Whither friendship?

I read this in someone else's blog recently and it got me thinking:

I'm lucky to have my friends there too. My real friends, the ones that know me, the ones that let me cry at 3am when they'd rather be sleeping. The ones who would be there through thick and thin. LK, JN, CJ, TB, LT, MP...in no particular order of importance, you make my life possible. I only hope that I've brought to your life what you've brought to mine.

(Source: JPK: You can never have enough water. I stumbled across this blog using the random blog search function from blogspot. I don't know the guy (though he's quite amusing -- when he's not depressed). Heck, you too can go to another randomly-selected blog now by clicking on the "Next Blog >>" icon in the upper right-hand corner. But finish reading this first!)

So as I was saying, Jason's comment kinda struck me, because I suddenly came to realize that my friendships aren't like what Jason describes. I've never cried to someone at 3 a.m. when they'd rather be sleeping -- and trust me, there have been times I've wanted to. (I end up crying at home alone instead.) I've always felt strange imposing upon my friends for almost anything. Even when I was recovering from surgery I felt really bad for having to ask my friends to come stay the night with me. I've promised each of them a dinner in return for putting them out so much.

But there are those who would argue (and I wouldn't disagree) that stuff like crying at 3 a.m., or incredibly inconvenient favors, are the stuff of which friendships are made. If your friendship can't survive late-night "I'm-depressed-and-just-wanted-to-talk" phone calls, then what do you really have?

Of course, there's a flip side to that argument, which I again can't disagree with. The flip side argues that if you can't respect your friendships enough to realize that your friends have lives too -- lives that don't revolve around you -- and reliving your drama isn't their purpose in life, then you're abusing the friendship. Late-night phone calls are the stuff of sappy movies, this theory claims, and friendships suffering from that in real life don't last long. Besides, it should be pointed out, even in the movies, those late-night calls either don't result in anything helpful, or in fact lead to bad decisions on the part of the comfortee.

I wish I could say I have a theory on this, but I don't. I can only take note of the friendships I have. Although I know I could rely on most of my friends for all kinds of things, they tend to small things -- like dragging my carless ass to parties, or even for a Target run. One once offered that if I needed help with a down payment for a real estate purchase, I should ask her. (Thankfully, I didn't take her up on that -- I don't think substantial debt between friends is ever a good idea.) Although I generally feel like I could crash at friends' houses out of town if I had to, I would feel like I'm at an age and success level by now that it just seems stupid not to find a decent and affordable hotel.

But at the same time that my friends are good for that kind of small stuff, I don't know, really, who I would have to rely on if, say, a member of my family were to die tomorrow, or if some other devastating personal catastrophe hit me. Knowing me -- and the relationships I have with my friends -- I'd probably put on a brave face, say that I was okay and everything will be okay... and mourn alone. In the movies, we see this all the time, but those people usually seem to have a spouse into whose arms they eventually collapse in a mess of tears. I think I'd have a teddy bear. It's the same thing that makes me unlikely to engage in the aforementioned 3 a.m. phone calls.

So is there a clear line to be drawn between leaning on your friends and respecting their right not to be burdened by you? I'm sure there must be. I just haven't found it yet.

Remembrance

Three years ago today, our nation was attacked in brutal fashion.

I still remember vividly how my day unfolded. It started with my typical tardy self, trying to get my butt out of bed to make it to the office at a reasonable hour. For some strange reason, I went against my usual routine and didn't bother to turn on NPR that morning. Had I done so, I probably would have heard news just a bit earlier.

I went downstairs and saw the people at the front desk watching some morning show. I asked what was going on -- after all, I had yet to hear -- and was just told "They're showing the Pentagon now. They're gonna switch back to New York soon." I didn't know what that meant. I just thought it was a typical Today show thing. I didn't realize that we were under attack.

I began to walk to work, where I saw some police officers standing by their car. There was smoke in the distance. I asked a cop what was going on. I was told something about a bomb at the Pentagon. (Serious misinformation going around.) I started to get the sense that this was serious.

I got to work. Everyone was there. There was a television set up in the kitchen, but with only a pair of rabbit ears and no cable, the picture was awful. Soon I retreated to my office to surf major web sites -- anything for a hint about what was going on. Finally the truth emerged, in all its awfulness. By then I saw the still photos of the collapsing towers on every major news source. By then the television in the kitchen had rebroadcast the impact ad nauseum, as if we really needed to see, over and over and over, the planes hitting the World Trade Center.

Slowly but surely, my colleagues started making their way home. Which was difficult, of course, since Metro had shut down most of its lines, leaving those people who had commuted into work that morning without a terribly effective way of returning home. I live way too close to the office, so I really had the choice to either walk home or stay at the office, either one being the substantial equivalent of the other: Being so near Ground Zero Washington, it wasn't like my two home bases made any different in terms of effect on impact. So my colleague Bert and I (Bert being stranded by lack of Metro service) wandered the ghost-town streets of downtown Wahington. We kept a vigil as close to the 16th Street view of the White House as we could. Upon hearing that the Washington Post was publishing an EXTRA edition, we went to the Post headquarters and got one. We went back to my place and kept watching the news from there. There was nothing to do but watch the reports and just keep seeing, "Holy fucking crap."

I could go on and on about how 9/11 has become a major political lynchpin in today's race, and unfairly so. I could opine about how it's a crutch for the Republican party used to mask absolutely no substantive platform otherwise. And I could draw parallels between the religious extremism that led to 9/11 and the religious extremism on American soil that leads to First Amendment violations as well as ideological issues like opposition to gay rights.

But for today, I should probably just let this be a day of remembrance.

Still gagging

Some people just can't take a hint. Either that or I'm just too subtle.

Him: after tomorrow I'll not see work for a WHILE
Me: i'm surprised you've seen work at all.....
Me: lol
Him: and God I'm so looking to spending a lot of time in someones arms :)
Him: he gets here in 12 hours and 45 minutes
Me: blah blah blah
Him: dude Ive been missing him so damn much
Me: uh huh.
Him: seriously
Him: the sex will be nice
Him: but I just want him here

To his credit, the first line of the above is actually line number 15 of our conversation. At least he lasted longer than he did last time.

Seriously now, "blah blah blah" is probably as rude as I can get on IM as a way of saying, "I don't really care at all about this conversation." I don't know about you, but when someone "blah blah blah"s me (and believe me, it's happened more times that I care to remember -- particularly with that little invisible-puppet hand motion), I take it as a cue to shut the fuck up. Does he just not get it?

Or am I just being a mean ol' bitter ass Grinch? Again, I have nothing against anyone being happy in a "relationship"... but I don't need to hear about it every time an IM window pops up with your name in it. And I'm by no means required to be enthusiastic about everything in your life. That just gets tiring.

Schmoopiness makes me want to puke

So I had the following IM conversation with a friend of mine recently. Background: my friend ("Him") is in Germany now, stationed there for a few years. Just before he left, he met a guy and fell head over heels or whatever. (Always seems to happen that way, I guess.)

I have nothing against someone being happy in a relationship, but when you can't talk about anything else, I rapidly lose interest.


Him: hey
Me: hey
Him: whasup
Me: not much.... how are you?
Him: chilling out
Him: missing my baby

[N.B.: This was line number six in our conversation.]

Him: talked to him this morning and woke him up
Me: lol
Him: just surfing around looking for a site I can't find
Him: what about you
Me: nada... just getting up. chilling.
Him: late night
Me: fell asleep earlier in the night.... woke up... went back to sleep late ...
Me: so i'm blog-surfing right now....
Him: ROFL
Me: some of these blogs are so incoherent
Me: it's annoying
Him: well someone called me at 3 am my time
Him: and then put me to sleep
Him: happily
Him: and then worked called me at 8am
Him: and then I slept until noon
Me: good to see they're working you hard.

[See how the conversation could have turned to a neutral topic. But instead it veered back again to the boyfriend.]

Him: well when I come back to DC I might let you read Gerry and mine blogs LOL
Him: right now they are private corespondence
Me: i'm pretty sure that's the last thing i want to do is read your blog.
Me: no offense.
Him: ROFL
Him: well Gerry is very coherent

[And yet again, we take a neutral topic and re-direct it to the boyfriend.]

Him: damn I can't find this site
Him: AARRRGGG
Me: sowwy
Him: I think I might have found it
Him: yeah I did find it
Me: yay
Me: one word: bookmark
Him: yeah yeah

[By this point I'm deliberately not asking what site he's looking for, because I'm certain that his search is centered around one thing, which I really don't need to be privy to. And sure enough....]

Him: I want to buy gerry a gift
Him: cool got it ordered :)
Me: cool. what'd you get?

[A slight moment of weakness on my part. Or just forced politeness. I can't tell which.]

Him: a pair of short (board shorts)
Me: ah.
Him: they are really cool looking
Me: good
Him: yeah they'll match a shirt he had
Him: oops has

[And here's where we get into obsessive idiocy.]

Him: hey got a question to ask
Me: yah
Him: what would you have waiting for your boyfriend when he came home from the airport ???

[He knows I haven't had a boyfriend in years.]

Me: are you on crack?
Him: what are you talking about
Me: why would you think i would have any kind of answer at all to that question?
Him: you are creative
Him: would what you do
Him: or what would you like
Me: yeah, there is no way i'm qualified to answer this question.
Him: oh help me out
Him: what you you think would be really cool
Him: what would leave you breathless when you walked in
Him: come on help me here
Him: flowers aren't enough

You can't tell from the above, but the last few lines were spread out over time. I had by that point refused to answer, and allowed the IM window to just lapse.

There comes a point when your obsessive talking about your boyfriend becomes insanely annoying. It's worse when you're slathering your blissful existence upon someone who can't score a date to save his life. After a while, it just becomes rubbing it in.

