Freedom is Somewhat Nebulous

Happy Independence Day, people in the place called America that's actually the U.S. because it doesn't include Brazil. Yet.

Happy troubling purgatory, people in the place called Egypt. I wonder if Egypt will be celebrating July third as Independence Day two hundred years from now. George Washington was a military General after all. I wish them luck.

I guess there is good reason to be proud to be an American (in the U.S.) this year with the watershed on gay rights. Yesterday while drawing I was listening to George Takei's bachelor party on The Howard Stern Show from 2008. I wonder if Takei groping a man with a fourteen inch penis while millions of people listened had any impact on the national attitude towards gay rights--Stern tends to refer to the 24 million people subscribed to Sirius/XM as mainly being fans of his show. He could be right, I doubt many people are paying money just to listen to music. Then there's the fact that Stern's audience largely consists of the very people whose minds probably needed changing. How much credit does George Takei get for publicly debating whether or not to play Naked Twister with Richard Christy?

There's certainly been a lot of sources in media exerting a positive influence, though. I watched "Cold Stones" last night, an episode of The Sopranos, the last of the arc with the homosexual mob capo played by Joey G (Joseph R. Gannascoli). It was a very good episode--I liked how they didn't make the guy a saint. He tries to lead a good life on the lam with a perhaps improbably perfect fireman but he misses gambling and extorting for a living so much he risks his life to go back to New Jersey. The confusion among his homophobic comrades on how to handle the situation is very well played and nicely unsentimental.

Anyway, I don't have too much more to say to-day so here's a mix tape I put together for the holiday. YouTube sure has made it a lot harder since the last time I did this;