Surprise, Surprise!

October 11 is the yearly celebrated National Coming Out Day. The day is observed internationally although it once started in the U.S.A.

I am celebrating the day by once again coming out to you ya'll and confessing with pride that I am indeed gay.

Now, it's your turn, surprise me in the comments!

Acquiring a Habit

I know exactly when, where and why I started smoking and whom I was with at the time.

For a long time I was the only non-smoker in my immediate family. My parents, both my two sisters and their boyfriends (later husbands) were all smokers. When they lit up their cigarettes after dinners I used to run around frantically, open up windows and complain loudly about the smoke and the smell and how I couldn't breathe.

The summer when I was 26 years old, I decided to travel a month around Europe on Interrail. I was studying law at the university at the time and had suddenly discovered that I had an opening of four weeks after the term ended and my summer job started. As a young man with an overprotective father, I knew I could not tell my parents my decision too long in advance because that would give my father too much time to launch a campaign of trying to persuade me to travel in a "safer" way.

I broke the news to my parents the evening before I was going to leave. All hell temporarily broke lose and I was fed with images of myself laying murdered, slaughtered, violated, raped, maimed, brutalized etc. in every street, town square or hotel room in Europe by my poor father. When he calmed down, I promised to phone at least once a week and "if ever anything bad happened, however minor I may think it was". After making this deal with my devil father, I was graciously "allowed" to travel.

The morning after I left started with a short trip to Copenhagen to catch the "North Express" at one o'clock in the afternoon. The Nord Express is (or was) a daily railway connection  between Copenhagen and Paris and viceversa.

I was early, so I could choose where to sit and found a nice compartment with eight seats and settled in before the other passengers started arriving. The last one to arrive just before the train departed, was a tall and husky blond guy with trembling hands, amazing blue eyes and a dazzling smile. He sat down opposite me.

At first there was this usual awkward silence in the compartment but after awhile we all started talking a little and introducing ourselves and sharing our travel plans. The guy said his name was Andrew and that he was a Canadian from Newfoundland on vacation in Europe. He was on his way to Paris for a few days before he was joining an archeological excavation at some place outside the city.

Andy was a smoker, he smoked Marlboro's. I didn't mind a bit when he lit up a cigarette, strangely enough. When we had travelled together a while, he offered me to come with him for a cigarette in the corridor. I gladly went along with him and accepted the cigarette and puffed on it, carefully at first so as not to reveal that I was a beginner. We had a great time together and the smoke pauses repeated themselves during the trip until we settled in for the night. Andy stretched out his unshod feet towards my side and I did the same and in that way we went to sleep resting our heads on the others feet.

When we arrived in Paris we decided to get a room at a hotel together, until it was time for him to continue to his damn excavation. We had four wonderful days together in Paris. I had fallen in love and was sad to part. We stayed in touch the first six months after, but then with time and distance and other men the letters and cards swindled and finally ended. The only thing I was left with was my newly acquired habit of smoking.

To this day I still smoke Marlboro's and I think of Andy when I see a man with more than usual tremor in his hands.

Open Letter

Source xkcd.com

I didn't know the list of who really controlls the U.S. government was quite so extensive, but you learn something new everyday!

"Jolene"

My friend Judas, a.k.a. Craig Jules and Atreyu, in this music video performs as Willam (from the reality television series RuPauls Drag Race) singing 'Jolene'

When I asked the creator if he had any dedications this time he answered with a smile, "This song goes out to any potential boyfriends of Bock McMillan." Sweet man, isn't he?

Forget Yesterday

Some days are just crappy, whatever one does or tries everything just turns out wrong or goes sour. Yesterday I was in a peculiar mood. Not tired, angry or sad or anything seriously bad, just edgy, restless and oversensitive. A remark here or there would just get me me in a foul state.

I avoided Butch all evening because he pissed me off with a remark he made early on - or perhaps didn't make. All the while I was ashamed for doing so because he had every right saying what he did or didn't say.

Another guy made a remark about me at The Grenouille Inn on the Yadkin sim, something to the effect that "Now Bock is going to do his usual faggoty thing", which for some reason totally set me off. So much so that if he had been in the same room I would probably have kicked him in the balls, instead I thought what the hell and put on my red Prestige boots from Bax while dancing on a bar counter for his benefit, forgetting that there are always cameras in SecondLife. When I later saw that Helene had posted pictures of me in my Prestige boots on Facebook, that pissed me off too...

