Tragic Rabbit

The Sin & The Sorrow Life is the sin and the sorrow, The temptation and the taste; Gazing afar to yon tomorrow While today wings by in waste. Born bright is he the Risen Born clean are those who Fall; Life’s beating hearts imprison Each – yet none at all. The grief of Life, it makes us Kin So why does it not make us Kind? At War are brothers ‘neath the skin, Living eyes must be born blind. To Live is to be fearful To Love to be brave; Must all our days be tearful, Weeping down unto the grave? Trouble not foreign parts with envious arts, Covet no one man’s prize and strive; For we each stride in step with hurting hearts And none come out alive. * on the occasion of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq

That's me, The Articulate Particulate. Many thanks, again...been gone awhile, I was. My current avocations are: continuing to breathe, writing, worshiping my cats (yes, this does involve votive candles and the occasional slaughter of minuscule mammals) and adoring my tiny service-dog-slash-songstress, Oona O'Neill Chaplin. TR

Thanks muchly! And that's cool, I had to look up 'John Cooper Clarke'. He invented the steam engine, right? TR

dogs and declination dog my steps by inclination I, in side-stepping, stumble, finally forced to rumble like a Jet, I pirouette take on a surly sobriquet; I'll turn around and bark them down just as soon as I attain renown I know that fear of fear itself is something one must fight oneself, but even so, my stumbled stride leaves me humbled, heaped, howling inside; night terrors jumble, mumble and amplify the things these uncouth truths imply ? that the old stone with sword inside is something I should leave untried for this dogged inclination to mere canine creation is a barking avocation albeit with fascination for me (bright abbreviation) subject to such trepidation a mere approximation, typing lettered bits of affectation dogs and declination, see, dog my steps and referee, proclaim I am as all agree, a mere never-ending deportee: a kind of lucid hallucination better yet, amalgamation bits of tin; no, no guarantee of the Me that could but cannot Be

Surely gods look down and see the whole: we're born to cry while growing old up on the mount, they see the truth beauty aching for lost youth the stoic men who wish for strength runners pushing, can't make the length weeping women who cut their hair wise men doubting gods are there and all the time the thumping sound these beats of breath above the ground old gods looking from on high ignoring prayers that ask them why the clink of drinks and chatter numb or are they stricken deaf and dumb why did they make this world below - Or can it be that they don't know?

You're quite welcome, BF, my warped view of the world isn't always so appreciated - like that funny relative who farts at table. Truth is, 'truth' seems pretty mallable and the world a tad tiresome if you stay too sober in your perceptions. Me, I like a little color; adds spice to a weird and weary world. But as I said, some hereabouts are quick to take umbrage or dismiss humor as inconsequential, with others loathe to take off the emerald glasses. You'd be amazed. If satire can take Al Franken to the US Senate, though, maybe there's hope yet for its virtues. I've found humor can be a fab platform for criticism and compliment and, like Des, am partial to the punny. It also keeps my typing skills at par. TR

New UK Government, First thoughts: Cameron Diaz will make a fine PM; she and Clegg will have great fun sharing clothes and makeup tips while making up stuff for the press. Second thoughts I'll leave to the voters. TR

Understanding Anemia There is a kind of freedom in frailty, in bodily poverty, endgame & emptiness; when all that you loved is far away, gone; all that you live for - removed, distant: timeless as an old photograph or gravestone epitaph For who or what can disappoint you, hurt you, maim your marred soul when all of your thoughts turn inward and all your ideas become either specific as sputum, bacteria, germs or airy as philosophical terms Few things concentrate the mind like weaknesses of the body; when your day's goal is to eat well and not to fall, fade away, in public: invisible as ghosts or hope and dead as any dream

Kissey-face right backatcha, Des. The urge to pun is a terrible vice. If punning were fatal, we'd both be six feet under...but in most excellent company. TR

No question that this is true...and a truth about as popular as Bloody Mary at a teaparty. Homophobia is predicated in misogyny, both of which are perpetrated & encouraged by men in public power overconcerned with their private manly powers. The worst sin is not to be a Real Man...a belief that killed, among others, Ernest Hemmingway and Joan of Arc. TR

