Author: Mark Alexander

Posted on

There Is No Literature Or Poetry In This White House

There is no literature or poetry in this White House.

No music.

No Kennedy Center award celebrations.

There are no pets in this White House.

No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat.

No kids’ science fairs.

No times when this president takes off his blue suit-red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he puts on his white shirt-khaki pants uniform and hides from Americans to play golf.

There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation.

No Obamas on the beach in Hawaii moments, or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape.

I was thinking the other day of the summer when George H couldn’t catch a fish and all the grandkids made signs and counted the fish-less days.

And somehow, even if you didn’t even like GHB, you got caught up in the joy of a family that loved each other and had fun.

Where did that country go?

Where did all of the fun and joy and expressions of love and happiness go?

We used to be a country that did the ice bucket challenge and raised millions for charity.

We used to have a president that calmed and soothed the nation instead dividing it.

And a First Lady that planted a garden instead of ripping one out.

We are rudderless and joyless.

We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great.

We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness.

The cheering on of others. Gone.

The shared experiences of humanity that makes it all worth it. Gone.

The challenges AND the triumphs that we shared and celebrated.

The unique can-do spirit Americans have always been known for. Gone.

We have lost so much in so short a time.

~Elayne Griffin Baker

[Thanks, Rick!}

1 comments

Posted on

In Memoriam

Of all the friends and lovers who have passed in my life, this one still stings the most.

It’s now been five years and I still think about him often…and despite that sting, I find myself smiling uncontrollably.  I know we’ll cross paths again in some other guise one day.

I’m reposting this from 2020 because I don’t think I could write anything better than I did then:

Floyd Meeks, 1958-2020

2020 just needs fuck right off.

Now.

Seriously.

Traditional wisdom says that you should be able to sense when a loved one has died.

I’m here to say that’s a lie.

I found out this evening that my dear friend Floyd passed last October. And before you ask, no, it wasn’t COVID. It was his heart, and he went in his sleep.

Floyd left behind his husband Ron, with whom he’d shared his life for the last 40 years and many grieving friends, myself among them.

Floyd and I met January 28, 1983. Despite it being a Friday night I wasn’t planning on going out. As I recall it had been an exhausting week and I wanted nothing more than to simply stay home and unwind.

But I stepped outside that evening, saw the most incredible full moon rising above the Rincon Mountains east of Tucson, and something told me in no uncertain terms to go out. There was, as they say, magic afoot.

My destination was The Fineline, a relatively new dance club on Drachman Street. I’d been there with my partner Dennis, numerous times, but since we’d split up a two months earlier and he took off for Austin, this was one of the first times I’d gone there by myself.

And hell, I was young and in a state of perpetual hormonal arousal, so why not?

I’d been working out (believe it or not) since Dennis left and I was feeling good about my body and the way I looked. I radiated a certain amount of confidence and it didn’t take long for Floyd and I to gravitate to one another. He was there with his partner, Ron, putting a damper on any thoughts of immediately scampering off to get nasty. But Floyd assured me they had an open relationship and while nothing would be happening between us that night, he was definitely interested in getting together. We exchanged phone numbers.

Later that same night I met Lee, a friend whom I’ve written about before, thus cementing the magic of that night in my life.

Floyd called me the next morning. We had phone sex. Floyd was a dirty, dirty boy and I loved it. We hung out a lot in the weeks that followed. As we discovered our shared taste in music and culture, a genuine friendship and affection bloomed between us. That’s not to say the physical attraction waned; if anything it remained constant, and over the years we became infrequent fuck buddies, all—somewhat surprisingly—with Ron’s blessing. Even during my San Francisco years we remained in touch, with Floyd traveling to The City numerous times on business.

Floyd and your host, Marin Headlands, 1993

After I returned to Phoenix and made it through the cancer ordeal, I started driving to Tucson to visit the guys on a semi-regular basis. I had a new car and if for no other reason I needed to reconnect with the friends who knew me best while putting my life back together.

