Dear Perez Hilton . . .

. . . or whatever your real name is, please shut the fuck up already.

Really, I didn't want to blog about this, and I'm sure we've all heard the story enough times. Miss California, as part of the Miss America pageant for girls who can walk and look pretty at the same time, was asked by celebrity slander blogger Perez Hilton for her opinion on same sex marriage. Miss CA bumbled her way through an attempt at an answer and only managed to give us a new term "opposite marriage" to describe those unions of heterosexuals. The gist of it was she's unsupportive of marriage equality.

Mr. Hilton, the blogger famous for . . . uh . . . mmm . . . drawing on pictures of young media starlets? I think? decided to call Miss CA some less than nice names. The right leaning media picked up on it, and suddenly the mouthy douche blogger is the voice of gay America?

We have Joe Solmonese and Michelangelo Signorile and many more intelligent and thoughtful people who are willing and have been willing to speak for us in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. We have blogs like Good As You and Box Turtle Bulletin to give us gay related news stories and present our side in, you guessed it, an intelligent and thoughtful manner.

So, for all our sakes, Perez Hilton won't you please go back to whatever you were doing before? Go on The View and snark about barely adult girls in too little clothing, or maybe go on some celebrity "news" shows and badmouth boy bands. Honestly, I haven't thought as much about you in the couple of years I've known of you as I've been forced to in the past week, and I'm about sick of it.

Yes, I know I'm foul mouthed and say rude things, but I do it on my blog. If I was somehow on national television, I'd like to think I could better represent my people, and I'd damn well do my best to do it in a manner that is both intelligent and thoughtful. Wow, those two words again.

So, in closing, please, if you have any respect for equality and the idea of gays being seen as equal and deserving, please, Perez Hilton, shut the ever loving fuck up already. Please?

it's called a joke

I hope that a thousand years from now mankind is still so stupid and deluded that when they stumble across my blog they suddenly have a new reason to kill each other over vague attempts to decipher just what the fuck I was saying in that archaic twenty first century brogue that I spoke way back then.

It would fucking well serve us right with our damn thumbs and chairs and art.

did they all move away?

Of the gay guys I seem to meet in this town I have found that they seem to fit into one of two camps. The random gays are generally much younger than me, what I'll call college age. I might see them anywhere, and all too often my broken gaydar doesn't really help with giving me any actual knowledge as to their actual sexuality.

Next on the list would be the guys at the gay bar. I don't hate hanging out there, at least not until the one overly large, creepy guy keeps staring at me. He won't even talk any more than a grunted greeting, staring at me as if transfixed. There are the two bartenders with whom I'm now on a first name basis. They even know to get me a High Life when I come in, though one of them does often bring me just about any other Miller product, forgetting somehow that it's High Life I want.

But really the thing that stands out about the second group, much like the first, is the general age range, though here it's at the other end of the spectrum. These are the guys enough older than me that I'm again just not interested. These are the guys who've been out for years, who see me and think of me as very young. Often that's part of the point when they talk to me, because who doesn't want to sleep with a young man?

A lot of the copliments I might pay myself are things I can prove. I do make good biscuits, and I am a fairly decent cook. The crap that I write seems often to interest people, and I even laugh again at my jokes as I reread occasionaly. I'm a decent speller most of the time, and I can take a cut on the hand or a smack to the knee while working and endure the pain pretty well, sometimes. And apparently, though I never really realized before, I'm at least not unattractive. I've had more than a few guys point it out at the bar, and though it may all be in my head, I seem to be noticing girls checking me out lately.

The point of all of this really is that middle group that I can't seem to find. There are the older than me and younger than me gays that I spot or meet or have a drink next to, but the guys my age are nowhere to be found, and don't even get me started on gays into the sorts of things I'm into. I've mentioned it before, noting that Motorhead and homosexual males don't seem a pair one often finds. The sad but oddly uplifting songs of Mr. Leonard Cohen seem a perfect gay fit, but again I have to wonder in the gay man's world of dancable pop music where I and my love for the morose fit.

