Will spank for food

Yesterday was Sunday but I did not go to church (se previous entry). In stead I went to an event of sin which few churches would embrace. A place where one lady had a sign saying “Free spankings to members of the religious right”.

It was “The World’s biggest leather event” at Folsom Street. Some 500.000 people visit the Folsom Fair in one day and look like something from a non-mainstream porn movie. We do not have anything like this in Denmark so I will let the pictures and the video speak for themselves, with just a few comments:

Beware of the video, it is a tad extreme. As are some of the pictures. Everyone seemed to enjoy the fair though.

The homeless are always creative.

This guy was every cliché from a porn film. Behind him was an elderly fellow who seemed shy and at the same time very eager to show his little Willie.

She was actually very sweet. Or at least she looks sweet, just lovely. I did not talk to her.

I have a lot more but you get the general picture. Plus I have spared you the painful spanking pics in case I get censored.

I found my church

Now this I never thought I would say: I might just go to church regularly.

This Sunday I went to a gospel mass at Glide’s methodist church on 330 Ellis St. and it was amazing! Having never been religous or cared about church or hymns this came as quite a surprise to me. But it was totally different from Denmark.

An Amen! to everyone

It was pure joy. Much more a pure praise of love than the dull Danish praise of God. But most of all it was an inspiring gospel concert with a great band and choir. It was so crowded that people had to sit in the window frames but a lot of the time we all stood up, singing, dancing, clapping to songs like “This little light of mine”

(I recorded a bit of video from the mass)

The thing that really made me like this church, though, was that it wanted to be a church for EVERYONE. Pastor Donald Guest with his big body and bald black head spoke passionately about everyone being welcome.

- Even if you don’t believe in God I know you believe in love so you on the right way! I don’t care if you Jewish or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. I don’t care if you democrat or republican…

At this point there was a silence in the audience who had so far been cheering. Then we started laughing at our selves, and Don went on:

- I come from a family of republicans, believe it or not. There are gays, lesbians and transgender here. We don’t tolerate nobody – we celebrate everybody!

Outside of Christmas, churches are only packed at funerals in Denmark. I wonder why.

Well, if you don’t have to believe in any diety to join a church I guess I could go. It was a beatiful experience to feel so much love and joy and hope between people. And when pastor Don said “show your neighbor there is love!” we all got up and hugged the people around us whom we did not know.

Also, I can certainly identify with the ideals of Glide’s. Not only did Don speak about how identifying with Jesus is identifying with the poor and the outkasts – it was also clear that this included non-heterosexual people. For example the big screen at the mass (yes, they had a slideshow) had signs saying “NO on 8″, the proposition that could ban same sex marriage in California at the election.

The (to put it mildly) frowning upon different sexualities – and, indeed, sexuality altogether – is one of the things that has caused my deepest disrespect for many religious groups. But this one did not frown. Now I just have to find out how they view things like abortion and research in stem cells.

However, I think I will leave it at going to church without joining. I still cannot stand the whole obsession with Jesus. Why do we need this guy to praise joy and love? I don’t. And I don’t believe in anything beyond that.

$1000 reward…

…to get guns off our streets. More specifically for tips leading to the arrest of individuals who illegally possesses guns.

Well, $1000 is a lot of money, I will give the SFPD that much. They are trying. With the taxpayers’ money of course but that is not the problem. The problem is that it will not make any difference. This measure does not go to the root of the problem: the liberal gun legislation.

Posters in and on busses encourage San Franciscans to tip the SFPD on illegal fire arms. The city wanted to ban guns but was not allowed to by the courts.

So what if you find a few illegal guns? There are way too many legal ones out there making it a Sysiphus work attempting to get rid of the illegal ones. Guns – legally and illegally possessed – kill. There are just too many guns altogether.

Michael Moore tried to figure out why Americans are gun crazy in Bowling for Columbine. I think the obsession with the Second Ammendment’s right “keep and bear firearms” is about an individualist distrust in society and the profoundly American belief that every man makes his own luck.

Seals of the city and its Police Department behind the campaign.

Owning a gun gives people the feeling that they are empowered to protect themselves and whatever else they may care about. It is the individual in control of his destiny. Not some regulating state that might not be there to save your ass when the burgler turns violent.

The problem with this is quite obvious. When few trust the government to guarantee safety many get guns to ensure their own thereby making the world very much more dangerous to everyone: Themselves, their loved ones, and the ones who chose to not own fire arms.

