That Damn Apple Pie

Isn't it always somethin'? One day you're flying high, having had a great performance to a sold-out crowd in your autobiographical one woman show, CBC wants to interview ya, someone wants to do a documentary on ya, an American company wants to publish your memoir after only one submission, then 24 hours later everything changes and not for the better. One moment you feel like it's all come together just as you had hoped it would and wham, nothin' is coming together no mo'!
I believe in the 'one step at a time' theory. Be happy for that step. Be happy for what happened at that moment. Do your best. That's all you can hope for. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. That glass ain't half full. It's just a glass with water in it. If you're thirsty, take a sip.
Just putting it out there into the universe doesn't cut it anymore, but staying in the moment and really appreciating that moment does.
Trouble is, that moment passes. That's why they call it 'a moment'.
Then ya get another moment. A new moment.
It might not be a pleasant one, but heck, it's another piece of that pie.
Another piece of that damn huge honking apple pie we call LIFE.
I like apple pie personally... as long as the pieces of apple are very soft and easy to digest.

Speed Dating For The Bisexual in You!

Just when you thought you had come to terms with your sexuality…
Just when your parents finally agreed to stop calling your lover of 5 years, your ‘special friend,’ …
Just when you figured out all the words to the acronym LGBTQ …
Now ladies and gentlemen and trans alike, you may abandon all of your almost accomplished pieces of mind, SSRI's, and expensive therapy sessions that OHIP doesn’t cover, by addressing that hidden part of yourself, the part that pleases not only your parents but the rest of society with your lack of commitment to either sexual side.
It’s time to attend the new and refreshing Toronto Bisexual Speed Dating Event. There's no cover charge but any donations are accepted with a smile. Proceeds go to ‘Good For Her’ on Harbord to invest in better vibrators.
Here's all you have to do.
Show up at our clandestine location (so secret that we can't share the address), showered and shaved, and give each person you're sitting across, your undivided attention for 3 whole minutes. I know that’s asking a lot. Be prepared to talk AT them, and occasionally maybe even listen to the other person for a change. It will feel like an eternity but remember that your attention span is not what it was. When the 3 minutes are up, you change partners and do it all over again and again and again until there's no one left to talk to. Just think of it. You might find the person of your dreams OR you just might realize that no one can meet your expectations and you'll rot your life away living with your parents or in a government subsidized bachelor apartment. Worst-case scenario…you just might finally admit to yourself that you're GAY and not bi after all. No more fence-sitting allowed.
Light beverages will be served and perhaps some day-old pastries but again, that’s only a maybe and only if the Food Bank is open that day. Hope to see you all there. Early registration required. Seats, self-esteem and sanity limited.

IS Gay Pride in Toronto of 2010 Really something to be Proud of???

GAY PRIDE 2010 IN TORONTO. IS IT REALLY SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF????

You’ve all heard the news. The group named Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA), who was a part of last years Gay Pride Parade with permission and support from the Gay Pride Planning Committee shouted out words of hatred and carried signs showing the same messages. Some displayed swastikas. If this group is so harmless and just expressing free speech, what does it tell you when their actions incited bystanders to utter anti-Semitic verbiage?

Let me remind you that Section 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada makes it an offense to incite hatred against an identifiable group or to make public statements that promote hatred.

That describes this group perfectly.

Toronto politicians say they MAY not fund Gay Pride next year if this group remains in the parade. Why MAY, I ask? Why not NOW as in this year!

Hillel said: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Now is the time to do something to prevent this damaging group from participating in Gay Pride, period.

Protesters in the United States weren’t able to "Stop Dr. Laura, (Schlessinger)" but Canada did in 2009 by banning this American popular radio personality from Canadian stations for being critical of homosexuality. Her comments fell under the category of Canada’s hate crimes.

If Canada could do this to Dr. Laura, why can’t Toronto do this to QAIA?

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council agreed with a complaint that Dr. Laura was abusive towards gays and lesbians. 

QAIA is abusive towards Israel, and in turn, Jews, because let’s face it folks, it’s one and the same. Even if there are Jewish members in QAIA, they are obviously self-hating Jews.

Just to let you know, Dr. Laura Schlessinger calls herself a Doctor, but her biography says the Ph.D was earned in physiology, NOT medicine or psychology. She gives advice to millions of listeners across North America. Just think of the damage she may have caused to others with her words.

Schlessinger has repeatedly described gays and lesbians as "abnormal," "aberrant," "deviant," "disordered," "dysfunctional" and "an error." She's also linked homosexuality to pedophilia.

QAIA repeatedly describes Israel as unfair and cruel. They claim that Israel denies equal human rights and equates it to the former situation in South Africa. Why doesn’t QAIA acknowledge that Israel is the only democratic country in that area, that it is the only country that has gays in the military, in parliament, in universities, and protects its homosexual citizens under its laws, unlike so many other countries. Take Uganda for instance. Being gay or lesbian in Uganda is illegal and those who are, risk being locked away for up to 14 years. Now, a new parliamentary bill wants gay people to face even stiffer penalties and is proposing life imprisonment and even death sentences in some cases. Many Arab states and communities have similar punishments towards homosexuals. In Iran, those found having homosexual sex may face death by either hanging, stoning, cutting in half by a sword, or dropping from a tall building or cliff. Why doesn’t QAIA spend their energy exposing the real culprits who threaten gay people’s human rights since Gay Pride is a gay celebration after all, isn’t it???

