After a long, hot day of drinking iced mint tea and reading voraciously (Reading Lolita in Tehran - marvelous), I moved on to my second favorite non-activity: surfing the interweb. After paying a visit to all the usual subjects -- .edu email, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and MySpace (the latter seems semi-sinister to me) -- I read CNN.com within an inch of a nervous breakdown and moved on to my second "favorite" news source, The Chicago Tribune. In truth, I don't have a "favorite" news source. Rather, I'm a news junkie. In the same way Kitty Dukakis drank rubbing alcohol when the the whiskey ran dry -- I will seek news wherever I can get it. Nevermind that Lebanon and Israel are burning, the top story on the website of The Chicago Tribune (a not-so-secretly conservative newspaper) was The Gay Games.

I'm only peripherally interested in the games as anything pertaining to sporting events can cause me to slip into a boredom induced coma. In any case, The Chicago Tribune article, diplomatically entitled "WHY A GAY GAMES?" mentioned an incident out in lovely Crystal Lake, IL where residents debated and wrung their hands and debated some more on whether or not to allow a Gay Games rowing competition to take place in their quaint village. The Crystal Lake/Gay Games "debacle" (I don't know that it was a "debacle," I just like that word) included all the homophobic rhetoric we've come to know and love -- words like "agenda" and "values" were used liberally (no pun intended) but, in the end, The Gay Games were allowed to use a pond in Crystal Lake for a rowing competition.

It was while reading this that I realized I'd make a truly lousy advocate for any group. In spite of my many, strong political convictions regarding a varitable cornucopia of issues, it was while reading about Crystal Lake's "hangups" and the spokesperson for the Gay Games' shrug-and-a-smile response that it occured to me how I would react . . .

The spokesperson for the Gay Games' handled the issue in a very tactful, appropriate, measured manner whereas I would have been all like, "Bitch! I don't want your motherfucking pond, anyway! And furthermore, in the famous words of Mr. Garrison (of South Park fame), 'I hope you go to hell. You go to hell. You go to hell and you die!'"

So, basically, I shouldn't be a spokesperson/politician/advocate. I am too easily riled. Passionate, sometimes, to a fault . . . especially after reading CNN.com for an hour while sipping rubbing alcohol.

Link of the day: THIS.