***

On a shockingly related note, I received an email from my friend Henry. I hadn't heard from him in years. It started off as one of those emails where you just cut and paste certain questions (and their answers) and forward them to all your friends and stuff... you know, mundane stuff like "What's your fave color?" or "What time do you get up in the morning?" I'm putting excerpts from this email below. I think it's just the world telling me I'm going to die alone.

1. What time do you get up? get up at 830am to get my baby to school by 930am. :)
6. What do you have for breakfast? sharing cereal with my baby.
15. Favorite sandwich? pastrami or any kind that my baby makes for me. :) yummy!
19. What color is your bathroom? yeah, we have the ugly lime green/yellowish tile with faded white walls. ick.
22. Favorite day of the week? monday - date nite with my baby! meow.
23. What did you do for your last birthday? a wonderful thai dinner with my baby, then spent the night working on a project :( thanks baby, for being so supportive!
28. What fabric detergent do you use? whatever is on sale. but that stuff my baby got at costco smells really good! mmmmm

Okay, upon further reflection, either this is a sign that I'm just going to die alone... or I'm just being way oversensitive to this shit.

Temporary Impotence

So I have (had?) this condition called strabismus for, like, ever now. It's commonly known as "walleye" or "cross eyes," and it's when both of the eyes don't focus on the same thing at the same time. This can cause some confusion for the brain, as two different sensory inputs are being received at the same time. In my case, it seems like it involves two muscles in my left eye, which worked too hard and keep yanking my eye up and out when my dominant right eye found an image to look at.

I've noticed that I had this condition for over a decade now. When I graduated from high school, I noticed that my eyes in my graduation photo weren't both looking at the same place. The condition apparently also manifests itself in the subconscious tendency to tilt the head to compensate for the eye maladjustment. I notice that I'm doing that now as I type this.

I've consulted with one or two eye doctors about this before, and was basically told that there's nothing really one can do about it. Although an inconvenience, I certainly wasn't blind. But the truth was, it also could give me headaches, and it gave me some substantial problems with depth perception, such as when I looked at a pair of telephone wires overhead -- I couldn't tell how far away they were, or even if there really were two of them or just one. It also made renewing my driver's license a bitch, since the eye test involves looking at a screen which wasn't ideal to a guy whose eyes were at odds with each other. (The examiner literally looked at me like, "you can't see that at all? The letters are there.")

In a most astonishing coincidence, my colleague Cynthia turns out to have also had this same condition. And to my utter surprise, she managed to find a doctor who actually could fix the problem. I let her be the guinea pig, then went to see him myself.

The surgery involves the doctor going into the eyes (I'm not exactly sure how) and weakening the hyperactive muscles behind the left eye. There was also the possibility of some overcompensation in the right eye, so another muscle would have to be adjusted in the right eye as well. As you can imagine, this occurs under general anesthesia.

Sure enough, after Cynthia's surgery, she could still see, and her eyes were definitely more pointed in the same direction. That's what we're looking for. She told me there was nothing to be worried about, that there's some distress or discomfort on the first few days, but then afterwards everything would be okay.

I went in for the surgery yesterday.

Cynthia understated the discomfort.

For some really stupid reason, I thought that I'd be able to walk out of the hospital that afternoon, sleep for a little bit, deal with a bit of discomfort, and deal with my day. Unfortunately, this was not the case. My eyes were effectively welded shut with the pain of micro-stitches in the eye, and a thin layer of ointment. This meant that every time I tried to open my eye, all I could see was a dull haze. There would be no hobbling around on my own in my cramped, messy apartment. Someone would really have to sit with me.

Thankfully, Tracy was able to spend some time with me, helping me feed myself and placing things in good positions so I could find them again. But for a few hours there, I really felt completely impotent. There was nothing I could do on my own. I couldn't see. Walking around involved substantial use of the hands. Even using the bathroom became an endeavor, as I not only had to find the toilet but then try my damnedest not to miss. (Eventually, someone smarter than I advised me to just sit down already.)

But the panic attack really started to hit me when I realized that I would be completely unable to feed myself if I got hungry and Tracy wasn't around. How would I be able to find something in the fridge? How would I prepare it? Suddenly, even something as mundane as a peanut butter sandwich, or a frozen pizza, or even a friggin' frozen tv dinner, would become a tremendous effort, involving lots of navigation that I would have taken for granted on any other occasion.

I think not being able to care for myself has quickly become my greatest phobia in life.

Tracy had to leave (she was tired and needed to get home), and I begged my other friend Elizabeth to come by and spend the night, just so I wouldn't be alone if I broke out in another panic attack. Thankfully, Elizabeth did, and thankfully, I did not have another attack. I slept through the night. When I awoke, at 6.47 a.m., I thought to myself, "What time is it?" and, somewhat reflexively, looked at the alarm clock lying next to me (which is how I found out it was 6.47 a.m.). It was then that I suddenly realized... I could see. There was minimal pain. There was no nausea. And though slightly uncomfortable, my eyes could open. There was nothing more than little pain one might get if there was a little too much gunk in it from the night before.

Today, I am, surprisingly, doing very well. I have my glasses on to see, but otherwise, it's okay. I'm not sure the strabismus is completely fixed, but my doctor tells me it takes a little while to get used to it, and it might realign itself gradually. But at least I can see. And function. And take care of myself. And for this, I am very, very thankful.

Gay Beach Weekend

So I finally got a gay weekend in at the beach. My friends Josh and Ben decided to take a weekend up there to attend a fundraiser for a gay Virginia delegate, so I decided to tag along. Yay! After two weekends at Dewey with my straight and no-so-fag-haggy girlfriends, I was ready for a weekend finally with gay people, in gay bars, on the gay beach.

A few things I picked up this weekend:

1. Trying to look "cool" in front of a beach full of gay men is well-nigh impossible when you fall over flat on your ass, and then your back, after failing to catch a football. Bonus stupidity if you're still fully dressed, including shirt and sunglasses, at the time.

2. Flirting with a guy who clearly doesn't ever want to see you naked is a good way of releasing your hostage paddleball without paying a ransom. (That sounds a lot dirtier than it really is.)

3. Being in the company of cute boys is an effective -- if not terribly ideal -- way to get into a conversation with other cute boys. "Hi there, you're cute...... Oh, and so are you, I guess."

4. If you've got body image issues and end up keeping your tank top on at the beach all day, be prepared for some mad tan/burn lines.

5. Telling a random guy that his Asian-character tattoo means "kung pao chicken" is funny. Not a great way to flirt, but funny anyway.

6. Long-term crushes will never work out, so don't even try. Let it go.

Notice that, unfortunately, "a man" is not one of those things I picked up this weekend.

Employment deception

Is it somehow wrong to be looking for a new job without alerting your boss of your interest? I feel like I'm deceiving him somehow when I make plans to sneak out during lunch, grab my jacket, throw on a tie, and reverse the process on the return trip.

Balancing Act

There's a delicate balancing act to be struck when your friends are visiting from out of town. Do you offer to hang with them whenever you're free, or do you give them some time on their own? I took Monday off to spend the day sightseeing with Mark and Jay all day and through dinner; last night I had dinner with them. Do I give them a night off from me? After all, they did spend all day without me anyway, so it's not like they could overload on me already. But perhaps they want a dinner that doesn't involve me for once on this trip. But then I hardly ever get to see them, so I'd like to maximize our time together.... Now I'm just confusing myself.

Service records

What with John Kerry's service in Vietnam being such a "hot" issue in the presidential elections right now (W. and Cheney's having completely avoided deployment to Asia notwithstanding), I found this quote in someone's else's blog which I feel compelled to pass along. I have not cite-checked the quotation:

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."

-- Colin Powell, My American Journey, p. 148. My American Journey is Gen. Powell's autobiography.

I Need Uglier Friends

So my best friend from high school, Mark, is visiting DC for part of this week with his boyfriend, Jay. I took the day off on Monday to hang out with them. We decided to go for a tour of the capitol (among other things) and, having gotten there early and received our tour pass for about an hour later, we decided to go get coffee/breakfast at the Rayburn House Office Building nearby.

After a relatively uneventful meal, Mark got up to attempt to bus his tray, and Jay went off in search of a restroom. When Mark returned and sat with me, a random staffer (apparently from Connecticut, I later found out) randomly said to Mark, "Are you from Cape Cod?" -- a reference to Mark's t-shirt. "No," replied Mark, "I just got the shirt when I visited."

I asked the man if he was working for a Massachusetts delegate, but no, he represented Connecticut. He asked where "we were all" from, so Mark told him he was from Seattle. I eventually 'fessed up that I live in the area.

Apparently this guy had winked at Mark while he was bussing his tray.

How is it that I have friends who can get hit on in such a relatively non-gay setting as the frigging cafeteria of a Congressional staff building? I mean, I've heard that the Hill is teeming with gay staffers and all, but they actually try to pick up random guys in the caf? I can't even get cruised if I were to wear a big sign on my head that said "Big ol' homo, gay men welcome to chat me up".

Of course, Mark is cute. I, on the other hand, am chopped liver.

On the Waterfront

Spent the weekend at Rehoboth/Dewey Beach this weekend. Jen, a friend of mine from when we worked at the courthouse, has a brother who has a house there, so from time to time we go over and crash his pad. This weekend, he was out of town, so Jen had some of us over. In the end, it was Jen, me, Christine, Linda, and Sue at the house. (For some completely inexplicable reason, I frequently end up being the only male among this group of friends.)

