26thyear

2003-07-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

This was the most beautiful thing I read last week "As we're the last two people we know in New York City, Baz and I are leaving town tomorrow morning. She's in love, I speculate, and I'm in love, no doubts there. Together she and I will go off and celebrate that. Instead of aching with distance and separation while my man -- the one with the most beautiful sad and funny eyes in the world -- is out of the country, I'll be happy and lucky and busy, because I am and I am and I am."

I'm not in love, but one day I will be, and until then I'll smile wistfully when I catch glimpses of it through the corner of my eye.

2003-06-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

Ahh...., the French :) I'm in St.Martin right now and thus far having a pretty good time. The only downside is that all of the men are so damned fashionable, that my already faulty gaydar has fallen to a previously unseen low of about 20% accuracy. Oh, and my complete inability to speak French, another definite downside. Rather than be impolite, I started parroting the greetings I'm hit with, I figure that even if I look like an idiot, at least I'm an idiot who trys! I'll figure something out..., besides the only language I want to speak is the international language [insert tounge rolling noise for desired cheesy effect]

2003-06-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so while I was going through my own entirely personal moral crisis, another was unfolding about ten feet away from me. A friend of mine, who I've known since grade school (we hated each other back then, but kind of reconnected at work), who was unquestionably my favorite person to work with, who made the din of stupidity that surrounds my work life quiet down to a bearable mumble, just quit. This sucks. Sucks doesn't even begin to encompass what this is. She quit over what she perceived to be "an unfairly prejudicial and hostile environment", but boils down to a dress code that went against her sense of style. I wanted to convince her to look past her pride and think about how this is going to play out, as opposed to how good it would feel hand in her resignation. I wanted to say that she was wrong, even if the dress code is bullshit. I wanted to grab her by her elbows and shake her into my more conformist views. But instead, I respected her decision and said nothing. I respected her right to take a stand and do what she felt was right, even if it didn't really make any sense to me, and was completely impractical. Which is the right path, grin and bearing, or declaring fuck all?

I'm only going to be here for another month, and if the *ahem* sick day I'm taking tomorrow (so I can go to St. Martin) doesn't stick, maybe less... but I'm definitely going to miss her. In fact, this job is going to downright blow.

2003-06-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

OK, so here goes... I'm having some huge issues with being gay. All of the sudden, it's like I'm back to seventeen and full of self-loathing and despair. I can't say what specifically brought this on, or when it started (or if it ever really stopped), but after almost two years of feeling good about my gayness, I'm full of questioning and depression over it. I think it has a lot to do with my lack of quality gay friends. And by quality gay friends, I mean people you can trust, and genuinely love, without wanting to hop all over them. It seems like all the gay people I've seen lately are tragically flawed in one way or the other. Now admittedly, most of these people are viewed from a skewed perspective, through television, or the internet, but despite the vantage point, most of them seem fucked to me.

I'm also really worried about how God views my sleeping with guys. I'd like to think that God doesn't really care too much. That when you juxtapose sucking the occasional cock with never giving money to charity, the blowjob comes out on the positive side. But truthfully, I don't know, and for that matter, nobody knows. All we have is a smattering of ancient texts that are attributed to God, or what God's disciples think God may have thought. Do you just go with what you feel in your gut? And what if your gut tells you that you're wrong? Islam believes that homosexuality denotes a lack of character, and as a course of life is a mistake. Depending on your level of fanaticism, this is equivalent to either shoplifting, or peeing on a Quran; it's either a no-no, or a huge earth-shattering sin. Growing up a Muslim (albeit, a very lax Muslim) I've got this in the back of my mind, and that's part of the problem. But the heart of my uncertainty is rooted in the gay community, or lack thereof. Where are the sane, non-asshole homosexuals? Where are my morally-intact brethren? What does morally-intact even entail? I'm really hoping it's a problem of locale and not that there's a complete absence. I'm praying that when I get to SF there will be some ray of hope.

more on this later...

2003-06-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

The move to California lurches along. I've been working out some, planning some, and obsessing non-stop. If I were brave, I would move to New York. I know nothing about New York, other than that's where it's all supposed to happen. I like the idea of New York, but should one shift their entire life on the basis of an idea..., or should they? New York beckons to me like a dancefloor lover, bathed in lights and full of possibility. Most times, that kiss beneath the bass line doesn't payoff. Outside the club all the glamour is gone and they become just another person that's right for somebody, but not right for you. So, in keeping with the metaphor, could New York be the boy that I take home, or just another jaded meth-queen who seems like a lot of fun at first, but ultimately not worth it.

