my own sideways reality

i stumbled onto a website today. this was at the top of the page:

We are trying to locate our classmates. We have no address or contact information for the people listed below. If you have any information about these classmates, please let us know.

i don't know any of these people. i did not grow up in st. john, indiana. but i swear i went to high school with every one of them.

they just had different names.

guess who's, uh...not coming to prom.

what do you do when a lesbian wants to bring her girlfriend to prom, and one of them is actually gonna wear – i hope you're sitting down – a tuxedo? well you cancel prom of course.

JACKSON, Miss. – Constance McMillen didn't believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year.'" McMillen said.

The district announced Wednesday it wouldn't host the April 2 prom.

parents, please: do everything you can to keep your children from coming into contact with scary lesbians. don't let your children see lesbians on television, don't let them read about lesbians in books, and for god's sake don't let them see lesbians dancing together in formal wear.

UPDATE 1:20 am – constance has gone viral.

(hat tip b.t.ryback)

zippo in michigan

michigan's state budget will come down hard on the arts in fiscal 2010. 'cause really, who needs arts programs for kids? and the news comes from a democratic governor. i wonder how jeff daniels feels about this:

"Gov. Jennifer Granholm's budget director, Bob Emerson, announced today that the administration will recommend eliminating nearly all arts-and-culture grants for the upcoming fiscal year, according to ArtServe Michigan, the statewide nonprofit that promotes the arts.

The elimination would slam groups great and small, from an arts program for kids in the Upper Peninsula, Keweenaw Krayons, to the Detroit Institute of Arts."

my home state is right across the lake. who's next?

UPDATE 2/14/09 - here's your answer.

(hat tip christopher)

queen for a day

last time i was in milwaukee, i mentioned that i ran into "my prom date from 27 years ago." and that's a bit of slam to my friend anne.

i went to prom with anne because she was one of my best friends. for a chunk of time, we even dated (anne could probably throw her two cents in here as well.) back then i knew i was different (never, never gay) but it wasn't something talked about in waterford, wisconsin in 1981. except in the women's hushed, chatty gossip about an effeminate local man who sewed for a living. or the angry slurs and jokes among the "men" in the town.

it wasn't something i had come to terms with either, in any way. i figured that at some point i'd get married, have kids, and yell "honey, i'm home" as i walked in the door at 5:00 p.m. i never really understood what i would do with this "other" part of me, with these other feelings. the scenario in my head never played out that far. as far as i was concerned, there was no other option.

if i'd followed that path, it would more than likely be about this time in my life that i'd be tearing my family apart. somehow, someone would have found out that while i was coming home from work at 5 p.m, going to school plays, attending pta meetings, and raising a family, there was a secret -- either acted upon, quietly and in private, or not acted upon -- left to fester and grow, fed by the necessary lies.

luckily, i made a different choice: i chose to be honest.

so today, i'm a little knocked over by this story: just over 22 miles from the high school where anne and i slow-danced to "babe" by styx -- anne wearing a pretty lavender dress (hmm) and me in a white tux with a purple ruffle shirt (hmm) -- uriel gomez, an openly gay high school student, was nominated to be prom queen at his school.

and he embraced it.

whatever you think of this kid, or his classmates, we've come a long way. go uriel.

thymus ignoramus

okay, so what if mr. bixler gave me an F in biology? so what if earlier today i didn't know what a thymus was? i do now. (it's a mass of glandular tissue located in the neck or chest of most vertebrate animals and it plays a major role in the development of the body's immune system. there. and that wasn't ALL copied from wikipedia, either.)

what you learn, however, when you don't know what a thymus is (or what a cow's thymus is used for) is fascinating, random, and scary:

"if (mad cow) disease does come to the United States, it will inevitably wreak havoc because nearly everything we touch or taste has cow in it."  -- discover magazine

think about that, as you go through your day touching and tasting. every time you touch or taste something in the next 24 hours i want you to think "moooooo, moooooo," or "cooowww, cowwww," or "mmmm, tastes like cow thymus," or "how many cows had to die for my diet coke."

for instance, did you know cow brains are used in cosmetics? (this may help explain kathie lee gifford.) cow bile is a very effective industrial cleaner (this may also help explain kathie lee gifford.) cow nasal mucus or lung mucus is used in heparin, a blood thinner i'm pretty sure my dad takes. and cow tallow (from hooves, bones, and horns) is used in chewing gum. consider that the next time you're chewing your cud. bessie.

