Tuesday Beau: Andy O'Neill

There's more

What? What?

If this picture is actually what it is purporting to be (in this day and age of Sarah Palin acceptance, I'm doubting my eyes more and more), this is possibly one of the most amazing images I've seen in a long while!

UPDATE: I guess it is kinda hard to tell what this is, so, briefly, this is a small contingent of riot police being completely surrounded by the riot. YAY! :)

First Barney Frank, now the National Review

This is quoted material from AMERICAblog, but it basically says the same as Barney Frank earlier. However, Barney is one of the most liberal/progressive people in Washington, while the National Review created modern Conservatism.

[T]he assertion by Republican leaders in the House that as many as a dozen of their members who were leaning toward voting for the legislation ended up voting against it because of Pelosi’s speech is extraordinary.

Let’s see if we have this straight: whichever side of the issue you were on, yesterday’s vote was considered one of the most important ones members of Congress will ever face. Many respected voices argued that an economic catastrophe might follow in the wake of its defeat. Opponents of the legislation considered it a terrible violation of free-market principles. The stakes could not be higher.

After the legislation was defeated and only one-third of House Republicans backed the plan, John Boehner and Roy Blunt took to the microphones and indicated that Pelosi’s speech had been so alienating and offensive that a significant number of House Republicans changed their mind and voted against the bill.

Can they be serious? Do they realize how foolish and irresponsible they sound? On one of the most important votes they will ever cast, insisting “the speech made me do it” is lame and adolescent. The vote, after all, was on the legislation, not the speech. And to say that a dozen members of your caucus voted not out of principle but out of pique is a terrible indictment of them. I hope we learn the names of these delicate figures whose feelings were so bruised and abused.

I have been defending House Republicans for a week against friends who thought they were acting in an irresponsible fashion. I argued they were people with admirable free-market principles who were simply trying to improve legislation and have their voices heard, something to which they were certainly entitled. And I thought they made the bill better than it was. But yesterday’s vote, and the excuses that followed the vote, have made me reassess my judgment. Watching Boehner, Blunt, and Cantor blame the outcome on the Pelosi speech was an embarrassment.

We are in one of the most dispiriting moments I have ever witnessed in Washington, when political authority seems to be collapsing all around us. House Republicans have contributed to this, and it’s a shame.

Today's My Birthday

Though you wouldn't know it from the level of suck going on today! All I want is to cocoon:



Or have the rain wash it all away:



I used to think the lines in Patty Griffin's Rain about being enshrouded was a sad thing, needing protection from a hurt, a lost relationship, but now it seems like a good thing. To be encased, to let the rain come and wash everything away.

But I could also go for this washing away too:



But I come back to Bjork. I absolutely HATE this video, but this song is one of my favorites, and it's all about being hidden:



Bjork seems to sing alot about the rituals of finding innerspace and hiding there, the rituals necessary to make it through life:



She reminds me of a very (much more) eccentric May Sarton, always looking for a balance between being happily involved in the external world, and finding it necessary to hide, and then finding it equally necessary to cut open the cocoon and going back out again.

My favorite bands seem to cover these same things.

Feist:


Portishead:


Jolie Holland:


Sufjan Stevens:


Rihanna:


But, hey, I got flowers delivered to me today from anonymous person AND I did get to eat with S. at Le Deauville last night. And then some drinks with friends at Mias last night too. It's really just today that's sucking.

Even Mother Nature is pro-Obama!

Barney Frank: I Would Not Have Imputed Such Pettiness to the GOP

Lunsford v. McConnell

The Louisville Courier-Journal poll shows McConnell and Lunsford are tied

Let's be clear, folks. McConnell is one of the people responsible for the current economic meltdown. He and the Republicans wanted deregulation!

And don't listen to the current attack ads about Valor Healthcare's treatment of vets.

And Lunsford had previously gotten in trouble for similar happenings with VENCOR. What ISN'T mentioned is that the Elaine Chao was also on the board of VENCOR. Elaine Chao is Mitch McConnell's beard - I mean, wife! (She's also the Secretary of Labor under Dubya.)

