Original MySpace Publication Date: July 13, 2009

I witnessed two events last week that deserve to be pointed out, documented and thoroughly enjoyed by the masses. Honestly, I live for this crap because if I wrote and put it in a book, nobody would believe that it actually happened. You know the kind I mean, right? The kind that when you get home, you immediately call your bestie and tell him/her all about it, then they embellish it to their friends and next thing you know it’s an urban legend. Well, maybe not quite that, but darn close!

First up is a little incident that occurred earlier in the week when we had a spot of rain. Well, spot as in it didn’t last long, but when it was coming down, it was a torrent. Not a computer torrent either. The Mother Nature kind of torrent. I was driving back home and passed one of those teenagers walking along the side of the road. You know the kind, right? The ones who wear their pants halfway down their ass and couldn’t run in them if their life depended on it? Yeah, one of those. Well, this kid was so wet from not having an umbrella that he couldn’t keep his pants up and was holding onto them with both hands for dear life.

You have no idea what it took not to roll the window down and yell “That’ll teach you not to pull your pants up and wear a belt, jackass!”

It would have been different had he at least been cute. I might have slowed down just to see if his pants did collapse (he was legal). Alas, he wasn’t, so I didn’t.

The second incident happened last Friday night around 11pm on my way home from a book club dinner. I was stopped at a light when I heard a boom, boom, BOOM getting louder. It turned out to be a Camaro that was pulling up alongside me, only the driver’s music was so loud that my windows were shaking and I couldn’t hear my own music. Trust me, it was that loud.

I HATE people like this. I’m not impressed with their car. I’m not impressed with their non-existent taste in music. And these idiots are going to be the first ones complaining about their hearing going in a few years. Not the brightest bulbs in the package sitting on a shelf next to guys who wear their pants halfway down their ass.

So the light turns green, we start moving forward and I’m suddenly treated to a display of flashing colors from behind. What’s this? Was it a roadside sign? Was it someone driving like a maniac? Was it a UFO? Or was it a police car that just happened to pull up behind the Camaro and discover his windows shaking? Yes, it was that. And that nice officer pulled that nice Camaro over.

I so wanted to stop, walk over, shake that officer’s hand and thank him for making my night. But I didn’t and it’s not because I was afraid of potentially obstructing traffic and getting arrested. It was because I didn’t want the guy in the Camaro writing my license plate down or taking a shot at me after I flashed him a HUGE grin and flipped him off.

Sometimes it’s the little things in life that make it all worthwhile.

I see stupid people!

Now, back to editing the next book…

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Kage Alan is the Teen Wolf (Season 2) watching, St. Elmo’s Fire Soundtrack listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins,” “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell,” and the short story, “Spacehunters: Master Elite and the Maternal Order of Loganites Beyond Uranus,” featured in the “Butt Pirates In Space” anthology!

Plus, since today is the last day of the workweek, why make you work too much harder? I’m once again giving you a 20% chance of being right just by guessing. Why? Because that’s the kind of guy I am.

Trivia Question #6

1) One Butt Pirates In Space author collects cowboy hats. Naa, that’s really not enough of a hint… Okay, so aside from collecting cowboy hats, which Butt Pirates In Space author had a career as a professional cook before becoming a full time writer?

Let the answers commence!

There are several authors who will be aghast at what I’ve just said and feel inclined to make their displeasure known. Moi? Not quite get PG13 horror movies? What’s up with that? Allow me to say that in the absence of gore, a solid dose of suspense always does wonders. For instance, Insidious. Fantastic film despite having a slightly weak final act. It simply didn’t have the budget to pull off what it needed to. Still, I had my fair share of goose bumps. The score certainly helped with that. Unfortunately, not all PG13 fare succeeds quite as well.

Take Mama for example. The first two acts are quite solid and sufficient hair was raised on my arms. The final act, though, falls apart so bad that it completely destroys everything it did right in the first sixty minutes. Again, we didn’t need gore, but following the logic the film presented would have been helpful. Hell, it would have been preferable. The three of us who watched it all had the same reaction and I believe one of us summed it up best with “How exactly did that make any sense whatsoever?” We also saw so much of the CGI creature at the end that it was no longer scary. I hate when that happens!