So did all the gay guys my age leave town? So many of the people I meet seem to be from somewhere else, and I sometimes get a feeling as if these guys are from towns so much smaller than this town, that this town must have seemed like the big city, the welcoming lights you see from you little farming community, that this place is so big and bright and welcoming they need never move on from here. The young gays are just now getting old enough to get out and get a taste, and perhaps many of them are just here for college, or they came to school and haven't quite managed to grow up enough yet to know to leave.

The guys my age must have tired of this town and its sometimes small town feel. They must have all moved on to bigger and better and less homo insensitive places. I'll admit to having met maybe two guys my age that seem even a little interesting, and both of them are attractive and seem likely to be cool in a way that I could enjoy hanging out with them. They are also both in relationships, which should make me feel that maybe there are at least a very few gays, but why I don't seem to meet them I can't fathom.

I do love this town, but I do sometimes yearn for a bigger place, a place with more people, a place I stand a chance of meeting someone. It's more than an age issue or a compatibility issue or a musical taste issue, but it's at least those three things, and it's more.

Of course, the chance I'll get to leave this town are nearly nonexistent, and my actual desire isn't necessarily to leave or to stay. As usual, what I really want is not something I can so easily tease out of the murky swirl of thoughts inside my head, that layer upon layer of ideas and possibility.

I'm sure there's great advice, unhelpful things one could say about being myself, being patient, work on being the person I want to be, take care of my own needs, don't rely on a guy for happiness or some such shit. I'm sure I'm doing those things to some extent. Whatever, I just want to meet these guys that I know have to still be here somewhere.

grrr!

In the last two weeks, two young boys, boys very near the age of Big Brother (my oldest son for any new readers) have committed suicide. These two children killed themselves because they were tired of being bullied and harassed.

They were tired of other kids being mean to them, and they had dealt with it so much that, at eleven years old, the only solution they could come up with was suicide.

What was the majority of the slander they dealt with? They were being called gay and were referred to as faggots. Were they faggots? Were they gay? Does it fucking matter when you are eleven years old?

How is this okay?

To anyone who thinks that homosexuality is a sin or is wrong, how can you possibly explain away the sort of bias that would drive an eleven year old child to kill himself? I don't care what you think at this point. I don't care what you think about me. I'm gay. I'm a faggot. Condemn me all you want. If your god really loved I think there's a good chance that he would take it a little easier on children who don't even know what sex is but are being damned anyway.

Read your fucking gospels already. Read your blessed are the meek. Read your blessed are the peacemakers, and then show me where the verse is that reads blessed are those that drive children to kill themselves.

Enough already.

P.S. if you don't know about the stories to which I refer at the beginning of this post then try using Google. Seriously, google the words "gay suicide" and see what you come up with. Hell, you don't even have to google it yourself. I made you a handy link. It's as easy as clicking.

omg is that guy still alive?

Somewhere behind me the television is on, muted so that I can listen to The Cure and Rufus Wainwright on YouTube. I never got into Joy Division, but HERE is The Cure doing the song of theirs that I did like.

I have flannel pajama pants and a dirty shirt, a sofa and a quilt awaiting me. On the t.v. is Richard Lewis, his same weird ass mullet like thing of a hair do and that creepy "stop laughing at me" overcoat. I don't know if it's a "classic" performance or something new. He looked old and raggedy when the '80's taught us that all stand up comedians are not created equal, and a sitcom does not a funny person make.

I'd for reals rather be here with you listening to sad and/or gay ass music. Speaking of which, and actually happy instead of sad, how about some Judy Garland HERE? Yeah, I thought about Rufus, but I went Judy.

If you wanna, go HERE to hear Sara Vaughan do yet another song I considered giving you the Rufus version of.

