CommissionerStraightJacket
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The moose tells me that Marilyn has decided to drop Facebook because so many people have un-friended her and she feels that people weren't reading her etc. She also, I'm told thinks I'm mad at her. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'd welcome a chat with her one of these days. I hope she reads this and contacts me.
Labels: Marilyn
Monday, October 04, 2010
WRAITH
One of my many regrets is that I did not spend enough time with Kiwa and more importantly that I kept London Fog from having as much time with Kiwa as she might have wished out of fear of putting dogs and rabbits together. I now know that the fear of putting these disparate animals, one a natural predator and one natural prey together may have been exaggerated, but I did have a pet white bunny rabbit, whom I never named as anything but 'the long eared galoot' and of whom I was quite fond. The long eared galoot escaped from his cage in what was then TransyHouse and actually made it as far as the yard where he became a Scooby Snack for Kiwa. I'm forced to think about another friend of mine, the late Isaac Bonewits. Isaac liked to joke about how so many of us modern vegetarian peacenik types like to worship nature 'pink in gum and paw.' But, the truth is that nature is not particularly kind to her creations and that Darwin had a point.
In any event last year London Fog and I were driving from Pine Hill, NY to Brooklyn and back a lot and we got into the habit of listening to books on tape on the drive down. One of the best was Seize the Night, by the great Dean Koontz. Dean Koontz has the unfortunate habit of putting a little too much conservative political philosophy into his work for my taste, but at his best he comes close to the brilliance of Steven King, although never with quite King's level of dark humour, on the other hand Koontz is better than King at the art of sticking to a plot and following it through just like they teach you in novel writing classes.
In any event, almost all of Koontz's author's photos on the dust jackets of his books show him with a dog, usually a Lab, and there is almost always a dog who is a major protagonist in his books, usually they are dogs that show signs of great intelligence and often they talk with the well known dog accent of Astor and Scooby Doo as in "Ri ruv rou reorge." In Seize the Night the dog was named Orson and he was a genetically modified mutt that was created by the narrator's mother a sort of mad scientist working in a top secret genetics lab where some secret section of the government's nefarious Department of Secret Science is doing terrible things unleashing unholy mutated zombies such as the priest with lobster claws in a homicidal rage.
So, I was feeling guilty about Kiwa, and favourable to dogs when London Fog and I were walking around Brooklyn on our way to the drug store and saw a very large dog (the size of a small pony) with a blanket on it's back that said "Adopt Me." For whatever reason, I suggested that London Fog and I after getting our prescription, take a look at the dog. This nice Lesbian couple was walking the dog, and one of them apparently worked in an animal shelter. The beast was left in her back yard, and expecting him to be a particularly difficult dog to adopt before the three days a dog can be in the 'shelter' before being executed. I believe lethal injection is the current method.
In a fit of my PETA member, vegetarian desire to save all creature great and small, I persuaded London fog to take Mr. Dog as we came to call him for a 'test walk' and then we decided to take him home on a trial basis. Nathan and Cecilia, who have been living in our basement apartment in Brooklyn (the 'Tranny Cellar' beneath the 'Fairy Palace' Sgt. Jacket and his partner Violet Temper live in on the top two floors) were freaked out by the dog, who had a wild mess of fur all over him making him look rather like a bear, and of course he was big, but he seemed pretty docile and actually was quite a handsome beast after Nathan got a wire dog brush and brushed enough of the fur that he was shedding off of him to make a winter wardrobe. He seemed like a good enough dog that night, and even lay down on the bed and slept with us for a while, before he sort of spoiled the mood by urinating on the wall, but with regular walks he got to be quite good about that sort of thing.
He did have a stubborn streak. Early on when walking him one had to be careful not to force him to go any place he didn't want to go as he would slip the collar and run like hell. We spent several hours on numerous occasions having to chase him and coax him back into our custody. He also could not be left tied up outside. We left him tied by the leash we bought for him and he chewed through the leash and walked back into the house giving us a disgusted look on the way to his room.
It was at this time that we started bringing our friend, the musician Joseph Johnson to our place upstate with the dog and they seemed to bond for a while. On several of these trips we got to listening to another book on tape, this time "Running With the Demon" by Terry Brooks. Another great sci-fi/fantasy read, this novel includes a little girl with magical powers, a mysterious grandmother, a wizard and a spectral dog named Wraith who becomes the little girl's protector. London Fog at one point gestured to the dog asleep in the back of our station wagon and said "I think that's Wraith back there," and so Mr. Dog acquired a first name.
The first sign of trouble came some weeks later when Joseph screamed in the back yard of the house in Brooklyn because he had been kissing Wraith (don't ask, I didn't) and the dog bit his lip badly enough to require fifteen stitches at the emergency room. We all, Joseph included agreed that he must not like to be kissed near the face and we continued as before, although with a bit more caution. During most of this time, Wraith became a better behaved dog, falling into a routine of coming up to one of us with his leash and begging for his walk, shaking paws with us and becoming more used to being 'our' dog. There were times when it was annoying to have to get up at four o clock in the morning in Pine Hill when it was 20 below zero outside and then to have to feed him several different food options before finding which one would stop the barking, but to this too I adjusted.
