Open Letter to the Haters

Dear Homophobic, Right-Wing Assholes:

Your marriage was already a mockery. Don't blame me.

Love,
Frank

What part of “don’t fuck with me” do you not understand?

I’m fairly mild-mannered as I move through my days. And although patience is not one of my virtues—blame my sonofabitch father for passing along that characteristic—years of meditation, qigong, and deep thinking all play a part in keeping my heart rate lowered while confronting “difficulties.” I’m never a dick … unless pushed to extremes. And yesterday I had to rely quite heavily on my coolness as I encountered several people bent on pissing me off.

Eating at Luby’s always stresses me out: I’m never quite sure which (or how many) sides to order. And the servers are rarely under sixty and (even less) display any serenity of their own. The first woman behind the counter didn’t grasp my order of coleslaw (pronounced “coleslaw”), so she ended up repeating it three times before finally spooning some in a bowl for me. Not too much of a problem, but it was enough to put me on edge for the next station.

My order: mashed potatoes. The server grabbed a plate with a huge chunk of pork on it and began slinging mashed potatoes. I asserted, “That’s not my plate.” Most people who know me know I haven’t eaten meat in 22 years. Since the server didn’t know me from Meat-Eater Marvin, I could certainly understand (and overlook) her mistake. But then she scraped the mashed potatoes back into the serving bowl and started slamming dishes around.

The next server asked what else I wanted, and before I ordered broccoli, I looked the previous woman straight in her 65-year-old face and said, “I could use a little less attitude.”

It was enough to make Stephen’s day, I think. He was still laughing about it later at night. The best part about it for me was that I said what I wanted to say, what needed to be said, and then let it go. Usually I’m worked up afterwards, but I was fairly calm while eating my coleslaw (pronounced “coleslaw”), (angry) mashed potatoes, and broccoli—hold the attitude.

After a stressful first day back on campus, filling out paperwork, meeting with students, attending orientation at the college, commuting for more than an hour, dealing with Surly Magpie at Luby’s, and trying to move into an new place, I was looking forward to relaxing a little once I got home.

At some time around 10:45pm, the flipping Filipinos—since I don’t know any racial slurs for Filipinos—started vacuuming. That is a common occurrence, and an issue that has been addressed by both the old management as well as the new. Since the last time I had to walk upstairs to tell them how to be decent neighbors and instead had a door closed in my face (after I was forced to knock three times before they deigned to answer), I decided I was above such face-to-face confrontations. So instead I crawled under our building and turned their electricity off. Fuck you, stupid fucks! Start making unnecessary noise when I’m getting ready to sleep and you’ll stumble your ass around in the dark.

Needless to say, I slept like a baby until about 6:00am, when I turned their electricity back on. Oh, did I say, “Fuck you”?

Professional Experience Optional

I love my teaching job. Really. My students are bright and inquisitive and ask really difficult questions. It's easy to see that many of them are engaged with the subject. Of course, I have a few slackers and wanna-be dozers as well, but most days I feel more akin to them—thank you, insomnia!—than those students who always raise their hands and want more information.

What I’m utterly sick of, however—and mind you, it’s only the third week of classes—is the shitty secretarial/clerical pool who can’t seem to do one fucking thing except sit on their asses and scold you for something completely out of your control. I still don’t have a key to my classroom. I was hired last April, but the key request wasn’t submitted until after the fall term began. And the one person on campus who duplicates keys took the past week off for vacation.

So I calls the gurl who should be able to get things done and am told I needs to just contact the campus police via the emergency phone to have someone sent up. My first thought was to simply pull the emergency alarm—feigning ignorance and misunderstanding—and fuck up the entire campus at least for a few minutes.

Of course, campus police feel they have more important things to tend to—and they really should; no argument here—but my class and I sit in the hall until about a quarter past before someone appears with a key. And I have to show my faculty ID, blah blah blah, because I look “like just another student” to the trained professional campus security force. Funny how some back-assward compliments tend to just piss you off.

Yesterday my email account stopped working, so while on campus this morning I called IT to solve my problems. Instead I’m confronted with Bitchy Bitchison. Now I don’t want anyone reading this to think I don’t like bitches. That’s just not true. Some of my best friends are bitches. But if she didn’t sound so completely laughable with her deep southern accent when she scolded, “Wahn thang atta tayme, now!” my head would’ve exploded right then and there.

I understand your jobs are shit. And seeing your plaques that read “In Honor of 5 Years of Service,” “In Honor of 10 Years of Service,” “In Honor of 15 Years of Service,” and “In Honor of 20 Years of Service” above your desk everyday has got to just rub you as raw as your inner thighs when you think back to a whole constellation of bad decisions that got you this far in life. But you have insurance—I don’t. Your paycheck—despite my almost Ph.D. compared to your Associates of Secretarial Training (I’m not making this shit up!)—is much more than mine since you’re fulltime and I’m barely part-time.

