my friend just told me that there's a secret second dashboard that solely contains posts from people you've turned on post notifications for, and when i click the link in the messages it opens it within the tumblr app, so the tumblr app also has a secret second dashboard for post notification blogs, and the only way to access it is to open the link for it within the app.
I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.
The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.
So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”
1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.
Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.
Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.
"don't assign human morality to non human things" is so true except when it comes to printers. they know what they are, they understand dilemmas and ethics and morality. they choose to be how they are, they choose to be evil, at their very core they are rotten
joel to work. pick up things from mama. visit papa. work on things for naz. go to work. help friend. wait for second student. get joel. bring joel home. visit papa again. work on other things. change phone for papa. have headache. get gas. get dinner. home.
i'm exhausted. not eating food all day isn't great.
brain cells dead. joel goes "it's sleepy time" when it's time to sleep. i love him. he is very cute.
today i didn't get to go see my dad. i got up and went to the school for the first ipse meeting, stopping at dunks to get something to eat. it was about 40 minutes and i took ten pages of notes. after the meeting, i spent more time with melissa talking about additional ideas and important details that we needed to include.
then kendall came to the school and she and i went and got dairy queen for lunch and just sat and talked for a little while. it was nice.
after lunch, i started typing up the notes i took, and i met with a student at 3 to do business math, and then i went back and sat to wait for melissa because when im there and naz is not it is my responsibility to get melissa to leave at a decent time.
i failed.
another friend of melissa's stopped by and the three of us talked for a while longer, and we didn't leave until about 6:50. i needed to go to grab some things from walmart and i ended up getting more things than i anticipated, but it was needed.
i also ended up being very hungry and i stopped at mcnaldos and waited until i got some answers from joel and john and i ordered food for us.
i ate and then i opened my computer and finished typing the notes and started working on the minutes format i wanted to use and then i was tired of it so now im in bed and about to go the fuck to sleep.
tl;dr: dad's okay. :) i visited him all day yesterday and earlier today. i worry.
dad's surgery went well! after surgery he went to the ICU, and then the step-down unit, where mom and i visited him together on saturday briefly.
i nearly cried as we were about to leave because i saw my dad as he was - an ever-increasingly fragile older man with health problems. just a man. it nearly broke me.
i spent my day yesterday with him at the hospital. mom couldn't make it up because she doesn't do well with hospitals, and we'd planned on going to the movies later but neither she nor chels were feeling well so i cancelled the tickets and stayed with dad.
while i was sitting and talking with him, he was telling me all sorts of stuff about his life. he shared music with me that had been influential in his life, and some songs that moved him to tears because of the sentiment behind them.
and i realized that this was a very rare occasion where dad was talking about himself and about something he doesn't normally share - and that i don't have a recording of his voice anywhere -, so i grabbed my phone and started recording. my dad is a very private person, and he doesn't share things about his life. he rarely tells stories about things that happened, and when he does, mom frequently rushes him through it, and dad is frustrated that he isn't able to share the whole story, i think making him feel the need to share it again and again. but i was able to sit and record some of it, and i ended up with about two hours of my dad talking and answering some of my questions. he shared work experiences and stories about his music and stuff, and it was generally a really great day. i love listening to the things he has to say. mom is impatient; she feels she has things to do all the time and listening to someone else talk is not something she wants to do especially if she's heard it before. so she doesn't listen to him.
but i do. i love to listen to people talk about things they love.
maybe i should be an investigative journalist. or a memoir ghostwriter. a biographer.
that would be cool.
anyway.
so that was good. i was there from 10:15am until about 7:15pm. i met the nurses and learned more about what happened during his surgery and stuff, and i gave him hand sanitizer after every time he had to pee because that was yucky.
joel and i went to longhorn for dinner, too, which was very much delicious.
today, monday, mom and i met and went to see dad. i got to the hospital just before she did, and i went to park myself because i don't like using the valet if i don't personally have cash, but i passed a car that was about to back out, so i turned around, and by the time i got back to it, another car decided it was theirs and took it despite my presence. great. i spent more than ten minutes looking for parking. there was none on the side of the hospital i was on. if i'd gone around the other side and walked around, it might've taken the same amount of time and saved frustration and anger. but it's fine. i stalked into the building, grumpy and frustrated, very slowly losing the steam from my ears.
mom and i went to the dunks before heading up, and getting a donut was a good way to calm me down. i love me a good donut.
we went up to see papa. he was fully dressed today! yesterday he was wearing a green johnny.
but mom and i sat down, and we talked to him. mom updated him briefly on the homestead. and she sat and complained. the nurse today was brusque and got along with mom. didn't indulge my dad in conversation like yesterday's nurses did. they were so sweet. conversational. caring. attentive. today's was all business. i was sad about that for him.