It wasn't until this past summer that things got quite bad with him biting his backside until it bled profusely until finally we took him to a veternarian who decided that we had to anaestesise the beast and then treat the skin. Upon shaving his back and hindquarters it was discovered that he had some nasty looking running sores all over his back like something one might expect to see in a leper colony. The vet never did determine exactly what the problem was that had caused this condition, but the theories included some sort of flesh eating infection or parasite infestation or even chemical burns. This remains an unsolved mystery.
The second serious biting incident occurred when London Fog sprayed some medicine on the sores as the vet recommended and Wraith turned around and bit her wrist badly enough to require medical attention. We decided that it wasn't the dog's fault as the stuff in the spray bottle must have hurt and he reacted. He allowed London Fog to pet him and to gently rub salve into the sores with no trouble at all.
About a month ago, I was walking him every morning with no trouble at all, until one day morning when I went to put his leash on his collar and he snapped at my hand, biting my wrist much as he had London Fog's and I'm looking at the scars as I type this. I eschewed medical attention, but probably should have had some. A week later when I went to put the leash on his collar he once again snapped at me, biting me enough to require some medical attention even though I was wearing a wool overcoat over a blazer over two heavy sweaters. We tried several strategies from that point, the most important being to always just leave the leash on him.
Last week our car broke down in Brooklyn and there's another funny story for another day on the sheer impossibility of getting a tow truck on the West Side Highway, how apparently the 311 system that Michael Bloomburg instituted so that New Yorkers could get answers to questions about their government has been outsourced to some foreign city, and the joys of getting death threats while trying to push a car onto a tow trailer from some terrorist type dude in a Mercedes
but that's all a digression.
As a consequence of not having a car, when we both had to go to Brooklyn we had to leave the care of Mr. Dog to a friend of ours who also often watches the store for us. Apparently when he picked up the leash the dog bit him very hard and he also had to go to the hospital.
After much agonising, we decided to take to dog to a vet to find out if there was anything to be done short of having him 'put to sleep.' This happened while London Fog was upstate taking care of things while I remained in Brooklyn to participate in a party at The Castle, a wonderful collective of Genderqueer geniuses mostly people in the arts, including some of the brilliant people with whom I had the pleasure of working in TrAntiogne this summer, including Blaise the costume designer of the future, the multi-talented and beautiful Mila Roo, the sound stylings of Chicago and other wonderful people too numerous to mention here.
Sadly the vet decided that since he had seriously bitten five people he would indeed have to be 'put to sleep' as they say. "London Fog called me crying and told me how he had started to go to sleep after one shot, woke up again, and after a second shot had finally fallen asleep for good with his head on her foot.
I find myself feeling very sad as I vacuum dog fur from my floor, as I look at cans of dog food on our pantry shelves and as I repeatedly ask myself if I could have somehow done better by him. London Fog says that we gave him the best year of his life before these tragic events, and I only hope that its true. I know that eventually there will be another dog as one thing I've learned is how much London Fog loves dogs and how much happier we both are when we're walking on the back roads with a furry friend.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Last weekend Isaac and Phaedre Bonewits blessed us with a well received appearance at Pine Hill Books, our wonderful emporium of new and used books at 300 Main Street in beautiful Pine Hill NY. We allso sell videos and vinyl albums and are located in a beautiful mountain community that is one of the most beautiful places in the world to spend a romantic summer weekend exploring our antique shops, hiking trails, and swimming in our beautiful lake.
Isaac has quite a few opinions some of which I think are true if overstated such as the assertion that Gerald Gardner assembled modern day Wicca from bits and pieces of earlier sources such as The Golden Dawn, the works of Aleister Crowley, etc. I question some of his opinions such as that Don Juan from the Carlos Casteneda books never existed, which while possible is by no means a certainty. Like God the existence or lack there of of Don Juan is unprovable. Certainly I have no trouble believing that some dude got high on some good 'shrooms with an old Mexican Indian and wrote down a sort of trips journal that became a best seller. Then again I believe that the Royal family are shape shifting space alien reptiles. Oddly enough Don Juan warned Carlos Castaneda that the world is secretly run by evil reptilian space aliens.
In any case this is Beltane weekend. We're selling books while Caleb runs amok in the park.
Yesterday I was sick as a dog from being in the sun dressed much too warmly and spent the ritual time barfing, which was unfortunate. I'm very sad that Nancy Venus was unable to attend this year, as we just lost this wonderful Lady who has been the heart and soul of Beltane in the Park (a yearly event in Wantaugh Park on Long Island) and she will be dearly missed.
Labels: How many Gardnerians does it take to change a lightbulb?
