fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Because of the greed of a few, we will all suffer. Republicans, punch drunk on hubris, will gore the middle class and exterminate the poor to feed the rich. Muffy will get her fourth yacht. Buffy will get his third Swiss villa. The middle class will get crumbs. The poor will get nothing. Throughout the…
A nihilistic, nasty, and cruel healthcare bill that would have hurt millions, including members of my own family, failed in the House of Representative because it was not cruel enough. To this we have descended. I have two thoughts about this. First, Republicans cannot govern because they do not believe in government. In their fantasy land, everyone…
Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States, is a one trick pony. Trump humiliated himself and the country during his joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week. When asked about growing anti-semitism, he went into a free association, stream of consciousness diatribe about his electoral college victory. This comes…
Way back when during my waning days at UCLA, not long after I came out, the Daily Bruin did something unconscionable. Buried in the paper appeared a story about the campus police arresting some guys cruising each other in a men’s room. And the paper printed their names. I was mortified. And livid. With youthful, righteous…
I haven’t written much about the 2016 presidential election. One could cite the usual fatigue felt even by those like me who like to keep up with politics. The cable news channels, the networks, and social media have done a splendid job of overanalyzing everything to death. No word, no thought, no belch, no fart from the…
In “The Scouring of the Shire,” the penultimate chapter to The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf gives Frodo, Sam, Pip, and Merry a warning about Saruman. Though defeated, his powers diminished, his master Sauron vanquished for good, the old wizard is still capable of a little meanness in a cruel way. Such is often the case after…
I went to a talk by legendary former South African jurist Albie Sachs the other day. He spoke about his role in bringing marriage equality to South Africa. Albert “Albie” Sachs was born in South Africa and early in his youth, he explained, he began resisting the racist apartheid government of his country. For his…
There’s a Gumby cartoon that has stuck with me over the decades. It’s called “The Small Planets.” Gumby decides that he’s sick of being bossed around, told to do this chore and that chore, so he hops into a book about planets, dons a spacesuit, and speeds off in a flying saucer to the asteroid…
Self-haters gonna hate. Earlier this week, gay Italian fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana made harsh statements about same-sex couples raising children. We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is the traditional one… No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed. They further…
A long-lived urban legend states that cities have a quota system in place for parking enforcement officers. One retired traffic officer in LA recently said that this is no legend, but a hard fact. In particular, says the retired officer, at the end of the year, when the LA Department of Transportation is preparing to close…
