Grand Old Nazi Party

We on the left have taken a lot of flack and been accused of hate speech because of our comparing the current Republican party to the Nazis. While it's true that they haven't yet killed 6 million Jews or 5 million gays, gypsies and disabled people, they have only been in power for 5 years. But their balls are getting bigger and bigger by the day. So if anyone tells you it's ludicrous to make the comparison, just point them to these little bits of current events.

Alabama Bill Targets Gay Authors. And not just gay authors, this bill in the Junkyard State would also prohibit state libraries from buying books with gay characters as well. And just think what kind of books would be banned:

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple has lesbian characters.

The fucking Color Purple would be banned. Think about that. I would imagine they could find a way to ban To Kill A Mockingbird since one of the children is based on Truman Capote. In case anyone forgot, this is exactly the kind of thing the Nazi party did in the early 30s - ban/burn books by Jews, gays, leftist, and "intellectuals".

More attacks against homosexuals is happening in Dubya's home state. The Texas state house passed a bill that would ban gays/lesbians/bisexuals from being foster parents. This despite the fact that there are already not enough foster parent to meet the needs of all the parent-less children in the state. And then they pull stupid shit like this:

Talton said his action was prompted by studies regarding the suitability of gays and lesbians to be parents.

"What studies are those," Coleman asked.

Talton thumbed through a pocket-sized, thin book and occasionally read what he said were the results of studies done regarding children and gays and lesbians and told Coleman, "I'll quote you a study if you want to know."

Reading, he said, "It says parents influence the sexual orientation of their children."

He quoted another study, "There was a 14-year study comparing 25 children of 18 lesbian mothers against 21 children of 16 single, heterosexual mothers. When asked what they thought their mothers wanted them to become... 40 percent of the children of lesbian mothers said their mother wanted them to become homosexual."

When asked by the Voice to identify the title of the book from which he read, staff at Talton's Austin office would not say.

Hey, you know what Rep. Talton? I've got a study that says kids who grow up in conservative households grow up to be axe murderers. No, you can't see it or know where it's from. Just trust me. Hitler had a lot of studies that proved Jews were inferior humans. I don't think any of them were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Everyone is still looking for the publication that did the "gay parents are bad" study the Alabama Nazi referred to. I wonder if anyone has looked to see if it is one of Mengele's studies.

And now of course they are threatening judges. First Tom DeLay says the judges who made the Schiavo decision will "answer" for it, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) gives a speech on the floor of the Senate saying its understandable that people are committing violence against judges, and the conservatives are calling for the impeachment or execution of any judge who rules against them:

Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

Wow, that sounds really familiar - Means Used by the Nazi Conspirators in Gaining Control of the German State:

Like all other public officials, German judges who failed to meet Nazi racial and political requirements became the subject of a wide-spread purge. Non-Aryans, political opponents of the Nazis, and all persons suspected of antagonism to the aims of the Party were summarily removed (2967-PS). The provisions of the Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933 applied to all judges. This was declared expressly in the third regulation for the administration of the law. (2867- PS)

I think I've made my point. I'll leave you with this little quote from the Justice Sunday rally held this last weekend. James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, referring to the Roe v. Wade decision said "The biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court".

He made that statement at the same time Jews around the world were celebrating the second night of Passover.

Fuck these people.

To keep up with the lies and hate being spread by these people, bookmark AMERICAblog and Media Matters - For America.

Inside The Out Of Tune Studio

Inside the Actors Studio has taught us so very much that we wanted to know about people. I mean, my life is so much more fulfilled after learning what makes Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lopez tick. But the best part is the oh-so-never pretentious French guy questions at the end. A little known fact is that I was invited on to the show, and did the taping, but it was never aired. Something about the FCC and nipples, I don't know. But I got ahold of a tanscript and want to share with you my answers to the famed questionnaire.


James Lipton: So I know turn to The Questionnaire, first conceptualized (dramatic pause) by my hero (dramatic pause), Bernard (dramatic pause) Pivot...

Out Of Tune: Hey watch the spit there Jimmy.

JL: Sorry, it's hard to say the name of my idol without the appropriate French spittle. So here we go. (dramatic pause). What (dramatic pause) is your favorite (dramatic pause) word?

