#called the blood of the exploited working class

[estavionpira]

fellas, im starting to think that the world is screaming "kiss me, son of god" but im not sure can anyone back me up on this?

[regretevator-headcanonss]

fleshcousin has an atrocious sense of rhythm, but a near-perfect pitch. they love human music and incorporate lyrics from songs they like into their speech all the time

FLESHCOUSIN LISTENS TO THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS!!!!

[woagwaowandeverythinginbetween]

I rlly like making patches 4 bands that r not traditionally punk. I made this TMBG patch 4 a friend a few months ago

[sorrelpaws]

i built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

[crossfalconx5]

—————————————— ”I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage, called the blood of the exploited working class-.”

Yeah sorry, your boyfriend destroyed the bond of friendship and respect between the only people left who’d even look him in the eye. Yeah, now he’s laughing and making a fortune off the same ones that he tortured. Sorry.

[tumbleinthenet]

i built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class, but they've overcome their shyness, now they're calling me your highness, and the world screams, "kiss me, son of god!"

i am not a gristol malik stan. however, who am i to deny the pull of they might be giants. i guess you could call this a sequel to the ana ng one i just posted! a spiritual successor, at least. and i might keep making more for as long as i can think of they might be giants songs to fit with psychonauts characters.

[rauberrauber]

i built a little empire out of some crazy garbage

called the blood of the exploited working class

but theyve overcome their shyness

now theyre calling me your highness

and a world screams kiss me son of god

[hiddensneker]

I built and empire out of some crazy garbage

Called the blood of the exploited working class.

But they’ve overcome their shyness, now they’re calling me your highness.

And the world screams

“Kiss me son of god”

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for capitalism?

I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class. But they've overcome their shyness now; they're calling me "your highness", and the world screams, "Kiss me, son of God!" I destroyed the bonds of friendship and respect between the only people left who'd even look me in the eye. Now I laugh and make a fortune off the same ones that I tortured, and the world screams, "Kiss me, son of God!" I look like Jesus, so they say, but Mr. Jesus is very far away. Now you're the only one here who can tell me if it's true that you love me and I love me. AITA?

[sunnymaxxing]

I BUILT A LITTLE EMPIRE OUT OF SOME CRAZY GARBAGE CALLED THE BLOOD OF THE EXPLOITED WORKING CLASS. BUT THEY'VE OVERCOME THEIR SHYNESS, NOW THEY'RE CALLING ME "YOUR HIGHNESS" & THE WORLD SCREAMS "KISS ME, SON OF GOD".

quotes: dennis reynolds in sweet dee gets audited, dennis takes a mental health day & kiss me, son of god by they might be giants. images: comedy by pierre charles trémolières, dennis takes a mental health day, & sacred heart of jesus by giovanni gasparro. coloring.

[alpaca-clouds]

Let me talk about Vampunk

It is punk-o-clock and... Halloween is in a couple of days. So let me talk about this one punk genre that I came up with myself: Vampunk. Because I just think there is an amazing potential in telling punk stories with vampires. Also I love my vampires. 🧛

I talked about it in the trope defining post before, but just to catch you up to speed on what I imagine this genre to be:

Vampires in fiction play a dual role.

They can be monsters and villains with the potential to stand in for all sorts of exploitation. There is a reason why we call folks, who exploit others a lot "vampires" often enough. They suck you dry and then leave you out in the sun. In a lot of fiction vampires have been made into slavers, CEOs and other people like that.

Vampires can also be a standin for the marginalized and especially queer culture has very much taken to them as a metaphor for queerness. A big factor of course is, that all the early vampires in fiction (Dracula, Carmilla and Lord Ruthven) are all queer-coded in their respective media. There also tends to be a lot of stories about vampires living in normal society and being forced to hide their existence because people would literally kill them if they knew. Hence, the vampire becomes a story about the marginalized - as well as a marginalized power fantasy.

This gives the vampire a dual nature as both the exploiter and the marginalized. And this is something that just makes for such interesting story potential.

