Bobservations

While in Portland, we decided to use the MAX trains to get from our hotel into the downtown area. It would be easier than driving in, fighting the traffic, and then hunting for parking; plus, once in the city, you can hop on the light rail to get to different areas. It was perfect.

We were shuttled from the hotel to a transit center, found the correct line, and waited for the train. We easily found a seat when the train arrived and settled down for the short trip. At one stop, a young girl got on, walked by me and sat down two seats away. A young man was sitting across from her, his skateboard on the floor, when the young girl snorted a wad of phlegm into her throat and then spit it on the kid’s board.

The kid went nuts, screaming at her, and demanded that she use her shirt to wipe the loogie from his board. The two began screaming at one another and I turned to Carlos and whispered:

“At the next stop, run for the doors.”

“I can’t see the doors.”

“Run to your right, then right again, and through the doors.

“I can’t see the doors.”

“Okay then. I’m gonna run. Text me when you get to safety.”

Good times.

PS The girl cleaned the loogie and the boarder got off at the next stop.

This one goes back to March 2011. Shortly after the arrival of Consuelo:

“Consuelo Roca Jones: #11 of 1500

When we adopted Miss Jones, they gave us a small bag of cat food, and this toy. It has a ball that runs through a channel, and lights up as it does so, with a scratch pad in the center.

Little Miss Jones loves to bat the ball around and watch it light up.

We also bought another scratching tool for her, but Tuxedo has taken to it most of all. he loves to sit in it, play under, lay atop it, but, most of all, guard it from the other cats.

That's my boy!”

I love how Tuxedo is not using it as a scratching post, but is just sitting there daring Consuelo to try and come on it. It was, and still is in many ways, Tuxedo’s world.

This is what common sense looks like … students in Massachusetts will get free lunch and breakfast at school thanks to a new 4% tax on people who earn more than $1 million after voters passed a constitutional amendment for that additional 4% state income tax on wealthy people.

PS 4% is $40,000; a drop in the bucket to feed children.

After Jason Aldean released his bigoted, gun-toting anthem to hillbillies and toothless cousin fuckers—a song that roared to the top of the charts and then dropped just as quickly—fellow country singer Chris Houseman showed Aldean how it’s done with his song, “Blueneck”:

Grew up with cornfields in every direction

That's where I learned all of my lessons

About life and living without fences

In the land of the free to have opinions

 If you work a job, you oughta make a livin'

George Straight or George Gay, there's no difference

People need help and I think that we should listen

 Three chords and my truth is

I'm a good ole boy with a bleeding heart

Just a homegrown hick with a hybrid car

I think y'all means all and I know we all

Just wanna know that we belong

There's a lot more color in the mix

When you're loud and proud out in the sticks

I am what I am, you get what you get

 Yeah, I guess I'm a red state Blueneck

My American dream is wide open spaces

Plenty of room for us all to be safe in

Yeah, that's a future that I'm chasin'

So I'm gonna go make it

 And that’s the America I believe in …

As I said on Tuesday of this week, first thing in the morning:

“I wonder just how drunk Rudy Giuliani is right now.”

And I laughed. From America’s Mayor to America’s Drunk Criminally Indicted Uncle in twenty years.

Last January, Abigail Zwerner was shot in her classroom at Richneck Elementary  by a 6-year-old student and is now suing the school district for $40 million.

Now, I found that a bit excessive until I read that the school district is arguing that Zwerner is only entitled to file a worker’s compensation claim because the injury she sustained from the shooting is a “workplace injury,” and that the shooting was a hazard of the job.

Yes, they want to set a precedent that a teacher should expect that getting shot is one of the dangers of her job and therefore she cannot sue.

Now I want her to sue for $400 million.

Speaking of guns, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat of course, approved a measure that would allow firearm retailers or manufacturers to be sued for marketing guns to people under 18 and promoting other improper marketing ploys geared toward the sale of weapons.

The law also allows civil action against the firearms businesses if they’re found to have marketed guns for unlawful paramilitary or private militia-related activities.

Good first step. Now, ban all assault weapons.

Tomás González, a Chilean Olympic gymnast, a bendy little nugget, has come out in his autobiography, "Champion: Lessons, Triumphs and Talls of an Olympic Gymnast":

"I suppose it is no longer an issue, but yes, I am gay. And if it is about making it public, I prefer to do it in this book.”

González realized he was gay when he 24, but coming from a traditional family did not make it easy to be openly gay; it also didn’t help that he experienced abuse in the sport where “machismo and homophobia are problems that exist in society and in the gym as well."  But the better news is Tomás González has been in a relationship for six years and hopes to marry and have a family:

"We all work, pay taxes, have a role in society. So, I want to have the same rights as any citizen. Regardless of any sexual orientation, we all have to have the same rights."

Welcome Out, Tomás, and please accept as our gift, from HOMO HQ, the Official Coming Out Toaster Oven and a copy of The Gay Agenda.

Welcome Out.

And here we have dancer and model Josh Fine, also bendy, and maybe a little fine, too, but the real question is: Would You Hit It?