Dewey Beach is a fun place to hang out, although sometimes excrutiatingly heterosexual. I mean, frat scene heterosexual. The crowd tends to be composed of college-age people -- or just-out-of-college age people -- who somehow have nothing better to do with their time or money over the summer than hang out at the beach in sweet crash pads, drinking all night, and recovering all day, only to repeat the process the next day. Surprisingly, there are also a decent number of over-25 people hitting the scent too, but they, too, have nothing better to do with their lives than maintain their (usually vain) attempt to recaputure their youths by drinking excessively and seeking their next bed partner at or around last call.

Because all my friends are straight girls, we go to Dewey when we want to take our own misguided tours of recapturing our youth through excessive bar-hopping. (The gay bars are more in the Rehoboth area. Not wanting to drag my straight friends to a gay bar at the beach, I usually just tag along with them to the Land of Uber-Heterosexuality.) This past weekend proved no exception.

We spent our evenings at a bar called the Starboard. It's a fun place. I'm amazed at some of the really hot guys there taking their pick of cute women. Sometimes you hear that the gay community has claimed every goodlooking guy. I'm here to tell you that's not true. There are tons of hot guys looking for women at these hookup joints.

Jen met a cool guy named Mark. They were talking at the bar for a while. I had no idea how drunk Jen was while this was going on, but apparently, she was. Before the night was over Jen would be leaving her lunch in a corner outside the bar and we would be escorting her home in a cab. And by "we," I somehow have to include Mark, for he made his way into the cab with us.

Don't get me wrong, Mark came across as a completely nice guy. I was just a little taken aback by the fact that Jen would actually invite a strang new guy home after meeting him in a bar, especially with four guests also staying in the house. Unfortunately for both of them, however, Jen was not done re-living her dinner when she returned home, and, apparently out of some embarassment, she locked Mark out of the bathroom while she went about her business.

At some point Mark came back downstairs (where I was staying) and started putting on his shoes. Unsure of whether Jen intended for him to leave or not, I asked him what was up. "She has locked me out of the bathroom," he said. "I thought I'd be staying here, but that doesn't look like it's gonna happen."

I genuinely did feel bad for the guy. It's not often that a guy is willing to come home with a chick who's puking up her guts. And who's still quite nice. But, I didn't know if Jen still wanted to see this guy around the house when she woke up in the morning. I was prepared to offer to let him crash on the couch that night, but I was having some trouble deciding what Jen would have thought about that. So, basically, I left the matter in his court. "What do you want to do now?" I asked. Eventually, after much (rambling) "discussion" (I used that term advisedly, since it was rather nonsensical banter), he decided he would catch a cab back to his hotel. I did tell him to leave his cell number, though, so that Jen could get in touch with him. I sensed she liked him.

The next night, Jen did actually call him again, but she failed to leave her number. She had assumed that it would show up on his called ID, until I pointed out that my phone doesn't give the ID if the phone is turned off. However, not wanting to seem desperate, she didn't call him again that night. I told him to call her on Sunday sometime. I hope she does.

***

Sue was referred to -- twice -- as resembling a "librarian" type. While I can see what the guys are getting at, it's so untrue. Every librarian I've ever known has been a short, rotund, dowdy old woman. Sue is a tall, thin, rather hot chick (albeit with a kinda plain face). No accounting for taste. On Saturday night, she managed to spend the night talking to some guy whose name I forget, but who was clearly a player on the scene. At 47, recapturing youth was clearly a top priority for him. I admit he looked good (and I don't just mean "for his age"), but there's gotta be better ways meet women than finding them at bars in a beach town. Thankfully, Sue wasn't planning on hooking up with him.

***

Linda found herself a man, too. His name is Evan and he actually lives in the DC area. He seemed like a nice guy and they danced most of the night and even shared a few kisses. (This was the first time I've ever seen Linda kissing a man. It was interesting, in a kinda jarry way.)

I hope it works out for them. Evan seems like a nice guy. Linda left him her number. We'll see if he calls.

***

And my recap of the weekend would not complete without my recitation of my near-death experience.

We (Linda, Sue, Christine and I -- Jen was still recovering from the night before) were on the beach on Saturday afternoon when we decided we were going to take a walk up the beach for a little bit. So we did, walking perhaps half a mile along the shoreline.

I suppose we should have noticed much earlier that something was amiss when lightning strikes began appearing over the horizon, but we honestly believed that we had a lot of time to make it back to our stuff. Oh, how wrong we were.

When we finally turned around to look at the sky, it was dark. As we started jogging (instead of walking) back to our stuff, the sky opened up and we started getting pelted with large droplets of rain. I mean, these things were large. And combined with the rather strong winds whipping these droplets of rain at us, it was hurting.

At this point I came to once again realize that I am in exceedingly poor physical shape. The rain was blinding me; the cold was taking my breath away (my asthma didn't help matters either); and the incredibly soft sand meant that each step required ten times the effort it would have on a normal sunny beach day. I honestly thought I might die. And it would have been a drowning. In the rain. That's how hard it was raining.

Linda and Sue somehow managed to move their way along the sand and eventually got ordered onto the boardwalk by the cops. They then managed to locate our stuff. We had happened to set up camp in a dent in the beach, so there was literally a torrent of water completely flooding our stuff. Not funny. I was not there to witness it, but it was amusing to imagine. Thankfully, nothing in my bag was completely irreplaceable, so hey.

Meanwhile, I was with Christine, having been separated from Linda and Sue by the storm. (Low visibility, you see.) (No pun intended.) I don't know why we were so far from the water, but it was definitely difficult to move in the sand. Eventually I gave up and told Christine it made more sense to head up to the street and walk from there. The rain was continuing to beat down on us and there was no way I was going to be able to make any substantial headway on the sand.

So I basically ordered Christine to follow me as we headed up away from the sand. We hit a bridge and walked up, only to realize that the bridge led not straight to a street, but to a private patio area at a housing complex. While I was somewhat concerned that we were trespassing, I also was relieved to be out of the driving rain. Thankfully, my trespassing fears were allayed when almost immediately after we set foot on the balcony a woman came out to greet us with towels, inviting us in to sit down and get the heck out of that crazy rain. We sat there for about 10 minutes while the rain passed and eventually -- while profusely thanking the random family that had taken us in -- we left, a few new towels in hand, to find Linda and Sue again.

I know this story doesn't sound that bad now, but I seriously felt like I was going to die on that beach. Just a quick reminder about the awesome power and majesty of Mother Nature.

But otherwise, the weekend was a lot of fun! No, seriously.

Link Luster

I do so wish I knew how to create that side bar on this blog to provide links to other people's blogs and/or news sources.... Unfortunately, I am code illiterate.

A Pound of Flesh

Some friends and I were having brunch at Eastern Market the other day, so we decided to do a little bit of flea market shopping when we were done. We walked around for a bit (I was going to buy a nice framed set of old-style Chinese coins, but the frame was terribly nicked), then happened to wander past a real estate office.

They had copied and put out a list of all the open houses taking place that day. On a lark, we decided we would go check out the ones close to the neighborhood.

I've been hankering to buy a new place for a while now. My current place feels so tiny. And, I am a master at accumulating junk. I want something bigger. I want something more "adult." I want a house house.

The first house we checked out was decent. It was a two-story townhouse, 3 bedrooms upstairs, living room, and kitchen. There was even a basement apartment complete with certificate of occupancy and separate entrance... mortgage offset! The upstairs was rather poorly laid out, though, for two of the three bedrooms were ridiculously small, and really usable only for children.

The basement apartment was occupied by a man named Jake. Undoubtedly, he was a Hill intern. He had framed pictures on the walls of him with various Republican bigwigs. It was sick. (Kidding!) The apartment was really well laid out... cute, not too cramped. And he had one of those microshavers (you know, the kind for "sensitive" areas that you can use on a balloon and still not pop it). My friend Elizabeth dragged us out of there when she realized that we were learning more about the occupant than about the apartment.

Not that any of us were really terribly serious about buying anyway.

The second place we saw was another two-story with basement. The basement contained a washer/dryer and what was charmingly described as an "in-law suite" or "au pair suite." (Yes, that's right, I'm planning on hiring an au pair when I move to a new place. You know, to take care of my nonexistent kids.) The backyard was expansive and great for entertaining! Hibachi heaven! The living room was large and included a fireplace, there was a separate dining room, and a rather large kitchen (lots of counter space!) with a dine-in area there as well! All this for only $640,000.

Man, I need to make more money, or move to a cheaper city.

So, my pound of flesh. In the bedroom on the second floor, there was one of those crawl spaces you get to by pulling down a ladder otherwise recessed into the ceiling. Unable to resist, I pulled the string down to reveal the ladder, and the rather completely uninspiring crawl space above. I didn't feel like crawling up the ladder, so I figured I'd push the ladder back up. Woah, strong springs! The ladder proceeded to retract back into the ceiling with alarming force, and with my fingers still captured in the string, well....

I pulled the better part of my left pinky nail off.

I didn't realize that the pain I felt was actually more than just pain until we got outside. I discreetly asked for a tissue or something to cover my bleeding finger. Of course, I tried to be discreet, but my friends noticed. I had to eventually make my way to a Starbucks and ask for a cup of ice to numb my finger.

My finger's not hurting as much now. It only hurts when I accidentally directly touch the area that was erstwhile covered by the nail. But I will note that it's an absolute bitch to type when you can't type "a", "q" "z" or the capital letters of anything on your right hand without moving your left hand off the home keys.

Friendship evolution

Ever have one of those friends who's been your friend for so long, you just can't imagine not being their friend anymore? This even when you realize you that you really just don't enjoy that friend's company anymore?

My best friend from school and I still keep in touch. He lives across the country from me and we see each other on IM all the time. Every so often we'll have random chats on line. Lately, I've realized that I can't enjoy these conversations anymore. I'm tired of watching what I say for fear of being belittled or condescended to. I'm sick of avoiding certain topics of conversation knowing that I would just get dragged into some stupid-ass argument over nothing.