McConnell Plays Fast & Loose With The Truth

However, let's be clear on one more thing. Lunsford IS probably almost as slimy as McConnell, but in this case I choose the lesser of two slimes.

My Point Exactly Part 2

My Point Exactly

Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson

This is probably the most conservative book I've ever read. However, don't get me wrong: I agree with a lot of it; whether he's talking about alternative medicine, the Da Vinci Code, Intelligent Design, or the Creation Museum here in Kentucky, the book is more about the excesses of having too much to choose from. And having worked in a "Metaphysical" Bookstore, I can tell you from experience, that the sellers of "quackery" are simply trying to separate the credulous from their cash.

Here is a quote from the book that sums up part of its thesis:

Page 93: Many doctors would say that, in so far as it [CAM or Complementary and Alternative Medicine] takes the pressure off them to treat minor ailments, and also encourages patients to take more responsibility for their own well-being, it's on the whole a good thing. But no one is truly empowered by being given false information about his or her own health. Moreover, there is a difference between allowing consumers the freedom to make bad choices about their own treatment and allowing the boundaries of medical knowledge to be decided by the whims of the marketplace rather than by scientific research.

I've been reading a succession of books about how the "marketplace" is basically changing us from citizens to consumers and the consequences (both local and global) that that has. This has become more apparent over the last eight years though has a long history. I was reminded of this this weekend when I saw a commercial for trucks (either Chevy or Ford) starring Toby Keith talking about the men and women of the country depending on these trucks on their way to the American Dream.

Suddenly I thought about the immigrants who came to this country in the 1800s and what I had read and been told was the American Dream then as opposed to now, say since the hardcore production of vehicles in the 1940s and 1950s, when the American Dream was recreated by the car companies. As though the only American Dream worth pursuing is the consumption of a car and the destruction of the earth due to the consumption of carbon-based fuels.

The idea of the American Dream has been taken over by the Marketplace in an effort to increase profits.

Another quote:

Page 119-120: Each of these trends [the previous paragraph was a listing of statistics about the falling numbers in church attendance, political party membership, and weddings in the UK] reflects the fragmentation of traditional authority structures - churches, political parties and the two-parent family - that previous generations rarely questioned. In the words of Boston sociologist Peter Berger, society is moving inexorably 'from fate to choice'. Modernity and the marketplace dismantle all sorts of institutions, including many whose authority is implicit rather than explicit, such as publicly funded broadcasters and family-run businesses. And every change brings with it new possibilities that are both liberating and a burden. The subjective side of human experience takes over from the objective...

The disintegration of communities, the inescapable presence of electronic media, the growing influence of distant happenings on our everyday lives, the bewildering array of lifestyle options - all these factors force us to choose who we are, in a way that our grandparents never had to...

It is all very well to be given greater freedom to choose our jobs, sexual preferences, political identity, philosophy and religious beliefs, but in making those choices we first have to decide what we believe...

Our takes is not made any easier by the fact that the public institutions that previously acted as gatekeepers to intellectual orthodoxy are now telling us that we can believe more or less what we like.

OK, so I hate that he lists sexual preference as a choice. It seems contradictory when one is writing a book about being scientifically rigorous about knowledge in the public domain AND when something IS under scientific investigation to clump it under the concept of choice, especially when doing so has historically been a means of negatively judging a group of people (i.e. gay men are sick because they choose to take it up the butt) and in essence just as much as Queer Theory is a form of counterknowledge (in so much that the standards of history and science are sometimes lax in an effort to please queers), the idea of sexual preference as choice is also counterknowledge, because once again scientific standards are made lax because a group of people don't want to deal with the possibility that gay men and women come out of the womb this way (i.e. God made us this way).

Page 124: The free market likes counterknowledge. The troubled newspaper industry - all of it, not just the tabloids - increasingly relies on fascinating but untrue stories to sell papers... Countknowledge, unconstrained by inconvenient facts, enables the media to repackage real life into 'real-life dramas' and history into 'mysteries'. Fact is presented to us as entertainment - and increasingly, though we may not be aware that it is happening, entertainment is presented to us as fact.

