We Gay it Forward.

I move into the dorms in tee minus twentyfive days, give or take, and I have yet to find out my roommate situation for next year. I am not pleased about this in any way, shape or form.

I really would like it if my next roommate turned out to be a latent homosexualist. I don't know if it's a continuation of yesterday's post, the residual effects of mothering for Heart after his surgery, or inspiration from one too many reruns of that that Will & Grace episode where Karen's cousin is a scraggly, recently out gay man and Will and Jack turn him into a presentable hip homo. I'd really like to help someone come out of the closet, for real, not just teaching the new guys at work to flirt with the attractive customers.

I could make him watch all the movies he should, from Auntie Mame and Angels in America to Y Tu Mama Tambien and Yentl. I could take him to his first gay dance and expose him to dance music, teach him the value of a good wit by way of Truman Capote and Charles Nelson Reilly, have him buy really expensive shoes, and teach him the value of pomade. We could watch Sex in the City, even though it's not very good, and we can watch Will & Grace, which everyone kinda dislikes but watches anyway. I could teach him to despise lesbians, cull some 'fag hags' and take him to get manicures and pedicures. I could watch him get all giddy for his first gay date, and help him pick out an outfit. I can be there for a hug if he needs it after he comes out to his friends and family.

Man, that would be fun.

I'm sure there's some hidden neurosis (or twelve) in there somewhere, that I don't feel like I'm living up to the gay standard and am using him as a way to work out my frustration with gay culture, or some pseudo-psychobabble like that, but I still think it'd be fun.


PS--Yeah, I don't like the title to this post either, but really it was unavoidable.

Homo Academy (or, Hot for Teacher?)

At work for the past week, I've been training these new guys how to cashier. They're the guys who are going to replace me once I move back to Madison. They're eating up all my hours, which sucks, but it's not all bad.

See, they finally hired some homos at my work. I used to be the only one, but now, by my account, there are three new young questioning youth working in my department, and I'm in charge of training two of them. Mua ha haha.

I'm trying to coax the gay out of them, encouraging them to give cute guys/gay couples discounts that don't exist, having them check the underbelly of the cart when guys come by wearing shorts exposing nice calves, and all in all flirting with the attractive male customers. They'll be bleaching their tips, wearing ugly necklaces and plucking their eyebrows in no time. Not that I do any of those things, but you know kids these days...

I think things are coming along nicely in that regard. I had one of them, after his shift, buy me some soda and a candy bar, and he was all coy and nervous while we walked to our cars. It was all very sweet and precious, but he's under 18 so I kept my hands off (no touchee! no touchee!) and the relationship professional.

But I was grinning like a motherfucker on the inside.

The Heart Is Casual Above All Things.

Things are going to be kept casual, see? All that happened yesterday was a voicemail: no hours-long AIM conversations, no impulsive overly-romantic gestures, no all-night covert makeout/whispering sessions because your roommate is passed out on the floor in front of your bed. Nothing like that.

Some synonyms for casual include easy, easygoing, informal, natural, relaxed, spontaneous, unceremonious, unrestrained, and laid-back. I can do this.

See, I have a habit of dating guys with weeks before I have to move. With the ex/Peter, we met the first week of July, and we both went to school in late August. With that krithing sithspawn Heart, we met in late March and I was to move back in May. Dating with expiration dates has never really worked for me in the past. It always ends with me getting dumped on AIM.

So when I met up with a guy to go see The Island (much better than I thought it would be), I made my intentions perfectly clear: even though I've never been able to casual date in the past, I'd like to try again. He voiced a similar opinion, saying that he too is always either head over heels or ambivalent, but being single sucks when all your friends are gone for the summer, and friendship with an occasional make-out session was worth a shot.

I didn't change before we met, I didn't do the pre-date shower, hell I didn't even shave. He was dressed sort of nicely, but that's only because he came directly from a job interview. Casual, see? We shook hands at the end of the date.

Actually, it wasn't a date. I made sure to say that this wasn't really a date, only some hanging out. He agreed, but made sure to say that he may want to kiss me at the end of it, whatever it was called.