On the other end of the spectrum is this BDSM craze that’s gaining traction. The whole idea of doms and subs is…hold on a moment. Master is calling on the phone.

<2 minutes later>

Carry master’s bags? Of course I will! Or maybe he’ll flog me.

Sorry. My Khan wants a few things completed at the house before he comes home on Saturday. Anyway, as I was saying, this whole thing about doms and subs is just too incredible to believe. I mean, I’m not stupid. I know it goes on. I’ve just never seen it, been a part of it or really given it enough thought to have genuine interest in knowing more about the subject. I am, however, reading about it in one of Patricia Logan’s novels.

No, I’m not going to be unkind about the genre. I may be a smartass about it, but I won’t be unkind. Being told what to do and living to please one’s mate sounds an awful lot like marriage, so I’m not quite sure how paddles and flogging entered into it. Maybe that’s what European marriages involve. Or Canadian marriages. I’ll have to ask my friend from Canadia.

What goes through my mind when the subject of BDSM comes up—or pretty much any subject that comes up—is how to make light of it. For those of you who know me, can you imagine the crap I’d say if ever wound up in the position of having to pleasure some guy who considered himself a dom? Seriously? Telling me what to think, what to say, what to do, how to please him… Crap. Hold on. Master is calling me on the phone again.

<90 seconds later>

He also wants some groceries, but nothing from the front of the shelf. It has to be at least from the second product back, otherwise it contributes to his unhappiness. Sorry, where was I? Right. My urge to say something sarcastic if some dom thinks he’s going to tell me what to do and that I’ll enjoy it. Boy, will HE be surprised! He’ll get a tongue lashing like he’s never had and NOT in the good way.

And there we have it. R rated films good, PG13 rated films borderline depending on who made it. Director James Wan? Totally cute. BLTs? Outstanding with crispy bacon, fresh tomatoes and toasted whole grain bread. BDSM? An acquired taste for the discerning palate.

Your thoughts?

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Kage Alan is the Teen Wolf (Season 2) watching, St. Elmo’s Fire Soundtrack listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins,” “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell,” and the short story, “Spacehunters: Master Elite and the Maternal Order of Loganites Beyond Uranus,” featured in the “Butt Pirates In Space” anthology!

The odds are considerably easier for this particular question since you have a 20% chance of being right just by guessing. See? Easier.

Trivia Question #5

1) One of the Butt Pirates In Space authors was surprised/shocked/dismayed/oddly titillated to discover he/she shares the same name as a serial killer. What is the name of the serial killer?

Let the answers commence!

Okay, Friday’s question was too easy since the second person nailed it. That’s actually not a decent way of judging it, though. Let’s say that the correct answer was arrived at in half the time it took for the others. But that was then and this is now. Let’s see how well you do with a question geared for a Monday.

Are you ready for the fourth trivia question?

Alrighty then. Let’s see how long it takes to get this one!

Trivia Question #4

1) Who does my gorgeous, witty, and delightfully busty fellow Butt Pirates In Space author Shae Connor live with?

Let the answers commence!

Bonding. I said bonding, Patti Logan, not bondage. There’s a reason the first person who responded to my trivia question on Friday when I asked who I thought the most evil person on the planet is came up with your name.

This Detroit house should be on a horror novel book cover!

I took my friends on a ride down Jefferson last year through the Grosse Pointe area and into the lovely areas of Detroit beyond Grosse Pointe. And when I say lovely, I mean scary. Real scary. It’s the kind of scary where you have a full tank of gas, stick to the main road, never travel there at night, don’t pull off onto side streets, and for He-Who-Walks-Behind-the-Blu-Ray-Rack’s sake, don’t get out of the vehicle! Detroit scares me and I don’t even like traveling down there for PrideFest or to go to John King Books. Or the Fox Theater. Or even the Detroit Institute of Arts. I do go to some of those places, but not without bringing along a minimum of three staff members to act as human shields.