When you realize that you simply don't enjoy talking about your everyday life with your best friend anymore, what are you supposed to do?

He's coming to visit next weekend with his boyfriend. Thankfully, they're staying in a hotel. I'm taking a day off to hang out with them. I'm not dreading hanging out with them, but I'm not necessarily looking forward to it the way one would expect from a visit from a good friend. If we get into another fight about some stupid, trivial matter, I may just blow a gasket.

Gay Literacy 101

In the ever-ongoing chronicles of "gay men on gay.com are such idiots," I bring you the following exchange which took place recently. I prefer not to identify the other person involved, but let's say the guy's screen name identified himself as "latin," and "nice."

Him: hi
Me: hey

As is usually the case, I must point out, I did not initiate this conversation.

Him: how are you?
Me: fine. you?
Him: i'm great.
Him: are you white?

I gotta say, at least the guy gets straight to the point. An idiotic and ignorant point, but the point nonetheless. Shall I also point out that this guy's profile identified himself as "Single, seeing someone special"?

More important, I need to highlight two important pieces of information about my gay.com profile. First, my tagline in the chat room says that sending me a private message is okay, but please read my full profile first. Second, my full profile identifies me as "Asian/Pacific Islander."

Me: uh, have you even looked at my profile?
Him: bye

I'd add a big, long, bitchy comment here, but I think I'll just let that conversation stand on its own. Some people are such assholes.

Zzzzz

I can't stop falling asleep lately. I mean, literally. I don't understand it, but my sleep cycle is completely screwed up, and I can't seem to stay awake at work anymore.

It's particularly embarassing when my boss walks in and catches me at the computer basically snoozing away. While I have projects to do. I mean, I try to fight it, and read the stuff that's in front of me, but instead I just end up dead to the world. Then I'll give up and just close my door and nap for a little bit. When my door's closed, it's pretty obvious what I'm doing too. Blah.

I hate it.

Blogspot issues

I tend to get myself caught in an endless login loop lately.

So I go to blogspot and try to log in by typing in my information in the upper left hand corner. Then I click "Log In."

Then I go to a second page, which says, "Please log in before continuing" (or some such). Not that I didn't just log in one click before.

So I type in my login name and password again. And I click "sign in" again.

And the screen is cleared of my information, and I'm back to the same "Please log in again" screen.

It's infuriating.

I don't get it.

So if anyone reading this (and I have still have no idea who actually is reading this) wonders why it's so long between posts, I'm just going to blame this.

That is all. For now.

Netflix administrivia

I've been a member of Netflix since June of 2002 now. I recently decided, just for fun, to run some statistics on my rental habits:

Number of movies rented (through 7/29/04): 234
Average cost of rental: $2
Average number of rentals per month: 10

Number of movies that I subsequently purchased (excluding tv show DVD sets) : 9
Number of movies that I subsequently purchased (includes Sex and the City): 22
Number of movies that subsequently ended up on my Amazon.com wishlist and are currently still there: 4

Number of movies with some kind of gay theme or prominent gay character(s): 39
Number of those gay-themed films I actually liked: about 7 (why do I continue to rent them?....)
Number of non-English-speaking films (in whole or in non-insubstantial part): 20

Number of movies which robbed me a few hours of my life: Too many
Number of movies which put me to sleep: zzz... wait, what was the question?

Number of rentals that are DVDs of tv shows: 58
To wit: All available DVDs of Six Feet Under, Oz, Sex and the City, Freaks and Geeks, Sports Night, the Superfriends series (before I came to realize how lame they are), one season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (which led me to detest that show with a passion), and one apparently random disc of Queer as Folk. Also, one disc of Coupling (the BBC version, of course!), before I realized I knew I would love the show, and ended up just buying them as they came out with "test running" them first.

Number of movies currently in my queue: 216 (yes, I am a freak)
Probable number of movies that are in there solely because I'm stalking a hot actor in the hopes that he'll do a shirtless or otherwise nude scene: >20 (see above "freak" comment)

Running Commentary

So I think I just figured out how to turn comments on in this forum. So this should mark my first comment-enabled blog entry. I have no idea who's reading this blog, so if you are, please drop me a comment. If for no other reason than to let me know that I'm not just whistling into the wind. Thanks.

Still More Short Term Memory

On June 25, I blogged about "Self-Loathing Asians." I'd provide a link for that entry, but odds on, it's right underneath this one. That's how recent this event is.

So tonight I'm back in the gay.com chat room, when the following exchange takes place, involving the SAME Asian guy from last night. Keep in mind that, again, I DID NOT INITIATE THIS CONVERSATION:

Him: hi
Me: hi

I immediately recognize the name and tried to start thinking of ways to fuck with his mind. Then I started trying to come up with ways of telling him how FUCKED UP it is that he puts a blanket kaibosh on Asian men, when he is one himself. But in the end I failed.

Him: wassup?
Me: nothing
Him: horny
Me: eh

"Eh" was my way of being rude, frankly. To tell him I didn't care to have a conversation with him.

Him: u?
Me: dude, we've talked before

By this point, I have given up the charade. If he's dense enough to insist that I chat with him, I'm going to get the important info out for him.

Him: ok
Him: really?
Me: yes.
Him: no chance to reconsider?

See, I see this as a further sign of self-loathing. He immediately assumes that I am the one who turned him down. He thinks I'm some white guy, see? So if we talked before, then clearly he wanted me (since I'm some white guy) and I didn't want him. The tables at this point are strangely turned. Though for some reason, I am unable to turn this to my advantage. Perhaps it's because it's 1:40 a.m. and I am unable to bother to come up with witty or clever comebacks.

Me: dude, you were the one who said you weren't "into" me
Him: really?
Him: stats?
Me: asian. like you.

This last sentence was calculated for its maximum effect. I wanted to highlight to him two things: First, that objective measurable stats like height and weight were irrelevant to him, and I knew it. All I had to say was "Asian," and it would be the ace-in-the-hole to end the game completely. Second, I wanted to reiterate that he, too, is an Asian man, like me.

Shockingly, at this point the conversation ended, and my gay Asian internet buddy was never heard from again.

Self Loathing Asians

As a followup on one of my previous posts, I am reporting the following conversation, which was NOT INITIATED BY ME, which just took place in a gay.com chat room:

Him: hi
Me: hi
Him: wassup?
Me: nada. how are you?
Him: horned up

[At this point I feel the need to reiterate that I was NOT the one who initiated this conversation.]

Me: ah.
Me: where are you?
Him: nwdc-logan
Me: oh. i live near there.

[I should explain this. I'm typing this from San Antonio, where I am on a business trip. I am logged on to two different chat rooms on gay.com, one in DC and one in San Antonio. I'm asking where this guy is, because I need to know this information to carry the "conversation" further.]

Him: stats?
Me: 5'8 165 asian

[Having given out my "stats" on electronic chat fora before, I know that this is usually enough information. Sure enough, I'm right.]

Him: sorry
Me: huh?
Him: not into asians

Okay, this is wrong on many, many levels. First, "sorry"? Ex-squeeze me? Again, let's reiterate where the center of the universe is NOT located: your penis. There's no need to be "sorry." I'm not going to cry myself to sleep because I didn't get to jump into a bed with your "horned up" ass. Get a life.

More important was my last line, which went completely ignored:

Me: dude, you ARE asian.

Yes, indeed, in checking this guy's profile (I had to make sure he wasn't a bot, after all), I found out that this guy self-identifies as Asian/Pacific Islander, all the way down to identifying as a Buddhist. At least he knows his own ethnic background, I guess.

As it is, "I'm not into Asians" is tossed around so flippantly in the gay community, in much the same way as "I don't drink Pepsi" or "I don't watch The Bachelor" would make its way into conversation. But to have it tossed at you by an Asian man leaves me with a feeling between revulsion and immense pity.

As I've already mentioned before, it takes a pretty closed mind to dismiss, in a blanket fashion, all people of a particular race as unattractive from the get-go without undertaking a particularized, individualized determination of each person's attractiveness. It takes a special degree of self-hatred to toss this blanket over an entire race of people when you're one of them.

This guy said "I'm not into Asians" without even acknowledging the disconnect that necessarily must exist between his statement and his actual self. When he looks at himself in the mirror in the morning, does he see a handsome Asian guy, or does he see a hot white guy trapped inside an Asian shell? Will he, someday, undergo some kind of plastic surgery to widen his eyes, shore up his cheekbones, bleach his skin tone, maybe color his hair? Does he at all even realize that when he says "I'm not into Asians," he's really saying, "I am repulsed by myself. If I walked into a bar and saw me there, even I wouldn't talk to me."?

Frankly, it's attitudes like this that have forever prevented me from joining any gay Asian clubs here in DC. I feel like I would forever be some kind of interloper, some "new" Asian guy (despite the fact that I've lived in DC for ten years now) who shows up at "Asians and Friends" night to steal our white men from us. Yes, with such a limited supply of white men who find Asian men attractive enough to date -- and after all, if Asian men are allowed to cast away Asian men without a second glance, why whouldn't the majority of men of other races? -- with such a limited supply of this Wondrous Other, they're bound to be outnumbered by the Asian men who want to date them. So the addition of each new Asian man into the pool only further slims the chances that the Wondrous Other might look twice at any of the other ones there. I, for one, would hate to rain on the parade of these insecure GAMs who feel their lives need to be defined by having a trophy white man at their side. Count me out. My self-worth is measured not by the skin color of the man with whom I choose to share my life.

Short Term Memory

The woman who works at the front desk of my building has got to have the shortest term memory ever. Well, then again, I'm pretty sure she's a bitter, surly bitch who could care less about competently performing her job.

