Alan Chambers announced yesterday that the ex-gay ministry was shutting its doors, conceding that “reparative” therapy for gay people is ineffective and unhealthy. Chambers’ note took the form of an apology for the “shame,” “false hope,” and “trauma” he caused would-be converts, pleading for forgiveness from “ex-gay survivors”:

Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents... I am sorry that I...failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry...that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine. 

OK then, now that I've stolen that bit off a news site, here's something even more interesting I found outlining some of the aversion therapy techniques used in those ex-gay camps. 

Bizarre Techniques

“Ex-gay leaders and reparative therapists try to come across as mainstream in media appearances. Upon closer examination, however, one can find outdated theories and bizarre techniques, making it clear why their work is rejected by every respected medical and mental health organization in America.

Defeat Will Make Some Straight Men Crave Gay Sex
“Non-homosexual men who experience defeat and failure may also experience homosexual fantasies or dreams.” (Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality)

The Rubber Band Technique
“Every time you catch yourself watching someone erotically or engaging in fantasy, snap the band. This will cause a moderate stinging pain, which serves as a shocking reminder of what you are doing. This should help you interrupt the spell.” (Bill Consiglio, Author, “Homosexual No More”)

Playing Sports Will Make You Hetero
“I recently counseled a fifty-year old man who carried a heavy burden since he was twelve. He thought that he had no eye-hand coordination, could not throw a ball, and therefore was less than the other boys and less than a man. I paired him up with a friend of mine who was willing to play ball with him. Within a few days, a new man was born. He could throw a ball. He just needed some practice and a sympathetic man to show him the ropes.” (Richard Cohen, International Healing Foundation)

Prozac Can Cure Homosexuality
“When we consider that there is no objective distinction between homosexuality and the other perversions, we can easily see how the development of the homosexual “habit’ fits into this framework (of cures through medication). Some [homosexuals]…are being successfully treated with Prozac. Here too, sexual reorientation is reported to have occurred incidentally.” (Dr. Jeffrey Satinover , M.D., Author, “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth”)


Prayer and Faith Cures AIDS
“Matthew was delivered from homosexuality in 1989 and miraculously healed from HIV/AIDS in 1994.” (Mathew C. Manning, Lighthouse World Evangelism, www.matthewcmanning.com)

Trouble in Mom’s Womb Can Make You Gay
“If a mother was experiencing difficulty in her relationship with her husband while carrying a child or if she felt rejected, unloved or unwanted by him or she experienced any other painful experiences during pregnancy, the unborn child within may have experienced these thoughts and feelings as though they were directed at him or her.” (Richard Cohen, International Healing Foundation)


Hypnosis Can Make You Hetero
“At the count of three, your subconscious mind will make you aware of the cause of your homosexual behavior…You need to form in your mind the event you have been looking for whether it was created in this or a previous lifetime…Your soul records are available to you on this issue. You learn from the past and move on!”(Potentials Unlimited, “Gay and Unhappy”, A Self-Hypnotic Tape)

Focusing on a Tree Will Help Make You Hetero
“I would start to experience a sexual response… So I would look out my car window and say something like, “Gosh, Lord, there’s a tree out there! That tree is green, and has leaves on it. It’s got brown bark.’ I would fix my mind on anything to distract myself…Over time, that made me mentally disciplined enough to displace all lesbian thoughts, period.”(Anne Paulk, Co-Author, “Love Won Out”)


Many of the Best Christians Are Mentally Ill
“Many of these persons — having suffered breakdowns and hospitalizations in the past — end up being the strongest and most effective Christians because, having been under such bondage to the voices of the past and present, they gladly listen for the life-giving Word in order to survive as persons.” (LeAnne Payne, Co-Author, “The Broken Image”)





Gaining Weight Will Help Make You Hetero
“My weight started to increase, and I found little desire to keep on a strict diet and stay fashionably slim. My very appearance was changing. I was looking less and less gay. And I was perfectly happy about it.”(John Paulk, Author, Not Afraid to Change)

Makes me want to grab the nearest hot chick and leave town.

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Snake charmer

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=951637

Can't seem to embed this, but hope the video link works. My daughter Shannon Paterson proves that she can charm even the snakiest python on her CTV News report!

All day, all night, Harold Lloyd

This cartoon must have something to do with Daylight Savings Time.

This one just sums up the essence of these three. . .

And here's another clock-hanger. . . 

A very strange chorus from a very strange cartoon. . . 

And this one's just the coolest of them all.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Furries, purries and other cuddly things

Just made this gif of an event my daughter Shannon Paterson covered last year on CTV News: a "furry" convention, in which people run around, presumably very hot and sweaty, wearing furry animal suits. Now. . . I am not one to criticize, and some of the furries in this piece were pretty gorgeous (especially the cat on the right - a lynx, isn't it? A bobcat? Or is it a fox?) Their dismay in this tiny clip is in reference to a CSI episode in which it was implied that their activities are fetishistic/kinky.

I really don't know, but I want that cat suit for Halloween.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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Popocatapetl!

