According to Examiner.com

According to Examiner.com
According to the Examiner.com---since 01/09/11

Monday, April 30, 2012

Well, believe it or not I am still sick.  I am not sure where to even begin to tell you the truth but in all honesty I guess the easiest place would be this EXTREME depression I am in.  It's like nothing I have ever had before, I don't  see an end to the light of the tunnel and last night--well I cried myself to sleep last night.  Not a good sign but I am not sure how to snap out of it.

This thing with my health again is really making me wonder if I am making the right decision about spending all of this time and energy going back to school.  Don't get me wrong I love school more than anything else in my life right now and I am doing, in my opinion, extremely well.  I have just  about a year left before I graduate and I have started making plans about grad school but what makes it so hard is trying to "know" when I am finished with my education, will I be able to do anything with it?

Will all of this hard work, good grades and dedication pay off, where I could possibly at some point get off SSI/SSD, Medicaid, Medicare and get a full-time paying job in career that I know I would love?  Is any of that even possible?  Or is my health, no matter what new medications are out, coming out or being planned going to keep me trapped another twenty-one years in a system that I hate and leaves you in poverty.

I simply can't do it... twenty-one more years of this kind of circumstance.  I went into school wanting to change my life and I knew school was realistically the ONLY way I could.  It was the only way I could honestly gain the type of job to have any kind of real life.  With it so close to the midway point, I am sorry to say I am losing faith, hope and perseverance.  It is very hard trying to put to words what I have been struggling with for months, outside of other issues I keep refusing to talk about here in this format; and then I wonder why I feel like I am not resolving anything?

The last few months I have to deal with bullies, liars, cheats and it always amazes me the type of people that do this are the type you never really expect it from; sometimes it is and it comes as no surprise.  But then there are the people who surprise you the most, people you feel like you don't even know all that well who are your biggest supports, your biggest fans and the people who back you the most.

This blog has seen so many changes in the time I have been running it... from talking about my personal life in the beginning, to collecting Wizard of Oz/ Judy Garland collectibles, to fashion, to news items concerning the LGBT community.  Who knows, where the next couple of months will take us, or what I will or will not talk about but to my dedicated readers... I want to thank you for staying loyal, to reading and for every now and then responding to something that is written here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

From The Hospital

This is not going to be an easy post, I know I have been lacking again when it comes to posting here and a lot of it has to do with how incredibly hard, challenging and trying this semester has been on me.  In all honesty, it has been one of the worst in many ways and in other ways one of the best.  I don't feel exactly comfortable discussing everything that has happened this semester, because I have the gut feeling it would come back to haunt me, but it has challenged nearly everything I know.  The way I work, how I work and exactly how I perceive things on a very personal level.

While painful it has been rewarding as well and the highs have been incredibly high.  Being able to present my Gage paper from last semester at the Honor's Conference being one of them even though I was sicker than a dog.  Being able to speak and teach about Maya Angelou for the entire class length for African American Women's Literature was another, thank you Dr. Brenda  Smith for that incredible opportunity.

Getting to meet actual Holocaust Survivors for my upcoming Honors Thesis left me feeling humbled, honored and very privileged.  The semester is ending though on a a very trying note.  I am back in the hospital with what they believe maybe pneumonia.  The same exact symptoms as last year this time that had me out sick for a month.  Needless to say I feel like I am at ROCK bottom.  I can't go through what I did last year.  I never felt so alone in my life, and in many ways I still am "emotionally recovering" from that experience.  Again it is something that is still so painful I do not really wish to go into depth about it here.  I feel like I  write this tonight from the hospital bed because once again I am terrified, I am physically and emotionally hurting and I feel in many ways this is the only outlet I have in order to do try to put to voice what I am feeling.

I know I am being very vague, but right now I have a lot of trust issues, and I know they are my issues but until I can resolve them I can not nor will not talk in an open format about any of them.  I have let my guard down recently, trusted where I should not have and when I needed "my back" I didn't have it.

I guess I mention all of this because I have feeling in the pit of my stomach that I am not alone, that I am not the only one going through a very painful time, that sometimes the pain is overwhelming and overpowering and if I have to be honest it frightens me.   How do I find the strength to cope, to keep pressing forward, to keep my head above water and frankly do as well as I am here lately.

I had an acquaintance recently tell me I seem sad all the time and that really bothers me, I don't necessarily see it as sadness necessarily but more of a state of constant reflection on the state of things and why some things are the way are.  Have I encouraged it to happen?  Have I fostered this to happen?  Did I lose my voice?  Do nice guys always finish?  Should I throw caution to the wind and speak "my truth"?  Say what I see happening around me?  Is it too much stress?  How do I ....?

They say that for everything that happens in your life it is but a stepping stone to make you the person you are meant to be, if this is the case then what am I meant to be?

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Book Selections

Reading Rainbow offers a wide selection of gay murder mysteries, one set in Hawaii, one a near triple-murder set in Antarctica, and the other a collection of the early cases of a gay P.I. We entertain the young adult market with Madeleine George’s new novel, and offer something for the ladies with Cleis Press’ new adult butch/femme erotica. There’s something for everyone in this month’s Reading Rainbow!