My only other problem with this book is a very small thing, and a sick twisted version of pride. In his discussion of Intelligent Design - which everyone needs to read, not because you aren't familiar with the American version of this idiocy, but because you probably aren't familiar with the much bigger Islamic version of it - he mentions Ken Ham's Creation Museum, locating said museum in Ohio. Mr Thompson, the Creation Museum is in Kentucky, thank you very much - Kentucky's considered the armpit of the U.S. for a reason. Get it right!

Now I said that this was a part of a series of books that I had been reading on similar subjects. Here is my Facebook note on the other three books.

In the past 6 months I've read three books all of which expound on the dangers of the Free Market Economy to the continuation of American Democracy and, therefore, to our Country.

The first was "Barbarians at the Gates of the Library" which covered in great detail how the public library is a guardian of public knowledge, education, and democracy. For those of us who can't afford an extended, college education, there is the library where we can learn everything we need to learn to be a knowledgeable electorate. [This covers what I imagine when Thompson talks about "gatekeepers to intellectual orthodoxy."]

The second was "Just How Stupid Are We? The Truth About the American Voter" to which I wrote a review on my IReads Application [sorry, this review isn't available anymore]. This also covered the need for the people to be educated - however, in this instance, Shenkman (the author) specifically talks about Civics. Check out the Just How Stupid Are We blog.

And finally my third book, Russell Banks' Dreaming Up America. This is Banks first work of nonfiction. The book is actually made of an interview that he gave for a French film delineating American History as represented by American Film (starting with the ur-racist Birth of a Nation). All three titles deal with the dangers of television: Barbarians talks extensively about the infotainment telesector. Stupid talks about the reduction of elected officials into 30 section personality spots. And Dreaming has the following quote:

We've done something that has never been done. As a species we have been required to protect the young, because it takes a long time for the human child to become an adult human, longer than any other species, all in order to learn how to deal with human socialization. In ancient times, as the species evolved, we protected the young first from the weather, from the saber-toothed tigers, from the amoral forces of the universe, protected them until they were able to protect themselves. In the modern era the amoral forces of the universe are primarily economic. Thus we have all those jokes about keeping the salesman out of the house, slamming the door on the salesman's foot. This is really about protecting the young and the vulnerable, those who can't distinguish between advertisement and reality. Those jokes and cartoons implied a serious challenge by the salesman to the sanctity of the home. But when we brought the television into the home, we basically brought the salesman into the home. We brought the saber-toothed tiger into the cave and said, 'Make yourself comfortable by the fire.' And now we leave the salesman babysitting the children while we step out the door and go off to work at McDonald's and Wal-Mart.

It's a very dangerous situation: We've colonized our own children. Having run out of people on the planet to colonize, run out of people who can't distinguish between beads and trinkets and something of value, having found ourselves no longer able to swap some beads and axes for Manhattan Island, we've ended up colonizing our own children. We're now engaged in a process of auto-colonization. The old sow is eating its own farrow...

We've become the conquistadors of our own suburbs. Actually we've done it all while claiming not to know what it is that we've done. It is very possibly the end of the Republic. We're seeing something different take place now, something altogether new on this planet - a fascist plutocracy presiding over a world population of disenfranchised and distracted consumers and would-be consumers.

The idea of the End of the Republic is a thread that runs throughout each book. And the Market-Economy-presented-as-Democracy (the same type of Democracy we've been forcing upon Iraq) is the destroyer of that Republic.

[end of Facebook note]

Thompson does give us a "preventative measure" against counterknowledge:

Page 135: In the last couple of years, counterknowledge has proved surprisingly vulnerable to guerrilla attacks from the blogosphere. Freeland defenders of empirical truth, armed to the teeth with hard data, have mounted devastating ambushed on quacks and frauds who have ventured too far into the public domain...The lives of celebrity pseudoscientists have been made an absolute misery by Bad Science, Holfordwatch, the Quackometer blog and David Colquhoun's Improbable Science website. Reputations are easily damaged in a furiously competitive market, and people rather enjoy the spectacle of smug, rich lifestyle gurus being humiliated.

