Lucky

Recently I finished a smashing book by R. J. Ellory, the famed author of the novel A Quiet Belief in Angels. This one is called A Dark and Broken Heart and is essentially about a man so corrupt, both legally and in his heart, that there seems to be no possibility of redemption for him. Nevertheless, as the father of four children, he hopes, if only for them, that he can one day reach redemption for his evil deeds. The novel is the story of his efforts, and it is indeed a dark story. In my work as an attorney, I dealt with many people who had done wrong and wanted to make it right. Yet society seemed to lay so many obstacles in their path. It was as if one bad act changed the nature of your life and society's definition of you, and determined the course of what would be made available to you both publicly and privately. You were now branded a criminal, and evading that title was a mind-numbing task. Too many found it easier to just accept the title and live that life. So, when Totally Oz says he doesn't want to focus on a person's past, I think I do know of where he speaks. And even if speaks not for himself, he raises an interesting point- that we won't let people leave their past behind. This happens in every day life, and it happens most publicly with politicians. There has been some improvement in my lifetime. In many parts of the county, divorce is no longer an automatic bar to public office.Just like gays have had to whittle away at opposition to their rights, so do those with a "past" have to whittle away at both society's bias as well as the bias of individuals who they want to hold important places in their lives. As gays, we can identify with them in many ways, until their past behavior reaches the tips of our own bias, and then we too draw the doors closed on them. I am not talking here of people with serious deviate behaviors, like killing, rape, and other offenses that hurt or even ruin others lives. I am talking about an otherwise "behaved" individual who has a background that makes it difficult for him to advance his life even though he or she has left that behavior behind and now attempts redemption in the eyes of his or her friends and family, and society as a whole. We get to face our own biases when voting for public office, but more often in our private lives when we decide whether or not a person's past bars him from participation in our own everyday lives.

Yes, of course you do. I am not sure if you are following the story closely. Much of the mayor's bad behavior has happened while he is in office-drug buying, crack smoking, drunken behavior, and general crudeness. What a person has done in his past is just one factor to be considered in determining his or her qualifications. Most of us here would find it hard to get elected to anything, including me.

How coincidental. I put a hold on it at the library today. Thanks for your review of the book.

Well, Obama told people one thing, and it wasn't true. Then he rolled out a program that was not ready. This program has his name all over it, you would think he'd get it right.

Huh? I merely asked the question that was flying around Toronto. Eat your curry, Oz. watch out for the MSG!

No, they should be mine.

Well, okay, so his name is not Kennedy, it's Schlossberg, of all things. But dang, if he don't remind me of his grandpa, the late President John F. Kennedy. Here's 20 year-old Patrick Schlossberg at his mom's swearing in as Ambassador to Japan:

Another Democrat Senator tries to undo parts of Obamacare: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/us/politics/senate-democrat-joe-manchin-takes-on-party-leaders.html?hp&_r=0

It is just starting to hit me that Dems are undercutting the president on Obamacare. After the GOP tried so hard to undo it after it became law, will the Dems actually help them out? http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/11/12/dianne-feinstein-joins-bill-to-change-affordable-care-act/ http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Clinton-Obama-should-honor-health-care-pledge-4977273.php

I cannot understand what this is all about, other than some auto-generating plan for college students to get their papers written and in on time.

I like manscaping.

Now we know how Adam smith is able to post as much as he does. Auto-generation while he auto-stimulates.

Having visited Hiroshima and the Peace Museum, with its scale model of the city post-bomb*, the magnitude of the event leads me to join the point of view that the crispy corpses, as defined hereto, cared one wit as to how the state was reached. *Take a room-sized table, put up the model of the city, then wipe it all away, except for a stray building or two.

They have (most likely) working wieners. Their legs can do things mine can only dream of. My knees gave out years before they were even born. I love the jackets! More reasons?

American Ballet Theater just closed out a two-week fall season. Sigh.

Such a lack of interest in Veteran's Day. I guess it's a sign of the times. When were soldiers last popular?

So far no mention of the day we remember all those hunky* young men who gave their lives and their bodies in sacrifice to their country. We may wish that they hadn't.or hadn't needed to, but the result is the same.Thousands of young men who might otherwise be with us are not, and thousands of young children never met their grandfathers or great grandfathers. It's a loss to the entire country. *Since they are lost and gone, and this is a site that appreciates such things, why not let them all be hunks for at least this one day.

I could have done without that picture...

Oh oh-TRAP! Do not fall into? Fall into? One would be embarrassing, the other might make me look cool. Nah. No one is going to think a guy my age is cool. They already guessed that when I said I had something hotter waiting that it was food,.. not a boy! So, to answer Ms. Guy: No, I didn't care for the show.

We all know and like TY and TO. In the past, they have known when to chop a head or give a stern warning. Maybe they don't want the job, but they can do it with many fewer rules and committees. If we start with a pledge of respect and courtesy to each other on the board, why not just go forth with that, and leave the admins the heavy lifting, which we hope will never happen.

"James Franco's Sal chronicles the final hours of the life of actor Sal Mineo, one-time teen idol and star of the blockbuster films Rebel Without a Cause and Exodus." Franco is too old to play Sal, so a muscular young actor named Val Lauren did that. I am not so sure that Mineo was so muscular, nor that he received testosterone shots way back then. (1976) His fame was on the decline and he was trying to push a script that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Frankly, it could have been the script for this movie, which was brutally painful to watch. Boring scenes, bad camera angles, and washed out lighting don't help what was a rather tedious final day for Mineo, whom I adored on the screen and fantasized him getting fucked by James Dean. My date and I walked out before Sal dies, as the movie had Dead On Arrival scrawled across it. It has taken it three years to make the screen, and even that for a free showing with "talk-back" with actor Val Lauren. My date and I had something hotter on our minds, so we left early, along with many others, who were not headed for the scene we had in mind.

Lurker, it's all window dressing.and I love dressing, especially at Thanksgiving. Even the big department stores will soon have pretty displays in their windows.

And here I was trying to pick my favorite coroner!

Same story, but EXPAT had a different take with the headline. But, he was first!

He does that and I am pleased to know he is on the ball. I benefit, too, when he gets us the news first.