It’s a place where bad things happened…in our minds.

So what does Lindsay say? “Can you pull off on one of the side streets so I can get out and take some pictures?” Umm…no. Okay, she’s lucky I agreed to turn down a side street. Real lucky. The first one? Not so much. We traveled about fifty feet when we saw people approaching a car in front of us. Not good. Maybe they knew each other. Didn’t care. Lindsay wisely changed her mind and we sought out the first available area that looked like it could give us the space we needed, turned around and went down another side street. Hey, she wanted a side street, not a specific side street.

Thus began our journey of looking for abandoned, burned out or otherwise scary looking houses. We certainly found some along with a few buildings, too. The odd thing is that these houses often had houses next to them that were kept up quite nicely…and then some that weren’t. Pushing the creepy factor is some of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods saw us and looked as aghast that we were there as we were to be there. That’s not a good combination under any circumstances. It fortunately started to get dark and we decided that an hour and a half of light left was simply too much to chance in case we had to Escape From Detroit.

The structure that caught our eye.

The best part of journey out and about happened on Saturday. We’d driven up to Port Huron so Lindsay could shop at the mall there. I haven’t been to that one in years and it’s a place where I took my husband when we first started dating, so special memories. It’s changed a little. Kind of a lot, actually. But as we were heading back, I decided to indulge in another special memory place from way back when my hubby-to-be would take road trips just to get out with each other. There’s a small outlet mall off of I94 where honorable husband and I would walk around and browse. It was quite nice. It’s not anymore. It’s…um…almost a ghost town and that’s sad. BUT, that being said, we saw the remains of a factory of sorts beyond the shops that simply drew us to investigate the area.

The building beyond the structure.

Don said the unfinished skeletal structure reminded him of Legos and it did. I thought it looked a bit like a coliseum or concert venue. The building beyond was hallowed out as well. We wanted to take a look inside, but there was a truck there and someone had been driving a 4-wheeler around, so we didn’t go further than the structure. Our first glance of it made it look as if it would be easy to climb. It wasn’t. There was a lake where the smaller steps of the structure reached into. We did, however, find a way onto it and, believe me, it went pretty high up.

Kage Alan on top…for once.

I haven’t climbed something like this since I was a youth…ten years ago. But talk about cool! The higher up I climbed and looked out at the building, the more I was reminded of the (don’t laugh) film Xanadu. The building in the film was a shell of its former self, yet was turned into something magical. This place gave each of us a similar feeling, that there was potential here. It touched our imaginations. And, fortunately, Lindsay brought her camera.

We’ve never been bored during our weekends together and it’s never felt like we’ve done the same old thing, but this weekend offered us a new adventure and a tradition I think we’re going to continue next year. We’ll seek out former civilizations, places with no life forms, and boldly take pictures…unless we see other people, in which case we’ll run like hell.

Still, we found Xanadu this weekend. Xanadu that was and might be again one day.

All hail the three adventurers! (Kage Alan, Don and Lindsay)

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Kage Alan is the Star Trek: Into Darkness watching, Journey listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins,” “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell,” and the short story, “Spacehunters: Master Elite and the Maternal Order of Loganites Beyond Uranus,” featured in the “Butt Pirates In Space” anthology!

The Face of Gay 33 (Petra)
I grew up in London in the 70’s on the kind of street that doesn’t exist anymore. Us kids would run in and out of each others houses, have dinner wherever we were when something was cooked, share baths and top and tail beds. Everyone was treated exactly the same. It never occurred to me that our neighbours were any different to us because they were black. In the same way, I never questioned when I was four why my parents held two 18th birthday parties one for my eldest sister and one for her best friend. I was much older before I realized that it was because her parents were strict Hindus and she wouldn’t have had a party if it was left to them. I also never questioned why my Auntie Josie (no relation, but everyone was aunt and uncle!) had a brother who lived with another man; they were just more uncles to me.