The thing I see such a high potential in is... That this mirrors a lot of real world situations. In the real world we also tend to have this. There are a lot of marginalized folks - and then there are some of them who for one reason or another end up in a position of power. And, well, not all of them end up doing good in those positions.

So, imagine a world in which indeed some vampires are holding those positions of powers. Being CEOs or slavemasters or maybe some especially greedy kind of politician. And they exploit that situation to feed on humans all they want. To bleed them dry - literally and figuratively. And they know that even if their secret came out, the secret that they are vampires, they would probably have an easy way to escape the situation because of their power and influence.

But most vampires are not that. Most vampires are just your average Joes and Jolines trying to somehow survive. They have to be careful how to hunt to not raise any alarm among the humans, have to hide themselves. Maybe, in fact, those upper class vampires put rules on them about how much they can to feed and in what way. And being kind of bound - through blood and kinship - they are forced to somewhat deal with those powerful vampires and in their own way get exploited by them as well.

Now imagine the kind of stories you can tell about this. About how those systems work and how complicated they are. About maybe some humans realizing how they get exploited and trying to hunt down the vampires. Or about some of the exploited vampires realizing, they have more in common with the humans than with those upper echelon vampires. About rebellion in an unjust system. And about badly veiled metaphors for capitalism.

Vampires as creatures are very ripe for metaphoric storytelling. Maybe more ripe for it in fact than nearly any other mythological creature.

And I think that we could channel this through a genre like this. Make Vampunk a thing.

Or maybe that is just me?

[sillygoofyart]

I BUILT A LITTLE EMPIRE

OUT OF SOME CRAZY GARBAGE

CALLED “THE BLOOD OF THE EXPLOITED WORKING CLASS”

BUT THEY’VE OVERCOME THEIR SHYNESS

NOW THEY’RE CALLING ME “YOUR HIGHNESS”

AND THE WORLD SCREAMS “KISS ME SON OF GOD!!”

[st4tic-g0re]

I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage

Called the blood of the exploited working class

But they've overcome their shyness

Now they're calling me Your Highness

And a world screams, "Kiss me, Son of God"

Kiss Me, Son of God - They Might be Giants

This song reminds me of him

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … November 22

JFK November 22, 1963

1869 – André Gide (d.1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.

Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation between the two sides of his personality, split apart by a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism.

Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869, into a middle-class Protestant family. His father was a Paris University professor of law and died in 1880.

Gide was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy and became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing his first novel, The Notebooks of Andre Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter), in 1891.

In 1893 and 1894, Gide traveled in Northern Africa, and it was there that he came to accept his attraction to boys. He befriended Oscar Wilde in Paris, and in 1895 Gide and Wilde met in Algiers. There, Wilde had the impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but, in fact, Gide had already discovered this on his own.

In 1895, after his mother's death, he married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, but the marriage remained unconsummated.

In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française (The New French Review).

In 1916, Marc Allégret, only 15 years old, became his lover. Marc was the son of Elie Allégret, best man at Gide's wedding. Of Allégret's five children, André Gide adopted Marc. The two fled to London, in retribution for which his wife burned all his correspondence, "the best part of myself," as he was later to comment.

In the 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky; however, when he defended pederasty in the public edition of Corydon (1924) he received widespread condemnation. He later considered this his most important work.

In 1923, he sired a daughter, Catherine, by Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, a woman who was much younger than him. He had known Elisabeth for a long time, as she was the daughter of his closest female friend, Maria Monnom, the wife of his friend, the Belgian neo-impressionist painter Théo van Rysselberghe. This would cause the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide and damaged the relation with Van Rysselberghe. This was possibly his only sexual liaison with a woman and it was brief in the extreme, but his daughter Catherine became his only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady"). Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage the practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built for each of them on the rue Vavin). She worshipped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship. Gide's legal wife, Madeleine, died in 1938. Later he used the background of his unconsummated marriage in his novel Et Nunc Manet in Te.

From July 1926 to May 1927, he travelled through the French Equatorial Africa colony with his lover Marc Allégret. In his published journal, he criticized the behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime, according to which part of the colony was conceded to French companies which could exploit all of the area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related how natives were forced to leave their village during several weeks to collect rubber in the forest, and went as far as comparing their exploitation to slavery. The book had important influence on anti-colonialism movements in France and helped re-evaluate the impact of colonialism.

