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I just saw a man so fat, I thought he was riding a horse.

Yo, seriously.

He was wearing these brown Sansabelt slacks, and he was walking down the middle of the street, and the sun was at a funny angle, and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, and honest to goddess, I thought he was riding a horse.

Now that’s a fatass.

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It’s sad to say, but every so often, I want to give Bill O’Reilly the benefit of the doubt. Call me naive, but I just can’t bring myself to believe that such a popular ideologue journalist with such a rabid loyal congregation fan base could be so damn stupid.

Then he spouts off about teaching “intelligent design” in public schools, and I forget all about being fair and balanced.

I mean, seriously: check the video on the right-hand side of that page. Billy-Boy claims that “many” scientists support the theory of “intelligent design” and insists that banning it from classroom discussion is nothing short of “fascism.” So, following that line of reasoning, teachers have the right to teach America’s children that the Earth is flat, the sun revolves around us, and on at least one occasion, the heavens have stood perfectly still.

Frankly, I think O’Reilly himself proves that there is no god. I mean, if there were, don’t you think she would have struck him dead long ago?

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So, I got a letter from my mom–adopt-a-mom, that is, not bio-mom. It sounds mundane enough, but considering I haven’t spoken to the woman in about six years, it’s pretty surprising. (Well, to be fair, my brothers and I did see her briefly at Christmas in 2003, but it was for, like, 5 minutes, and I wouldn’t call what we did “talking.”)

Mom and I used to get along great. For most of my childhood, I was way closer to her than I was to dad, but around the time I was getting ready to leave for college, things changed. I think it might’ve had something to do with mom’s clinical schizophrenia and her heavy boozing (now that’s a party, ladies and gentlemen), but whatever the cause, she and I stopped communicating. Even when we talked, we weren’t communicating–we were just speaking in the other’s general direction. Eventually, mom went through a string of failed marriages, financial difficulties, medical and mental woes, and I treated her like I’ve treated friends in similar situations: I completely forgot about her.

I know that sounds harsh, but honestly, it wasn’t a big deal. Contrary to what you might imagine, I didn’t feel any of that hackneyed, soap-operaesque inner-conflict: “Dammit, Carlos, she’s my mother, and I just can’t bear the fact that I’ve had to cut her out of my life!” Fuck that noise. I didn’t even feel guilty. I still don’t. Mom’s become a different person, and like everyone else on the face of the freaking planet, I’ve learned that people sometimes grow into other people–people you may not want to be friends with anymore. I kept up with her via my father and brothers, who still live near her, and that was enough for me.

So, this letter. It was striking for several reasons. It was long. It was handwritten. There were no grammatical errors. (Trust me: half my life has been spent proofreading.) It was earnest–sometimes embarrassingly so, like a sappy acoustic guitar played by a latent lesbian beside a campfire at church youth retreat. But most of all, it sounded kinda like the mom I used to get along with. Well, except for the Jesusfreak stuff at the end. I mean, mom was always a devout Southern Baptist, but now I think she’s gone, like, totally Jan Crouch and shit–a side effect of the twelve step program that helped her kick the bottle, I imagine.

Regardless of the holyrolling, I’m kinda happy to hear from mom again. Well, happier than I’d thought. She’s poor, and she’s living in TheMiddleOfNowhere Mississippi (no, that’s not redundant), but she sounds happy, which is more than I can say of the woman I’ve seen over the past couple of decades. If she had a phone (she doesn’t), I’d call her, but as it is, I guess that sometime over the next couple of weeks, I’ll sit down and write her a letter in return. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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Astronomers have found a new world orbiting the Sun. The giant lump of rock and ice is larger than the planet Pluto and is now the farthest known object in the solar system.

The discovery was announced by US scientists yesterday and the object has unofficially been named Xena, after the TV series starring Lucy Lawless. “We have always wanted to name something Xena,” said Michael Brown, a member of the team that made the discovery using telescopes at the Palomar Observatory, outside San Diego, California.

