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So you “want to take America back”? Really? Fuck you tea party folks, you had your chance and fucked the country up with your blind support for people who espouse a narrow shallow money oriented “christian” ethic. Fuck you.

We had eight years of
Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad!
You didn’t get mad when
the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a
President.You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted.
You didn’t get mad when
the Patriot Act got passed..

You didn’t get mad when
we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when
we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when
over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when
you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when
the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when
we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when
you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when
we let a major US city drown.

You didn’t get mad when
we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn’t get mad
when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.

You didn’t get mad when
the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad
when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no.

AND NOW YOU’RE MAD?!

When you can actually act like grownups instead of screaming harpies that just protest without offering a balanced opinion (saying no to obama when all you do is regurgitate talking points from fox news does not an opinion make)

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how my life needed a massive shift to align better with who I used to be and at my core really am. Last night while enjoying some breakfast with a friend I jokingly said that the way my life has changed so much in the last week plus my insomnia made me feel a bit like maybe I wasn’t me anymore. My own Tyler Durden moment (I do so love shopping at Ikea too) Maybe my subconscious had stepped in and started making sure that I better embraced my own needs a bit more. Who knows just typing this makes me feel a. pretentious and b. slightly insane but then I suppose maybe that’s exactly the sort of me shaped object I am.

What’s really interesting is realizing more and more that in order for me to be truly happy I need to embrace the person I was from age 19-22 much, much more.  I lived life in many ways like a hippy or beatnik. I worked when I needed money, I slept if I needed to but above all I never compromised my own values or ethics while at the same time keeping to my promise to always be equally mutually beneficial to any interactions I had. I forgot that along the way and that imbalance contributed to a lot of hurt to a lot of people who didn’t deserve it including myself. The adage “be true to yourself” means accepting the flaws inherent to who you are too.

I’m by no means glossing over my own immaturities throughout my life but there is a certain raw natural instinct that guides us at that age before the outside world forces us to change to be a better fit in society. The real question then is how useful is society if it requires that we not be ourselves (obvious nonharmful to others qualifier). So much of our society is about making a better you with stuff and lesser so on excelling on being ourselves.Why can’t we instead work towards promoting a better species instead of just being a vast network of interdependent snake oil salesmen.

So who is this new me? Or rather what is the “me” that has returned? That’s really an observational thing so find me somewhere at any of my favorite Portland haunts and see for yourself :D

One of the strangest clues I wish I’d noticed earlier in the year was my lack of listening to music. Now it seems as I wake up fully, I’m constantly singing or rediscovering some of my favorite bands and songs. Even better is finding songs that actually spark new thoughts and new directions in my heart and soul…

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

We all await the answers to our hearts, to the questions in our souls. I used to think that the fear that the answer wouldn’t be what you want was the worst thing of all. Not at all I know now, quite to the contrary. The hardest part is waiting with baited breath, every cell anticipating, needing to know, needing that sense of resolution and knowing that no matter what there is no way to hurry it along, no way to have the solution, no way to resolve things without patience. Now that I know that it’s a lot easier to find the strength to just wait and focus on what it is that’s important: health, humility and above all being comfortable with lack of control :D

Thank you Beatles for pointing that stuff out to me :D

This weekend was a cathartic kismet roller coaster leading me to and fro inside and outside of my heart. Almost like an acid trip only of sobriety and understanding. If I didn’t know better I’d guess I dreamed all or most of it. all in all it keeps leading me back to what I somehow always knew to be true but even more bizarrely somehow forgot for awhile, I love my wife, my lady, my best friend, my confidant, my lover. I love you Zoe and I’ve been giving some thought to what you said to me the last time we spoke.

You’re absolutely right, there is no way we can go back to the early days of our relationship, our marriage….I don’t want that. It wasn’t stable or all that healthy. I want something more and you deserve something more. I want an incredible loving, passionate, respectful marriage with you. I love you with all my heart and am doing my best to leave you alone right now even though all of me wants to fight for your heart. I understand now that talking isn’t the way to fix us. Me fixing our finances, budget, my attitude and my anger is what it will take to do so. I am fixing all of that as well as I can and just hope it is enough for you.

Namaste!