Do I sound fixated by a certain Mr. Wainwright? I'll admit he's hot, and some of us remember my swooning because of him. That was soooo long ago in blog history. Things are so different now, or are they so much? So much of my life feels back to normal while so much still feels in a state of turgid agitation.

Turgid agitation sucks donkey dick. But it's not so bad. What makes things better would be some more good music, and if you like Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam then you will love THIS.

Know who else makes me swoon? A certain Leonard Cohen. We end with him doing a song I hear done live recently, but first, the guy that did the song we're going to hear Mr. Cohen doing. HERE is Chris Scruggs doing a different song, and HERE is Leonard Cohen doing the song that is the point of all this. It's just some music I like by artists I like.

It may seem odd to have thrown in Chris Scruggs above, but I saw him live recently, and he kind of makes me swoon a little(a lot) and he did the song I ended with. His version was much better, but since we can't find that on the YouTubes we'll just settle for the other version.

I hope you enjoyed this musical journey, and if you didn't then you just don't have any tast whatsoever. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help. I tried my best.

arguing with arguing

One of my brothers, on his blog, is discussing freedom of speech being used in arguments. His suggestion is that we too often do not allow the same freedom that we demand. Go HERE at Chris is Searching to read his point, then come back for mine. I almost commented last night when I saw this, but I was a little woozy and maybe somewhat goofy from the combined efforts of antihistamine and a couple of beers. I hate Tennessee allergies!

So, we've decided there are any number of arguments one could have, and we know that there must be at least two opinions in contradiction to each other. We've also pointed out that communication can only happen when both sides listen and attempt to understand. That may not have been verbatim from the post, but it's there.

So what do we do when we feel that there is no argument other than the one an opposing opinion tries to force? I'll continue using Chris's example of gay versus straight, because, in my opinion, there is no actual argument here. What there is of an argument involves not mere straight people but a religiously motivated point of view that refuses to accept the vast majority of points I and other gay people might make.

If we argue about sports teams then we can actually have some sort of argument. Perhaps my team has better attacking and a solid defense but tends to lose it in the midfield. Perhaps your team has a great midfield and a great front line, and perhaps they can serve balls into the box all day, but your attackers just aren't getting shots on goal.

Arguments as to which team is better or more likely to win are valid to a point. There are points on each side that one should consider. But getting back to Chris's example, what if I just can't accept that the arguments from the other side are valid? I can say that I don't believe biblical restrictions should apply when discussing civil law which isn't the same as reminding you that your team has drawn or lost as many games as they've won.

My argument as a gay person is that before and more importantly than my orientation is that I'm a human and a US citizen which should be all I need to demand equality. I should have the same rights and responsibilities under civil law as any other person. The only possible counter to this is going to be derived from a religious point of view that somehow wants to demand that everyone follow their pov/code/laws regardless of personal beliefs.

So, giving you your freedom of speech is one thing, but we also have to take into account the argument itself. I'm willing to allow you freedom of speech as well as freedom of thought, but if you are going to argue any point of view then we have to start from similar places.

I'd like to ask anyone willing to indulge in freedom of speech with me. I'd like to hear an argument that could be seen as gay versus straight that doesn't involve religious views or the Bible or any other text that any group considers as their sacred code. I want to hear from a civil point of view that involves us living here and now in 2009. I don't want "that's how we've always done it" or "god said it so it must be true." I don't want Leviticus, though if Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Payne mentioned gays I'd be interested.

an eleventh and a first

One more has passed, another anniversary of the day Momma and I got married. Little did either of us know what all we were in for even given the couple of years before that.

We didn't celebrate, though I did joke about it in passing. We actually both worked. I'm finally being given Saturday a.m. shifts and arrived this lovely morning at nine-ish and dove straight into the work. I quickly had the line set back up having put up so many of these items a mere ten hours earlier.

I opted not to do a prep list as I waited for the boss to come in. Whatever time I spent doing it would be wasted as he would just redo it anyway, so I began making bread. I know this has to be done, and I know it's one of the main things a day shift has to focus on here.

