Five I like
Five I dislike
Yes, yes, indeed, there are few gorgeous hunks there, but guys, that’s not a primary reason, believe me.
What I like is that it is basically a story about – difference.
And learning to accept it and live with it.
Cylons are the metaphor for that difference. I have a crush on them, even on Tricia Helfer (what an appearance, simply WOW). I like their ambiguous attitude towards humans. Hating and fearing them on one side, admiring them and wanting to be like them on the other. Reminds me of ambiguity I as young gay lad felt towards my own cousins and straight friends during college years (there were days when I thought I would gladly spend my whole life in a lie, just to avoid being rejected by close ones).
Second fact I like is that, unlike in many other Sci Fi series, humans are portrayed very realistically and definitely not superior to their enemies. They are dirty, weak, frightened, drunk, vain, lying, cruel, superficial, violent, vengeful and quite often treacherous. Just as in a real life. And quite often they have no idea whatsoever what to do in that middle of everything called the Universe.
And yes, they got their asses whipped pretty well and bright red by Cylons at the very beginning of the series. No more we-can-do-everything style officers, like Kirk, Spock or that annoying ubermensch Picard with his notorious and sometimes even more annoying pet laptop, Data.
Thirdly, there is no classical good-versus-bad dichotomy. Everyone has bright and dark moments, on all sides. Just like in real life. And at some point you can hardly differentiate humans from their designed nemesis, the Cylons. Not that their differences ceased to exist. Simply that their similarities (imperfections, one would say) at some point begun to outnumber the differences. And that is another correspondence with the straight-versus-queer dichotomy in the real world.
Yap, there are few significant differences and there is no point denying or neglecting them. But there are much more similarities among folks in general, both straight and queer, and they are worth noticing too.
As I logged on Yahoo just few moments ago, to get my daily dosage of porn, a pretty face of Paris Hilton, signing her own petition to Arnie to pardon her from her recent prison sentence, drew my attention.
While struggling with the subscript font in which the article about the heroine of the House of Wax is published, I noticed another headline on the same webpage, which almost immediately generated another click of mine on Yahoo and, presumably, brought few dimes more to their Sales and Marketing department. The headline was: “The Casette Tape – 1963 – 2007”.
Well, if Zarathustra happened to be surprised when they told him something about an ancient god of theirs being dead, the news that the good old lady Tape just passed away stunned me too. She (in the rest of this post I intend to keep writing about the Tape as it is a female, since in my native language it definitely belongs among nouns of the feminine gender) and I had few good years together. Not that our sex life was very exciting, though. Still, long before MP3, Ipod, and e-Music came along, she and I collected, shared and enjoyed music and thoughts many would consider bizarre and eccentric.
Yes, it has been a very, very long time indeed since I last used her memory capabilities to listen to some music. And, if my memory serves me well, it happened to be Aram Khacaturyan’s “Masquerade” on some cheap 60-min long Tape imported from (of course) Far East. (On second thought, there is a certain symbolic meaning in that … what else would do for a queer like me better than a masquerade, heh?). The Tape Player “chew” her well before the Waltz was over. There are living members of my family claiming that the fact that I listened sequentially the very same Tape some 20 times contributes to that peculiar and most inappropriate hunger of the late Tape Player. Still, I’m not convinced …
Anyway, she’s gone. What should a queer like me say on such occasion, except to quote queer’s all time favorite? Thank you for the Music! 
Embarking I am on a strange journey tonight, my fellow guests. Started writing without knowing where and how it will end. At least, I know the topic. Fatherhood.
Recently I found that I will not become a father as I expected and hoped for, after all. Well, that may sound a bit strange, taking into account what I am, but, honestly, desire to have a child should not be strange at all, at least from my point of perspective.
Desire to conceive and have a child and become a parent is something that comes naturally to many people, and I do not consider myself an exception. I guess it has something to do with one’s need to love, to give and to share. To love another human being unconditionally, to give one’s life a new purpose and to share that very life with someone who needs both all that love and help to start a life of his/her own. And that desire has nothing to do with another desire, one that attracts us to sexual partners, either of opposite or the same sex. Well, what I want to say is that the fact that one is gay or lesbian does not disable that person from ability to be a parent and have a child. There are many different kinds of love, one not excluding the other.
Love you feel for your partner, whether it is a husband, a wife, a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or even just a mate is something entirely different from the love you feel for your parents, which is different from the love you feel for your children and the love you feel for your country.
I’ve been thinking about having a child for quite a long time. Yes, when you’re gay, it is not easy, you do not engage in sexual relations with women that might result in pregnancy and, eventually, new baby being born. You are also often challenged by many obstacles, social misunderstanding, prejudices and complete social insecurity when it comes to rights of participation in the upbringing. But that all does not matter, you still want yourself a pretty little baby. Want to see it smile happily, want to hold it, to see it grow and glow.
At this time of the year an ancient, presumably pagan custom takes a new form in the civilization in which I live. The Carnival, a place and time to hide ourselves behind masks and behave and talk as we usually do not do throughout the year.
Never was much into carnivals, I have to admit. Maybe because the whole life of a “fuckn’ faggot” like me (at least of my age) is pretty much something like it (well, if not a full-time masquerade, than definitely something well-hidden).
It has been a week since I wrote my last entry into this blog of mine. Time does fly by quickly. I browsed a bit my photo album today, dating all the way back to 2001, when I got my first digital camera. What struck me most is not the aging that one can notice on my face or the faces of my loved ones, but the fact that many of events depicted on these photos do not seem so far away at all. Few weeks only, I’d say. But count years instead of weeks, in reality.
