Stabby the Cat will MESS YOU UP

And I’m busy rehearsing at rehearsal for the show I need to rehearse so I can’t save you.

#Pride101:

Virtually every pride parade and public event draws a crowd of hate-filled, mouth-frothing religious bigots carrying signs (notice the ever-popular message in this photo: GAY = Got AIDS Yet?) and screaming at us with bullhorns and often trying to goad us into physical fights so they can videotape them and whimper to the police about the cruel persecution they endure just for expressing their First Amendment rights. At bigger events like the Chicago Pride Parade, they're walled off in pens like the rabid swine they are at the end of the route where they're more of a nuisance than a violence-inciting threat. But at smaller events like the Cedar Rapids Pride Fest, they wander freely in much smaller numbers at the perimeters, hauling massive signs as if they were crosses and yelling into bullhorns and goading us from afar so they can run like the cowards they are if they feel outnumbered and/or want to stoke their wannabe persecution complexes. But we keep showing up to our events, not letting their cruel, puerile, relentless harassment undermine our celebration of who we are how far we've come. THIS IS WHY WE USE THE WORD PRIDE.

#Pride101

Probably every gay, lesbian and trans person you know has been called a faggot. Or worse. I have. More times than I can remember. Probably every gay, lesbian and trans person you know has had something thrown at them with the intention to hurt or humiliate them. I have. It was a barrage of eggs as some friends and I stood on a sidewalk in Chicago's Boystown. Where we'd assumed we were immune from such bullshit. The worthless cowards who threw the eggs missed all of us and ran away cackling like they were big men who somehow mattered in the world. Many gay, lesbian and trans people have been physically, violently assaulted. I never have, but I have friends who've been assaulted so violently that they've been hospitalized. It's 2019. The homophobic violence that our forebears endured may have lessened, but it hasn't stopped. But we all still get up, walk out the door every day, and live our lives as openly as we dare and as comfortably as we can. THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

#Pride101

Before the 1969 Stonewall riots, virtually every aspect of being gay was illegal to varying degrees in America: being openly gay, showing public affection, having any kind of sex, marriage, adoption, assembly in public, assembly in private, going to gay bars … even owning bars with any form of gay designation. The only gay bars that existed were owned by crime syndicates, who definitely weren’t at the vanguard of fighting for gay liberation; they saw in the gay population a steady and highly dependent form of revenue that the mobs could protect via their considerable influence over law enforcement. We were exploited for our desperate need to find each other and for the money we were willing to pay to feel like we weren’t alone. We paid exorbitant prices for watered-down, bottom-shelf liquor. We gathered in buildings that were unclean, unsafe and unimportant to society. The subtexts were shame, risk, secrecy, and arrest and public humiliation if we were caught entering or exiting these bars. But in the gathering momentum of our achievements in equality over the last half century, our forebears demanded--and slowly, surely got--our growing equality and our freedom to live our lives openly and safely and without imposed shame and exploitation. THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

#Pride101

It's 2019--a literal half century after the Stonewall riots and the dawn of our demands for equality, justice and our right to exist in peace--and "religious" leaders like Tennessee pastor--and sheriff's detective Grayson Fritts--just today today are angrily demanding "the death penalty for someone being a homosexual" from their pulpits and on their wide-reaching media "ministries" and inciting continued harassment and violence against us from their morally bankrupt followers. And we continue to resist and survive and love and support each other and live the open, brave lives that our forebears fought so hard to pass down to us. THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

On this holy and widely celebrated National Grammar Day,

let us pause—using the punctuation of our choice—to give thanks that the holiday’s name has been shortened from the National Violent, Racist Grammar Day that was established in the bygone era of this venerable childhood grammar primer that up with which my mom grew.

10-Day #ChristmasCountdown

It has come to my attention that today is National Grammar Day

Thankfully, the name has been shortened from the National Violent, Racist Grammar Day that was established in the bygone era of this venerable primer that up with which my mom grew.

I'm gonna leave this right here and run so you don't hit me

#ThursdayThings

One person's decorative items are another person's hideous projectiles. That's why all my decorative items are made of lightweight, non-threatening, not-at-all-gay-sounding papier-mâché.

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Who’s gonna man the fort now?

Is Vidkun Quisling available? Check with his people — he may still be hiding out in a Nazi bunker, but he’d be a BRILLIANT fit for this arrogantly corrupt, catastrophically imploding administration-in-name-only.

It's like she WANTS us to attack her personally

Was it worth it?

Relive the horror here

No, really. That whole time you were filling the pot with water ... standing by the stove waiting for it to boil ... thinking and planning what you were going to do with it ... carrying it carefully over to the sleeping faggots so you wouldn't hurt yourself the way you intended to hurt them ...

Was it worth it?

Fifteen minutes of planning and preparation to inflict two lifetimes of agony and suffering and disfigurement and torment and humiliation. And for what? To prove that you're a man? To make sure those sleeping, defenseless faggots will forever know that they're less than human and deserving of unprovoked, unforeseeable physical violence?

It wasn't just enough to hate. And this wasn't just a fit of rage. You took time and effort to turn the ugly hatred you've been taught -- and that you chose to embrace -- into cruelty and barbarity so shocking ... so severe ... so sadistically permanent that you've physically and emotionally destroyed two lives and sent waves of horror and numbingly familiar pain into the hearts and minds of older gay people who've spent their lives suffering from and struggling to rise above your hatred and evil along with a new generation of gay kids who are just starting to learn about the hatred and evil they'll have to deal with the rest of their lives -- the hatred and evil perpetuated by you and all the people like you who work so tirelessly to make sure that the rot in their hearts and minds lives on to rot the hearts and minds of everyone else they can possibly influence.

And now. Forty years in prison. Where you'll no doubt be applauded by people like you and targeted by people who see how weak and cowardly you really are in the gay-hating/gay-obsessive hierarchy.

Fifteen minutes of planning. Two lives forever altered. A small man making a mighty splash of hatred over a new generation of gay people who can be hurt and the less-than-people who can hurt them.

All for only 40 years in prison.

Was it worth it?