Meanwhile, later in the evening, I've agreed to help work a catering event, an event I was offered days earlier. After a barely frantic couple of texts, I had secured the services of a friend and her kid, a most lovely pair. There was most of a day wait in between the request for services and the actual agreement, a wait I felt each interminable moment of.

There was some amount of rushing around between the two halves of my working day, mostly to purchase frozen pizzas for the babysitter to feed the kids and of course home to shower and change. I rushed back downtown to pick up food then headed east to the event.

I missed the ceremony, and I don't know what the couple whose celebration I helped cater prefer to call it, but for all intents and purposes and as close as we can get right now a lesbian couple got married, and I fed them pasta. Did they know they had even more gay at their wedding/union/pairing/swearing thingy than they bargained for? Of the two male bartenders plying their trade I would bet that one of them is also gay. We have discussed my broken garday I'm sure, so I can never be too certain.

My night ended back at work, with the same person with whom I'd so recently been catering, bent over the triple sink scrubbing dishes. It so shouldn't have been our job, and I was two beers into my needing to go home, and I had my nice clothes on, and my shoes are still dirty, but thankfully the shadows are being nice right now, because I just looked, and it kind of feels better that I can't see it. But some of the dishes were ours from the event, even though we basically bailed the dishwasher out of his own self imposed dilemma.

I ended up making the agreed upon amount for my services as well as an extra tip that was half as much as what we knew we were making. I gave it all to the babysitter, especially considering the bad habit of coming home late again.

The evening ended with some perusal of the internets. It was its ever lame thing, the glow in the night that drags us to it, that constant drip of water that no amount of attention ever seems to stop, those internets.

And now it's a day later. I'm sore from toting food and dishes and from falling on slick tiles and hurting my hip. I'm tired just because I am. I'm just generally in a mood anyway lately, so there's always that.

whaddaya hidin'

According to Sean Braisted at Nashville for the 21st Century, Nashville's Metro Council has a bill that would require restaurants to post nutritional information for their food. As is to be expected, restuarants and their flunkies are fighting the bill, arguing that it would be too unwieldy and/or expensive and/or . . .

I've worked in restaurants for years and expect I will continue to do so, and I've considered this issue before. I don't really dwell on the idea, but I am sometimes surprised that more people don't seem interested in nutrition data in restaurants. Sure, if there's an actual need, allergies for example, they will ask appropriate questions, but people don't very often ask beyond that.

Fighting this sort of bill is a lose/lose situation for restaurants in my opinion. As restaurateurs we should have nothing to hide, and we should be willing to admit what we've done to your food. As people we should be willing to share the information because it's the right thing to do.

But there are considerations, things that should not give our representatives and lobbyists reason to fight the bill but should give us all a reason to work together. You don't want an extra fifteen feet of drive through signage, and you don't want to look for the walking fingers on the front of your suddenly book thick menu.

I would personally want the information available if I owned or managed a restaurant, but I don't know how I'd post it. How big would a menu need to be to contain all the info the customers should be privy to? How would you put that on a drive through menu? Would it be good enough to have this info available online, or could we just have printouts for customers?

So, I'm a cook, and Metro Council bill or not I'll tell you what I put in your food. Of course considering what the politicians from my end of the state cook up on a regular basis, nutrition info is only so important here in the east. We're more likely to get bills that ban things that make the menu sound gay or potentially gay.

omg five things that somethinged

Of the cars I've driven more than a few times, or semi regularly, over the years I'd have to say I probably owned as many as not. One of these cars was a certain green thing that certain friends or family might well remember.

Of the people I think of as friends there is really only one person I knew from this time with whom I'm still friends. I'm still related to most of the people I was related to then, but there are a shit ton more than then, but that isn't the point. I'm as friends with my relatives as I am, and the less said about that this moment the better, in a good way, seriously.