It is like when people drive huge cars and defends that choice by saying that if they are in a car accident with someone else they will not be in the car that gets crushed. This is makes traffic much more dangerous to those who do not get an SUV or other form of tank.

When people in California are not required to have a license to buy guns or even to register their firearms guns will spread throughout society leading to other peole’s death. Like Jordan whom I wrote about in the last entry and who was buried today. Why you would not change a system which so obviously carries tragic, innocent deaths with it is just beyond me.

How can the individual’s right to own guns be paramount to general safety in a society? To the death of even one person? I heard the other day that privately owned guns are more likely to be used on friends or family members than on criminals. There are no words for such stupidity!

Charlton Heston, you dick. Besides being an actor he is the former president of The National Rifle Association who fight for gun owner rights (He is now known for the quote “From my cold, dead hands!” referring to when the gun-opposing Al Gore could hope to take Heston’s gun away from him in a 2000 speech). And they promote it as a civil liberties struggle.

As in other cases San Francisco is more progressive than other parts of the country and after a majority vote of 58% in 2005 San Francisco banned the sale, manufacture and distribution of firearms and ammunition as well as the possession of handguns within city limits. Well, the NRA filed a lawsuit saying that San Francisco was violating state law by introducing a ban and they won. So now San Francisco has no ban on firearms even though its citizens voted for it.

Democracy? In a very twisted way. Justice? No such thing. I will write about something happier next time.

Jordan was shot

Now is when Christians would say “The lord works in mysterious ways” to find comfort in this random, fragile, cruel world.

Wednesday morning at 1.40 am Jordan McKay was shot while riding his bicycle home through his quiet neighborhood, Richmond. He stumpled, bleeding, from door to door on Cabrillo Street but no one let him in. Someone called the police though, and when SFPD arrived the officers found Jordan collapsed, dead in a doorway near 15th Avenue – just a couple of kilometers from his home. Two weeks earlier I had sushi and beer with him after a movie at Van Ness.

I met Jordan because he is – no, he was, I still think of him as alive – my French friend Marie’s flatmate. Marie was living with Elisa and Jordan who had been a couple for seven years. He was 23, smiling, had curly brown hair, a great sense of humor and a genuine kindness to his way of being that made me immediately like him.

Marie was in the shower Wednesday when she heard Elisa. At first Marie thought she was laughing because Elisa is always laughing. Then she realised it was screams and crying out of the deepest despair. Worrying why Jordan had not come home, Elisa had called SFPD and the police told her they had found his body.

So why was he shot? Who did it? No one knows. There are no eye witnesses. Jordan had been at his work in Berkeley, where he is – no, was – doing special effects on an upcoming Bruce Willis movie. He then went to say goodbye to a friend who was going on a trip. It was on his way back from this that he was killed.

The police says it is looking for two suspects. Apparently they approached Jordan and got into a verbal fight whereafter they shot him and fled the scene, but it was only seen from a distance. They did not touch Jordan’s $1000 bicycle or his backback, nothing was stolen.

Marie called me Wednesday, crying. Elisa had gone to her parents and Marie did not want to be alone in the flat so I met her at Church Station and we went to my place. I only found out Jordan was dead when I met Marie. It was surreal, unreal. Truly like a bad dream. She was crying in my arms and it felt so fictional, like I was a puppet in a play. Only now, days later, do I feel like it really happened and Jordan was shot – tears are streaming from my eyes as I write it out. But I still cannot believe he is gone. He is no more. I cannot comprehend it.

The papers have written about it to. I ripped the article out of The Examiner, but you can read about it online as well in both The Examiner and The San Francisco Cronicle. Reading about it in other places makes it feel less like a dream.

The murder does not make me scared, only deeply sad. But I guess it is dangerous here compared to home. San Francisco had an average of 93 murders a year over the last three years, peaking in 2007 with a decade-high 98 homicides. So far there have been 78 this year. In Denmark there has been an average of 60 murders a year since 1995 and the last time it was above 60 was in 2003, according to Danish Statistics. So San Francisco has about 55% more murders in absolute numbers. When compoared to the Danish population, which is seven times larger than San Francisco’s, there are roughly 11 times more homicides here than in Denmark.

Now, I want to write about how the imbicil Americans should quit their obsession with the second amendment and make it hard to get a gun. I feel strongly about this but right now I can only think about Jordan and how it feels so strange that he is never going to come back, never going to breathe again or kiss Elisa or turn 24.