To all of the new friends I made this week and to those friends that have been my guides through the wilderness I’ve travelled heart and soul through the last 30 days I thank you from the bottom of my heart and appreciate the clarity, growth, acceptance and above all understanding you’ve given me.

So my wife Zoe & I are buying a house, in this economy that seems like a silly idea. Actually it’s not entirely silly since property values are so low right now. However with the complexity of banking habits right now plus the fact that I started a little business called Slate Technologies I don’t have the resources or the desire to actually deal with navigating the banking waters.

So anyhow, the idea I had (yet another one of my strange social experiments) is to see if I can crowdsource buying my house. The idea is to still pay everyone back that donates but to do it without paying all of those spurious fees to banks, real estate brokers and everyone else that skims money off of the top. To be fair I love most real estate brokers, in this case however we love the property but the agent is a giant bag of suck.

I could say more and be even more flowery in my speech but in this case short, sweet and succinct seems like the best plan. Below is the donate button. All donations will be credited with name (and or twitter handle if you’d like) in list form as the experiment continues.

Easy peasy right?

In honor of the abject backwards cowardice of the California Supreme Court (and every other court that believes that popular opinion supersedes that pesky constitution (the one that says we’re ALL equal)) I am hereby declaring that I am gay and standing with all of the other oppressed people.

Not opressed you say? Really? So not being able to visit your partner in a hospital without lengthy paperwork ahead of time? Not being able to have all of the same rights as any other couple in love? Seems like oppression to me.

Exactly when did the government have the right to determine who someone loves if they’re both of consenting age? Why is this still an issue in this day an age at all? Doesn’t case law from the 60s establish that discrimination is illegal? Meh it’ll take more than facts, truth and logic to sway the minds of blind stupidity, ignorance and fear.

I strongly endorse the idea of everyone on twitter, facebook, myspace wherever it is that you spend your online social time and be gay for the day, the week, the month. However long it takes for people to wake up and end the all too common standard of discrimination we live in.

Fuck oppression

Fuck discrimination

Fuck religious ideology being forced upon the masses.

The above is how I feel, apparently the courts think otherwise.

I’ll be hashtagging on twitter using #gayfortheday

So here we are, the first person to sign up for the Great Portland Interview Experiment. My good friend (and wife of one of my oldest friends) Angela Leach. When we first met a few years back I was immediately fast friends with her since she’s a drumcorps fan and also we have similar senses of humor. In the years since I’ve gotten to know her as one of the coolest people around and am thankful every day that my friend Jason found such a great match and that I get to be her friend too. Alrighty enough introduction from me, let’s get to the interview questions.

1. If you had one tweet to summarize yourself what would it be?

“Redheaded, polyamorous, badass, tattooed, intellectual freak of nature. Wife, mother, friend, lover, complicated, musical, passionate.”

2. You won a pretty prestigious scholarship recently. What was it and how has it affected you?

I was awarded the Ford Family Foundation ReStart scholarship.  It is an amazing scholarship given to individuals over 25 who have limited college experience and are looking to educate themselves after devoting their adult life to raising a family or serving the community.

Being awarded the ReStart scholarship has been amazing for me.  I have been able to aggressively pursue the education I want at the institution I want without fear of having to pick up a full time job to help my family survive.  The scholarship is significant enough that I will also be able to graduate with less than $20,000 in student loans, which is amazing in this day and age.

3. I see you have a blog, what inspired it?

I began my blog in November of 2004, one month after I started reviewing adult toys for Freddy and Eddy; someone mentioned that a blog would be a reasonable step for me, since I love to write.  I had been a regular contributor on different forum systems and offered advice there, so it made perfect sense to begin a blog and start sharing the twists and turns of my life.  The self discovery and amazing journey has been a side benefit, but a pretty significant one.

4. You seem proud of your celtic heritage, what made you embrace it?

I think, honestly, I’ve been pretty well reminded of my heritage since I was young.  My grandparents brought home kilts for all of us after a trip to Europe when I was around 6 or so; my sister has hers framed in a shadow box and I plan to do the same.  Both of my parents are very interested in genealogy and have helped me study my family’s roots, which in turn got me interested in researching these people that I came from.  Beyond the bloodline, I have always felt a very real connection to Celtic spirituality and think that it is an important part of how I see myself.

