fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
“When they said Berkeley was ‘crunchy,’ I didn’t know they meant students’ rib cages.” – Stephen Colbert Gathered together to protest the injustices of the day, they linked arms and held firm. They linked arms as they crossed a bridge, knowing that police cars, batons, dogs, and fire hoses waited at the other end. They…
At a long forgotten antiwar demonstration around 20 odd years ago, I stood tense as the atmosphere grew dank from humidity and angst. We were gathered in front of the federal building on Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco. We wanted to take the steps, but a police line blocked it off. They were in…
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” – President Obama, April 2009 First we saw Wisconsin and the movement to save union rights for public service employees, a justified reaction to a gross conservative overreach. Citizens in Ohio followed soon after in reaction to a gross conservative overreach in that state…
Graffiti I recently spied in the men’s room at one of my favorite brunch joints said it all. In gaudy yellow felt on the toilet seat sanitary cover dispenser was the phrase “TAX THE RICH,” in all caps and fat letters. Written right below it, in thin-lined blue ink were much smaller letters that read “And…
I was honestly not going to do any political posts for a bit — not enough fiction, you know. But I can’t resist. Eric Cantor. I could say all sorts of rude things about him or say what my nickname for him is, but I’ll refrain. Alright, I call him Gumby-head. Doesn’t his whole head,…
Young black kids are killing and dying in the streets. Gun fire echoes on quiet nights, on busy streets, in daylight — bodies fall to the ground. Killers stand over the fallen triumphantly and pump in more and more. Then they run away. But it’s not OK to snitch. Young black kids trying to get…
Don’t mean to get down on his ass, especially since he’s not doing too well at the moment, but the more that comes out about Mr. Weiner, the more I’m beginning to think that his resignation would not be a bad thing. Steve Kornacki at Salon.com wrote a story describing how Weiner broke into elected…
Audie Bock is not a household name. Only California based political nerds like myself even remember her. She was, for a brief moment, the highest ranking Green party politician in the country. Happenstance got her into that position. Ron Dellums’ retirement from the US Congress in 1998 started a daisy chain of special elections. Then-State…
I had never heard of Harold Camping. I am familiar with Family Radio, the station he helped to establish in the 1960s. It was one of many evangelical shortwave stations I encountered on the dial during my long years of traveling international radio. I paid it no mind. Evangelical stations are typically, though not exclusively,…
So President Obama persuaded Hawaiian officials with a personal, handwritten note to send him copies of the sacred “long form” birth certificate so that the White House can distribute the document widely and bring a hoped for end to the “silliness” about the origins of his birth. Until this week, Hawaii officials said they wouldn’t…