Floyd and I called each other Dolly (from our shared love of Personal Services.)  I’d call him up and say, “Dolly, I need to get out of town for a while. Are you and Ron free?” and depending on the answer, I’d hop in Anderson and make the 90 minute drive south. I remember one insane Saturday when I drove down to help with some computer issues, brought his PC back home to repair, and then returned it later that day.

Floyd did the same sort of spontaneous trips north, and one of my favorite memories were the two separate times he (and a few weeks later with Ron) came up to Phoenix and we shot photos at Arizona Falls.


Floyd and Ron, Arizona Falls 2008

Shortly before Ben and I left for Denver, Floyd and Ron fell on some very hard times. They both lost their longtime jobs, were unable to find work, lost everything they’d built together, and were forced to move in with Ron’s sister.  Through it all we stayed in touch, they stayed together, and when they’d gotten back on their feet and Ben and I moved back from Denver, talked of a weekend visit but it seemed life was continually getting in the way and one thing or another always prevented it.

When it finally seemed we were going to be able to coordinate a visit, COVID hit, killing our plans again. I last spoke with Floyd in September, when he called to tell me that Abe, a mutual friend from our University of Arizona days, had passed.

Floyd, Ron, Abe and I used to joke that when we got old and retired we’d buy a big house together and disgracefully spend our twilight years like the Golden Girls.

The best laid plans of mice, men, and queens…

Though we went through periods when we didn’t see each other, or even talk much other than an occasional text or email, Floyd was one of those people in my life I just knew would always be there…and now he’s not. I think that’s why this has hit me so hard. His impish grin, that devilish twinkle in his eye, and his extensive…vocabulary…will be so sorely missed. More than with any other death that’s hit my life (and yes, sadly that includes my parents and my first partner, Dennis), I feel like a part of me has been ripped out and there’s nothing but an empty hole remaining.

As I get older, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that you need to tell the people you love that you love them every damn day, because they can be taken from you at any moment.

0 comments

Posted on

Quote Of The Day

I want to check in with Trump voters. I have one very genuine question: it’s been 250 days. Now that immigrants have been violently torn from their families and communities have been destroyed, now that trans people have been blamed for virtually everything and live in fear, now that free speech is on the brink of collapse for us all—has your life gotten better? Have your groceries gotten cheaper? Has your health insurance premium gone done? Has your work/life balance improved? Can you take a vacation yet? Are you happier? Has the widespread suffering of others paid off for you in the way he promised it would or are you still waiting?” ~ Ariana Grande

0 comments

Posted on

Friday Tiedrich

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

seriously, fuck that guy.

now let’s congratulate the woman who did win the Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado.

The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who built a powerful social movement and has been living in hiding since last year, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

María Corina Machado is the Venezuelan opposition leader who stood up to a tyrant, worked tirelessly to bring democracy to her country, and — after arrest warrants were issued on bogus conspiracy charges — now lives in hiding, fearing for her life.

conspicuously not on Machado’s resume is renaming her Department of Defense to Department of War, disappearing people into slave-labor gulags, exploding the shit out of fishing boats, or sending armed military after her own people.

because the country of Norway is forced to exist in the same shitty timeline that we do, they now have to fear reprisals from the thinnest-skinned grievance-baby ever to crap a diaper in the Oval Office.

call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that causing an entire country to fear for its own safety if they don’t award you a Peace Prize kind of disqualifies you from ever getting a Peace Prize.

here’s Machado’s statement, upon learning she’d snagged the Prize.

“Oh my god. Well, I have no words.”

She went on: “This is an achievement of a whole society. I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”

“I’m honored, humbled. I’m very grateful on behalf of the Venezuelan people. We’re not there yet. We’re working very hard to achieve it, but I’m sure that we will prevail,” she said.

did you hear that? that’s what humility sounds like.

it’s a sound we don’t hear much these days in America, where we’re governed by a preening asshole who never stops screaming in our exhausted faces about how he deserves all the accolades.

here’s what Steven Cheung, the dime-store Bond villain who doubles as Donny Convict’s communications director, posted to Elon’s Nazi Bar.