2003-06-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm moving to San Francisco in August. In honor of my return to Boystown, I've pledged to lose 30 pounds. The combination of Grannie's cooking and a poor dating pool, produced a lethargy previously unseen in my exercise habits (and to be honest, I wasn't exactly setting endurance records to begin with). Though I'm going to miss my paunch, there's just no place for it in a big city dating scheme. I hate to admit that I'm one of those people who only exercises to look more attractive, but fuck it, that's what I am. Longer life and the ability to climb a flight of stairs without wheezing pale in comparison to being able to catch the eye of a desired trick. So anyway, I've got some pounds to return. And yet, I have a complete lack of desire for exercise and proper eating. Last night I bought not one, but two large pizzas (the two for one coupon really isn't a suitable excuse, but I likes a little thrift with my fat), and let them cool while I ran into the Supermarket for a pint of mango Haagen-Daz. For lunch today, I had two double cheeseburgers, six nuggets, fires and a shake. Something has to be done..., I just don't know what.

2003-05-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

So I went to see the Matrix Reloaded last night. The first Matrix was almost like an epiphany for me. All I knew of it before I saw it was Keanu Reeves was hot, and a good friend had already seen it three times and was willing to see it a fourth so she could share it with me. Loved it. The idea that we control our reality, and can either be victim to the machinations of others, or empowered to define our own existence, was both powerful and comforting to me. In addition to the fact that it was a delightful surprise, it was also a perfect union of art & commerce. It was Hollywood at it's best, expensive, witty, and thought-provoking. So in an effort to recreate the experience, I tried to put aside my preconceived notions and present myself virgin-like to the viewing experience. For the last three months I've done my best to avoid all kinds of external spoilers. I skipped over review sections in magazines and flipped past all commercials, I even left a fresh shiny Premiere on the newsstand shelf because it featured Monica Belluci and Jada Pinkett-Smith in spoiler-filled pose on its cover. I got to the theater 45 minutes early to avoid the line, and sat silently eating my popcorn. I watched new lovers nuzzle, and friends chatter, and generally enjoyed the simple communion of anticipation. I was already feeling a little isolated when J.C. and his new boyfriend strolled confidently down the aisle together. I'm writing about this here, because I don't really want to talk about it with anyone. I don't want my voice to betray the very real hurt I inflicted on myself during my year long dalliance with him, and the fact that I still burn for him. I feel like a poorly stubbed out cigarette, smoldering on from my ashtray dedicated in my intention, even if its purpose has passed. Why did I let it get me off my well deserved Keanu-inspired drool fest? Why did I sit there in the dark and wonder why he'd chosen the new guy and not me? Why do I still want a boy who so obviously doesn't want me?

2003-03-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

I think I have to quit my job. Actually, I'm almost positive I have to quit my job. If I have one shred self-love, I've got to quit. It's not like they're flogging me with whips, or subjecting me to Catherine Keener-styled horrors, it's just... I hate it here. The building I work in is the winter home of negativity; it's as toxic as the cabin of a 747, it gets pumped back in through the AC vents and thrives. It's not just that there's a bad vibe.., I feel like I'm not growing, correction, I know I'm not growing. In the past two years I don't think I've learned how to do one new thing. The pay sucks, even though it's more than I've ever made before, and the pace is pretty relaxed... but the lack of something to do isn't as fun as it seemed in 9th grade. Actually, that's kind of where the root of the problem lies. The way I'd envisioned myself in 9th grade in no way resembles the way I live today. On the one hand, kind of foolish to live your life based upon the expectations of a 9th grader, on the other..., who am I? I'm afraid of going hungry, I'm afraid of sleeping in my car, I'm afraid of being the guy that everyone laughs about becuase he still lives with is grandmother, I'm afraid of nothing in particular, and everything all at once. If I woke up in five years and was still working at this job I know I'd break down into tears.

2003-03-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

I'm all jumbled up right now,.. or, given my lethargy, all jumbled down. My head is a mess of hopes and longings and my life is a mass of unfinished business, and the living side of poor planning. I want to leave here. I hate it here. I hate this mental state, and the way it's quiet persistant nature is defining my life right now. I want to throw all of my clothes in a duffel bag and board a flight to anywhere. My playlists are filled with Bjork singing about Intuition and Jason Mraz wondering when his life is going to begin. When's my life going to begin? Where is that fucking checkered flag? Decent metaphors aside, I know who holds it, and right now I hate him too. Maybe I hate him the most. Maybe I'm sick of hating him, and if I could figure out for just a minute how to reconcile myself with him, then he'd get on with the getting on, and I'd just be fucking happy.