Gide left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952.

1913 – Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, (d.1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. For the next fifteen years he devoted much of his compositional attention to writing operas, establishing him as one of the leading 20th century figures in this genre. Britten's interests as a composer were wide-ranging; he produced important music in such varied genres as orchestral, choral, solo vocal (much of it written for the tenor Peter Pears), chamber and instrumental, as well as film music. He also took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, and was an outstanding pianist and conductor.

Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk. His father was a dentist, and his mother a talented amateur musician who gave Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He showed musical gifts very early in life, making his first attempts at composition aged five, and thereafter composing prolifically as a child. He started piano lessons with a teacher from his pre-prep school when aged 7, and viola lessons when 10 years old.

Britten heard Frank Bridge's orchestral poem The Sea at a festival and was, as he put it, 'knocked sideways'. A family friend of Frank Bridge and was able to arrange an introduction. After examining Britten's work, Bridge took him on as a composition pupil.

In April 1935, he was approached by the film director Alberto Cavalcanti to write the film score for the documentary The King's Stamp, produced by the GPO Film Unit. He subsequently met W. H. Auden, who was also working for the GPO Film Unit; together they worked on the films Coal Face and Night Mail. They also collaborated on the song cycle Our Hunting Fathers Op. 8, radical both in politics and musical treatment, and other works.

Of more lasting importance to Britten was his meeting in 1937 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and inspiration as well as his life partner. In the same year he composed a Pacifist March (words, Ronald Duncan) for the Peace Pledge Union, of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member, but the work was not a success and soon withdrawn. One of Britten's most noteworthy works from the 1930s was Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra, Op. 10, written in 1937.

Britten (seated) and Peter Pears

In early 1939, Britten and Pears followed Auden to America. There, in 1940, Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first of many song cycles for Pears. Already friends with the composer Aaron Copland, Britten encountered his latest works Billy the Kid and An Outdoor Overture, both of which manifestly influenced his own music. While in America Britten wrote his first music drama, Paul Bunyan, an operetta (to a libretto by Auden). The period in America was also remarkable for a number of orchestral works, including the Violin Concerto Op. 15, and Sinfonia da Requiem Op. 20 (for full orchestra).

Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, and both applied for recognition as conscientious objectors. He completed the choral works Hymn to St. Cecilia (his last large-scale collaboration with Auden) and A Ceremony of Carols during the long sea voyage. He had already begun work on his opera Peter Grimes based on the writings of Suffolk poet George Crabbe, and its première at Sadler's Wells in 1945 was his greatest success thus far.

Peter Grimes was the first in a series of English operas, of which Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954) were particularly admired. His Shakespeare opera, A Midsummer Night's Dream, followed in 1960. These operas share common themes. Even in his comic opera Albert Herring of 1947, all feature an 'outsider' character excluded or misunderstood by society. Often this is the eponymous protagonist, as in Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave.

In his last decade, Britten's health deteriorated,and his later works became more and more sparse in texture. They include the operas Owen Wingrave (1970) and Death in Venice (1971-1973) Having previously declined a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage on 2 July 1976 as Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. A few months later he died of heart failure at his house in Aldeburgh. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul's Church there. The grave of his partner, Sir Peter Pears, lies next to his. A memorial stone to him was unveiled in the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey in 1978.

1938 – John Eleuthère du Pont (d.2010) was an American philanthropist and heir to the Du Pont family fortune who in 1996 murdered Olympic gold medal winning wrestler Dave Schultz. He was a published ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist, conchologist, sports enthusiast, and self-styled wrestling coach. In 1972 du Pont founded and directed the Delaware Museum of Natural History and contributed to Villanova University and other institutions.

After his mother's death, du Pont developed the 440-acre (1.8 km2) Liseter Hall Farm in Newtown Square as a high-quality wrestling facility for amateur wrestlers. He called the private group "Team Foxcatcher", after his father's noted racing stable. Du Pont established an Olympic swimming and wrestling training center and sponsored competitive events at the estate. He also allowed some people, such as Olympic champion wrestlers Mark Schultz and later his older brother David Schultz and his wife, to live in houses on the grounds for years. Schultz also coached the Foxcatcher team.