As I mentioned before, we shook hands, with no tongue action. It was raining, we were surrounded by 13-year old girls waiting for their rides, he had a follow-up interview at 9 the next morning, and we were parked on opposite sides of the parking lot.

It's not that I just met with him, per se, either. His mom was my vocal coach for a while, and his best friend's twin dated my best friend, and his mom is now the musical director at my church. He was just more of a casual acquaintance before. And now he's just..

Casual.



EDIT:: Of course, now that I think about it, this entire post was about a guy I chatted with twice on gay.com, had a 20 minute coffee thing, watched a movie with and left a voicemail for. Since he hasn't, you know, called me back, this whole thing could be moot, and I could be taking this thing less casually than he is.

I knew those insecurities would find their way back.

As Corny As Kansas in August

I did write a post for yesterday. Really, I did. It's not like I took a holiday in memory of Bob Dylan's 'plugging in' at the Newport Folk Festival 30 years ago. But it was sappy and depressing, because I was feeling sappy and depressed when I wrote it, but when Monday rolled along, I just wasn't feeling it.

Basically, this weekend I drove past the (only) gay bar in town. Then I drove past it again. And then again. It has a reputation for being more for elderly, retired homos, but still, in two weeks, I could go in. I could go in if I had friends, that is. Waa Waa Waa, to be sure.

It was thought out carefully, to be sure, and more nuanced. But in the end, it was just another whiny post about not having any friends and my insecurity to let my hair down and have a good time. And we don't need any more of those.

But you know, I think that whole mindset's going to change. At least for the rest of the summer. Of couse, this new mindset could make it harder for me to move back to school in a month, but I'll worry about that later.

This post is more cryptic than I'm used to, but I think you guys get the idea anyway. I don't think I care, really. Right now, I'm just in a conventional dither, with a conventional star in my eye. And after the way my summer turned out, well, I deserve it.

A Collection of Half-Developed Posts

I watched Walt Disney: On the Front Lines, a collection of animated shorts/propoganda films done by Walt Disney during WWII yesterday. There are like, five or six posts I could write about the whole thing, but for some reason none of them seem as interesting now that I write them down.

1. The Disney shorts are generically unfunny. I mean, we all think of Walt as this wildly creative, innovative guy, and that everything he touched was golden, but a lot of these shorts weren't very entertaining. I'm sure there's something to be said about the evolution in animation, and how 2D animation can't hold a candle to computer-assisted animation, but a lot of these were still pretty repetitive and didactic.

2. In one of the shorts, they were trying to encourage the purchase of war bonds. A cartoon devil came and tried to convince Donald to spend for himself, keep spending like nothing was happening, while an angel came and encouraged him to scrape, save, and invest in war bonds. The Dubya parallels came to mind, but, as people have stated in the comments, my political posts leave much to be desired.

3. Speaking of Donald Duck, he makes a pretty good traitor. In the shorts, he sends generals to prison, interferes with factory workers, falls asleep while on guard, ruins the food supply, wastes ammunition, tries to con his way out of paying taxes, and dreams he lives in "Nutzi" Germany.

4. You could never have something similar to this today. I mean, Pixar wouldn't touch the IRAQ conflict with a ten-foot pole. Then again, I read somewhere that "The Incredibles" is a Ayn-Randian parable (which ruined the movie for me, by the way), so maybe they'd do something covert about the war, but nothing like throwing pies in Saddam's face or anything.

5. It was odd to see childhood icons doing such blatant propoganda. I mean, it's weird. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are such staples of Americana, and yet there they were, blasting political rhetoric for the masses. Conservatives have been talking about the liberal propoganda in children's shows for years (Bert and Ernie are gay, Tinky-Winky is gay, Sesame Street is pro-Israeli, etc), but this was definite war-praising and Nazi-bashing. I mean, sure, it was a different time and all, but it was still weird.

6. There was a short called "Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi," which proves that the only thing more disturbing than a five-year old boy crying "Sieg Heil" is an animated five-year old boy yelling "Sieg Heil."