Is it too much to ask for a little respect? If not for my degrees, professional demeanor, maturity, functionality, then at least for the fact that once, a long time ago, I too served as a secretary/clerk, but that I used my secretarial powers for good and not evil. And that I got out of the secretarial pool to evolve into the super boy-genius you see before you. And I probably type just as fast if not faster than Thou. So fucking do your job and stop telling me how to do mine!

Arrival/Departure

We arrived yesterday morning in Germany without too many travel scars despite the simply lovely family that not only tried to take over our seats before we settled on the plane for the next 8 1/2 hours but also proceeded to talk throughout the entire flight. And by talk I mean whine incessantly, slap one another (mostly a mother-daughter ritual), and--as we from the hills say--holler up a storm. When I logged on to the Internet today I saw a headline about some mother arrested for beating her child on a flight in the US. I followed the link just to see if it was Indira Slapsalotta travelling on to the Gulf States (as in Persian and not "of Mexico"). I felt like hollering myself, "If you don't fuggin behave, I'll turn this plane around. So help me, Allah!" But then I'm not too sure if I'd be able to blog from Guantanamo.

Wiesbaden is even more wonderful and relaxing than it was in December. After a painfully short nap, Stephen and I walked the pedestrian mall, eating a hefty sandwhich at Perfect Day. I also stopped at a couple of bookstores just to see what kinds of gift purchases I could make for my professors who made it possible for me to be here for the next six weeks (by writing letters and suggesting I apply to this program). When Chris and Mary returned from work, we walked back into town for Italian. Last night I slept from 11:00pm until about 5:45am. It was a recent record!

Today we plan more cups of coffee, more casual strolling, perhaps some sweets, and maybe a short visit to one of the old thermal baths--a mainstay of Wiesbaden. (The "bad" in Wiesbaden means bath; it was known as a Roman spa town a couple of thousand years ago.) Tonight we head to Barcelona, where our all-too-short vacation goes to a whole 'nother level.

People Unclear

Over the past few days I've been completely surrounded by people unclear on the concept of how to be adult human beings. For example, when I dropped off my recycling Saturday morning, another man pulled up to drop off his recycling as well. The only problem was that he left his car running while he made several trips from his trunk to the bins. He probably would've done less harm to the world if he would've thrown everything out with the trash and left his car off and in the driveway. Never again will I be concerned that the 25-minute commute to the recycling plant is a waste.

Later that day, after we got out of the free showing of Todo sobre mi madre at the Latino Cultural Center's Pedro Almodóvar film festival, Crazy Bitch #1 started throwing soda cans out her car window as she was driving up North Central Expressway. We took her license and car model, and I'm happy to say this morning I passed that information on the Don't Mess with Texas office. My small vigilante work here is done. (But if someone would like to find out her address and slap the shit out of her, go nuts: 122 JVW (Texas) - Blue Kia Spectra.)

And speaking of nuts, what is going on in the world these days to produce a jock shortage?!?! I was in search of a jock for several days before I finally found one in my size. I wear large, and it's not that I'm a unique shape. Most sports/athletic shops didn't carry a single one; some carried only youth sizes; and a couple had only smalls or XXLs. What's a boy gotta do to get a jock around here? Thank you, Target for carrying the one single large jock in all of Dallas. Now restock so I can buy a second one.

Lord, give me strength...

On her own, Jaime's most noted enemies were the Fembots, a line of powerful androids that she fought twice in the series....

And a little something I wrote years ago.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

So this is what tries to pass itself off as political discourse in the good old US of A: plastic doll Ann Coulter—who tries to pass her brand of uninspired anti-intellectualism off as conservatism—essentially calls Senator John Edwards a faggot. Then she proceeds to enlighten us by declaring, “It isn’t offensive to gays. It has nothing to do with gays. It’s a schoolyard taunt, meaning wuss. And unless you’re telling me that John Edwards is gay, it was not applied to a gay person.”

Overlooking the fact that one of those self-styled conservatives finally admits to being the equivalent of a schoolyard bully, we can’t pass on the fact that according to that useful and erroneous logic, it must be exceptionally acceptable to call said trash-talking bimbo a whore because she isn’t one. Or maybe—even better: how about any of the other inoffensive terms she allegedly isn’t. Nigger? Spick? Chink? Gook? Jap? Wetback? I guess as long as we don’t call her a bitch or a cunt then we’re in the clear. Yet somehow it still doesn't feel appropriate, no matter how inoffensive they appear to her and other bullies who would use them.

The only thing more annoying than that travesty is her sidekick Matt Sanchez, formerly known as gay porn star Rod Majors but currently known simply as Major Tool. Now that he’s been washed in the blood of the neo-con agenda, he declares, “I don't like porn, it reduces the mind, flattens the soul.” I’m thinking that if after such stellar performances in such films as Touched by an Anal, Jawbreaker, Beat Off Frenzy, Laid to Order, Lunch Hour 2: Sweating Grease, Man to Men, Secret Sex 2: The Sex Radicals, among several others, if porn was flattening his soul then perhaps he wasn’t doing it right. Semper Fey, you stupid cocksucker. And remember: it’s only offensive if you are.