Non-sexual in Illinois

This is the shit I am talking about. On one of the AVEN discussion boards, this was posted:

well my title syas its all. i am not really asexual..i just need sex once in a blue moon with complete strangers....however i am very romantic and can enjoy female company equally well....and thouh gay, i always see myself having wife and kids....so how does it matter about my sexuality when i am almost asexual..

That is NOT what asexuality is....AT ALL....typos are as made.

Ineffable



So what does this symbol have to do with anything. Well, it seems like the once laughed-at, mocked, and misunderstood group of people who called themselves asexuals and - most unfavorably - human amoebas are gaining in number and visibility on the internet. That is the symbol they have chosen to represent Asexuals (care of AVEN ). More on the symbol later...

What I do want to express is a sense of relief and amazement that after all these years my jokes and feelings are actually real and not some biblical plague or miracle. It is not something to be ridiculed as non-existent or simply as a means to an end. After all, it was less than 30-40 years ago that people and professionals were looking at homosexuality in the same way; as some aberrant disease or psychological problem. Asexuality is a real thing.

Well, what is it, you ask.

To put it simply - and there are different variations - asexuals are sexually arousable (meaning the equipment ain't broken) and have a desire to be intimate, BUT there is no sexual attraction. There is no spark, no need to fuck or be fucked when looking at a male or female. It is not something that is voluntarily avoided or looked at with disgust, there simply is no need or desire to have sex or be sexually attracted. It is not something I think about, it is just something I know. Yes, I have tried my hand at dating and messing around. Non-asexuals don't get it and thus get frustrated by a lack of physical intimacy....I know thsi first-hand. All these years I hated being touched and hugged which was also another sign pointing to this as it is one of the characteristics.

Yeah, people dimiss it as, "You're just hiding that you are gay." And I take offense when people call it the "new gay." People cannot get past their ideas of dualities and binary oppositions: male/female, hot/cold, gay/straight, black/white. We have semantically fucked ourselves into a corner of ignorance thereby allowing anything new or not paired to be deemed as not the norm and as marginalized. Consider hermaphrodites and transexuals. They are considered on the fringe. There is no room for them sexually or genderly (yeah, I know that is not a word).

What bothers me about those who consider themselves asexual is that people who have psychological blocks to physical intimacy DO NOT fit into this category. Those who give up a life of sex or sexual addiciton in favor of celibacy DO NOT fit into this category. Asexuals are born that way. There is no decision. And much like my view of homosexuality being a case of nature, I feel the same about asexuality. It makes sense to me because it is what I live with every day. It is normal to me.

Ignorant people who can't seem to get their minds around it because of this need to fill a hole or have a hole filled, do nothing but increase the misunderstanding. Those who are seemingly so intelligent but who don't have the foresight or patience to understand this are no better than bigots. And those who just won't accept it because it makes no sense and why wouldn't everyone want to be a sex fiend are just as pathetic as racists. Extremes I know, but I am continually surprised by people, some of whom are in my life, who just make the jokes, dismiss it, or say "whatever" as a means to understand it or ignore it. To them, because it does not fit into their world of dichotomies, it is fake and psychologically constructed. Let the hegemonic struggle begin, I say (look Sara, post-structuralism in my blog....wheeeeeeeee!).

I have been lucky enough to have friends who ask the questions, who try to understand, who are sometimes envious (as if they think this is so easy...only by a fraction), who look at me quizically but try to wrap their heads around it. If they don't get it, at least they are trying to, and therefore respect who I am as a person and what this means in my life.

I don't expect people to get it. I don't expect them to like it. I expect the same thing I always got: being dismissed as a raging homosexual stuck in a big closet. And if I gave a damn all these years about what people thought, I would be no better off than those who stand idly by like sheep when their fellow men are taken off to slaughter.

I am happy there is a place for asexuals. I am happy I found the sites and the places where they can meet and create a discourse. And like everything else, there will be a weeding process. I can only hope that as the movement for understanding grows that more people become aware and stop acting like a bunch of fools who can't see anything beyond the sexual organs that they use to define themselves.

