Random Musings

Since becoming husband-and-husband, I’ve found renewed joy in my life with Carlos because, well, I get to gaslight him all the time now!

Like the day I was home and he called to say he was running late, and I acted as though I couldn’t hear him.

Then, when he got home, and I asked why he was late and hadn’t called, he said he had. I said he didn’t; he said he did. It went on like that for a couple of m minutes before he whipped out his phone and called the house phone because he wanted to check if it was working.

And I laughed, telling him that I was gas-lighting him.

Like the time he said he had to go to Lancaster for work, then to Cassatt, and then back to Camden. He called to tell me he was back in Camden and I asked what he meant by that.

Carlos: I told you I was going to Lancaster.

Bob: No, you didn’t.

Carlos: Yes, I did.

Bob: No, you said you were going to Cassatt and then back home.

Carlos: I did go to Cassatt.

Bob: You went to Cassatt? Why didn’t you tell me?

Gaslight. Not that there’s a huge sum of money I’ll come into when I have Carlos declared mentally unstable; I’m just doing it for fun.

"I, Darren Wilson, hereby resign my commission as a police officer with the City of Ferguson effective immediately. I have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow. For obvious reasons, I wanted to wait until the grand jury made their decision before I officially made my decision to resign. It was my hope to continue in police work, but the safety of other police officers and the community are of paramount importance to me. It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal. I would like to thank all of my supporters and fellow officers throughout this process."

Good.Bye. And I hope we never hear from you again.

Tony Dungy, the former NFL coach-turned-NBC analyst who said he wouldn't have drafted Michael Sam because he wouldn't want to "deal with all of it" — meaning the media attention — said this week that he would welcome wife-beater Ray Rice onto a team.

So, you can beat up a woman and still be an NFL star but you can’t be gay.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson yesterday petitioned the Fourth Circuit Court, asking that they not rule on his marriage appeal until the Supreme Court issues on a decision on the cases out of Sixth Circuit. Wilson, like his counterparts in several other states, is desperately trying to keep his case alive so that marriage equality can be undone should SCOTUS rule negatively.

Although he’s wasting taxpayer money and doesn’t seem to realize that South Carolina is not bound by decisions of the Sixth Circuit Court.

Seriously, Alan, give up. The Queers have landed legally married in South Carolina!

Back in the olden days — well, late last century — it was always a bit surprising to see interracial couples on scripted TV shows. Not surprising to see them in real life, mind you, but TV always seems to lag behind the real word. I still remember the shock of the Willis’ on The Jefferson’s back in the day.

So, imagine my surprise when two new shows — NBC’s Marry Me and Bravo’s first scripted show The Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce — each featured an interracial couple.

And a gay one, to boot — clockwise from top left: Dan Bucatinsky and Tim Meadows from Marry Me, and Patrick Heusinger and J. August Richards from GG2D.

A friend posted this thing on Facebook that you should Google your first name and the word ‘meme’ following. Then go to images and post the first image that comes up.

That one, up there, was the first image that came up, but that — down there — was Number Four and, I felt, far funnier and more apropos.

So, let me get this white: in America you can be shot to death for stealing cigarillos from a store in Missouri, and you can be choked to death for selling “loosies” — single cigarettes — on Staten Island?

Oh, only if you’re Black in America.

AT&T U-verse had a Free HBO weekend over Thanksgiving and so I recorded all the episodes of The Leftovers, which is based on a book I’d read last year about a Rapture-like disappearance of 2% of the world’s population.

Good book, but the show features one Justin Theroux, an ISBL hottie, and star of a Would You Hit It post. Justin appears shirtless, pants-less and nude.

Bob is intrigued.

Down in Houston, two teenage carjackers were met with a wee surprise when trying to steal a car: a stick shift.

The two morons held the motorist at gunpoint trying to take his car, and then demanded that he tell them how to drive it. After the driver provided a few instructions, the teens ordered him out of the vehicle, drove off, probably riding the clutch all the way, and the driver called the police.

Both morons were arrested for carjacking and stupidity.

Speaking of Texas, county clerks in Fort Worth and Houston say they won't issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples even if a federal judge lifts his stay of a ruling striking down Texas' marriage bans.

Bob says you should then be fired for not doing your jobs, and then you can whine about how, while not following the law, and denying Gays the legal right to marry, your own rights were trampled on.

Then you can STFU.