It wasn’t until I was 11 and being bullied at school that I realized exactly how naïve I was. I had learnt from my parents to take everyone at face value regardless of colour, religion or sexual orientation and yet I soon discovered that other children did not have this view. There was a lot of name calling and fighting amongst groups with different colour skins and different religions. It appeared to me that in the six weeks between junior and senior schools, people that I thought of as friends had developed a whole new vocabulary. I remember the first time I heard the word lesbian. I really had no idea what it meant!! Obviously, this made me a prime target for ridicule and all because I had been taught to judge people on face value. I made it through school a bit battered and bruised psychologically, but still not appreciating the amazing start to life I had been given.

No one ever sat me down and said “It’s OK if people are gay.” That would have at least given me the chance to think about why some people were not OK with people being gay. It was just a non-issue to me; gay people were just …. people, no labels, and the same went for skin colour and religions.

Aged about 4, my daughter crept out of bed one night and walked in on me watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And with the impeccable timing that children have. the screen was filled with Willow and Tara having a full on snog. She stared at the screen, then turned to me with the most indigent look on her face. “Well!” My heart sank at the thought of the coming conversation “They’re doing that wrong!!” My thoughts were now along the lines of “Huh??” “You don’t kiss like that you do it like this!” she said puckering her lips and pecking me on the cheek. I laughed and sent her back to bed, but this, once more, set me thinking that prejudice is a learned behaviour and have been determined that my children will grow up with the same attitude I did.

I think I have succeeded as she has just taken her GCSE in Religious Education and one of the questions was “Should religious people accept homosexuals? Give two reasons for YOUR opinion.” To which her response was “Uhm do you have like a whole load of pages and a few free hours and I’ll give you my opinion!!” In fact I’m surprised she didn’t just stand and yell at the test paper she feels so strongly about gay rights! Hopefully her actually written response was slightly more eloquent.

A Facebook friend recently posted a status saying he loved all his friends, especially the straight and gay-friendly ones. I immediately posted below that whilst I was happy to be his friend, I did not consider myself special for being gay friendly. I am normal; the rest of society needs to catch-up! This attracted a lot of likes, but I was sad he had felt the need to thank us / me at all!

I continue to live my life liking people for who they are. But don’t assume I will automatically love you if you are gay. I’m sure you can be gay and just as big an idiot as a straight person. I will, however, stand up for people’s rights where I can. I actually yelled at a co-worker once for some ignorant anti-gay remarks he made, which, in a relatively quiet although well-populated office, was something of an event. When I stepped away to calm down, another co-worker came and gave me a hug and said “thank you,” although he didn’t broadcast it much. He was gay and was so glad that someone had finally said something. Apparently the bigoted remarks were a frequent occurrence!

Although prejudice must be fought—as with all battles—the best answer is not to start it. I wish I could wave a magic wand and take all the hate from the world, but as I can’t, I will have to content myself with making sure that my little corner is full of love and hope others are doing the same.

If you’d be so kind, please leave Petra some love in the comment section below. Also, you’ll be hearing me begging for future guests to post for this series. Not that I haven’t been begging all along, but I’m going to have to start doing it louder.

The Previous 5 entries in the Face of Gay Series:

The Face of Gay 28 (Patricia Logan Part 2)
The Face of Gay…Er…Bi…29 (Wayne)
The Face of Gay 30 (Moxie Anne Magnus)
The Face of Gay 31 (Sharita Lira)
The Face of Gay 32 (Jon Michaelson)
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Kage Alan is the Mrs. Brown’s Boys watching, Nick Carter listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins,” “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell,” and the short story, “Spacehunters: Master Elite and the Maternal Order of Loganites Beyond Uranus,” featured in the “Butt Pirates In Space” anthology to be launched today at OutlantaCon!

So, this is exciting! We’ve had two winners so far and they’ve won by mastering their powers of observation and technology. Well, one e-mailed one of the other authors and the other blew up a picture from a Facebook photo album. They did it! Since it’s Friday and since the previous questions were a little difficult, I thought I’d give you a slightly easier one for today.

Now let’s get to the third trivia question.

Are you ready? Then let’s get ourselves another winner!

Trivia Question #3

1) Who does Kage Alan (that would be me) think is the most evil person in the world?