and hey mr. bixler -- guess why-mus.

i know when i'm not wanted

back in high school, i never really belonged to any of "the groups" or "the cliques." (if you could see me right now, i'm doing that annoying "quotes" thing with my fingers, but only for effect. NOTE TO ACTORS: don't do this in plays. we don't like people who do this in real life, and we like people who do it in plays even less.)

like any normal high school in a small, midwestern town in the late seventies, we had them. "the cliques."

we had the jocks. the jocks. really, nothing more needs to be said about the jocks.

the computer nerds. and by that i mean a computer. singular. as in one computer in a back classroom upstairs in the "annex" building. you had to sign up a week in advance to use it...this...contraption into which you loaded skinny paper tape with tiny holes punched in it. and then you had to get the hamster to run really fast in his little wheelie-thing.

the freaks. the kids who smoked cigarettes behind the dumpster in the alley and wore jean jackets and tie-dyed led zeppelin t-shirts.

and the band nerds. suzanne dinwittle, during third period band rehearsal, reached over and circled -- on my music, in red pencil -- the b-flat i should have played in the sixth measure of "el capitan." didn't say a word, just silently circled the note. that is classic band nerd behavior.

of course, there were other groups too. and then off-shoots of the core groups: the freaks who probably smoked pot (nobody was really sure.) the jocks who were in band, but miraculously managed to escape band nerddom. there were the theater dweebs. we didn't say dweebs back then, i just added that. i was, like, secretary of the theater dweebs.

but i never actually fit into any of those groups, even though i was part of many of them. okay i was never a jock. my one attempt at being jock-like was in the ninth grade: junior varsity tennis. my final match, an away game, involved me and another jock-wannabe from the opposing school trying to finish up a set while the rest of my team leaned out the windows of the idling school bus and yelled "come on you pansy! hurry up!" and alright, i was never really a freak. in fact, in sixth grade two freak girls beat me up on the playground at lunch but we're not going to delve into their sick need to make men look weak and my strict adherence to a pledge made years earlier to my mother: never hit a girl.

and as long as we're at it, i wasn't actually in high school band either. i was in band during graded school (in wisconsin we call it graded school, like normal people. not grade school. please.) in graded school i played first chair trumpet/coronet (i was multi-talented, brass-wise.) sometimes i was relegated to second chair, but only when the band director, mr. verbraken, was trying to pacify becky hegemann and her whiny, annoying father ("it's harder for a girl with a harelip to play the trumpet so she deserves to be judged by different standards, for christ sake!")

so was i a computer nerd? only some of the time. my swedish friend ross was really the computer nerd, and i was his friend. so by association.

the jist of the matter is i didn't belong and i knew it. when my jock friends were going to shakey's for pizza, i stayed silent. i waited patiently for the usually off-handed invite. it didn't happen often, but if it came, i butched up and went along. those were...hmm...exciting times.

when my computer nerd friend was going home after school to listen to abba records, i waited for the word. "oh c'mon tony, you love 'voulez-voux'" ross would say. and we'd go over to his house and talk about which abban was prettier, agnetha or anni-frid. (my secret vote was for benny.)

when the freaks asked me to...okay no. the freaks never asked me anything. two of them kicked me in the back in sixth grade, that's it.

ultimately, the point is this: i knew when i wasn't wanted. i was never that third wheel. the person who overhears you're going to shakey's and laughs while he says -- a little too loudly and with a lateral shh -- "yeah, but no black oliveshh!! " only to get sideways looks of "who asked him to come along?" and then finally, resignation -- "alright, i guess he can come." (sometimes there'd be a different first look -- "who's that?" or "what was that noise?")

i'm proud to say i'm good friends with many of these same people today. (not the girls who kicked me in the back.) as a group, we've lived long enough to grow out of our jockishness, our freakishness, and our nerdishness (true, some are still stuck in the nerd world) and become adults. mature adults. thoughtful adults.

and we've remembered and embraced the lesson learned from those times: when you're not wanted, stay away. when you're not part of the cool group, don't try to be. when everyone else is going to shakey's, go home and open a can of beefaroni. stay in your box. stay in your corner. stay in your room.

what i'm trying to say is this: ralph nader needs to keep the hell out of the presidential race.