So there was something in my mailbox behind her head when I walked in tonight. So I said, "Hi. I'm in Apt. 202. Could I have what's in my box, please?" So she stands up, takes the paper from my box, and hands it to me.

Then I say, "Hey, what do you know about pool passes? I haven't gotten mine yet."

To which she responds, in a rather annoyed manner, "What's your apartment number?"

It was all I could do to refrain from immense sarcasm when repeating my apartment number, which I had just given her some 20 seconds before.

Subway stupidity

Although this post could (and probably should) be about idiocy on the Metro, it's actually not. The other day I had the most idiotic exchange ever with a person behind the counter at one of the many local Subway sandwich shops.

I've been collecting those little stamps like a fiend now. You know, so you can get a "free" sandwich after a while. I like buying the cheapest damn sandwich on the menu then redeeming the "free" one for the most damn expensive one they have. Just because I'm cheap that way.

One day, noticing that I had a slew of stamps but none of those little cards to affix them to, I walked into a Subway to ask for some of those cards:

Me: Do you have those cards to stick my stamps to?
Her: Cards?
Me: Yes. To stick my stamps on to.
Her: We have gift cards. They're $5.
Me: No. No no. I want these cards to use as part of the frequent eater program or whatever.
Her: Oh. [She doesn't move.]
Me: ... Uh, so, could I have some of those cards please?
Her: [Reaching for those gift certificate cards] How many do you want? They're $5 each.
Me: Uh, one more time, no. I want those cards that I stick my little stamps to. [At this point I'm a little annoyed that I don't have one of those stamps to show her what I mean.]
Her: Oh. Okay.
Me: So do you have those cards I'm talking about?
Her: Yes. [She doesn't move.]
Me: ... [Heightened annoyance.] Well could I have some please?
Her: Sure. They're $5 each.

By this point it's comical that we're actually both speaking English, and yet both not. So finally I resort to the lowest level dialog I can possibly muster:

Me: Look. When I buy a sandwich here, I get stamps, right?
Her: Yes.
Me: And after I get a certain number of stamps, I can get something for free, right?
Her: Yes.
Me: Now, when I get those stamps, I need to stick them to something, right?
Her: Yes.
Me: I want from you that card that I'm supposed to stick these stamps to.
Her: Okay. [She still doesn't move.]
Me: This isn't going anywhere, is it?
Her: So did you want a card or not? They're $5 each.

I left the store. At least the massive proliferation of Subways, like weeds in an unkempt garden, means that I can go almost anywhere and find a Subway that features a person who might actually know what I'm talking about.

When Your Chest Speaks Volumes

Gay Pride was this weekend. Some people, though, take pride so far as to border on some kind of god syndrome.

I saw -- on at least two different people -- a t-shirt which really annoyed me for some reason. Now, I don't want to come across as if I'm one of those politically correct humorless dolts who think everything is offensive, but this one just irked me. The t-shirt read, in Courier type approximately 25 point:

"Sorry. I don't do girls."

Wha? "Sorry"? For some bizarre reason I got annoyed by this big time. What, you think you're so hot that everyone is clamoring for a piece of you? Are girls (especially at Gay Pride, fer cryinoutloud) swooning at you, going, "Dammit, I want him sooo bad, and his t-shirt proclaims loud and clear that I can't have him!"

News flash: You're not as hot as you think. And not everyone wants to get into your pants.

***

The other t-shirt that bugged me (and thankfully I only saw it on one person): "GAM4GWM." Translation, for those of you unschooled in this particular code: "Gay Asian Male, For Gay White Male."

I'm fine with indulging the fact that people have "a type" that they find "attractive." But limiting yourself by an entire racial category is a bit much.

I'm the kind of person who believes that, given the right set of qualities (physical and non-physical), all kinds of people can be very attractive. Intelligence can shoot a guy's sexiness factor up by a factor of 10, as can a great sense of humor or a kind heart. Likewise, if a guy is hot and he knows it, nine times out of ten I find him no longer as attractive as I may have found him before he opened his mouth.

So what's with gay Asian men who apparently count themselves as among the not-attractive-enough-to-date set? It's bad enough that Asian men get a stereotypical bad rep (everything from the physical to the emotional, Asian men get picked on), but if even my Asian brothers can't look at each other as attractive enough, that's just sad.

Quick questions to ponder on this front:

(1) If you, an Asian man, can't find me, a fellow Asian man, attractive enough to date, why would you ever believe that anyone else would want to date you? If you're willing to completely write off your own race in one fell swoop, why shouldn't the white guys you covet do the same?

(2) Have you considered the degree of self-loathing it takes to think, and then to announce, that you don't find people with genetic backgrounds similar to yours attractive?

***

On Saturday night my friend Amy and I went to Phase One, a lesbian bar on the Hill. She's gay and hadn't ever been, so we decided to go. Personally, I like the place. It's got a low-attitude going on, and people just seem to have a good time. Of course, I never picked up on any of the lesbian subplots unfurling before my very eyes because, well, I was too focused on the two or three guys total in the room.

One guy in particular, I found out was named Rick. I recall I thought he was pretty attractive when he walked in with two male friends. I didn't think much of it at the time, because there were other gay men in the bar too, so whatever.

At some point Amy and I find ourselves standing near them just holding our beers and watching the crowd. I excuse myself to use the facilities and when I returned, I was surprised to find Amy chatting it up with these boys, discussing the butch/femme dynamic which seemed to have dominated the dance floor, and talking about which chicks in the place were the hottest, etc.

As the conversation progressed, I started feeling slowly wigged out by the content. The following exchanges set my Spider-sense tingling:

Rick: (in response to Amy's lamenting about her difficulty in finding a date) That's crazy. You're gorgeous.
Amy: Well, thanks, but you know...
Rick: No, really. Gorgeous. Say, did you come here with anyone?

First hackles raised.

Amy: Nope, just my friend Dennis here.
Rick: So have you two ever....
Amy: Well, seeing as Dennis is gay, and I'm gay....
Rick: Yeah, but you know, you could swing both ways....
Me: Yeah, uh, I'm not terribly interested in the idea of swinging both ways.
Rick: (to Amy) When was the last time you kissed a guy?

Klaxons sounding.

Rick: So do you think there are going to be some bi chicks out there on the floor now who would be receptive if I were to try to dance up there with them?

Red Alert! Red Alert! Shields up!

At this point I literally abandoned Amy. I was at least slightly miffed at her for even allowing this conversation to continue, but really, my primary goal was to get the heck away from these three guys, who I had figured out were obviously straight, and had trekked down to the Phase from frigging Baltimore for the purpose of finding some lesbo action! I was skeeved to the extreme. It was Pride Weekend, after all! The Phase was supposed to be a safe haven year round, but especially at Pride, when you're supposed to be able to go out, be who you are, express yourself sexually, and not be the subject of heterosexist ogling. No, Mr. Straight Dude, she won't be turned on by you. You have a penis. You are not attractive to lesbians. She won't become straight if you (you big stud you) fuck her "the right way."

Maybe, Mr. Uber-Straight Dude, just maybe you haven't been fucked "the right way" by some big buff stud named Jeff, which would cause you to abandon your heterosexuality in a heartbeat.

Celebration of Love

This weekend I had one of the best vacations I've ever had in the States. (Unfortunately, nothing at all can really compare to the vacations I've taken in Paris and Rome. Man. But I digress.) I spent the weekend in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My friends Jessica and Jason got married.

Jessica and Jason are really the perfect couple. Their senses of humor totally mesh, and each complements the other's personality. Watching them exchange their vows was wonderful. They were able to affirm their love for one another in front of a slew of friends and family and carry on with their lives together in a public celebration of their love for each other.

I was there. I was celebrating with them. They're good friends of mine. And they're happy together.

And yet, of course, I had to spend the entire weekend taking special care not to make any political statements about their special day. I know other gay people who boycott the nuptials of their heterosexual friends on the theory that it's a heterosexist institution, so celebrating and supporting it -- even for friends -- would be somehow fundamentally wrong. I can't agree with that. It's still an institution worthy of celebration -- so much so that gay people want to be a part of that as well.

Jason and Jessica would have actually understood if I harbored any outrage toward the discriminatory granting of marriage rights. They're good liberals and they believe that gays and lesbians should have the rights they got to enjoy so readily in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We actually exchanged a quick comment about the fact that they were permitted to apply for a marriage license without proof of residency in the state. But I didn't want to rain on their day.

Watching J&J's wedding -- affirmed by both their families and so many of their friends -- was, as most weddings are, a wonderful experience. Two people in love, declaring their love publicly, being happy together. That's what it's all about. An affirmation of their lives together. It's just that simple.

And there's really no logical or sane reason that gays and lesbians can't or shouldn't be permitted to take advantage of this institution too.

Don't Dance When You're Hung

As a way to get out of the house and have some fun, I've lately taken to taking dance lessons at Remington's, a country bar on Capitol Hill. It's a decent way to meet people, seeing as the crowd tends to be ("tends to be," but not "is uniformly") fairly friendly, and I get a few hours of fun out of it. And, sad though it is, it's somewhat aerobic. I take two-stepping lessons on Monday night, and line dancing lessons on Wednesday nights. Line dancing in a poorly-climate-controlled venue can work up quite the nasty sweat.

Some quick background on the line dancing lessons in particular: There are frequent twists and turns in the process of the dance; one ends up facing a different direction from start rather quickly. To keep us on track, we practice segments of the dance facing each wall, usually just by staying at the wall we've just turned toward. So, for example, if after the first 8 beats of the music you're supposed to have completed a 1/4 turn right, we'll stop, and start again, but this time facing the new wall so that the next 1/4 right takes you to yet another wall. (I do so hope that made some sense.)

Last night we did a dance called the "Booty Call." Okay, I should have known just by the name alone that this dance was not for me. But hey, I was gonna give it a shot, because it's all about the fun, right? Well, let me tell ya.