I read gawker this morning and I'm fascinated. It's awful and witty and uppitty in that 'better than you' sort of way that I sometimes think I'd wear really well. Makes for good reading, but I wonder how it'd hold up in conversation. More likely than not it'd be cold, like an elevator ride with an old friend, who some long-forgotten slight has rendered nameless and mute, and yet still longed for. I want to move. I've said that I was going to stay here and get my degree. But is that what Don Cheadle would've done? Would he have sucked it up and stayed in a shit job for two years biding his time for an uncertain prize? I hate it that I want so desperately to mold my life after other people. I hate that i've been feeling like this for the better part of the last two weeks. I hate that one thick night with a long-desired boy pushes itself out of it's proper description, and defines itself as more than what it is. I hate that with all of the free hate I'm dishing out, none of it belongs to him. How fucked is that?

2002-11-07T05:22:00.000-08:00

I saw Y Tu Mama Tambien last night, and it kept me up when I was trying to sleep. I didn't really mind. It's the kind of movie that so good that it almost scares you away from all dreams of filmmaking. You leave a movie, and the parts that you relate to you are the parts that stick with you, even if those parts aren't the purpose of the movie. So later that night, as I lay in bed trying to get to sleep so I could wake up early enough to get some food in before sunup I thought about friendship. I thought about growth, renewal, class structure and a whole bunch of other things, but mostly about friendship. If you haven't seen the movie, you really should.

2002-10-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

I just finished getting the update on the trip, and basically, right now I'm really quite pleased just to have my own problems. I'm glad that I'm not an asshole. No matter how much I fuck up, no matter how often I say the wrong thing, I know that the base of myself is good, and everything I do springs from that. I'm glad that I realize that there is nothing in my current reality that I can't surmount, even if sometimes I forget this. I'm glad I'm older becuase it means I've gone through shit and gotten over it. I'm glad that even if I frequently feel lonely and most times out of place, that it's not becuase I'm a shit of a person. I'm glad that I don't feel the need to get caught up in other peoples drama, and usually can avoid doing so about two or three months before the drama begins. I'm glad that over the years I've managed to pick up the scent of insecure fuckwads, and sidestep them before they darken my path.

Don't get me wrong. Just like everything else, I realize that I'll be duped again, and that I'll beat myself up over insignifigant shit, and that this self abuse, is to a large extent, just the nature of life. But today, at 1:35 pm, its like I'm standing atop a beautiful (if somewhat sparsely populated) mountain, overlooking the brambles and thorns it took to make it here. I feel that if I could just take this idea to heart..., if I could just press it into my chest and life, and out of the abstract realm of theory, that I could evolve as a person. You know that old raver dance, where people are balancing an invisible ball, sliding it up and down their arms, over their necks and around their bodies. I imagine that this realization is that a glowing sphere, and instead of rolling it around my shoulders, I could take it in my hands and press it into my chest. Pass it through my breastplate, and deep into my heart. So that the light of this self-awareness would add itself to every cell coursing throughout my body, untill it seeped out of my pores, enveloping me in a soft impermeable sheen. Protective, residing inside me, sheilding me from all that has nothing to do with me.

2002-10-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

I just had a conversation with a friend who's going to visit her.., um..., friend I guess (more than a fuckbuddy, but less than a boyfriend, that kind of a grey area) and his terminally ill mother. She related a talk she had with the mother, in which it was laid out that the mother knows that this is the last trip she's taking. I didn't need much more after that... I had a similar conversation with my mother, months before she died as she was preparing for her final trip to St.Thomas. A trip to say goodbye to her parents and home. Suffice it to say that the shitty mood that was dashed away by the indecision of Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama, has returned. I'm always fascinated at the how little it takes to bring you back to a moment in time. Memories wait on cliffs in our mind, biding their time for the right cue to plunge over the edge and splash into our consciousness. Over smokes outside the breakroom, all it took was the word "dying" and I wanted to get up and run from the bench. I thought about the years and months since my mother passed, and realized that I've got a constant wait for the anniversary of her death. A kind of internal monitor that times the arrival of the day when I won't think of her everyday. They say that we all mourn at our own pace, but it's coming up on five years, and I wonder if I'm ever going to make it there. I'm not saying that I want to forget my mother, and I'm not saying that I cry myself to sleep or anything, but she's a constant presence in my life. And seeing as how there's nothing I can do to change anything, I want to think about it less.

2002-10-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Think I just figured out how to get over my problems with frames.... Fuck frames, I'm going to use tables. :)

2002-10-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I didn't do anything, this is a problem I sometimes I have. I begin a project brimming over with enthusiasm, and slowly but surely, it ebbs and wanes down to nothing. I'm not sure whether I should blog about this, becuase I think if you let a lot of your inner negativity make its way out of your head, it affects your actions and only leads to more negativity. However, I want to be honest about everything I'm feeling throughout the journey of this year, and therefore need to say it.