In August 1988, a problem-plagued wrestling program he funded at Villanova was shut down after just two years. In December 1988, a lawsuit (which was settled out of court) claimed du Pont had made improper sexual advances to Villanova assistant coach Andre Metzger.

Du Pont became a sponsor in wrestling, swimming, track, and the modern pentathlon. He was also involved in promoting a subset of the modern pentathlon (run, swim, shoot) as a separate event. He took up athletics and became a competitive wrestler in his 50s. His only prior wrestling experience was as a freshman in high school. He began competing again at the age of 55 in the 1992 Veteran's World Championships in Cali, Colombia; following that in 1993 in Toronto, Ontario; in 1994 in Rome, Italy; and in 1995 in Sofia, Bulgaria.In the 1990s, friends and acquaintances were concerned about his erratic and paranoid behavior, but his wealth shielded him. On January 26, 1996, du Pont shot and killed Dave Schultz in the driveway of Schultz's home on du Pont's 800-acre (3.2 km2) estate. Schultz's wife Nancy and du Pont's head of security Patrick Goodale were present and witnessed the crime. The security chief was sitting in the passenger seat of du Pont's car when du Pont fired three bullets into Schultz. Police did not establish a motive. Schultz had worked with du Pont to coach the wrestling team for years. Schultz had also tried to help du Pont with his drinking problem. On February 25, 1997, he was convicted of murder in the third degree for the January 26, 1996, shooting death of Dave Schultz. He was ruled to have been mentally ill but not insane and was sentenced to prison for 13 to 30 years. He died in prison at age 72 on December 9, 2010. He was the only member of the Forbes 400 richest Americans ever to be convicted of murder.

Du Pont is the subject of the 2014 film Foxcatcher, in which he is portrayed by Steve Carell.

1941 – On this date the American dancer and writer Nicholas Dante, best known for the hit musical A Chorus Line, was born (d. 1991). Born Conrado Morales in New York City to Puerto Rican parents, Dante's early career was spent dancing in the chorus of Broadway musicals such as Applause and Ambassador. In 1974, he was approached by friend Michael Bennett who invited him to the sessions which led to the basis of material for the book of a musical about Broadway "gypsies," the dancers who serve as a backdrop for the leading performers.

Eventually, collaborating with James Kirkwood, Jr., the result was A Chorus Line, a groundbreaking musical which earned him the 1976 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Book of a Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In particular, the story of Paul, the homosexual Puerto Rican dancer whose early career consisted of working in a drag show, was based primarily on Dante. The actor who originated the role on the famous monologue, Sammy Williams, won a Beast Featured Actor in a Musical award in 1976 for the role. Dante himself went on to play the role in later mountings of the show.

He also authored a screenplay, Fake Lady, and a stage musical based on the life of entertainer Al Jolson entitled Jolson Tonite, but never again achieved the success he did with A Chorus Line. Dante died on May 21, 1991 from AIDS-related complications in New York City.

1943 – Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society. She won "The Battle of the Sexes" in 1973, in which she defeated Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon men's singles champion, for $100,000, winner take all.

Billie Jean Moffit was born in Long Beach, California, into a conservative Methodist family, the daughter of a fireman father and housewife mother. Billie Jean attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School. After graduating, she attended California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) because her parents could not afford Stanford or the University of Southern California (USC).

She married Lawrence (Larry) King in Long Beach, California on September 17, 1965. In 1971, she had an abortion, which Mr. King revealed to the public in a 1972 Ms. Magazine article, without consulting Mrs. King in advance. King said in her 1982 autobiography that she decided to have an abortion because she believed her marriage was not solid enough to bring a child into her family. Billie Jean and Lawrence divorced in 1987.

