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Do you think that the differences between Judeo-Christians and Muslims are reconcilable?

I have a real problem with that because of my love for Christians and Jews. Can we ever all get along when there are terrorists out there? It is doubtful.

What do you think American foreign policy should aim for in Iraq?

In the new country, under the new democracy, why should the official religion be Muslim? I think as Iraq becomes a democracy, there are going to be a lot of churches springing up.

—New York Times

So Muslims=terrorists and democracy=Christianity? There’s so much going on in this interview with Roberta Combs, the new head of the Christian Coalition of America, I don’t know where to begin. I give her credit, though, for at least being forthright about [the many insidious assumptions and plans behind] today’s very creepy, evangelical, right-wing rhetoric.

Was I hallucinating, or did I really wake up at 2:00 in the morning to see a holiday ad for Target featuring the song “New Toy” by Slavic-milkmaid-with-a-big-scary-voice Lene Lovich?

Oh, well. I guess she’s gotta make rent somehow these days.

It was not until the 1960s that the school lifted the rule prohibiting students from going to movies. For generations, students were barred from dancing — on campus or off — unless it was with members of the same sex or a square dance.

—CNN.com

Conservative Christians and same-sex dancing? It just goes to prove my point that there are two reasons that homos-in-denial hurl themselves headlong into the church or the military:

1. On a semi-conscious level, queers-to-be realize that in the church/military, there are rules that prohibit homosexual activity. So, as the thinking goes, “Because I’m prohibited from getting it on with my roommate, I won’t get it on with my roommate.”

2. On a not-so-conscious level, queers-to-be realize that the church/military are designed as same-sex environments, imbuing them with an undeniably attractive, erotic charge.

I wasn’t exactly the most self-loving teenage homo myself, but luckily I had the good sense to recognize the inevitable. Otherwise, I could have made my college years very, very miserable indeed.

Last week, several of us schlepped Uptown to a small-ish indie-ish bookstore to hear Dan Savage read from his latest book. Honestly, I’m not much of a fan–his work is nice and forthright, though it doesn’t really do much for me–but everyone else wanted to go, and I was the only one with a car, so we went.

In person, Mr. Savage was, of course, charming and cute and well-versed in his subject matter. He was also clever–in the mildly deprecating, vaguely envious British sense of the word–and occasionally glib. In fact, although he was discussing topics of wider import than his usual sex column fare, his tone remained the same.

Which led me to wonder: is this why the anti-intellectual Right doesn’t take liberal logic seriously? Can Lefty, iconoclastic authors like Mr. Savage ever compete in the national dialogue with vehement adherents of conservative values like Ann Coulter? Is this why we’re always fighting an uphill battle–because it’s so much harder to “think outside the box” (a phrase I despise) and develop new paradigms than it is to stick to the status quo?

Not that I want to lay blame for the failure of liberal ideology squarely on Mr. Savage’s shoulders. I mean, the Louisiana governor’s race demonstrates all too clearly the inability of Democrats (i.e. today’s liberals) to articulate new political and social strategies–all while conservatives simply trot out the same old chestnuts they’ve been harping on for the past 20 years.

Clinton represented a great middle ground: a thoughtful intellectual and an affable good ol’ boy. Who’s next?

Reasons to Celebrate

1. Wendy Cope is alive and well, which means she can continue to pen verses that get stuck in my head for weeks on end–verses like the following, which the boyfriend used to recite to me when we was a-courtin’ (I should have known something was up):

Higgledy-piggledy

Emily Dickinson

Liked to use dashes

Instead of full stops.

Nowadays, faced with such

Idiosyncrasy,

Critics and editors

Send for the cops.

2. It’s the feast day of St. Josaphat of Polotsk, who suffered a visually interesting martyrdom but was otherwise a dullard of a saint, brought down by nothing more sinister than bureaucracy–despite the intervention of some very noble Jews.

Woo-hoo! My boyfriend becomes even more famous this week with the launch of Mr. Denton’s beautiful, sexy, and so totally not work-safe FLESHBOT!