OOT: Leftist.

JL: What is your LEAST (dramatic pause) favorite word?

OOT: Dubya.

JL: What turns you (dramatic pause) on?

OOT: Why Jim, you looking for a piece of ass?

JL: We'll talk later. What turns (dramatic pause) you (dramatic pause) off?

OOT: Pretentious name dropping talk show hosts with self-importance issues and elephant-sized egos.

JL: Yes, me too..

OOT: I was talking about you, ass wipe.

JL: Ha ha. See kids, I told you he was funny. Reminds me of when I was working at (dramatic pause) Comedia Del Arte with the great (dramatic pause) Maurice Chevalier...

OOT: OK, Jim Jim that's enough, this is about me remember.

JL: Oh yes of course, pardonnez-moi. What (dramatic pause) sound do you love?

OOT: Tom DeLay being smothered by a pillow.

JL: Oh yes, I remember when I had to smother Desdemona in a 1963 production of Othe...

OOT: Let's stay focused Lippy.

JL: Yes of course. What sound do you (dramatic pause) HATE?

OOT: "War on terror" spoken with a fake Texas drawl.

JL: What profession (loooonnnnnng dramatic pause), other than your own, would you like to attempt?

OOT: Wilco roadie. And I'd do it for free. (I know, not really a revelation to anyone)

JL: What profession would you (dramatic pause) NOT like to participate in?

OOT: Reporter/Prostitute for Talon "News".

JL: What is your favorite curse word?

OOT: Doody.

JL: If Heaven exists (extremely long dramatic pause), what would you like to hear GOD say (more dramatic pause) when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

OOT: Thank Me your here! I've got the Pope in a strangle hold and I need someone to kick him in the head a zillion times. Oh, and here's a cosmopolitan for you. There's more at the bar.

JL: And now I'll turn you over to the minions, er... students for Q & A...


I then had to answer 67 questions about "the process".


(c) The New School Actors Studio

Potpourri

Random things on my mind today....

According to the new Pope, he prayed that he wouldn't be the one elected. So we finally found something he's got in common with American Catholics.

Another little tidbit about what this guy has been doing for the last 24 years: He has been the director of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I just learned this weekend what the previous, less PC name of this office was. Take a guess. Anyone? Anyone? You won't believe it.

The Inquisition.

So the Catholic Church never actually got rid of the Inquisition, they just gave it a softer name. Nice.
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This hasn't been a good week for trains. The problems with Amtrak's Acela couldn't come at a worse time, what with Bush trying to destroy it on behalf of his auto and oil buddies. This kind of press we don't need. Looks like Congress will protect it in the end though, so I'm not too worried.

And this morning's wreck in Japan was just horrible. It is one of those things that people like my brother will point to as an example of how unsafe trains are, despite the fact that more people will die in the next hour from car crashes than will all year from train wrecks. What it should tell us is that we need to make sure that all rail lines in this country have modern signal safety upgrades that make these kind of accidents highly unlikely.
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If they allow John Bolton (who thinks the UN should be destroyed) to be the UN Ambassador, then the next Democrat president should be allowed to name Jane Fonda as Secretary of Defense. Makes as much sense. Check out the video John Bolton: In His Own Words at truthout.org. See what we mean?

Democrats are finally united against one of the many fucked up things our ass-hole prez is trying to pull. If you live in a state with any Republican Senators contact them right away and tell them to vote against this insane man.
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Oh, and something the media isn't highlighting enough on the issue of the judicial filibusters the wingnuts are trying to end is this: The Dems have threatened filibusters on a total of ten Bush appointees, and have let 205 get confirmed. Doesn't take a genius to see that comes out to over a 95% confirmation rate. Compare that to the 90s, the right wingers blocked over 40 Clinton nominations just at the appellate level! And we on the left are the ones that get accused of being obstructionists. Ass-holes.
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Something I've been wanting to know lately. When I go to public restrooms and use the urinals I notice that most other guys flush before using it. What is up with that? Is there some secret I don't know about? Maybe someone can explain this to me. If it is to make sure there is no one else's urine in the bowl before hand, why? What the fuck is the danger of a little of your piss mixing with someone else's? Will it explode like one of those grade school volcano projects? Is it that they think they're pee is better than everybody else's and they don't want to contaminate it before they send it on its way to the treatment plant? So confusing. I feel like I'm being left out of some sort of secret club. Is it just me who finds this weird? Seems like a waste of water to me. I'm just sayin'....