These being Counterknowledge's version of Michelangelo Signorile. Also Counterknowledge has its own blog as well

Múm: Green Grass of Tunnel

Friday Beau: Matthew Mitcham

There was also a lovely picture in the Advocate of Matthew showing off his tongue piercing. I haven't been able to find that pic online. Hopefully if I can find my roommate's jerkoff mag stash I can eventually scan the pic.

Wanda Sykes on Bailout and Palin

Thursday Beau: Three Pieces by Michael Leonard

Wednesday Beau: Before Joe's

This blog's got my dander up for the day, so I'm leaving on a pretty note.

Top 20 Beer Drinking Countries

CNBC has released the Top 20 Beer Drinking Countries. Most of the entries features pictures of beer symbols or pretty shots of a village.

However, the US slide features a redneck beer belly sticking out from under a too-short shirt and hanging over a belt. Yummy!

I, of course, would have these pictures posted to this blog, if CNBC wasn't such a tight-ass about their pictures. Grrr.

Local: Bruce Lunsford Now Within 3 Points

WOO!

Let's get that bitch, McConnell, out of the White House, PLEASE!

* McConnell 49%
* Lunsford 46%

With six weeks remaining until election day, Republican McConnell, the Senate minority leader, now holds a 49%-46% lead over Lunsford, which is within the poll’s 3.9% margin of error. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released six weeks ago, Lunsford is up 6 points, McConnell is down 3.

Six in 10 voters tell SurveyUSA they are focused on the economy, ahead of all other issues. Among voters focused on the economy, McConnell went from a 6-point lead six weeks ago to a 9-point deficit in the latest poll, a 15-point swing to Lunsford.

Of course, there are no homosexuals in Iran...

...they kill them all!

Iran: Death penalty for man accused of homosexuality

Tehran, 23 Sept. (AKI) - Nemat Safavi, arrested almost three years ago at the age of 16, has been condemned to death by a court in Ardebil, in the northwest Iranian Azerbaijan region.

Nemat has not killed anyone, stolen anything or even carried out any political activism.

Nemat has been accused of having homosexual relations.While that was not stated during the court case, he was accused of "sexual relations that were not admitted".

A year ago, on a visit to Colombia University in New York, Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "there were no homosexuals" in Iran in response to a question from a student.

Iran President (and psychopath) Ahmadinejad Compares Homosexuals to Traffic Offenders on Larry King.

So, are they hanging traffic offenders in Iran now?

UPDATE: Some idiot posted a comment about how I'm a racist ethnocentrist. So I guess I should be okay with a culture, religion, or government that kills it's own simply because of a fairly recent addition (fundamentalism) to that culture, religion or government.

Fundamentalism in America started after the Civil War and began as a reaction to the freeing of slaves.

It is my understanding that fundamentalism in other countries has come about as a result of American corporations and administrations interfering in other countries. I.E. We the people want cheep shoes and soccer balls, so we invade countries in the name of Democracy, and then put children to work for pittance.

That is horrible! Equally horrible is the killing of young men and women simply because they are whom they are. Who am I to judge? Well, who are you? God made me gay. The young man referenced in the above article was gay by the grace of God or Allah.

For any government to imposed itself over a group of people and claim to know the WORD of God (or Allah) is bullshit. Words were created by man, so anything written that is called the Word of God is nothing but the Word of Man. We give God all our prejudices as a means to affirm that what we do to others (torture, hanging, injustice) is ok. Well, it isn't. What the United States does is horrible. What the government in Iran does to its gay and lesbian citizens is horrible: and don't try to blame it on Allah - it is nothing but the small-minded, small-hearted, cold bullshit of Man. So, hass, if you read this blog again. Fuck off! Your ignorance is not welcome here!

Bookish Beau

Since they've started giving the men on the covers of trashy romances haircuts, quite a lot of them have been BEAU! Especially in the area of paranormal romance - though I think that's just weird in and of itself. Come on! It's bad enough if you gotsta get drunk or fucked up just to have sex, but to have to turn into a furry werewolf??