Today I am laughing at it all and wondering to myself what was going on. I'm leaving that behind and will tell you instead what was good about yesterday, although I sadly didn't take any pictures.

The good things yesterday included, but were in no way limited to,

• A concert by the Swedish band KAOS that made its debut is SecondLife. It was a totally WOW-ing experience and I am looking forward to hearing more from them in the future. (For more information about them, videos etc. please visit their website KAOS). 
• Having a long talk with Dej and sensing that we could get along fine despite the fact that we were both in a crabby mood. 
• Visiting Romanum during their ongoing Wine Festival and finding a place to purchase new togas.
• Re-friending Loch Wolfhunter, he has been away for awhile and had been culled from my friends list as one of those lost to first life. Fortunately he was a good sport and did not hold my culling against me.
• Visiting the ongoing Boystown Pride.
• Installing my new Dennis-dances from HUMANOID in my dance-HUD and loving them.

As Nina Simone sings "It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me... and I'm feeling good!"

The Art of Ted Fusby

For more artwork from Ted Fusby please visit his webpage.

My thanks to Torro Spyker of The Bullring for first showing me his work.

Extortion, Not Stalemate

I am still lingering on the shutdown of the American federal government, because I simply cannot wrap my mind around how something like this can occur in a democratic country with a healthy economy.

Time Magazine's cover for October 14, 2013

I think I may have stumbled upon a great article by US Political Commentator Brian Normoyle on Huffington Post's political pages. The article is entitled This Shutdown Is About Extortion, Not Stalemates.

"Those following or reporting on the U.S. government shutdown should refrain from using terms like "impasse" or "stalemate." These words imply two honest parties negotiating in good faith have arrived at a temporary but surmountable deadlock. That's not even remotely the case here.

Instead, two parties--the Senate Democrats and the House Republicans -- each passed divergent budgets earlier this year. The latter, propelled by a very small yet ideologically rigid minority of its members, made the calculated decision from the start not to negotiate.

Democrats made 18 requests since April to go to conference and compromise on a budget bill; Republicans blocked every single one of them. And now they are using a manufactured crisis to extract policy concessions on duly passed legislation they don't like and cannot repeal through the normal democratic processes: elections, legislative votes, and litigation.

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue to insist they're doing the will of the American people despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. While a plurality or small majority of Americans remain confused about or opposed to the Affordable Care Act, a strong majoritywant a budget approved without conditions to repeal, defund, or delay it -- mainly because they see the law as a settled issue.

And so it is. Republicans lost this fight repeatedly:

• in the 2008 election in which this was a primary issue;

• in a year-long debate in the halls of congress, media, and the public square, after which the law was passed by both chambers of congress and signed by the president;

• in the Supreme Court--the final arbiter of the constitutionality of a law;

• in the 2012 presidential election, which 2/3rds of Americans now see as a referendum on Obamacare;

• in the 2012 congressional election, in which the GOP failed to take the Senate, lost seats in the House, and lost the popular vote in that chamber by more than 1,000,000 votes;

• in the 46 House votes to repeal, defund, or delay Obamacare that were dead on arrival in the Senate and had no chance of becoming law.

Most curiously, Republicans now have the votes to end the shutdown immediately by putting a clean resolution on the House floor with no riders or conditions. Such a bill certainly would pass, and 800,000 Americans could return to work tomorrow, but Boehner doesn't do it.

The evidence suggests the GOP intentionally put these workers out of a job by using a historically routine budget resolution to undo the outcome of three lost elections. And they now have the hubris to demand Senate Democrats and President Obama negotiate with that extremist position. As Republicans continually shift the political goal posts ever further to the hard right, negotiating now requires meeting them somewhere between extreme and preposterously irrational. Democrats justifiably have declined to do so here.

This is not an "impasse" or a "stalemate." It's an attempt at extortion that was prevented."

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I believe I finally understand what has happened in the US after reading this article. We have a bunch of lousy losers who cannot accept that they lost and now are trying to shove their point-of-view down everyone else's throats to make them accept it. It's no new tactic, I have seen it before in both my lives, although never on such a dramatic scale.