7. And, to top it all off, the last animated short came with a Parental Advisory. Apparently, mixing the story of Chicken Little with Nazi propoganda might not be suitible for young children. Who knew?


And there you have it. Seven posts I would have written about the DVD I saw yesterday, except that I didn't want to write that much about them.

I made myself a t-shirt that says "I break into heterosexual houses so I can masturbate in their heterosexual kitchens."

If that kind of dialogue just rocks your socks, well, you're in luck. The guy who does A Softer World, my favorite online comic strip sort of thing, has come out with a book that I'm sure its as genius as all git out.

It's called Lockpick Pornography, and you can read some of the chapters online. Yeah, there's some socio-political critique going on, but there's also hilarious lines like the title.

I write this for three reasons.

1. The creative well is dry, unlike this heat, which is humid.
2. My birthday is coming up.
3. If you wrote a brilliant online comic I'd totally shill for you too.

"You've heard that stupid controversy that Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street are gay? What if we got ourselves some masks, and became Bert and Ernie? What if we took the ridiculous idea that characters on a children's show are gay, that they are a threat to "traditional family values", and we made it come true?"

"You mean, like, put on the Bert and Ernie mask and fuck somewhere in public?" he says and I shake my head.

"No, I mean put on our Bert and Ernie masks and videotape ourselves breaking into people's homes and leaving pro-gay children's books in their kid's bookshelves.

C'mon. You've got to admit, that's awesome.

Don't Mess With Orgasmatron

Another one of the reasons why I hate living at home is that I can't take advantage of the $.49 vibrator 'personal massager' sale going on.

Sure, I've used my vibrator once or twice (a Valentine's Day present to myself, which ended up being more trouble concealing than fun), but it sure would be nice to have one in every color, don't you think? Or at the very least, mix it up a bit. Or have one so that I have the option of mixing it up a bit.

But I can't justify shipping it home, because then family members will want to see what I got in the mail, especially because it'd be arriving around my birthday, and I don't have my roomn umber yet for the dorms, so I can't send it there.

Le sigh.

It's a good thing that I think vibrators are more trouble than they are worth (cleaning, the secrecy, etc). I mean, it's much easier to just zip up my pants if the roommate stumbles drunkenly through the front door than it is to hide a "personal massager."

Do you ever want to just punch a writer in the face?

No, I don't mean a blogger who's written yet another whiny post about being single. I don't mean academics who justify poorly-developed ideas with dense murky language, nor do I mean a monstrosity of humankind, like Ayn Rand (not only is she dead, but I'm willing to bet that Objectivism, like cooties, is highly contagious). I'm talking about reading a book, enjoying it immensely, then coming to the ending and wanting to punch the motherfucker in the face for wasting your time.

If the ending wasn't a tacked on, clensed deus ex machina bile of shit, I might have recommended this book to you all. In fact, up until the last chapter, it is a wonderful book.

Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour is the (mostly) delightful tale of an obsessive-compulsive, neurotic, death-obsessed self-made eccentric millionare with a hardon for our thirteenth president, who rattles off long diatribes like this one:

Frankly, the way I see it, the human race has simply romanticized a basic physiological process into something lofty and exalted. Why? Who knows? Perhaps because we humans are a little embarrassed about the odd, bestial contortions that these nasty hormones and their chemical cohorts compel us to perform. All that huffing and puffing, all that uncivilized grunting and moaning, all that orgasm faking, all those bodily fluids flying hither and thither. I suppose the urge for ordinary sexual congress was simply too undignified for the superior human species, so some arrogant but resourceful Neanderthal with a flower garden invented the concept of romantic love and it becaume, through the ages, a very profitable venture, particularly when one considers the price of a dozen roses and a small box of Godiva chocolates.

I don't actually believe this, but it's still well-written and fun. And, of course, he starts seeing someone. Not just anyone, but his shrink's estranged, death-obsessed, hypochondriac ex-wife. Oh, the fun times. I love it when eccentric characters bounce off each other, like AbFab or Arrested Development.

