Today, boys and girls, we are going to have a  lesson about love.  Love and music.

Lovegodsway.org says this:

“One of the most dangerous ways homosexuality invades family life is through popular music. Parents should keep careful watch over their children’s listening habits, especially in this Internet Age of MP3 piracy. “

Bands to watch out for:

• The Spores (endorse suicide)

• Scissor Sisters
• Rufus Wainwright
• Merzbau
• Ravi Shankar
• Wilco
• Bjork
• Tech N9ne
• Ghostface Killah

• Bobby Conn
• Morton Subotnik

• Cole Porter
• The String Cheese Incident
• Eagles of Death Metal

• Polyphonic Spree
• The Faint
• Interpol
• Tegan and Sara
• Erasure
• The Grateful Dead (AIDS)
• Le Tigre
• Marilyn Manson (dark gay)
• The Gossip
• The Magnetic Fields
• The Doors
• Phish
• Queen

• The Strokes
• Sufjan Stevens
• Morrissey(?questionable?)

• The Pet Shop Boys

• Metallica
• Judas Priest
• The Village People
• The Secret Handshake
• The Rolling Stones
• David Bowie
• Frankie Goes to Hollywood
• Man or Astroman
• Richard Cheese
• Jay-Z
• Depeche Mode
• Kansas
• Ani DiFranco
• Fischerspooner

• John Mayer
• George Michael (texan)
• Angel Eyes
• The Indigo Girls
• Velvet Underground

• Madonna
• Elton John
• Barry Manilow
• Indigo Girls
• Melissa Etheridge
• Eminmen
• Nirvana
• Boy George*
• The Killers
• Lou Reed
• Lil’ Wayne
• Motorhead
• Jill Sobule
• Wilson Phillips
• DMX
• Lisa Loeb
• Ted Nugent (loincloth)
• Dogstar
• Thirty Seconds to Mars
• Lil’ Kim
• kd lang

• Frank Sinatra
• Hinder
• Nickleback
• Justus Kohncke
• Bob Mould
• Clay Aiken
• Arcade Fire
• Bright Eyes
• Corinne Bailey Rae
• Audioslave
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Panic at the Disco
• Elton John(really gay)

Ok, first of all, George Michael?  Texan?  Also note the mention of Cole Porter.  Although Ted Nugent may be scary, the fact that he sometimes wears a loincloth is beside the fact.

Notice: there is no country music on this list.  However, on this site, you can write in and let mister Donnie D. know what other bands endorse gayness.

Meanwhile, I’ll have a side of the Marilyn Manson (dark gay) please, sir.

Yesterday I wrote that I was going to try the Natural Calm magnesium drink and see if it helped me sleep. 

I drank it around 8:00pm last night and was completely prepared to pass out.  It didn’t happen.

 I stayed up and watched the Daily Show and Colbert and once that was over I was still wide awake, but went to bed anyway.  It didn’t take me too terribly long to go to sleep.

I am happy to report, though, that I didn’t wake up even once last night and I woke up feeling pretty good.  It seems that while the drink did not actually make me sleepy, it did provide me with some good quality sleep, which is wonderful in my book! 

I have no problem using this product again!

  As a massage therapist in the day time and a freelance writer at night, you can imagine what kind of trouble I get into with my muscles.  Especially my shoulder and neck muscles.

Today my muscle and neck pain prompted me to take a trip to the local health food store.  I take anti-depressants and they are VERY important to me.  I have found that my sanity relies on them.  However, I am reluctant to take other prescription drugs…I figure, the fewer the better.  So, I went the natural route.  I asked the nice lady who works there if she had any sort of natural muscle relaxer and she pointed me towards this drink mix.

It’s called Natural Calm and a bought a few packets in the Raspberry-Lemon flavor.  She told me to mix the powder with water and drink it before bed.  It mainly contains magnesium and I’m going to give it a shot.

It can’t hurt.

I’ll follow up tomorrow, when hopefully I’ll be telling you about the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.

I have learned this week that an announcement was made at West Monroe High School that skulls are now banned from any article of clothing worn by students.

Hm.

Is this what we are spending our time on in the school board meetings? Banning the image of an x-ray’d human head?

My son has a skull shirt from a local clothing company called Mojos.  Instead of teaching the idea of promoting local business in his free enterprise class, apparently the idea is to teach, “you are what you wear and skulls are scary to us normal folks”.

Only once has anyone said anything to him about his clothes.  He was wearing a t-shirt which was vaguly flame-ish and a teacher told him that he shouldn’t be wearing demonic clothes to school.  To which he pointed at the kid next to him and replied, “Hey, don’t look at me, that guy’s wearing a Jesus shirt.”

I love my son.

There was no reason given for this absurd ban.  Possibly, they just didn’t like the connotation that the image of the skull conjures up.

Two words here.  Johnny Reb. The school mascot is a confederate soldier.

Another student theory being passed around is that “they” don’t want anyone banding together as gangs and using the skull as a symbol.  As we already know, even just simple colors and strips of fabric can be used to identify gangs, so really, what’s the problem here?

I’m not sure when Jolly Roger became such a bad thing.  The whole idea is just silly.

So, please, West Monroe High School, maintain some sort of sense of humor here.

After all, I maintained mine when you spend $200,000 on asto-turf.

1. I was married to a baptist minister for 10 years.

2. I was a nuclear lab tech for 3 years.

3. I was once awarded the key to the city of Monroe, Louisiana.

4. My favorite childhood toy was a red riding hood doll which changed into the grandmother/wolf when you turned her upside down and lifted up her skirt.

5. I once dreamed I was magnetic.

6. The smell of turnip greens makes me puke.

7. When my son was 13, we put our Christmas presents under the TV because both of us were too depressed to put up the tree.

8. My friends and I once made a drinking game out of the presidential debates.

9. I believe in science and magic and poetry.

10. I once lived in a castle.

A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control has found that one in four teenage girls has an STD. Over the last 8 years the abstinence only programs in the U.S. have been spreading like wildfire…or…like chlamydia. Clearly they are not working. These findings are disturbing, especially in the U.S. where STD’s can be easily prevented.

Not only is telling a teenager not to have sex before marriage like telling an asthmatic patient to hold his breath for the next 5 years, it’s also alarmingly self righteous. Concerned citizens who are pushing abstinence only education are fooling themselves, and I would place all my money in the bank on the fact that most of these abstinence pushers had sex before marriage themselves.

Living in north Louisiana, I live in what is considered to be the “buckle” of the Bible Belt. I see everyday the harm that childhood indoctrination is doing to our children and teenagers. They are taught daily to have so much guilt that their shame of being a sinner comes between them and their physical health. They would rather silently suffer the consequences of having a disease than to admit to their parents that they have had sex before marriage and failed in the eyes of God.

Teenagers have had sex since the beginning of time and there’s no way that they are stopping now. Had these teenagers been taught the proper way to use a condom, these diseases would not be so widespread. Teens need to have a safe and confidential way to purchase birth control and be tested regularly for STD’s, while not feeling ashamed for trying to protect their own health. Teaching them that the only safe way to avoid an STD is abstinence is akin to telling a person that the only cure for their disease is on the planet Mars. The cure exists, but the chances of reaching it are nearly hopeless.

There ARE ways to prevent STD’s. But the emphasis is not on teaching how to prevent, but in teaching morality in the forms of guilt and shame. Parents who advocate abstinence only sex education are putting their own rights of childhood indoctrination over the physical and mental well being of their own children.