MsGuy

"Our bloom is gone." AdamSmith, you have the oddest taste in tag lines. I don't know whether to thank you for pointing me to the first long poem I've read in decades or to cuss you for posting such a dismal tag. For anyone interested, the excerpt is not nearly so dreary when read in context.

Who but Oz would give us four paragraphs of very practical guidance on the art of dealing with an awkwardly timed fart? I second Mr. Locke's suggestion. Oz's pieces warrant gathering into a pinned thread, at least until he has the book and movie rights negotiated.

The version of the story I recall was attributed to Krushchev. Stalin had a stroke after that party. Several days later K., Beria, Molotov and others were by Stalin's deathbed congratulating each other on surviving the purge Stalin had just kicked off. The apparently unconcious Stalin suddenly popped open his eyes and glared at them. Molotov fell to his knees begging forgiveness. Beria had the wit to put a pillow over Stalin's face and finish him. I hadn't heard the Wiki version. When you consider that warfarin poisoning would produce stroke like symptions, the two versions dove-tail neatly into each other. K.'s story gives K. and the others a pass on denying medical care, and Molotov's bio. skips the embarrassing denouement. Both attribute Stalin's death to Beria, a man murdered by the two of them (with the aid of Gen. Zhukov) a few months later. I'm old enough to remember how proud the Soviets were of themselves when they managed to replace Krushchev without killing anybody.

Wasn't there a persistant rumor that Beria(?) used a bed pillow to ease Stalin's passing?

Somehow in my 30's all that stuff started fading away. I hope it was the same for you. In my 20's, I crawled out of my foxhole and began seeking out gay friends. And I came out to my family and straight friends. No courage there, I just could not figure out how to stay in the closet and survive. If suicide is still an issue for you (I hope it is not), you might try something that proved very helpful for me 35 years ago. I sat down and visualized that scared, desperate bewildered 15 year boy I was back in school. I remembered how ignorant he was about what was happening to him and how he could see absolutely no honorable path out of that horror. For that clueless kid there was only the bare hope the outside world might not be his small town writ large. I thanked the kid for somehow struggling through all that pain. I thanked him for giving me my life. And I promised not to betray his struggle by giving up on my own. Typed out here all that seems awfully nutty, but try it, it worked for me. Back then I didn't much like or respect that kid. Now I'm kind of proud of him for handling things as well as he did.

Back in the day, pornography drove sales of VCR's. Not many folks bought a $1000 machine in order to view Disney in the privacy of their homes. Most mom and pop video stores were fronts for the sale of porno. I would think sex, paid or not, plays a declining but still important roll in CL's business plan. You're right. Those numbers would be a great peek into the mind of America.

IMO this article understates the problem. Much of the world's fishing capacity is concentrated in blue water trawler fleets supported by factory type processing ships. Unlike shore based fleets, they are not tied to specific fishing grounds. As fisheries collapse, they move to still productive areas. The 4/21 edition of TheEconomist.com has an excellent one page article on the political & economic dynamics of regulating European fisheries. See 'Fishy Tales' by Charlemagne. Sorry about the absence of a link. This newbie is working on basic net skills. One promising innovation is the creation of private fisheries. Individual fishermen are awarded ownership of a permanently fixed % of the overall quota which they are free to swap, lease or sell. It's a clever way of side stepping the tragedy of the commons. It solves the excess catch problem and reduces the pressures resulting from overcapacity. The fishermen themselves begin focusing on protecting the long term health of the fishery rather than their immediate catch. Scientists and greens become potential allies rather than meddlesome outsiders. The U.S. is experimenting with this concept in the Alaskan king crab fishery. So far all stakeholders concerned seem happy with the results, so much so that there's serious talk of extending the idea to the other Alaskan fisheries.

I had forgotten her go-rounds with Archie until I read this post. I used to laugh my ass off. My mother and stepfather rarely missed a episode of Golden Girls.

One of the things I'm trying to puzzle through is why they failed to act. In both the Ed colleges in N.E. Mississippi, student teachers are taught to intervene in situations of severe bullying. Gay baiting is specifically discussed and different methods of effective intercession are covered. Whatever their personal beliefs may be, administrators at my local school district are very aware of the potential for substantial legal liabilities. They may or may not care about gay kids, but they care about their budget. I find it difficult to believe that these kids' schools are any more backward or conservative than the schools here. This isn't 1970. To me it just doesn't seem credible that the schools' failure resulted from lack of knowledge or from lack of training.

