Deep Something

You’ll recall a brief post last week about a guy who got hit by a car, which knocked him in front a bus, which hit him. Well, we have a guy run over by a Suburban after he left the cardiac unit of a hospital to go smoke a cigarette, and another guy who got shot and killed the day after he got out of jail.

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We’ve got crazies coming out of the woodwork. In Tampa we have a guy calling 911 for phone sex, and another guy taking a tire iron to a Greek Orthodox Priest (because we all know how easy it is to mistake them for Arab Terrorists), and a “Christian” group wanting to try to incite people to gay bash so they can become martyrs charged under the revised hate crimes law. WWJW

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Some of you will know that Lay’s been through a two and one-half year experience trying to get naturalized. Of course he had permanent status, and has lived here since he was 2 years old. In fact, he’s never been back ot Laos. So it was past time to go ahead and get this over with, but little did we know what an ordeal it would be. Then, I came away from the Naturalization Ceremony profoundly concerned about the complete lack of competence in how even the ceremony was conducted.

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Buju Banton is a Jamacian Reggae star who riled up the gay community with songs like “Boom Bye Bye” which calls for gay people to be shot in the head with automatic weapons, have acid poured on them, and be burned “like an old tire wheel.” He currently has an American tour being roundly opposed by the gay community, and a number of events have been cancelled. Unfortunately, the owner of a concert venue in downtown St. Petersburg, Janus Landing, feels no responsibility to help build an inclusive community.

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OK, I know that about this time every year I write something about Autumn being my favorite time of year. I know, Tampa, FL is not the place to be thinking about Autumn. I think we get our Autumn here in January, the time of year when these nasty live oaks dump a big portion of their leaves. Still, there is a rhythm that comes with the seasons no matter where one lives, and I love this time of year for the sense of “settling-in.”

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I am glad I was not on the road for most of Sunday, and even then, we stayed on surface streets and around the neighborhood. Three crashes (I-75, I-4 and I-275) all had major accidents within a two hour window Sunday afternoon that involved over 100 vehicles, and sent 14 people to the hospital. Fortunately, no one seemed to have life-threatening injuries.

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Dale Mabry was closed at Bay to Bay all day yesterday and most of today, there was a bank robbery and shootout, a pack of cocaine was found in a fire station washer, and then they ran over someone they were going to help.

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From yesterday, we’ve got a “pig” traffic tie up out in Pasco County, and today we’ve got rain, rain, and more rain, and do you know what one calls 1,000 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?

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What now appears to have maybe two tornados pounded my hometown of Kings Mountain Tuesday evening. West Kings Mountain out through Bethlehem and Oak Grove communities seem to have been hit the hardest. Fortunately, Mom only had a few limbs down in her yard.

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I think this is going to start a new series we’ll call RUFKM (Are You Fucking Kidding Me). We’ve got a Hillsboroug Deputy suing because someone at the Gasparilla Parade fired a cannon near him, and another guy suing Lowes because the bathroom stall door would not lock. It was a hit and run in the Lowes Restroom.

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We’ll try to get back to finding those fun little over-looked news items you won’t get on the CBS evening news. This is what we found for the week ending on January 2, 2009. Wow, a new year already.

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If you’re a regular visitor (or you receive the digest email) I suppose you have noticed a decided lack of activity here lately. I have to tell you, I’ve just been tired. I think that’s the best way to describe what’s been going on in my life lately. It’s not that feeling of “being sick and tired of being sick and tired,” but more a general malaise that came over me during the last months. I didn’t send out Christmas cards this year, and didn’t even decorate the house. I came into the season with a good deal of the shopping done, and combined with some upcoming time off, I was actually looking forward to the holiday, but somewhere along the way, I just sort of lost that holiday spirit. I’m working on a comeback.

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Friday evening Lay and I ate at one of my favorite restaurants in downtown St. Petersburg, The Central Avenue Oyster Bar. This is one of a number of small storefront places in the 200 block of Central Avenue in downtown. We have not been there in a while, but have eaten there several times, and find the food, service and atmosphere excellent.

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Maybe, finally gay people have decided that enough is enough when it comes to having second-class citizenship foisted upon us by krazy kristian kooks. Across the country Saturday were a series of rallies decrying the enactment of three marriage amendments on election day which enshrine discrimination in the Constitutions of Florida, Arizona and California. As angry as we may all be, we should not be surprised at the outcome. There is no leadership within the gay community, and practically no community left anyways. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has become a parody, and while I respect the work done by Equality Florida, they too have been totally ineffective. So let’s take a look at what happened, and think about what comes next.

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No blogging or politics last week, as I was on the road from Monday to Friday. I drove up North Carolina because we had a business meeting in Burlington Wednesday, and then I took two days off, visited Mom and drove home. It was actually a pleasant week. i also took some photos around Kings Mountain and Shelby.

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An article at the Florida Bilerico project points out the lengths to which the American Taliban will go in order to scare people. John Stemberger, lead proponent of Florida’s Amendment 2, is claiming that if Amendment 2 fails, the schools will have indoctrinate children to gay marriage. And to top it all off, despite being an attorney (or maybe because of it), Stemberger and Florida4Marriage.com are being accused of violations of campaign finance laws. Seems they may be trying to hide who their donors are, a violation of Florida Campaign laws.

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Harry Blivins, at 37, is an industrious guy. Harry is a supervisor with Tampa Downtown Partnership’s Clean team. This is Tampa initiative to keep the downtown clean. Harry also has a lawn service he operates on the side. Unfortunately, he got a little over-ambitious in his efforts to keep Tampa clean.

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Today, while running an errand, I passed a sight which gave me some pause. I’m not sure why I noticed, and I’m not sure why I am drawing the assumptions I’m drawing, but I’ll tell the story anyway. Some years back, to make ends meet, I worked a part time job for a lot of years. For several of those years, I sold shoes at a Florsheim shoe store right in the main corner of the largest mall in Greensboro, NC. To pass the time when we were slow, I would often pick out someone walking by, and just based on what I could see, I’d make up the person’s current life situation. If that person came in the store, and any sort of chat developed, I was often astounded by how accurate my story had been, and so, from that perspective, I tell another story. I have no clue how accurate it is, but it illustrates a point about the recent economic downturn.

We were driving up Dale Mabry Highway, the main north-south road here in Tampa. Walking north (going south would eventually run you into the water of the bay) was two men. One of them was maybe near my age in his late 40s or early 50s. The other person was a bit younger, probably in his late 20s. (I don’t think they were related.) They both had backpacks and were carrying more bags by hand. They had the look of people moving on to somewhere else taking along just what they could carry. I didn’t get the idea from their appearance they had been homeless.

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Once again, we were very luck here in Tampa, and were bypassed by Ike. Unfortunately, islands in the tropics, and Cuba weren’t so lucky, and Texas is going to take a pretty good wallop. Some areas have received a bit of rain from outer bands of Ike, and there’s been some coastal flooding during high tides.

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Tropical Storm Fay never quite made it to hurricane strength, but she has definitely dumped a lot of water on some parts of the state, and has caused some power outages and some severe flooding. She certainly gave forecasters a fit.

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