In bed at 10pm. Up at 3am. Back to bed at 7am. Up again at 8am. It’s a little frustrating.

At least I was entertained for part of it. During the second round of sleep, I found myself dreaming of Cocoa Beach, Florida (no idea why–I’ve never been there or anything–but it might have something to do with my childhood fascination with Larry Hagman on I Dream of Jeannie). Anyway, I was staying with Tom Chase–yes, that Tom Chase–who was acting as my real estate agent or something while I looked for a suitable summer beach house for Jonno and me. Tom went down to the basement to throw in a load of laundry, and when he came back, he suddenly noticed that I had an unfinished tattoo of a parrot that covered nearly all of my left thigh. I, of course, was terrified; in my book, parrots fall into the same category as unicorns do as far as tattoo subject matter is concerned: avoid them at all costs. Gradually I calmed down and went to pay my electric bill. Then I woke up.

It seems silly enough, but I checked my leg when I got out of bed, just to make sure. It was that intense.

Funny thing though: my electric bill’s due Wednesday, and I’d completely forgotten. Creepy, no?

Insomnia isn’t pretty.

Don’t look at me–Jonno’s got the pics.

On an unrelated note, I wish Mother Nature would get over this Robert Smith/Trent Reznor/Danielle Dax kick she’s on with all the grey and the glooming and the schvitzing and the no-swimming in the afternoons. Of course, if it were sunny all the time (like it was in May), I’d be complaining that it was too hot. Go figure.

Today’s genius worthy of serious, stone-cold worship: Christoper Durang. This afternoon, I reread Titanic, and I was really astonished that I’d forgotten how funny it is.

Case in point: Lidia, the Captain’s roughly 13 year-old daughter, is wandering about the ship’s dining room and suddenly plops down beside Teddy (a 20 year-old dressed as though he’s 14).

LIDIA: I used to keep a hedgehog up my vagina. (Pause.) But my parents made me stop because I kept feeding it in public. I think that’s being fussy. (Pause.) I got a funny disease from the hedgehog. They thought it was Dutch elm disease, but it wasn’t. After a while, I got a reputation, and then none of the boys would sleep with me. (Pause.) I used to bring lesbians on for a while, and they all had to get rabies shots. Am I boring you?

…

Could I borrow some of your lettuce?

TEDDY: Yes

LIDIA: Thank you. (She puts it up her dress.) I have a couple of hamsters in there now, and do they make a mess! (Keeps feeding hamsters. Fairly long pause.) My gynecologist runs the other way when he sees me coming. (She smiles.)

With all my laughing-to-the-point-of-sobbing, I’m sure the neighbors thought something awful had happened.

Ungh. Noon. Just getting up.

Head + back + shoulders = pain.

Good party.

All-purpose pick-me up for days like this: biggie fries and copious amounts of clear carbonated beverage. (Try it, you’ll see.) That and a Biore and I’ll be good to go.

Whee! We’re on for tonight after all. (There was some confusion as to whether we’d been included on the final line-up.) Off to Robert’s to pick up last minute supplies: several boxes of Kix (which’ll serve as dog food), a couple of cheap dog collars, and of course lots and lots of newspaper for those un-housebroken little puppies.

XO Wish you were here….

I thought we might go out on the town for a bit of carousing this steamy evening, but my ever-sensible domestic partner brought it to my attention that we’ll be seeing a lot of moonlight the next several days and should probably charge our batteries tonight. Unfortunately, he chose to remind me of this after I got all hopped up on two gallons of caffeine. To calm myself down, I traipsed around the corner for a cocktail to go. Unfortunately, I’ve drunk 2601 completely out of Pernod, so I had to settle for Herbsaint, which is close, but not the same.

Coming home, I was reminded of a phrase often repeated by a New Orleans performer qui s’appelle Becky Allen, which goes something like “New Orleans is the uterus of the world: we can grow anything.” And as I walked up the stoop to see a fistful of slugs slowly dragging their slimy, glabrous bodies over the cat food we leave out for the half-dozen strays we’ve adopted over the past several months, I thought, “Maybe Becky’s onto something.” Multi-cellular organisms are just plain weird. (Yeah, us, too.)

Okay, goddess: enough with the waterworks. Just ’cause we went a couple of months without it doesn’t mean we wanna make up for it all at once….

Zoinks! Two of my all-time faves–on the same couch!

Warning: the following post is even more tedious and self-indulgent than usual. Proceed at your own risk.

Since everyone else is weighing in on the Boy Scouts thing today, I could reasonably let it drop and move on. But there are a couple of things about it that interest me. Notably, it bears a striking resemblance to an incident that took place here in New Orleans back in the early 90s in which Mardi Gras krewes (basically social clubs that get together every year during Carnival to host a ball and run a parade) were ordered by the City Council to integrate.

Now, krewes are fundamental to the social hierarchy in New Orleans. If you grow up here, your identity and your social milieu are somewhat determined by the krewe to which your family belongs. If you’re part of an old-skool krewe like Rex or Comus, you’ve got it made. If, on the other hand, you belong to one of the newer, pretender-to-the-throne sort of krewes (e.g. Tucks, Thoth), you’re gonna have to work a lot harder at it. So it’s not surprising that the krewes were reluctant to adhere to the City Council’s edict (perhaps the most understated thing I’ve ever written). In fact, many krewes went on hiatus in protest, bringing to an end parades that had been running for nearly 200 years. They thought, like the Boy Scouts, that krewes are social organizations and that they can associate with whomever they want.

Although not technically business, I’m assuming that the City Council based their decision in part on the precent set by the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

SEC. 2000e-2. [Section 703]

(a) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer –

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

(b) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

If that’s the case–if the City Council used the Act as its precedent–then social organizations are subject to these guidelines, right? And so for homo activists, it’s just a matter of amending the Civil Right Act to include “sexual orientation” so that homos are officially protected just like everyone else. And in fact, according to the precedent set by the Supreme Court’s ruling against Colorado’s Amendment 2, homosexuals do constitute a protected “class” of citizen, not unlike African Americans or women:

We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is affirmed.

(full text here)

So, even though homos aren’t mentioned specifically in the Civil Rights Act, the Court has essentially ruled that like Ragu, we’re in there and we’re protected. Which would mean that we should be able to belong to any social group we want, right?

Then, yo, why’d we get dissed? Are they speaking out of both sides of their mouth, or what? Or maybe the City Council’s edict is just unconstitutional.

Of course, come to think about it, the Colorado Amendment smackdown flew somewhat in the face of the Bowers v. Hardwick decision, which essentially said that homos aren’t a protected class at all–at least, not when it comes down to fudgepacking. Maybe the Court’s decided to do a bit of backpedaling on homo rights for now.

Or maybe I’m completely off-base. Just food for thought, I guess.

[Note: Regardless of the convoluted arguments expressed here, Justice Anthony Scalia is still the Antichrist.]