Feel free to comment or question.

Oh, and the symbol....I think it is rather stupid for AVEN to adopt that as the asexual symbol as it is just the gay symbol filled a quarter of the way with purple ink instead of a full on pink triangle. Helloooooooooooo??? Are we not trying to disassociate ourselves with current dualities. Pick something new folks.

Everybody Got Their Something



I absolutely love this woman. I love her personality, her style, her attitude, and most of all, her music. I always go hunting on P2P programs to find tracks from underground albums or cut songs and I cannot say there is not a song that I do not like. I have been waiting FOREVER for her to release a new album and it is finally happening on May 24th. I have heard snippets and it is going to be the SHIT. I cannot wait!

Finally got the last bits of design stuff done for the blog. I like it. Not sure how long I will keep it.

Poor Baby V is gone from A.I. It definitely should have gone down to her and Bo, but white southerners from Christian towns and Baby V from Fort Meyers....oh well. No matter what, all three of them are going to get record deals. They are so different in voice and style that they would do well in their respective markets.

Got my iPod....it's niiiiiiiiiiiiiice. me gusta.nikka.bmp

Summer Changes....Version 4

Well...this is version 4 of the blog. Back to the basic white but a little twist to it. Kinda like political cartoon meets modern art meets talk-blog meets a no holds-barred-screw-you interface.

Of course, I am also working on another one I may use instead. I know there are some wonky bits here and there. Still working on it all.

CNN.com - Zellweger marries country star - May 9, 2005

WHAT?????

Who even saw THIS coming????

All the Little Green Men

CNN.com - Hunt?for extrasolar planets turns to Earth-size worlds - May 9, 2005

Wouldn't it be great if we finally discover life on another planet? I cannot possibly imagine that in this entire universe our planet is the only inhabited one. Of course, how sad would that be given our planet. To think that we are the only ones around, is of course, just ignorant and brash. Can you imagine the social and religious implications of finding life and making contact. The destruction of all religious dogma and political superiority. Tee hee.

Of course, this new life may also feast on human brains and dominate the world, but whatever...

Family Guy is Freakin' Sweet



Ok, the new episodes of Family Guy are absolutely hysterical. I was not sure how good they were going to be compared to the first three seasons, but two episodes in and I am laughin my ass off. I actually spat out my cereal tonight during a scene when Stewie farts and pops a blood vessel. Oh good lord. Everyone must watch this show if for no other reason but to assure high rates and longevity.

Living the Real Life....Or are they?

It is no secret to those close in my life that I enjoy watching reality TV. Not all programs, but most of them. Why? Aside from it being hilarious watching what other people do and how some shows pass of as being real when they are contrived andsscripted, as a person who studies, teaches and talks about pop culture, I would be an idiot to eschew and poo-poo what has become so idiomatic about modern life, media, and talk-politics. Sometimes all I need is some good brainless fun that I can really sink my teeth into as if I were some raging testosterone freak watching a football game (really...what IS the difference). What astounds me though, aside from how many different kinds of reality TV shows come out every season, is the fact that some people really do consider them real.

Take, for example, "The Real World." You know, the MTV show where 7 strangers are put together in a house and the cameras capture everything. What happens daily over a 6-month period is edited down to 22 30-minute episodes, including commercial breaks. Anyone with half a brain can see that what we are watching is at the producers' discretion. They are creating the reality of that house and the events through their own machinations. Do the events really happen? Yes. Are we necessarily seeing them happen chronologically or in "real" time. I doubt it. An argument that could last for 3 hours can be extended to some 3-week grudge. I realize that these are all human constructs. I never believe for one second that it is all "real." But it is still damn fun to watch. Of course, it is sad that over the last 8 years the show has gone from real people to the perpetuation of the myth that only pretty people exist. I have yet to see anyone unattractive, overweight, or handicapped on that show. You want real TV, offer a cross-section of society.