Weekend In Shittown

Oh Boston how I hate thee, let me count the ways.....

So my wife was gone for this past weekend and I decided to do a couple of things. On Saturday I went down to Poughkeepsie to visit a really good friend and spend the night there. So that was all good, get out of Boston for a day or so and have a fun time hanging on a college campus. The night before, I decided to check out a local bar. I really love a good bar, but my exploration of the bar scene in Boston has not been very successful to this point. For starters, too many of the bars here are full of college frat types, which is the same exact scene I avoided while I was in college myself and my hatred for frat boys and sorority girls has never waned. So that's one reason I've had a hard time finding a good bar. But there is a bigger reason. You know the opening song to Cheers, "where everybody know your name and they're always glad you came" yadda yadda yadda and what not? Sure you do. Everybody does. And it helped give Boston this reputation for friendly neighborhood bars. Well if you are a twenty-year regular, and they do in fact know your name, they are pretty friendly to you. But if you are a new person walking in the door you might as well be invisible or look like the devil, because you are either ignored or treated with open hostility. So that makes it difficult. And it's a huge change from living in Chicago, where bartenders will treat you like a buddy the first time you walk into a bar by yourself and it's really easy to strike up conversations with people sitting at the bar.

So I gave it another try last Friday. A neighbor had told me about a place called the Red Hat around the corner from our place. Apparently this is the place all the regulars at the real Cheers moved to after that bar became a Hard Rock Cafe-like tourist trap, and I was told they have good food. So I headed out to watch a little bit of the Sox game, sit at a bar, and maybe have a little dinner. I walked in and sat up at the bar. Looked like my kind of place, with a beautiful looking bar area made of wood with great comfortable stools and a couple of TV's with the Red Sox game playing. So far so good. Only a few of people were sitting at the bar so it was a perfect laid-back situation.

As I sat at the bar, the bartender was in the middle of a conversation with a couple of Southie types (think Good Will Hunting without the good looks or the math genius brains). He looked right at me when I sat down and continued talking to his buddies - for about five more fucking minutes before he came over and asked me what I wanted. As he came over he was laughing from the end of the story he just told his buddy, then turned completely stone-faced when he switched to asking me what I wanted. It was like I pissed him off just for sitting down at his bar. And it was like this every time he came to check on me. Which wasn't very often, because I would have an empty beer glass for ten minutes before he would come over and ask me if I wanted another. And even with only four customers at the bar he never remembered what I was drinking. And sitting at the bar everyone there talked to each other and ignored me. Well, didn't ignore per say, more like glanced over wondering if I was some sort of Commie spy trying to steal their souls. And I tried, fuck I tried. When conversation was about the ball game I would throw in some comments here and there about the Sox, or other little tid-bits that usually break the ice in a bar. No go. Best I would get would be a half smile and nod and then they would go right back to talking amongst themselves, and I swear they started talking lower so I couldn't hear them (OK, probably not, but by this point my ego is about three inched tall). I felt like the new kid in grade school who on his first day fell out of his desk or accidentally walked into the girls bathroom and is then shunned by the herd.

So I left. Didn't finish watching the game. Didn't order any food (of course the bartender never asked me if I wanted to order any food anyway).

And then the weekend ended with another reason I hate Boston: the public transportation system. Sunday night I walk up the street to the subway to catch the blue line to the airport and meet my wife when she gets back into town. I get to the platform and wait for the train. There are several people already waiting so I figured one was due any minute. Five, 10, 15 minutes go by and no train. "OK", I'm thinking, "one needs to come right now or I'll be late" We don't have cell phones so this is a bigger problem for me than most people. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty minutes. Lots and lots of people on the platform now, no train has come from either direction. Now I'm fucked. Then we hear an announcement. Unfortunately it sounds just like one of the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. At this point I'm trying to figure out what to do, since I don't have an easy way to call the wife and tell her just to catch a cab and not wait for me to meet her. A few minutes later there is another garbled announcement but this time I am able to make out two words, "disabled train". Fuck!