It all started when I was having a email conversation with a fellow blogger yesterday and they didn't reply to my last and most personal email. I checked my email every five minutes waiting for a response..., I hate it when I do that, makes me feel defective, and worse than that, needy. I hate the impersonalness of online friendships. I dislike not being able to view the response that what I'm saying is having on someone, not being able to see how they register my words. This morning I realized that Jonno deleted my now defunct blog from his links. I can see why he did it becuase truthfully, I haven't written anything funny or even half decent on it in months. But it still kind of stinks, becuase he's perhaps my favorite blogger and I'd like to think that he holds me in good esteem. I hate it when I allow that actions (or inaction) of others to affect the way I feel. I hate it when I allow my locus of power to stray towards the external. [sigh]

Bitch, bitch, moan, moan... todays a new day. I'm going to try to squeeze some time in to haggle through the frames on the Bjork page, and tonight I'll write some more content, hopefully get though an album of song analysis. I really want to have the page finished by Sunday night. The target links don't seem so hard. And once I figure out how to get the frames right I think it should be easier to build.

2002-10-22T05:39:00.000-07:00

Spent last night working on the navigation for the Bjork page. I've been setting it up in frames, which has been somewhat difficult for me. I've figured out how to get all of the frames I want on the same page, but the dimensions are all messed up. I'm figuring out how to work out the parameters of each frame. I've got this nice color scheme of ice blues and deep blues juxtaposed against each other. I think that starting with the navigation is the easiest way to go. I know all of the different pages I want to have, and feel that once I have the look of the whole site (well, it's actually not a site, but whatever), than I can focus on the individual pieces. It was so aggrivating and I wanted to put the idiot book down and go to bed.... but I stayed with it and A. realized that the example in the book wasn't actually two horizontal and two vertical frames, but one vertical frame and three horizontal ones(that's what i was trying to create), and B. how to place a frameset inside a frameset. So... here's to perservearance (even if i can't spell it) and all that.

2002-10-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Spent last night (a saturday night!) working on a page about Bjork. I feel kind of childish having a fan page, but trutfully, Bjork is so dear to me, and it's a wonderfull way to ease on up to building the entire site. I figure that if I wet my beak on a subject that so much has already been said about, then it'll be easier to delve into a subject that very little has been said about (me!). It was kind of tough to put all of my feelings about her into one essay, but content is king right ? While I was building the page I was playing Bowie live at the Beeb and Purple Rain in the background. Wonderful background music. The BLATB was much better this time. It's funny how when you buy an album it takes two or three good listens to actually get into it. The first two runs usually just sound like different versions of the same song, and you end up fast-forwarding through to the songs you know, which as we all know is kind of cowardly.

This morning I went running for the first time in two years. Thanks to a rather diligent tobacco habit, I ran for exactly 6 minutes before my lungs issued an ultimatum; stop running or collapse into traffic. When I got home I did about 80 crunches and spent the next 20 minutes ogling myself in the mirror. I can't wait to see what my stomach looks like without that pesky gut covering it. It felt so good to be active. After paying homage to Narcissus, I seasoned about 5 pounds of chicken and two pounds of tofu (trying to get into the veg life, failing miserably.... if any of you vegans want to offer some advice, feel free), I'll grill it all later. I then cut my grandfathers hair, Western Union-ed some money to my sister, and went to Kmart to get some blank CD's and car washing fluids. Currently I'm at work to burn off all of the shit that probably shouldn't be on my harddrive anyway, and wash my car (water's scarce here, so you have to pinch it where you can). I feel like I've done a lot today. I like that. Hopefully I can wash the car, grill up all that food, and have time to squeeze in the Transporter around 7.

2002-10-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

I can't lie... just that small bit of web work makes me feel powerful. Perhaps powerful is too strong a word, but I definitely feel good. Good that I've finally started this project, good that I'm doing something, good that I'm learning after two years of lethargy. If I knew how to upload !@#**%! MP3's I'd probably throw up some Nina Simone, more specifically "feeling good" by Nina Simone (the Nina Simone canon tends to run towards the depressive side, so better to be exact, lest I confuse you).

2002-10-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

OK.... been trying to set this site up, and it's odd that I've made it this far in life and yet not realized just how stupid I am. Or maybe it's not me..., maybe this is rather complex and not as easy as all my Wallpaper subscribing, black coffee drinking, code writing, webfriends have led me to believe. I'm really pleased that I've got the spalsh page up, unfortunately, it's only coming up on Explorer. Now, I know like, no one uses Netscape, but that's really not the point is it. And if it's not coming up on Netscape, I shudder to think what happens when its called up on Mozilla, or some of those Unix browsers.

On the upside, I did get it up. heh.