By 1968, King realized that she was interested in women, and in 1971, the same year of the abortion and while still married to Lawrence King, she began an intimate relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett. King was forced to acknowledge the relationship when it became public in a May 1981 "palimony" lawsuit filed by Barnett, making King the first prominent professional female athlete to come out as a lesbian. King said that she had wanted to retire from competitive tennis in 1981 but could not afford to because of the lawsuit. "Within 24 hours [of the lawsuit being filed], I lost all my endorsements; I lost everything. I lost $2 million at least, because I had longtime contracts. I had to play just to pay for the lawyers. In three months I went through $500,000 [$1,207,416 today]. I was in shock. I didn't make $2 million in my lifetime, so it's all relative to what you make." King said in 1998 that Martina Navratilova was not supportive when King was outed, resulting in their relationship having a "very bad five years."

Speaking about the lawsuit in 2007, 26 years after it was filed, King said:

It was very hard on me because I was outed and I think you have to do it in your own time. Fifty per cent of gay people know who they are by the age of 13. I was in the other 50%. I would never have married Larry if I'd known. I would never have done that to him. I was totally in love with Larry when I was 21.

Concerning the personal cost of concealing her sexuality for so many years, King said:

I wanted to tell the truth but my parents were homophobic and I was in the closet. As well as that, I had people tell me that if I talked about what I was going through, it would be the end of the women's tour. I couldn't get a closet deep enough. I've got a homophobic family, a tour that will die if I come out, the world is homophobic and, yeah, I was homophobic. If you speak with gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders, you will find a lot of homophobia because of the way we all grew up. One of my big goals was always to be honest with my parents and I couldn't be for a long time. I tried to bring up the subject but felt I couldn't. My mother would say, "We're not talking about things like that", and I was pretty easily stopped because I was reluctant anyway. I ended up with an eating disorder that came from trying to numb myself from my feelings. I needed to surrender far sooner than I did. At the age of 51, I was finally able to talk about it properly with my parents and no longer did I have to measure my words with them. That was a turning point for me as it meant I didn't have regrets any more.

On August 12, 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for her work advocating for the rights of women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community. "This is a chance for me - and for the United States of America - to say thank you to some of the finest citizens of this country and of all countries", President Obama said.

King currently resides in New York and Chicago with her partner, Ilana Kloss.

1964 – Stephen Geoffreys is an American actor. Born Stephen Miller in Cincinnati, Ohio, Geoffreys first began acting on the stage. In 1984, he was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award for "Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical" for his performance in a play based on the The Human Comedy. For this role, he won the Theatre World Award in 1984.

Geoffreys appeared in several horror and teen films in the 1980s, most notably Heaven Help Us (1985) as well as Fraternity Vacation and 976-EVIL in 1989. He also played a supporting part in the critically acclaimed drama At Close Range in 1986. He is best known for playing the creepy "Evil Ed" in the 1985 vampire horror classic Fright Night starring Roddy McDowall. Two of Geoffrey's lines from that film became catch phrases in the mid 1980s: "To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?" and "You're so cool, Brewster!" Some have suggested that Geoffrey's refusal to appear in the Fright Night sequel was a major career misstep.

During the 1990s, Geoffreys appeared for several years in gay pornographic movies, using the aliases Sam Ritter and Stephan Bordeaux, moving from "bloodsucker to cocksucker" as one crtic put it.

Geoffreys returned to horror in a supporting role as "Mr. Putski" in the independent film Sick Girl, released in October 2007, after an almost 17 year absence from mainstream film. He went on to play a lead role in the horror film New Terminal Hotel. He later filmed the horror movie "Emerging Past", which also featured actor Brooke McCarter of The Lost Boys fame. Geoffreys' partner is John Wiliams.

2004 – Lord Peter Mandelson is the first openly gay Commissioner of the European Union. He is a British Labour politician, president of international think tank Policy Network and Chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel. Reinaldo Avila da Silva, a Brazilian-British translator, was his partner from 1998 to 2007. 

Today's Gay Wisdom:

Quotes from André Gide:

"Fish die belly-upward and rise to the surface; it is their way of falling."

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not."

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again."

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

[stupidsketchpad]

i've made a little empire out of some silly garbage called the blood of the exploited working class

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