  

"Zero Break" (Neil S. Plakcy)

In two-time Lambda Award finalist Plakcy’s sixth novel in his acclaimed Mahu series, gay detective Kimo Kanapa’aka and his detective partner Ray Donne investigate the murder of a young lesbian mother in an apparent home invasion. They follow up on all the "mokes and titas", aka the usual suspects, and uncover a tangled web leading to the real motive -- one that involves a secret marriage between the woman’s ex-partner and the husband of their twin daughters, an ex-con boyfriend, and an accounting coverup.

Plakcy writes candidly and without fuss about his character’s sexual orientation, noting in the first page, "Yeah, I’m a friend of Dorothy, and proud of it, though it hasn’t always been easy being the only openly gay detective in the Honolulu Police Department." And of the murder victim’s Asian ex-partner, Kimo wonders, "Among gay men, a haole who likes Asian men is called a rice queen. I wondered if her family history and the jewelry she possessed made ZoĆ« Greenfield the female equivalent of that term."

He and his fireman partner Mike have a good life together, but worry throughout the novel whether or not it’s the right time for them to start a family. Plakcy also shows off his knowledge of both Hawaiian culture and cop lingo. His character talks about growing up schooled in the Hawaiian ways, where he learned to repair an outrigger canoe, speak some Hawaiian, play the ipu gourd, and "weave a decent lauhala mat to use when my dad dug an imu in the backyard to roast a pig." There’s lots of surfing, following leads, double-crosses, and boat chases before the case is finally cracked. "Zero Break" is a well-written, thrilling read, refreshing for its LGBT characters and tropical backdrop. Think of it as "Hawaii 5-0" goes gay, a perfect read for while sunning yourself in The Pines. (MLR Press)

  

"Crimes on Latimer" (Joseph R.G. DeMarco)

Joseph R.G. DeMarco takes a look into the formative years of his gay detective character, Marco Fontana, in this teasing collection of short murder mysteries. In the first, "The Kronos Elect," Young Marco is a scholarship student at St. T’s Catholic School when school disciplinarian Patrick Bidding is murdered. Marco’s ally on the staff, closeted Mr. Sullivan, is a suspect for the murder, and this young P.I. rushes to his aid to discover that it was the disciplinarian’s son, Damian, and his pact of ne’er-do-well friends, who did the dastardly deed. In another, Marco helps the employee of a friend, who has been accused of stealing a valuable DaVinci sketch. The sketch’s owner, Mr. Haldane, is the father of Marco’s high school crush, Cullen, and the thief ends up being Haldane’s son-in-law to be.

The story reads like Dashiell Hammett paperback noir, with a gay plot twist. In "The G-String Thief," one of the dancers at Marco’s business, StripGuyz, is being targeted. The dancer, Kyle, suspects his rich family has hired the thug who is harassing him, to force him to give up stripping. He’s partially right. Through the stories, readers learn about Marco’s teen years and ’20s, his growing collection of friends and allies, and his healthy attitude regarding his sexual orientation. This collection of mini-mysteries is compelling, even if at times, the pat way young Marco solves the case seems a little hard to believe. Overall, the collection is solid, and serves to spark interest in the escapades of this gay private dick, all grown up. (Lethe Press)

  

"The Survival Methods and Mating Rituals of Men and Marine Animals" (Chris Kenry)

In this engaging novel, children’s book author Davis Garner has hit rock bottom: he’s been diagnosed with HIV, been evicted from his almost-bare apartment, and his reputation as a writer has suffered at the fate of his last two, poorly-written books. When a friend helps him get a job as a technical writer on an Antarctic-bound research vessel, Davis at first suffers the insecurity of not knowing anything at all about the job he is supposed to be doing.

He soon realizes that his shipmates are not all they’re cracked up to be, either, from the stern network administrator Maureen, to the electrical tech Worm, to the handsome scientist Artaud. Davis spends his days aimlessly wandering the ship, inventing a weekly list of his accomplishments, and playing game after game after game of solitaire on his computer. He balances the need to make the money for his HIV medication with his loathing for the job and for how it takes him away from writing his new children’s book. But when he is tapped as the marine tech investigating whether the seismic technology is causing marine animals to beach themselves, he finds himself in the middle of a very polarizing issue.

Meanwhile, Maureen has stolen the superior scientific work of Artaud’s ex-wife for him to pass off as his own, Worm has had a surprisingly successful one-time hookup with the object of his affection, Maureen, and the less said about Artaud’s hairy sidekick Jerry, the better. In the end, Davis, Maureen, and Worm team up to bring to light Artaud’s sinister plans to sell the scientific research to oil companies, barely escaping a triple-murder in the process. Kenry’s fourth novel shows his chops as a consummate weaver of stories, able to hook the reader early and reel him in with one whale of a tale. A perfect read for a leisurely week at a seaside resort. (Kensington Books)