The Booty Call is a remarkably simple dance, requiring very little practice, so I'm not complaining about that. I got it, and I'm not likely to forget it, so next time I hear the song I could dance it if I wanted to. If I wanted to.

My trepidation with actually doing the Booty Call comes from the fact that the dance requires some TEN BEATS worth of butt-wiggling. Or pelvis-thrusting. Or whatever. I suppose it's meant to be a kind of flirty dance that way, but from the moment we got to that point in the lesson, I found myself thinking, "I gotta say, I can't see myself doing that." (As a punctuation to this thought, I burst out laughing when this move was introduced to us. I think some people thought that I thought our instructor looked stupid shaking his thang. In reality, I was laughing because I really just knew that I would be the one looking silly.)

Sure enough, during the practice run where the entire room ended up facing me (I was facing the wall with the entire class behind me), I performed the beats... but did NO wiggling whatsoever. The instructor even called me out on it: "You're supposed to wiggle, not just stand there!" I laughed it off, because, well, I was not about to announce before the entire class, like some southern primadonna, "Sir, Ah do NAWAT 'wiggle'!" (I was saved by a heckler from the bar who pointed out that the instructor himself actually didn't do that much wiggling himself, so I quietly let the subject drop and I found myself off the hook -- though still without a wiggle. Heck, I think a worm on a hook would in fact wiggle better than I.)

The saddest part of this story is what I found myself thinking when the wiggling was supposed to take place and why I felt that I couldn't do it. The fact is, as an Asian man, I couldn't help visualizing how stupid I'd look shaking my booty because I couldn't help thinking of William Hung, the tragic hero of American Idol infamy, the Johnny-come-lately of horrific vocal ability. Watching William Hung shake his hips during "She Bangs" made me cringe. (Or maybe it was the actual singing. I couldn't tell. The entire scene was cringe-inducing.) The thought that I could end up looking like him due to my comparable lack of groove thang paralyzes me. And so I must politely decline to wiggle during the "Booty Call."

Frankly, it's not a fair assessment for me to make. In all honesty, during several of the other practice turns (when I faced the rest of the class, for example), I can't help noticing that a bunch of the white boys on the stage (and yes, they were mostly white boys) also could not shake their booties to save their lives either. One guy, John, while a cute guy, couldn't really shake very well at all. Even Richard, whom I have an on-again-off-again crush on, doesn't do the whole wiggling thing with much aplomb (as much as aplomb is needed in a gay country line dance). But he does it with confidence and without self-consciousness. Which is what I should be striving toward.

And yet William Hung appears to have scarred me for life.

It's the Cause, Stupid

So lately I've been involved in a surpringly active group of rag-taggers in some grassroots activism. I certainly don't consider myself an activist at all; most of the time I just consider my underpaying, thankless job in employment discrimination to be my part in fighting for civil rights in this country. I honestly think our esteemed President has forced me into a position where I feel like I have to fight the power to get results. I do so detest that man and his policies.

So I'm a member now of two different groups which have grand ideas for the advancement of gay rights in America. They're fun people, excited, energized, passionate. Being with them charges my batteries. It tells me people really do care about what I care about, and are angry enough to do something.

I can't help thinking of the irony of the situation, though. One of the groups I'm with has as its raison d'etre gay marriage rights. Great. I'm all for it. Really. It's one of the big civil rights issues of this time, in my opinion. What's so ironic about it? I'm fighting for a cause I feel like I have no reasonable chance of taking advantage of. I can't get a date to save my life. And I'm fighting for the opportunity to get married. I'm amused.

I was similarly amused when I had a great time at the March for Women's Lives. Abortion? Huh? But yes, a right is a right, and I will be counted in support of it, even if I will never need to make that decision on a personal level in my lifetime.

***

I while back, I wrote a piece entitled "Activism at Its Cruisiest," about the HRC Gay Marriage Rally. As a quick update: Things don't really change.

As I said, I'm a part of this marriage equality rights group. In general, a fairly collegial group of people. But one of two of them won't even talk to me, it seems. Too busy talking to the "hot" guys in the group? Maybe. I'd rather not think such ill thoughts about people with such noble intentions, but there will be times when I will need to talk to you about the project we're running. And you may have to listen. Without thinking that I'm trying to get into your pants. Which I'm not.


Related link of the day: The Full Page Project

Family Affair

Nothing can possibly please my parents. I have decided that my parents simply hate me. Either that, or something deeply rooted in their collective psyche refuses to allow them to tell me that I am anything but a miserable failure in life. Or at least that I'm terribly socially unacceptable.

First off, I will be the first to be admit that I am no longer the same weight as I was when I was a senior in high school. I have, in fact, put on a few pounds. Does my mother really have to point this out? And in such a mean way?

I last went to see my folks during the week of Labor Day, 2002. During that trip, I resolved never to visit my parents again. My mother could not stop telling me how fat I had become. No, really. The following exchange took place during a dinner at a Chinese restaurant with my parents, my brother, his wife, me, and some other family members:

Other Family Member: You guys should eat more! There's plenty on the table!
Mother: (pointing to brother and sis-in-law) Those two need to eat more. (pointing to me) That one doesn't need to eat more.

That's just one example. It didn't stop for approximately five days. It got to the point I was getting ready to throw up -- from disgust, not from bulimia -- but I was afraid that would make my mother too happy.

Now, anyone who's ever seen my parents knows they are not small people themselves. I don't want to lay full blame on genetics, but I really have been dealt a bad hand here. By no means can my mother be characterized as a waif, nor my father lean. My father always had a belly for as long as I've observed him when I was a child.

And let's not forget that the entire time my parents were busy telling me how fat I am, we were dining out on rather fatty and carby foods.

***

This weekend my parents tried again to express their displeasure at me, despite not having laid eyes on me for two years. Their noses function from a continent away. Let me explain:

I had to spend a large wad of cash (thank you, Discover card) at the dentist recently, for a filling and a night guard. I apparently exhibit symptoms of tooth grinding, which can wear away at the gum line, exposing the roots of my teeth, causing problems. I made the mistake of telling my brother all about my dental issues, and he was idiotic enough to tell my parents all about my dental issues.

Bear in mind, again, that my parents have not been in my physical presence for over two years now.

Also bear in mind, please, that when I told my friends (many of whom are also law school grads) about my tooth grinding issues, several of them responded, "Yeah, it's common among law students because it's usually stress related."

My parents' response to my dental issues:

(1) You will be happy to know that my tooth grinding is, in fact, all my fault, because of my bad lifestyle decisions. This means, I don't eat the right foods. I'm supposed to eat "cooler" foods, drink more herbal broths, and eat fewer deep fried foods, like french fries. I'm a bad person for eating this bad stuff. Now I'm suffering the consequences.

(2) Now that I've consulted a dentist (and they've heard about it), my parents think it would be a good time to ask said dentist about my HORRIFIC BREATH. Naturally. Because if my mouth is cleaned (the work of a fine dental hygenist) and rinsed, my HORRIFIC BREATH must clearly be the product of -- again -- my terrible lifestyle choices, including what I eat. Yes, folks, my parents have their M.D.s -- from Elbonia University. Of course, the fact that my parents have not seen me in over two years and hence have not actually had me breathe in their face is not an obstacle to their condemnation of my breath; my breath is so HORRIFIC that it can be smelled from an entire continent and half an ocean away.

(3) And speaking of Dennis's horrible eating habits, which have led to both tooth grinding and HORRIFIC BREATH, dare we revisit the issue of how FAT Dennis is? Well of course we should. Yes. What a splendid idea.

I am going to shoot myself. Perhaps having a dead son whose ample body weight has diminished through natural bodily decay and who expels no breath at all is preferable to one who is fat, alive, grinds his teeth, and has HORRIFIC BREATH.

Oh, and my HORRIFIC BREATH as well as immense obesity is probably also a reason I can't land myself a girlfriend. Yes, you read that right. That's totally another story, best left for another day.

Dreamscapes

Okay, my life has officially hit the realm of the impossibly pathetic. Although I'm reassured that this happens to others frequently, I'm still bemused at my immense reaction to this.

The other day I was having a strange dream. And I do mean strange. Part of it involved my superpowers. Yes, superpowers. I was able to set things on fire with the sheer power of my mind. Wait, it might have been the power to make things explode. Well, something like that. At one point in the dream, like Drew Barrymore in Firestarter, I had to turn my attention to a large tank of fish to make sure I didn't do anything disastrous. (Unlike Drew's, however, my re-channelling of energy caused poor little fish to jump out of their tank, which has suddenly become a teakettle thanks to me.)

Then I came to realize that the strange superpower I had was actually in context: I was somewhere pretty much akin to the Xavier Institute, where everyone basically had some kind of power. I know this because everyone else around me was a student (because, you know, I'm so young as to still be in school), and because no one really batted much of an eye when my superpowers threatened to go awry.

At some point in this dream, I was actually unable to restrain my powers, and entire plates of sheet glass which served as windows to the academy shattered. I laughed and basically just said, "Uh, oops. At least that shit is replaceable." (I know what you are thinking. You are thinking something else happened at the same time that this big explosion occurred in my dream. You are wrong.)

But the point of my patheticness (is that even a word? Well it is now) comes from this: At some point in my dream, a really cute boy starts hitting on me! I mean, he was really cute. Despite the fact that I dream-lived right across the street from the school (now complete with tremendous amounts of shattered glass), he was insisting that I hop into his car and spend the night at his apartment. And the thing is, I was going to go. I was actually kind of excited (again, no pun intended), in a freakishly schoolgirl kinda way, that some really cute boy was so into me.