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Isaac Bonewits the author of Real Magick and the first American to get an accredited college degree in Magick will be reading Tarot and other things at Pine Hill Books
300 Main St.
Pine Hill
next to the Pine Hill Post Officd
845 254 3309 for directions
We look forward to hosting this event. I met Isaac some years ago when he did a reading at Magickal Wonders, having known him previously from 1979-80 somewhere in there at Magickal Childe (formerly the Warlock shop) which hosted a Pagan Way group (a sort of outer Grove for Gardnerians) an OTO group (blessed be and 73) and other wonderful things to numerous to mention.
Labels: Isaac Bonewits
Sunday, February 21, 2010
London Fog surprised me last night by showing me a scurrilous blog by Pauline Bloody Park in which she blatantly defends her actions in by her own admission rigging a phony baloney election for the expressed purpose of getting me out of the 'working group' of NYAGRA.
Some of what she says is true but distorted through a lens of psychotic egomania the rest is nothing but bloody bollocks. It is true that I disagreed with her on the GID diagnosis nor do I particularly enjoy being called a 'white trannsexual elitist'
However she neglects to mention that the crux of our disagreement is that I supported trans inclusion in SONDA wheras she was part of a gang of so-called trans leaders who actively worked against trans inclusion in SONDA and viciously attacked anybody who did support such inclusion. I can only assume that she was bribed to do so by ESPA or somebody similar and/or that she actually believed that trading away trans inclusion for SONDA in return for ESPA's support in getting a transgender civil rights bill passed at the New York City level, a bill incidentally that exempted the city itself from following its own non discrimination guidelines. This meant that trans women could still be discriminated against in the shelter system and the jails where the most frequent incidents of heinous abuse occur.
In retrospect I would not have posted as much information on the listserve as I did, but I do not agree that my posts were irrelevant. I have always advocated forming alliances with other groups in order to garner support for trans civil rights in general and support for trans inclusion in SONDA in particular. In her tirade Park points to a posting about AIDS in Africa failing to report that I was advocating that NYAGRA support ACT-UP's work in this area and in return seek further support from ACT-UP for transgender causes. This is what is known as building coalition. Later on I suggested building a working relationship with NOW which caused Donna Cartwright to attack me with a diatribe in which she said and I quote "NOW is not part of my community" Whether she actually meant to say that people who work towards equality between men and women are not a community with whom she is in sympathy remains unclear.
The egomaniacal Park goes on to complain that I spoke with Wonbo Woo of GLAAD about a disgustingly homophobic cover picture and article by Norah Vincent that appeared in the Village Voice. I don't see where she gets off saying that I can or can't speak to people in GLAAD about anything I damned well please without her permission particularly when I was a card carrying member at the time and had been long before I met Park. She complains that I compromised her negotiations with Wonbo Woo. Well that's just too goddamned bad considering that nobody gave her any legitimate authority to be the only tranny that could talk to GLAAD on behalf of all trannies. She expresses concern that we could be alienating our so-called allies at the Village Voice. With allies that ridicule and humiliate us in a population in which they essentially pimp off of ads from tranny sex workers I've no idea why we need enemies
When NYAGRA showed a lack of will to address the problem with the VOICE in a meaningful way, the Metropolitan Gender Network, which had been the premier trans activist organisation in New York City before Park and Carpetbagger Cartwright darkened our halls had a successful demonstration at the Voice which was supported by Christine Quinn, Rev. Pat Baumgartner of the MCC, the late Bob Kohler of Fed Up Queers and others including the late Sylvia Rivera who despite rumours to the contrary was a trans political activist before Park or even Riki Wilchins had first reared their heads.
There will be more about this crooked lying Stalinist bastard and the psychotic purge of the rest of the board of NYAGRA that followed in future postings on this blog.
Labels: Pauline Bloody Park
Friday, March 27, 2009
'Tis an overcast Friday morning and the commisioner is waiting for the turtle to emerge from the shower and then we go to the Uni an hence home again home again jiggety jiggety.
Then I can run lippity lop to see my bunny rabbits.
I had a nice long talk over a brew with Leonardo Da Vinci last night. He's still designing aircraft and studying the human body.
I'm afraid of China. They seem to be demanding more and more power at our expense first actually warning the U. S. government that they are a major investor and dissatisfied with the way we are conducting our business (i.e. the Chinese government wants to tell us how to run our bloody economy. This is a country that supports slavery in Darfur and has their own people living in cages and shoot people like me for writing blogs like this one. I say that serious thought should be given as to whether our Founding Fathers would be dropping Chinese products into Boston Harbour by now. I see no reason why Michael Phelps should apologise to the the Chinese government for "disgracing" their Olympics---an event at which french fried scorpion's were sold for crying out loud--for smoking a bowl of kind bud right here in the Good Ol' USA. I'm beginning to thing that the government should start seizing Walmart stores as outposts of a hostile foreign power. USA! USA! ALL THE WAY USA!
Labels: Friday
