Homer'sWorld

Lots of talk of homo assimilation and stereotypes and closet case Republicans on various blogs. Here in Tucson we have all of the above. The gay bar that called the police to remove a trannie that somehow ruined the "man's bar" atmosphere. The closet case car dealer who, in the last week, sat down with Dick Cheney for a big Republican fundraiser. The Catholic Bishop who rose to power because his predecessor got caught shuffling predatory molesters from parish to parish.

There are a lot of pressures being a homosexual. The conflicts with families, being told you are evil by the church and certain politicians, trying to find someone to be with, trying to make perfect meringue pies. It would be nice if we could all just get along, although it looks like that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

In the meantime, I think it is important to be a little self aware and think about how your actions affect other people. One example, the all-too-common use of the phrase "straight acting" that some men use to describe themselves. Last time I checked straight guys were not interesting in sucking cock (any straight male readers want to verify this?) or dating other men or watching Project Runway. Gay men are "gay acting" no matter how "straight" they think they look, act, dress, and so on. Purporting to be straight in appearance and actions suggests that being gay is somehow bad or inappropriate. Yawn. Been there and done that. Gay people are fabulous, mostly, and deserve better.

Would you date someone who said they were "straight acting"?

My not-so-secret garden. I'm trying to grow some vegetables in the corner next to my brick patio. I've tried to do this before and haven't been so successful. This year the artichoke has decided to grow like crazy. I had some potatoes that sprouted in the fridge, so I dropped them in the garden and covered them with potting soil and zoom! They are rapidly shading out the onions and garlic that also made the fridge to garden transition. A tomato and some violets seem to be doing well also. I'm guessing that things won't be so rosy when it gets super hot here.


I like the dramatic artichoke leaves.

In other news, anti-gay marriage nut-case Cathi Herrod was whining in today's paper. She is the leader of The Center for Arizona Policy and has been pushing for an amendment to Arizona's constitition that would ban gay marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships. Poor Sign-of-the-Beast Cathi is all mortified because her groups' petition drive is failing. Imagine, people are refusing to sign. Churches are refusing to allow the petition to be circulated. The leading petition drive company in the state won't touch it, saying people are so turned off by it they won't sign other petitions.

Too early to celebrate. Here's a little something can do to help defeat these morons- call their toll free number and waste their money- 1-800-FAMILY1 (1-800-326-4591). The woman who answered the phone just giggled when I told her that discrimination against homosexuals was evil. I wonder if she would continue to giggle if she got a lot more of those kind of phone calls?

Someone took the time and effort to send me the following anonymous email: "Sweetie, Nice blog, but you're no Andrew Sullivan. sorry guy." Oh Christ, for a moment I thought I was Mr. Sullivan's clone.

I read Andrew's blog and watch him obsess about various topics. The latest: Atheist Discrimination. Hello Andrew? This is big news? I am pleased that he realizes that George Bush is a complete moron, six or so years too late. I could have explained exactly why he was going to be a rotten president back in 2000.

Anyhows, enough nasty, smelly politics and more lovely, smelly flowers:



Or how about a cute picture of Jimbo taking a nap with Joey?


Or maybe a photo of the sun setting behind the mountains in San Carlos.


Or the cool roots in the mangrove swamp.


Or the raft of sea lions off the port (left!) side of the boat?


Well, I'm no Andrew Sullivan, but then he's not Homer either. And neither one of us are pricks who send anonymous emails.

Jimbo and Homer's Excellent Adventure was both. We drove to San Carlos, Sonora on Route 15. At the tourist visa station we chanced upon a mama dog and her variously colored pups.


Pieta.

In some ways the dog symbolized life in Sonora- difficult, harsh, and enduring. Sonora is a fairly empty place, the population concentrated into a handful of towns. The countryside is deserted and a desert, in some places horribly overgrazed by cattle. The people do what they can to survive, you can see why people would choose to come to the United States looking for a better life.

Jimbo's lunch at Santa Ana.

The drive to San Carlos took longer than I remembered, of course the last time I was there was in 1994. We ended up in a Best Western, oh god, the lava rocks we slept on there made my back ache.

"Tu, solo tu," in honor of Patrick.