That one friend will remember this car, and there's a good chance that we were in it the first time I told someone that I thought I was gay. He was cool then, and he's cool today. Another guy I knew very briefly who gave me my first beginning to end, all the way blow job, the kind with no expectation at the moment of reciprocation, might also remember the car. So began my love of the blow job, but again, that's so not the point.

The point is the car, this particular thing that was in my family for a number of years. The last car my grandmother owned, the car I took over when she passed it on when she could no longer drive, the car that my oldest sister in law learned as a young adult to drive to work in, was a singular car in my mind. It boasted all the electrical amenities available in the very late seventies, was large and American made. There was an extra pillowy layer of cushion on top of the seat cushions that made it extra soft.

I hadn't thought of the dirty story from above for a number of years, but the damn Facebook did me in. Anyone there has seen the five cars quiz going around. If you know me there you may well have wasted some small amount of time looking at tiny pictures that fail to accurately represent what these cars truly represent for me. One could even imagine them as little time capsules of memories of times. This car certainly represents a certain time for me.

As mentioned a couple of fairly gay moments came to me in this car. What's gayer than coming out and sucking dick? And again, I hadn't really considered this car in a number of years till that damn Facebook quiz. I saw a friend had done it, and it looked cool. I've come close enough to owning the cars or had some share of ownership in them.

And then one of my brothers did the same quiz, and there among his five cars he's owned is the same car. The car in the picture is so far from the same color, but just seeing that shape and imaging that car, the nonsense and fun of being young, I was taken back in time to a moment so long ago. Such young, carefree days as only happen when we are too young to know better.

And years later, remembering this car, the trickle of ownership it saw for such a long time. Grandchildren rode in this car to eat at the cafeteria, then young gay man explores sexuality in a strip mall parking lot, while years later a young wife and mother goes about her day, all the above in style and luxury.

Don't get me started on the sofa in the garage that was left by a different grandparent in the house in which I currently reside. It was only recently that the sofa reached the garage, replaced by another sofa from my mother in law. Don't get me started on that sofa either.

can't take the mess

This house has been one of America's top ten biggest residential messes for what seems like months now. I'd take a picture, but that would be too depressing to show anyone.

I have made a start in making a dent in the mess.

Keep in mind that it's ninety percent toys, and I seriously doubt I had a hand in making this toy mess. I have now put up a few, mostly just retaping the bottom of the Cootie box and putting the Cootie parts back in it, and I also picked up all the Battleship pegs that had gotten dumped out of both the red and the blue game boards, or whatever you call them. Battlegrounds maybe?

My next offer of help came in the form of separating toys by type or end location, meaning putting all the Legos in a pile and all the Transformers in a pile and . . .

I've done this in both the playroom and living room. It all happened yesterday, and magically the piles are still mostly separate and distinct.

Now I just need to motivate two boys to finish the job. I won't mention their bedroom, but the floor is invisible beneath a sea of Legos and Littlest Pet Shop and Playmobile. I sound like a really crappy ad for all these toys right now.

And it also just shows how we aren't hippy parents with primary colored, peaceful toys. We don't have large chunks of wood sitting around inviting imagination, and we don't have anything made out of foodstuffs that was both experiment and play. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but it's just not us. We have light sabers and toys that do unending battle with evil. We have monsters and pirates. We also have two naked Raggedy Andys, but that's neither here nor there.

Of course there is a pile for books, everyone from James Patterson to Richard Scarry to Bionicle instructions. I currently have a book pile in the bathroom, but we aren't worried about my tiny mess just now. It's the kids we're worried about.

And that's my day. I keep mentioning cleaning and how I've made it too easy, but we have as of yet failed to do any cleaning. I need to do one or two loads of laundry and put up some clothes I folded last night. I've emptied the dishwasher and need to reload it. I have beer cans to stomp for recycling and a few new ones to rinse. I also need a shower and to be at work by four. Maybe I'll remember to take my knife and sharpen it on the stone at work.