At least until the ending. Man, it sucked. I literally threw the book across the room when I finished it. The library's getting back a copy with a battered cover, that's for sure.

Tarnation

It's as if someone took a sword, slipped it up my crotch, my taint, and scooped me out, letting the intestines pool at my feet.

I don’t feel this way often. Even when I was dumped, even when that jerk cheated on me while my father was in the ICU and blamed it on me, I didn’t feel this way. This is a different sort of hollowness. This is a different sort of sunk.

Part documentary, part narrative fiction, part home movie, and part acid trip. A psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture, and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family travesty.

Jonathan's first memory is of his mother being raped while he watched. She spent most of his childhood in mental hospitals, undergoing shock treatment while his foster parents tied him up and beat him. He escaped through his video camera, documenting his life and his mother’s deterioration. Growing up gay in Texas is hard enough.



His picture on the poster is what first caught my eye, walking past the indie-movie theatre on the way to school every day. I wanted Heart to come with me to see the movie, but he was never up for it. There were problems with his social security check and he didn’t want to always pay for everything, he didn’t think he could walk the few blocks to the theatre, he wanted to watch Jon Stewart and didn’t think we’d be back in time.

He described himself as an artist to me. We were talking about volunteering and charity work that we both do, me for arts promotion in the school and community, and he for clean food and water. He told me I was wasting my time, that one of the most selfish things he could think of is worry over whether some 5 year old girl had enough crayons when people are dying painful deaths due to starvations and contaminated water. But he was an artist, he said. That's how he would describe himself, though I never saw anything remotely artistic in him.

Well, he did have a way of turning into every conversation so that it revolved around him. I've spent enough time around artistic people, actors, dancers, singers, painters, to know that his world revolved around him. He hated other people’s ideas. I could never do anything right. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want to go to the movie because I had suggested it. God I can't believe it lasted two months.

Actually, yes. I can believe it. I'm too much a mother. I wanted to hold him, protect him, make everything better. I want to do that to Jonathan Caouette, star of Tarnation, to Ryan Adams, to Justin Kirk in Angels in America, to Rimbaud, broken young artistic men. I knew the relationship wasn't working, but Heart is slowly dying, his heart could have spasmed at any time, at any sneeze that was too much, at a shower that turned cold, an electric shock. I couldn't break up with him, even if it meant breaking my psyche to keep us together. Man what a sappy sentence.

Is that what I'm into now? Saving cute but tortured guys?

This movie is amazing. Shocking, disturbing, cringing, in need of a hug. The whole time I wanted someone there with me, a boyfriend, a friend, whoever, to squeeze their hand when his grandma couldn't form words anymore, to rest my head on their shoulder, bury myself in their arm when his mother's schizophrenic bursts turn angry.

Even Jonathan, the star of the movie, had someone with him, a guy who held the camera, a guy who woke him up with a kiss, who squeezed his hand when things got emotional. I had something like that, or at least I’d like to think like that, with my first love/the ex/Peter. But it’s been a long time since then. A long time.

I hate being alone.

I can’t even go out looking. I log into gay.com, but I don’t know why. I'm leaving to go back to Madison in 6 weeks. I can't start something new. That's what I've done in the past, start a relationship with only a few weeks left before I have to move, and it always ends up with me being dumped in an AIM conversation. I'm not one for fuck-buddies, I'm actively not looking for a date, all of my friends are out doing things, living their lives.

Life is a banquet, and I'm starving.

I don't think I could watch this movie again. I don't think I’m strong enough emotionally. Then again, I don't think I’m strong enough emotionally to do much of anything.

I'm starving.

Dante said it first.

There's a special place in hell for those who schedule me to work starting at 5:30 in the morning.

::EDIT::

So maybe it wasn't as bad as expected. There was a plethora of cute 20-some guys in suits grabbing their morning coffee and doughnut on their way to work, which helped.
Immensely.

Old-School.