Luckily the margaritas at dinner were nice and strong. Saturday morning I was up early and sat on the beach by myself, watching the pelicans, grebes, sea gulls, swallows, and frigate birds. In the distance I could hear the barking of sea lions.


Mexican self portrait.

A very friendly and cute dive shop employee told us where to go to see wildlife. Jimbo is a bird watcher, and we talked about how many gay guys aren't really into nature or getting dirty and so on.

In the mangroves.

The estuary leading out to the Sea of Cortez had probably 20 species of birds- blue herons, egrets, avocets, long-billed curlew, several types of gulls, grebes, pelicans, a cardinal, along with crabs and fish. Colorful shells lay on the ground and the path crossed over prehistoric shell mounds. I managed to spot prehistoric pottery sherds among the thousands of shells. Jimbo's new camera takes great zoom photos.


Egret.

My camera is better for close ups.


Jimbo and Homer, on the beach.

Sunday morning we sat right back and took a two-hour-tour. Just us and a pack of old ladies, with a screeching tour guide who qualified as a "repeater." Apparently, it is best when making a incorrect factual statement that is somewhat wrong, to repeat said error or observation over and over and over again. The tour guide-ess's inane babbling almost ruined the trip, but the opportunity to see and smell bird shit close up (or as the tour guide-ess insisted on calling it "poo"), was exciting.


Pelicans and guano.

More exciting were the rafts of sea lions and the amazing dolphins, the latter jumping in and out of the boat's wake.

Dolphin.

The drive back to Tucson was long, Mama dog was happily nursing her puppies when we passed through. I took cuts at the border crossing and felt guilty afterwards. We got home and rushed off to karoake to hang with Patrick, Brady, and Panchesco. It's early morning now and Jimbo is safely deposited at the aeropuerto. It was a nice adventure. Next month, San Francisco!

I'm real tired of people who just don't get it. Take the supposed ex-gay group Exodus, whose leaders keep getting caught in homo bars. They are threatening a lawsuit against blogger Justinsomnia for posting a parody of their billboard. Luckily, the ACLU is lining up to defend him and perhaps Exodus will lose a pile of money in the process in legal fees.


This is a parody, only a parody.... (thanks Ted for posting this!)

Then there's Arizona State Senate witch Karen Johnson. This dried-up bit of nastiness is always spouting anti-homosexual crap while screeching about the importance of traditional marriage. She should know all about the latter, since she's been married five times and has 11 children. Like a friend said, if she had more pricks sticking out of her as she has had sticking in her, she'd be a porcupine.


Arizona State Sen. Karen "Porcupine" Johnson.

According to the official Senate website, Johnson is "standing resolutely against the homosexual agenda." Also on that website she spouts off about how women should stay at home with their kids and not work, except somehow she had to go out and get an elected office to support her family. That's pretty much bullshit because Arizona pays our lawmakers next to nothing. She's an ugly version of Phyllis Schafley. With Karen having 25 grandchildren, what are the chances one of them is a cocksucker or dyke?

Jimbo arrived safely and today we had some adventures. One of them involved visiting the sewage treatment plant. I know, I know, what were we doing? The answer: the sanitation folks in Tucson came up with the clever idea of placing treated water into recharge ponds and creating riparian wildlife habitat, something that has largely disappeared in the Tucson area.


Sweetwater Wetlands

We saw many species of birds including coots, Inca doves, Gambel's quails, red-winger blackbirds, cinnamon teals, and various types of ducks. Also cottontail rabbits and I spotted some marsh rats.


My favorite were the turtles.

I thought they might be mud turtles, but I'm not sure.

Afterwards we came home and Jimbo took a nap with the cats, we went to dinner with Patrick and Brady, watched Lost, and I made a lemon meringue pie! A typical exciting day, I guess.

The floors are mopped, clean sheets on the bed, shower scrubbed. Jimbo is on the plane and I'm pooped from cleaning house. At least the kitchen floors actually look like wood again.

I was out digging again and a pair of Gila woodpeckers were busy courting on a dying saguaro cactus a little ways away from me. I hope they find a new home when the bulldozers come.

I tried to take a picture of orange Joey and I together, but she wasn't liking posing. So I took an orange self portrait.


Homeorange.