If nothing else gets done I'll definitely work. It's a Monday, and the weather report I checked last night indicated rain, and the sky outside looks as if it's promising a good dousing, but so far it isn't the one hundred percent chance of rain that NOAA suggested. That means I won't have a whole hell of a lot of work to do at work, but it is the one inescapable component of my day.

So, now my plan truly comes to fruition. I will now finish blogging and go find the boys. I'll share with them the news that I need a shower and remind them that video games are a good diversion for them while I'm in the shower. They will be offered the trade of picking up small piles of toys for video games. The older will take the bait quite readily, but the younger, still not able to quite put together the concept of future reward versus current dislike of work, may take some prodding.

And in the end the house will be less not clean. I'll be able to see more of the wretched carpet and will be reminded of the need to vaccuum. I'll put it off for a couple of days while the blanket of toys reforms throughout the house.

And then I've got my week planned.

not really parallels

Something came up in my reader in one of the blogs that I've only recently discovered, The Bygone Bureau. It has absolutely nothing to do with the German homeschool whatever, but it is about aspects of German education as seen by an American living in Germany and teaching.

If you aren't a homeschooler or into home education news then you may well have no idea why I even mention Germany and homeschooling together, but if you are aware of this particular not a news story then you can imagine I thought of it when I saw an article about Germany and education. I'm only aware of the story because as homeschoolers we can't help but at least know it exists as a story.

Unlike my usual m.o. I offer no opinion. I found the article interesting, but then this writer, Locke McKenzie and the particular blog The Rambling American were what coaxed me to look further at The Bygone Bureau in the first place.

driven to the brink

Via advocate.com today I read the story of an eleven year old boy committing suicide. According to his mother he was tired of being teased and bullied and called gay. The article doesn't tell us whether or not the child was or was not gay, but I don't really think it matters.

According to the mother she attempted to work with the school and tried to get them to stop the bullying, and according to her the school was entirely unresponsive.

And now for my anger.

1) what is so hard about not allowing school children to use discriminatory language? Are the kids also allowed to use racially based words to insult each other? Are they allowed to use religious based words to insult each other? When will it no longer be okay to use words that belittle based on an assumption of sexual orientation?

2) why would a parent continue to put their child in situations where they are terrorized in such a way? Why not stop sending the child to a place, even if it is school, where they are going to be antagonized and hurt on a daily basis?

I don't want to think about this story, because honestly I have enough on my mind. I can depress myself quite easily. And if I think about this poor little boy, this child so close in age to my oldest son, if I think about it I'm going to cry, and I'm going to be angry, and I'm going to wonder about the children who drove this child to take his own life. I'm going to wonder about the type of parents who raise children to treat others like this.

As long as there are people in this world willing to demonize me and other gay people then we are going to continue to see this sort of fallout. We are going to continue to see children taking their lives, and we are all poorer for having these hate mongering monsters still alive, still walking around, still screaming their homophobic epithets and claiming victim status when we demand they stop. The real victim is gone. He wrapped an extension cord around his neck and said, "no more." Why was this the only way to stop his hurt?

we have plenty in the freezer

In the distance, slowly approaching, I hear it, the ice cream van.

I hate the ice cream van. It's not just the obnoxious music or the even more annoying "HELLO" that sounds so full of attitude.

More than anything it's probably my cheapness coupled with my lack of funds. I get tired of telling the boys no. I want to buy them ice cream, and I'd love to buy the ice cream based novelties sold out of the annoying van. The boys some days want so much to get ice cream from the van.

But I hate the van. I hate hearing it blocks away and never knowing exactly where it is. I hate people marketing to my children, especially getting up in our faces pretty much in our home. Television commercials are one thing, providing fuel for a steady diet of "I want that." But they are commercials, and I think that, from a fairly young age, most of us grow immune to the near constant deluge and are able to shut out the ads.