At that point, my alarm clock started going off. Somehow, Bush's economic recovery theories made their way into my conversations with this boy. Which, I think you'll agree, is just plain wrong, on many levels.

My patheticness derives from the fact that I spent the better part of the waking morning quite sad that, in fact, I was awakened from my delightful slumber before ever getting to see my (literally) dream boy naked. I guess you can say I was a victim of premature awakening.

***

Earlier in the week, I had my recurring dream again. The one about the algebra test. As usual, no one in the class was remotely sympathetic to me about my dilemma. It's amazing how stressful those dreams are. It's amazing how quickly I revert to the stress of academic life. The strangest thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm capable of controlling my dreams, at least to some degree. I remember once I dreamed I was making out with someone who looked remarkably like an ex of mine. In my dream, I promptly changed his name and even the color of his hair because, Gawd, who wanted to be making out with him? And yet, I remain unable to change anything in my algebra anxiety dreams, and I continue to panic over a non-existent set of LaPlacian transforms.

Random Acts of Violence

This weekend was a particularly strange one for me. Well, stranger for my best gal-pal Debra, but strange definitely for me as well.

May 1 is my other gal-pal friend Lora's birthday. She was having a party that night at her house, so I spent the day doing, well, nothing in particular, just kinda gearing up to go to the party. Perhaps I considered purchasing a six-pack or something to take with me to the festivities. Never did do that, though.

The phone rings. For some reason, I don't answer it. It's Lora. She leaves me a voicemail that says, in its entirety, "When you get this message, call me." Finding that message strange, and just a bit annoying, I decided not to return the call until later.

The phone rings again a few hours later. The caller ID identifies it as Debra. Again, I choose not to pick up the phone. (I was in a mood, I guess.) No message left. Actually, I don't think it even rang for long enough to get to voicemail.

Immediately after Debra hangs up her phone, Joe calls. He leaves a voicemail too: "Hey, call me when you get this message." Again, no substance. Grrr.

So around 8:30 or 9:00, I finally call both Lora and Joe back. (Debra not having left a message, I decided not to return her call.) Lora wasn't in so I left her a voicemail. (She also has no cell phone, a fact which meets with considerable ire from many of us, because she is such a social butterfly that many times she's next to impossible to pin down.) Left a message with Joe too. Both messages: "Hey, returning your call. What's up?"

So at around 9:45, I speak to a human being for possibly the first time that day. Joe returned my call. "Did you hear about Debra?" he says. "No, what about Debra?" I respond. I'm getting slightly concerned now. Joe's next sentence does very very little to alleviate my nervousness: "First off, just to be clear, she's fine."

"Oh my God," I spit back, "What happened that you have to tell me that she's fine?!?"

Debra got stabbed on Saturday night. It was quite the act of randomness and, in fact, was quite hideously violent. Apparently, Debra had just left her apartment, having changed and freshened up after a long day of shopping, and was heading out to meet someone for dinner when, less than a block from her house on Irving Street NW in Mt. Pleasant, she was grabbed by the arm and stabbed in the neck. Yes, that's right, the neck.

Debra began screaming (we find out later that, luckily, the stabber has managed to miss every last important thing in her neck) and running literally into the street to summon assistance. Bear in mind that this is occurring at approximately 7:00 pm -- it's still plenty bright out, and there are still people around. For some reason no one is responding to her entreaties, though, so she literally throws her purse at him and says, "Here, just take it!"

Odd thoughts of a strange man wielding a bloody knife cavorting off with a bright pink purse notwithstanding, the man didn't take the purse. Instead, he followed her into the street and stabbed her again, in the back, before he finally retreated.

Finally, people emerge to help Debra. One woman is sitting with her trying to keep her coherent. A Metro bus driver has stopped his bus and is holding a cloth to Debra's throat to help stem the bleeding. (Unfortunately, someone soon pointed out that she had been stabbed in the back as well. So when that someone lifted up her jacket, the nice woman who was with her promptly passed out at the sight of the second stab wound. Debra found herself sitting there, bleeding from two knife wounds, thinking, "Great. It must be pretty damn bad if this chick is passing out on me. And I'm the one that's bleeding!".)

Well, putting aside all the other details that follow, Debra was taken to the Washington Hospital Center, where she was found to have a collapsed lung. A most hideous tube was inserted into her (somewhere -- I didn't lift up her blanket to try to figure out where exactly the tube was connected to her) to drain her lungs, which, presumably, would help revive the fallen lung. She was treated there for a few days.

So I spent much of my weekend at a hospital. I hate hospitals. The super-sanitary smell alone is enough to make me want to vomit. But I sat there next to Debra, and with my friend Lora, for quite a while just keeping her company.

As an added irony, Lora herself was born in the Washington Hospital Center. So, twenty-nine years to the day, Lora finds her back there. Not the most fun way to celebrate a birthday, but hey.

Debra's a trooper. To the extent that she could talk (she was pretty drugged up, and that drainage tube was pretty painful), she was her usual sarcastic self ("So they gave me these painkillers, but since I hadn't eaten before the stabbing, I got all sick and started throwing up. Not fun when you have a knife wound in your neck."), which I found to be excellent. I give her snaps for still having that kind of spirit when she's been the victim of a violent crime.

Her mom came down from New York to be with her, and Debra was discharged by Monday afternoon. A bunch of us went over to her place last night and had an impromptu "get better/welcome home" party. I brought a bunch of cheesy videos from my personal collection with me, since Debra doesn't have cable and would likely be bored out of her skull.

They caught the guy who did it. He's been arraigned on a charge of Assault With Intent to Kill. Despite the best efforts of my attorney friends and me (none of whom practice criminal law), we can't see the difference between that and Attempted Murder. But we'll take what we can, long as the bastard sees plenty of time behind bars, where he will hopefully be met with the long end of a big, thick penis finding its way to places he doesn't want one to go.

Man, I got punked.

Yesterday I was sucked into probably the best April Fool's joke ever. Not because it was exceedingly embarassing for me -- I didn't end up crying, or wetting myself in public or anything -- but just because it was so close to reality that I believed the big lie, hook, line and sinker.

The setup: My girlfriend Lora has had a HUGE crush on a boy named Rob for years. She's told me so. And the more she claims that she's over this "silly little crush," the less I believe her, because, well, she's simply not over it.

Well, on Wednesday night, Lora and Rob, as well as a few other people, went out for dinner at some big party-type thingee (which I declined to attend, for a variety of reasons). At this party, I was told, Lora got a bit drunk and was out alone with Rob when she impulsively planted a wet one right on the lips.

Reportedly, there was much fallout, including the disappointment of a gay guy who also has a huge crush on (presumably) straight Rob.

Of course, this was all a lie. No kiss ever took place. I fell for this entire story simply because, well, I wouldn't put any of it past Lora at all. I mean, it's not like some April Fool's joke where I was successfully led to believe that I was being sent to Hollywood to star in a movie or something. I didn't fall for a completely outlandish prank. I fell for a prank that hews completely to actual objective facts. You can't call me too terribly gullible for that, now can you?

Here's the kicker: she managed to get all kinds of people in on this joke. Debra (who also went to the party event) emailed me to ask me if I had heard the "drama" from that night. Joe, Lora's roommate who did not attend the party, emailed me to ask if anything was "up" with Lora, because she just didn't seem like herself lately. Even Rob emailed me to ask me for "advice" about Lora's not-so-subtle romantic advance. Oy.

Of course, if Lora wants to make her schoolgirl crush the center of an April Fool's joke -- even to where she's involving the object of that crush in that joke -- there's really no telling how I'll react to it. I mean, I could very well tell Rob A LOT about Lora's neverending pining process. There's no end to what mischief this could result in....

Yes, I took the bait. Luckily for Lora, I didn't run with it. However, I do think a practical joke that's based so tightly upon actual facts (which have immense embarassment potential) is ill-advised.

Speaking of practical jokes, I find this web site immensely entertaining. If I had had the time, I would have tried some of the pranks here on my officemates yesterday. And check out the series of essays on "Bob the Anal Fissure." I busted a gut laughing my ass off.

She's a Man, Baby!

I hereby take back my post of March 3, 2004, in which I proclaimed myself a "big ol' girl." I don't know how to link back to that post directly, so I'll just leave it to the reader to find it. It was only 21 days ago, so it can't be that difficult.

I am NOT a big ol' girl.

At least, not all the time.

There are many times when, in fact, I too like to take control and act to "fix" things. And I get frustrated when the people I'm trying to help don't appear to be listening to me.

My friend Debra quintessentially seems to have drama revolving around her. Sometimes I think she manufactures drama just to have some excitement in her life. Sometimes it's drama that wouldn't even be drama if she would stop making such a big deal of it. In the past, I would have suggested avenues to head off the drama. Unfortunately for Debra (and me), usually my suggestions involve a radical shift in thought patterns which Debra is usually unable or unwilling to entertain. (For example: "The guy isn't calling you back? Oh well. Plenty of other fish in the sea.")

And it frustrates me to pieces when she complains to me about things neither she nor I have control over, then obsess about them.

I have a similar reaction to Lifetime ("Television for Women, and Gay Men"). Here's my do-it-yourself version of a trailer for every Lifetime movie ever made:

"Next on Lifetime. A woman is in trouble. Deep trouble. Watch her suffer and cry and get the shit kicked out of her for two hours before she finally wakes up, decides to take control of her life and get out of her terrible situation."

Whether it's an abusive husband, or -- wait, it's pretty much always an abusive husband, isn't it? -- the women in Lifetime movies need to get a grip. I'm not sure I understand why such movies are supposed to be "empowering" to women. Anyone who doesn't watch the last 10 minutes walks away with the impression of a powerless, snivelling woman who's fine with being treated worse than the family pet.

