Another Glorious Day In PR

A few LA hospitals are taking some flak (go on!!) for discharging homeless patients to the city's skid row neighborhood. For, the hospitals say, the very good of the patients. They (the patients) will be closer to the services available to them if, as they are, sent by taxi to skid row, the hospitals suggest.

Here's a quotation carried by CNN:

Patients are sent to skid row only if they are healthy enough, the representatives [of the hosptitals] said.

Ah, the other defence is that most ask to go to skid row. Nobody is being forced to go anywhere.

Okay then, I'd suggest that post-hospital homeless be coached to ask if they can be dropped off on Beverly Hills street corners.

Wow, funny.

Ain't organized religion a hoot! And the Roman Catholic church has gotta be the biggest jester among a "chuckle a minute" gang of jokers. Consider this sentence from the official report (due next Tuesday) from the Vatican which will ban the ordination of cock-sucking, ass-licking, bum-fucking, god-mocking faggots:

"If instead it is a case of homosexual tendencies that are merely the expression of a transitory problem, for example as in the case of an unfinished adolescence, they must however have been clearly overcome for at least three years before ordination as a deacon."

Whoooohoooo!

Turgid

I finally have, as I described earlier today in an email to a friend, a piece of art that I just may take down for certain visitors (if I ever had any).

I went to the Buddies in Bad Times auction on Saturday night. It was given me that the event was an art auction. In fact, there was little art there and lots of deals for the cheap bastards that made up the bidding audience. Everything from a handmade (by a drag queen) bodysuit to a certificate good for $1,500 for a gay cruise were up for bid. A suite of great Asian furniture also went for a song. From Green Tea Designs.

As it was a fund raiser I also had my polaroid taken on leather Santa's lap along with an elf -- a young dancer from the ballet. In case you have ever wondered, Elves have big baskets. And incredibly firm thighs -- I noticed as it was there my hand rested.

There was some art and some more near art.

The first item up for bid was a 90 minute RMT massage (and a month at a Yoga studio) and in what was to be the theme of the evening, the bidding was very low and very slow. So I bid on it and won it. I'll get more back from my work health insurance than I paid for the darn thing. The Yoga studio is too out of my way to use, so I'll give that away.

One quite small but splendid figurative, almost abstract portrait was "the" art of the show. It was near the end so I didn't buy much anything else (I'll get to the item prompting the headline of this blog in a moment) in anticipation of spending a few hundred bucks on it. I never actually bid once on it -- my plan was to wait until the going going gone speech and then to bid -- since everything else went for way under "retail value." But this little painting went in a wonderfully fast and viscious bidding war for considerably more than I wanted to pay -- about $1,500. At an auction where the other couple pieces of actual art went for 300 bucks or so.

Anyway, early on the bidding list there was a photograph (by Terry David Silvercloud -- never heard of him) which I had admired (lusted after) during the pre-auction preview. There was a bit of a two-way bidding fight going on so at the last moment I thought I'd stir things up and raised my paddle. Ah, I bought the photo.

I'd post a photo of the photo, but I don't have a computer at home at the moment. Subject is a gorgeous guy in a studio setting with a very, very, very erect penis. Just standing there, ahem both he and his penis. Standing. Marble.

Archival b&w (maybe 24x18) print. In a lovely frame.

Most turgid.

iMac down

My year old iMac G5 is in the shop. This after AppleCare asked me to open her up and have a look myself. Ah, no! I've always thought it would be an interesting world if auto manufacturers treated customers on warranty the same way: "Sir, just be careful when you release that bracket the engine block is likely to shift heavily... A winch is useful..."

The problem (with my iMac) is beyond common, apparently. The techy guy guessed what it was as soon as he saw me carry in the box :) Something to do with capacitors. Anyway, the display is screwed leading to the computer refusing to boot up or boot up properly. How exciting.

MUST have the new iPod video. Must. Just gotta sell my current iPod. What a sweet bit of technology. Even hotter than the Nano which is saying a lot. Ahem, went shopping after dropping my iMac in the repair side of the store.

Anyway, without a home computer for a week now.

___________________

Just love this quotation:

"The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth." -- Gerald Burrill


A rut's deeper right?

November 11, 2005

Cenetaph, Old City Hall, Toronto

Wounds

This is my weeping season. November.

There is nothing truly more stupid than war, but nothing that makes much more logical sense either (if one resigns one's self to assigning -- as I would define the term anyway -- the rationale of psychology to the interaction of states as is described by realpolitik, or power, as I do).

If nothing is stupider than war, fewer things are sadder than victims of war, or beyond that even, the media of war themselves, the soldiers. Story in the Star yesterday of an 84 year old who escaped (unlike much of his family) as a Jewish youth from Germany, was sent to England, was labelled an enemy of the state or enemy combatant or some such (as those children were) but was, despite that and his too young age, still able to talk his way into the fighting with the British -- he flew hang gliders to get behind enemy lines at D-day, for example. Bombed a few bridges. Cut off supplies to the Germans who were sluicing up the beach and those landing there.

Still, until this year he always doubted whether it (war and its hell) had been worth it. Wondered all these decades, full of doubt, until a very young Dutch boy at the reunions in The Netherlands approached him as he stood alone, thinking, handed him a flower and simply thanked the old man for freedom.

Here's a poem:

November

What if memory lacked personal boundaries?
floated free like dandelion fluff, uncorralled
by grey borders, title-less until nourished
by curious, foreign soil
(and not some odd notion of collective
memory - but
self in past-tense roaming)

Would you finally be accessible?
Dieppe concussions, rippling
along the paths of my memory
as they did down your spine
French and German and Dutch dirt
under my nails
as you scrambled to die (but didn't)
Reaching to my own face
your scar pulsing
anger and Crown Royal, shards of highball glass

And what did you know
of me?

Steven Heipel