“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

oh my god, you tiny little spite-fueled homunculus. how fucking hard it is to say ‘congratulations’?

boo fucking hoo, you sore losers. eat binky.

but do keep your chin up, Donny. you still have one thing mean old Barack HUSSEIN Obama will never have: the Nobel I Pointed At A Drawing Of A Camel Prize.

“I also did a cognitive exam. which is always very risky because if I didn’t do well, you’d be the first to be blaring it, and I had a perfect score. and one of the doctors said he’s almost never seen a perfect score. I had a perfect, uh, at perfect score. I got the highest score. and that made me feel good. when they asked ‘would I like to do one,’ I said yeah. I said, ‘did Obama do it?’ no … the last time I took a cognitive exam, it was a perfect score. the doctors announced it. and by the way, not the easiest test. the first few questions are pretty easy. once you get into the middle, it gets a little trickier. and there aren’t a lot of people in this room who would get every single question right, I could guarantee it.”

that was Donny, yesterday, at another one of his farcical ‘cabinet meetings.’

imagine being so fragile — and so in constant need of affirmation — that you have to interrupt your own meeting to brag about acing a test they give to people who show signs of drowning in their own dementia.

this the test Donny is bragging about — the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

it’s not hard. twenty percent of the test is literally pointing at a drawing of a fucking camel.

awesome job, Donny. you get a lollipop!

now let’s give the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press a well-earned Two Minutes Hate, because they’ve spent the last three days pissing themselves with glee, and declaring that Donny deserves all the Peace Prizes for his Gaza cease-fire plan — a plan that’s basically identical to the peace plan Joe Biden hammered out on his last day in office. Donny shoved it into a drawer and ignored it, let the carnage in Gaza continue for ten months, then dusted it off and put his name on it.

good boy, Donny! help yourself to another lollipop!

can the Washington Post please, at long last, kindly fuck all the way off?

this is the kind of drek the WaPo shits out onto their oped pages these days. notice that they’re still using ‘democracy dies in darkness’ as their motto. I’m thinking it’s more like ‘democracy dies when Jeff Bezos disappears up Dear Leader’s ass.’

oh look, Chris Cillizza wants to play a round of Easy Questions, Easy Answers™.

“What if…Donald Trump actually deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?”

Newsweek can join the Washington Post over in fuckoffistan.

according to who? I’m pretty sure the Nobel Committee doesn’t lob prizes in the general direction of anyone who announces the framework of a concept for a sketch of a peace plan.

how about we wait and see if this latest cease-fire lasts more than a day before we anoint Dear Leader as God-Emperor of All Peacemakers?

and I’m sorry, but I can’t even any more with this guy.

please, John, for the love of all that is holy, shut the fuck up.

and finally, what is this nonsense?

Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter: “Donald Trump has done that. that’s why he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. that’s why I’m introducing a resolution today that will honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize, and if need be, we’ll call for a discharge petition.”

I’m sorry, give me a minute to wrap my head around this insanity. do I have this right? Buddy Carter is so mad about Dear Leader getting snubbed that he’s going to legislate that Donny gets a Nobel Peace Prize anyway?

how the fuck would that even work? are Republicans going to gin up a fake Peace Prize and award it to Donny, so he can display it in that vulgar gold-plated bordello that used to be the Oval Office? they’re going to do thisjust to keep an infantile rage-baby from melting all the way down — and then we’ll all stand around and pretend it’s a perfectly normal thing that happened?

am I on crazy pills right now?

my god, the entire Republican Party is sore loser babies all the way down.

people, we are in serious danger of depleting our nation’s Strategic Reserve of Binkies.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

1 comments

Posted on

“Copper Chisels and Stone Knives”

Triads of Menkaure

These three schist triads of Menkaure were found by the Egyptologist George Reisner in the valley temple of Menkaure near his pyramid in Giza.