Well, as long as T.Y. has outed my thread, I'll toss in my own take. The old gal has done herself proud. She told Simon and the producers to stuff it when they tried to pressure her into keeping her 'frump' look for the show's finals. She didn't allow anyone to make her look foolish by glamming her up. She did get her hair dyed, got a modest new do and had her eyebrows plucked (lightly). total cost: $57. She did buy a new outfit, age and weight appropriate and obviously to her own taste. She did get a friend to help her with her make-up. (IMO) She allowed herself to feel pretty on her own terms and in her own way. Good for you, Ms. Boyle, you go girl. The link would have allowed you to judge for yourself, but the damned thing refused to work.

T.Y., Have I totally lost my mind or did you wave your magic wand and move this thread from the chat line forum? I would swear under oath that I started it there. I'm fine with the move. If the link had worked I would have re-posted it here myself. I was just testing whether I had figured out how to create a link. The "aarrh...smilie" bit was me laughing at my own frustration. As long as I've got your attention, can you post me a link to some web site that shows total newbies how to create a working link? Or is there a "Posting For Dummies" I can pick up at a bookstore. My incompetence is starting to get old.

As I read your post it occurred to me that many gay guys must have a form of traumatic stress disorder much like that acquired by soldiers in combat. I thought I had put that crap to rest 30 years ago, forgotten or forgiven all of it. But when I was looking at that 11 year old kid's face on tv, the anger and the sadness just flooded back into me. What I experienced last night matches perfectly with the emotions occasionally experienced by a couple of my Vietnam Vet friends when something in their enviroment triggers memories of the war. All these years and all that pain and gay kids are still being hounded to suicide by childish cruelty. I came out of the closet for two reasons and one was to make life a little easier for the kids following behind. Exactly as you say, Caeron, I just want to tear into them and the homophobic teachers who sat back and allowed it to happen. Wow, I thought had calmed down. Just reading & replying to your post set me off again. I honestly didn't want this thread to turn into either a hate fest against straights or a pity session for gays. I wanted (still want) it to focus on the kids, understanding what happened and why. But going into denial about the emotions these events set loose won't work either. Maybe understanding our own reaction is part of understanding what happened to those boys. Thanks for your post, Caeron. W/o you I would have slid back into denial about my real reaction. I don't like feeling hatred, but that's part of what I'm experiencing. I guess I need to look at that honestly too and deal with it. Lying to oneself is the worst kind of lying.

Well, T.Y., I did notice that you have a decided preference for rolled newspapers over feathers, but, aside from that, the Lord seems to have cut you a fair deal in the personality department. IMO Oz's grace under pressure likely owes more to growing up gay in the deep South than to devine intervention. And down here humor helps keep the murder rate down. Thanks for your thoughtful reply to my post. You both gave me new data and some insight into how you are going about deciding this. I'm beginning to suspect that I have become more interested in the process than the result. I wish I could offer something useful by way of response, but right now another matter has claimed all my limited capacity for serious thought. Plenty of room for fluff, but not for anything else requiring focus.

CNN did a segment last night on two separate cases of 11 year old boys who hanged themselves after prolonged bullying at school. Seems the boys were labeled 'gay' by their classmates and hounded to their deaths. At least one parent repeatedly (7 or 8 times) asked the school for help and was ignored. The pictures of the last kid hit me pretty hard. I realize that this is a darker topic than customary for this board, but the two guys with whom I would normally talk this through are both off on vacation. Hearing the reaction of others usually helps me organize my own thoughts. If I can, I'd rather avoid the other site as MinnieMoosie would inevitably throw a shovel of shit into the conversation. For a start, I doubt either of the kids were in fact gay. And I can't see that it makes a whole lot of difference whether they were or they were not. The reluctance of the kids to seek help might bare looking at. The reaction, or lack of it, by the school personnel puzzles me. Even in my small Mid-South town, teachers are aware of the potential of law suits in this situation. I personally know of an effective intervention in a similar circumstance by a quite conservative and religious teacher. She thoroughly disapproves of homosexuality but acted out of simple compassion. One of the things I'm wondering about is whether there is any practical approach to modifying classmate behavior before this type of thing occurs. As my lesbian friends might say, I haven't 'processed' all this yet. I'm still at the stage of reacting to a punch to my emotions. I spent my middle and high school years in a determined effort to avoid exactly the situation these kids found themselves in. Except for a searing 5 months in the 10th grade, I was successful, but this news brings back unpleasant memories. I hope that this thread will be helpful to those of you who have similar experiences just as I hope your thoughts will be to me.

ARRHHH!!!! (is there a smilie for 'pulling out hair?'