Yeah, I do like shooting photos. It’s basically about saving, preserving life, freezing a moment in time (the way I saw it) for later usage, for revival. With a bit of exhibitionism in it, I presume. Just like blogging. Even though it takes much more time to write a decent blog than to make a snapshot of a moment worth remembering.
Unfortunately, there is not much to photograph in January and February, winter is still around and forests are left fully naked and leafless out in the cold. Sky is occasionally clean, on those freezing days when cold Asian winds blowing all the way from Siberia scatter the clouds around, but much more often is just plain grey, dark and foggy, with hidden Sun no brighter than a midnight Moon.
Oh, yeah, I neither pretend nor intend to be an artist. I’m just an amateur that simply wants to learn how to make good photos (or at least photos better than those I used to shoot before), to have fun and feel good while shooting and to have fun and feel good when browsing photo album, reminiscing memories. I did read several books about digital photography and learned something about selecting and combining elements, but, I never edit my photos (except for resizing purposes, okay). No Photoshop around here, no playing with contrast, brightness or saturation on the photo.
Just WISIWYG – What I see is what you get.
Venus for Romans, Aphrodite for Greeks, Freia for Germans, much admired goddess of love still brings us week-end joy on Venerdi, Vendredi, Freitag or Friday afternoon almost 15 centuries after our ancestors expelled her, together with other ancient gods from their temples and basilicas into paper and marble, myths and stories.
Hail Venus, bringer of joy!
Hail Venus, destroyer of Troy.
You know, deity, as a young boy learning about you, your affair with that handsome god of war and your children, I was wondering how Love could bring life to things like Horror and Fear. It took me quite a long time to figure it out.
And, as good old Freddie would say: “It’s so easy!”
The paralyzing fear of losing the one you love and the horror of not being loved (any more or at all) cannot be felt and understood before you actually fell in love.
Love. Yap, if sex is a crime, you ought to be a punishment. Even handless, you leave us headless, goddess…
Today is January the 31st. On this day back in 1606 Catholic insurgent Guy Fawkes was executed (actually hanged, drawn and quartered, in so typically subtle English manner) for trying to blow up in the air the Parliament of England. Pretty much the same institution Puritan Cromwell will dissolve less than 50 years later.
I always felt sorry for Fawkes, for Mary Stuart, beheaded by three blows upon orders of Elisabeth, and for her grandson Charles, beheaded upon orders of that same Cromwell. And for many other historical figures who were tortured and killed throughout history. Yes, I used to be a good man. Well, if not good, than definitely better than I am now. I mean, I used to think that people around me are generally good persons. So, I did my best to be as good to them as possible. As I grew old, I found that human beings are generally bad, often evil, deceiving, unreliable, selfish, incompetent, arrogant and cruel. That used to surprise me and cause me profound sorrow for quite some time, but, it turned out that I’m not unable to adapt after all. I became a profound and honest cynic, half-full of disgust and distrust towards many others, even when meeting them for the very first time. And much more determined to ferociously defend what’s mine than before. My younger bro’ has shown me today an unpleasant e-mail he got earlier in the morning from one of his colleagues in the office. Man, what an aggression I’ve felt towards person I’ve never seen in my entire life! Such strong desire to hurt someone used to embarrass me profoundly even only a year or two ago. Today, I am not ashamed any more to admit to myself this “beast hurling within”. I even dare (even though this is supposedly an anonymous blog) to admit it publicly. What would I do if I really met this unknown person in a real life? Would I hurt that stranger somehow? And, if the answer to the previous question is yes: how? I remember a friend of mine who told me not so long ago; “What I like about you is that you never forget one thing: revenge is a dish that is best served cold!”
Yap, I’m finally growing up, leaving behind all illusions, innocence (not just of the body, but even more of the soul) and, ultimately, hope. Learning to live with all these losses, as it is something perfectly normal. Well, it was quite about time, for someone already deep in his forties.
Hello, World! Call me Hal. Is that my real name? Of course it isn’t. But, what’s in a name anyway? So, why Hal? A long. long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away someone tried to teach me computer programming. And the book started with writing “Hello World!” on the screen. Which was quite about everything I learned about programming. And the most notorious computer known to me is Hal the Murderer from “Space Odyssey 2001″. Didn’t like the movie. Can’t like something that you watch for three times trying to figure out what the hell is it all about, and still have no clue whatsoever. So, let it be Hal. For the time being.
I’m Caucasian, male. I’m pretty sure that my ancestors swept the Romans out of their Empire some 1.600 years ago. I’m not as old as I intend to become but am much older than I feel and should be. I’m brown, I’m cut, I’m gay and I am not very fond of blogging. Feels like wanking in public, to be honest. And wanking in public is almost always and everywhere prohibited. Which is why so many people enjoy doing it, I presume.
So, why do I blog, after all? For several reasons. To practice my English (yeah, not my native language). To record thoughts and memories in a vain (yet so human) attempt to create something that may outlive me. To share memories with friends to whom I do not write as often as I should. To claim that I write, therefore I think. To force myself to dedicate a small portion of my daytime to sit back and contemplate a bit about the day gone by and events and thoughts worth remembering. To expose myself publicly, yap, and probably (hopefully) after some time stop feeling so embarrassed about it. To jump out of the closet and say something about the difference that may be not so different as many would think.
And who the hell is Cioran? A Romanian philosopher. His “Extimate Diaries” (where “extimate” serves as the very opposite of “intimate”) were the very first blog in history. Even before the Internet era and the rise of blogging.