Somehow, after many calls from a pay phone, I was able to get my wife paged at the airport to tell her what was up and she caught a cab. It was over an hour before the trains had finally started to run again. It would be one thing if this was a rare occurrence, but this happens all the time in Boston. In every other city with rail lines that I've been in, they know how to get around stalled trains by using track crossovers and minimizing the disruption. Not in this stupid town. One little stalled train shuts an entire line down for over an hour.

14 more months, 14 more months, 14 more months.....

Papal Thought Of The Day

The first ballot is done, and I wasn't able to pull two-thirds so the smoke was black rising from the Sistine Chapel.

I was reading about the rules of the conclave and came across a little tidbit I find kind of funny. The Cardinals and the staff at the Vatican take an oath of secrecy to ensure they reveal nothing of the conversations or process of the election of the new Pope. And the penalty for breaking the oath?

Excommunication.

So I'm thinking "Wow, excommunication for a little leak to the press. But raping children or helping to protect child rapists gets you moved to a different, often cushier, post in the church. And you get to keep your pope-voting privileges."

And people ask me why I hate religion....

Pretty Birds

First thing I read this morning in the New York Times is this story about a fresh attack on the "liberal anti-faith judges" by the right wingnut Christians and my head feels like it's going to explode. So I need to think happy thoughts and not get worked into a lather today.

So today I'll tell you about a great little movie my wife and I saw several weeks ago. It's a documentary called The Wild Parrots Of Telegraph Hill, about this guy in San Francisco who befriended a flock of tropical parrots, called cherry-headed conures, that live in the city. Apparently these were pets who escaped or were set free by their owners and have done perfectly fine on their own in the wild, and are even breeding so there are well over a hundred of them in the flock now. So this guy Mark Bittner, who moved to San Francisco in the 70s to be a rock star and mostly has been a bohemian and street musician, started feeding them in the 90s and eventually gained their trust to the point they started eating out of his hands. He then gave most of them names, based mostly on their personalities or physical markings. And he took care of them if they got sick or injured.

He then decided to keep a journal about the birds which he turned into a book. And then an environmental documentary filmmaker heard about him. And she has made a really incredible film. Some wonderful shots of these parrots in the wild and of Bittner interacting with them and you really can see the birds' different personalities. You can see how much this guy falls in love with these birds, and how he's affected when one gets sick and dies or gets caught by a hawk. You'll fall in love with Bittner as much as the birds.

So go see this movie. And read the book. It really is a wonderful story. Go here to see when and where it's playing near you.

Pope Deni I

OK, so after reading all of the stuff that has been written in the news about picking a new Pontiff and how its done and all that I've noticed something. I'm actually eligible to become the Bishop of Rome. It's true. I am a baptized Catholic male. That is the only requirement for Supreme Pontiff. I'm still four months away from being eligible to run for president but I can become Pope next week! Now my odds might being longer than Kucinich '04 but hey, Karol Wojtyla was an unexpected choice too, back in the day. Now it will be an uphill battle for sure, what with my only having been to a Catholic church about twice since I was 10 and those were a funeral and a wedding. So I'm going to have to explain that. And I haven't taken communion since my grandfather's funeral when I was 15, which I think may have been the only time I ever took communion, and don't really want to again since the body of Christ is some foul tasting nasty cardboard thingy. But I have taken communion, so that's covered. I figure after I'm Pope I can switch it to something like rum balls anyway.

But I'm going to have to change a lot of my ways and make some serious campaign promises if I plan to pull off the big upset next week.

First, I don't hate women enough. So I'll have to pledge to continue the long tradition of treating women as second class citizens. Sorry girls, that means no priesthoods or reasonable family planning for you. And I'll need to find a way to tell my wife that after all those years of medical school and training she'll need to now dedicate her life to raising children since that's all women are supposed to be good for.

