September 2004 Archives

Dolly News:
Boobs Killing Her.

Dolly's New Show | Reuters.com
Of the new show, Parton said that it's "more of a production than I've ever had on the road, with light and sound and fun things I've never done. It's real high-tech. I call it 'Buck Rogers meets Will Rogers."'

It’s been a sad couple of weeks for me.

Strangely disconnected and alone. Nowhere to turn. So unsure what to do. And come fall….or God! I dare not even think about winter…. I just don’t know what I’m going to do –

until Alias starts.

I have one TV show left. One. Period. That’s it. And even that may not be enough to combat the disconnectedness I feel with my television. It is the most unhappiest of breakups, me and my TV. I have begun to not just dislike it, but also ignore it. Forgotten, it sits untouched or un-remoted(?) several days out of the week. Maybe I’ll watch the Today show. Mmmmm….maybe not - especially if Katie has one of her very tepid and oh-so annoying interviews.

I have finally reached a point where it’s not that there’s nothing on but I’ll still bitch and moan and sit there – I simply don’t turn it on. Or it’s set on PBS, never waivering….well, maybe for Beastmaster reruns every now and then.

It’s been a very disappointing transition for me - this learning to despise television. I could have never conceived such a thing possible. I’m still lukewarm in terms of film – I do hold out some hope for that. But the Sony-MGM combo has me worried.

Every year the new season of TV would start and every night would have a favorite – or at least something I could tolerate. These past two to three years, nothing. And then the last vestiges of programming that I could call my own called it quits. Bye Anya…...bye Samantha…..bye…oh I must just stop. The goodbyes could go on forever.

TV happiness eludes me.

I didn’t get cable when I moved into my new place. Something about paying for programming that has commercials annoys me. And although Lifetime, Television for women is like crack rock to me, I can’t justify the expense. Even for the sake of entertainment.

Good television should be free and sometimes entertaining. That’s my belief. So if the TV collects dust, so be it. I don’t even own a DVD player – I just use my old Mac display. Maybe I’ll dust off the VCR and the TV for company – folks who come over to watch Faster Pussy Cat, Kill Kill or some gay porn…. Ya know, good times with friends.

But my relationship with TV is being tethered to Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley and just a few others. Tim Russert, if I haven’t been out Saturday night.

It’s a real sad, sad thing for me. I cannot ever bring myself to look at the fall lineup. The disappointment would be overwhelming.

I guess there’s books. Or exercise. Or art. Or thinking. I dunno. It’s just too much – this thinking about what I could be doing with my time instead.

I dunno if this is just growing up. Maybe getting old? Or is it losing touch?

Maybe all of the above. I think about my mammaw (my Mom’s mom) who didn’t watch University of Kentucky ballgames on the TV. She lay on her bed – eyes closed – and listened to the excited roars of the crowd as Caywood Ledford detailed the play by play. There in her bedroom where she slept for more than 90 years, she would extinguish the lights and would imagine what was going on.

Doesn’t that sound all noble?

Well my mammaw was cheap. Radios used less electricity. She never got indoor plumbing, even though she could afford it. Why pay to poop?

I can understand frugality but I don’t want to have to imagine things, dammit!!!!! Can’t I just mindlessly sit here – distracted from the greater world view while cute girls drink martinis or fight crime or maybe even do both?

* sigh *

This is just grief. I’m gonna go read something or draw something or watch some porn – keep the old appliance from getting too rusty.

I have the tiniest glimmers of hope that my cathode ray lover will return.

It's Now a Tidal Wave....

Actress Linda Hamilton reveals she's bipolar in interview

Copyright © 2004 Associated Press
By MICHAEL P. WEINFELD, AP Entertainment Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - "Terminator" fans know Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor - tough as nails and out to save the world. But in real life, Hamilton was having trouble saving herself.

Silly rabbit, that's not a drag queen, she's his wife!

Gay Sex Claims Haunt Televangelist
--excerpt-- Televangelist Paul Crouch, founder of the world's largest Christian broadcasting network, has waged a fierce legal battle to prevent a former male employee from publicizing allegations that he and Crouch had a sexual encounter eight years ago.

Oh what a tangled hair weave Mr. Paul Crouch has gotten himself into. The full story is here
Televangelist fights sex claims from Monterey County Herald -- 09/13/2004 |

Web Sites Keep Tabs on Campaign Giving
By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK (AP) - As a Washington journalist during the 90s, I made frequent treks to the Federal Election Commission to inspect cabinets full of campaign-finance reports to find out who was giving to whom.

FEC
IRS
PoliticalMoneyLine
OpenSecrets
Fundrace

The story is here - Excite News

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was a guest on the Diane Rehm show this morning talking about his new book, and had such disturbing news about the President's environmental policies, that I had to share this article we wrote:

The Junk Science of George W. Bush

Excerpt:

As a favor to utility and coal industries, America's largest mercury dischargers, the EPA sat for nine months on a report exposing the catastrophic impact on children's health of mercury, finally releasing it in February 2003. Among the findings of the report: The bloodstream of one in twelve US women is saturated with enough mercury to cause neurological damage, permanent IQ loss and a grim inventory of other diseases in their unborn children.

He also went on to talk about 25% of New York's black children having asthma, thanks to pollution. For all of their rhetoric about protecting the lives of the unborn, you'd think they'd put pollution, more than abortion, in the spotlight. But protecting the unborn assumes that folks can actually reproduce:

Excerpt:

.....last November the EPA cut a private deal with a pesticide manufacturer to take over federal studies of a pesticide it manufactures. Atrazine is the most heavily utilized weedkiller in America. First approved in 1958, by the 1980s it had been identified as a potential carcinogen associated with high incidences of prostate cancer among workers at manufacturing facilities. Testing by the US Geological Survey regularly finds alarming concentrations of Atrazine in drinking water across the corn belt. Even worse, last year scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Atrazine at one-thirtieth the government's "safe" 3 parts per billion level causes grotesque deformities in frogs, including multiple sets of organs. And this year epidemiologists from the University of Missouri found reproductive consequences in humans associated with Atrazine, including male semen counts in farm communities that are 50 percent below normal. Iowa scientists are finding similar results in a current study.

The Bush Administration reacted to the frightening findings not by banning this dangerous chemical, as the European Union has, but by taking the studies away from EPA scientists and, in an unprecedented move, giving the chemical's manufacturer, Switzerland-based Syngenta, control over federal research.

I watched the RNC Convention all week and was very disturbed by what I saw. Reading info like this just amplifies what I was feeling all week long: I am more afraid of Dubya than I am Osama. On so many levels, Bush represents an attack on my civil liberties, my safety, my rights and my health.

And he's leading in the polls.

I think I am beyond frightened at this point.

I got this the other day - and it made me giggle.

September 1, 2004

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

On behalf of "girlie men" everywhere I'm perplexed. Last night while you were speaking at the Republican National Convention, you said, "To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be girlie men.""

I've never known girlie men to be pessimistic about much of anything. Think of our leading girlie men icons - Liberace, Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson-Reilly, Freddy Mercury, Nathan Lane, and Harvey Fierstein - all hopeless optimists, smiling and fighting on in the face of adversity.

Oops. Now I get it. You simply misread the teleprompter. You obviously meant to say, "To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "BE girlie men." I look forward to someone in your office setting the record straight, so to speak.

All the best,

Matt Foreman
Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

So what's up with these activists protesting and interrupting Bush during his acceptance speech at the RNC National Convention???????

------------------

This is so not getting the media play it should.