Ms. Boyle has treated herself to a $57 makeover and a new faux leather jacket. Some are opining on her loss of innocence. Anyone have a take on this? link to article

With actors as with escorts, sometimes I let looks trump performance, at least until I've paid for my ticket.

T.Y., I am still looking for that article, but you might want to try GlobalGayz.com. Click thru to Cuba and you can find a slew of pieces on Gay life in Cuba that range from life in the boonies to a 1st person POV of a tranny show bar in Havana to Raul Castro's daughter publicaly pushing something like Gay marriage. Also covers arts & cinema. It looks like a good place to find a mosaic of Cuba's gay life.

Back on topic: I've tried several times to put together a coherent post you might find helpful, but I keep getting lost in all the variables. All I can do is offer some more or less random thoughts. It's not my intention to step on anyone's sore corns, so you find anything below too blunt or otherwise inapropriate for a public post, please feel free edit or delete as you see fit. Won't hurt my feelings one bit nor lessen my affection for your site. I'm coming at this as someone who initially came here for the reviews (I prefer your format,) lurked the posts for several years and recently registered. Random thoughts: At bottom this is a business decision. Style and tone considerations are relevant only to the extent they relate back to your business model. Obviously posting itself is a very small part of the traffic on your site, but it plays (or should play) a major role in adding 'stickyness' and building brand loyalty. I don't know what % of of your visitors are lurkers, but surely converting 2 or 3 times a month review readers into 2 or 3 times a week lurkers plays some part in your business plan. And you need a livelier board to gin up that conversion rate. T.Y., you and Oz are doing way too much of the heavy lifting on the board side of this site. What % of the threads are started by one of you? How often do you find yourself posting something just to keep someone else's thread alive? You need more people who post regularly and you need a greater diversity of posters. That you're acting out of necessity doesn't change that it's you doing the work not us. A good board wants to be carried by its members, not the moderators. Maybe allowing political posts would add just enough mass for the board to become self-sustaining. Please note that at the other site there exists a substantial overlap between the political posters and the people who initiate and/or sustain threads of a more general interest. Forgive me, but you also need more reviewers sending in fresh reviews. That's your life blood. Without knowing, I suspect a guy who posts here regularly is far more likely to submit a review here. I fully realize that building a band of loyal reviewers is a long slow process. If it were easy or quick , there would a dozen of these sites instead of two. Maybe a thriving board would help incrementally. The question of how you open up the board w/o harming its tone is above my pay grade. I can do w/o guys whose idea of wit consists of shouting idiot and moron over and over. And preserve me from that sad case on the other site who posted the picture of a severed human head just to attract attention. I did notice that the guys who weighed in in favor of all this make up a highly desirable group of posters (& reviewers) but I admit there could be a self selection bias problem with that sample. The anti's, also a desirable bunch, would probably be O.K. with ringfenced political posts. T.Y., since it's Oz that advocates political threads, make him promise to moderate it. And promise you a trip to Montreal on his tab if (when?) he neglects his duties. You might as well get compensated if you wind up scrubbing out the carpet. I just reread this post to make sure that I didn't word anything in a way I, myself, would find offensive if our positions were reversed. This post is offerred solely as a token of my gratitude to you two for your work in creating something I've grown very attached to. If low blood oxygen has addled my thoughts or a discussion of business plans is not appropriate here, please delete with my blessing.

My own guilty secret: Gore bored me so badly I was content that he would be off T.V. for 4 years. That guy could put me to sleep in 15 seconds flat.

Young George was something of a tribulation for us all. Don't sweat it, "predicting is hard, especially about the future."

Thanks AdamSmith. That was like a pat on the butt from the head jock. My Dad used to say that folks had to elect a Republican now and then to remind themselves why they were Democrats.

Unless I want an enraged Israeli warrior pounding on my liberal old ass. Hmmm...

So Ty is a closeted Republican and has been prodded into outing himself by no less than 2h2t. I wonder how he's going to tell OZ? I cling to the hope that 8 years of aversion therapy may have cured him of these inclinations.

T.Y.: Every time I try to think this thing through I end up channeling Tevye. Too many 'on the other hands.' One of the factors I've been thinking about is the level of commitment to civility required for a political forum to work here. Self restraint 'above and beyond' seems sine qua non. Refraining from throwing the first punch won't cut it. Letting that sly dig (or elbow in the eye) slide w/o response just might, but how realistic is it to expect that from ourselves? The public places I go for conversation rarely rely on bouncers. Their customers respect both the premises and each other. I've read quality conversations here and I'd like to see more of them, including political ones, w/o T.Y. and OZ having to break out their stun guns. As AdamSmith said, I know what I want. Bugger me sideways, though, if I know how to get it.