Advocacy on Behalf of Gay Men Verbally Abused by McDonald's Staff

September 16, 2008

The ACLU is representing two gay men in an official complaint to the Louisville Human Relations Commission after an employee at a McDonald’s restaurant in downtown Louisville called them and three friends a series of anti-gay slurs.

Ryan Marlatt, Teddy Eggers, and three other friends had stopped for lunch at the McDonald's restaurant on July 26, 2008, while visiting Louisville for the weekend. While they waited for their food to be prepared, an employee behind the counter referred to them as "faggots" to another employee. Marlatt and Eggers asked to speak with a manager. As they waited for the supervisor on duty to appear, the employee who had called them "faggots" started arguing with them, repeatedly calling them "faggots" in front of other customers and calling one of them a "cocksucker" and "bitch."

There's more

PETA was in town yesterday

It seems the circus is coming to town.



My neighbors doggie, Brooklyn, sniffs at the strange "animal" in her cage.



Check out Circuses.com

Eulogy for a Hero

Henry Earl (a.k.a. James Brown) Arrested for the 1000th Time

Here in Lexington, our current African-American hero/superstar is not a member of either UK's basketball or football teams, nor is he the cross-dressing, gender-bender, Sweet Evening Breeze, who lived here. (Miss Sweets died in 1983).

No, he is Henry Earl - more popularly know as James Brown.

And no he isn't cool. He's a obnoxious drunk who comes into the library and likes to be annoying, so please quit encouraging him!

There's more

And he has a wikipedia entry.

LOL: Obama Barack

Tuesday Beau in French

Both are hotties, but I'm more interested in the one on the left with the headphones and the purply background.

To see more, especially if you can actually read French, click here

Chinese Astrology: Libran Cats

I thought I was a Rabbit, but according to this book in France, I'm a cat, because Chinese Astrology came to France à la Vietnam...or something. So here I am according to Suzanne White's Chinese Astrology: Plain and Simple.

CAT/Libra (September 24 - October 23)
This air-ruled feline personifies the pedestrian notion of femininity as it used to be. Libran Cats are jolly good talkers. They waver, vacillate, and balance themselves on an eternal hot tin roof. Garbed in finery fit for royalty or better, these Cat/Libras are intangibly lovable. Though they seem weaker than others, there is tremendous strength in so feeble an appearance. People talk to them. Who could be afraid of this gentle creature? Couched behind that ready smile, ready to spring into reverse, is a wily tabby who spends gobs of time feeling people out and discovering their foibles. Neither aggressive nor harmful, Libran Cats are elusive to the nth degree. When they seem to be in one place, they suddenly are not there any longer. Then they pop up elsewhere. A Libran Cat's a mighty wary beast. This Cat's hiss, though not to be taken as lightly as we think, is much worse than his scratch.

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw -
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air -
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Mcavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square -
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -
But it's useless to investigate - Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
'It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

~T. S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Tiny Beau for Tuesday: Vincent Laresca

Why are there no better pictures of this actor? Or at least some screen shots from Weeds. In the first season of Weeds, he is Alejandro, a competing drug dealer who starts pennying Nancy's car and fountain. Later they end up with a hardcore quickie in an alleyway. You get to see some nice ass.

In the next episode he sends Nancy a gift, that she returns. He in turn shows up at her bakery. And everything he said, everything facial expression he made, made me quiver in my nethers. Mmmm....sprinkles!

My Kittehs: Edie, Harry, and Sami

Edie: she's my oldest kitteh. I got her from a neighbor who was leaving the country to go be with her very hot, street-performing boyfriend in France. Then Sept. 11, 2001 happened. She didn't leave but she didn't come get her cat back - thank Jeebus! I saved that cat from a lifetime of being called Nefertiti.









Harry: On the day of the release of the last Harry Potter book, my roommate and I adopted two kittehs, brother and sister. We named them Harry and Hermione. A friend just recently adopted Hermie and now calls her the Herminator. But Harry is still with us. We characterize him as a big ol' footballer bottom. He loves nothing better than to curl up in the crotches of the pants that I've worn throughout the day, or in my boxers when they're pushed down around my ankles on the toilet.