The triads was discovered in 1908 in the valley temple of Menkaure in its own hierarchical group, and 5 were found and it is believed that they were eight as there are eight places allocated for them there, in the eight corridors of the temple.

1- In this triad, the king can be seen standing, the muscles of his body well defined, wearing the white Hedjet crown of Upper Egypt, a false beard, and a short kilt. His left leg strides forward, in the conventional manner.

The goddess Hathor, to his right, holds his hand, identifiable by the cow’s horns and sun-disc that surmount her wig, and by the inscription below, which reads, Hathor, Lady of the Sycamore Tree in all her places.

To his left stands a personification of the Diospolis Parva Nome (Hu district) of Egypt, herself identifiable by the standard above her head.

2- Menkaure in the center, accompanied by Hathor on his right, standing with her hands at her sides.

The personification of the Theban Nome stands to his left, presented as a short man with his left leg advancing forward, and his arms down by his sides.

As with the other Nome personification described above, he is identifiable by the standard above his head. The king’s beard has broken off.

3- This piece shows the king accompanied by Hathor and a Nome Goddess with the crouching jackal emblem of the nome of Cynopolis. Menkaure is wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt.

It was believed that they were placed in each region of Egypt, but this is an exaggeration, and the five were found in good condition, except for one completely broken and the other almost intact, and there are now three of them in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and two in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (11.1738 – 09.200.1)

Menkaure was the fifth king of the 4th Dynasty. These are the oldest triads in the history of ancient Egyptian statuary.

Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty, ca. 2530-2500 BC. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 46499, JE 40679, JE 40678

[source]

0 comments

Posted on

One Of The Worst Parts….

…of not being able to eat solid food (for however long this is going to be) is that you start seeing pictures of food everywhere. You also realize how much eating is present on television. It seems every show has at least one instance of a group of people dining together, grabbing a slice of pizza, sitting in a cafe having coffee and pastries, getting take-away Chinese… It’s just crazy.

To be honest, I’ve been cheating. Some things go down easier than others. Some things refuse to go down at all. Today has been one of those days when nothing is going down (even liquids), forcing me to rely on the fucking gastric tube (yeah, I had one of those put in pre-surgery) for everything. I’m meeting with the swallow/speech therapist next week to begin therapy. We’ll see how it goes.

So without further ado…let me frustrate myself with some mouthwatering images:

5 comments

Posted on

Grail

I ran across this 2-disc set back in 2002 when I was housesitting for some friends. I asked if I could make a copy and they said go for it. At the time I was a noob at disc ripping and let’s just say the results were…disappointing. These friends moved to Seattle shortly after all this happened so I wasn’t able to borrow the discs again to try for a better copy.

And it’s not like these Euphoria discs were cheap. I would’ve sought out my own copy if it weren’t for the fact they were going for $40 at the time and that simply wasn’t in my budget.

I eventually copied everything to iTunes and stopped obsessing over the fact that I’d cut off the last two tracks on each disc because they wouldn’t fit on the  74-minute blanks I’d used for the original rip.

Fast forward 23 years. I wanted this music on Minidisc because it’s my favorite of all the Euphoria series I’ve heard, but of course the only source I had was my original rip transferred to iTunes. I was able to transfer them, but then realized that there was a small gap between each song on these continual-mix CDs. Aargh!

So I decided it was time to bite the bullet and shell out whatever was needed to get original copies that could be transferred—gapless—to MD. Discogs again came to the rescue and I received this pristine copy from the UK today.

One not-totally-unexpected fallout of having the orange mental patient in the White House is that I’m seeing more and more sellers on Discogs marking their items as “Unavailable in the United States.” There were several offerings of Ibiza Euphoria listed, but this was the only one that shipped to the US—and was reasonably priced.

0 comments