Let the answers commence!

Here’s our carpet conversation the last time he was home.

Me: I really like this. What do you think?
Honorable Husband: It’s blue.
Me: Yes.
Honorable Husband: No.
Me: What’s wrong with blue?
Honorable Husband: It’s not gray.
Me: What color do you want?
Honorable Husband: Really?

The conversation continues for some time until finally:

Honorable Husband: Can we please wrap this up? Dinner is ready and I want my Italian sausage.
Me: I’ve got your Italian sausage right here.
Honorable Husband: You’re not Italian.
Me: But if I was Italian, I’d have your Italian sausage right here.

As you might have guessed, we didn’t exactly settle on anything except a general color. Because I’m sure there aren’t various shades of this color in existence.

Yeah, a match made in Heaven these two aren’t.

Well, there are. And when I took what I thought we wanted to IKEA today to hold up against the couch we agreed on, I discovered it (the carpet) was too dark. We need a much lighter shade of gray. The carpet store I’ve been frequenting was unhappy to hear this since they’ve been pushing the darker shade on me and were ready to drive out today and install it. I don’t like pushy, but I also don’t like the fact that Lowes wants to charge us $2000 more for a similar carpet. This means I need to confer with honorable husband.

Allow me to say that trying to get and maintain honorable husband’s attention while on the phone is a gargantuan undertaking. In person? Not so horrible since all I have to do is tell him I’m hungry and he lets out one of his “again????” growls. On the phone is a whole different story. He enjoys conversations under thirty seconds in length. Anything over that and he’s climbing the walls to get off the phone or he starts surfing the internet…even if the computer is off. He even fell asleep on the phone with Miss Kim one night because she wouldn’t take a breath and let him tell her he was hanging up. Ironically, it took her fifteen minutes to figure it out. The snoring may have clued her in.

Anyway, I obviously want his input in this project because if I muck it up, I’ll hear about it for the rest of my life. Aside from that, though, I genuinely want him to be happy when he walks in the door and sees the fruits of our delegating power. Yes, those nameless, faceless workers can one day go to that great workplace in the sky resting easier in the knowledge they’ve contributed to my husband’s happiness. Or something like that.

Honorable husband isn’t exactly what I’d call a ‘grand listener’ to begin with anyway. He hears what makes him happy and fills in the blanks of everything you haven’t said yet so it continues to make him happy. He also rewrites history so that when he looks on it, it makes him happy. Are you seeing a pattern here? I joked in a text message with him while at OutlantaCon two weeks ago that a friend who’d spoken with him on the phone for twelve minutes several months back was looking forward to speaking with him again.

Twelve minutes. That’s eleven minutes and thirty seconds longer than he’d have preferred and he was climbing the walls during the majority of that conversation.

Honorable Husband’s Text: “When does she want to talk to me?”
My Text: “Next time you’re home. She misses you!”
Honorable Husband’s Text: “If you could only see my face…I think it’s the same look that animals have at the Human Society.”

And he tells me I’m not a people person.

So the carpet color selection is up in the air for yet another day while we also now wait to receive the quote from the electrician for all the work they’re going to do. You know, I don’t expect this to be easy, but… Well, let’s be honest. Yes, I do expect it to be easy. If people would just cooperate! He wants gray carpet. Read his mind and install it! It’ll make my life that much easier.

Now, that damn backsplash…

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Kage Alan is the Castle Freak watching, Tears For Fears listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins,” “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell,” and the short story, “Spacehunters: Master Elite and the Maternal Order of Loganites Beyond Uranus,” featured in the “Butt Pirates In Space” anthology.

So let’s get to the second trivia question.

Are you ready? Then here we go.

Trivia Question #2

1) Beautiful, talented author extraordinaire Kiernan Kelly never goes anywhere without her willing faithful servant, confidant, love slave and inspiration. She calls this person her husband. At conventions, however, the folks at registration love to joke call him something else, which winds up on his name badge. What’s one of the nicknames Kiernan Kelly’s husband is given at DragonCon or OutlantaCon?

Let the answers commence!