I’m sure someone in the media is going to laud it as “porn for the thinking man and woman” or–even worse–as “hyper-erotic hypertext” (which sounds, like, really lesbianesque). In point of fact, though, it’s just reviews of and links to really interesting masturbatory material. As Mayor Quimby’s buxom spokesmistress once said, “Gentlemen, start your whacking!”

To paraphrase Jerri Blank: If Aguilera and [Vanilla] Ice were Rumsy and Rice, Saddam would have been a non-issue.

Yeah, I admit it’s a little weak–is there anyone else from the MTV set whose name rhymes with “Rice”?–but as this article explains, the point is valid: infiltrating countries via music and culture may be slower and less predictable than sending in the troops, but it’s a great way to effect significant, long-term change. In fact, a couple of years ago, I toyed with the notion of taking a position with the Department of State as a cultural diplomacy officer, where my job would have been to lead such covert operations. Unfortunately, I had to decline the offer once I learned that Colin Powell goes positively nelly for Rogers and Hammerstein and would likely have me pushing Oklahoma in drought-stricken communities where the thought of corn as high as an elephant’s eye would bring not applause, but salivation.

Still, I’ve said it before (but I’m not browsing my archives to find it): if we’d thrown Brittney in a burka in the late 1990s and sent her on a tour of Afghanistan, the world might be a very different place.

In the past week, I have…

• lost two pounds and gained one.
• endured no end of phlegm thanks to some sinus mishegas.
• decided I’m finally going to read Jane Eyre.
• rewritten and begun rehearsals for our annual holiday extravaganza.
• succumbed to peer pressure and done that whole tribe thing.
• remembered how much I like Bartlett pears.
• been passed over for the position of spokesmodel for Chanel No. 5.
• decided I really, really need an honest-to-yahweh vacation.

Which, I guess, is another way of saying, “what else is new?”

The internet can do many things for us. It can bring us closer together through email. It can spread news and other useful information with ease. And, as demonstrated by one particularly well-developed, non-work-safe heteroporn engine that allows users to search titles by fetish–including agalmatophilia, missing teeth, roller skates, ugly women (though not, unfortunately, ugly men), and vomiting–the internet can also reassure folks that there are lots and lots of freaks out there that make some of us look stable by comparison.

You may not know it to look at me, but I’m pretty anal. I recently went through a pile of photographs dating back to junior high and arranged them chronologically. I then dove headlong into a stack of our theatre company‘s reviews and organized them by production, then subdivided them alphabetically by media source. And last night at 10pm, knowing that my car was running on empty and that I’ve got traveling to do later this week, I put on some shorts and schlepped to the gas station for a fill-up.

But that’s not why I’m writing.

Driving home last night, I was listening to the radio, and I heard this song…. I don’t know who wrote it, and ultimately it doesn’t matter: what’s important is the feeling it evoked. It had a dreamy, soothing, Cocteau Twins kind of sound–the very sound I found so engaging when I first became fascinated with New Orleans a decade and a half ago. Back then, I’d drive into the city with friends, and we’d cruise up and down St. Charles Avenue, windows open to the humid night air, listening to gauzy alterna-rock. I wouldn’t say that those were golden days or even that they were carefree; in fact, it was a fairly difficult time for me, trying to reconcile my (somewhat) straight frat rat facade with my evolving awareness that I really, really like to kiss boys. It was, however, a memorable time in my life–one filled with rituals and comfortable routines.

Last night, it wasn’t just the music that struck me: the song coming from the radio, the time of night, the temperature of the air, all combined to effect a flash of recognition and remembrance. Every so often this happens, like an intense physical/emotional recall, and for a split second, I’m Uptown, hanging out with an early crush. Or I’m back in junior high, on my first day at a strange, new school. It’s a fleeting experience, and try as I might, I can never hang on to it for very long.

Let me reiterate: what I felt last night was not some smarmy, wistful, weepy-eyed, Bruce Springsteen-inspired “glory days” moment. It was not nostalgia. Nostalgia is a warm and fuzzy thing–literally translated, nostalgia is “a returning home.” This was not that. This was the shock of the deja vu, as disorienting as time-travel. This was visceral and breathtaking and significant and disturbing. This was reliving, not remembering.