- June 2023
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- April 2023
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Image: FacebookA friend and I went to an REI store outside Seattle yesterday, and discovered the outdoor and sporting goods establishment is having a sale on queer.
We spotted Pride T-shirts, bandannas, frisbees. We assumed that these were Pride month offerings from last year, currently being pushed out the door to make room for new June merchandise.
I left with rainbow flip flops. I now have the gayest feet in town.
- January 2023
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- August 2022
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Image: Atlas ObscuraAtlanta police are looking for the man who spray-painted swastikas this week on the city's rainbow-painted crosswalks.
Could the spray paint be hair dye? Rudy Giuliani found himself in Atlanta this week . . .
- June 2022
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Image: FacebookI can't call it a Pride miracle, but it definitely qualifies as a Pride surprise.
My brother and his wife, while supportive of me, have always been reticent to take on the role of ally to the queer community. Yesterday my sister-in-law, who works for Bank of America, sent me a photo of the two of them at a Pride in New Hampshire, wearing rainbow Bank of America t-shirts.
You could've knocked me over with a deposit slip.
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Image by Paul Henri Degrande from Pixabay In Saudi Arabia, the government is chasing rainbows.
The Saudi Commerce Ministry recently posted a video on Twitter showing its employees in stores, hot on the trail of rainbow-hued clothes and toys.
The government says rainbow colors evoke the Pride flag and promote homosexuality in children.
That is, of course, exactly how a gay person is created. Hand a three-year-old boy a rainbow teddy bear and rest assured that by 10 he'll be sewing it Joan Crawford's waitress outfit from "Mildred Pierce."
The Commerce Ministry's super sleuths comb through stores, seizing and confiscating "products that contain symbols and signs that call for aberration and contradict correct nature," according to the Twitter post. Retail establishments caught with aberration-pushing hats and backpacks are penalized.
A TV reporter followed some of these courageous hunters of rainbows through what appears to be a mall in the capital city of Riyadh. Everything they took from a store sat in a pile on the floor, a sad rainbow mound. "It indirectly promotes homosexuality," a ministry official declared of one item, while a voice-over decreed the toys "are nothing but poisoned messages that target the innocence of children."
If Saudi officials believe that playing with a rainbow fidget toy will make a child homosexual, do they believe playing Chinese checkers on a hexagram-shaped board will make a child Jewish?
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- December 2021
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It's Christmas day. Santa brought me a cold.
This was already a less than cheery holiday for me. In the last five months, my mother passed away, my divorce became final and my brother-in-law received a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer.
Add in the brand spanking new COVID variant, inflation and my exasperation over the willingness of so many of my countrymen to continue believing in the lies of Hey Mr. Tangerine Man, and, well, let's just say I've been taking to heart those enlightened messages about how happiness at Christmas isn't required.
I've aimed to leaven my Scrooge-like impulses with a little whimsy. My mask of choice these last weeks features Snow Miser and Heat Miser, two flashy characters from the 1974 Rankin/Bass Christmas special "The Year Without a Santa Claus."
Unfortunately, so few people have recognized the images that I feel like a 500-year-old. With a cold.
Today I'm wearing socks I got as a gift last year. They're purple with snowflakes—and rainbow stripes and unicorns.
It's a lonely Christmas, but thank goodness I have queer whimsy to help see me through.
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Image by Elf-Moondance from Pixabay I read in a holiday catalog that "The rainbow has symbolized hope since the days of Noah and the flood."
Why has nobody ever told me that Noah was gay?
- November 2021
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- October 2021
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