So yes, there are definitely times when I, like my friend Mark, will feel this overpowering urge to "fix" the problem rather than listening to others bitch about it.

But then, at least when I suggest changes, the changes I suggest are within the power of the individual. Moving may be within my power. but the greater good is served by granting District citizens full voting rights.

Repeat link of the day: www.dcvote.org

Stuttering Kojo

So I listen to NPR on the web while I'm at work. It's a streaming audio feed. I enjoy it even though I think there's a slight delay between what's being broadcast on radios and what I'm hearing on my machine.

Lately my machine has little hiccupping issues. Like it'll freeze up and refuse to do anything, especially when I try to send documents to print at the shared printer in the work room. The distracting thing, though, is the audio continues to work.

Or does it?

I wasn't paying much attention to it when this particular circumstance occurred today, until I found myself noticing how "short" Kojo Nnamdi was becoming with his caller. Basically, what I heard ended up sounding like this:

Kojo: "And what is your question?"
Caller: "My question is that [blah blah blah]...."
Kojo: "And what is your question?"
Caller: "My question is that [blah blah blah]...."
Kojo: "And what is your question?"

The first few times, I honestly thought that the caller was just babbling on about nothing and Kojo was somewhat abruptly urging her to get to her point by repeatedly asking her what the question was. Basically, the polite equivalent of "Shut yer yappin' and get to the friggin' point, time's a-wastin'!"

Then I finally realized that, with my machine in the midst of a prolonged hiccup, the audio connection was, effectively, skipping, much like a scratched 45. (Not that I've ever earned a turntable).

What?

Have I mentioned I'm also unusually forgetful lately? Isn't it a bit early for Alzheimers?

I frequently will read something at my desk, realize that I need to do some followup, get up from my desk... and promptly forget what followup I needed to pursue. Here are the stage directions to the play, conducted mostly in internal monologue:

Me: "That's an interesting point. I don't know that it's accurate. What did the original document say? I should take a look at it. It's probably in the file."

[I get up and head toward the file room to get the document. The internal monologue continues when I'm about 1/4 of the way from my office to the file room, which is about 20 feet away.]

Me: "What was I supposed to go look for again? ... Dammit!"

I bring this up now just because this morning, I thought of something that would be cool and fun to blog about. But when I actually opened up the window to write the blog.... nothing.

Disordered States

I think I have ADD. I'm far too old for this.

I've just recently come to this conclusion, and it bugs the crap out of me. I hate it. I hate the thought that I might have a "disease" that's usually prevalent in grade-schoolers and adolescents. I hate the thought that I might find myself medicating myself into a proper state of mind when what I really could use to get my head focused better my just a swift kick in the ass. After all, that's what they did to us kids when I was growing up. No mollycoddling "let's just give you a few pills and you'll be all better" mentality. No. We got, "shut the hell up, listen to the teacher, and do your homework if you don't want to suffer some form of punishment."

But now, my faith in the "suck it up and just do it" mantra could be waning. Because I'm realizing that I am simply unable to concentrate, and I may just want to blame it on some sort of physical disorder so I can escape responsibility for it. Didn't get my work done today? I couldn't concentrate on the assignment. Had to surf the web instead. It was more fun. Didn't get the laundry done this evening? Couldn't help it. There was a string of really really addictive TV shows on, and I kept surfing between five of them when the commercials hit.

Q: How many ADD kids does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Wanna go ride bikes?

I guess I should see a doctor. But I still hate this.

Stepping Up to the Plate

I'm too old to be living the way I am.

My friend Jessica is getting married in a few months, so I, of course, had to shop for housewares. The task was made substantially easier by the fact that there exists a registry, and decisions regarding what to buy were pared down to one tiny consideration: price.

So I surfed through the Bloomingdale's web site and selected a few items for purchase, clicked a few times, entered a credit card, and happily completed my duty as a happy wedding celebrant.

Bloomingdale's appears to have (quite stupidly) misinterpreted my request to hold off on delivering the goods for a few months. To wit: Because I didn't want the gifts to arrive too terribly far in advance of the wedding, I asked Bloomie's to hold off on shipping them (two sets of items) for about a month. Bloomingdale's interpretation of my request: Please ship the items whenever you get around to it.

So Jessica got the wedding gifts early. I had to call to verify that she had received them, because, given the conflict between what I requested and what actually occurred, I couldn't be sure there wasn't some big, even stupider mix-up somewhere.

One of the gifts I sent were a set of plates. Very nice, apparently. Jessica's quite pleased with them. And, she reports, "Jason [the fiance] won't let us use them yet. He's not ready to throw out our old sets yet."

At which point it hit me that the plates I use on a routine basis at home are not "sets" of plates. They do not look "nice" by any stretch. In fact, they are literally leftover salad and dinner plates, and cereal bowls... as stolen from my college dining hall. And my alumni association is pestering me about my tenth-year reunion.

So, without a second thought, I asked Jessica if I could have the soon-to-be tossed plate set. I'm excited to get new plates and stuff. Even if they're hand-me-downs. I'm too cheap and poor to go buy new ones myself.

Any Given Saturday

My cousin Danny is getting married. I'm very excited for him. For some reason, I love it when family members get married. He's getting married in Seattle, on the one Saturday before the end of the year that isn't already booked solid.

He's getting married on September 11.

I suppose it's not a bad thing. It's just a date, right? Yes, one with a very, very visceral and tragic image associated with it, but it's just a day in September. Right? Right?

Best I can say is, maybe this means I'll be able to find cheap airfare if I decide to attend the ceremony. After all, so many people are still pretty nervous about flying that day. Except that technically, I'd be flying before and after September 11, but not on 9/11.

Activism at Its Cruisiest

So I went to the Anti-Marriage Amendment Rally held at the Human Rights Campaign last night. It was fun. I love gatherings with large throngs (did I actually just use the word "throngs"?) of people gathered together for a common, passionate purpose.

But more to the point, this rally would almost of necessity be populated by slews and slews of gay men.

Not that I really care about that.

I was supposed to meet several people there. Friends of mine, some gay, some straight. I found Lora and Amy, but couldn't find anyone else I knew, with the dull exception of a guy who I "kinda sorta hung out with" (his words, not mine) for a few months over a year ago and to whom I had no inclination to say hi. So there I was, a gay man in the company of two women at a gay-rights rally.

As I kept my eyes out for my friends, I couldn't help noticing that many of the men there weren't so much paying attention to the speeches as they were either chatting with friends or giving directions on their cell phones. It was a social event more than anything. With a nice background noise.

But it was fun and energizing in any event. I'm now looking into doing some kind of volunteer work with a gay group. I say that now with every best intention. Whether I meet with positive results remains to be seen.

Man, I Feel Like A Woman

I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm a big ol' girl.

Okay, that was a little dramatic. But it's still at least slightly true. Apparently all the literature says so and supports my self-diagnosis.

The single biggest indicator of this circumstance is my relationship with my best friend from high school, Mark. He lives in Seattle. At times I wonder why he's still my friend, seeing as we can never talk without fighting.

But that's the point: We have vastly different communication styles. Were we both of the "masculine" communication style, we might get along much better than we do. But we aren't.

I was recently bitching and moaning to him about the District's voting rights -- or lack thereof. "Half a million taxpaying U.S. citizens are denied an effective voice on the floor of Congress!" I railed. "One person one vote is a sham in this country!"

Mark's response boiled down to: "So? Move."

His argument further consisted of: "You knew what you were getting into. You're an adult, you're educated, and you made the conscious decision to relocate to the District and buy property there. If you were some uneducated black guy living in S.E. D.C. who was born and raised there and was systematically disenfranchised, I'd have more sympathy for you, but you should simply know better."

My response -- "and if a black man in 1950 for whatever reason made the choice to move to Alabama with its Jim Crow laws and its public lynchings, well, heck, he deserved whatever he got, up to and including execution" -- could not sway Mark. Moreover, he had no problem with my assertion that he was using my education and my race against me in a fight for equal voting rights -- as if certain people deserved representational voting rights more than others. If you're black and historically disenfranchised, you present a better argument for getting the vote than some uppity Asian lawyer who chose to move to the District. The uppity Asian lawyer can go voteless if need be. If we handed out votes one by one to District residents, I'd be one of the last to receive it, because I deserve it less.

But, I digress.

My point is this: I was bitching and moaning. That's really all I was doing. It's frustrating to me that taxpaying citizens of the United States can't vote in matters of national policy. Still more infuriating is that we don't have an effective voice in matter governing our own local affairs (Congressional oversight of the entire District budget).

Mark's response was not helpful to me. His response was basically, "Shit or get off the pot." Do something. Fix the problem. Moving to an actual State is a quick fix to the problem. Slower fixes include lobbying or otherwise getting the word out. But, in Mark-world, bitching and moaning did nothing. Do something.

The conclusion I draw from this? There are times I need to vent. And when those times come, I just want to be heard. And all I need is an occasional, "Yeah, I understand." And what I don't need is "Get off the pot."

Like I said, I'm a big ol' girl that way.

Related Link of the Day: www.dcvote.org

Catchy gross rats

Okay, I feel totally sick and twisted for saying so (and in fact have been called totally sick and twisted for saying so), but I LOVE those new Quiznos ads out featuring strange-looking rats singing in stupid little accents. They're gross. I mean, really gross. One of my friends, who has never eaten at Quiznos before, swears she can't possibly eat there now after those rats.

But the ads have so saturated the market that now I like them. I find them amusing. God help me.

And I'm going to supply a link, too: Check here and watch the commerical yourself.

"They got a pepper bar!" (Aside: I went to Quiznos the other day, just on the strength of these commercials, and as far as I could tell, there really was no pepper bar. Maybe by "pepper bar" they mean that rats get into the area where they keep their peppers after work and the rats help themselves.)