Someone asked me if I'm a dish queen. Well, yeah, like totally. I like all kinds of dishes, old ones, pretty ones. I also like digging up pretty, old, broken ones on my dig sites.


Thanks Jimbo!

I also like flowers, my spring flowers- tulips, daffodils, and irises are all starting to bloom.

Tulip.

And I like cooking- lately I've become a pie queen (although I really dislike making pie dough).

Onion and Asparagus Quiche.

There are a lot of other things I like (redheads, cats, art, family history, etc). What kind of queen are you?

Yesterday I spent a day volunteering at a dig my company is doing. Sometimes there isn't enough money to completely excavate a site before it is destroyed by development. At least the county and city I live in has rather strong archaeology laws, stronger than most places.

Caramia and I finished excavating a pit structure that dates to around A.D. 1000. You can see the row of posts around the inside edge of the pit, these once held up the roof.


Caramia is mapping the ramped entry into the house.

Last week I was out at the site working and excavated a dog burial. The Hohokam dogs came in small and medium sized categories- this particular dog was probably about 18 inches long from head to rump.


The presence of a bacculum, or penis bone, indicates it was a male dog.

Occasionally we find human figurines, probably used in religious rituals.

The presence of breasts indicates this was a female.

It was nice spending the day digging at this prehistoric site, normally I spend my time in the field digging historic outhouses, wells, and building foundations.

Yesterday was my half birthday. Here's a photo to show you what I looked like 40 years ago.

Buck, Grandpa, and Homer, circa 1966.

Three generations of dishes.


My great grandmother Maybelle's (1886-1951) cup.


My great great grandmother Edna's (1854-1931) serving bowl.


My great great great grandmother Frederike's (1833-1914) teacup and saucer.

My sister has my grandmother's china, I have my mother's melamine dishes.

Some suggestions for the pictures in your personal ad:

- you probably shouldn't use those photos of a well known blogger unless you are actually that well-known blogger. Since he lives in San Francisco and has a hot boyfriend, the likelihood of him posting a personal ad in Phoenix is pretty small anyways.
- if your mother is going to be in a photo with you, perhaps you should ask permission before including it in an advert that discusses, in great detail, exactly which types of bondage you are into.
- you may also want to ask permission from your prom date before using that photo, even if that means tracking her down at the 20th reunion.
- the wonderful thing about a digital camera is you can take 100s of pictures and only use the very best one.
- the horrible thing about a digital camera is you take 100s of pictures and only use the very best one.
- certain parts of the body should be photographed only by a professional like Scott or Archerr. If you have to ask which parts, you haven't been examining bigmuscle lately.

Dougie and I watched Amazing Race last night, and as usual we shouted at the telly. Some of the people on that show are pretty unbelievable. Why any woman would stay with a man that called her a bitch is something I don't quite get.

Anyhoo, I arrived just as American Idol was finishing and I agree that Chris Daughtry= Hottie. The other guy with the gray hair was kinda cute in a more cuddly way. But whatthefuck is up with that goofy 16-year-old Kevin? I had to literally cover my eyes so as to avoid looking at the poor lil carwreck of a contestant.

There was snow on the Santa Catalina mountains to the north and it was too cold for Mollie to wander the yard while I was at work.


Buckle your seatbelt Mollie!

She behaved herself admirably, although she had to go to the bathroom three times. And on the way home she smelled the car up pretty bad- who knew Milk Bones made you farty?

Eric discusses problem ear wax. Thankfully I don't have that affliction, thanks to the very careful swabbing that takes place every time I shower. I can't stand to have water in my ear canals, it just bothers me.

And so I now recall the time the Ex's French friend visited and, ohmiEifelTower, he had the most disgusting earwax. Ever. And I mean ever. Flakes, crust, darkened, perhaps oxidized, overflowing outwards like a frozen waterfall. And for some reason he thought of himself as this sexy French man, albeit one with extraordinarily poor hygiene (he was rather Pepe Le Pew as well). I tried to explain to him the American tendency toward this stuff called soap and water. His response was, "Oh Homere, my Doctore tolded me that beink too kleen, that eez irresponsible. It eez bad for the skin!" I tried real hard to convince him, "But [French friend of the Ex], your ears are over flowing with wax." "Oh Homere, the Doctore told me to never, ever remove the wax, it eez important to have it!" Not surprising, he didn't get laid while he was in Tucson.