I cannot help but feel it is unfair. I always thought, logically, that life is chance and we must all cope with that. That the whole why-do-bad-things-happen-to-good-people was something that people should not complain about because that is just life. But now that it is death, and sorrow squeezes my heart, it really strikes me.

Even though there is no such thing as justice this feels profoundly unjust. I guess that is life. We are all just puppets in a cruel play co-directed by chance and time. The famous MacBeth quote comes to mind:

“Life is but a walking shadow

A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot

Full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.”

But I will not succumb to nihilism and despair. Moments when lives are shaken, even ended, should make us value life the higher. We should all strive to feel joy and spread it to others. With that, I will end this entry…

Hypocracy part II: Marijuana

Not long ago I wrote about how there are some purist, saved aspects of life here even though San Francisco prides itself of being so liberal. Well, I have come across a new and interesting thing concerning marijuana.

Actually there are several stupid aspects to this. One of the unintentioned results of the 21 year drinking limit is that it promotes marijuana (and other worse drugs). Because alcohol is hard to come by for under21s, young people turn to drugs. And getting marijuana is relatively easy compared to alcohol. In SF it is everywhere and clearly easier to come by than in Denmark.

The cannabis plant I would be harvesting.

In fact it is legal. But not for everyone. In California (and other states) what is known as medical marijuana is legal. In short this means that if you suffer from a certain illness, just get high. It’s okay. All you need is a doctor to say that you need it.

Now, another moral curiosity is that mellow smoking-doctors who will sign anything have sprung up but that is not my story. My story is a man. A man who makes his living by growing cannabis and selling it to San Francisco hospitals. I met this man, whose name I cannot reveal so I will call him Bob, in a wine bar downtown a few weeks ago. He tells me about his way of income and even offers me a job: I could make $200-400 in a day if I came to his farm and harvested marijuana.

- Where is it? I asked.

And here comes the hypcrite part: Bob could not say. And he could not because it is illegal for him to grow and transport marijuana even though it is perfectly legal for him to sell to the hospitals so they can relieve people’s pain. So he keeps the adress a secret. It isn’t even an adress. But apparently it is about three hours from the city.

Bob did not really care about the law because he is apparently rich and has never been caught in the smuggling act. But it’s just stupid, is it not?

I did not say yes to Bob’s offer on the spot. But I got his number…

So Sarah Palin is coming to town…

It had to come up here at some point: The election. But this is not the way I would have thought.

The GOP – that’s the abbreviation for the republican party (stands for Grand Old Party) – aspiring Vice President Sarah Palin is coming to The Bay Area. Why?

Palin being patriotic with Alaska Guard members she is about to give money to.

Honestly I was beginning to think there were no republicans here. Obama is everywhere, except where the independents are. Today is 9/11 and what you see in San Francisco is grafitti saying: War on terror = War on us all. (Though, admittedly, there are a greater number of Stars and Stripes out than usual).

So what does Palin want? I mean, look at this lady:

• A lifetime member of the National Rifle Association
• Wants to drill up all the oil dwelling under the nature of her home state of Alaska
• Refuses to believe humans have had any effect on global warming
• Opposes abortion in all cases except if there is a serious threat to the life of the mother. That means rape victims must carry their raper’s child as well – a case in which McCain is ready to make an exception
• Called the war in Iraq a task from God
• Opposes benefits for homosexual couples
• Wants to teach creationism in science classes (though she does not want it to replace evolution theory, only that both be taught). McCain wants each school district to decide
• Believes in “abstinence only” sex education (this one is really hard for a Dane to swallow, though the view is quite common in the US)
• Is member of a church promoting converting gays into homosexuals through the power of prayer (though Palin herself has not publicly taken a stand on this)

For more on Palin facts, see The Boston Globe’s “Sarah Palin rumors – true or false” and San Francisco Cronicle’s “Sarah Palin: a true-false guide”.

9/11 at 10 am: Painters removing graffiti made overnight on the wall of San Francisco State University

So, except for being liberal on gun ownership, this is not exactly a liberal girl. As opposed to the city of San Francisco. The answer to why she is coming is very simple and very American: Money.

It’s a fundraiser. And it will not be held in the liberal heart of San Franciso but in Woodside south of the city. For $1,000 a ticket you can have a fancy lunch with Palin in the residence of local republican Tom Siebel. If you pay $2,500 they throw in a special McCain-Palin label pin, hurray.

So while Californian republicans share no hope of winning the state for McCain they are able to raise money for the GOP campaign. I wonder if any of the annoying, godless, taxraising liberals will show up at the fundraiser…