I don't think that's really in Mein Kampf, one of those hoax quotes, but I agree with the sentiment expressed by the hoaxer and poster above. So, check out the Aussie Pirate Party - while you still can - and their weapon against this legislation and what they call The Great Australian Firewall: http://www.computerworld.com.au/slideshow/...alian_firewall/ TR

If Aussies were filtered from the Net, who would we have left to laugh at...except maybe the Welsh. Seriously, as both a parent and a teacher (in a former life), I'm against any government attempts at this kind of thing. In government, less is more. The stated goal of child protection is all too frequently used for political adventage without any real understanding of or concern for children - only for votes or monetary gain. "Moral busybodies are taking the perfectly good word 'family' and using it as a code for censorship the same way 'states' rights' was* used to disguise racism in the mid-sixties." -John Waters Two things strike me on the subject after all those years of the above: (1) actual children are just young humans, both for good and ill, and shouldn't be mistaken for angels, (2) there really is no way to control children, all that parents & teachers can do is try to guide. Children will, by their own choices, devices and mistakes, turn out badly...or not. Most of it comes down to luck, upbringing, genetics...and more luck. Very little adults do makes any difference and few things politicians try will do anything but make possibilities worse. "Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." -Anne Frank The only reason the angelic and vulnerable image of children is so popular with politicians and other madmen is that it seldom fails to tug at the heartstrings...but that view of children is ficticious. "A person's a person, no matter how small." -Dr. Suess ` Children are little people: some are bad, some good, some smart and some stupid, some capable of change, some not, many kind but no small few are vicious. They, like us, are limited by their own humanity. TR *and is again, witness Arizona's most recent bid for national attention in the form of lightly coded racism.

