Categories
Gay Rant

Critical Mass

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers]

Japan.  Spent zirconium fuel rods, usually submerged under forty feet of water, now lie uncovered in the drained spent fuel pools where they are stored.

The fuel rods at all six reactors at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi complex contain plutonium — better known as fuel for nuclear weapons. While plutonium is more toxic than uranium, other radioactive elements leaking out are likely to be of greater danger to the general public.

Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation.  The fuel in the other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process.

This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium.

In the heart of not one but six nuclear reactors some fuel rods maybe broken…ready to melt down, ready to spew radioactive material into the atmosphere.

We are facing a potential catastrophe in Japan.

Here I link you to the Vlogbrothers simple yet elegant explanation of nuclear fission…for those of you who may not understand what is going on.  Technically.

Critical mass imminent?  Likely?  Who the hell knows.

Critical mass means that there is enough fissionable material to produce and sustain a chain reaction, which grows exponentially within a miniscule passage of time. This chain reaction is precisely what happens in nuclear weapons and could happen in Japan.

We are witnessing critical mass in other parts of the world:  Bahrain where the government saw fit to shoot little children demonstrating with their parents.  Libya where after the United Nations imposed a ‘no fly zone’.  Gaddafi proclaimed a cease fire…then promptly bombed the rebels.  Where, you may ask, were the fearless British and the noisome French?

Critical mass in Wisconsin is growing daily but completely ignored by almost all of the US news media who are frankly perplexed when confronted by white Americans behaving like anything other than bovine subserves.

Last night I, uncharacteristically, turned on the TV and sat with Rachel Maddow for a few irritating minutes.  She was blathering on about how in the 1950’s the Democrats benefitted from the last time the Wisconsin Republicans tried to vote away collective bargaining, unions and the like.   Well, that was then Rachel…when the Democrats served the people and as an effective opposition to the rabid corporation obsessed Republicans.  In a time, long ago, when America and Americans were relevant.

Occurs to me that even if Rachel Maddow believes the Democrats can benefit from getting behind American Working People (she may be right) the working people of America will not be served by those Democrats they elect…most of whom are already bought and paid for by the corporation.  Who said that capitalism means the enslavement of the people?

As fabulously bright as Maddow is there is something vaguely mithering and condescending in her tone.  More worryingly..her solutions are rather naive.

Meanwhile…if it couldn’t get any worse for the LGBT community…

In Congress the ultra right-wing, motivated by crazy house leader John Boehner (Boner), is so deeply committed to dialing back rights for LGBT Americans that nearly 100 of them are co-sponsoring a resolution condemning President Obama for his decision last month to no longer defend DOMA in court.

As Americans struggle to recover from the recession, they just want their government to do right by them.  Republican House leaders are doing the exact opposite – committing taxpayer money and precious time to defend a law that most Americans oppose, and a social agenda that most Americans reject.

Finally, critical mass at the micro level rather than the macro…I am suing somebody.  It stinks…but it has to be done.  Business is business and I hope that he doesn’t take it personally.

Categories
art

Preparation X

I should have called this post: Pre-Existing Condition.

I have always been embarrassed by my piles.  Hemorrhoids.  I have always had them.  Ever since I can remember.  Thank God I was never a bottom.

Whilst the rest of the world looks on in horror at the inevitable nuclear meltdown in northern Japan, the brutal attacks on protestors by the Bahrainian police force, the Libyan civil war I spent this evening with a complete stranger from the internet who arrived at my home with a bag of groceries and cooked me dinner.

Whilst he did that:  I fainted.  Very, very Jayne Eyre of me.

The upshot being that I badly bruised my back on the fucking chair Michael Temple made for me.  The chair looks nice but it’s a FUCKING DEATH TRAP.

That’s what we do in LA.  Strangers come to our mountain top mansions and prepare Penne Carbonara.   I served coffee in delicate Sevres coffee cups.   The dog was FREAKED OUT when I fell over.  He ran away from me when I tried to placate him.

This morning Charles left in his neat black suit and freshly pressed shirt and tie.   He looked so sweet.  I had film stuff to do after he left.  After a few film related conversations on the telephone I walked to the PCH.  All the way there and all the way back.   He chased many ground squirrels.

I sold some art.

This afternoon I watched Sophia Coppola‘s film Somewhere.  I really enjoyed it.  The language and locations of our Hollywood lives.  Too many afternoons floating on the pool, too many hasty hook ups.  Too many facile conversations.  Too many text messages from people who either want to fuck you or fuck you over.  Not enough substance.  Set against a back drop of elegant hotels with fancy toys to play with.

I once lived in the Chateau Marmont for a month.   I moved there when the mountain burned.  I have spent many hours there making new friends.

I remain isolated.

Most of us are isolated here.  However successful we are or we are not.  However many parties we are/are not attending, however ‘connected’ we are.

Sitting around.

Waiting for a great idea.

So now the next great idea has come upon me and I have convinced others to work with to make a dream come true.  Suddenly this town makes sense.

Los Angeles, oh you strange and terrible place.

The christian twins are coming to stay.  The beautiful, twenty-year-old twins are coming to live with me at the house, live at the house whilst I am in NYC.   When they return from Utah.   My born again beauties.

I ate the pasta/caprese salad/garlic bread and he left soon after we finished our coffee to my strange, secluded mountain top life.

He was perfectly nice.

The bruise on my back is worth photographing.

just part of the bruise
Categories
Rant

Rex Weyler

Greenpeace demonstrating against Esso. March, ...
Image via Wikipedia

Dinner with Jason, Jennifer, Hilary and Rex Weyler.

What an incredible man!

I will let you discover who he is and what he does.

Discussed his film…the film he wants to make with Viggo Mortensen about the creation of and how he co-founded Greenpeace.

We discussed potential directors and (rather unusually) how much a film like this might cost.  Can one really justify spending 50 million dollars on a film?  Really?

Naturally we discussed Egypt and how when the people speak governments are forced to take notice.  We congratulated Julian Assange.  We mourned the dead in Bahrain.  We wondered about Israel.

The demonstrations in Madison Wisconsin are particularly heartening as are the angry British protestors who are presently targeting Barclay’s bank over claims of tax avoidance.

Is this Glenn Beck’s ‘coming insurrection’?  Let’s hope so.

Ultimately the question one has to ask ones self is:  Am I prepared to take a bullet for what I believe?

I told him that I knew people who were oblivious of what was going on in Egypt.  In fact more than half of all Americans were not aware of what was happening in Egypt.

Why are people not more inquisitive?