12-12 is squarely my special day so I felt entitled to both my ridiculous love of alliterattive headlines and a mini-sermon (it was much longer but good sense prevailed -- perhaps being 31 for 12 hours or so has given me some sense...)
We confuse attachment with love. Attachment is concerned with my needs, my happiness, while love is an unselfish attitude, concerned with the needs and happiness of others....A relationship free of unrealistic grasping is free of disappointment, conflict, jealousy, and other problems, and is fertile ground for the growth of love and wisdom. -- Kathleen McDonald, "How to Meditate"
"Brokeback Mountain" isn't a more universal love story because we gays - even closeted, punching hot wranglers -- love like everybody else; in fact, it's the opposite. Every time people demolish their closet doors, emotional walls or chocolate Magic Shell surrounding their heart to actually connect, it's incredibly unique -- and that's what gives it so much power. But love that doesn't work when it feels like it should -- when it can't or it won't or it isn't allowed by cicumstance or design or the sweet knowing hand of Gay Jesus -- that has a similar feeling that anybody who's felt it would recognize, no matter what swings (or doesn't) below the big old rodeo buckle.
It's why romantic comedies are generally so trite and tragedies have so much power. You can't make your love seem like my love because my love is something only I can know. But there's something vaguely familiar about the pain of love that sparks but doesn't quite catch the flint. Familiar and exciting.... like a bored child on a dry winter day trapped inside but still wearing a wool sweater. You know the next thing your finger touches is going to shock you and you wish it wouldn't happen. But you also keep dragging your feet. And eventually you let it touch. And repeat it again. You're pretty sure that it will never be too much for you to control -- a touch of the doorknob shouldn't suddenly be like sticking your finger in the socket. But part of the thrill is that it might. And the good tragic love story is what happens when it does.
But hey cowboys and cowgirls, don't let that scare you. Tie your loop your own way and toss your lariat without giving a thought to if you're doing it like your neighbor thinks you should or like your dad taught you. As long as you buckleroos all end up happy, you're doing it right.
Speaking of, my porn recommendation from last week has shown up in the advertising emails for TLA Video.
Buck up for Brokeback Mountain with the beefy
BuckleRoos Premium Collector's Edition
(And if you need to pretend that it's Heath and Jake you're watching, we don't mind!)
Taste is subjective and all that - but if you have to imagine anything other than Dean Phoenix when he's naked on your screen, I think you should get your cowboyparts examined.
Have a happy Mike's birthday. You've earned it.
To say that John Spencer's death will change the direction of the remainder of The West Wing is perhaps an even bigger understatement than it sounds, if that's possible. It's become clear this season, as the Bartlett Administration wraps up/collapses under its own weight/moves on that the arc of Leo McGarry would be the through line of the series. The recovering alcoholic forced to run things behind the scenes because of his past had become the elder statesman vice presidential candidate on the maverick Democratic ticket. Ludicrous? Perhaps. But John Spencer made it work. 
Jossip 
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