At a loss for what to blog about. Actually, I have ideas, just not the computer time available for me. I can't even find the time to write down this short story I've had in my head for a few weeks. Fuck living at home.

Anyway, here's a post from about two years ago. Going through old blogs, like going through old notebooks and diaries, can be both embarrassing and interesting at the same time.

---

In English class today, our in-class assignment was to re-write a paragraph from a scientific journal from bland, technical jargon into common-place, everyday speech.

The original paragraph (minus the citations):
Researchers have hypothesized that these children have fine-grained phonological discrimination problems, severe phonological awareness weaknesses, naming-speed deficits, cognitive or language limitations, or attention or behavior problems. Because research on this topic is new, the question remains, Are such characteristics important correlates of children's unresponsiveness to treatment?

Since I am an asshole and hate the class and the professor, I decided to write a rap.

Here it goes. Check it, dawgs.

Guys in white lab suits called scientists
They researched their very best
They put their problem to the test
And they explain said problem with this guess
Kids, usually deemed not too smart
Who never learned that reading's an art
They said maybe hearing plays a part
Even if they tried with all their heart
Maybe they couldn't pay attention too well
Always waiting for the recess bell
For them, a library is a prison cell
But those illiterate fools won't go to hell
It's not their fault that they hate books
And all their studying never took
Hearing and attention problems need a closer look
And that's the gist of it, if I'm not mistook.

Either fortunately or unfortunately, I was not called upon to read my exercise.

---

Sure, this was only a five-minute writing excercise, done in class without the help of a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary, but it still made me giggle. It makes me think of what kind of obnoxious rap I could write if I had more than five minutes.

Personally, I think that some Dylan Thomas, with the help of some bling-bling, would represent. Yo.

Questions I Have Been Asked on gay.com

"do you like to eat?"

"I won't bug if you say no... but you aren't by any chance interested in getting sucked off tonight are you?

"what be the perfect guy for u"

"your white, rite?"

"woud u be my dream pussyboi?"

"sure wish i could swallow a few loads from u tonite u game?"

"have you heard of anne rice and her sleeping beauty books?"


Oh, gay.com. I can't stand you, but oh how I enjoy disliking you.

Note how I say "Almost"

The genius of Arrested Development (which I bought over the week and devoured like a cockslut at a circuit party) almost makes up for the satanic figure that is Rupert Murdoch.


Also, according to wikipedia, the plural of Elvis is "Elvii." There is absolutely no reason to bring that up in everyday conversation, but damnit! I'm going to try.

Summer dreams ripped at the seams.

So, you ridiculous raw youth you, your summer sure has sucked, what with your father having massive surgery, your cunt of a boyfriend cheating on you then blaming you for his indiscretions, and having to live at home for the summer, when all of your friends are gone.

Why yes, yes it has sucked. And, to top it off, the large, dehumanizing company which I work just doubled their staff to prepare for the school year starting, when a large chunk of their low-level employees go back to work. Starting next week, I go from working 35 hours a week to 11.

Also, I'm on dialup internet, with no air conditioning, and I don't even have my own room, just a mattress in the office.

Oh and have I mentioned that my mom is starting the menopause and my bipolar sister is having problems with her medicine?



Yeah, life sucks.

"In my church we don't believe in Mormons."

I know I don't post political often, but I've been hitting a dry spell lately and this story is too good to pass.

Church's Anti-Gay Message Creates Big Uproar in Small Community

I don't watch the local news. I live in a moderately-sized town in the middle of Wisconsin, and there have been more than a few times where tractor pulls and barn raisings have made the news. Slow news days come easily like milking a cow.

I was walking through the living room, grabbing my waterbottle, when I the story caught my eye.

Basically, a church in some small town that I've never heard of put some anti-gay signs out. "When homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible it is always condemned" and "Homosexuals don't need affirmation, they need redemption." Oh, those Baptists.
"The goal of the sign was to provoke discussion and make a statement," the discussion being how to get those damn homos to shut up and stop existing, and the statement being, presumably, that homos are bad people who should go away.