but once the nurse came in and said she needed to change his dressing, mom had had it - she got up and was almost sick and the nurse was so apologetic and took care of her first, making sure she was not going to pass out or be sick on the floor. while they were occupied, dad turned to me and told me he was surprised that mom had come at all with how she is with hospitals. the nurse came back in to change the dressing. dad sat at the end of the bed and the nurse told him to stop talking so she could change the bandage. so i sat forward on my chair across from him, sat up straight like he was asked to, and i reached out to hold onto his fingers, just rubbing my thumb across the backs of them to distract him.
the nurse finished quickly, mom coming back in a few minutes later. maybe ten minutes later we ended up leaving because she'd had enough. i was not surprised she didn't last long. i'm glad i didn't get her squeamishness like i did her general dislike of people, although that's annoying too. oh well.
the two of us went to tucker's for breakfast, where i couldn't decide what to eat. she told me to close my eyes and point when she said to, and she moved the menu around a bunch, and my finger landed on a combo that was actually a great choice. so i got that. it was very good. but i ended up spilling a bean on my shirt. :(
during our meal, i texted kendall to check up on her. i had in my calendar to ask her about paying me back from dinner a couple weeks ago, but it's tactless to just go "gimme money" without even saying "hi how are you." she replied. we had a brief back she forth before i got my food. after, before i left, she invited me and our friend chelsie to get dinner together, and so we made plans for that.
after mom left but before i got to my car, though, an older lady got out of her car and saw me and my "live laugh lurk" mothman shirt. she said she liked my shirt. that it was cute. that will live with me now.
after lunch, i headed back to joel's, remembering last-second to get a few things, so i cut across a few empty lanes to get to target. in the dollar section i found some canvas under-bed storage things with plastic covers, so i grabbed three. i found what i needed, and then i went in search of a gift for chelsie. she's been going through a really hard time and a ton of bullshit lately, so i wanted to get her something to lift her spirits a little bit. i found a notebook with plants on the cover, a set of good pens, and a set of three potted plant magnets. a bag and some tissue paper, too, and a card telling her she can do this. and then i went in search of a few other things, since i got the under-bed storage, because i keep meaning to grab things to make things neater in the apartment, so i grabbed a rack for over the bathroom door and a hand towel.
i came home and did the other thing on my list of things to do today: clean up my massive corner of bullshit/laundry. mostly laundry. i'd started this morning by throwing my dirty clothes into the washer, so that was out of the way by the time i got to organizing. i took everything out - all of the bags, emptied, all of the stacks of nonsense, unpiled -, shook it out, folded it again, and sorted it into piles of items. i put my winter clothes away. i found winter accessories and put them away. my boots. all of the extra bags. stuffed animals that were in the way. craft supplies. it's all away, folded neatly, in containers under the bed. i found some stuffed animals that were icky from mouse yuck that i put into the washer to clean.
but i took the rest of it, sorted out what i wanted to donate, and put the remainder back into bags and plopped them against the wall to be used later.
i took the snacks out and put them away. i swept. took out my trash. collected other trash.
i was sweaty and gross but very satisfied with my work. i put on more deodorant and a new shirt so i wouldn't be smelly to see my friends. kendall got here around 6:20 and we got to chelsie's around 6:50. i gave her the gift i got her and she showed us her apartment. it's very cute and very her. i love it.
then the three of us went and got chinese and japanese food from a place nearby. it was very good, and we got to chat and catch up and sit and talk and it was really wonderful to just be goofy and chatty with them. i love them both so much.
when we were done, we found a friendly's and we got ice cream. we sat and talked a little longer, and when chelsie started yawning, we headed back, dropping off chels before kendall and i came back to joel's since kenny had left her car here (not a lot of parking space at chelsie's).
and now i'm home, in bed, exhausted, needing sleep but not wanting to put off writing another day.
but overall, because dad is doing so well, they won't be sending him to a rehab facility and instead will come home 24 hours after the drains come out. he really just wants to come home.
also jared ordered him indian food for dinner and had it delivered to him. he was very excited about it. he called me when kenny and i were leaving to ask if i wanted to come up and take the rest as leftovers since the nurses didn't really want it. i told him to share it with the night crew. but i was happy he called.
Data from this questionnaire will be used in an article about how the general public feels about gas prices right now.
Hi folks! I am a journalist writing an article about gas prices and how normal people feel about them and would love if you could spare a minute to fill out this survey and send it to your friends! Thanks in advance!
I don't care if they're the highest grossing movies on planet freakin Earth, you say "Avatar" and everyone and their mom still thinks that bald little bitch and his magic cow. Soggy James can keep his millions, he'll never have the streets.
somehow all these good vibes have washed back on me and it's great. y'all are manifesting writing mojo for each other and me and I love it. keep going. don't stop.