I stopped by Blobby’s Blog this week — on World AIDS Day — and he had written a post and then ended it with a Rosanne Cash song, “I Want A Cure” as a way of tribute.

And that little moment triggered the song that’s been playing on a loop in my head for the week. The song, “Tennessee Flat-Top Box” was one from Rosanne’s childhood — she remembered it being sung to her as a lullaby — and she longed to record it. When she did she found out that old lullaby had been written by her late father, Johnny Cash.

Sunday Funnies

Fox News: To Avoid Getting Beaten In An Elevator, "Take The Stairs"

I’m going to shock you … I.Don’t.Watch.Fox.News. … There; I said it. Whoosh. Now, y’all can calm down for a minute; no need to gather the pitchforks and the angry townspeople and come after me. It’s just that, well, we all know that Fox News wouldn’t know the truth if it was tattooed on Megyn Kelly’s breasts or painted onto the Mama Grizzly Bore’s™ five-head, but this week, even Fox News has gone too far.

The hosts of Fox & Friends — Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Anna Kooiman — aired the video of fired professional football player Ray Rice beating his then-girlfriend, now wife, Janay Palmer, into unconsciousness in an elevator and, well, they appeared to find it all quite amusing.

In the video, which I’m sure most people have seen once, because seeing it more than once is sickening, Rice punches Janay, and her head hits the elevator wall before she falls to the floor unconscious. Rice then stands over her, seemingly admiring his handiwork, and then casually drags her body off the elevator. This is funny, y’all, to Fox News; and not a big deal, at all.

One host, Steve Doocy acted as though the whole episode is nothing to get worked up about because, after the beating, Janay Palmer became Janay Rice, marrying the man who beat her unconscious, so let’s not make a big deal about it. If a woman gets beaten that severely and then marries her abuser, well, it must be fine so let’s move along to more important issues. 

Say? Is that Obama playing golf?

But, fellow host Brian Kilmeade had to throw in his two-cents — proving he is highly overpaid because his commentary isn’t worth a penny— adding that the same thing happened after Chris Brown beat the crap out of Rihanna. Again, it must be okay, because Chris Brown did it, so, yeah, Ray Rice should be able to do it, too.

Neither one of these men apparently has a sister, mother, wife, girlfriend, because if they did, if they weren’t a couple of goose-stepping asshatted, batshit crazy, FoxNews wingnuts, maybe they’d take a moment and realize that they are making light of the physical beating or a woman by her professional athlete boyfriend.

Kilmeade then says, the lesson to be learned is to “take the stairs” while Doocy adds that the “message is, when you’re in an elevator, there’s a camera.”

Avoid the beat down. Take the stairs; and if you’re gonna beat your wife or girlfriend in an elevator, remember there’s a camera; learn to take the beating into your private room because then no one would see it and it would be okay. The actual message here, that that Doocy and Kilmeade, and fellow host Anna Kooiman — and I’ll get to that moron in a moment — fail to acknowledge is that domestic violence is wrong; always. And with their lighthearted reporting of the beating, they missed the opportunity to help other women who are in abusive, or potentially abusive, relationships, by turning this into some kind of a joke.

I cannot fathom how these so-called news people — and, yes, I know it’s Fox News so they’re not real new people — think that domestic violence, physical abuse, of any kind, is something to make light of; take the stairs? Really? Think about the camera filming you before you throw that first punch. Really?

When men — and I use the term loosely when referring to Doocy and Kilmeade — make light of domestic abuse, they’re basically siding with the abusers; they’re saying it’s not such a big deal. And when Doocy and Kilmeade, representing Fox News, and therefore representing the GOP and the conservative movement in this country, it’s not much of a stretch to say that others of their ilk feel the same way about abuse. Especially when you hear so little from the GOP and its kin demanding an apology from Doocy, Kilmeade and Kooiman

Take the stairs, honey.

And now let’s talk about co-host Anna Kooiman, who basically sat there while these men made light of the beating, and then had the nerve to say that this incident is “unfortunate for football [and] gives a black eye} to the sport. Where’s her compassion for the black eye and bruises given to Janay [Palmer] Rice? Better yet, where’s her compassion period?

After this little bit of ridiculousness went live and viral, a sliver of what they call compassion was shown by the powers that be at Fox News when they gave a thirteen-second disclaimer about how they don’t condone physical violence. Thirteen seconds; that’s all it’s worth.

Proving its okay to laugh at physical violence and keep your job at Fox News.