I hope you didn't read this while eating breakfast...

Oh it's raining. It hasn't rained like this since before October. I hope it continues for a while, I'd like to skip the nasty forest fires that have been predicted.

At the movie rental place I had to endure the Loud People who loudly debated which movie to rent. Apparently various things they said were very funny because they laughed very, very loudly. I couldn't escape hearing what they were saying so I'm guessing that taking lots of drugs makes things a lot funnier. Their choice in movies sucked, by the way, but I won't make a big deal about it because I rented some sucky movies too. Why? Because the movie rental place is slowly phasing out videotapes. I'll have to get one of those fancy DVD thingys soon, but by then it'll be outdated anyways.

I decided to really clean the living room tonight. With Jimbo arriving in a couple of weeks I need to make things spiffy, so away I went.

Ohmigod, three cats and a dog and a dirt patch for a front yard equals nasty hairballs and dust everywhere. Poor Mollie decided to go outside when I took the broom and swept the picture rail. Now I'm all sneezy but one room is done, only six more to go.

In other news, I got the Williams Sonoma catalogue and there were the mixing bowls that would bring great joy and happiness when I make meringue pies. I was going to use all of my tax refunds on paying down my credit card, now I'm going to spurge and buy myself this one present.

Wednesday survey- my next party:

1). Mixed drinks or beer?
2). Mixed nuts or potato chips?
3). Disco music or jazz?
4). Finger foods or pizza?
5). Celebrities or Mexican bingo?

I guess I should be all bitter 'cause I didn't get the prize for best-dressed at the Oscar party I attended. But since the award was a Barbie doll, I'm kinda okay with the biased judging (a woman in an evening gown won).


Homer and Matt.

Honestly, the Oscar show pretty much sucks. It would help if I had actually seen a lot of the films. The speeches, endless lists of names of people I won't ever meet, are tedious (I know, big news). Philip Seymour Hoffman was repulsive. Repulsive. He gave me the creeps. Dolly Parton should have won. Those film montages. Yawn. Poor old Lauren. Etc. Etc.

People keep telling me I look years younger minus the facial hair. I dunno, I feel strange with a smooth face. Plus, the balding stuff is super obvious when I'm not distracting with the beard. We'll see, luckily it grows like crazy.

The name's Homer Del Marr.


I've heard tell that my daddy was a ranch hand up near Riverton.


No, ma'am, I'm not the marrying kind.


I wish that Byron would call....

I wonder if I am on the FBI terrorist list now? I've had another letter in a local newspaper.

I'm sitting here listening to Marc's radioblog. Except there is one song I have to skip- something from the musical Rent. For some strange reason I can't stand the music from that play. At karoake on Sunday people practically have orgasms singing Rent songs. I don't get it, but then many people would say the same thing about Moulin Rouge.

I also listen to Sam's music. At work I play it so loud I can't hear the phone ring with my headphones on.

Some little known facts:

- all archaeologists are fabulously rich and make excellent sugar daddies.
- we also have the best taste in home furnishings.
- lemon meringue pies taste better when you are serving them to furry redheads.
- Puff and Joey are not gender confused.
- I was glad that the gay guys got eliminated on The Amazing Race.
- lemon meringue pies taste better when you are serving them to furry blondes or brunettes.
- I've been wanting to scream "I told you so!!!" at most Republicans.

Patrick's pretty daisies...if I keep staring at them long enough maybe I will not think about how angry I am at the Catholic Church here in Arizona. They have decided to support the "Protect Marriage Arizona" amendment to our state constitution, claiming that "equating so-called same-sex union and marriage are profound and unsettling."


I guess it wasn't profound and unsettling when the bishop in Tucson declared bankruptcy to hide church assets because so many local priests had fucked around with children. Some how I don't see how hiding child molesters by moving them from one congregation to another strengthens families in any way. But then the whole premise of single, celibate, dress-wearin' prissy ole thangs offering marital advice has seemed like, really, really stupid. That's like having repeat child molesters counseling children about not masturbating. Hmm, did I miss something?

I wish we could give the Catholic Bishop here in Tucson some truth serum and ask that queeny gurl some interesting questions, "Ever thought about choir boys in a profound and unsettling way?"