Not so with the damned ice cream van. Even inside the house the sound worms its way in, and there it is "HELLO" amidst the horrors of music that could only be worse were it a midi file, though that may actually help, but given the two options it's sort of like the difference between wiping your ass with sand paper or just slapping it clean with the binder of a spiral notebook.

oh so tired

I did not sleep for shit last night. I didn't drink much, and I really don't want that to be the reason I couldn't sleep, but considering I spent the night in the bed of someone I don't actually know doesn't really sound like the greatest reason either.

After getting off work last night I carried my shift beer up the square to the pub only to decide that I wouldn't be spending any time there due to the horrid nature of the music. I went to the little honky tonk bar for a beer only to learn that there was no one there I wanted to hang out with. A quick beer there, and I left for the gay bar.

I didn't expect much there, not much more than a beer. I knew there was a really good chance that I'd run into the last two guys I let pick me up, and I did.

One of those two didn't see me at first, though I saw him. I wasn't actively avoiding him, and I'd be willing to spend more time with him, but I'm not sure what he's looking for any more than I can pinpoint exactly what it is I'm looking for. He gave me the old "did you lose my number?" routine which I served right back. His phone is no more one way than mine. Of course now I'm debating whether to text him and start our conversation up again. I'd kind of like to see him, but I just don't know. He had to have seen me leaving with the guy I left with, especially considering he was sitting next to me at the bar when I left.

One of the bartenders was off and hanging out. He's young, really hot, and dating someone. He approached me at one point to say Hi and that he had a friend he wanted to set me up with, a friend he claimed needed a boyfriend. I was open to meet someone.

And then suddenly there was someone else sitting next to me at the bar, a fairly young looking and fairly hot someone, a guy giving me this look and telling me that he thought I was hot. I can't say that I went there with the intent of hooking up with someone, but I have to admit that some amount of going to the gay bar involves some amount of at least willingness to hook up.

And I didn't sleep for shit. It's been a while since I had one of those doze for a minute wake for a minute nights, and last night was one of them. I'm not unhappy with any of what happened, but again, given my two options of why I didn't sleep, I can't say either of them make me proud. Either I'm a drunk or a slut, both labels I'm okay with wearing for the moment but not the place I want to be.

dear friend

I know that you think your boyfriend is hot. He does seem to have a nice enough body under his overalls, and believe me when I say I don't have anything against overalls.

Yes, the hillbilly mohawk is kind of cute(ish) on him as is the chinhawk(not really) and yes he is amazing on the pedal steel.

It's probably a very good thing that you are so attracted to him, and honestly, why else would you have initially gotten together were it not for a mutual sexual attraction? That's pretty much how we humans seem to find ourselves in these sorts of things.

I don't find your boyfriend unattractive, but really, do you need your gay friend to agree with your opinion of your boyfriend's hotness? Do I really have to tell you what you want to hear?

So, really, let it go already. I'm not going to pretend he's hot, so you can stop pretending to be so damn offended. We'll still be friends, and I'll still not want him, and that's okay. I've got enough issues with straight guys that I don't need yours added on.

Thanks!

allowed

"God is allowing me to go back to school." So reads a message from a "friend" posted on Facebook. Other friends have commented back, generally congratulating this person on their utter helplessness in the face of the absolutely mundane thing he has allowed god to do, a thing that millions of people do all on their own with no need to thank an interstellar being.

I'm amazed at this sort of thing, though I should be used to it, as it's the sort of mindset that I grew up with. It's as if we are just mindless automatons that can't think or do for ourselves without the guiding hand of space grandpa providing his willingness to allow.

I'll admit that I haven't made the best decisions in life, and I'm likely to make some bad decisions in the future. I let myself down much more often than I should, but I'm willing to admit this and own my mistakes. I don't need someone of questionable existence to accept all the blame or all the credit for what I do.

I guess I just don't get it. Of course these are the people who see an accidental pregnancy as the payment you must accept, along with the next eighteen years of child rearing, as a just punishment for a sexual indiscretion, so I think we can accept that their reason is often a bit skewed.

