Why the NCAA Must Pull The Final Four From Indiana

As an avid baseball fan when I was a wee sprout, I followed a few select teams, GO CUBS!  Most of the sports history Keith Olbermann talks about I had no clue about.  He lays down a fantastic logical argument why major league sports needs to take a front row seat in this fight for LGBT equality. 

Society as a whole, plays catch up to the more progressive elements who are the vanguard to sweeping social change.  White folks going to the Cotton Club to listen to jazz that cant be heard any other place other than Black clubs due to Jim Crow laws.  The military desegregating ending the days of the "Buffalo Troops".  And a baseball team brave enough to hire the first major league African American player, hero Jackie Robinson.

In the late '60s the ballerina Raven Wilkinson faced harsh racism while the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo toured the southern states that she had to leave the company for safety reasons.  Imagine being horrified that one of the dancers was Black.  I don't know about you, but there is no way for me to understand this extreme racism. 

Sit back and listen to him weave a web of logic that underscores just how backwards the right is.

Flowers!

This picture came out I thought really nicely, so am sharing my flower love with y'all.  Love my hipsamatic app.






I'm still struggling with my gender issues.  Every so often they squiggle out thru the cracks in my defenses.  And there they be, again.  Grief.  Sadness.  The useless struggle of a being with no way out of the trap.  This song says it all,  "these feelings won't go away".  No matter how well I wall off my desire to be male.

A Friend, The Renaissance Festival, and I

I whined and complained about going, and thought it was going to be way to hot and recipe for sunburn for only a few hours of boredom.  But I went and am glad I did!  Next year I'd like to go back in February when the Festival opens, before the sun gets quite so hot and I have to carry a silly sun umbrella to keep from turning into bacon.

All pictures will embiggen.

We are waiting in "line" to go in.  It takes forever due to bag checks.

Best Friend Tori, wanted to go in her furry suit, but the weather was forecast to be in the high 80's to low 90's.  So she attended as Super Kitty!  Loads of people adored her shirt!

We walked around, sat in a few entertainments, one was funny bawdy show called, "Wenches at the Well".  Those ladies really knew how to work the crowd.
This wasn't the same ladies that did the Arizona show, but it was the same script.



 Walking to find the privies we happened across "Three Guys and a bunch of Drums" and sat and enjoyed their show as well.  They weave funny skits in with drumming.

After walking about for a while, we were both getting hungry.  Oh dear, there wasn't anything that I saw was safe, until!  A booth offering baked potatoes loaded with dairy, and they sold brats and sauerkraut.  So I channeled my inner Tim Gunn and made it work.  Was it the best lunch?  No, but it was filling and not that bad!

While Tori was petting some doggies, two fellas walked by and my jaw dropped with amazement.  I grabbed Tori and we began to hunt down these guys, and then!  There they were!  The short one was mega hot in some weird Greek Mythical way......

As we were leaving we met two brave, or fool hearty Furries, can't decide which.  Tori just had to pose for a snap with them.

After 3 hours the sun and the heat was sapping us, and it was time to go.  Next year we are going in early February when it opens!

Korean tv takes a brave step forward into equality

So, yeah this is another post about a Korean tv drama, this one is "Coffee Prince".

                  WAIT!

Come back!  This one has a great story, but its how delicately they treated the main theme that is blowing me away.

 Choi Han-Gyul is the only one without a vest.  Go Eun-Chan is the sitting on the table.

When the drama begins it seems like just another typical poor girl working insanely hard to put food on the table, who struggles against overwhelming odds daily, but still manages to be cheerful and happy.  However, this drama quickly tosses all those cookie cutter plots in the trash, and heads for untrammeled pastures.

Korean society, as most Asian countries, has a vast pay inequality based on gender.  Needing to help support her mum and younger sister, Go Eun-Chan who has boyish looks and shape, lets everyone believe she is a guy to receive jobs only open to men and a higher paycheck, and plays on that by only wearing male clothing.  She meets a fella who is being pushed by his Grandmother to go on blind dates with marriage in his near future.  He's not ready to settle down and pays Eun-Chan to go to his blind dates and act as his gay lover.  Grandmother realizes to what great lengths he is willing to go to chase potential brides away and drops the blind dating to Han-Gyul's great relief.

Choi Han-Gyul later offers her a job at his new coffee shop, and slowly falls in love with her, believing the entire time that she is a guy.  Once he realizes that he is falling in love with her, he tries hugging a girl he used to have a huge crush on whose now a friend, and then Eun-Chan hoping that it will "fix" his confusing attraction he is feeling for a "guy", it doesn't.

He talks to a psychiatrist hoping the doctor could help him get rid of these same sex attraction feelings.  The good doctor asks him how long he has wanted to wear make-up and act like a woman.  The writers are making fun of the elderly doctor's out dated views on homosexuality in a way that hopefully allows views to see that one can't change their sexual orientation through psychiatry.

Things come to a head one night on the beach.  At the end of the clip, he says he just can't be with "him' as he knows Eun-Chan wants.



 It's all to much for Han-Gyul and he fires Eun-Chan, but she refuses to quit, so he stops coming into work and pretty much trashes his house.  Han-Gyul is so torn as to what he wants, being angry with himself for having those feelings, confusion and anger at liking a guy, missing Eun-Chan and hating that he misses "him".