Then there's the pretend caring about the poor. I figure what I need to do this weekend is get a good photo-op with a dirty poor family. I can find some HIV-positive single mother with twelve kids somewhere and preach to her about morals and tell her what a good Catholic she is for not using those evil condoms to save her from her disease and having more children than she could afford as I bless her forehead with my bejeweled hand. I'll then take my leave back to my castle by way of bullet-proof limousine for my nightly seven course meal served on sterling silver by faithful butlers amid billions of dollars of centuries old art before retiring to my feather bed with silk sheets, where I fall asleep while watching The Daily Show on my satellite TV and looking over the church's stock portfolio. That will give me a great image of caring for the poor.

And then there's the fags. Now my attitude towards them has been waaaaayyyy off church teaching for a long time, so I'll have to lose all my gay friends. This will make my social circle significantly smaller but the tradeoff is that so many more people will be kissing my hand everyday. So that's cool. I'll have to wiggle my way through the reasoning behind condemning gays while protecting child rapists, but the American Bishops have already got that covered for me. We just blame the fags for the child rapes instead of the Cardinals who moved them from school to school. Kill two birds with one stone. Sweet.

Looks like I've got a long weekend ahead of me. I'll need to have a strong kick-off to my campaign. I've got to make up for a lot of years of neglecting my Catholic duty of oppressing and demonizing women, gays and rape victims. Most of my competition are years ahead of me. But maybe, just maybe, with a little hard work that white smoke you see coming from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel could be me.

For my name I've decided I will call myself Pope Junipero Serra I, in honor of the 18th Century Franciscan priest. He's the one that ran missions in California where he enslaved Native Americans, forced them to convert to Christianity (sometimes at gunpoint), shackled and whipped them for disobedience, and hunted them down if they ran away from the mission. John Paul II beatified him (one step 'til Sainthood!) in 1987.

Smack This

So lunch today was incredibly annoying. I always take a late lunch at the place where I'm temping because, well as you can probably tell, I'm not really fond of most people and there are too many of them in the lunch room at the noon hour. The only problem is sometimes this woman who works in the office also sometimes takes a late lunch. I won't use her real name, let's just call her Smacky. I try to not be there when she is but today was unavoidable. This woman, in her 40s at least, can not eat with her mouth closed. And she smacks her mouth like crazy. Loud. There can be two other people talking in the room and still all I can hear is her. Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, smack. And I'm not talking one of those people who just does it on some or even a lot of her chews. Were talking about every single up/down with the jaw. Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack. It is like some kind of Chinese torture method. Has no one ever told her? How can you make it this far in life and not know to close your mouth when you chew? Did she not have any parents, or get lost in the jungle as a baby and raised by apes until her eventual rescue by big game hunters who found her as a teenager one day slinging poop in the wild? Was smacking lips the one ape-like behavior they were not able to cleanse during her rehabilitation to the civilized world? Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack. Oh god, please stop. Its killing me. My thoughts turn to jumping on top of her, grabbing the taco salad fork out of her hands and jabbing it in her throat, screaming "CLOSE YOUR FUCKING MOUTH CLOSE YOUR FUCKING MOUTH I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE SMACK THIS YOU STUPID BITCH AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" And then start slapping her across the face over and over and over. Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack.......


So how's your day going?

...And Purple Smoke Means "Send Snacks"

This just in from CNN: The Pope is still dead.

Breaking news from MSNBC: There is no new Pope yet. We have no idea when there will be one.

Hot story from CNBC: The Pope was Polish and Catholic.

FOX: We love the Pope. The Pope is great. We love him like Reagan and Bush. A great conservative that Pope was. We've always loved him, despite the things we've said about him in the past. (here too)

While it may be fascinating for some people, though I don't know who, to still be droning on and on about one guy's death for the past five days (six for FOX, since they "confirmed" his death 26 hours early) there is some actual news to report that the 24-hour channels seem to want to ignore. Seriously, you have to be dying or dead to get on the news these days. And there seems to be no end, news of Schiavo was replaced by Pope, who is now briefly interrupted to talk about Prince Rainier (why can't these "professional journalists" take two seconds to learn the correct way to pronounce his name?) and a small mention of Saul Bellow, and then back to the Pope. They should start calling them the "24-hour obituary channels". I'm trying to decide if it's better or worse than 24/7 Michael Jackson trial.