It isn't broadcast enough outside the gay community. This is old, old news. The essence of the issue (refusing to pun here) may lie elsewhere. The vetting of blood donors shouldn't be about behaviors, it should be about obtaining blood if the person is not underweight, ill or whatever. Meaning, right then and there. Either way, for those things you can't determine right there (weight is determined with a scale, on the spot - a scientific observable reality), there are HIV tests and screens...performed AFTER the blood is collected and on all blood collected and stored these days. That was not the case when I began donating, so asking back then, for example, if a donor had had recent tattoos or surgeries, was perhaps reasonable. Perhaps. Screen Blood Not Prejudically-Predicated 'Behaviors' These days, all blood is required to be screened for a number of things before storage, including the Big One (in the minds of the general and generally uninformed hetero community) - HIV antibodies. Since all blood is tested for this, ALL blood, there is no reason whatsoever to ask anything remotely masquerading as a search for 'risky behaviors' etc because (1) people lie (2) questions demonstrate an ignorance of HIV transmission far beneath even NIH's something-less-than-shining standard, (3) all blood is tested, sometimes repeatedly, before anyone receives it, (4) questions are so intense, numerous, invasive and often unrelated to real-life 'behaviors' that their existance as prerequisate cannot raise anything but disgust in a rational and unbiased person. The questions' only purpose is to determine if the donor is GAY, nothing more. Screen Blood, Not People. Being gay is NOT a high-risk behavior for anything but liking members of the same sex. The questions do not really ASK behaviors, anyway, which is interesting because almost all the behaviors asked or implied are enacted just as frequently by heterosexuals. They do not ask IF you are HIV+, which would be illegal even for them I imagine...and unnecessary as the post-AIDS-discovery-by-media late-80s HYSTERIA resulted in multiple testings FOR HIV antibodies - though curiously nothing close to a cure or vaccine for AIDS - long ago leaving us with an nearly insane madness for testing of blood or other donated tissues/organs to weed out any tainted with HIV antibodies. Strange that so many other dangerous things are NOT also tested for, ah, but this could become a book...and a book already written by many other people, again and again. What is not strange, though highly unethical immoral and insulting, is the long litany of questions about sex practices WITH ANOTHER MAN - not 'do you engage in safe sex', 'are you monogamous', 'do your sex practices even involve touching that OTHER MAN' or whatEVER, they simply exist to label a (rejected) donor as GAY and thus preclude his donating without lying. The questions are NOT THE SAME FOR ALL DONORS OR EVEN FOR ALL MALE DONORS. Gay men are singled out for 'special treatment'...now what does that make you think of? This all started with one question (have you had sex with another man in the last half year - asked circa...85? I can't recall what year) - but had, last time I donated (by lying), evolved into a seriously embarassing and ridiculous line of questioning about WHO you have sex with (over the last whatever, decade, twenty years, it's gotten ever more insane) not HOW you have sex. And again, only men and then gays and bisexuals are singled out from that group for additional questioning. Women have a whole separate booklet of questions. I would suggest that the majority of heterosexuals who are sexually active engage in extremely 'risky behaviors' fairly routinely, that heterosexuals are in deep denial about the 'lifestyle' of sexually active heterosexuals - themselves and their peers - and that heterosexuals have a completely unscientific distase, at least in public, for sexual practices generally considered, wrongly, as 'gay'. There IS no 'gay sex', there is just SEX and who you have it with is not important. If you want to ask stuff, which you should not, it might be minisculely more productive to ask if the donor (of any sex, of any claimed or presumed sexual orientation) had had sex with someone who was HIV+ in the last year, if the donor had had any unprotected fluid-exchange sex with ________ <fill in the blank, they'll prefer to ask ANOTHER MAN>. All this serves NO public safety purpose. It is counterproductive to public health because it significantly reduces donated blood intake and has done so for two decades. It is unAmerican in that it unconstitutionally marginalizes by public shaming and semi-private Inquisitions a segment of the citizenry...and potential donor pool. It's not really so unAmerican when you remember that America, or at least a portion of NE America aka the '13 colonies', were founded/invaded by a batch of religious zealots no longer welcome in England, zealots who had a passion for defining an ever-changing all-important 'heresy', and then weeding out and burning the flavor of the week - 'heretic' loosely defined as 'outsider' and/or someone who isn't you or someone very like you. It is not widely touted by NIH, like a lot of other truths, but prior to all this, gays of both sexes were far more likely to be regular blood donors than heterosexuals. Fact. Some still are and an awful lot of heterosexuals owe their lives to that fact, to the fact that many will continue to donote while being actively humiliated and discouraged from donation. I'll end this on a last observation, because this could ramble/rant on forever and is on record elsewhere ad naseum, that absolutely none of this tagges lesbians. No, not because they 'don't get AIDS', we won't go there and it doesn't matter because ANYone can get AIDS and even THAT doesn't matter because all donations are tested and retested. The real, true hate that is considered polite to express in public - and against whom to invoke the gods of science - is for MALE homosexuals. Male homosexuals who have sex, who have a partner, who would like a partner, who are okay with those who partner or like members of the same sex and who are perhaps/probably a lot happier than the hets with blinders who bandy these bawdy topics about. Which says a lot more about straights - in NIH and in the reading public - than it does about homosexuals, HIV antibodies or 'safety' concerns. Straight people will take pride and prejudice over science any day...and in a heartbeat. Possibly their own.

FOR AWESOMEDUDE.COM In Neverland, where men grow small While memories grow great and tall; The old ones gather by the fires And chew the bones of dead desires White hairs turn in faerie glow To colors that they used to know; While tired limbs rustle, remembering Night winds whip trees, dismembering One voice starts, stops ? another begins Until Tales have painted all with grins They sparkle eyes and brighten smiles: Grouped close there on the Never Isles Happy, huddled, hands outstretched Hearing Tales sweet and farfetched; They do not see, choose not to know How fleeting is this night's fire glow It is enough that they again have seen And frolicked merry on the green; That shadows lurk and all things end Takes nothing from each Tale's pretend In Neverland, the Awesome Truth Is that we none truly lose our youth; It might be misplaced, be hard to find-- May our tender Tales serve to remind

Old sore topic but one that merits periodic revisiting. Absolute madness, those questions, but I've stopped trying to change NIH's mind on the subject. Junk Science at its best. I used to donate regularly once I became old enough but stopped, with a few exceptions like that above, when lies became part of the process. At this point, my own blood donation is moot thanks to health issues, but my valuable blood type was taken off the market for no good reason. The exceptions were times when schools I taught at had blood drives and, to provide a good example for my students(!), I lied and donated. Last time was nearly ten years ago and the pre-donation vetting questions had become even more nosy and unnecessary. Pride and Privacy are out of fashion in America. TR