Han-Gyul is in an emotional trap.  Here is a straight guy, who believes he is in love with another man, and wants to be with him, but can't let himself.  After days and days he comes back to work and is surly and nasty and angry with everyone, but especially Eun-Chan.  Driving home from work, he's crying and trying to decide what to do, and begins to remember the fun they have had, and "him" calling Han-Gyul brother, until finally he turns the car around and heads back to the shop where he knows Eun-Chan is alone.

Han-Gyul walks up to Eun-Chan and says, "Just once....I'll say it just once I like you, I don't care if you're a man or an alien".  Han-Gyul tells "him" that he will be with "him" and doesn't care what happens.  Sorry I couldn't find one with english subs with just this section.  But I wanted you to see the conflict he is struggling with even as he is kissing "him", but he knows he can't live without "him".

What I found amazing about this show is they never took the easy way, nor did they gloss over Han-Gyul's emotional torment and confusion.  They let the emotions flow from treating "him" as a good friend, to treating "him" as a younger brother, to despair at being in love with another man.  The writers never once made light of being gay.  Several of the other coffee shop workers voiced their acceptance of having a supposedly gay co-worker.  One of whom said, "What difference is it anyway who someone loves?"

Yes, it would have been better if Eun-Chan actually was a man, but I still think this is a huge step for a traditional society like Korea.  I can see conservatives throwing a fit about this show if it aired on national tv here in America. Yelling that they knew it was all a lifestyle choice, and how dare they air  such a show where children could see it!

Ok, I can see how one could view it as a choice for Han-Gyul, because he does choose to be with a man.  But I see it as someone willing to throw anything and possibly everything away for love.  A love he didn't seek, and a love he didn't honestly want, but a love he couldn't resist, and chose to follow his heart.  Which is what we LGBT folks keep saying, "its about love".

Now, I know you're wondering why Eun-Chan didn't tell Han-Gyul that she is indeed a girl.  At one point he tells her that he likes her better than any girl, he has so much fun with her, and she's afraid if she tells him he wont have anything to do with her, and having some of him is better than none.

She does eventually tell him, and yes he is angry with her, but hey its a Korean Drama, and there is ALWAYS a happy ending.

Free Range Biki

So, I've been out and about and snapping some photos of the world around me.

Before I left Alaska after Christmas, I snapped a photo of my favorite bridge.

And arrived to this sight for light deprived eyes.  My apartment complex's water feature.

Then a trip to Tempe to load up on tasty tamales! Downtown Tempe is quirky and fun and as any area surrounding college campuses, full of art and bars.  The best of both worlds, yeah?

First the art, sidewalk style.

Then the bar that grabbed my attention.  Is it just my very dirty mind, or at first glance does the ladder look a bit like jism running down his mouth?

Seen outside of Whole Foods while I was manning a table for the library at a neighborhood celebration.  She's quite tame, or so the fella says, and is 21 years old, and has the projected life span of nearly 90 years!

A delightful evening spent playing '80's arcade games.  This one was my favorite, I used to play this one all the time at a bar with TH.

And a trip to an aquarium with my friends.

Weird looking fish, like peeking into an sci-fi movie, or a cartoon.  It was a pretty cool aquarium but it was geared to children, so many of the fish tanks were down on there physical level.  Yes, I had to lean down!  Geesh!  I'm not that short!

MIA Biki

Yes, I've been gone due to grief.

No, no, everyone is still healthy and hearty.  Added a new grandchild to the family rosters actually, a wee girl.  That brings the total of grands up to three, two wee adorable girls and a wee lad of a boy.

I'm having major gender issues to the point where I don't know who I am.  Male?  Female?  Neuter?  Both?

Remember me telling you about the tummy flu?  And then I caught a cold.  After getting back to Cactus Land I caught the chest flu that was going around at work.  While I'm not 100% sure exactly that this is the cause/effect but for the first time in my life I'm healthy.  I forgot a knife in the dishpan the other day and cut myself jolly well and good.  Three days later, its nearly gone.  The kink in my ear canal that has been there since around 5 years when my allergy to calcium made my ear canals grow nearly closed, is nearly gone!  My hair is suddenly thicker to the point when I had my hair cut the stylist mentioned it.  The only thing I can think of is that 2 years of eating nothing I shouldn't has allowed me to heal and repair.  And catching viruses reminded my body of what it is supposed to do, fight invaders, not myself.


But along with the feeling better, and becoming more active, I'm losing weight and toning up and becoming more girl shaped, and its tossed me for a loop-de-loop yet again.

I know I'm a guy, but can't touch or see him and he's totally invisible to everyone.

Since my return in January, I've come out to several more people that I work with.  All of them have been accepting, one even asking what pronouns I wanted used.

And while I'm no longer alone in this journey, I'm still invisible.

Been re-thinking the whole clothing thing again, but that wont let people see a boy, only a butch lesbian.  Nothing against lesbians, butch or otherwise, but that isn't who I am, or want to be seen as.

I'm a man, a gay man, trapped for all eternity within the body of a girl with no way out, unless I'm willing to loose TH.  Which is unthinkable, totally completely unthinkable.

For a teenager who didn't believe in love, but only lust, this love thingy sure did hook me.

And now you know why I've been gone.  I hate being sad.  

Oh, just to calm your worries, I'm totally not suicidal this time, not even a tiny bit.  Just sad, and blue and depressed.