Good ole Al Gore. He’s back in the spotlight - now as a film producer rather than a smarmy politico. He’s making us quake in our boots about the horrible things we are doing to this floating wet rock we call home. He’s assuring us that all we have to do to stop it is give up our freedom, radically change everything about our lifestyles, and turn our decision-making over to scientists who have produced no results, only theories.

Global warming will flood your pretty city. Scientists (mostly employed by the government) are sure of it. Anyone who denies the existence of global warming is obviously a tool in a massive global capitalist industrial conspiracy to kill all mankind. The world is doomed unless we do as we are told and give up all that we have learned are the goods of a productive and enjoyable life. That’s all it takes.

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Years before Poppy wrote her Lennon-McCartney slashfic novella, I was in 12-grade English class as an 11th-grader set to graduate a year early.

I don’t think I would have made it through that class without having had a smooshy granola teacher whom Andrea and I referred to as “Bitch Taylor”. She was a totally annoying teacher, but she encouraged and tolerated my queerness to an unusual degree in the quite conservative school I spent those years at.

One story I wrote, which I dug up some reminders of last weekend, was a slash fic piece I wrote based on the rise and demise of Joy Division. I basically renamed the members and made their timeline a story about the love affair between Ian “John” Curtis and Bernard “Mike” Sumner, with the balance of the band, Steven “Stev” Morris, Gillian “Susan” Gilbert and Peter “Greg” Hook providing a supporting cast that saw the roller-coaster creative couple through their affair and to the death of the singer.

I did this type of slash fic a lot that year. Luckily Bitch Taylor was so out of it with youth pop culture that she didn’t notice (not to mention not noticing things like Andrea turning in The Smiths’ “This Charming Man” as a poem or my closing every poetry book project with a Siouxsie and the Banshees song).

I hate funerals. As I’ve said before, I find death totally wrong and unnecessary, and I hate the fact that our culture tends to ‘celebrate’ it with various rituals. A good quote I came across recently sums up the practice quite well:

“I do not find it respectful or dignified to allow someone to rot and talk about how wonderfully natural it is. For most, rotting is unavoidable and a dignified (and hygenic) burial is the only option, but to pretend it’s a good thing rather than the ultimate downside of the human condition is greatly disrespectful to the suffering it causes.”

I was 14 when I vocally objected to attending a funeral for the first time. People couldn’t quite understand why a black-swabbed gothlet didn’t want to go to a funeral. In any case, they thought it was a one-time thing. It was an uncle who had babysat me as an infant and was one of my closest and most loving relatives. I simply felt that a ‘celebration’ of his death was not appropriate. I felt that any affection I had for him was now rendered worthless and there really was no reason for me to go.

Several years later I went through this again. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I consciously decided to give up on funerals altogether. I don’t want to go to them, even for very close relatives.