You know how it is - don't you? You're sitting there watching TV, mindlessly - in this case, a Doris Day movie with Oscar Levant in it (he doesn't get the girl - but, notably, he was the one who coined the infamous quote, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin"), when suddenly.

Just these things came into my mind, these - things. One was, how old is Johnny Depp anyway? He fell off a horse while playing Tonto and could have been kicked to death, and now there are rumors going around that he really is dead.

There were worse things, as Doris sang "You smile and I hear violins, it's magic. . ." with Oscar (needing the money no doubt)  playing florally on the piano. Then these words sprang into my head:  Harald Hardrada and Tostig. Surfeit. Popocatapetl. Along with them, meaningless bits of phrases: a surfeit of peaches and honey. Somebody died of it. And you know you'll never boil a kettle/on Mount Popocatapetl.

I found out something about some of it. Google seldom lets me down.  Harald Hardrada was some sort of English king or whatever, really boring stuff. I kept coming across the word thegn, which sounded like someone with a really bad headcold. I still have an old satire called 1066 and All That, and remember some obscure English show called The Norman Conquest, starring, I think, a comedian called Norman Wisdom.

Tostig, he sounds kind of Scandinavian or Norse or something, one of them Vikings maybe? But I thought they got lost in North America.

But Popocatapetl, now. That one I thought I recognized, from a jolly Aztec-colored, magenta-and-turquoise little poem we chanted in school. About how you can't boil a kettle /on Mount Popocatapetl, likely due to the altitude which makes people walk 2 feet off the ground.

But I couldn't find it. I only found some shred of a reference to it that led to nothing: the search terms gave what might be the first line, teasingly: "My friend if you should want to go and make your"- and when I googled it I got a whole long post about William the Conqueror. Well, at least it sort of matched up with my Tostig thing.

Yes, that could very well have been the first line. But I was quite blown away by some of the poems and song lyrics Popocatapetl inspired, such as:

ROMANCE

by: W.J. Turner

HEN I was but thirteen or so

I went into a golden land,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Took me by the hand.

 

My father died, my brother too,

They passed like fleeting dreams,

I stood where Popocatapetl

In the sunlight gleams.












 

I dimly heard the master's voice

And boys far-off at play,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Had stolen me away.

 

I walked in a great golden dream

To and fro from school--

Shining Popocatapetl

The dusty streets did rule.

 

I walked home with a gold dark boy,

And never a word I'd say,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Had taken my speech away:




 









I gazed entranced upon his face

Fairer than any flower--

O shining Popocatapetl

It was thy magic hour:




The houses, people, traffic seemed

Thin fading dreams by day,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

They had stolen my soul away!















I would assume this poem alludes to homoerotic love, hidden behind a mountain where it has a chance of staying hidden. But it occurs to me that those Aztec-sounding names are wonderful when inserted into poetry, not to mention Popocatapetl, its six syllables rising and falling symmetrically like ocean waves.




But soft - here's a lovely song lyric by a group I've never heard of, Krux:




In the eye in the heart in the flesh
In my mind all the time
Silver fountains golden castles made of ashes
Crimson tide blood like wine

Earth mother birth goddess
I love you like no other
Within you around you
A stream of fire inside you
Earth mother birth goddess
I love you like no other
Within you around you
I can't exist without you











Dream forever prince of nowhere man of shade
I cast my fire where I go
Tears and treason in my prison night and day
You destroyer of my soul

Earth mother birth godess
I love you like no other
Within you around you
A stream of fire inside you
Earth mother birth goddess
I love you like no other
Within you around you
I can't exist without you















And here, this one more:







Mexico: Popocatepetl, the Mountain

Popocatepetl

William Haines Lytle (1826–1863)

(Excerpt)     PALE peak, afar Gilds thy white pinnacle a single star, While sharply on the deep blue sky thy snows   In deathlike calm repose.     The nightingale         5 Through Mira Flores bowers repeats her tale, And every rose its perfumed censer swings   With vesper offerings.     But not for thee, Diademed king, this love-born minstrelsy,         10 Nor yet the tropic gales that gently blow   Through these blessed vales below. *        *        *        *        *     Deep in thy heart Burn on vast fires, struggling to rend apart Their prison walls, and then in wrath be hurled         15   Blazing upon the world.     In vain conspire Against thy majesty tempests and fire; The elemental wars of madness born,   Serene, thou laugh’st to scorn.         20     Calm art thou now As when the Aztec, on thine awful brow, Gazed on some eve like this from Chalco’s shore,   Where lives his name no more.     And thou hast seen         25 Glitter in dark defiles the ominous sheen Of lances, and hast heard the battle-cry   Of Castile’s chivalry.     And yet again Hast seen strange banners steering o’er the main,         30 When from his eyrie soared to conquest forth   The eagle of the North.     Yet at thy feet, While rolling on, the tides of empire beat, Thou art, O mountain, on thy world-piled throne,         35   Of all, unchanged alone.     Type of a power Supreme, thy solemn silence at this hour Speaks to the nations of the Almighty Word   Which at thy birth was stirred.         40     Prophet sublime! Wide on the morning’s wings will float the chime Of martial horns; yet mid the din thy spell   Shall sway me still,—farewell















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