The signs came down, due to community outrage. Apparently, it's not "en vogue" to be making those sort of statements. The local news cameras came to watch the pastor take down the signs, and let him make comments about future signs--"In the future, I'll be talking a lot more about the choices people make about their relationships with GOD."

This story really wouldn't have been that interesting, except that the city is small. Ant-farm small. Like, my Classical Mythology class I took last semester had more students than this city had residents.

Wisconsin gets a bad rap a lot of the time, we're all fat beer-guzzling cheese-feasting small town hicks with gun racks on their pickups, but if a some redneck city up north with more bars that people, a city too small for an elementary school, can cause a ruckus over gay rights to the point where the pastor feared for the life of his family, well, maybe there's some hope after all.

Listmania.

Carly Simon doesn't write her own lyrics.

Well, I suppose she does. I remember watching some VH1 countdown years ago, the 100 Greatest Girls with Pianos and Long Hair from the 70s or something, and she mentioned that she travels with a little notebook and pen, writing down the interesting lines from her conversations. Most of her choruses, her best lines, are taken from her friends. Someone else came up with "you walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht."

I have no idea why I'm talking about Carly Simon.

My point is that I've been trying to keep a handheld notebook in my back pocket for the past few days, writing down lines and things that come to mind, story ideas or whatever. Since I haven't been feeling very creative lately, and when I have been feeling creative, my sister is writing in her crappy, crappy blog or my mom is checking her email or my dad is listening to some conservative blowhard on internet radio, and I haven't had a chance to make anything come of it. It's mostly devolved into a list of books I should see if the library has. But since I'm at a loss of words at the moment, I figured I should post something.

I started writing a post, but it came off too whiny, and really, I can sum it up in five words. I feel like a Tenenbaum.

You are Margot... Deep, Brooding, Depressed. Black
eyeliner abound. You take many lovers but are
still hoping for the day when it will be
politically correct for you to marry your
brother. You also have a wooden finger. Good
for you!!
Which Tenenbaum are you?

Anyway... list! With links!

Nouvelle Vague
Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour
holdthattiger.com
Sibelius
motocross jacket
Nelson De La Nuez
With the voice in my heart, I sang out like a shotgun
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
Hawksley Workman
the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table.
The Decemberists
Angels in America

I'm not gonna snatch you from your mother; I'm an art lover

Some new graphics in the mastheads today, including some lovely artwork by fellow blogger seekyledraw. I've also asked secret simon to draw me a banner as well, so I'll be adding to the collection sometime soon. Check out the art page for more info.

For those of you big into symbolism, the new bannerheads are mostly black and white, with melancholy or distressed guys in the corner.


Mmmm.... symbolism.

there's another national anthem

I don't like holidays, patriotic ones especially. The most patriotic thing I'm going to do today is wear my Smiths t-shirt: The Queen is Dead.

That being said, I'm posting Elliott Smith's Independance Day (mp3).

Future butterfly gonna spend the day
Higher than high
You'll be beautiful confusion
Ooh once I was you
I saw you caught between all the people out
Making the scene
And a bright ideal tomorrow
Ooh, don't go too far
Stay who you are
Everybody knows
You only live a day
But it's brilliant anyway
I saw you in a perfect place
It's gonna happen soon but not today
So go to sleep and make the change
I'll meet you here tomorrow
Independence day

I'm also posting a joke forwarded to me by my mom, who I'm pretty sure has found this blog and needs to fucking stop reading it right now, especially because she found it once before (damn Dad and his google-stalking) and promised not to read it.

A woman, in a hot air balloon, realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude, and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me. Can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago. But, I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS, and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes North latitude, and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes West longitude.

She rolled her eyes, and said, "You must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But, I have no idea what to do with your information. And, I am still lost. Frankly, you have not been much help to me."

The man smiled, and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am!", replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well...", said the man, "You do not know where you are, or where you are going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, that you have no idea how to keep. And you expect me to solve your problem. You are in exactly the same position you were in before we met. But somehow, now it's all my fault. . . ."