— The Observer

For shame, Mr. Brown. Perpetuating the stereotype of the geeked-out, fantasy-loving astronomer is bad enough, but appropriating lesbian icons for cheap scientific thrills is quite another.

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The Iranian government may be hunting more gay teens after publicly executing two boys for having sex with each other last week.

According to human rights activists, police officials are searching for three boys connected with the “crimes” of Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, who were hanged last week.

— PlanetOut.com

That’s not exactly news to wake up to.

It’s shocking, isn’t it? I mean, really, truly shocking. Teens jailed, beaten, tortured, executed? For fooling around? And there’s likely more to come? I don’t even know where to begin. For something to knock the words out of me these days–well, that’s pretty rare.

Of course, if I were a better informed fag, I’d have heard about this last week when the story first broke. As it is, I’m sitting here before 7:00am, before my second cup of coffee, trying to make sense of it alongside a dozen other week-old headlines. And all I keep coming up with are questions:

  • In Death of a Princess, it’s said that to carry out a conviction of adultery under Islamic law, a defendant has to admit his/her crime three times in court. Apparently, a conviction for sodomy is just as difficult to obtain, since the defendant must confess his crime to authorities four times, or it must be documented by four righteous men. So were these boys coerced into confessions? Or did they blithely admit their acts, unaware of the consequences? Or were their admissions an act of defiance? Or were they blindsided by four former friends?
  • If the boys were convicted on the word of others, what could they have done to merit such retribution? Did they piss off the wrong person by doing something kinda cruel, as teenagers are often wont to do?
  • Could the execution have been simply a way of saving face? The boys were initially charged with raping a 13-year-old boy, but all sources seem to agree that those were false accusations intended to make the conviction more palatable to the public. What if the rape conviction came first, and then, when proven baseless, the authorities found themselves needing a way out?
  • The relatively small chorus of protests–which has included the European Union and Iran’s own Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi but not the US or, as far as I can tell, even Amnesty International –has relied almost exclusively on the argument that children under 18 shouldn’t be executed. Apart from gay rights groups, no one has mentioned the issue of homosexuality and human rights. That’s probably a tactical thing, done with the understanding that people are more likely to feel sympathy for innocent children than innocent sodomites. But still, you’d think someone might mention it.
  • What’s the rationale behind making Iran’s age of “criminal responsibility” (i.e. the age at which individuals can be tried and sentenced as adults) 15 for boys but only 9 for girls?
  • How many right wingers are going to take the opportunity to say, “See what you’d be facing over there, you dirty fag? Shut up and be happy with what you’ve got.”
  • Given my childhood (and adult) penchant for precocity, how long would I have lasted in Iran (or Saudi Arabia or Sudan or Jordan)?

Anyone?

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So I’m humming along this morning, doing my thing, when I stumble across this petit morceau, dating from way back in January:

The U.S. army considered building a “gay bomb”, which could make enemy troops “sexually irresistible” to each other, government papers say.

— Al Jazeera.com

And I think, “How the hell did I miss that, Mabel?” (I sometimes refer to myself as Mabel in the course of internal dialogues.)

Then I pause to consider the source of the story. I mean, yes, to many folks, Al Jazeera is a respected news outlet, but its website also features a section devoted entirely to conspiracy theories–most of which would be hilarious, if they were intended as fake news gags. (They’re not.) So I assume this “gay bomb” stuff is another bunch of hooey designed to entertain a readership with a cultural affinity for stories of subterfuge.

Wrong.

A quick check of the source materials, reveals that, lo-and-behold, Al Jazeera isn’t kidding. A declassified document from 1994 details the project, as well as many others, including chemical weapons that would make enemy combatants attractive to rodents, give them chronic bad breath, and cause hypersensitivity to sunlight.

All of which makes me wonder:

(A) Which of Al Jazeera’s other conspiracy theories are grounded in truth?

(B) Did Wright Labs build a prototype of the “love bomb”?

(C) If so, how can I get it to Edirne for the 2006 Kirkpinar?