5. Do you consider yourself a “sex blogger”

I sure do.  While I blog about things other than sex, my primary focus still tends to revolve around sensuality and eroticism.  I feel more at home in the “sex blogger” community than any other blogging “caste”, so to speak.

6. Since you’ve become a parent, how has that changed your sex life?

Well, that depends.  I think that my sex life has actually been more affected by my being a student than by being a parent, but both of those roles do directly affect my sexuality.  As a parent, I have responsibilities to care for my children and I expend a lot of energy doing so.  As a student, I have responsibilities to focus on my studies and do what it takes to get the most out of my schooling.  There difference between the two is that I can get help with parenting duties (can and, for the most part anymore, do get help) whereas I can’t ask someone else to do my studying for me and expect to learn anything.  Similarly, I don’t think that being a mom has adversely affected my ability to be a kinky, perverted sex goddess long term – in the beginning it took some reconciling my different roles.

7. You posted weeks ago on your blog that you “came out” about being poly to your speech class. Were you nervous?

Are you kidding?  I was pacing and ready to vomit going into that class, but I felt that if I was to be truly honest about who I am and what is important to me I had to find the courage to tell the truth about my family.

8. How did your classmates react?

Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the LACK of reaction.  No one asked any questions about polyamory afterwards, and only two of my classmates have said anything since then.  Both were positive and nonjudgmental about it, so I can’t complain there.

9. What inspires you about each of the following: parenting, education, technology, sexuality

I think, with parenting, what inspires me the most is the community of people I know and love.  My husbands and wife, my friends with children, other bloggers with children, Ian and Alicia Denchasy (of freddyandeddy.com), and realistically the entire support structure of friends and family I have surrounded myself with.  We all have different personalities and I see a great many wonderful things in each person that I can try to instill in my children.

10. What’s the most important object on the planet to you?

Object?  Oooooh, that’s hard.  I would say a computer, but that’s not entirely realistic.  I think the most important OBJECT on the planet to me is my cello.

11. Why is it so important?

All through my life, I have been a very subdued person.  Music is the only thing that brings out the passionate side of me, the personality that is always hidden behind these walls and defenses.  My cello has the strongest effect on me, and without that, without the opportunity to express my true personality, I am nothing.

12. Worst thing you’ve ever done to someone?

Heh… I had to think about this one for a LONG time.  I think the worst thing I’ve done to someone is put a rainbow sticker on a severely homophobic person’s car.

13. Did they deserve it?

Oh, she definitely deserved it.  Trust me.

14. How would you change the world to make it better?

I would magically make people tolerant to alternative lifestyles.

15. Favorite 5 bloggers?

Oh crap… this is a hard one. Besides you? The five that I’ve been following religiously the longest are:

• Twisted Monk
• Shay
• Ell
• Goose and Gander
• Bondage Blog

I have SO many more that I follow now, though, and have made a ridiculous number of blogfriends in the last several months that it’s ridiculously hard to answer that question without feeling like I’m missing a bunch of people.

If you’d like to learn more about Angela you can find her here:

@CelticFrog
SwelteringCelt.com (this is not very work safe so surf with caution)

So I’m a relatively wordy twitter user, as well as known for being exceptionally brutally honest and free with my opinions. I’ll usually try and color it with a healthy dose of humorso as not to be too mean but still it’s part and parcel of who I am.

Which brings me to a little experiment I’m trying out. Every Friday between 3pm and 5pm I will be engaging in #nofilterfriday. This means I’ll say whatever pops into my head and most importantly will honestly answer any questions that I’m asked. This will be difficult and I will honestly say there are very few subjects that I won’t respond well to (too private of info about my wife and kids for example).

I’ve already had a few questions asked in the original test #nofilterfriday.

sewmyheadon: @chrisorourke #nofilterfriday what pisses you off most about the iPhone?

@chrisorourke: @sewmyheadon The fact that a progressive forward thinking company like Apple did a deal with ATT. Apple could’ve been the first successful..
MVNO. Imagine paying your phone bill with itunes? Simple. Everything apple tied together. Really surprised they didn’t do it.

verso: @chrisorourke #nofilterfriday what is the thing from High School you look back on that still FULLY embarrasses you?

chrisorourke: @verso 1992: huge screwup during the ballad at the U of O marching band show during prelims. I played loud perc notes during flute solo.