What astounds me even more, and this moves beyond reality TV, is how some people equate whatever they see in the media - mostly TV and movies - as being any kind of real life. Movies and TV shows are built around stereotypes and myths. And while those two things at some point came out of some true situation, however miniscule, to accept that as law and expect your life to be the same is ludicrous. We excuse our behaviors or make our decisions because that is what they do on TV. And nothing happens to those people at all. They foul up, shed a few tears, and then end up at the local watering hole laughing it up. Our problems don't, unfortunately, get solved in 30 or 60 minutes with some indie band playing in the background of our life.

So we excuse our insecurities, banal words, assinine behaviors and disassociative lives by allowing TV and movies to be our template and false idol. We fuck up and act like assholes because obviously nothing will happen. We lie, we hurt, we act a fool and show our asses because what could possibly go wrong. It is these same deluded people that really offer nothing else to society other than a reason to point and laugh. But who is better off? Sometimes I feel that ignorance truly is bliss, even if it is voluntary. But hell, I would rather suffer the slings and arrows of real life and grow and try to be a real human being that delude myself and find myself alone, embittered and lost 20 years down the road. Give me the pain and hurt of real life because I have learned and can learn to work through it. Screw trying to hide myself or excusing my actions with vapidity.

And now....I shall go watch last night's episode of American Idol. God I hope they vote Scott Savol off.

Free Will and Choice...Stick with Me on This

Ok, so I have been thinking about this ever since I had a class discussion/assignment on this. Couple this with my interest in theology, religion, questions of authority/authorship, and contradictions in doctrines and dogmas and we have the following. I would love your thoughts (especially Amanda and Tucker).

So, most of understand or were taught to understand that free will meant the freedom to make a choice. And therein lies the problem. There is a difference between freedom of will and freedom of choice. The latter means you are free, able and capable of making a decisions when offered two or more options. The first implies and literally means that there are no boundaries to the choices that are being given. They are simply there. The second someone tells you, "Here are your choices. Decide," your free will has been compromised.

Take for example Adam and Eve. They were given the free will to make their own choice, but that is not true. They were told that either of their choices had consequences. By someone else's design their ability to freely make their own choice was influenced and colored by someone else's warning and impediment. Had God never said anything about the tree and had Satan never tempted Eve, THAT would be an example of free will. Eve, beind idly curious, would eat the apple and suffer the consequences as a result of her freely making a choice. Of course, gaining knowledge is not really a punishment. A doctrine I will attack at some point on in this blog as it speaks of so many problems.

I mean consider Plato's "Crito," or even better, Walter Stace's essay on determinism and free will. If there is no free will there can be no morality. Morality is concerned with what men ought and ought not to do. But if a man has no freedom to chose what he will do, if whatever he does is done under compulsion, then it does not make sense to tell him that he ought not to have done what he did and that he ought to have done something different.

Stick with me...

The difference is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion about meanings of words. It is a semantic problem. A problem created by the fact that people have assumed an incorrect definition of free will.

A certain definition of actions done from free will was assumed, namely that they are actions not wholly determined by causes...free will was defined as meaning indeterminism. This is the incorrect definition which has led to the denial of free will.

For example:

Mr. Jones fasts because he is lost in a desert and has no food. He does not do this of his own free will. He has no choice.

Ghandi fasted because he was passively protesting. He could have gone on eating. He used his own free will to choose not to eat.

The only reasonable view is that all human actions, both those which are freely done and those not, are either wholly determined by causes, or at least as much determined as other events in nature.

If this is confusing...welcome to the wonderful world of rhetoric and semantics.

So....your view?

Oh my god! AHAHAHAHAAHAH!
You MUST go to this site. This is F'ing HYSTERICAL. All you theatre minded people have GOT to go here.
Broadway Abridged

Ok, with some free time coming up, yeah right, it is time to redesign this blog. Any color or scheme suggestions?

And no...Strawberry Shortcake is NOT an option. But I will consider Rainbow Brite.

Stifle all chuckles and comments.

I can't stand delusional self-righteous people who have absolutely no grasp on reality past what they can't see at the bottom of a vodka bottle.

Just a few more weeks and I will never have to worry about it again. Thank fucking day.