But seriously? God allowed you to get into school? And I bet he spoke in the ear of the person reviewing the different applications? Did he secretly rubber stamp the application when the office wasn't looking? Did he make the other applications illegible?

I'm ending up so far from any point I thought I was going to make and have ended up too close to crazy wing nut rant land. I can't think clearly when it comes to this sort of thing. I think I'll turn the rant off for now.

oops, I seem to have . . .

Yes, I did it again. I saw it coming, and I didn't do anything about it. I suppose there's nothing I can do about it, and I kind of hate it, but at the same time I doubt there's much I can do about it.

I have a crush on a straight boy.

He's the roommate of a guy I work with who isn't not hot in his own way, but he isn't the sort of guy who I have to assume is my type. I'm sure there's a point at which the line that represents "my type" corresponds with hot enough, but we aren't graphing that particular concern at the moment, and we won't likely visit it in another post, so we're left to ponder.

The roommate however seems to fall into a category that I've been recognizing as "my type." He's roughly my size/height, but he has really dark hair/eyes, and there's a certain charm, a bit of something I can't name. I like him.

And he likes girls.

I've sort of hung out with him here and there, and the moment I saw him I was a little smitten, so the having hung out only seems to add to the problem. I hung out with him a bit tonight, and the whole time I was torn between knowing I have no chance with him and continuing to enjoy his company in a way that makes me want him even more.

And it's not just that he's hot, though he certainly is. I can't claim to know him too horribly well. Like I said, I've sort of hung out with him here and there, though the here as well as the there are either the place I work or the bar a few doors down.

He is really more a symptom than the problem. I should even admit that it isn't that it's even such a huge problem. I'd wager it is an ongoing concern among gay men in general, so it isn't even an issue common only to me. It does get annoying at times.

He does of course have to get in line. There are at least two other straight guys that I know and am somewhat friends with for whom I seem to harbor some desirous feelings. No amount of Jedi mind trickery is going to make any of them suddenly gay, though I won't pretend I'm not trying. I guess for now I'll just keep my imagination oiled and ready, waiting, ready for that moment.

hating patience, well, not hating it, just having to be it

This is one of those moments when I feel I have absolutely nothing to say, but I feel compelled anyway. So out with it.

My right hand hurts like hell. It isn't a constant thing, but certain movements are really unpleasant. I can't think of any specific thing I did, but I'm fairly certain there was at least one whanging with the back of the hand some part of the car in my attempts to fix the car.

In the end I gave up on my attempt at car repair. It was breaking the 3/8 to quarter inch adapter that finally did me in. You may remember the 6+2(3) inch adapter that was going to allow me access to the bolts on the exhaust pipe that I couldn't reach, and here too was the demise of the 3/8 to quarter inch adapter. It was a borrowed tool, but it's Craftsman, so it's replaceable.

I did in fact take the car to a shop and have it fixed for a sum more than I'd intended but less than that which I could have paid. I did bring my own oil pan and gasket, so that was money saved, and they found the bottle of oil I had (just in case) and added that in with what they put in.

And I'm ever so happy to have my car back. This feeling of my car is still somewhat new. Momma has had her own car for a short time, and then suddenly my car was leaking entirely too much oil, and as it sat parked for much of the time, not to mention on jackstands two different times, I've driven Momma's car a good bit, and we've had to continue the running each other to and from work that having two cars would have, and will, fix. So I'm back to having a car that is all my own.

I don't have to adjust the seat or the mirror suddenly. They're always right where I left them. It's nice not hitting my knee as I get in and realize the seat is too close to the steering wheel. I may even spill less coffee this way.

I just got a phone call from Momma. She believes my phone is not accepting texts from, claims that she's texted me four times. I don't have any new texts from her, and her phone is the one that's sadly and slowly (or not so slowly) dying. I don't know what to say to that.

And the US MNT beat Trinidad and Tobago in Nashville tonight with Jozey Altidore scoring all the goals in a 3-0 match.