Ernst Zundel, a leading Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi propagandist, white supremacist ideologue and one-time resident of Toronto, Canada, was also found guilty several times after making derogatory statements against Jewish people. He too proclaimed that he was simply exercising his right to freedom of speech. Interestingly, as long as he kept voicing his opinions, synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in Toronto were being desecrated. In May of 2005, a Federal Court judge declared Zundel a threat to national security and Ottawa deported him to Germany where he faced charges of inciting racial hatred and defaming the memory of the dead. In 2007, he was found guilty on fourteen counts and imprisoned. Finally! Well, that’s one way of fixing the problem.

So Dr. Laura is out. Ernst Zundel is out. But Toronto can’t seem to get rid of QAIA. I say put your money where your mouth is, Toronto.

Toronto threatens gay parade’s funding over anti-Israel group

April 22, 2010

(JTA) -- The city of Toronto has threatened to withdraw funding from a gay pride parade if an anti-Israel group is allowed to participate.

The city believes that its anti-discrimination policy was violated by the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the 2009 Pride Toronto parade, to which the city gave $121,000, the Toronto Star reported Monday.

The city reportedly received complaints about the use of the phrase "Israeli apartheid."

Pride Toronto officials told the newspaper in an interview hours before the city's general manager of economic development and culture made the funding cut threat that it had not been decided whether the group would be allowed to march in the 2010 parade.

The threat follows the announcement and cancellation last month of a Pride policy that would have parade signs reviewed by an ethics committee.

Elle Flanders, a Jewish member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, objected to the city comparing a political opinion on apartheid to hate speech.

"They're trying to compare it to hate speech, and I find it deeply offensive, as somebody who's been fighting human rights battles for a really long time, to hear that criticism of the State of Israel is somehow hate speech. No way," Flanders told the Star. “”

I say nope! The most offensive thing is that this group hides behind freedom of speech instead of admitting just what they are doing; inciting hatred.
Check out this link.

www.thestar.com/.../article/797207--city-may-cut-pride-funding-over-israel...

‘City may cut Pride funding over ‘Israeli apartheid’ marchers
'May' is the key word here. Why May???

M

Bureaucrat calls name of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid ‘very problematic’
Very  Problematic??? That's putting it mildly!

Check out this article by The Globe and Mail.

www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...gee/...israel-gays.../article1540175

“Israel is the only country in the Middle East where gays and lesbians enjoy full legal protection against discrimination. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are the only cities in the Middle East that have gay pride parades. So imagine the surprise of Jewish Torontonians when an anti-Zionist group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid showed up at last year’s Toronto Pride parade to rant about the crimes of the Jewish state.

What business does such a group have in a parade celebrating the fight for homosexual rights? Kyle Rae, the gay city councillor who helped found the hugely successful annual event, says the group is piggybacking on the parade to spread a political message “that has nothing to do with celebration of pride.”

He has a point. By worming its way into Pride Week, which draws more than a million people, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid gets a broad platform for its fringe message.

That message is far from harmless. The group says it was formed “to work in solidarity with queers in Palestine and Palestinian resistance movements around the world.” If that were its real objective, you might expect it to protest the plight of homosexuals under the fundamentalist Hamas regime in Gaza.

In fact, the group has little to do with gay rights. Its real aim is to portray Israel as a racist state, undermining the country’s legitimacy by comparing it with South Africa’s apartheid regime before the end of white rule. On the issue of whether Israel even has a right to exist, it says on its website: “It’s hard to answer this question without making clear what exactly it means.” Last year the Ontario Legislature declared that calling Israel an apartheid state “incites hatred.”

Pride Week organizers have been slow to wake up to this threat. When Queers Against Israeli Apartheid first popped up, the organizers listened to voices within the gay community that said it would be a mistake for a movement with roots in protest and dissent to seem to be banning anyone from the march. They backed down again when critics in the community objected to a decision to create an “ethics” committee to vet placards carried in the parade. “Don’t Sanitize Pride,” the critics said. “Free expression must prevail.”

But the organizers can’t be hamstrung by fears of being labelled censors. That is just the quivering reaction that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid are counting on. In the same way that the far-left groups that once infiltrated the peace movement cried “red baiting” whenever someone tried to challenge them, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid cry “free speech” and expect everyone to run for the hills.

This is not a free-speech issue. The group is free to spout its malignant nonsense on any street corner day and night. It has a free run of many university campuses. No one is shutting down its website or blacking out its posters. The question is whether a parade dedicated to promoting gay rights is obligated to welcome a group that is pushing a completely different agenda – one that happens to deeply offend many people both in the parade and on the sidelines. If it is, then Pride could soon become a very different event, with contingents from every group with an axe to grind and a pink triangle to slap on its placards.

Fortunately, Pride now seems to recognize the danger. Organizers have revised their procedures to make sure that march applicants get a closer look and that marchers can be held legally accountable for any violence that might stem from their actions. After warning that city funding could be withdrawn from the event if it doesn’t meet Toronto’s anti-discrimination and human rights policies, city officials say that “there are now mechanisms in place that allow Pride Toronto to keep the focus of the parade on the celebration of the history, courage, diversity and future of the LGBT communities.”

That – not the supposed sins of Israel – should be the message of Pride Week.”

I THINK THIS GLOBE AND MAIL ARTICLE SAYS IT ALL!

THE MOST HATED WORD CURRENTLY USED

AWESOME

Awesome has got to be the most irritating, obnoxious, under-educated, over-used word in current circulation. It absolutely irks me. I am vexed by it. And concerned for all of mankind. I think it started with a teenager at some point and then their parents,babysitters, or lovers who may have a much younger lover, started to adopt this word as a form of expression. Perhaps 'form of expression' is too worthy sounding a description. How about, too mentally lazy to formulate something more articulate than the word 'awesome' to describe anything at all pleasant.
Anyone who agrees with me, just send me a comment in one word...AWESOME!
And remember folks...
Have a day.