Here are some stories that are kind of flying under the radar that have a lot more impact on people's lives than a stranger's feeding tube or a dead gay-bashing misogynist.

More and more things keep coming out about the ethically and morally challenged Tom DeLay. Today's Washington Post article about a trip DeLay took in 1997 that he claimed was paid for by a non-profit group. Turns out that it was only filtered through that group from a company registered in the Bahamas that did extensive lobbying for Russian interest. This breaks not one, but two House ethics rules. Congress is not allowed to have trips paid for by either lobbyist or foreign interests. This follows two other trips already being investigated for the same reasons, involving Indian gaming lobbyists and a Korean businessman, among others. And there's also this story from the New York Times about how his whole family is lining their pockets with cash from his own PAC and campaign committees, to the tune of over $500,000 in the last four years. I guess it's good to be married to DeLay, except for the sex with a troll-like man part.

Potential vote-rigging in Zimbabwe. Widely unpopular leader wins an election landslide, where no international observers were allowed except for his allies from neighboring countries. And before the election there were allegations of opposition intimidation and a crackdown on the media to make sure no negative stories were done on the ruling party. Basically all I've heard from the news channels is that Zimbabwe voted and the incumbent won.

Oh yeah, by the way, the Iraqi government appointed a president.

And something that should be one of the biggest stories in the media right now should be the comments made by Sen. John Cornyn(R-TX) saying he understands why people want to shoot judges, with all those liberal activist rulings and such. You've got to see it to believe it. Go here and then click on the link for the video. Here's a little taste.

SENATOR JOHN CORNYN: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence." (Senate Floor, 4/4/05)

If you ask me (I know, you didn't), we should be seeing a lot more conversations and interviews about whether or not this guy should be impeached or resign instead of what the color of the smoke means during the Cardinal Conclave.

OK, that's all I've got for now. We now return to talking about the Pope single handily defeating Communism with small interruptions about Michael Jackson's showering practices.

Come Together

Well, it finally happened. The impossible. Leaders of three major world religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, have come together for a common cause. Putting their differences and mistrust of each other aside, they are standing as one. What could make this miracle of miracles happen you ask? The fight against poverty? The horrible crime of sex-slavery? The AIDS pandemic? The oppression of women worldwide? The sudden realization that they all worship the same god? All wonderful reasons to come together and break bread with your fellow man, but no. The common thread that has brought these three religions together is they all agree that they hate queers. It seems that there is going to be an event in Jerusalem called WorldPride 2005, which is an international festival promoting gay rights and tolerance. The theme of the festival is "Love Without Borders", and these religious leaders will have none of that. So they called a press conference. And these "holy men" stood together as one to condemn the event. It was a very serious occasion, but the mood was lightened somewhat by the comedic stylings of American Orthodox rabbi Yehuda Levin, who zinged the crowd with his amazing one-liner "This is not a homo-land. This is the Holy Land". I hear he'll be playing the Catskills all month. Though I would tell him to leave out the follow-up joke about spiritual rape, you should end the show with your "A" material.

I can't believe this is all it took to bring these religious foes together, a little homophobia. Heck, they've shared a common goal of oppressing women for years and even that didn't bring them together (I suppose different methods of oppression were a sticking point). The festival hasn't even begun yet, there are still months to go, and it is already bringing the world's religions together with just the promise of a few gay films and a little parade. Imagine what else could be done with even more stimuli. So here's my urge to the attendees of the festival, all in the name of peace in the Middle East: Go gay nuts! If the mere thought of your presence can bring these centuries-old enemies together for a short press conference, just imagine what you can do if you really gay it up. And I'm not just talking about men with handlebar mustaches in leather hats or chicks in overalls with buzz cuts. I'm talking blow jobs at the wailing wall, anal sex in the Temple Mount, lesbian orgy in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (but keep your heads covered girls, you must humble yourself before the lord), and drag shows (with music by Deee-Lite!) at the Dome of the Rock. Maybe then there will finally be peace in the Middle East. Carter couldn't do it. Clinton and Bush couldn't do it. But maybe, just maybe, Harvey Fierstein and Melissa Etheridge, et al, can.