Sami: Sami is the bitch of the bunch. Meaning, I'm the only person she really likes, and in my book that gives her points. She was part of a barn litter and I took her because I was told that she would be killed real easily in the wild of the farmyard. She has beautiful blue eyes, and orange stripes on her tail. She is a little blind.

I Love My Cousin

My cousin is the very cool artist who sculpted the above. Check out his blog here

How I'm feeling today...

Actually what covers it better is a scene from Episode 5 (Dead in the Nethers) when Nancy is watching a video of her and her husband (now dead) making love. She starts crying. There are times that I can still feel exactly how it felt to kiss someone, or feel them on top of me or near me. In the back this song is playing:



The scenes are from my favorite version of Pride and Prejudice (with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth). The way I feel (if not my love for Jane Austen) leads me to believe I'm going to be alone for a very long time. If not always. So I try to remember that George Cukor appeared to have a full life and not let it get to me (It was never known if he ever had a lover.), but today, no, today, I can taste him and feel him, still. And to him, I'm just the dear, old friend with problems who seems awfully blue this weekend.

I didn't really want you, but I want you now...

Monday Beau: Miro Moreira

Love the tat!





There's more!

Lexington Street Art

This is probably something that the Y has done to appear cooler, but it's a beautiful piece on Vine St.

A Couple Other Things

From a very cool blog: Rottin' in Denmark

And in other fabulous news:

Sarah Palin's favorability ratings tumble 21 points in ONE week WOO!

Saturday Beau: Carson Wheeler NSFW

Carson Wheeler is the top in the following photo. He's absolutely beau!



Click here for a short vid of Carson. The little write up suggests that I should be able to see more of Carson, but I haven't been able to find him anywhere else.

However, here is another lovely Carson.

UPDATE: Found the following two links for Carson Wheeler:

Carson Wheeler Busts a Nut

Carson Wheeler Fucks Noah River

Lovely Lovely LOVELY!

UPDATE 2: I don't know how much it's updated but here's Carson Wheeler's blog at CollegeDudes247

Cool Found in the Restroom

Friday night at Joe's, I found the following bit of tiny graffiti on the partition in the men's restroom:



Turn it on it's side and you get three faces. Cool:

Friday Beau: Teddy Thompson

For S

Books, Books, Books!

From Towleroad: The Lewis and Clark Public Library in Helena, Montana held a public hearing on Tuesday night over whether the book The Joy of Gay Sex should remain on library shelves.

It was the echo of a hearing last March in Nampa, Idaho, when, after weeks of debate, the book was pulled from the shelves but was still made available to visitors — from behind the librarian's desk.

The Billings Gazette reports on Tuesday's hearing:

"More than a dozen people testified in favor of removing it. Helena resident Wayne Beckman was one of them, saying the book shows immorality. About 20 people spoke in support of keeping the book, including Mike Cronin of Helena. He said the public library does not have an obligation to serve as a parent. The request to remove the book came from Paul Cohen, of Helena, who found the book on a visit to the library in February. The book was reviewed by the library's collection review committee, which recommended keeping it...Because Cohen challenged the decision by [the library director], the library board of directors held the public hearing."

The book has been in the library's circulation for 15 years. A decision is expected to be made on October 21. Those in Helena would be wise to look at a recent decision made by the Nampa library to return the book to the shelves.

In that case the ACLU stepped in and threatened the lawsuit. The library said it was returning the book to the shelves "as a matter of fiscal responsibility."

[end]

The LPL hasn't had a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex in forever - if we've ever had it - but we have every book you could ever want on the intricacies and joys (puke) of straight sex. We must have more perves here though, because all sex books regardless of one's preference typically get stolen or the pages with pictures get ripped out.

In other news, after ordering it MONTHS ago, LPL finally got today The Advocate Guide to Gay Men's Health and Wellness. Up until today, we'd only had a book from 1997: The Gay Men's Wellness Guide: The National Lesbian and Gay Health Association's Complete Book of Physical, Emotional and Mental Health and Well-Being for Every Gay Male.

Also, we got in today a book that the people of Helena, Montana may want to read: