The Tome of Communism

On Money and Evil

2012-01-18T13:57:00.001-05:00

You can now consider me among the ranks of the unemployed. After weeks of speculation about Emperor Mary Jane terminating someone to set an example of her power and cuntiness, it turns out I was the example. I don't know how I missed the memo but I did not know I had to work the first day of the year, so I showed up two hours late with a gash on my face from when I had to rush shaving since no beards of any kind are allowed. Still bleeding I came into work when I was put on dish to help the two people back there. An important note about dish; you can only fit two people back there, the only two dish jobs are rinsing and running the machine, and on this particular day my help wasn't even needed. Being in pain, pissed that I had to cancel dinner plans an hour beforehand, I have to admit I lost my temper and slammed a couple of doors out of my way but nonetheless finished my shift. I figured I would get in trouble, but it came as quite a surprise the following Wednesday that my trouble would be termination. When Darth Jeff and Greg (a weird, albeit nice guy coopted as the Empire's instrument) cornered me in the break room I was informed that my endemic (my words, not theirs) bad attitude was a problem. I called Jeff an asshole and went on my way, and I regret nothing.

Unemployment carries with it some very conflicting emotions. I got my overage check the day before my termination and had yet to spend any of it so I do have enough to survive for a while. However, that means that until I find a job to pay for living expenses the plan is for my mother to pay my rent with her tax rebate. She could damn well use the money and I'd really like to not do that to her, but I'm not seeing many other options. Nobody is hiring in this town; the ones that don't outright say no tell me to come back in March when they do spring quarter hiring. So I'm wracked with stress over putting my already overburdened mother through more as well as not having a steady stream of income, since there's a lot of that overage check but it won't last forever. At the same time, I never have to go to Central Foods again, ever, for any reason. The Empire was right about one thing, I hated that place. These two weeks of unemployment have been so happy and relaxing. I have another 22 hours a week to devote to schoolwork (yes, schoolwork), Skyrim, art, and other pursuits that previously got shouldered out of my life to varying degrees because of the Bakery. My official grounds for termination were a bit shaky (one strike for coming in late, and "the severity of my door slamming" warranted another two) and I probably could appeal it, but do I really want to jump back on a sinking Executor-class Star Dreadnaught?

Not entirely unrelated, the principles of gross mismanagement combined with what can best be described as financially-driven evil find themselves manifested prominently today in the Stop Online Piracy Act, arguably the more hated half of the twin SOPA/PIPA legislative assaults on the internet we know and love. If I were to dissect the two and point out everything wrong with them I would be typing well into next week, but in short the regulatory measures SOPA would create combined with dangerously vague definitions of key terms and responsibility for pirated content would essentially give the federal government power to shutter any website that has any illegal content on it. In such a vast expanse as the internet, illegal content is everywhere. Short of destroying the internet, it cannot be stopped. Trying to stop internet piracy is like trying to stop an ant infestation by squishing every individual one between your fingers. Of course Congress says the implementation of SOPA won't be as liberty-trodding as the legislation suggests, but would you trust anything News Corporation has their fingers in? Much like effective drug policies evolve over time and respond to the realities of life, so too should internet law. Hamfisted attempts to enforce outdated understandings of intellectual property will fail. In the end it doesn't really matter anyway, since the President can indefinitely detain without charge or indictment anyone he wants.

And thus we arrive at our final point, Paula Deen. You see, the Calorie Queen recently revealed she has type-II diabetes. I wonder why. The important point isn't that Paula Deen has diabetes; that's what happens when you spend decades eating deep fried stuffing on a stick and butter fried butter sticks on a stick. The important point also isn't that Paula aims to keep eating the way that she has been all these years since "there's no reason you can't eat what you want as a diabetic". Apparently death isn't a reason for her, which is fine with me--stupid people culling their own numbers as a direct result of their stupidity shouldn't bother anyone. The problem is that newly diabetic Paula Deen decided to whore out her fatty arteries and lethal foods to Novo Nordis, the Big Pharma manufacturer of the non-insulin injectable medication Victoza. After achieving fortune and fame by slowly killing herself and others, she's going to make even more selling the wasted, greasy bodies of herself and others to exactly the kind of monied interests that poison this country by the second. I want to say good on her for making even more money off the dumb, but there's something so principally wrong about what she's doing. One can only hope Victoza has some fatal defect Novo Nordis didn't notice and it brings Paula to an early demise. That is, if her defiant consumption of ultimate fantasy deep-fried cheesecake (probably on a stick somewhere) doesn't get her first. What a world we live in...

Canada or Bust

2011-12-23T20:13:00.002-05:00

For the last three years I've been living in Athens, Ohio attending Ohio University as all of you probably know. Even though they have a well-known record for misdiagnosis and borderline malpractice, Hudson Health Center is close, convenient, usually quickish, and bills your student account so you don't have to worry about it later. From routine STD tests to viral identification, virtually all of my blood work has been processed through Athens Medical Laboratories, Hudson's primary medical lab. Not until a few weeks ago did I know that my healthcare company, United Healthcare, did not pay for any of my lab work as AML is "out of network". Not once did anybody at Hudson, AML, or UHC inform me that I was sending information to a lab my insurance would not pay for. Now I owe them $350.00.

Last year I went to a wonderful dentist recommended by a friend because I hadn't been to a dentist in at least a decade and I was concerned about the welfare of my teeth. The dentist asked me, "you smoke out of the right side of your mouth don't you?" which, after my confirmation, she followed up with "I can tell by the staining on your teeth. But who didn't smoke in college?" After receiving a surprising and soothing bill of clean dental health, they sent me on my way with the added comfort that I would not be receiving a bill, as United Concordia, my dental insurance company, should cover everything. In October I got a $200.00 bill from Riestenberg and Lavelle, DDS. That's what United Concordia decided not to pay.

This past June I came down with a very strange viral infection; I was nauseous, running a very high fever, sweating bullets, and chronically dehydrated. After Hudson failed me it took four different people to convince me to go to the emergency room since I was terrified of receiving a $4000 bill later in the year. Nonetheless I went, and O'Bleness Memorial Hospital basically did to me everything Hudson did, with the addition of a crying baby and fat cunty white trash woman to keep me company in a large room divided by curtains into smaller examination rooms. I left, eventually got better, and never received the dreaded thousand dollar bill. I did, however, get billed for a $162.50 "physician's fee" that United Healthcare again refused to pay. O'Bleness sent the bill to a collection's agency a scant month after the due date.

Riestenberg and Lavelle, DDS and AML offered me a 'convenient' payment plan of $10/month until all outstanding debts are taken care of. HRRG, the collection agency on behalf of O'Bleness, demanded half of the $162.50 by January 1 and the other half by January 31.

Today my mom and I went to get me glasses. My vision isn't bad yet, but it has noticeably deteriorated over the last couple years. I've tried before in Athens only to be told I don't have vision insurance. This afternoon though she called and was told United Healthcare would cover part of the expenses. Upon going to the eyeglass store, they told us that United Healthcare wouldn't cover a single cent because our vision insurance had been cancelled at some point in the past. Bear in mind that my mother has worn glasses for decades and is still paying for vision insurance. Infuriated and confused, we went home and she called them again, whereupon one representative told her UHC doesn't offer vision insurance anymore and another told her that all vision expenses must first be paid out of pocket and then we can mail in in a seven page rebate form signed by the ophthalmologist (who must be in network) and one to three months after that we will receive a check for some of the expenses.

To provide context, if I worked exactly the hours I'm scheduled at the bakery and didn't give any up in taxes, I would pull in a little over $730 a month. However, the actual number is almost half of that. Rent is $430 a month, electric is around $45, internet is $35, and water/trash pickup is $35. In addition to that I need to buy groceries, school supplies and textbooks (once every three months), anti-depressants (Wellbutrin costs me $50 a bottle once a month to my student account, which has to be paid in full in order to register for classes) and treat myself to something once in a while to avoid the full crushing oppression of poverty. If you think all that doesn't add up with my salary, you're damn fucking right. $20 a month to settle the dental and lab debts might not seem like much, but that is a substantial amount of money for the underemployed living paycheck to paycheck. And considering neither of my parents make enough money to support themselves, I am effectively financially independent and quickly amassing a relative mountain of medical debt. I just turned 21. I haven't even finished fucking college yet and I'm already being fucked because I had the nerve to get sick a couple of times.

Dare I say it though, I'm one of the lucky ones. An old friend of the Tome commented on my facebook:

I heard some sad assed stories from people that had gotten ill or had been in accidents who had never properly healed because of no access to health care. This one woman in her late 30s who ran a laundromat got hit by a car when she was in university. She had no healthcare. It placed her in a lifetime of debt and she basically became disabled as physiotherapy was unavailable to her. When I told her that where I came from all her surgeries and the physio afterward would have been looked after regardless of whether she was employed, unemployed, a student, not student, whatever, she cried. A week or so later when I was in there doing laundry a man who had been listening to our conversation the week before brought in an invoice from when he had heart surgery. He had health care coverage, but the bill detailed all the costs and expenses that had been incurred during for his surgery and his stay in the hospital. It had a total on it like $65K or something.

I've always known that insurance in America was a bit like choosing whether you'd like to lose a couple toes or your whole leg, but only recently has it really hit home. It's disgusting, revolting, and inhumane. How insurance companies, no matter health, car, dental, vision, home, life, flood, fire, tornado, whatever, can suck tens of thousands of dollars out of people because the patient had the shit-kicking luck of needing a little help and the insurance company, with annual profits in the billions of dollars, just can't bring themselves to absorb another $500 in losses.

Five hundred dollars is paltry to them but a fortune to me, and to millions of other people in the same situation. Nonetheless, they won't pay it. So it's up to us proles to live in even more destitution while the Ameristocracy--insurance companies, banks, and anyone else too wealthy for their own fucking good off the backs of poor people--rake in more and more through stock dividends, fine print, special fees, interest rates, and other asinine mechanisms designed by the rich to make them richer. It's realities like this that cast tons of horseshit on the idea popularized by Ronald Reagan, another opulent fascist cow, that the United States is "the last, best hope" and "a shining city on a hill." Reagan knew better. The upper class knows better. But the message isn't for them, its for us, and a great deal of my fellow Americans are inconceivably stupid enough to believe it. As long as this is the case, nothing will ever--ever--change.

Me? I hope to move to a country that actually had a socialist movement and watch Rome burn.

Are You Experienced?

2011-12-12T16:24:00.000-05:00

"You wanna trip balls today?"

With that left-field question on an otherwise ordinary December Tuesday afternoon, Andy took me on possibly the most interesting journey of my life. The little slips of paper were bitter, a boring beige, and textured similarly to the construction paper you cut Christmas trees out of in pre-school around this time of year. Awfully plain-tasting and looking for something supposedly so mind-expanding I thought, but determined to not have a bad trip I stayed positive and bought a couple beers for the occasion--Yuengling, his favorite.

The sunset was gorgeous that afternoon, a scant hour or so after swallowing the paper. A vibrant orange partially hidden behind walls of battleship gray clouds. Even the cold wasn't too bad. Probably my first indication that something different was going on was how reflective the puddles from last night's rain were. About half an hour after getting back to the Chamber I knew the lysergic acid diethylamide had run-the-fuck-over me when all I saw in the fluttering pride flag hanging from my window were a series of colored triangles. Oh, and the giggles. Oh my god, the giggles.

Following that much of the trip is a blur of Star Trek (which got overwhelming), GTA (which also got overwhelming), and failing to find Yellow Submarine on my laptop. I tried to record the evening with a series of pictures, but around 5:00 I realized the futility of it all. Andy said some things about entering a whole new world that made beautiful sense at the time; indeed I've heard many people talk about the first time they did acid being a life-changing experience. Determined not to direct my experience though, I stuffed it in the back of my head for the time being.

Later research uncovered that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of antidepressants I am currently on, is known to reduce the effects of LSD which would explain why Andy continued peaking while I was well on my way down. Entertaining an unexpected guest was pretty interesting in that context; you can see the portrait I drew for her to the right (and this was me coming down). After she left the strangest thing happened; I found myself bogged down in thoughts about my financial and professional future, and if things continue/d the way they were/are, how awful the rest of my life would be. Unlike how things would normally proceed from there though, I never sunk into a depressive episode about it. I just mused on that for the rest of the night, and all during my acid hangover the following day.

Since I'm only a few weeks removed from that interesting day I hesitate to say this with any conviction but I feel a much stronger dedication to responsibility than I've felt perhaps ever. I've made a lot of mistakes in the past and see now where my time or money should have been much better spent than however I did spend it. I made a master to-do list covering everything I have been meaning to do but haven't had the time, from getting a learner's permit to researching post-graduation options. I've been investigating ways to create a supplementary income to pay off various debts and help my mom with my rent (thanks mom, I love you). I'm working on building a financial plan to manage every dime of every paycheck as successfully as possible. I've drastically reduced my smoking and drinking to convince myself that I don't really *need* cigarettes and alcohol (most of the time), again to save precious money. Hell, I even called my insurance company and a collection agency about some questionable medical charges, but that's another fury-wrapped discussion for another day.

While it waxes and wanes (and when it wanes I try to force a wax), I've felt this all-encompassing drive to not be poor for the rest of my life envelop everything. Success rates obviously remain to be seen, but I'm just the slightest bit optimistic about my immediate future. At times like these I hope I can force myself to stick to plans, since I am notorious for not doing that. But god damn being poor sucks. If there's one thing I want, more than anything in the world, it's not even to be rich, just to not be poor. I want to be able to live my life without prioritizing by necessity electricity over internet, or eating brown rice for several days to afford a friend's birthday present. I really don't think that's too much to ask. The American dream don't come easy these days.

Failure is an Option

2011-11-29T11:05:00.001-05:00

It's not often I am forced to sit down and say "wow, I fucked up" but wow, I fucked up. As you may remember I had a bit of financial aid drama earlier this year, where I missed the mark for my scholarship by a hair and it cost me $6000. The good news I believe I neglected to mention is that after about six weeks my appeal came through and I got a third of that back for fall quarter and presumably the rest, provided I kept my GPA at the appropriate level. I artificially revved my academic drive to keep the rest of my money all quarter. Grades came out yesterday, and while I did well, I didn't do well enough. Missed the mark yet again, this time by .025 points. At least it's an improvement?

When I got the news I felt a wave of failure I hadn't felt in years swallow me whole. Part of me wanted to keep this a closely-guarded secret, but I figure if ever there were a time to be shamed now would be it. Losing $4000 because my grades were half a hair too mediocre, who does that? So many what if situations float through my head, even singular nights where I could have forced myself to study that extra hour or reread that research paper one last time (I am proud though to say I did fine in my junior composition class, though). All pointless, though.

So where do I go from here? Well, I have five weeks to attempt to draft another appeal, I figure it won't hurt to try yet again. But because that probably won't get me anything it's time for Plan B. With my paycheck on Wednesday generous donations from Readers Like You this week I will be able to get most of my outstanding debts taken care of, buy an ample amount of groceries, and have some money left over that will, in light of recent events, go in a don't-fucking-spend-me savings account for some sort of financial emergency that will surely pop up at some point. I'm trying to pick up a second job at least over break and possibly for the rest of the year, time allowing. I might even start doing those tedious 20 minute surveys for $1 or two. After going without for a few days I've discovered I don't really have an addiction to cigarettes despite smoking for a year, so that habit will probably fall to the wayside since I need every cent I can get.

I hate asking my parents for money. One is in a fair amount of debt to the IRS, and the other isn't even paid a living wage. But Allah bless them, my freshman and sophomore year they always managed to come up with the $3600/year to pay for what my scholarships didn't cover. My hope is that they will be able to do it again for half of a year, after of course yelling at me for losing free money. With my job at the bakery I can handle bills on my own. Rent, though, is where my overage checks always went. I will still get a (much smaller) overage so I will be able to help them, but I can't carry the weight on my own anymore. Failing that, I'll have to start researching private student loans and try to secure one that won't bankrupt me until I'm sixty like so many of them do.

In the meantime, fall quarter brought down on me an incredible amount of stress and I'm going to enjoy the rest of my break to the extent I can cause fuck I need it. But I literally cannot escape the shadow of my failure, even if I wanted to. I'll figure out a way out of this I'm sure; whenever things like this come up I always find a way to come out the other end intact. I am so damn close to completing my degree, and ain't shit short of death gonna stop me. Even if I don't have a single solitary dollar to responsibly spend on myself until June.

Them Belly Full

2011-11-26T00:08:00.000-05:00

Color me Scrooge but I think I don't like the holidays. Growing up I enjoyed them a lot, Thanksgiving and Christmas especially having some special feeling to them no other days in the year had. Being a big boy at 21 now, the end of the year makes me realize two things: it's goddamn cold and I'm too goddamn poor. For the last month my paychecks have disappeared shortly after receiving them, all to paying bills. I suppose I should be thankful for still having all my utilities on, but you can't do much with an oven if you don't have food to prepare on/in it.

Speaking of thankfulness, I can feel my stomach boiling whenever people talk about "what they're thankful for" come this time of year. Just because some natives helped out a very lost and confused colony of Englishmen some 400 years ago does not mean this is the one day of the year you should appreciate all the shit you have. Facebook statuses and tweets about gratefulness just seem so painfully contrived. As much as I may complain about being poor I realize my poverty is only relative; billions can't even hold a candle to my wealth. Even though bills bankrupt me and they don't always get paid on time, at least they do get paid. I know I'm appreciative of that fact, because electricity is awesome. But why do I have to tell the world? It's just so damn stupid.

I will always maintain that the people who say "money can't buy happiness" have never been poor. I know that's missing the point of the statement, but the point of the statement is fucking dumb. I love my immediate family very much, and my life would be worse without them, but there are just some things $50,000 can do that they can never. I don't even particularly want to be stupidly rich, although it would be nice. I just want to lead a life where I don't have to struggle to pay my damn bills. Which is why I'm so excited about my future as a history major.

Really, I feel as though 50k is being selfish. So much as a $20 can make quite a bit of difference. For reference: I have $.96 in my bank account currently, and Andy has $.88. Together we found $1.11 in change and got him a third of a gallon of gas. Afterward we went to a grocery store where I shoplifted about $33.39 in food because we were hungry and had no other way to eat. Just now I finished taking a dump when I remembered I didn't have any toilet paper because I couldn't afford it. Even though classes are finally over until January I've been in a funk all week because I'm so desperately poor. But after having to clean my ass by taking a quick shower, I really think I've had it with this poverty bullshit.

Stronger Than Me

2011-11-04T04:03:00.000-04:00

Consider this an exercise in essay writing. You see, I have a draft of a big fucking research paper due in approximately eleven hours as of press time, and I got roughly halfway done with it before ramming my face into a brick wall. Figuratively speaking. So I went to a launch party for an Android developer a very good friend of mine works for, had some "small batch homemade vegan banana ice cream" that wasn't as awful as you may think, and dined with two people I never thought I would.

First, a flashback.

At the Rocky Horror Picture Show two weeks ago, my drunk ass friends and I bonded with one character + his boyfriend, something previously considered high treason as the character mentioned is a very, very upsetting one. Looks a bit like Dr. Frank-N-Furter, actually. We were all pretty drunk though; Nick broke his whip on the boyfriend's ass and the character ran his fingers through the magic of my afro for the first time to, admittedly, no protest. Later they all went to a diner and had a late evening of revelry, innuendo, and breakfast foods. Andrew, however, apparently had to escort me out just after the Time Warp. Turns out a fifth of Southern Comfort, four Crown & Cokes, and a snakebite will wreck your shit. Vomited once on my way out (on Andy), again on the street, and once I got home I'm told I immediately got naked and passed out in front of the kitchen. Andy more or less dragged me to bed. So that was my night.

Regardless, the untouchables (what we'll call them) were also at this event tonight, seeing as how one of them is an admin/my friend's boss. Someone struck up the idea of leaving for Athens favorite and famous goddamn delicious hotdogs, O'Betty's Red Hot!, so the five of us took off for a dinner that featured talk of condiment hatred, the Walmart song, and--being a table of four gay men plus one woman--meat. So, so, so many penis jokes. And, strangely enough, fuck me eyes. Awkward? Sometimes. But honestly, not nearly as horrible an experience as I would have feared even a month ago, much less a year ago when they first entered my life.

The untouchables are, dare I say it, touchable (not like that, not one of them anyway.) I've hypothesized that they and we have much in common, it's simply that we've found two people that are even more socially awkward than us. Which, if you've ever seen us balls deep in our own inside jokes and insanities (none of you have), is quite an accomplishment. They were even guests at a Halloween party that wound up filled with strangers, ending with the homeowners having their scary black friend (moi) throw everyone out. Later, we got the character got blazed off his ass and he turned feral. After some movie we watched he briefly thrusted into his boyfriend (giving him quite the noticeable boner), crawled onto the floor and shoveled a large pepperoni pizza slice into his face while lazily tossing my shoes around while the rest of us were trying to sleep because it was 5 in the fucking morning. Marijuana: It's not for everyone.

Once time came to leave the launch party tonight, we made passive mentioning of departing to no reaction from them, before they went back inside ostensibly to get some vegan hippie ice crap, or something. Unsure of whether they were expecting us to stay or not, we stayed and debated the subject until they came back. What followed was five minutes of one party wanting to leave but afraid to say "we're leaving", and another party just going with the flow. The number of silences and awkward silence breakers was considerable. We also shared our love for Stanley Kubrick films though, so it wasn't a total exercise in elementary school shyness. Once one of them made mention of meatloaf ice cream though, we quickly parted ways.

One of the most infuriating people in my life I have now hung out with on three separate occasions, and never once left wanting to put his face on some ciabatta and have it for brunch. They're having us over next week to watch the 27 minute epic Gayniggers from Outer Space, a movie they previously had a threesome to with one of my friends (where the charge of high treason came from). While it is dangerously close to being a triple date, at least I don't have to worry about being roped into group sex. Those fuck me eyes weren't from or for me; they both seem to have a thing for skinny white boys (can't blame them, unf), something I'm not. Normally I would be upset one person I don't want to fuck and another I don't mind fucking wouldn't want to fuck me.

These aren't normal circumstances however.

A combination of just looking that drunk and actually being that drunk.

Andrew (Andy, he insists) and I have been dating for about seven weeks. It really does seem other-worldly. He may have gorgeous hazel eyes, strong hands, and a big dick, but otherwise Andy bears little resemblance to 'my ideal man'. He's really fucking weird, to be honest. But the most alluring, even seductive, thing about him is something I can't even put into a word. He can be a bit air-headed sometimes, and he still makes the occasional Borat joke, but how can a 90s kid say no to someone who will sing every word of "Oops!...I did it Again" with him when it comes on the radio? One Saturday we spent untold hours playing our favorite songs on YouTube and touring each other's hometowns on Google Maps. He made me breakfast. He forgave me for puking on him. He calls me "Chocobear", simultaneously the fucking dumbest and most adorable thing I've ever heard. He isn't the yin to my yang or anything crazy like that. It's simple. I like him, he likes me; I like that he likes me, he likes that I like him. Andrew isn't perfect, but he's damn good. Especially when his competition is Taylor.

Forty minutes later I can feel that adderall beginning to kick in. If you'll excuse me, I have a Tet offensive to write about and a weekend with Andrew to anticipate, with the Erection Chamber to ourselves.

Debriefing

2011-10-25T00:54:00.001-04:00

-I've developed an affinity for cleaning. It's easy, an essential task, and unlike many things people have to do you can actually see your progress! As soon as I get a six-pack I'm going to become a houseboy for some rich gay couple.

-Some minority friends of my roommate's gave us a surprise visit on Sunday, wherein they clogged our toilet (which was only a minor clog until it overflowed about five minutes ago, this is why every house needs a plunger) and burned our carpet when they knocked over a hookah.

-I can't fault them for the hookah too much though, because not ten minutes later I knocked the damn thing over myself and burned another coal-shaped hole in the carpet.

-Rooming with Nick is going very well so far. No bill disputes, cleaning isn't a problem since I like to do it/we try to keep common areas clean anyway, and we have a dishwasher that works so no passive-aggressive fermenting chicken like that cunt of a roommate I had last year!

-I'm not sure if I mentioned this here or not (probably didn't) but I recently lost a scholarship, thanks to a GPA .045 points below the minimum. Well guess who's diction cock got them a scholarship back? In related news, I spent $300 on pillows and bedding yesterday. It's magical.

-So Muammar Gaddafi is dead, allegedly captured alive but hit in the head by a stray bullet during an escape attempt (at least that's what I heard). Bush toppled a dictator with an eight year war and 4000 dead soldiers among untold thousands of other dead people. Obama did it with a couple drones, no combat troops, and allies in a couple months. Barry 1, W 0.

-Having a boyfriend is a pretty weird thing, not really accustomed to it. Stranger thing is he doesn't care who I flirt with since he's the boyfriend. Kind of a first-among-many sort of thing, I guess. Neither odd thing is a bad thing, I have to say.

-In my junior composition class (organized around the writing of a 16-18 page research paper, which is 70% of the course grade) my peer review group members keep giving me glowing reviews of my work, talking about how I have everything in order and really seem to know what I'm doing. If nothing else, AP English classes taught me well how to convey more mastery of a subject than I actually have. I've spent maybe a quarter of the time on my paper (so far) that any one of them has.

-I finally found it! A Boss Nigger movie poster! Looks like The Erection Chamber just got 10% more offensive.

-After much debate I've decided I want a record player. There really is something so nice, so crisp about vinyl that mp3s can't touch. Oh, to have Frank and Ray on vinyl!

-If you're upset this post was pretty much pointless, well, go to hell.

-UPDATE: Apparently one of my friends from high school is Occupy Wall Street's CFO. wut.

Double Barreled

2011-10-21T02:08:00.001-04:00

Any number of my friends can tell you of my distaste for white people. This may seem like something of a contradiction since the vast majority of my friends, as well as my boyfriend, are white. When I talk about "god damn white people" I'm talking about the masses of totally oblivious, fundamentally stupid, and/or snobbishly entitled people out there that, in my experience, are almost always white. Holding a conversation in the middle of a fucking doorway? Thinking employees bus the tables at a coffee shop so they can just leave their trash and go? White people. Standing on the left side of the escalator? White people (although I think that might just be rural people not knowing how escalators work). This past Saturday evening I had an encounter that excellently encapsulates my qualms with white people.

We were at my friend's house on Mill Street, a street in Athens well-known for Natty Light, public intoxication, and lots of parties full of dim bros and dimmer sorostitutes. As you would expect the people living there are not the typical Mill crowd, they just liked the house and got a pretty good deal on the rent. After some intoxication we sat in his den and watched some stupid Disney movie I wasn't paying attention to. Then we all looked at each other suspiciously; it seems all three of us had heard what sounded like footsteps in the house. Given that it was only the three of us plus the girl asleep in the chair that were supposed to be in the house, this was very upsetting. As soon as he started getting up to investigate, Nathan heard and answered a knock at the den door.

Four bros of the Mill variety were standing there, obviously high on something, and confused because they "thought the house was empty this year" (despite walking through a kitchen filled with kitchenwares). Apparently a friend of theirs lived there last year and they wanted to have some nostalgia for a minute. Oh, and they wanted to do a line. They kept asking if they could do some lines. They probably asked three times, mixed in with "this is awkward" comments, introducing themselves to us, "no sketch, we're not sketchy, no sketch bro don't worry" and telling stories about how the place had changed that nobody cared about. Two of them had the sense to leave without saying anything as they judged our facial reactions, ranging from overwhelmed and confused to I'm-going-to-break-a-bottle-over-your-face. But the other two kept standing there, talking and talking and talking.

Tired of them polluting my air with their stupid, I felt the rage swell inside me to the point of the shakes when I got up, in their face, and kindly informed them "You need to leave. Now." They seemed to take offense at my kicking them out of a stranger's home. I'm sorry, but what fucking country do you come from where it's kosher to just walk in to somebody's home and ask if you can snort coke off their furniture? See what I mean about goddamn fucking white people? Normal people, if they were dumb enough to even walk into a house they thought vacant in the first place, would have noted immediately upon entering that someone was living there and thus left. Or robbed the place. Either way, normal people wouldn't exhibit the crass stupidity of these god damn fucking white people. They're lucky the matriarch of the home wasn't there that evening; if I know Leah (and I do) she probably would have shot them.

Hopefully because they were coked out it took the remaining two a minute to understand that an irate black man was throwing them out, and I had to follow them out of the house, encouraging them to leave with threats of violence and police action. For my first time throwing someone out of a house I think I did well. Of course l'espirit de l'escalier kicked in shortly thereafter; there was a claw hammer and an empty beer bottle nearby that would have been excellent weapons for beating the fucking dumb out of them. Regardless, they left without further incident and I, still shaking from the adrenaline and rage, decided to polish off my flask and not let stupid fucking white people shit on my evening.

If some dumbass white boys just waltz into my apartment though, they're getting a face full of meat cleaver or nightstick, depending on what's closest.

"Mommy, I Want to be a House Negro"

2011-10-12T16:40:00.000-04:00

The "too long; didn't read" version of this post.

Allow me to be blunt: I despise Herman Cain.

Supposed and sudden front-runner for the Republican nomination, Cain has found himself in the limelight as the mainstream media's flavor-of-the-minute and with each passing second of his cocoa skin absorbing the attention, the distaste rises for any discerning observer. I saw on a friend's facebook a brief clip of our house-bound friend on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, wherein he claimed that black people have been brainwashed from the cradle to not even consider voting for a conservative, and that an entire third of American blacks would vote for him over Obama should he secure the Republican nomination.

To any reader who knows the basics of 20th century American history, this necessarily asks the question: what the hell United States of America did Herman Cain grow up in?

President Lyndon Johnson shoved through Congress the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively. Johnson, a Democrat, led (intimidated) his fellow liberals in Congress into quickly passing the pieces of legislation. Southern Democrats, obviously in no rush to give niggers recognition as human beings, jumped ship en masse to the Republican Party in protest. This is not speculation by a brainwashed black youth, this is historical fact. The reason black people don't vote Republican is because it is a party whose core strategies, ideas, and beliefs have changed little since they were formulated by former Dixiecrats and of course Richard Nixon (no friend of any minority, let alone black people) in the late 1960s. This is not to say the Democratic party is a friend of the black community, they're simply less of an enemy than the GOP.

So for Herman Cain to say that black people have been brainwashed by liberals into voting Democratic is ludicrous and moderately offensive. Can you blame entire generations of black people for not voting for a party whose constituents and leaders have helmed squads of German Shepherds, penned anti-drug legislation disproportionately jailing poor minorities for ridiculously long sentences, slashed urban school budgets time after time after time, reduced or eliminated social welfare programs...do I really need to continue? This is not to say every Republican is a racist, a statement needing no defense. This is to say, however, that the modern Republican party was constructed by and for white, Anglo-saxon, protestant men.

How, then, does a black man get roped into a party that has been an enemy of their people for the last fifty years? Especially having grown up during the Civil Rights Movement? Maybe Herman Cain's conservative principles override his allegiance to his race (a notion I have a problem with too, to an extent). Maybe Herman Cain doesn't care about black people. Or maybe he's just fucking stupid. The world may never know. What is known though, is this black man--and probably many more than the 66 "brainwashed" percent--will never cast a Herman Cain vote for anything other than House Negro of the Year.

Occupy My Heart

2011-10-09T15:42:00.000-04:00

One of the ill-effects of being without a computer for so long is that you tend to fall out of the times when it comes to (inter)national news. I don't have cable, don't pay for magazine subscriptions, and the only papers I read are local papers when they happen to be nearby and I have a free five minutes. And even then I usually flip straight to the opinion section to read some of the most inept letters to the editor you will ever see. Crotchety old people or opinionated college students barking about this or that sensitive issue and causing a ruckus until something else grabs their attention. So when I first heard about this Occupy Wall Street nonsense I rolled my eyes. Fitting, I thought, that it only existed in the mainstream as a half-baked afterthought. Probably a couple hundred twentysomethings with some sort of twig up their ass, for a good cause or not. Then, the other day, it hit me: this is how those Tea Party cunts started out.

Truth be told I don't remember when the Tea Party first hit the scene. As odd a sight as it may be, protesters in powdered wigs with teabags and poorly written signs isn't exactly something you watch and think, "this is a critical moment in American history." And unless you're studying groupthink in the American people, it still isn't. I believe a large (maybe the) reason the Tea Party is still even quasi-relevant is because the monied powers-that-be have recognized their potential to divert public outrage away from those responsible--the powers themselves--towards some more convenient scapegoat, like that black guy. Let's be real here: the Tea Party, with little exception, is absolutely nowhere near smart, or even capable, enough to accomplish all that the Tea Party has without help from the kinds of people that would love to keep the American people riled up at Democrats and Big Government. I'd like to envision OWS as a more reality-grounded alternative to the Tea Party. I'm sure they believe in some pretty crazy shit too, but the basic message of "this shit ain't right" rings painfully true. Maybe this is the tip of the wake-the-fuck-up iceberg.

That's a pretty fucking big maybe though.

The American experience teaches you to be a cynical asshole. You'll always be poor, they'll always be rich, and good people who make too much noise are either co-opted or shot. Provided my rationale for the Tea Party's continued existence is true, OWS is a far more attractive target for our monied benefactors to crush, neutralize, or slowly force into irrelevancy. People, in the grandest sense of the term, don't think for themselves. They believe what's dictated as truth. It will be interesting to see what becomes of OWS if they keep the momentum up enough to actually make a splash. If they're still around in five months, I'll be very (pleasantly) surprised.

As an imminent college graduate, I have more of a stake than ever in the economic future of this country. I want to be able to find a job that isn't assembling sixty different kinds of hamburger with nobody telling me how to do any of it. If things continue the way they have been, my options will be that or being unemployed, living at home with my mother. Frankly I could have done that without ever accruing $22,000 in federal student loan debt. I went to college to become something, to get a comfortable job like my parents and pop culture promised me would happen. I've seen a number of my friends, highly intelligent people with excellent grades and even lucrative degrees, leave school only to plunge deep into unemployment or underemployment and debt. Contrary to the opinion of one house nigger, they are in fact quality people cheated by a bullshit system that promised them better since the cradle. Every day I fear that will be my future, too. Something's gotta give, and soon.

A Satisfied Mind

2011-10-06T19:44:00.004-04:00

I finally got a computer!

Don't let that make you expect more frequent updates. We know who we're talking about here.

I've got a 20 page research paper to write by the second week of November, I work 21 hours/5 (formerly 6) days a week at the worst goddamn place in the world, because of missing the mark by .045 grade points I'm down $6000 pending a psychiatric/psychological and medical appeal, among other things. So I'm a fairly busy motherfucker.

I will tell y'all this: thank god for the Prozac. At some point over the summer I got tired of being depressed all the god damn time and essentially demanded to see a psychiatrist. Talking about my problems was like seeing a massage therapist for chronic back pain. Sometimes you just need pills, and that 20 mg once a day has been doing wonders.

Little changed about my life, if anything it got worse. But about a week after I started taking them I just didn't give a fuck. Africans fuck up 3,600 cookies and I alone have to put everything back together? Meh, okay. Exam in two hours I totally forgot about? Shit, I better get on that. I'm so much more level-headed, and it's made my life so much more manageable. Sure it takes at least twice as long to cum which can be problematic with having a boyfriend and all but he seems like he too doesn't give a fuck. It works out quite well.

I do still get angry pretty frequently but rather than devolve into a festering cauldron of rage I channel my hatenergy into productivity. When I want to attack Central Foods with a battery of cruise missiles, instead of festering like a cauldron of rage, I pay off bills I've been sitting on and relish in the dopamine rush of being responsible (and not having to worry about my electricity getting shut off).

I'm even being (marginally) more fiscally responsible. I know smoking is bad m'kay but the fact of the matter is I do and will for the immediate future. Instead of shelling out $6.20 per pack of delicious, delicious Marlboro Blend No. 27's three times a week I bought a whole carton of machine-rolled cigarettes for $25 at Cheap Tobacco, the chain store that can only exist in Appalachia. I wasn't even trying to be careful with my money and I had about $30 left over when I got my next paycheck. Cigarettes are fucking expensive. But what's even more expensive is being 21, holy shit. It's pretty cool being able to just buy alcohol whenever I want (except Sundays, that's Jesus' day). On my 21st I spent $50 on whiskey and spiced rum, and gave a bartender a $5 tip for a free birthday drink. It's important to build a reputation.

Between channeling my anger instead of resisting it, building a reputation with bartenders, smoking substandard cigarettes because they cost almost a third of the price, and taking forever to cum I can't tell if it's the Prozac doing all this to me or if I'm finally, actually becoming an old man. My back has been hurting a lot lately.

Amy, Amy, Amy

2011-08-06T15:26:00.005-04:00

I've always been very self-conscious about my music taste. It's eclectic, to say the least. Hendrix, Lennon, Vaughan, Badu, The Fugees, TLC; predominantly artists like those accompanied by one or two people you've heard recently on the radio with handsome helpings of mashups, remixes, and quirky internet songs without official releases. And I always feel like whoever I'm talking to will find my music weird, strange, or something they just don't like. Whenever people ask me about the music I like I often preface it with 'all of my favorite musicians are dead', and as of a little over two weeks another darling to my ears has slipped beneath the waves. As you no doubt know, Amy Winehouse was found dead back on July 23rd.

I can't say I'm sad about it--people die, it's what they do, especially former or current drug addicts--that's not to say I expected it, either. Sure the girl drank a lot, but like any other celebrity being out of the headlines for so long meant I didn't pay Amy Winehouse the person much mind. She was just the voice belting out soul and blues numbers on my iPod with a wail all her own, kind of like another tiny lady who was all voice and all drink. I couldn't believe when I read after her death that Amy was only 4' 11". The ridiculous beehive probably didn't help, but like Janis it's difficult to imagine someone with such a loud personality and soul-wrencher of a voice being a third of my size.

Past the heavy drinking and hard drugs Amy Jade was probably a wonderful person. But I, like the rest of you, didn't know that person, so who am I to say with any real certainty? Why do we even care? All of us, sometimes we're generous and sometimes we're downright cunts. I didn't and don't really care about whatever she may have put in her nose or through her lips, this is simply about the permanent silencing of a beautiful voice that hadn't been heard before and won't ever be again. Any time my depression acts up I put on my 2-disc edition of Back to Black, and just listen. It doesn't make me feel happy: as they say, misery loves company. The sorrow remains, there's no doubt. But it's neutered, diluted, made more palatable, almost like sipping a glass of chilled whiskey with a splash of lemonade.

I had a dream I never told people about of sitting in a dim, smoky bar in New Orleans, or Austin, or London, with the drink I described, alone watching her perform live. Feeling the vibrations, wincing at the high notes, smelling the liquor and loneliness in the air. Experiencing it. And it had to be that. Seeing her in concert at a stadium, with a couple thousand sweaty drunk people works for high energy pop starlets like Lady Gaga, but not Amy. It'd be like watching your parents' wedding in a movie theater, it'd just feel weird. Some of my friends might call me scum for wanting such a thing, but I don't much care because it's the truth. Amy Winehouse was a gift to this world, and like all good things eventually are she's gone forever. My dream of a smoky pub, smoky drink, and that stirring voice will forever be just that. I guess I'll just have to use my imagination.

Live and Let Die

2011-07-31T10:52:00.004-04:00

I'm the absolute worst, I know. Two months and no word on my riveting life, my bitingly accurate sociopolitical commentary,my hilarious witticisms--I'm proud of all of you for making it this long without. But fear not! For now you can get at least a snippet of your fix of Robert Raymond Lewis (as well as a hopefully legitimate explanation as to where the fuck I've been).

Shortly after my previous post, I spent a morning at a coffeehouse here in town and ran into my best friend unexpectedly. I closed up my laptop, put it in my bag, and talked with him for a bit before he had to go take an exam. Nothing left for me in there, I slung my bag over my shoulder to leave when I heard a loudish thud on the floor. Apparently my bag was, in fact, not closed; when I put it on my shoulder my laptop went flying and landed hard on the floor. I checked it then and there and eveythig seemed fine, but a few hours later I saw I had, in fact, destroyed the display. I'm typing this entry on my iPod (keeping in mind there is no blogger app or even a mobile site) so don't say I don't love you. And my lack of computer really is the only reason for my absence, otherwise I would have told everyone last month that...

My upsetting butt problem is gone! Right around July 4th the last of my warts fell off, and they haven't been back since. Ten fucking months of dealing with the fallout from that asshole, ten fucking months of sexual isolation over. Only to be replaced with more sexual isolation; there really is nothing in this town, especially over the summer. In fact the only thing that's come my way is my slutty, cokehead, stripper, Catholic friend who "needs sex so bad". Don't we all. Although you wouldn't think that I would need sex, considering the rumors going around that...

Myself and two of my friends are in a three-way relationship. Now, I've heard and hopefully dispelled rumors that Nick and I are dating, but the big happy three-way between myself, Nathan, and Corey is a radically new one. In the immortal words of the Fresh Prince I ain't even mad, just confused and amused. I have to wonder what whoever started this heard in the first place to believe such a thing. Nathan and Corey are the happy couple, I'm simply a good friend of both. We are seen in public together a lot, but so fucking what? I first wondered if such hearsay impeded my ability to find someone to do something with, but then I realized the idea of a committed three-way relationship among college gays is a little ludicrous. I found out about this rumor while...

I was getting thrown out of a bar! My two apparent boyfriends and I drank a lot and went to the summer gay dance cause we were bored, where there were quite a few gays and lesbians in their 40s and up. Townies? Closeted (or confused) Bobcat Student Orientation parents? Who knows, but at least I didn't get petted again. I did however have a friend buy me a Jack and Coke when some asshole bartender who previously had us waiting in the rain because they were "at capacity" (despite letting several people cut the line) saw my hands, grabbed me by the arm, and pushed me out the emergency exit. Why couldn't he just look the other way, like everyone fucking else there? I wasn't punching people in the balls or puking on the walls, I was just sitting and enjoying a drink with friends. It's the summer for fuck's sake, pull the nails out of your ass. When I finally do turn my country's archaic drinking age, I vow to never tip that bartender.

Night wasn't a complete bust though; we went to a decidedly less homosexual establishment staffed by not-cunts where I had an even better Jack and Coke, met up with Nick, and brought back some funny looking guy with a nice body that outed himself on the way to our apartment, the Erection Chamber. We drank more, Corey and I wound up naked under a sheet cause we grew drunk and tired of pants, Nick passed out, and then everyone else got naked. This doesn't end in an orgy but gross sexual imposition, although the victim more than brought it upon himself. After stealing some of my and Nick's liquor (Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey and Skyy Ginger Vodka, respectively), new naked guy and his erection passed out (we're a dangerous crowd; moderate intoxication for us knocks people who don't hang out with us on their fucking ass) leaving me and my two apparent boyfriends who stayed up for another hour or so talking outside still naked. Oddly enough, earlier that day I had talked about wanting to go out there naked at 4 AM. Our balcony is decently far from the street, so I won't get arrested for indecent exposure any time soon. Unless it turns out that cunt bartender is my next door neighbor.

There's scores more to talk about, like drinking with my friend's Puerto Rican parents while trying to conceal my homosexuality, the routine hell of Central Foods, the ongoing battle with depression, John fucking Boehner, Norway, and how already noone cares about Libya. Unfortunately, my thumbs hurt like a bitch. Pardon any typos, iPod autocorrect is just about the worst fucking thing in the world.

Oxen Died Fording the Rubicon, or: Ain't That Some Shit

2011-06-05T14:36:00.008-04:00

I prepared a grand old Imperial proclamation about how I was enabling comment moderation to get BBC the fuck out of my life because blogger has no other ways to deal with borderline harassment. When I go make the fateful step, though, I see that I can now mark (and effectively delete) comments as spam, with the implication then being that after a while Blogger will learn that anything from BBC is spam, and I won't have to worry about it ever sullying my Tome ever again.

Oh. Well, then. We'll see how this works, but I reserve the right to clamp down on your puny individual freedoms in the name of security.

A Good Day for Democracy

2011-05-20T00:59:00.009-04:00

Yesterday was the last day of Student Senate elections here at Ohio University, aka the happiest day of the year. For the past month the bros and sorostitutes forming the rank-and-file of RSVP have faced off against the other bros and other sorostitutes, plus the occasional hipster, of FACE in virtually every public space on campus. Yes those party names are acronyms; all you need to know about them is that what they stand for is absolutely fucking irrelevant like the parties themselves and Student Senate as a whole. It's amazing to see the things people go through for something that might look good on a resume. And honestly, I would cry if I had to see someone who thought they could 'make a difference at Ohio University by serving on Student Senate,' or, the Ohio University Supreme People's Assembly.

Campaign methods are predictable. "Vote FACE!" scrawled on a classroom chalkboard, staring you in the eye when the mind wanders from lecture. "Vote RSVP" (the V being a checkmark, how clever) posted in the bathrooms for you to stare at because looking at the dick of the guy next to you is socially frowned upon. Painting the graffiti wall, incessant facebook events and banners and profile pictures, taping a fucking note to my front goddamn door, using email lists from year-old classes to 'spread the word', and the quartersheets. Oh my Christ almighty, the fucking quartersheets. Each party gets a band of sunny white people to stand by every moderately busy intersection or doorway on campus all day, every day, shoving teal (FACE) or neon green (RSVP) quartersheets in the faces of people just trying to get to class. As if the student populace gives a shit about the brown-nosing desires of some thick-necked, thicker-skulled fratboy and his pretty but personality-less friends.

Apparently this year FACE and RSVP drew some controversy. Not for being annoying shits--that happens every year--but for supposed "negative campaigning". Rumor has it each party took advantage of the other's members being caught drunk as shit at Palmerfest (the year's largest gathering of douchebags and Natural Light) and promptly put the pictures on facebook. The negative campaigning even 'inspired' an associate of mine to launch an independent write-in candidacy for Student Senate president (that two candidates of FACE, then RSVP promptly endorsed to be different, dare I say mavericks) that, as it turns out, failed. RSVP--the one with the broiest bros--won, in a near-landslide. Fraternities exist for networking, and nothing else.

As I said earlier, yesterday was the last day of the election season. My first two morning classes are held in the same room, and during the time between them, I'm the only one in the room. Today I took advantage of this time to tear down the Vote RSVP posters, rip them up and put them in the trash, and erase their chalkboard messages with a pocket New Testament no less. A good day for democracy.

Sausage Sausage

2011-05-01T23:31:00.003-04:00

Originally my next post was to be all about Bobby's First Concert the other night, but in light of recent events that's not nearly patriotic enough. With Osama bin Laden dead the archetypical villain of my generation lies (likely in little bits and pieces) in U.S. custody and for the next week to month we can all expect a massive upsurge in nauseating levels of patriotism. Then again, it's not every day the United States Army shoots the shit out of Towelhead Enemy #1. Tonight, America's penis throbs in victory.

Clampdown

2011-04-06T09:18:00.003-04:00

I'm thankful to have a guaranteed source of income every two weeks, but damn it is difficult walking into my job every other day for minimum wage. The new cook doesn't have a personality, a full two-thirds of my coworkers are painfully inept, management never has any idea what's going on, and a pair previously in charge of the food court (that demanded all baguettes be of the same size, shape, and color, and would send back those that didn't conform) have moved in to take power over us. They bare an eerie resemblance to Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader; Mary Jane doesn't say much or show her face very often but her helper-boy Jeff is more than eager to speak his mind and trample employees as he sees fit. Being on the track to be a student ~~manager~~ leader, my minimum wage difficulties will be mitigated but I'll have more regular contact with the Sith lords.

At a manager meeting this past Friday morning (because Lord Vader doesn't want to work weekends) one of the topics discussed was students taking breaks. It's an understandable want for managers to know where student employees are and when they take breaks, but few of them were actually using the break sign out sheets. One of the student managers, who best fits Admiral Piett if we are to continue with the Star Wars analogy, proposed a solution to the problem: mandating break times. That is, a student manager comes up to an employee and tells them to take their break at that time. Given Central Foods' already pervasive problem with morale, I took it upon myself to shoot that down as best I could. Then Lord Vader chirped up, saying that we are managers and thus superior to the other employees. If they don't like us or our rules, tough. And if any employee resists the Imperial will, they are to be referred to him and he will deal with the matter. Moreover, according to him, we aren't even required to give them a break until they work four hours and one second, despite the line having been for months that a four hour shift entitles you to a 15 minute break.

After Vader left, student coordinator Admiral Ozzel and the rest of us managed to strike the compromise of having managers sign students out on break, but the student gets to choose when they take it. Palpatine and Vader have brought with them a sweeping set of new rules, including most notoriously mandating that students wear hairnets (previously you could bring your own hat), and charging us five cents for each hairnet. Rumor has it that according to the Ohio labor laws that Vader so loves, it's illegal to charge minimum wage employees for anything required at work. When I have the time I'll look into it as best I can; in the meantime I have an ample supply of hairnets I acquired back when they were still free.

A couple days ago my friends and I were lunching at the overpriced food court-thing and saw nearby the Emperor and her apprentice, taking their food into a little closed off room that full-time dining services employees use as a sort-of executive dining room. It took an impressive force of will to keep from 'dropping' my drink on them. Later on we saw Vader busing his boss's tray for her. How sweet.

Bitches Ain't Shit

2011-03-17T17:46:00.003-04:00

It's a common misconception that gay men understand women. After all, its why they collect female friends (fag hags, for the uninformed), right? I posit that is not the case. Gay men collect female friends so easily because typically, gay men are to be welcomed as sex partners or avoided altogether as ugly fatties, and straight men don't hang out with fuckin' queers. Me, I've never understood women. They confuse me. With limited exception I've always preferred the company of men. I recall that in kindergarten I referred to having my two best friends sitting on either side of me as being "surrounded by boys". While I may not understand women, from time to time their motivations are laid bare enough that even a klutz like myself can understand what they're up to.

A friend of mine, one of those elusive heterosexual males, not too long ago began sorta seeing this girl that appeared out of nowhere. Judging from our mutual friends on facebook she is nobody I want to associate with. Then again she's not dating me. But she's not really dating my friend either. Legend has it she transferred to OU to get back together with her ex-boyfriend and after "deciding to not do that" she met my clinically depressed straight sophomore friend. He asked her what their budding relationship was, and she said she wants to keep seeing him "but would like to remain single for a bit", whatever the fuck that means. Two more of our mutual friends later met her and immediately thought the same thing: this bitch be triflin'.

I told my clinically depressed straight sophomore friend to tread lightly cause this girl sounded like trouble, and his idea of treading lightly was drunkenly vomiting on her twice, shoving her away as she was trying to help him into bed, and calling her a succubus. I was so proud of him until he told me he was trying to make amends, and last I heard they came back together. If you've ever seen that episode of Hey Arnold! where Arnold meets this girl named Summer in Jersey and they have a typical summer romance, but she only wants him for his sandcastle building skills to win some contest, it's basically that. Just replace sandcastle building skills with free drugs and alcohol.

I would like to think I'm a good judge of character for spotting this bitch so early on. I certainly have my moments, but then again I had to be told by everyone around me that Taylor was lame as balls. Damn, did he ever prove them right. I suppose it's pretty easy to be blinded by the light of a relationship and not see that the person you're sticking your dick in is replying in kind with a knife in the back. I've told myself I'm going to have words with my clinically depressed straight sophomore friend about his gold digging pseudo-girlfriend but I'm not sure how much he'll listen to me. Even if he just shrugs me off at least it'll be on the record eventually that I was right, I guess. and that bitch ain't ever setting foot in my apartment.

Fuck Ben Folds.

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T00:02:00.010-05:00

Unlike most times when I make a stab at reviving the Tome where I stare idly at a blank screen for a minute or two before going on to do something more engaging to the focus-challenged mind, tonight the words flood my head and steadfastly refuse to trickle out in an orderly fashion. So I suppose I can start with the elephant in my corpus callosum: my ex-boyfriend gave me anal warts. I found this out on the 28th of September, one day before my birthday, when I went to the school clinic suspecting I had a month-old hemorrhoid. From then to the first week of December I went back every Friday to get them treated. And as one would expect a needle full of acid being injected into one's anus to be, it was quite painful. The clinician referred me to an actual dermatologist when the trichloracetic acid she was using stopped having any effect.

The actual dermatologist turned out to be the actual dermatologist's assistant, with the "M.D." conspicuously absent from his picture on the waiting room's slideshow, on a smaller monitor next to Regis Philbin on the big television. I've been seeing Nathan (doctors apparently like to be on first name bases with their patients, probably to make them feel more comfortable) since late December, shelling out $25 co-pays with each visit and another $25 roughly every two weeks for the cream he prescribed (one tube is supposed to last four weeks). So much for that stable financial base I had planned.

I ran into my ex on a slutty hookup site my friend had demanded I make a profile on late one night when he was drunk. I haven't been having sex because I don't want to bestow upon anyone such a damn painful infection, minus one celebratory booty call I made during a very brief period in November where I was clear. At any rate, when I told Taylor that he had benefactored me a little wart problem he insisted it was in fact the other way around. After explaining to him how virtually impossible that would be (before him, I had sex with one person once almost exactly a year before I met my ex) he admitted that he had, in fact, infected me and went on one of his characteristic apology rants, making unnecessarily profuse amends for first being such an asshole to me (he was), but primarily for giving me warts. Apparently he had some on his penis shortly after we broke up, but never thought to tell me because he thought I had infected him. This brief online encounter of ours was almost two weeks ago now, and despite my best efforts to forgive, if I ever see him again I will have to be restrained from bludgeoning him. The callous stupidity, the offensive indifference. It did make me feel slightly better knowing he hasn't had sex with anyone since me (that was now one year ago), but knowing him he told me that in an effort to get me to feel sorry for him.

Nathan says they're looking good; since they're all white and dying he thinks my immune system is finally beginning to clear the virus (it's no fast process; he said that about three weeks ago). And while some of them will fall off when I take a dump or a shower or even while I'm applying the cream, they hurt so. fucking. much. For weeks I haven't been able to walk, sit, take a dump, or clean up taking after a dump without experiencing some degree of pain, usually mild but sometimes severe. I had to stop myself from screaming on the toilet a few minutes ago; imagine spreading your bare ass as you sit directly on several upright nails. You know, after stealing my zippo, being such a raging cunt, and giving me goddamn anal warts, Taylor went to the doctor once, for one treatment, and never had to deal with them again. Karma my black ass.

So that's what I do these days. I've got an oral exam in Spanish on Tuesday and (again) a written Spanish exam and a physics midterm back to back. My cultural rebellion professor wants a summary of 100-some pages of Jack Kerouac's On the Road for tomorrow, and for the next four days I have to surrender my evenings to trifling with the Nation of Africa, all the dumbass appalachian white people, and the utterly pretentious student managers at my minimum-wage job. Paul has the goddamn nerve to try and tell me, one of the only people there that actually does anything, what the fuck to do when he has the whole Nation standing idly in the corner gossiping cattily in an odd language and doing no more work than what is required of their bodies to continue living another miserable second.

In case you couldn't tell I'm very angry these days. My back and neck are hideously knotted with rage; the university offers semiprofessional massages but I don't have the time of day to get one. I really think the cure for what ails me would not be a proper two hour massage, or finding $10,000 in a briefcase on the side of the road, or even Taylor's head on a pike, but finally being done with these upsetting fucking warts--and by extension being able to have sex again. Happy Valentine's Day!

(Everyone Thinks) I'm on the Mend

2010-11-29T12:25:00.001-05:00

It's been a little under a week and the old adage still holds true: Rockville fucking blows. I've been keeping myself busy primarily by watching episodes of Mad Men which, while it is an entertaining show, isn't doing too good of a job of making me not miss Athens. Since the show is about an advertising agency in the 1960s, all the characters do is drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes. I've never wanted a decanter and set of rocks glasses more in my life. Surprisingly though it doesn't particularly make me want to smoke. I reluctantly picked up the filthy little habit this past quarter because of everything I had to manage and after attempts to slowly wind down my tar intake failed I used going home as a convenient excuse to cut myself off completely. It's only been about five days since I last had a cancer stick and sure I sometimes do still want one but I can see improvements being made. The real challenge will be going back to Athens when I don't have a parent that will judge me if she sees a Marlboro No. 27 hanging out of my mouth.

I had a brilliant segue from my cigarette addiction to the next topic of discussion but I've completely forgotten it. Occasionally I go to CNN.com not for the quality of their stories, but simply because their website is very pretty. Smack in the middle of their page (and ostensibly the most important news item they had to offer) was a story about a Pennsylvania couple who excitedly bought a house, began getting sick in it, and later discovered via a neighbor that there used to be a meth lab in the basement. Crystal meth is a hell of a drug; it's made of all the over-the-counter things that say in big yellow letters "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION". I've done some awful things in my day but I don't think smoking Drano and Freon will ever be on that illustrious list.

The homeowners are understandably upset that they made a down payment on and now have a mortgage for a meth house they can't really live in. On top of that, getting the place cleaned will cost them $25,000 (or $61,000, if you ask CNN). Paul Quigley, the man in the relationship, commented that he wants "justice" for this. What exactly is justice for the proud owners of a meth house? Screening for methamphetamine isn't a typical part of home inspections since houses typically don't host meth labs. My inner fuck-you-republican wants to tell them it's their loss; sure you may have never thought to check your house for meth residue but the information was freely available on a federal website. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, etc. As usual though, while the fuck-you-republican appeals to my distaste for people in general it doesn't seem right to effectively toss these people out on their ass because of a problem nobody ever thinks to research before buying a house. I know my parents didn't when they bought this house.

I also had a conclusion in mind but in between going to the bathroom and listening to my mother complain about how her state employers do nothing right (it's true, they don't) I've also forgotten that. Maybe I shouldn't be such a drug fiend. Maybe the Soviets should have won the Cold War.

Captain Hindsight

2010-10-31T03:01:00.003-04:00

Normally at this point I would try and craft something elegant-sounding to convey my thoughts and emotions to you, seemingly the only people who are consistently available as an ear for a boy in need. But every time I do that I get a bunch of shit about how this is a whiny gay man's blog. So have some animals close up, with a wide angle lens.

Status Update

2010-10-11T08:16:00.004-04:00

-Twenty credit hours is pretty overwhelming. Last week was consumed by my take-home midterm for my Germany in the 20th Century class in which I had to write three essays: Evaluate Germany's responsibility for the outbreak of WWI (it was largely their fault), How did foreign relations during the Weimar and Nazi eras shape the development of Germany from 1919 to 1945, and Compare and contrast the experience of civilians during WWI and WWII (a better question would be 'Would you prefer to be slowly starved to death by a Royal Navy blockade or terrorbombed by the Royal Air Force?' I think the latter would be a more exciting death.) I woke up at 7 this morning to do some Spanish homework I didn't have time for last week only to discover I'm more behind than I thought, and am probably going to take most of the day off to catch up. The life of a college student, amirite?

-I almost gave you guys yet another gay post (cause let's be honest, of all the political issues at my disposal it's by far the one I'm most invested in) but opted for this instead. Apparently today is National Coming Out Day, and while I already did that it's commonly used as a general pro-LGBT rights day. On Facebook I made a crack about while the gays are a second class citizenry in America, at least we don't live in Serbia. Frankly I'm a little surprised a country formerly occupied and persecuted by Nazi Germany would even allow far-right groups to exist, but then I remember that a) this is the Balkans we're talking about, and b) they are targeting faggots. It is indeed a big leap from where the country was in 2001 when the fifty (yes, five-zero) police officers assigned to protect the marchers casually watched them be beaten by assorted cultural fascists. I'm sure the police protection upgrade (5,000 cops this time around) has nothing to do with Serbia trying to get into the EU.

-It being my first long-term employment, I suppose working at the bakery is going pretty okay. I've already identified several people on different shifts I don't like, including a kid who barely speaks English but has a propensity to take other people's jobs when they leave to get a new pair of gloves or a drink of water, one of the cooks who throws random fits of passive-aggression and then laments being chronically lonely, and this one Indian bitch with a massive superiority complex I damn near hit in the face with pizza dough yesterday because of her callous bitchiness. Luckily I find daily solace in the friends who work there with me, this one other girl who's pretty alright, and filling orders we're not baking that day with stuff from the freezer which allows me to pretend the people I detest simply don't exist. And those asiago bagels are fucking awesome.

-Speaking of work, Thursday night I went to a drag show put on by a theater company in support of charity/their annual production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was quite a good time; I had three Long Islands (the first one was immaculate, the second had a bit too much coke, and the third was at least half sour mix) and saw a bunch of gays get real gay. Hell, I'm even considering performing if not in the spring then next fall, mostly because as I was watching the closing performance of Alejandro, my drunk ass thought "I could do this a thousand fucking times better than that queer." I also saw (and got groped a bit by) one of my coworkers there in fishnets, boy shorts, and some real fierce ankle boots. Later I would awkwardly molest him at work as he thrusted directly into my hand trying to lift a bag out of a trash can that I was holding down.

-New York Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino (R) is quite a character. He's found himself in no man's land after saying in front of a gaggle of Orthodox Jews that homosexuality is not "an equally valid or successful option." Why he didn't continue with "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. That is not how God created us," as planned remains unknown. Perhaps he thought to himself as he was speaking "shit, did I just say that?". In that article I linked to (if you don't read it I don't blame you, it is CNN after all) he went on damage control fast, throwing his Jew hosts under the bus and saying those were their words, not his. This might sound plausible--the media misreports things all the time, and Orthodox Jews I understand are generally very homophobic--if there wasn't a camera pointed directly at his dumb ass, recording video and audio of him and nobody else making the remarks in question. I leave you with this excerpt from the article:

"Carl Paladino's comments would matter if they were coming from a serious political figure. However, they are not," said Christopher Barron, chairman of the gay conservative group GOProud, in an email to CNN.

All He Cares About

2010-10-05T11:29:00.003-04:00

I'm sure all five of you have noticed that I don't do this very much anymore, mostly due to a loss of passion and time. Twenty credit hours + a job = not much in the way of free time. When the fuck did I start growing up? For similar reasons I don't much follow domestic politics anymore; I don't have the patience for it anymore. Frankly I'm not sure how I ever had the tolerance to so rigorously follow the wacky words and actions of 535 smilin'-ass white people, many of whom with weight and solicitation of prostitution problems. Nobody embodies all the negatives of congress to me quite like Newt Gingrich, who is very unfortunately still alive and capable of flapping his gums at anyone in the MSM who will give him the time of day.

His Republican Excellency's esteemed advice to the GOP for the upcoming midterm elections they will surely run gangbusters over (because Americans are afflicted with crippling short-term memory loss, kind of like Alzheimer's) is to frame the debate as being one of "paychecks vs. food stamps". That is, when Democrats took Congress back in 2006 unemployment and the number of people on food stamps were both about half of what they are now, and Republicans need to emphasize their fiscal responsibility compared to the Democrats' knee-jerk, 13 year old girl at a shopping mall spending ways.

I believe America needs a friendly reminder of the Republican Party's money-wise principles, the same set of principles that first plunged the United States into staggering debt in the 1980s and further dragged that already appalling Reaganite number down into the pits of spendthrift hell during the first part of the past decade. Don't forget who's fault this recession is. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi aren't quite the saviors of America either (maybe the scheming savants); fact of the matter is while the Democratic Party is an inept gathering of vaguely left invertebrates, electing the Republican Party to power would be akin to electing a Russian-born politician Chancellor of Germany. Perhaps it's because I share one or two positions with the Democrats, but it seems to me that every time the GOP is in power the things they propose and do are ten times more destructive than anything the already incompetent Democrats have to offer.

I suppose the abridged version of this post would read, "Can we exile Newt Gingrich to Saint Helena?" I like to think of him as a symptom of a cancer. Putting on a wig to hide chemotherapy-induced baldness doesn't get rid of the cancer but it makes you feel a little better; getting rid of Gingrich wouldn't cure what ails the American political system, but it would make it just a bit more tolerable.

In Conclusion:

Only CNN would replace Rick Sanchez with Eliot Spitzer, and hedge the future success of their network on that.

Who got tickets to The Monster Ball Tour Starring Lady Gaga? I got tickets to The Monster Ball Tour Starring Lady Gaga!

Tell your friends about the periodically active but usually dormant Tome of Communism

Lua

2010-09-20T17:23:00.005-04:00

One continual legacy of my struggles with a typical late-teenage depression is my lack of sleep. Ever since the summer of 2009 I've had a fairly erratic sleep schedule. Some nights I won't feel the need for sleep (despite knowing I should) until four or five AM. When I know I should be in bed by a certain hour I go, and lay awake for hours with this and that racing through my head before I fall asleep and wake up five hours later, barely rested. Last night was one such night; I got in bed at midnight since I had to be up at 8:30 the next day for my morning Spanish class. It took about three hours of laying in bed to actually fall asleep, and even then I woke up at 6 for no apparent reason.

A few weeks ago a freshman, let's call him Brian, drunkenly stumbled into my life. He reminds me a lot of myself then; a baby gay as they're called. New to this whole penis-sucking thing, not very sure of himself, terribly self-conscious, desperately wanting a boyfriend and thinking a relationship will be the cure for all his ills. Seemed like just another baby gay freshie until one night we were boozing and, as booze tends to do, the truth came out in the form of him being all over me (literally and figuratively) all night. Brian's not my usual type. He's tall as all hell, but not particularly hard on the eyes. Honestly he also seems kind of dumb but I'm trying to shake myself out of the intellectual elitism I've been finding myself sinking into (thanks in no small part to your average OU student).

Last night my brain's topic of obsession was how I came to be the romantically solitary person I am. As you all well know my young love life is dotted with failures. One or two guys I came on to that ultimately rejected me, disappointing webcam encounters with boys far away, a one night stand terribly lacking in both lube and any semblance of emotional connection, and of course there was that whole unrequited love thing I trifled with (once and never again, hopefully). In fact, of the two people (in Athens, anyway) that have ever shown romantic affinity for me the first was certifiably insane and the second decided he shouldn't date his best friend (and was also insane). I present myself as being happy and confident and to an extent I truly am, but when it comes to the dating world I am unhopeful and insecure enough to not even bother. And when something does come along my first reaction is to think of reasons why it should not happen.

Reenter Brian. I've heard from mutual friends that he complains quite a bit about not having a boyfriend, going so far as to say fixing that is the principal reason he's at OU. One of these days someone is going to come along and rape him of his idealism as did happen to me. I've discussed romance with just about all my friends and at some point in time it happens to everyone. Part of me simply doesn't want to be the one to bring him down. Another is honestly afraid of possibly winding up in a relationship, especially with someone who I'm not even actively pursuing. What if he suddenly decides I'm unattractive? What if I decide I've had enough of him? What if I'm already writing off something that could wind up great? At this point in me knowing him there isn't much Brian has to offer that I find attractive, he's simply not unattractive. And I, somewhat paradoxically being terrified of relationships while desiring sex, flirt back when he happens to be around but don't go out of my way to spend time with the boy.

Maybe if someone else came along and rattled him out of that naive idealism I wouldn't have to worry about the effects such idealism would have on my dating him, whatever those effects may even be. Knowing first and second hand the type of pain it can bring, I don't want to be the one to shatter his world. I think I want someone who's already had someone else do them the courtesy of popping their love bubble; at the most it's something we could bond over and at the least I don't have to worry about being such an asshole if I pick up someone who's damaged goods like me. Maybe this is me being considerate and thoughtful, or maybe this is me being insane. Who's to say?

Fuck Bitches, Get Money

2010-09-08T19:04:00.003-04:00

When I was a wee lad in grade school my mother always tried to impress upon me how important it was to get good grades. Nothing like "You'll amount to nothing with a B average!", but more of "Don't fuck up." And sure enough, I fucked up a couple times. Fourth grade was my first D (after pulling straight A's the year before, oddly), and I failed the second semester of Algebra II with Analysis in 10th grade (summer school blows). Once 11th grade came on though I was given more freedom to choose my classes. Since I picked AP's for subjects I excelled in and on-level classes with idiots for math and science, I managed to pull my GPA off the floor and wash away some of the dirt. Enough for Ohio University to think I was a shining example of intelligent black youth and give me a bunch of money recognizing that.

I've often said that I don't know what I would do if I were white, and that's because it's true. A friend of mine's former roommate suffers from the whiteness but is otherwise a remarkably capable, hard-working college student. I say he suffers from the whiteness because he's just as--perhaps more--intelligent than me, certainly more driven than me, and I think even has the strongest GPA between the two of us. However, he's white and I'm black so I get five figures of scholarships and grants annually and he's going to be in debt for the rest of his life. Affirmative action might not be fair to America's capable, impoverished WASPs but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna take what the guilty white man hands me.

That being said, I failed another class in the spring (goddamn jackass biology teacher, she can eat my shit for all I care). After dropping $1000 in surprise money I had left over from financial aid for a five week piano class to being my credit hours back up, I got my negro money back which is news excellent on a scale that I don't see very often. For the past two months I've been living off of $.45 day-old loaves of french bread, mayonnaise packets, and the charity of my friends. While I know compared to dirt-poor poverty that is a cakewalk, it's certainly the worse I personally have ever fared. However, with that bit of negro money soon enough I will be completely debt-free (minus my federal student loans; those aren't yet on the radar) for the first time since high school. Whoever said money doesn't buy happiness must've had their head lost hopelessly deep in the crevasses of their cushy bourgeois ass.

An Open Letter to White America

2010-08-16T12:46:00.003-04:00

White America,

You can't say "nigger". If your black friend doesn't recoil when you muster enough balls to call him a negro in jest, then perhaps you can use it around him to no ill effect. But on TV? The radio? We thought you would have learned this lesson some time ago, but apparently not. Every couple of months some intrepid old white person lets the word boldly fall out of their mouth in one form or another and then tries to rally support by crying First Amendment rights. And? My First Amendment rights say that I can call my mother a punk-ass bitch. Should I?

In case you hadn't noticed, saying "nigger" willy-nilly is bound to lead you to some serious bodily or professional harm if you're not careful. Is there a double standard? Yes. Is that wrong? From a logical standpoint, yes. But people aren't logical; that's the way things are, and it's the way things will probably stay. With centuries of keeping everyone else down under your oversized belt buckle, you really have no room to complain White America. History is full of double standards, and you just gotta deal with it.

You and your friends are tough enough to branch out across the globe and establish empires of war and commercialism, but not enough to restrain yourself from saying "nigger"? Nigger please. We understand that black people are the arbiters of most everything you find "hip" and "trendy" (to use your words) and, really, you just want to belong. That's fine, everyone wants to belong. But this is one social club you excluded your damn selves from. If we made it through genocides, imperialism, epidemics, slavery, lynchings, fire bombings, etc., we think you have it in you to deal with being barred from one single word.

Sincerely,
Everyone Else

Running On Faith

2010-08-06T11:57:00.009-04:00

Just when I think I'm out, I stay the fuck out. I used to ridicule those who consciously choose to stay uninformed of non-celebrity events happening around them. It appeared to me the mark of someone happy to live ignorant of things that matter. I still do, but as of late I at least feel like I have a better understanding of why they stay completely uninvolved with the politics of the time. First, the mildly upsetting: Wyclef Jean is running for President of Haiti. The busybody former Fugee was, as was everyone else, inspired to help the island hellhole after the earthquake there eight months ago. If he hadn't set up a foundation there in 2005 (after Hurricane Jeanne passed over the country), I would almost say he, like everyone else, was convinced Haiti didn't exist. I suppose one of the beautiful things about democracy is that anyone can run for any political office, but I'm willing to bet Jean's presidential run is basically a glitzed-up version of Basil Marceaux For Governor. Also, sometimes I think fellow limelight whore Sean Penn would do the world a favor by acquainting his face with a city bus.

I have a friend of mine to thank for first alerting me to this not too long ago. He has written a petition and is trying to organize a counterprotest against the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The devout, God-fearing Christophiles of Dove World Outreach are reaching out to the Muslim world by putting together a massive Quran burning, to be held on what day but September 11th, 2010. Their website (you can find it yourself, I don't want to inflate the egos of such 'people') even has a list of ten reasons to burn a sandnigger devil book. Most of the reasons are medieval-fare akin basically to 'they don't follow Christ, therefore they are subhuman', but the tenth is a real gem to me. "Islam is a weapon of Arab imperialism and Islamic colonialism." Dove World Outreach wouldn't know anything about Christianity, or any other faith, being used as a tool of imperialism. Literally, they wouldn't: people like this willingly lead themselves down a path of stellar retardation by choosing to educate themselves only with facts (sometimes 'facts') that reinforce whatever utterly uneducated opinion they conjured from the vast caverns of their minds. He's a lot nicer and more hopeful about it than I am, but you can read and sign Matt's appeal here.

Since I don't have cable anymore I rarely catch The Daily Show in a timely fashion, so this morning I watched a new segment they aired the day before yesterday named "I Give Up." To summarize, recently there was a bill proposed in Congress to provide billions of dollars in federal healthcare to help the 9/11 first responders who are now living with all sorts of respiratory illnesses from inhaling pulverized concrete and god knows what else as a direct result of their heroism. More than a third of the House of Representatives-- probably all Republicans--opposed the bill because of a "job destroying tax increase" that would be used to pay for the program. The tax increase? Closing a loophole on foreign corporations evading U.S. income taxes with offshore bank accounts. Regardless, the measure got a pretty healthy majority vote. But id didn't pass. Why? The Democrats who proposed the bill used some obscure procedure that would require a 2/3 majority for the bill to pass, in order to avoid the GOP trying to dick with the bill which could embarrass the Democrats come election time. Disregarding for a second the medically-bankrupted first responders out there, it's comforting to know that the people nominally in charge of the country--supposedly among the nation's best and brightest--are nothing but a gang of shiftless, trifling niggers whose jobs could probably be performed better by 535 fourth graders. Of all the bills to fail, this one. And of all the ways for a bill to fail, this way. I would say Congress could do themselves a favor and shove their heads up their asses but that would require Representative Dipshit to find both his head and his ass, a challenging task indeed. The layers of stupidity here are offensive almost beyond words. I'm so tired of people.

Rollout

2010-08-01T11:07:00.005-04:00

Last night I attended a Christmas party. I know, it's July, but there was a Christmas party complete with lights, a tree, Harry Potter themed beer pong, one of those decorative table trees, punch, and homemade Christmas jerky. Their first batch of punch was some hellish blend of old white and red wines that were well on their way to becoming vinegar, plastic bottled rum and vodka, and Hawaiian Punch mix. Quite a potent concoction, but with a bit of Sprite it began to taste less like sugary wine and more like a proper cocktail. The second batch was peach schnapps, vodka, rum, Mountain Dew, and more Hawaiian Punch mix. Maybe it was the wine talking but the second punch was much better.

Before I ventured out to celebrate the season, I made the important observation that I literally hadn't eaten anything all day. I've been having some sleep problems so I was asleep all afternoon. Cooked a simple plate of buttery garlic rice, drank some water, and off I went. My sort of friend, we'll call her Nina, probably thought the same but being, well, really dumb, in spite of her preparations she didn't know when to stop toying with the devil's drink. Folks were outside for a smoke break when the hero of our story falls/lurches out of the chair and expels what appears to be tandoori chicken all over the sidewalk and grass. She collapses in it, rolls out of it, and then rolls back in it. And then the poor girl's poor mother shows up. To her credit Nina made it to her feet on her own and stumbled over to the car (not before knocking into us) and it took them quite a while to leave--I don't even want to think about what was going on in that car.

Lately I've been discussing the possibility of my own mother coming to town for a weekend or so. Something about old (okay, older. Love you mom!) black women makes gay white boys queen out and squee in excitement. Should this plan come into effect though, it would involve my mother finding out what I have become. She once told a friend of hers that her kids feel comfortable telling her the things they've done, because she's probably done worse. While that's probably true I don't think she knows how close it is to not being true. I can't even conceptualize making a drink or playing pong with my mother, much less hitting a bong or going for a smoke break. But should the stars align and that wind up happening, she'll at least be proud to know her baby boy has his mother's knack for knowing when enough is enough.

I remember about a decade ago I was rummaging around in the attic when I found a silver cylinder labeled "Diamond Grind". I opened it up, it smelled funny, and I bought it downstairs.

"Mom, what's this?"
"A grinder."
"What's it do?"
"It grinds things."
"Like what?"
"Maybe when you're older I'll tell you." She takes it from me and I haven't seen it since.

Much like I never got a sex talk I never really got a drugs talk either. Earlier this year I asked her why I never got those painfully awkward moments she told me she knew I had common sense enough to not do anything so stupid it would wreck my life. I've had bad nights like anyone else but for two years of doing this now I think I'm doing pretty well. Nina, on the other hand, could maybe stand to wait until she's older. There's no excuse for rolling in your own vomit. Twice.

A Michael Corleone Moment, or: The Pentagon Papers 2.0

2010-07-30T12:42:00.000-04:00

A lot of people harsh on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III as not living up to the expectations of its predecessors, 1972's stellar The Godfather and 1974's near-flawless Part II. People bitch that the story isn't as coherent, Michael is boring in his old age, Sofia Coppola has the gravitas of a damp rag, etc. Personally while I don't believe it's as strong a film as the previous two, that's not to say that the third installment is a bad movie by any means. Regardless, one part everyone remembers from the movie they love to hate is when Michael is in the kitchen and laments "just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" Likewise, just when I thought international politics had lost its appeal for some time leave it to the internet to suck me back down.

Uncovered by Wikileaks and then published to The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian, the schticky-named Afghan War Diary is a collection of some 90,000 internal U.S. military memos, debriefings, assessments, and logs related to the War in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009 when it was largely out of the public eye. Much like its spiritual predecessor the Pentagon Papers did of the Vietnam War in 1971, these formerly classified documents paint a sordid tale of an already particularly heavy war. Among other things they detail instances of ISAF soldiers killing--sometimes in panic, sometimes as a simple misunderstanding, sometimes in cold revenge--Afghani civilians. Put in simpler terms, they merely confirm what any thinking person already knew was going on there. Innocents die because of scared/careless/confused/murderous soldiers, and the military sweeps it under the rug with press conferences and ~$3500 checks to the families of the deceased.

While not quite the same as the Pentagon Papers, which were the result of a commissioned and researched study on the war in Vietnam, this collection of documents will certainly (okay, hopefully) give the Pentagon's PR apparatus a strenuous workout. In 1971 the Pentagon Papers sent Nixon into a paranoid rage about mouthy aides that would ultimately consume his presidency, despite not being personally or professionally implicated in any of that document's thousands of pages. It certainly seems as though Obama is more mentally stable than Tricky Dick, but one still has to wonder how he will handle this mess which, like Nixon and the Papers, does not implicate Obama in any sense. Nevertheless the administration has released a statement distancing itself from the described conduct of the war, saying neatly "On Dec. 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy and new resources for Afghanistan and Pakistan precisely because of the grave situation there," and that "President Obama has been very clear and candid with the American people about the challenges that we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Right.

Obama has shown no signs of winding down the War in Afghanistan; in fact his administration has been working to redesign and revamp efforts there (for whatever reason). When the Pentagon Papers were released in 1971, American combat involvement in Vietnam was winding down. Yes Nixon was all about bombing the piss out of North Vietnam's burgeoning industry and cities, but when compared overall to the war circa 1968 it was clear the U.S. was folding its hand. Knowing today's American, the Afghan War Papers won't spur any sort of massive, organized, continual anti-war movement. That's not to say it won't have an effect on the conduct of Obama's war though. What that effect is exactly is anyone's guess. This could bring an effective end to American involvement in Afghanistan, or it could largely blow over within a few weeks' time. I bet on the latter.

Figures that this flaming pile of shit finds itself on Obama's front porch just as he finally stopped having to say of the Bush administration's less-than-legal actions "we can't move forward if we keep looking back". But it's so hard to not take a peek or two in the rear-view mirror when there's a massive fireball and the charred tatters of a Presidency in it. While the Afghan War Diary doesn't really reveal anything too shocking to the observer blessed with inference powers, there aren't many of those anymore so who knows what will come of this leak. At least General McChrystal is enjoying the lamp being off him for a change.

Your Irregularly Scheduled Programming

2010-07-15T23:59:00.003-04:00

-Two or so weeks ago I met up with our comrade BB in the Nation's Capital. He was a bit late because his mother is a whore but once he overcame that we had ourselves a ball. An HRC campaigner that I walked by twice earlier stopped the two of us and asked for a dollar or two. "It's your flowing blonde locks, of course we're that obvious." We were on our way to the District Chophouse and Brewery, where our possibly gay waiter put both our meals on one ticket until we asked him to separate them. A guard standing on the Capitol looking as menacing as possible with his M16 directed BB (black man knew better than to walk up to a white federal employee holding a rifle) and I to the building's public tours. When the intro referred to the hallowed ground as "the Temple of Liberty" we knew we were in for a trip. We bailed on the tour and headed for Dupont Circle to enjoy the shade, men, and homeless people--and the tall drink of art gallery-working gorgeous from Texas that pretty blatantly hit on one of us, and yet never bothered to facebook either of us like he said he would.

-When someone says to me the initials LBJ, I think Civil Rights legislation, relentless bombing of South Vietnam, and the Great Society. Clocking in as yet another reason for me to love Athens but hate the greater State of Ohio, Cleveland's former basketball prodigy LeBron James (who those with no consideration for history have also started calling LBJ) has been the subject of tireless discussion for the past week. It always struck me as somewhat sad, and honestly pathetic, for entire cities to stake their hopes and dreams in sports teams. Especially when they have such storied sports records as Cleveland. Even Detroit has the Tigers. God forbid a talented player leave the team that's offered him nothing in exchange for a better shot at winning. Isn't winning (and money) what professional sports are about? When I conquer the world, I'm paving over the midwest.

-Another reason to hate Ohio: while all my so-called friends were raging over LeBron raping their churches and burning their women, scientists discovered several antibodies that can kill 90% of HIV-1 strains, the most common subtype of the virus. While simply finding the antibodies doesn't mean there will be an over-the-counter vaccine by next month, this is the first foundation in forever upon which scientists may be able to build a vaccine. If they get herpes and hepatitis next, don't expect me around these parts very much anymore. I'll be too busy fucking everything that walks/conquering the world so I can pave over the midwest.

-It's been a good few days for me, a very good few days. After a couple of months of searching, I secured some menial employment at a dining hall to help the university impress incoming freshmen and their parents with a false, classy image of OU dining. Then to celebrate I blazed mad blunts for the first time in a long time and was reunited with my genius friend's certifiably insane, involuntary-commitment level high. I rediscovered how much fun it is to drink with friends, had my first sorta-Long Island Iced Tea (we were out of sour mix so my friend replaced the sour mix with more booze, ehh) which definitely wrecked my shit. I won't bore you/creepy you out with my sexual exploits but suffice it to say I've had my fun since I've been back. While I've since come down with a cold that sucks balls, it's still good to be back.

A 4th July Interlude

2010-07-04T19:57:00.001-04:00

Stay tuned for your irregularly scheduled programming.

They Just Smell That Way

2010-07-01T17:15:00.004-04:00

Some of you might know about Taylor, a guy I dated for a little bit a few months ago. Made some mistakes with him but luckily all I lost from that fiasco was a nice baby zippo. Took it right out of my hand, I assumed I would see it and him again, said he "sold his car and forgot it was in there". I know if I were selling a car I would scour that motherfucker with a fine tooth comb looking for anything and everything of mine that might be in there. For that and a few other reasons we parted ways. He probably still hates me and I don't really consider him a good person either, but I think neither of us would wish the other to be "raped by a pack of niggers."

Mel, did you ever think some people just shouldn't drink? A few years ago a good friend of mine gave up the bottle after pushing a friend of his down the steps. He has since found out he was only an angry drunk because he was an angry man at the time but he saw where there was trouble and put a stop to it, for his sake and others'. On the other hand Mr. Gibson, you don't seem to be able to tell when enough is enough. First the Jews carefully engineering all wars to gleam a profit, and now roaming packs of wild niggers raping white women for their sustenance. Will we see nomadic Mexicans toasting their tortillas over the burning corpses of celebrity exes next?

I think any chance of Ms. Grigorieva, your "fucking fake whore" of an ex, going easy on you in the divorce proceedings isn't just out the window but rolled down the dam wall, splashed into the river, and washed out to the ocean well on its way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And even if you do "come and burn the fucking house down", I don't think she will "blow you first", or any time soon for that matter. If anyone ever hires you again I wouldn't be too surprised, but if anyone ever dates you again, well goddamn. Let's just say if I were they type of nigger-bait you go for, I would pass. Perhaps, though, you'll find the love you want in Providence.

You Mad?

2010-06-27T14:06:00.009-04:00

This is one of many colorful scenes from this year's G-20 protests up in the always-exciting Toronto, Canada. In case you didn't know G-20 is shorthand for the Group of 20, a collection of the world's economic powerhouses where they sit down and talk about whatever it is imperialists talk about with riots going on outside. These summits typically attract protesters and--at least, as far as I've noticed through passive observation--at some point during the festivities shit gets real and someone flips a car, smashes a window, throws a brick at the riot police, what have you. The tough boys with mommy issues behind the riot shields reply in kind, and reports of "violent clashes" between "rioters and police" dominate the big three news crawls for days. The question I ask though, is why?

A riot is supposed to show whatever you're rioting against that the days of simple picket signs and sit-ins are over: the people are pissed, and the oppressors can expect this and a lot more in the future unless they reform their ways. And sometimes this works; American history would certainly be different without Malcolm X or SDS (although it would be equally as different without the Kennedy or Diem assassinations). Other times however, it doesn't seem to make much of an impact. Ask yourself this: why should the United States government care that some windows in a Canadian Starbucks got smashed in at a G-20 riot?

While an overturned car outside a Pizza Pizza obviously has no effect whatsoever on global economic policies, more wounding to the aims of the protesters and rioters is that what they're doing has become so damn passé. Every year there's a riot, every year people go to jail, and every year the G-20 goes about their business. The smoke from that burning police cruiser might as well be clouds in the sky. As an article that came up in my facebook feed this morning said of poverty, "its ubiquity integrates it into the numbing background noise of everyday life". Much like boycotting BP stations, not much more than a stressful work day for some kid on minimum wage will come from the disobedience in Toronto. How are the world's most powerful people supposed to be scared straight by the types of things they've come to expect?

Likewise, how are people supposed to be enticed to join the fight if the same thing happens every year? You wouldn't spend much time watching a TV show if the same damn thing happened in every episode. The kind of people that would be inspired to go protest in solidarity by images like this are likely already there with their signs and black shirts. For the rest of us, we might condemn the police brutality but outside of that the care factor just isn't there. Why join a movement that isn't moving? Considering the activities of the world's economic powers barbaric demands not ordinary but extraordinary action. Routine riots aren't the answer, and writing a blog read by a handful of people mostly for your own gratification isn't the answer either. I tell you though, if I had the solution I'd be out there trying to make a dollar off of it.

Rehab

2010-06-17T19:47:00.003-04:00

What is "of communism: world war pride" you ask? Well, it is what the gods of the internet thought was relevant to my Tome of Communism when the old dot-com URL that so many of you grew familiar with was replaced by a spam/placeholder site of that name. The working theory now is that the dot-com URL simply expired (strange why that would happen though, considering the $10 payment is an annual one) but given that it fell right in the middle of my computer--notably my Google account--being compromised by some sort of malware, I flipped shit and feared the worst.

Not to suck my own dick but there are a lot of things I'm pretty decent at. One of them is not computers, apparently. I mean, if the internet's acting up I know to try restarting the router before I get put on hold with India, I try to defragment regularly (as I remember to), and Norton and McAfee are both overpriced jokes. And while my email was indeed compromised, these past five years of hatred and bickering and bawwing escaped unscathed at the end of the day, aside from a slight URL change. For those of you who may not know this is my original blogspot address, around before Google bought Blogger. I like to think of it as vintage. *hair toss*

Beyond Petroleum

2010-06-16T11:00:00.007-04:00

So apparently not too long ago something exploded off the coast of Louisiana and set off a big ol' mess all along the Gulf Coast. The ongoing oilspill, the result of an uncappable well that formerly had the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on top of it, is the worst disaster in the United States' otherwise stellar environmental history. It will cost BP billions of dollars, and as my stark-raving cunt of a biology teacher incessantly noted in class, "zomfg the poor animals". Of particular interest though is the oil spill's effect on Barack Obama, the poor soul who happened to be President during one of the worst accidents to ever befall the United States.

It's pretty typical for every U.S. President to have shit get real at one point or another during their administration. Lincoln had the Civil War, FDR had Pearl Harbor, Bush had 9/11. Usually such times of crisis, in true American fashion, are resolved with someone somewhere getting their ass pummeled. With this oil spill, however, Obama finds himself in a curious position: there aren't any asses to kick. Sure, it's possible that some sort of negligence by BP can be tied to the eventual explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, but I don't think it would be very kosher to send a squadron of F-16s to Westminster. While Obama promised last night that "we will make BP pay", what exactly does that mean? Oustide of the literal, financial interpretation (was it ever even an option that BP would not be footing the bill for this?) there isn't much Obama can do other than promise that the environment will be repaired and that, well, "we will make BP pay."

BP, bombastically labeled "The World's Most Dangerous Oil Company" by corporate hippies with nothing better to do, has already been the target of much scrutiny over this mess. Within 50 days of April 20th (the date of the explosion) their stock halved in value, and they find themselves the target of popular (and pointless) boycotts on facebook and twitter. I remember a couple weeks ago a 'friend' of mine had as his status "So-and-So just saw pictures of animals covered in oil. My boycott of BP starts today." As is true with the vast majority of things posted on facebook, I could honestly not care less about your simple, overly-emotional, easily swayed personal beliefs. A handful of loud-mouth college students boycotting a company with annual revenues of $250 billion won't do much more than make a boring work day for the guy behind the counter. Or, if their boycott is successful, the company will have to cut costs and close underperforming (read: boycotted) stations. If anything will bring BP down, it will be the gargantuan costs associated with rebuilding some of the world's most fragile ecosystems.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is a serious environmental issue, taking a terrible toll on America's already somewhat-neglected coastlines. However, when you're stewing in your computer chair after seeing more pictures of animals choked in oil, consider the following: Obama is just the President, there really is not much he can do. For this oil spill to sink his presidency would not be surprising, but it would be quite disappointing. Likewise BP can't honestly be regarded as "murderous"; murder involves intent to kill, and this oil spill was purely an accident. Drilling for oil in deep water is tantamount to playing with fire, and sometimes you and everything around you gets engulfed in flames. Perhaps if Obama had tightened decades of loose regulations on Big Oil during his 14 months in office, perhaps if BP insisted on finer quality standards, perhaps if the Horizon's owners and operators, Transocean, weren't so consistently inconsistent this oil spill never would have happened. "Should've, would've, could've", my mother says.

The Impossible Will Take A Little While

2010-06-07T17:48:00.002-04:00

I'm convinced a friend of mine, lets call him Andrew, is a gay drunk. Considering the kind of company I keep I am quite surprised he's my first legit gay drunk. A couple nights ago I was at a rooftop party with some friends and Andrew, since he's going to be living there next year, was one of the hosts. He nursed the keg, I champed the vodka pink lemonade as carefully as I could, and while I was on the roof enjoying a sin stick my ears caught the ever-familiar intro to Poker Face. As Shawn had predicted, within five seconds I was inside and making bitches jealous of my boogie. And within five seconds of that I had Andrew's mouth in mine real deep which started a small trend of dudes kissing dudes, but Andrew planted the only open-mouthed one of the night on me. His girlfriend (who was not there) hates it when he does gay things; she once told him she would be more broken-hearted if she found out he was cheating on her with a man than a woman. Safe to say, I don't understand her line of thinking.

So I move out of my dorm room on Friday morning, finishing my last year of dorm life. One thing I've learned is that I hate having a roommate. Last year I had a single and I loved it, this year I took a chance on rooming with a friend of a friend and it didn't work out quite as well. It remains to be seen how I deal with housemates, but a roommate? Fuck that. Only a handful of hours left that I have to come back every night to someone who leaves my 360 running for hours after he's done with it, has half empty cans of Diet Mountain Dew scattered everywhere, and permeates everything in the room with the smell of straight boy. Not straight boy smell like that wonderful fresh-from-the-shower scent, straight boy smell like day old socks and Axe body spray. Nice guy, kind at heart. Just smelly and messy (and terribly forgetful; if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "Have you seen my keys around?").

A job is hard as shit to come by. Reasons are multifold: there is a recession that's made employment at all levels a challenge to come by, getting a summer job at a college town is never easy, my résumé is paper-thin, and I'm sure my defeatist attitude isn't doing anything to help. I was considering selling some of my artwork for whatever meager profits that might get me, maybe do some commissioned work if there's demand enough. At least my intoxicating habits have yet to begin eating into my personal finances. I called my landlady (also the mother of one of my friends/fellow renters) and explained to her my chronic unemployment, she sounded as supportive as a landlady who's not getting paid could be. This weekend $200 showed up in my bank account; I'm not really sure where it came from but I'm not really complaining either. Let's see how far I can make it stretch!

That Crazy Casbah Sound

2010-05-15T15:34:00.007-04:00

Arizona's quite a state. Home to that sheriff that likes putting prisoners in hot pink underwear and chain gangs, a recently single friend of mine who has no idea how to be single, and apparently intolerance. That immigration law they recently passed has been plastered all about as encouraging racial profiling, allowing police to ask anyone who looks illegal to show proof of citizenship. At least that's what the Facebook group told me. And now the sunbelt's pride and joy has taken things a step further, with the governor recently singing into law a bill putting strange limitations on ethnic studies classes in schools.

Last year I took a Black Media class here at OU, which focused on portrayals and involvement of black people in American media from the Reconstruction period to present. (Not) surprisingly there were a lot of white people in the class. And if you showed up, paid attention, and did decently well on the exams I imagine it would be difficult to leave the class after ten weeks thinking that racism is over and everything is hunky-dory in America (the professor actually posed the question, 'Does Obama's presidency mean the end of racism?' Everyone laughed). The Arizona law forbids grade schools to teach classes geared "primarily [towards] pupils of a particular ethnic group" and also bans classes that may advocate overthrowing the U.S. government or harbor "resentment towards a race or class of people." Oh my my.

It's not that such "ethnic studies" classes seek to make you hate whitey and want to burn Washington, and in fact I'd bet most people don't come out of the class like that. However, for the emotionally immature, it's not like you can't see why they feel that way. Contrary to what every state between Maryland and California will tell you, American history is drenched with abuse, hatred, relocation, and slaughter of minorities. It's almost as if America's trying to catch up to the centuries of oppression her big brothers and sisters in Europe have under their belts. Hatred breeds hatred, it's that simple.

Unfortunately these "ethnic studies" classes are a necessary part of education in this country. There might be a Black History Month and a Hispanic History Month and what have you, but they all fall under the umbrella of White History Year. In order to gain a functioning understanding of your environment and your history you need to examine multiple viewpoints, even if they may teach you that your race has been a right proper band of cunts over the years (and I'm not just talking about whites). That's not to say a class on Black Media is a flawless vision into the American black experience, but it's better than your only knowledge of it coming from a day of lecture on the Civil Rights movement in your "American History, 1865-Present" class.

Four On The Floor

2010-05-09T12:03:00.000-04:00

This entry you are reading is representative of many firsts for me. First post in some time, first post from my wonderful iPod, first time I have woken up as sober as I did after drinking as much as I did, first time taking care of not one but two people, as well as some other firsts I shant discuss in this family setting.

So as I lay here half naked on nate and coreys futon (yes I was quite drunk and no nothing happened) pumping tunes into my ears and eyeing my friend nick across the room to make sure he doesnt go out like Hendrix, I think to myself, "if only my mother could see me now".

Not that you will read this, but happy mothers day mama.

And get off my ass about the typos and errors; for some reason autocorrect is not working right now, a vital function in touchscreen keyboards.

Get On My Horse, I'll Take You 'Round The Universe

2010-04-28T17:10:00.006-04:00

It is impossible to overdose on marijuana. This is a claim I have always heard, and usually believed since the only people who told me otherwise were the same people who told me one joint was more cancerous than five store-bought cigarettes. In light of recent experiences however, I'm not so sure anymore. I am still convinced it's (at least practically) impossible to smoke yourself to death, but is a non-lethal overdose possible? Consider the following.

Tuesday of last week was, of course, April 20th. To celebrate the day's festivities I didn't expect too much out of the ordinary. Some friends of mine had bought dishes to make crème brulée, and I assumed we would feast on the Rolls Royce of stoner foods after smoking a few bowls and playing Mario Kart. But before that, I had a typical day of responsibility to take care of. At 2 I went to the dining hall to meet up with my friend Nick for lunch, as I do every day, only to find he wasn't there. I called him to ask where he was and I could immediately tell he was fairly baked and he had forgotten about lunch because of that. Being without a lunch date, I had no option but to join.

When I got there I was told to smoke fast, for we had a magical destination to go to. I did as told, and before I knew it we found ourselves in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. We ordered our food, got back in the car, and our mostly sober DD drove to the bowling alley for Andy and I's bowling class (yes, that is a class here) that Nick sat in on. Once we got there we finally got to sample the glory of our Double Downs that had been taunting us with their heavenly aroma the entire car ride. The sandwich is so greasy, it pruned the tips of Nick's fingers. It is so delightfully decadent and delicious, I've taken it upon myself to make my own at the dining halls when they have fried chicken patties available.

Our bowling professor showed up for class about ten minutes late and in all likelihood not sober herself. After saying "it's been one of those days" with a smile, she had the owner turn on the blacklights, laser lights, and 80s music for a round of what they call cosmic bowling. It was like a movie; throwing neon balls down a purple-lighted bowling lane to the sounds of Toto and The B52's. It was at this point in the day we decided that our lives are, collectively, the perfect stoner comedy. Double Downs dipped in mashed potatoes and gravy? High professors? Cosmic bowling? How could things get any better?

After a few healthy rounds of high Left 4 Dead 2 I got a call from two gay friends imploring Nick and I to join them at their house. Never saying no to inebriation, the two addicts journeyed the twenty minutes to sample the very 60's pop art bowl and mid-90's modern art bong and play some Super Mario RPG. Before long other people showed up with more festivities, more pieces, and more sativa. We matched their output by packing a hookah with almost an entire eighth and taking too many drags off it. But the coup de grace of the evening was the product of this strange beast-man, a friend of the happy couple's. He sat like a dog, snapped at moths that made their way into the house, and consistently sniffed the air about him. He's also an excellent cook, working at a restaurant in town and having prepared for the group five (huge) strawberry adorned crème brulées enhanced with the taste of champagne and the wonders of weed. Eventually the night culminated in an exhausted game of truth or dare where I switched shirts with a woman and massaged said woman's cleavage with an ice cube. I don't know how I willed myself back to my room at 3 AM. The next morning I woke up still very baked and made an honest attempt to go to class before realizing that was simply not possible.

April 20th may have only been a week ago for you, but for me it is months in the past. I did not know it was possible to consume so much pot in one day that it alters your perception of time for the next week. There are people from that night that I have no recollection of other than others telling me about them. moreover it's as if all the events of the past week are blurred together into one nondescript day; I don't remember what day or what time things happened. It's almost as if my recent life can be divided into pre- and post-4/20. But now I'm regaining a proper sense of time and my academics are chugging along just as strong as they were before (lucky for me, this week is midterm week, not last week). My night of debauchery and the recovery week following it were part startling and part incredible, the kind of college tale that only happens once in an academic career. Nevertheless, I think it may be time for some semblance of moderation to return to my life.

Amerikitsch

2010-04-19T20:11:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago a dear friend of mine learned that one of his in Long Island was recently rendered homeless and is, in her own words, starving. I suppose I should elaborate and say that these two have never met in person; they happened across one another on Omegle and liked each other enough to stay in touch. This was the first time in some time he had heard from his Omegle Princess and in the moment he was afraid he would never hear from her again. To remedy the problem I proposed we each get dressed, meet outside somewhere, steal a car and drive to New York. Don't pack anything, don't tell anyone we're going, just go. Ditch the car in Manhattan before spending a day to just walk around and absorb the sights. Get some coffee in Greenwich Village, then con our way into a hostel for the short term. Get jobs waiting tables at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant paying just enough for food and to help with rent while we live with my art school friend on the West Side. And eventually we'll have saved up enough money to take the three of us--myself, my friend, and his Omegle Princess--to see the Phantom of the Opera sequel on Broadway.

Now, despite the romantic nature of casting off everything and running to New York, we actually stayed here in Athens to tend to our various dry responsibilities that, at the time, neither of us really liked. Even in Athens, the bastion of knowledge and drugs that I so glorify, I find myself getting so tired of the daily affairs of life. Lately it's really gotten me down how routine and ordinary my life has become. Wake up, trudge to class, go to lunch, trudge back to class, come back to my dorm, dick around online, maybe go get high, come back, sleep. When weed becomes boring, you know you have a problem. I've always had my contentions with the cliché but I had never noticed it to such an extent in my own life as I have this past week.

Part of the reason I feel so pulled towards people and places I've never seen in person, I think, is because they still have that element of mystery to them. Face-to-face communication is immensely different than anything the internet (or even the telephone) has to offer and without knowing each other in person there's still a shadowed perspective to the relationship. And this isn't to harsh on my friends in Athens or Rockville; (most of) those people are just as cool. Being part of a culture that still very much looks down on making friends through the internet it's a strange feeling when I find myself more attracted to some multiethnic mutt in North Carolina or a fiery ginger in Texas than the Ohioan I am was supposedly dating. Every time we talk I wonder how much different we would be together if they lived just down the street instead of millions of miles away.

In the grand scheme of things I am happy here, really I am. Athens is a wonderful little city and I know some great people here. I joke around and tell people I'm living a mid-life crisis at 19, but when a significant part of me wants to go be a bohemian New Yorker sometimes I wonder how much I'm actually joking. With one exception my classes range from fairly dull to suicidally inane, I have little to challenge me mentally, and I don't know anymore whether it's more impossible to find a (sane) boyfriend or a job in this pissant pseudoliberal backwater. However, my artsy nerve seems to be attempting a comeback, several of my friends will soon be done with their extracurriculars that have so far kept them out of my life this spring, and in the course of a breakup I found out I am a master troll (that's what the asshole gets for stealing my zippo). Through all of this tumult though there is a solid foundation, a something to fall back on if need be. Thanks for oddly being one of the more stable aspects of my life, internet people.

A Series of Open Letters

2010-04-13T12:36:00.003-04:00

Of course I could specify who all these people are since ~~none~~ few of them read this blog, but that kind of takes the fun out of it.

Dear 1,

Thanks for the post idea.

Dear 2,

Stop fucking IMing/calling/texting me with nothing to say. "Sup?" does not count as having something to say. If you're gonna contact me, please, have something on your mind.

Dear 3,

Stop trying to tell me what to do with my goddamn life. If you were my boss and you told me to be more friendly to the customers, fine. If you were my teacher and told me to elaborate on a question more, okay. But my personal life is my dominion and nobody else's. Who are you to shoulder in on it and tell me I shouldn't do something? Fuck off.

Dear 4,

I don't know what to think about you anymore. While I enjoy the attention and appreciation (one might go so far as to call it validation) you haven't been around for a few weeks now, for various convenient reasons. I know you say I don't talk to you very much but I feel you're not very interested anymore, and honestly neither am I. I told you I didn't do this long distance shit the very first day I met you.

Dear 5,

Stop fucking up. You know what I'm talking about. Everyone has their slip-ups, fine, but goddamn. You know better. Oddly enough I can't really say I'm worried, but I am bothered.

Dear 6,

It seemed a bit irresponsible at the time but in the long run I think what we did right before break was very healthy for our friendship. Who would have thought sex could actually uncomplicate things (knock on wood)?

Dear 7,

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaked

Dear 8,

As time goes on I find there are fewer and fewer people whom I can spend an extended amount of time with and not wind up getting pissed off at. I don't know if that's a problem with me or with people, but regardless thank you for being someone I can spend hours with and call it a good day. Part of me wishes I had more people like that in my life, but if I did folks like you wouldn't seem as special.

Dear 9,

I know good and damn well you were not born with that face. What happened to it? And I don't mean that in an insulting way (even though you are a complete bitch), it's pure curiosity.

Dear 10,

At this point in our friendship it is glaringly obvious you want my dick. You, however, have a vagina. It's not going to work.

Culture Clash

2010-03-31T13:57:00.005-04:00

Those of you privy to Facebook Bobby may already know this, but last night I walked into the bathroom and came across one of my Chinese floormates washing his feet in the bathroom sink. Now, this isn't the first instance of the Chinese folks on this floor doing weird shit, merely the most heinous. And oddly, they all involve the bathroom. Washing their clothes in the sink, habitually hocking loogies into any sort of plumbing orifice, scowling at me in the shower room (despite my warning them that they were gonna see my dick if they didn't wait a minute), covering the seat with toilet paper and leaving it for the next person to use or flush at their discretion; all minor annoyances. But, at least in my opinion, its pretty fucking gross to watch someone pick at their toe fungus over the sink I used to use to brush my teeth (that didn't stop him from using it to brush his, though). And it's not like they're uncultured brutes; given that they're here I'd assume they all come from families with enough money to be familiar with 21st century living standards. I'm pretty sure China isn't in the dark ages anymore, but if these guys' behavior is any indication I couldn't be more wrong. As my roommate pointed out, "If you think that's bad, imagine what they do in the showers."

From The "No Shit" Files

2010-03-23T19:47:00.003-04:00

It isn't too often that I see a news story, much less headline, that makes me lean back and audibly say "no fucking shit". "Kids who lose parents still grieve as adults", however, is one of those headlines. What kind of time did someone waste to write this riveting journalistic documentation of a fact of life more obvious than "water is good"? Moreover, how much did they get paid to alert us to this breaking news? A sum of money that could have been put to better use than paying dim-witted fuck-knobs with B.A.'s in English, like perhaps hiring staff with some sort of discernible talent.

Ask A Black Dude

2010-03-21T15:49:00.006-04:00

After an eventful last Friday night in Athens I made my way back to darling ol' Rockville, and quickly remembered why I hate this place. So many stores, malls, movie theaters, restaurants, and still there's nothing to do. If it hasn't already been labeled as such (or something similar) I would like to coin the term Capitalist's Dilemma right now. Within 12 hours of coming back, I find myself bored nearly to tears. And no, I don't have it in me to masturbate for an entire week straight.

Two of my friends went back to school right before I got back, and the third won't be free until Friday night. Sometime between now and then I'm sure I'll hang out with my brother, and some friends may or may not be visiting DC just to get out of Athens. Until then however, please make your questions interesting!

Meanwhile, in the World

2010-03-16T10:39:00.004-04:00

This morning, after stomping ass on a History final I had presumed I would fail, I listened to the Soviet National Anthem on my way back to my dorm in celebration, and then popped in Halo 3 for some multiplayer mayhem. Needless to say, mayhem is what followed. Round after round I had my ass handed to me, and I finally put the controller down once I realized I was more pissed off at the game than I was at having a final at 8 in the morning. Priorities. Being part of the internet generation I can't be apart from technology for more than five minutes, so I quickly hopped online and played some Bob Marley to soothe my nerves. I hold that the version of "No Woman No Cry" on Legend is one of the finest live performances ever recorded.

After the typical internet experience--facebook, 4chan, porn, facebook--I wound up surfing the big three cable news sites for the first time in a very long time. John Edwards' mistress has an interview and spread in GQ and is reportedly in tears over how bad her photos are. Pauvre bébé. But hey: no matter how gargantuan your ass looks or how masculine your face looks Rielle, at least you don't have breast cancer. Senator Chris Dodd "puts Wall Street in Washington's sights", as he proposes legislation that would be the most sweeping reform of the economic system since the New Deal. Also important to remember is that lobbyists were not an omnipresent and nearly omnipotent political force in 1933. Israel is pushing to build more Jewish housing, this time in east Jerusalem, to the enraging of the Palestinian community who claim ownership of the city as well as the Obama administration who has called Israeli conduct "insulting". Honestly, everything that can be said about Israel and Palestine that can be said has been said (kind of like the teabaggers). What more is there?

Good to see nothing has changed during my absence. Llewellen, my pipe?

Again Again

2010-03-09T12:36:00.001-05:00

Another homophobic Republican has been caught with a cock in his mouth. This week's victim, California State Senator Roy Ashburn, was arrested for driving (his state-provided vehicle) while drunk early Wednesday morning after leaving a gay bar in Sacramento. Yesterday morning Ashburn mustered up the balls (pardon the sort-of pun) to say on the radio what everyone had long ago concluded. How often does a straight man get arrested leaving a gay bar at 2 in the morning?

"I am gay. And so I … those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. But I am gay. But it is something that is personal and...I felt with my heart that being gay didn't affect -- wouldn't affect -- how I did my job..."

In case you were wondering, Ashburn stands by his anti-gay voting record by saying he was simply representing the will of his constituents. Let us look upon this shining example of a politician: so devoted to his constitutional duty as a state senator to represent the people, that he should do so even when it goes directly against all that would serve to benefit him. So selfless, so honorable. If only we had more Roy Ashburns in the world, maybe this would be a more perfect union.

Majora, Minora

2010-03-03T01:00:00.001-05:00

So I think it's been reaffirmed that I'm the worst blogger in existence. People tell me occasionally that I should do this sort of thing for a living, and its times like these that I remind them that one can't just up and leave their actual job for three weeks and expect to come back to something of a warm, welcoming audience. You know I love you; please love me back for I can't handle another broken heart (totally not a sympathy card). However if I showed some sort of diligence, some sort of determination then maybe I could write for a living. Not talk, but write. I've said it before: I'm very different on here than I am in person. I loathe public speaking and in conversation with people I tend to take a more passive role.

At any rate, what the hell have I been up to? Well, for one, I'm bracing to fail one of my classes. My US History from 1945-Present teacher (I refuse to call him a professor) is a dick. He told my roommate on a paper (shortly before he dropped the class), "this paper makes you sound ridiculous" and gave him a D-. An idiotic dick. According to him, DDT does not cause cancer and Ho Chi Minh was a Stalinist. In addition to someone who knows not what the fuck they are doing, my little Feels-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die period (which we're mostly over, btw) didn't exactly enable me to focus on my academics. I'm not going to do well in another class of mine either, but that disappointment is nobody's fault but my own (apparently you actually have to go to class, even if it's at 10 AM and only a 100-level).

Counseling has been going pretty well. Not at all what I expected, but well. My shrink is warming up to me and doesn't seem as suffocatingly cautious as he used to. I leave each session less and less morbidly depressed, so that's an improvement. He told me to keep a journal of my thoughts and feelings throughout the week so that something dominating my mind on Sunday isn't forgotten by Friday's session. However, I've been so goddamn busy I forgot about it until just now. Paper after paper after paper juggled with a re-blooming social life, whatever worries counseling brings upon my shoulders, a kid that wants to jump my bones (and I want him nowhere near mine), and an apparent boyfriend (I know what you're thinking, "wut"). I've got a lot on my plate. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to break a freshman's heart. Things have a way of coming full circle.

Enough

2010-02-15T11:23:00.005-05:00

of the goddamn snow. Growing up as a little kid, that's something I never thought I would say. D.C. winters are notoriously cold and rainy. Almost every time a system comes in from the west, the air temperature happens to be around 40 degrees. Or, should air actually be cold enough for snow, most of it breaks up over the Appalachian mountains. In general precious snow days were few and far between, and each one was cherished. Of course, now that it is snowing a lot I'm in college where they would think twice about cancelling class for a terrorist attack much less a little frozen precip in the face or blindness from platinum white snow sheets reflecting every source of light in town.

As you know I now reside on the other side of the mountains, yet paradoxically it's been my homeland that's been getting the vast majority of the snow. Last I heard Rockville was in 30+ inches (that's a lot, for you metric-folk). And naturally this snow should hit (again and again and again) when I need my mother to do her taxes so I can fill out my FAFSA at a reasonable time of year. Kind of difficult to get to where she needs to go to do that when there's three feet of snow on the streets. I imagine it's also pretty hard for her to make any money or keep any sanity with the government, her employer, closing up shop day after day. Cultural attitudes tell me that snow is fun, innocent, romantic, and carefree. Hah.

Saturday night Nick and I saw a free play put on by the school of theater here. These plays are typically hit or miss, but atypically it was not snowing on Saturday. The play, "Proof", is about an aged mathematical genius with Alzheimer's being taken care of by his almost-as-intelligent daughter in Chicago and her not-as-intelligent sister trying to distance herself in fabulous New York. Because wasting away like that is Nick's greatest fear, and I watched that happen to my grandmother for six years (and counting) it hit the both of us pretty hard. To be honest though, the thing that stuck out most in my mind about "Proof" was the cool summer nights they described. Fairly warm, pretty humid, the occasional blast of cool air reminding you fall is on the way. Cicadas in the distance, in the treetops; an orange sun slipping giving way to that navy blue/deep purple sky with the occasional star or satellite. Sitting on the porch with a glass of lemon iced tea, and being content, maybe even happy, with everything.

Goddamn snow.

I Am Anyone You Want Me To Be

2010-02-08T10:47:00.005-05:00

So yet again I've been out of it for a week or so. Of course I'm only talking about an internet presence; I've been fully conscious for the past week; my life has been very dry, very non-psychoactive as of late. A friendly reminder that I don't actually have a drug problem is always nice, but then again so are drugs, especially during times like these. I thought that after I spent an unusually warm Tuesday night wandering around the pitch-black golf course (yes, Ohio University has a golf course, no I can't tell you why) sobbing uncontrollably I would be good for a while. And I was, at least for a little while, but I can already feel those emotions slithering their way back in me. I finally got an appointment scheduled for Friday, though. With a permanent counselor, provided the one they gave me is someone I can work with (probably not).

Did you know it's possible to get pre-evicted? The lease I had signed for a house next year required us to make some payments before we moved in this June. For myself and one roommate, let's cal her Holly, our first payment was due March 1st. She paid ahead of time, I didn't. For our third roommate, let's call him Derek, his first was due February 1st because that's just the deal he worked out. February 1st came and went without him paying our landlady, and she tried to call him but he didn't pick up. The next day he wrote her a check and dropped it off at what he thought was her house but was actually her neighbor's house. In the meantime, our landlady flipped shit and cancelled the lease because she didn't get any word from Derek. In a way I lucked out because I had no idea where my payment of $650 was going to come from, and I get my $300 deposit back at a time when I could really use some money. However, the landlady violated the terms of the lease in cancelling it so abruptly, so for our vindictive friend Derek and those caught in tow this isn't over. Also, where the fuck am I living next year?

Around the same time, through a good friend of mine and his intensely annoying sort-of girlfriend/boob support system/free ativan supply, I met this freshman. We can call him John. John is a bit shorter than me, a physics and math major (gah), and in the closet. At least to his rich, white, tax-evading suburban parents. I used his lap as a pillow while I was trying not to fall asleep during Little Nicky. Does the Devil's white son remind anyone else of David Bowie? I get told incessantly by another friend that we'd "be really cute together" (John and I, not satanic David Bowie and I) but honestly I'm not that attracted to him, even though he seems to rather like me. Attracting the not-attractive is a pretty well-defined pattern in my life, whether it be guys that message me online without realizing we've met before, or 15 year olds with road rage and drug problems. I'd chide him for not being out to his parents, but then I remember only half of my parental unit has seen the light.

In Conclusion:

You know things are bad when I'm using Lady Gaga lyrics as post titles (Move Over Mr. L).

Listen to Gaga and Elton at the Grammys if you haven't already. Personally I couldn't handle the fabulousness.

Mass Effect 2 is a lot of fun, although resource mining is a lot more boring than it was in the first game. However, listening to Gaga while scanning planets for element zero makes it a little better.

Tell your friends about The Gagalicious Tome of Gagammunism

's A Frustrating Mess

2010-01-30T13:44:00.000-05:00

On my first Saturday back in Athens, which was roughly three weeks ago, myself and a friend went to a 'classy' birthday party. I cay 'classy' instead of classy because while everyone was dressed up, they were drinking Keystone and Natty Light. Not my company, we were classy through and through. Even as we were chatting with self-described micks and wops, and a questionable figure in a white-and-red phoenix leather jacket expanded our know-how of drug use ten-fold. Ever heard of candyflipping on a stick? It's nothing you want a part of, trust me.

At some point in the night I noticed my friend was gone; probably ran off with some moderately attractive girl he had been talking to on again and off again throughout the night. I feel guilty about being so selfish with my emotions, but bearing in mind that at this point standing still was an adventure I did feel somewhat abandoned. Following that sad feeling, of course, came thoughts of self-disappointment, self-disgust, and ultimately suicide. I've been a sad drunk before, but never like that. Moreover, this isn't the first time I've had these feelings, including suicide. In fact, the last time it happened was over the summer--completely sober--in regards to things I thought I had moved on from. Needless to say, the morning after, and after that, and after that were quite depressing.

The following Monday, not allowing time for second-guessing, I headed over to Hudson's 3rd floor, where counseling and psychological services (CPS) are located. I used their one working computer to fill out a self-assessment, and then they scheduled an intake appointment for me two very long, very heavy weeks later. I didn't expect any sort of miracle work from one appointment, but the whole time I was looking forward to it. I personally couldn't handle my problems anymore, having heart-to-hearts with my friends had long ago stopped doing anything, and drowning my problems in various substances, well, even though I felt like I wanted to die what semblance of logical thought I had left kept me from actively or passively pursuing that. Thankfully.

After two weeks of nonstop brooding and finding displeasure in everything my appointment day finally came. When I got to the receptionist's desk at 3:00 on the dot she said there was no record of my having an appointment to see anyone, not just that day but at all. That was a bit rough to hear but I (mostly) maintained my composure as she told me to wait down the hall. 40 minutes later she has me see this lady who, ironically, they brought back part-time because they were overwhelmed with students needing help. We went into a little office next to a bathroom, she told me a little bit about herself and I told her a lot about myself. And after an hour of talking about a lot of things I really don't like talking about and (stupidly) holding back tears she confirmed what I already thought; I'm "showing signs of depression related to loss of something that could have been, and to an extent a loss of what was". It's what I get for being a dreamer, right? CPS was supposed to call me back this week to set up a permanent counselor and meeting time, but true to their track record they didn't. So on yet another Monday I get to go there in person and let them know they're letting a student in need down.

That's what I've been up to these past few weeks. And you?

It Can't Happen Here

2010-01-21T18:08:00.007-05:00

I remember way back when they were teaching us about American government for the first time (in high school; it was probably the ninth overall), and one of the points my teacher touched on was the limits placed on the amount of money corporations could give to candidates. On one hand it seems like corporations, like you and I, should be free to donate as much money as they want since they too are constituents of the United States government. However, once one applies even a modicum of common sense it becomes obvious that the comparatively limitless funds of Lockheed Martin should keep them from endlessly donating to a political campaign. You and I can only afford to give maybe $1000. Raytheon could sponsor an entire campaign themselves.

Well, this is how I see things, how my 9th grade government teacher sees things, and how I think most people see things. Except, that is, for the five members of the US Supreme Court that yesterday removed a ban on corporate ~~financing of~~ spending on political campaigns. You can argue pretty well I think that these laws were really only laws in name only, and any special interest that cared to could weasel around campaign finance laws. But still, it was nice to say we could keep JPMorganChase, or even the UAW, from cutting a check in Barack Obama's name and blatantly expecting something in return. However, now instead of being inched open like a kid escaping his room at night to get some cookies, the door to fascism has been forcefully kicked in. But I suppose it's not all doom and gloom; two years ago the "Hail To The Cheese Stephen Colbert's Nacho Cheese 2008 Presidential Campaign" was a joke. Thanks to the Supreme Court though, Stephen Colbert could be our next president. Now that's what I call expanding democracy!

A Love Affair

2010-01-16T01:22:00.007-05:00

Haiti gained its independence from French colonizers in 1804 thanks largely to a former slave by the name of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was ironically partially inspired by France's own revolution. The young nation--first free black nation in the world and second oldest republic in the western hemisphere--also managed to ward off threatening British and Spanish armies. Freedom of religion was enshrined in their constitution (although under L'Ouverture Catholicism was made the official religion), and all residents of Haiti were labelled black regardless of their skin color, in an effort to destroy the racial hierarchy established by the French. Things certainly started promisingly for Haiti. Now, I don't pretend to be an expert on Haitian history, but it seems clear that something at some point went radically awry.

In case you didn't know, Haiti is miserable. And that was before the earthquake. The last functioning government they had was headed by the lazy-minded fascist Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was actually less of a murderous asshole than his father. Baby Doc hightailed it out of Port-au-Prince in the mid-1980s with a nation of pissed off poor people clamoring for his neck, the entire contents of the Haitian Treasury, and the comfort of a United States Air Force escort to France. The wonders of the Cold War. Efforts to better the condition for Haitians by foreign governments have, like nearly all of their efforts anywhere else, failed miserably (if you sent any money to USAID, you'd have been better off wiping your ass with it). In Haiti, there exists a traditional cure for hunger pangs that the partakers in it insist contains many minerals needed for survival. However, those of us with a ~~healthy~~ ample diet know that eating bon bon de terres--dirt cookies--is far from nutritional.

And then came that earthquake. I suppose it's inspirational that the miserable island nation is literally overflowing with foreign aid at the moment (I know Harry Reid's pretty damn happy with the timing). But Haiti has been in a desolate, desperate situation for decades now, and nobody's really batted an eye. Especially not the United States, which seems to be priding itself on generosity towards a nation in crisis, as if nothing was amiss before Monday. Sure Haiti will get a hand in clearing out its streets, burying its dead, rebuilding the Presidential Palace, but then what? The media will find something else to fawn over as Haiti fades from the public consciousness again, and the islanders go back to eating sun-baked dirt to avoid starving to death. 700 miles from Miami Beach, no less. I'm not saying you should truthfully care about anyone or anything in Haiti. I'd understand perfectly well if you didn't. But if you claim to, at the very least don't forget about them once Anderson Cooper flies back to Atlanta.

Bronze Corral

2010-01-07T00:54:00.002-05:00

Well I've been gone unannounced for a couple days without so much as a peep from me anywhere in the blogging world, that is until 1 AM on a Thursday. Must mean I'm back at school. My first night back I made the unfortunate mistake of going with some friends to West Virginia to look for a place to eat. I suppose the fact that we were going to that other state to eat should have been my first tip-off, but it wasn't until we were actually at the Golden Corral that I realized what exactly I had gotten myself into. It was my first time at a Golden Corral, and I wasn't hungry so I figured I would just get a drink and provide polite company. Then the cashier slurred at me "that'll be 13.85" or something like that, because apparently one can't simply join their friends for dinner and not be trusted to stay away from the food they don't want. Regardless, that was my last $11 (a friend had to spot me the $1.85) and to make up for such highway robbery I resolved to be a one-man buffet apocalypse out of spite. And that was my second mistake.

With mashed potatoes reminiscent of stiffened Elmer's glue with a little added butter for flavor, my attempt to get more than eleven dollars' worth out of the Golden Corral was going poorly. The fried okra was cold, the rotisserie chicken was a bit like wet chalk, the sour cream came in scoops not unlike ice cream (we thought it was butter first), the biscuits were cheese and garlic flavored skipping stones, and the bacon-wrapped scallops on a stick had been sitting out so long the bacon was beginning to be subsumed by the scallops, which long ago gelatinized into one large scallop stick. And they had brussels sprouts, which is just inexcusable. But still not as offensive as the brothers drenched in matching (!) Adidas clothes and complimentary Adidas cologne.

In other news, my bank won't answer their phones when I try to call them regarding an "outstanding balance" on my account, employment is even a bitch for college students these days, I forgot how hot my lap gets when my laptop is actually in my lap, and I don't know why everyone got me a Christmas present when I got them nothing, expected nothing, and nobody else got anything from anyone. I guess I'm just that awesome? I don't know. But it's fun to be back in Athens (minus Golden Corral).

A Time for Wine and Roses, or, a Boy's Decade in Concise Review

2009-12-31T03:49:00.013-05:00

At the start of the year 2000 I was barely 9 years old and already calling bullshit on the Y2K insanity. I loved Kenan and Kel, thought Rugrats jumped the shark with Dil before I even heard of the phrase, believed everything my parents told me, and thought America was the greatest country in the history of forever, bar none. I thought that even though Gore was a boring puss Bush stole the election ("I don't want a man named after a plant as my president!" I remember telling my parents in my best sassy black bitch voice). CNN really was The Most Trusted Name In News™, Jimi Hendrix was a stranger, and I was writing a series of 3 to 10 page short stories about an anthropomorphic giant pumpkin monster named Jack-O that slaughtered people by the millions. I dreamed of having it published.

For a long time I was of the fierce opinion that 9/11 didn't change anything. I still think that the Constitution holds true in the face of security challenges that clear and sunny Tuesday morning posed, and I hope most people do. But it took nine years to realize that in terms of everything else 9/11 was my generation's Vietnam, World War II, Kennedy Assassination, all that and more rolled into one neat package with only 2900+ dead. How can such a defining moment not upturn everything once considered normal? Not a month later strangers were sending some white powder through the mail. Next year, around the same time, two guys in a ~~white truck~~ ~~white boxy van~~ blue Chevrolet Caprice took a semiautomatic assault rifle and made walking to my bus stop 3/4 of a block from my house an adventure. My parents were splitting; most of the time they argued they didn't know I was awake. I wouldn't admit it at the time but I missed my father every day. Six months later we invaded Iraq. A year after that my grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Half a colon and gallons of painkillers later she moved in with us and her Alzheimer's came to light. And yet, I felt fine.

My mom waited until I would be old enough to a) remember it and b) not be a nuisance to take me to Disneyworld. Epcot's fucking awesome. A year later with the money from the sale of my grandmother's apartment we went on a Hawaiian cruise, and on the way to Maui our plane ironically flew directly over Hurricane Katrina. Flying over hurricanes is pretty cool. Art turned out to be a lot of fun even if I wasn't very good at it; in my art class I bonded with one of my future best friends over a mutual hatred for some Pakistani asshole that (thankfully) moved halfway through 8th grade. Staying true to my love for the arts, I skipped my 7th grade English class' performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream because I didn't want to wear a dress in front of everyone (I was cast as Hermia). A year later a different English teacher singled me out in front of the entire class for having self-esteem issues.

Thanks mostly to years of effortless good grades on my part, my GPA tanked in high school. I scraped by with a D- in 9th grade biology, and the first and only class I've ever failed was algebra 2 with analysis in 10th grade. For the record I still hate math, and summer school fucking sucks. To stay sane I spent my breaks reading 1984 and analyzing it in my head as best a 15 year old could. English, history, the arts; all the specializations useless in the real world I still understood with a familiar ease. At some point in there I started a silly blog with a silly title, the media began boring me, old people told me I had an old soul, and girls quietly stopped being pretty. In 11th grade I did better academically and I met new people, and because it was going so well for me life after high school didn't really exist in my mind. I didn't even apply to colleges until January of 2008 (around the application deadline for most schools). My first choice was Howard in DC, but as it slowly became more evident why girls had stopped being pretty a while back I figured going to an HBCU with one foot in the hood probably wouldn't be best for me. So naturally I chose a school in gay heaven, Appalachian Ohio.

Before showing up at Ohio University I nervously asked a (pretty cute, very gay) native about life in Athens over facebook, something else I was new to. It wasn't just that I was talking to someone I found attractive, the thought of going away to college scared the shit out of me. He was happy to answer my questions and deal with my unreasonable fears but we never really talked after that. Until, through a truly odd set of circumstances, I wound up becoming friends with one of his roommates. Even now it's hard to find eloquent words to describe how things unfolded, but I suppose confusing events don't always wind up making more sense over time. Part of me doesn't want to admit to love but how else do you describe hopeless attachment? Someone with such direct control over my happiness, or lack thereof? I'm sure what I felt for him will some day seem trivial in the face of other friends and lovers. But for now, I think about it every day.

One thing's for certain, the Bobby that's heading into 2010 is vastly different than the one that rolled into 2000. I still adore Kenan and Kel and Bush turned out to be the abject failure I thought he would be. But Hendrix, Lennon, Clapton, Marley, and even Spektor, Winehouse, and Gaga are no strangers to ~~love~~ my ears. I know all sorts of unknown unknowns that The Most Trusted Name In Bullshit™ would have never told me. And I might not have my future planned out very well but I've met some truly amazing people while trying to figure it out. Some of them I even came to love. And while I carry the weight of a torn heart healing itself, a father mostly MIA, and a grandmother who doesn't remember my name anymore (some call all of that "growing up"), one thing that never fails to give me solace is how infinitesimally small and insignificant we are in the universe. Maybe for a more ego-driven--or perhaps just successful--man this would pose a problem. But I'm just wandering through life at the moment, and remembering most of the big things really aren't that big puts a little more confidence in my step.

"A Prophet of the Gospel of Justice for All Nations" (especially the U.S.)

2009-12-24T10:32:00.011-05:00

Not since President George W. Bush have we seen a major American political figure with such a striking ability to capture the imagination and attention of millions. She may stumble and bumble every now and then, but even then the words come out with such a gracious elegance that you can't help but smile. Only in America, the shining city on a hill, could someone like Sarah Palin rise to the national consciousness on nothing but her own ~~ego~~ ~~boobs~~ bootstraps. What more is there to say about her? It never does get old but surely there must be some other reason for my lauding her great vision for this country again.

Well, as you may have heard, Sarah is waxing philosophically again about Obama and the fascist Democrats' death panels passing judgement on whether or not its worth the Obamessiah's dollar to pay for dear old granny's operation. A common misconception the liberal media holds is that Sarah was originally talking about a literal group of Senators, headed by His Darkness himself, voting yea or nay on someone's life. To you and me--people who really know Sarah-- we know she was actually warning of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of bureaucrats tasked with reducing Medicare costs by 2% over the next twenty years. How will they do that? Increase the efficiency of the health care system? Buy products on the cheap from China? Get the fuck outta here. Clearly they're going to do this by denying coverage for your father's liver transplant. There's no other possibility when it comes to liberals.

According to Sarah, the health care bill is unpopular with conservatives and liberals as a 'big government takeover' (surely liberals aren't upset because of the total removal of the public option they were promised). Socialism is on the great red march people, threatening to trample American values as it has never done before. But perhaps the most outrageous part of this Marxist coup? As Sarah points out, "though we will begin paying for this bill immediately, we will see no benefits for years." Waiting is for college students and single mothers. If something doesn't provide immediate gratification, then why bother with it?

A great conservative once said, "If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower." And when we're fighting for God and Country, our willpower is infinite. With socialism pressing our throats more and more with each passing day, who else can we turn to for leadership but Sarah Palin? Her devotion to the preservation of proper, limited American government is so strong she quit her governorship early to write a book and maybe get a talk show, all to spread the word of American Conservatism. Now that's devotion. Needless to say, we need more Sarah Palins in the United States.

Look Good In Latex

2009-12-20T00:23:00.008-05:00

I will grant the Teabaggers and other assorted right wing crazies this (and only this): this czar fetish the US government has is really out of control. Did you know that we apparently have a "safe schools czar"? Maybe it's just me, knowing history and what not, but I don't think the words "safe" and "czar" belong in the same breath much less the same phrase. At any rate, Obama's "safe schools czar" is Kevin Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network. I'm sure the noble people with nuts proudly displayed on their foreheads are up in arms about a queer enabler being in a position of power but there's something else at play here. Do you know what fisting is?

That was the question GLSEN leaders asked a group of 14 year olds during an educational workshop on the practice at the organization's 10th anniversary conference way back in March of 2000, where Obama's safe schools gruppenführer was the keynote speaker. Having grown up with unrestricted internet access I know what too many things are, and holding an educational forum on fisting just strikes me as intensely lulzy. The fact that later on they handed out latex gloves for the practice and visual instructions on how to make a dental dam out of the glove is just that extra sprinkling of insanity on the already delicious cake of hilarity.

Originally I had a more contentious post planed for this issue, until I saw the claim that favorite right-wing punching bag Planned Parenthood was the one issuing the so-called fisting kits and I realized the sources I was dealing with. The link I first got emailed to me, Big Government, is associated by name with Andrew Breitbart, editor for The Drudge Report and columnist for The Washington Times, the kind of paper that would run editorials defending Hitler as a spirited nationalist. One of the links in BG's article leads to a site with an ad reading: "Ancient Christian Doctrine: A New Patristic Commentary on the Nicene Creed. Subscribe now and save 30%!" What? Andy's blog also cites an editorial entitled "Queering the Schools", published in March of 2003, as a source. Lovely. And the people they credit for breaking the story? "Undercover journalists" at Mass Resistance, whose own manic headline for the matter is (emphasis not mine) "FISTGATE: WHAT HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVISTS DO IN SCHOOLS WITH CHILDREN". I think I have a feeling of what I'm dealing with.

Did GLSEN talk to kids about fisting and whether or not its rude to spit instead of swallow? I don't know; I wasn't there and I can't trust those sources. But even if they did I'd be willing to bet that sticking your arm in someone ass wasn't the organization's primary focus for the discussion group. Partisan blogs, no matter how intelligent their writers, have a nasty tendency to horribly distort facts to fit whatever agenda its author believes or pushes. They can be a fun read--the fistgate post certainly was--but as far as researching goes, my teachers have taught me since third grade to seek out as impartial a source as possible if you want to get as close to the actual facts as possible. Any website screaming in bold caps like, well, a 14 year old kid, about homosexual activists is about as unbiased as Perez Hilton's reviews of Lady Gaga records.

New Sodom, USA

2009-12-15T15:52:00.009-05:00

Sunday night the budget for the District of Columbia was passed by the Senate without the country's legislative body batting an eye. Normally this wouldn't be worth mentioning (other than pointing out how strange it is that the federal government has to sign off on a city's non-federal budget), but among the programs scheduled to be funded by the D.C. city government next year are a needle exchange program (added to the budget by Republicans), abortions for poor women, and the legalization of medical marijuana. Again, the budget breezed through Congress without a hitch. The benefits of seeking passage on a Sunday night in the middle of December, I suppose.

The D.C. city council is hoping to pull a similar trick with more legislation slated to transform the capital city of (easily) the most conservative first world nation into a shining New Sodom: same-sex marriage. The council had previously passed the resolution with an 11-2 vote, and after a strange let's-sit-on-our-vote period, they voted earlier today to pass it again, with the same 11-2 vote. However, previously unbeknownst to me, the bill the council passed must undergo 30 working days of Congressional review after Mayor Adrian Fenty signs it in to law as he has promised. Is this review period worth worrying about?

Well, it is technically possible that this could explode into a national issue and be voted down by the House and Senate under intense pressure from people blinded by hate, money, and misguided religious beliefs but this is extraordinarily unlikely. It's late December, these people want to go on their Hanukwansmas breaks. Then it will be January, and they will want to go back on their breaks. Democrats are busy organizing a lynch mob to torch Joe Lieberman's house and hang his entire family from the White House Christmas tree. Democratic leaders have already implied they don't really want to get involved in another same-sex marriage debate. 30 working days is an awfully short period of time to turn nothing into something, to convince already preoccupied senators that they will lose their jobs if they affirm a gay marriage bill for a city of 600,000 people that they don't seem to care much about anyway. Congress has only overturned a DC law three times in the past 25 years.

While we have plenty of reasons to assume that Congress won't touch this law, we can't get ahead of ourselves and write of the seemingly impossible as actually being impossible. A lot of people, myself included, didn't think Proposition 8 had a chance in hell of passing. Be cautiously optimistic, not certain. When I checked my iTouch for any news updates from the AP, I did get a good sign that DC's same-sex marriage law will stay under the radar. Rather than it saying "Breaking: D.C. city council votes 11-2 to legalize same-sex marriage," it read, "Breaking: A spokesman for Oral Roberts says the evangelist and university founder has died at age 91." Oh, the irony.

Eight Girls A Week

2009-12-12T17:53:00.005-05:00

Tiger Woods has always been something of an oddity. His birth name is Eldrick. He's thainegro (like my chinegro only with thai instead of chinaman, even though he's got some of that too). He's a not-white man who plays golf professionally. He's a not-white man who plays golf better than the white men he's not. He's the world's highest paid athlete. He is one of the most recognizable people in the US, famous for playing a sport famous for how boring it is. He's got a hot body with a funny looking face. And he apparently had more mistresses than normal men could keep track of. Then again, Tiger Woods is anything but normal.

What drives such an extraordinary person to fuck up so spectacularly? Obsessed with keeping everything about his life outside of golf private, Woods never had to do anything resembling damage control. When the opportunity presented itself he did damage control about as well as the Army Corps of Engineers did flood control. Having so many goddamn women on the side he deserves to get shat on from the very highest mountaintops. If that rumor that he's offering his wife millions to stay turns out to be true it's a sign of a stupid, desperate man who doesn't know what he would do without someone to help him through life. I almost feel bad for him.

But at the end of the day, it's just another celebrity with a twisted sex life. Kobe allegedly raped a girl, settled the case out of court, and is still one of the most lauded and loved basketball players ever. For a country that allegedly prides itself on second chances, one has to ~~wonder~~ realize: if these men and others like them weren't so ridiculously rich and famous, they would be buried.

Marriage Is For Yanks

2009-12-09T13:49:00.005-05:00

Apparently that's the message of the Texas state constitution. (In)famous for maintaining a sense of independence fiercer than that of South Carolina, the great state of Texas has gone to extreme measures to prevent New England liberal ideas about marriage from penetrating the proud state's law books. Like many before it, Texas adopted in 2005 a constitutional amendment explicitly outlawing same-sex marriage. However, unlike other states, the wording in Texas' marriage amendment technically outlaws all marriages--straight, gay, or otherwise. Read for yourself (emphasis added):

The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

Any sensible person can say that's not what the law meant to say, but what the law meant to say doesn't really matter in the face of what it does say. This laughable oversight by Texas state legislators was spotted by Democratic candidate for Attorney General Barbara Ann Radnofsky and (naturally) blamed on the current Attorney General, Republican (naturally) Greg Abbott, who could have and should have spotted such suspicious wording from a mile away. To top it off, before the amendment passed a group by the name of Save Texas Marriage warned that a "liberal activist judge" could easily--and legally--interpret the second part of the then-proposition as outlawing heterosexual marriage, potentially voiding all marriages ever performed in the state. Coming from the state with one of the longest and most nonsensical constitutions in the union, the state that executes the mentally retarded, and the state that brought us George W. Bush, this only comes as a moderate surprise. Texas never fails to bring the lulz.
This post adapted from this post.

That Sharp Scratching Sound That Makes Your Right Eye Twitch

2009-12-06T22:56:00.000-05:00

So there I was, in the passenger seat of my mom's truck (yes she drives a truck, no she is not a lesbian). She was fishing through her wallet for my credit card, and hoping the management at the department store would understand she accidentally left with more than she bought. We were in the parking spot right by the sliding, motion-detected doors and after turning on the battery wasn't sufficient she had to turn on the engine, and then she got out with my wallet and oddly enough no clear bag of clothes. Even though the store was still open, it was literally dark as midnight with not a soul around. After she got out of the car, my mother vanished behind the sliding doors. I was depressed about something or another--not to mention wondering how that boy in LA can get guys naked for him without doing or offering anything in return, the bitch--and it only seemed natural to listen to some Queen. What should come up, but Radio Ga Ga. Someone still loves you.... I'm sure they do.

The casino appeared off in the distance as a tower of glorious capitalistic excess. The ladies and I geared up for the assault of our lives as we landed on the helipad and stormed in through the roof access. The gambling floor was dark, quiet, and oddly office-y. Nobody in the cubicles noticed us running through the aisles with semi-automatic M1014 shotguns. But on our way out, the security team showed up. Lady Gaga's namesake song started playing again as we blasted our way through wave after wave of unarmed Gaga clones, clad in white leather leotards, matching boots, and jet black sunglasses. Let me tell you, they were persistent. Her head exploded fantastically when I capped her with a shotgun blast; she was only crawling towards me because I had blown off her legs previously. We made it back through the gilded roof access doors to our helicopter, and we took off into the night. To keep the remaining Gagas from following us we made sure to blow up the helipad on our way out, much to their displeasure. You could see them waving their disco sticks in anger for miles.

"It Was Like a Rectangle!"

2009-12-05T12:07:00.004-05:00

(And no, I'm not talking about the Washington Monument)

When I'm in Rockville, one of the things I frequently bitch about is that there's nobody to hang out with and thus not much of anything to do. Once I started college I lost contact with a lot of friends from high school, and when I did come home I found myself missing their company, but (with a few exceptions) I didn't find myself missing them. Who wants to get lunch or see a movie alone? In between eating a sandwich I really should have gotten mayonnaise on and sharing stories of unfortunate sexual experiences, that was how I explained my gross excess of free time to our friend BB BB on the steps of a Baptist church in downtown D.C.

We talked about BB's (real name Adrian Monk, no relation) childhood in Soviet Arabia being raised by American expat parents in Riyadh, the capital city. He told me he came to the states in the summer of 2001 when his father had a strange feeling that shit in the middle east was about to hit the fan. While in his native sand country, Adrian developed a strange affinity for an n-word: nutmeg. Once he got to America, the boy (it feels weird calling someone older than me "boy") developed a strange distaste for Uncut. As far as magazines go they have decent articles, in my opinion. When he asked me to keep all the newly uncovered details of his life private, I told him I'd just make up something fantastic for the blog.

But the above paragraph of bullshit does go to show you the far reaching nature of our conversation; I was out with him for a good 3 1/2 hours or so and things never really got stale. Anybody who talks about gay sex at the front door of a Baptist church is a friend of mine. We would have discussed sodomy at the back door (har har) but one of D.C.'s homeless was occupying that stoop. According to our friend BB the homeless in DC have a special glow about them. They may be homeless but dammit they're the most ironic homeless people in the world. Citizens of the capital city of the richest, most powerful nation in history and they don't have a roof over their heads.

We went down to the National Mall where, surprisingly, the actual grass was closed to the public because they were "refurbishing" it. In December (for the record, it's snowing today). I found a nice metro exhaust vent to stand on top of but eventually we got moving down towards the Washington Monument, whose mammoth size up close I forgot about, and the White House which is surprisingly small in person. I've lived in the area almost all my life and I've never been to a lot of the monuments so to an extent I was as much a stranger to them as he. However, he is not a stranger to ~~love~~ distasteful photos. 'Flying into the White House'? "Too soon," I said. He retorts, "it's been eight years." The boy's got a good (and hairy) head on his shoulders.

Under the Radar

2009-12-03T11:11:00.000-05:00

One of the five schools I applied to in my senior year of high school was Howard University, right in the heart of D.C. In fact, it was my first choice--in November of 2007 (seems like such a long time ago) I was afraid to leave my unhealthy home environment, and I really wanted to stay local or even be a commuter. Being right on the green line, Howard fit everything I wanted. But Ohio offered me too much money to turn down, so off I went. Conveniently enough however, by the summer I had figured out I was gay and I was afraid of a young homosexual's fate at a predominantly black university in a predominantly black--and poor--neighborhood (gentrification hasn't quite made its march to Howard). However legitimate that fear of mine, I didn't wind up going to Howard and for several reasons I don't regret turning them down. I'm still not 100% on how the people of the nation's capital, despite being host to some of the largest gay neighborhoods on the east coast, feel about the lgbt community.

So imagine my surprise when I read on Tuesday night that the D.C. city council voted 11-2 to legalize same-sex marriage in the city, despite threats from the Archdiocese to drawback its social services from a DC with gay marriage on the books. Comments from councilmembers were drenched in grandstanding rhetoric about equal rights for all, how this is the culmination of years and years of work, how the District is a haven for equal rights--exactly the type of thing you'd expect. The only two dissenting votes came from Yvette Alexander of Ward 7, and, everyone's favorite, Marion Barry of Ward 8--both representing impoverished black districts of the city. Barry said of the vote that his constituents don't support the measure so neither can he, and that he doesn't want this issue to become a litmus test for his otherwise "strong commitment to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community". For once, he does have something of a point.

Before you go and break out the bubbly, the measure has to undergo another council vote on the 15th before it actually gets signed into law by Mayor Adrian Fenty. But perhaps what's more surprising to me than the bill passing (after all, the council has two openly gay representatives) is how little attention it got. Maybe groups like the HRC had other priorities, or were hoping Nom (nomnom)'s lobbyists wouldn't notice the DC vote if it flew under their radar. More likely, however, is that since it wasn't a referendum accompanied by massive media campaigns nobody cared. When the idea first came up a couple months ago to vote on same-sex marriage again (it was previously proposed, and shouted down by the Catholic Church, in 1975) the biggest coverage it got was an article in the Washington Post and maybe a mention on CNN's stupid little news ticker. Evidently people only care about gay rights if it's accompanied by more public drama than a CSI episode (does anybody still watch that?).

Then again, when the New York Senate voted down its own same-sex marriage bill yesterday, that got pretty considerable coverage--especially considering it was the day after Obama's Afghanistan address--and that didn't involve massive media campaigns. Certainly nothing on the scale of California, or even Maine. Then why the utter lack of attention on what seems to be the movement's surest chance for a victory? Is it because D.C.'s so small in comparison to an actual state like California, Maine, New York, or (soon enough) New Jersey? If you're wandering through a desert and suffering from dehydration, you can't turn down an oasis you stumble upon because it's too small and too dull for your grandiose tastes. Water is water, and beggars can't be choosers.

Sunshine of Your Love

2009-11-26T17:57:00.002-05:00

Yesterday afternoon was the first time Rockville's seen the sun in weeks, and even then it only stuck around for about 20 minutes. For the past month or so it's been raining with temperatures holding steady around 50 degrees. It's like London, without any of the chicness, history, or royalty. Often I find myself wondering if I'm making Rockville out to be worse than it is, not on here but in my own mind. An acquaintance of mine from high school, now a freshman at Columbia, is stupidly excited to come back to "The Roc". I've unfortunately never been but I have a feeling if I sat foot in New York City the only way you'd get me to leave is in a pine box. I guess we're just different people. More likely he stayed in contact with his high school friends; I haven't talked to all but the closest of mine since high school, and I don't really mind. Again, different people.

To help break the boredom I applied for a menial seasonal retail position at an electronics store that more-or-less replaced CompUSA and Circuit City when they packed up and left town years ago. It pays below minimum wage (commission's supposed to make up for the difference) so it's not glamorous, but the way I see it getting paid $4 an hour to tell the confused parent they should not buy their ten year old son Left 4 Dead 2 beats getting paid nothing to be in the house for six weeks. But the earliest I'll hear back from them is in 7-10 business days, so I will happily (?) be missing out on Black Friday.

Funny I should mention excuses to get out of the house, though; I went to visit my grandmother at her nursing home today. She didn't remember my name.

The Fantasmagorical 9 AM Revue

2009-11-23T09:19:00.006-05:00

I can't believe I got up at 8 AM for that shit. A paltry, somewhat cumulative, 30-some question final exam in a morning class I hated from day one. One of the questions was seriously "who was the last leader of the Soviet Union, known for attempting to reform it but instead hastening its demise?". I've known that since 10th grade; this is not a question I expect to find on a final in my sophomore year of college. At least it was easy, I suppose. But damn. It figures that my most inconveniently timed final would be my last one too. I'm leaving Athens until January in about 9 hours. Haven't cleaned my room, haven't packed, but I have said most of my goodbyes. And even though I'm not dreading home quite as much as I was in June I still don't particularly want to go. The thought of leaving what has become my primary network of friends doesn't so much make me sad as it does make me...uncomfortable.

Since last night I was busy being social (which was cut unfortunately short because I needed to study for that dildo of an exam) I missed the AMA's. I know what you're thinking, who the hell watches the ~~AMA's~~ televised award shows anymore? As much as I hate to admit it Gagafever got the best of me; her performance last night was the first thing I looked up on youtube after getting out of my final. Loved the choreography, the burning piano, the bottle smashing, all that. Her voice seemed a bit uncharacteristically weak on "Bad Romance". Bit of a cold? Couldn't catch her breath? Probably just an off night. If she's gonna keep doing them though, Lady needs to work on her ballads. Gaga, you're a hell of a lot closer to Madonna than you are Aretha Franklin.

I'm hoping to land a seasonal job in Rockville mostly to keep myself busy, but having money will be nice. I've got some small debts to clear up, rent to pay starting in late March (steep rent, but it's a very nice house), and maybe a present or two for some people. Don't tell anyone but I've also got a bottle of the best thing an illiterate Russian peasant has ever created to share with some close friends. A date isn't set but I'm determined to get this done before January. One one hand I'm interested to see my high school friends drunk. On the other it's a little bit of Athens I'm bringing back with me.

...

Ah well, at least I get to see my puppy babies*.

*They're not actually puppy babies, it's just what I call them. I love my dogs.

Crazy He Calls Me

2009-11-19T06:00:00.001-05:00

Well it's 6 AM on a Thursday, I don't have any finals (or any obligations) today. I woke up wanting to fuck around online but my roommate was still asleep, so I made my way down to the creepy basement study rooms. I figure nobody would be down there at 6 AM on a Thursday, right? Wrong. Fucking moonfolk. Lucky for me I brought headphones. And who should my fancy new iPod Touch think is appropriate for 6 AM Thursday listening but Lady Gaga? Now, I make it no secret that I love me some Gaga. Why? I'm not entirely sure; everything I've ever known or felt about music tells me I should despise her, but goddamn I can't. Ever the unpredictable wardrobe, infectious bouncy jams, fantastic music videos...she's got this endearing mystery about her and I want to know so much more than I do. Whether or not she has a penis.

Speaking of crazy, what should I see on my Google News page but a story about Sarah Palin's new book? First off there's a name I happily haven't heard in months. Second off, I didn't know she could string together enough coherent thoughts to make up a book. And not just any book, a "tell-all" book. I was unaware there's something about her curious life that we didn't already know. Where Gaga is the eclectic, artistic crazy I can love, Sarah Palin is the dim-witted, short-sighted crazy I can love to hate. Everything that falls out of her mouth sounds like something a political science 101 student would say, thinking they know everything there is to know having managed a B+ in the class. Sometimes I think inept is a better word to describe her than dumb, but any synonym for stupid perfectly matches her base. What money they don't give to her they likely spend at Cash4Gold. At the very least she should have released her book much closer to 2012 so she could ride the inevitable wave of superficial popularity to a Presidential nomination. Maybe she thinks the world's going to end in three years so she's cashing in now.

But back to happier thoughts. Thriller homages, pincer heels, and faux polar bearskin dresses galore! With her sort-of sophomore release out as of yesterday, let's hope Gaga sticks around for more than 15 minutes.

Real Love

2009-11-16T22:57:00.002-05:00

"Gay Puerto Rican Teen Decapitated, Dismembered, and Burned." What does one say to that? It was one of the first things I saw this morning as it showed up in my facebook news feed. As my comment showed, all I really could say at the moment was a blank, run-that-by-me-again "what". Apparently if you're the lead investigator of such a crime, what you say to that is "people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen." I'd like to believe the investigator's true intent was lost in translation, but it's not hard to find someone who speaks fluent Spanish in the States and its not hard to believe such an attitude would be held in the sometimes deceptively easygoing Caribbean.

A couple hours later I reread the story. I can't say it made more sense to me the second time--cutting up and burning anyone, much less a 19 year old kid is almost nonsensical by definition--but the words made their way through my head easier. I'm not much of an empathetic person at all and reading about this twice did nothing to change that. If he had just been stabbed or shot or even beaten, I could have written it off as just another hate-driven murder in my mind and gone on about my day. But the fact that they cut off his head, severed the rest of his limbs, and then lit the pile of body parts known in life as Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado ablaze on the side of a remote road, well, pardon the pun but its a grisly image that burns itself in your mind.

What will come of this example of inexcusable barbarism? Excuses, disappointment, outrage, maybe major media coverage (that's a big maybe), hopefully no copycats, probably not an arrest, if there's one of those probably not a conviction, and if there's one of those probably not much of a sentence. To be fair it's not always as doom-and-gloom as I fear it to be; the events in Laramie 11 years ago ended in two consecutive life sentences for each murderer, the effective martyrdom of Matt Shepard, and (11 goddamn years later) federal hate crimes legislation protecting LGBT people. But as a triple minority, being optimistic about these sorts of things is damn hard.

I'm so sorry Jorge.

Philadelphia Freedom

2009-11-12T15:14:00.002-05:00

Fall 2002 was a very scary time for me, and a lot of people I knew. I remember one day after they shot that kid, almost killed him, I was too scared to walk the one block to my bus stop. That was when they were still looking for a white van and there were tons of those in my neighborhood. I took the cushions off the couch, stuffed them in front of the windows, drew the blinds shut, and sat on the floor all day calling the cops on any white van I saw drive past the house. Eventually I did uneasily go back to school since there was no indication these guys were going to be collared anytime soon, and I couldn't afford to miss indefinite amounts of class. But after about 3 weeks of looking at everyone with burning suspicion Police Chief Charles Moose came on the TV and said they had arrested a John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo over by I-70.

While they were caught in Maryland the pair were soon extradited to Virginia where a) they shot and killed FBI agent Linda Hamilton, and b) the second highest number of American convicts are executed annually. Malvo only kept his life because he was 17 when he pulled the trigger, but Muhammad had no such saving grace. After that they were sent back to Maryland to go on trial for the shootings they did there but by then nobody really cared because neither one of them was ever going to see the light of day again. With that, the two went off to jail and while their month-long spree certainly wasn't about to be forgotten, it became less and less prevalent with time.

Two days ago I headed over to CNN.com for shits and giggles (and their redesigned website actually looks really nice) and what should I see but 'Virginia ready to execute 'Beltway sniper'', above the comically titled video 'Chris Brown wants Rihanna to shush'. It's not often I'm aware of executions taking place, especially executions pertaining to crimes that affected me. Obviously I could use this as an opportunity to make some grand statement about the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment, and while I personally think the death penalty should only be reserved for people who remain a major threat while in prison, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Muhammad being executed. It's easy to make a sweeping statement about moral rights or wrongs until the decision affects your life. I do, however, find a bit of irony in executing Muhammad, a Gulf War veteran, one day before Veterans Day. Intentional? Probably. Lulzy? Yes.

Three Cheers for Failure

2009-11-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

Goddamn, one post in the entire month of October. That takes effort.

I wish I could say I was busy doing more important things than honing my writing skills and networking online, but truth of the matter is I really wasn't. Sure there's school but for whatever reason my course load is as academically rigorous as a Speak & Spell. Rather I've occupied myself with courting a boy (omg, I wish you the best, I'm so happy for you, etc etc) who, as it turns out wants nothing more than my friendship (aw, c'est la vie, fuck that asshole, etc etc). I'm a popular guy; everyone wants to be my friend.

Tuesday was sort of an election day across these great United States. Virginia got a raging hardon for the GOP, Michael Bloomberg got reelected by a narrow margin despite what the mainstream media called "intense distaste" for his running for a third term, and I forgot to vote. I wouldn't have had time anyway (Tuesday was a bad day). But notably, and as far as I'm concerned expectedly, the good people of the great state of Maine voted to overturn a law giving same sex couples the right to marry (wtf, this is shocking, we'll get them next time, etc etc). You know it's a problem when the last couple words of that sentence start to sound routine. But again, I expected it. Yes it's a New England state but typically when people hear those words they think liberal bastions like Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Maine is kind of forgotten; it might as well be part of Canada. Maybe then they would have kept equality on the books.

However, in spite of all the bullshit, I saw Avenue Q last night and it was incredible.

Purple Elephants

2009-10-06T15:22:00.004-04:00

Let's face it, the guy to the left is either a brilliant actor or is actually batshit insane. Lucky for the rest of the world, the people tugging on his strings aren't quite as brash and reactionary to openly call for the eradication of entire countries. There was a time when I believed, mostly out of spite for the Bush administration, that Iran's nuclear program was in fact purely for peaceful purposes. Once I pulled my head out of my red liberal ass though, reasons why Iran would not be working on "the bomb" became pretty fucking slim. That being said, I really don't think we have much to worry about in that department.

Lets first start with the Ayatollahs at the top. Anyone who knows anything realized they are the true power holders in Iran. And if their relatively violent repression of supporters Mir Hussein Mousavi, a moderate reformist, this past summer are any indication they very much value their power and will do most anything to protect it from any threat, real or imaginary. Ahmadinejad can run around on camera and wave his dick in the face of the US and Israel, but really that's all they're going to let him do. Anything much more would be taking too much of a risk. Certainly if an Iranian nuclear weapon was used against Israel--directly by Iran or through a proxy like Hezbollah--it would mean the almost immediate end of the Islamic Republic, no question. While in this case the Ayatollahs would probably maintain some power over an insurgency or something like that, they would certainly have a lot less power and a lot less wealth than they do now.

So why then would Iran want a nuclear weapon if they're not going to use it? While we're at it, why does the United States still hang onto its nuclear weapons when we're (probably) never going to use any of them? The UK? France? Russia? Simple, it's a power broker. So few countries have nuclear weapons, it's like an elite little club. And for some odd reason, the nations with weaponized nuclear capabilities tend to be taken more seriously on the world stage. How else is a middle-eastern Islamic theocracy fronted by a lunatic going to be heard in a world dominated by Judeo-Christian leaders backing American and European interests?

Even if you have a real problem with Iran having nuclear weapons, what are you going to do about it? Sanctions are a joke, we've been yelling at them since 1979 to no avail, and we demonize them daily in the media while all they do is reciprocate the civilian re-education with daily "Death To America" chants. Even nuclear non-proliferation treaties are a waste of time; India unabashedly violated every nonproliferation law on the books to develop their weapons program and they're now one of America's closest allies. Really the only thing you could do to stop the Iranian nuclear program at this point is bomb their facilities, which the US isn't going to do. Enter Israel. They did it to Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in the 1990's, but then again Saddam, not having paranoid hyperconservatives to keep his insanity in check, was a much more credible threat than Ahmadinejad is. Considering Israel can be just as crazy as their neighbors though, who knows what will happen on that front.

Nobody can say for certain that Iran is or isn't developing a nuclear weapon and nobody can say for certain that they will or will not use one provided they are developing one. International relations is an educated guessing game; you look at the facts and draw what seems to be the logical conclusion. Then again, sometimes your logical conclusion couldn't be more wrong. Political scientists in the 1980s would have laughed in your face if you told them the Soviet Union would be no more by 1991 and it wouldn't require a NATO invasion. But for the most part if you think enough about these things you can predict the future fairly accurately. Accurate enough to sleep easy at night, anyway. That being said, keeping the ruse of outrage at and unacceptability of an Iranian nuclear program is an important part of the game. It is in fact that game that makes us able to predict how things will go. The world we live in may be madness, but Sparta isn't all its cracked up to be either.

His Truth Is Marching On

2009-09-29T21:39:00.001-04:00

Somewhere in between singing "An American Trilogy" with a gay socialist and an Armenian and devouring 3/4 of a pint of Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream, I realized that I was the highest I have ever been in my life, ever--on my birthday. Let me tell you, that was a wondrous realization to this 19 year old chinegro homosexual. Almost as amazing as realizing just now the comedic value of singing "Oh I wish I was/In a land of cotton" with cottonmouth. After getting to bed around 4 AM still fairly under the influence, I slipped into a dreamland I don't remember much of. All I really remember is taking a quick second upon first waking to regain my depth perception; I've been told this is normal.

I figure that since last night was a fairly carefree, irresponsible one today should be a day of modest celebration. My miserable morning class was let out half an hour early, I got a free book on Buddhist meditation from a monk in a hoodie, and my knee which I managed to tweak horribly the night prior suddenly doesn't feel so bad. With any luck Anthropology will be cancelled or cut short and I can go watch my friend in a reading of a high schooler's one-act interpretation of Romeo and Juliet as a rapping Benvolio. Originally I was going to perform the part, but the aforementioned Anthropology class will keep my Sean Connery-voiced Benvolio rap from ever seeing the light of day past rehearsals.

One thing I wondered about doing this September 29th was finding a way to better myself. Yesterday in one of my political science classes, the professor was going over the headlines from the past week. Somehow the three of us--among the smartest students in the room--completely missed the FBI foiling two terrorism plots over the weekend. We really dropped the ball on that one. But hey, that sense of being smarter than most of the other people in the room came flooding back when a classmate suggested that the WWII weapon developed by the United States over five years that completely changed how countries handle hostilities with one another was not the atomic bomb, but tear gas. If you don't know what you're talking about, shut the fuck up and listen to people who do. At least I've (mostly) got that down.

So that's my existence. And yours?

Jive Turkey

2009-09-20T09:00:00.003-04:00

How Glenn Beck still has a job is beyond me. I'm not one of those gushy liberals who think he should be exiled for saying Barack Obama does not care about white people. Being an idiot isn't illegal in America. However being an idiot is usually enough to get you terminated from your job. Judging from the number of people that watch his hour of stupid on the Fox News Channel though, he's clearly not (entirely) incompetent. Whether or not he believes the things he says, he knows how to market it to the fine citizens of this country. Be loud, flail your arms around, and don't forget to cry a bit. It's how Maury and Keith Olbermann are still on the air, after all.

How people can be so stupid is beyond me. While anyone who knows anything about the National Mall, estimating crowd sizes, or simple journalism can tell you that the 9/12 Teabagger rally only had tens of thousands of people, not 1.8 million as claimed by endless 'conservative' blogs. Still, a legion of the fat, the old, the white, and the religious 70,000 strong calling for a return to Constitutional government (via the Stars and Bars, no less) is nothing to piss at. In fact, if all of them thought like this I'd say it would be something to be concerned with. But if they're letting their political opinions be spoon-fed to them by a fat man in a suit who can cry on command, the likelihood of them getting out of their lawn chairs to actually do something is minuscule. And even then, Obama's death panels will likely put down at least half of Beck's Army by 2012.

Manic State

2009-09-15T09:48:00.004-04:00

So I've had quite a week. And you? What have you been up to? I suppose I should explain my sudden absence from the world of the internet (or at least of blogger) but honestly, I was expecting it and you should have been too. First week back home with all my friends and all the things I shouldn't be doing but do anyway. For the record, raspberry vodka + fruit punch + about a quarter shot of SoCo for flavor is probably the second best nonsexual thing on this planet.

Speaking of sex I haven't been getting much of that lately. My life is one continual, massive cockblock. Four times, and that's just with one guy. My friend Shawn brought this up the other day; with gay men the cockblock is a weapon not understood by heterosexuals. There's two cocks so it's almost like a double cockblock, the Berlin Wall of cockblocks if you will. All this for a hookup (not even a relationship). To relieve the stress of the situation this past Saturday I got my slurp on and went to a gay dance where, sure enough, a wasted asshole offered a drunken apology for how he used me and fucked me in the head, and demanded a hug to say things were all better between us. He was supposed to call the next morning, but I doubt he even remembers I was there. In short, fuck my life.

But when you find yourself being continually shot in the foot by your social life--which I must admit really isn't that bad, although it gets me down sometimes--you have academia to turn to. As I write this, my Comparative Politics class is half an hour away and is taught by a disorganized man who resembles an old lesbian. Anthropology is interesting, but goes from 6 to 8:30 at night. Lastly I have 2 hours of International Relations with two of my best friends, and a Vietnam War class taught by a German with a slight Canadian accent. I don't need to explain why that's amazing.

So in review, my social life is okay but could be better and my academic life is okay but could be better. Seems like in addition to being the world's largest cockblock my life is one of contentness but not happiness. Although I will say quite happily the one I loved and couldn't have is no longer a concern. Getting past that (finally) is something I have to prop up on a pedestal, and I'm gonna shine that bitch up until she gleams.

But I still haven't bought The Beatles Rock Band. Fuck!

A Live Broadcast From The End Of The World

2009-08-30T15:00:00.003-04:00

Back on the 14th of August, at 9 in the morning I opened up blogger and saved this post title. I really don't know why; as far as I can remember nothing particularly bad happened that day. I just liked the title and decided to keep it without having anything in the way of a post saved. Now it's about 2:30 in the afternoon, sixteen days later and as my (likely hungover) mother who just woke up walks back to her room in silence with a bowl of Frosted Maple & brown Sugar Mini Wheats it dawned on my how much has happened these past couple of weeks, and to a certain extent how little it all matters. I also caught a hint of that earlier when I caught my younger dog licking himself to a red rocket. Kids these days.

I'm convinced the people who draw the commercials for Trix yogurt are on acid. The ad was just on TV, and there were lollipop trees growing out of pink-purple and green breathmints floating in a velvet void. Only because children are its intended audience is something like that allowed on daytime TV; if it was targeted at young adults parents would cry it encourages them to drop acid and make love with everything in sight. Their two-weeks girlfriend, their sister, their loofa, everything. Don't try it, not even once. Adults these days.

I know I grew quite a bit in college; it was my first time out on my own to any real extent (although not totally, my parents still paid my tuition) and I didn't realize how much that independence meant until I lost it to live in a living room for two and a half months. My mother did that for four years and I'll never know how she managed, but I gained a lot of respect for what she went through. And while I'm certainly more excited to go back now than I was to go for the first time, much like last year I don't know what the future holds and I'm a little afraid of it. So much has happened around me and to me this summer. I am in an entierly different situation than I was this time last year and yet it's been tinted with love, lust, and loneliness to such an extent that I find something of a brother in sheltered little me from a year ago. That being said, I need to get the fuck back home. And that home ain't Rockville.* Six more days.

*How profound of me.

Jesus Christ It's A Lion, Get In The Car!

2009-08-26T12:33:00.003-04:00

It was at about 2 AM or so this morning when I first heard Ted Kennedy died. I was listening to music and talking to three friends on AIM (when I went to sleep I coincidentally dreamed that one of them died) when I glanced in the direction of the TV and actually said "holy shit" quite loudly. Not because I cared particularly about Kennedy, he's just one of those people you never really think about dying. Like Michael Jackson.

I can say that in my heart, the death of Ted Kennedy is pretty much meaningless to me. Honestly, it is. I will grant him and his family, cancer is right up there with Alzheimer's on the list of shitty ways to go, but fact of the matter is I didn't know the man personally and I don't really know anything about him politically. Ted Kennedy was and is just a name to me, a face on the TV talking about this legislation and that outrageous comment by a colleague.

Maybe because I came up in a different time where the Kennedy name is really just an almost mythological legacy, or a time when I'd sooner spit at the feet of a congressman than shake his hand given all they've done for this great nation. I don't know, maybe both. People said he was a pretty okay guy and now they say he was a demigod, one of the last honarable men (read: people) in the U.S. government. Maybe when people stop kissing the ground the man walked on I can learn more about him. Michael Jackson's stuff finally fell out of the Top 10 on iTunes, so if that's any indication we've got at least a week of Kennedy worship ahead of us. Wake me when its done..

Da Killin Gnatzi Bidness

2009-08-22T19:36:00.004-04:00

It's not 'Inglorious Bastards', it's 'Inglourious Basterds'--typical of any Quentin Tarantino film, normal expectations simply do not apply, and that even goes for the title. As you've probably heard, Lt. Aldo Raine (as played by Brad Pitt) is in da killin Gnatsi bidness, and bidness is a-boomin. Raine leads a squad of seven Jewish-American soldiers dropped into France whose job is to collect for their Lieutanant 100 Gnatsi scalps each. And he wants his scalps. Meanwhile, the charming feller you see to your right with the pipe is Col. Hans Landa of the SS, colorfully nicknamed the Jew Hunter. He hunts Jews. And then there's Shoshanna Dreyfus, a French Jew caught in the middle of it all. You can probably see where this is going, and let me be the first to tell you that you're positively wrong.

Without spoiling too much I can say that Inglourious Basterds is a damn long film. About two and a half hours. The dialogue is of course masterfully written but there are occasions where it just drags on unnecessarily well after the desired tension has been built. I enjoy it as much as the next guy, but sometimes your actors just have to shut the fuck up and shoot each other. And about the shooting, there isn't much of it to be honest, but when blood does splatter it blankets the camera lens and, with a little help from the...dynamic soundtrack, conjures a mixed bag of emotions. Yes, even for Gnatsi scum sometimes you have to ask "was that really necessary?" Or maybe that's exactly what the Gnatsis want us to think?

Austrian TV actor Christophe Waltz undoubtedly has the performance of the film as Col. Landa, possibly the best character Tarantino's ever had and easily the most interesting Hollywood villain I've seen since Heath Ledger's Joker a little more than a year ago. I really can't heap enough praise on the character or the performance. He's sharply dressed, intelligent, witty, friendly, can charm the panties off a nun--it's then that I found myself liking a character called the Jew Hunter. What?? Landa dominates the scenes he's in from the very opening of the film straight through to the laughably unpredictable ending, and I do mean laughably unpredictable in the best possible way.

Like Tarantino's masterpiece 'Pulp Fiction', 'Inglourious Basterds' isn't a movie you can watch once and catch everything in that one viewing. Pop culture and film references aside the characters and situations are so nuansced (and the dialogue so fucking long) that you can't possibly fully appreciate the film having seen it only once. I can tell you that minor shortfalls aside it was a damn entertaining ride through a outrageous, unabashedlyover-the-top alternate history of 1940's France. It was funny, tense, thrilling, surprising, and honestly at times it struck me as disgusting. It's a movie you simply have to see at some point.

See No Future

2009-08-13T13:15:00.005-04:00

Perhaps this is part of growing up but it never ceases to amaze me how a stable situation can descend into chaos so unexpectedly and so quickly. I won't bore you or stress myself with the details but just know that a figurative car bomb has gone off in the lives of a handful of a couple of people I hold close to my heart. One in particular, one I'm trying my hardest to get over because that's for the best, and one who should come crying to me when the one he thought he loved unexpectedly broke his heart via text message. (Yes, a text message.) One thing I've found myself saying over and over again almost ever since I met him, "Nothing is ever easy with that boy."

Him and the rest of my ailing company are so far away though, there's really only so much I or anyone else can do. It's times like these you just want to give someone a hug and tell their emotionally fucked mind the reasonable truth that everything will be alright, and despite how bad things seem there is a happier happiness out there for us all. I said it for him just as much as I said it for anyone else including myself, only problem is I don't know if anyone took it to heart. I should be thankful that I'm avoiding the same miserable pitfalls my friends have fallen into, but damn I am tired.

Twenty-four days.

But Will Obama Cure My Over-Stretched Sphincter?

2009-08-12T14:29:00.005-04:00

Seems people in America can't shut the fuck up about health care these days, and for good reason. America's the only industrialized nation without some form of widely available socialized (yes I said socialized, no that does not mean I'm a Soviet agent) health care system, and the privatized one we currently have is a pile of shit for most people. Premiums are suffocatingly expensive, and maybe if we found a way to lower those then people living in shacks in the mountains with unstable mindsets, a plastic vagina collection, and internet access could get the help they need instead of trolling the blogs of people several decades younger than them. Every day some senator somewhere hosts a "town hall" where they pretend to listen to the gripes of their constituents for a little bit, and laugh at the occasional riley audience member who has to be escorted out by the police.

Speaking of people who need to be escorted out by the police, Sarah Palin has reared her cancerous head yet again to chime in on the current health care shitstorm. Earlier, on her official facebook page, she claimed that Obamacare contains plans for "death panels" packed with "his bureaucrats [who] decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether [people] are worthy of health care." In a vain attempt to inspire her defective base to action, she said 'the America she knows and loves' wouldn't submit to Obama's health care Gestapo that would almost certainly sentence people like her grandparents or her Down Syndrome baby to death by refusing coverage. What Palin fails to realize because of her moderate affluence and massive stupidity, however, is that such death panels already exist. Every day health insurance companies measure whether or not it's beneficial to their bottom line to pay for someone's operation. And if it's too expensive your mother to get that liver transplant she needs, Blue Cross Blue Shield might send you some nice flowers in condolence if you're lucky. So long as they don't lose money on the blue dye for the roses.

But the Obama administration, internet-savvy motherfuckers they are, remain a step ahead of Sarah Palin and her army of sociopolitical rejects. The administration wants you the people to help cut through all the bullshit, all the lies and half-truths perpetrated by opponents of Obama's will by forwarding anything that "seems fishy" to flag@whitehouse.gov. Before you go and report your Republican neighbors to the Thought Police though, bear in mind that in addition to their contact info the administration will also get yours. If the endless texts sent to those of us who wanted to know who his VP pick was as well as the usual Constitutional fidelity of the Office of the President are any indication, the White House will take their own liberties with yours after they're done with your fellow Americans. Gruppenführer Müller would no doubt see shades of himself in Obama today.

Quality Control

2009-08-09T22:49:00.000-04:00

Being a child of 4chan there's admittedly not much that can truly trouble, upset, or offend me out there. 1 Guy 1 Cup was funny. Tubgirl was an impressive feat in anal control. There are people who make fun of the recently dead, there's people who venture into North Korea alone and leave with a woman on each arm (okay that's pretty gangsta), but then there are people that make even a people like me take a step back and say "Why do you do these things?" Leave it to the Australians.

There are times where you have to wonder where and how things failed so spectacularly. Nero, Nazi Germany, Enron, and CNN Shirts are all good examples. One day not so long ago the writing staff of ABC's (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) The Chaser's War On Everything (like The Daily Show but with more sketches and less funny, most famous for sneaking an Osama Bin Laden doppleganger into an international conference) sat down in their brainstorming session, and one of them said 'Hey guys, I have this great idea--let's make fun of dying children.' And thus, the Make-A-Realistic-Wish Foundation was born. The premise goes that children with leukemia wanting to go to Disneyworld is too impractical, so instead they're given a pencil case. "Why go to any trouble, when they're only going to die anyway?"

Somewhat needless to say a sketch ridiculing children saddled with terminal illnesses for wanting to meet their heroes or go on fantastic vacations from a drab hospital bed didn't rub off so well on the public. Or maybe we're supposed to laugh at the adults who go through so much to bring a little joy into a child's otherwise miserable existence? Either way, the failure of someone on the staff to say 'Hey guys, we could get very fired for this' led to just that, and more. Aussieland's Mandarin-speaking, rather liberal PM even said in a press conference, "having a go at kids with a terminal illness is really beyond the pale, absolutely beyond the pale. These guys collectively should get up and hang their heads in shame, it's just wrong."

"We're a comedy show; sometimes we're amazed at what offends people," is what one of the Chaser staff said back when he still had a job. Whether or not that quote was taken out of context by the news channel, as a comedian with a job to keep on a station funded by the government, it's in his own interest to know what will and will not offend people. Clearly he couldn't figure this out on his own without a nation of pissed off parents yelling at his superiors to fire everyone on the show first.

Hanged In Rags

2009-08-06T20:37:00.002-04:00

If I ever saw someone wearing a shirt emblazoned with "Rare waterspout seen off Alaska--I just saw it on CNN.com" I would break their arms and then piss in the wounds created by their jutting bones. It just baffles me as to why someone would wear a shirt with a news headline on it. Like anyone gives a shit about some Alaskan waterspout or that you watched it online. And the "I just saw it on CNN.com" part becomes kind of silly when that shirt arrives in the mail five business days later and the link to the story is probably gone, made way for more stupid and redundant commentary or report cards on Obama's third, fourth, fifth, and sixth 100 Days.

In their FAQ section (yes, people have frequently asked questions about shirts), there is the following gem: "I took my CNN Shirt on vacation, and I have great pictures. Where can I send them?" Well, aside from your various aunts, uncles, and cousins who surely don't give a fuck about your vacation pictures that only remind them of how poor they are, the good folks at CNN have a CNN Shirt photo archive. Pages upon pages of CNN having aimless people show off their stupid network swag, primarily for CNN's personal gain. It's corporate camwhoring, except they never show their cock. And those are the worst kinds of camwhores.

The shirts are available with any headline the CNN editors thought fit to go on a shirt dating back to April when they first started offering this idiocy. The shirt with your favorite funny, intriguing, deep, of just plain quirky headline on it will run you $15, although if you really want to wear such shit you can go to the dog park around midday and smear your neighbor's lab's breakfast all over your chest for free.

Brain Damaged

2009-08-05T21:56:00.001-04:00

One social fad I never understood was that abortion of a show Jon & Kate Plus 8. And I really do mean it when I compare the show to an abortion: I watched just one episode and when they spent half an hour doting on a girl's room being painted pink and the ten of them plus camera crew driving on a beach I wondered why the TLC executives don't fully flesh out ideas for shows before passing off what they found in the eye of their cock as a flagship program. At least other reality programs have drama: assholes, love triangles, alcohol, that sort of stuff. This shit had none of that.

Not only is it boredom incarnate, it's a manipulative, greedy, destructive, lecherous excuse for a reality show. At least on other showcases of humanity at its finest, everyone consents to being made into an ass on international television. Under normal circumstances the consent of the parents to have their kids on TV would be enough but there is no doubt in my mind these shining examples of parenthood are willfully and shamelessly exploiting their eight children to make a cool couple million off of the easily-entertained retarded masses.

Words cannot express how much of a waste I think this show is. You should have seen the veins bursting in my face when I found out it's nothing new and Jon & Kate Plus 8 is actually in its fifth season. It's fifth season! What the hell is wrong with this country? I suppose I can find pride in avoiding such shame for such a long time, but now that it's caught up with me--well, I can't say I'm beside myself, it's just that rarely does such a show come along that so genuinely displays slimy, shit-suckling excuses for people behaving at their absolute most selfish (in such a dull fashion, too) to rave reviews and ratings. At least the triumphant return of their bullshit circus act suffered a 61% drop in ratings. Maybe instant karma got the jackasses good.

Krusty Krab

2009-08-04T21:04:00.002-04:00

It must be stories like this that make people hate Americans. Not hate America; that's done easily enough by foreign policy allowing the world police to kick in everyone else's front door and fuck shit up in the name of freedom. But reading that a vast majority of American children don't have enough Vitamin D in their bodies, now that's something.

Vitamin D is everywhere. It's in the milk you drink, the eggs you eat, the fish you have for dinner, the multivitamins you take, it's even in the fucking sunlight. Yes, spending 15 minutes or so in the sun a day--the equivalent of walking to 7-Eleven and back for a bag of Cheetos and a pack of cigarettes--will make your body produce a healthy amount of Vitamin D.

I've had sand in my vagina ever since getting back to Rockville two magical months ago, but seriously, what the hell? I am no prime model of physical fitness. I've even put on 12 pounds! But even if I don't find myself out and about I find the time in my busy, busy schedule of reading, gaming, and boredom to pop a Centrum a day. You barely have to get up and ruin that bed sore you've been working on to take one, and a bottle of 100 pills isn't much more than $10. I'd think it was a small price to pay for avoiding brittle bones and heart disease--a bike ride is even cheaper--but how can 60% of parents be wrong? Bones are but crutches of the liberal elite; real men hold their bodies together with duct tape and sheer willpower. Idiots.

Lee Harvey Oswald's Best Friend

2009-08-02T22:21:00.001-04:00

Eric Hansen was a sophomore at OU, living in a hall not too far from me. I didn't know him at all, but on April 28th he did some shrooms with a friend/supplier (at least this once) and wound up falling out of his 4th floor window to his death. The friend, James Wagers, was recently charged with manslaughter. The authorities contend that if it weren't for the mushrooms Hansen would still be alive. If Wagers is convicted of that along with the drug charges he could spend up to 11 years in prison. And while all that is well and good, what I want to know is when is someone going to do something about these damn windows?

Absolute Anal Blast Destruction/Ask A Black Dude

2009-08-01T21:29:00.001-04:00

Today I went and saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It took every ounce of self-control to keep from whispering loudly, just as the movie started, "Snape Kills Dumbledore". Bearing in mind I have not read any of the books save for the first, I enjoyed it--particularly all the great That's What She Said moments. ('Harry, you're my friend, but..sometimes you can be really thick'). Then Tyler and I had dinner and talked a lot about sex, relationship woes, and drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. All in all a good day, for once.

So as Omar dutifully pointed out, my darling mother kinda knocked the shit out of the scheduled Ask A Black Dude for yesterday. I completely forgot about it until he mentioned it, so here we go. For any new people, the premise of these posts is you ask me any question about anything you want in the comments and I'll answer them. Yes, you can ask for my address and phone number but no you will not be receiving an answer to such inquiries.

We Apologize

2009-08-01T13:41:00.002-04:00

For this temporary interruption in service. Expect AABD this evening.

Two Foot Small

2009-07-30T14:06:00.003-04:00

"So why don't I ever hear you telling me about your girlfriends?"

"Um..what?"

"I mean, most guys your age have girlfriends--you're certainly old enough and you're a good looking guy."

"..........."

"The fuck?" She doesn't say it but she thinks it, it's all over her face. The light changes and along with it the conversation. She starts talking about all the things she has on her mind; classes, discussion board posts, this and that. I almost interject "and a gay son" but she went on and on about qualifications she has to fulfill to become a psychotherapist in the state of Maryland.

"So why don't you have a girlfriend?"

"Erm, because I don't want one?"

"Well, why not?"

"Some people prefer boyfriends."

"What, are you gay or something?" That look comes back on her face.

"Is that a problem?"

"Are you?"

"Yes; is that a problem?"

"No."

To Waste Your Time Away Like This

2009-07-28T18:47:00.005-04:00

My first hands-on experience with cancer was in 2004 when, sometime around my 14th birthday my grandmother was interred at the hospital to undergo an operation for the disease. Naturally it was so far along that chemotherapy, while miserable in its own right may have proved less painful in the longrun, was just not an option. Half a colon and no apartment later (how else do you think the operation got paid for?) the real fun began. Having the two of them under one roof, a unit that I soon learned never got along well at all ("That woman has never once told me 'Good job, I'm proud of you.' Never."), in addition to the unwelcome guests dementia and incontinence mean it's been a damn long five years and counting.

This past September when I left for Ohio University, I went not because I wanted to but because I had to. Sure enough though, ten weeks free of a decaying grandmother slowly driving my mother to the brink was exactly what I needed. That plays no small part in my saying that going away for college is the best decision I've made with my life to date. However with the highs come the lows; when winter break finally ended I was ready to start pulling my hair out, and this summer has been especially taxing on my own sanity. Not just because of that though. It seems like everyone I know now knows someone who has or is undergoing treatment for it. I know South Park said cancer was in at the moment, but damn.

But before the cancer and the dementia there was the Breyer's Vanilla Fudge Twirl ice cream, The Price Is Right, and the cities on her living room floor I made with paper bags for skyscrapers and index cards for billboards and Hot Wheels cars for traffic that I was always sure to clean up before my mom came and got me after work. These are the kinds of things a friend suggested I reminisce with her about now, "even if she doesn't remember them." I'm at peace with her dying soon but the much more likely reality of her not remembering all the good times we had is what broke me. He apologized a thousand times over for making me cry but the fact remains that I can't bear what's become of her. And that, I think, is why I'm ready for her to go on.

Things I Do Not Give A Fuck About

2009-07-27T18:02:00.000-04:00

Imagine that every time you had something to say about an important topic, you had to wait for some horrible thing to happen before anyone other than the choir would listen to you. And even then, they're really only paying lip service. Nobody's really listening to what anybody has to say about the topic at hand and the drama surrounding the event fades. Then, a couple months or years later, something else terrible happens and the process repeats. Fuck that shit, right? People shouldn't need a problem thrust in their face in order to pay attention to it. Your waiter or waitress doesn't even have to walk with their hips for you to notice they have a nice ass, so why does a black man need to be arrested by a white police officer for someone in a suit and tie to come along and say "racism is a problem in America"?

Every time one of these 'national conversations' start, I can imagine someone in their own little corner of the world thinking, "hopefully after this we can all learn to better get along with one another" or something else unflinchingly adorable yet ignorant and enraging. It's one thing to believe this if you're 14, another if you've witnessed how these things turn out. The cycles are always the same and they never stop. I would go so far as to say the only things Americans have learned from 9/11 are how to irritate each other at the airport and be distrustful of Muslims. 'National conversations' are constructs of the mainstream media. It gives them an excuse to drag a nonsense story out over days, even weeks, and have panel after panel of 'strategists' and 'experts' wax poetic about shit they really don't know anything or care at all about. All because the people at the networks know that the masses nom up shit like that. It's profit-driven insanity. And I don't know who's more in the wrong: media conglomerates for letting capitalism define news, or people for being so damn short-sighted. Flip a coin.

Bruno-No-Go-Go

2009-07-26T12:30:00.001-04:00

As a man who prefers the company of other men I know I'm supposed to hate Sacha Baron Choen and his latest brief-pseudo-social-commentary Brüno. Baron Cohen is a homophobe looking to bank off of the sentiments of hateful and/or ignorant Americans such as himself. After actually seeing the movie (late, I know, and only because plans to see Harry Potter fell through) I can safely say the aforementioned stance is just about as valid as people calling Baron Cohen a xenophobe over Borat. Maybe it's just because I refuse to assume the worst of people.

That being said the man's latest is nothing like his previous movie. While not sophisticated, Borat had a lot of smart comedy and legit social commentary immersed in its stupidity. It was the kind of movie smart people could laugh at, and stupid people can laugh at too without realizing they're the ones being made fun of. In a sense it largely preached to the choir and I doubt anyone who went into the theater hating minorities came out loving them. Still though, it was a damn funny movie. Brüno, on the other hand, is a much lazier film. Most of the humor hinges on the outrageousness of the title character instead of the unknowing stars and their reactions to uncomfortable situations. And, at least where I watched it, the moments in the film that challenged patrons to walk out didn't work (except for one old guy). To be fair, I didn't really pay attention to people's faces as a 20 foot penis was being waved around on the screen ahead.

I will say though, the one moment in the film that made me feel a bit resigned about the sorry state of the United States was the climax. I won't spoil the movie by saying too much, only that I wish the entire 81 minutes could have been as sharp as those five. Brüno was still a funny and somewhat-intelligent movie, but it wasn't as all-around excellent as its predecessor. Too often it missed its mark and made an ass out of the gay guy and not the supposed butts of the joke. That feeling I got in my stomach during much of the movie must be a hint of whatever the Kazakhs were feeling in 2006. Lucky for myself and other homosexualists though, I doubt Brüno will change anyone's mind about anything, much like Borat came and went without a long-lasting effect on things.

Poetry In Motion

2009-07-25T21:19:00.001-04:00

Maybe it's because it's the name of a professional wrestling move but the above phrase sounds incredibly corny to me. But at the same time I adore it; it's (the words, not the move) exactly what comes to mind, not necessarily what I think, when I type out a post in one sitting. Something that doesn't happen very often with me anymore. I don't know if you can tell it or not--you probably can--but just a little bit of the passion for this has been stolen. During the school year I genuinely didn't have time, and so I was looking forward to the summer where I would be able to get back in the proverbial groove of things. Naturally, as soon as summer hit I lost myself and was unable to write for a myriad of reasons/excuses (that I am not going to discuss here because it's too tiring).

Not too long ago I was considering seeking professional help. I mean, I'm still going to pay the extra $40 for counseling once school starts should I need it but I'm fairly certain I don't want to go through that trouble this summer. Headshrinkers are expensive as fuck. While I still feel a bit lost and clueless I'm not nearly as bad as I was this time last month. If I told my mother I wanted counseling she would lose her mind even more than she already has. She needs me to be stable so I'm going to be stable. My very close friends are doing a decent job of holding me together (and I appreciate their effort very much). Another friend of mine got referred to a psychiatrist who literally serves as his licensed drug dealer; he just asked "What and how much do you want?" If I so desire I can get drugs without paying a psychiatrist, thank you.

Ask A Black Dude this Friday, it's been a while.

Even When You're Down And Out

2009-07-22T08:30:00.002-04:00

I still loves you, porgy. Keep your head above water.

It's Not Me, It's You

2009-07-20T12:00:00.000-04:00

You know, I've got to learn to be a better asshole. That's not to say I'm going to go around telling people to piss off at random. Rather, I need to be able to tell people the hard, fast truth even if they don't want to hear it. I think, and I've been told repeatedly, that I care ~~almost~~ to a fault. It's the byproduct of being raised in an unintentionally over-sheltered existence. On the other hand I've also been told there's no such thing as caring too much. But after handling everyone's problems for the better part of five months now, once they begin to drag me down with them I respectfully disagree. Fundamentally, I'm tired of my happiness being tied to the happiness of others. Even if they are my friends. if one of them isn't happy with me for some indiscernible bullshit selfish reason (like one of them is right now), I no longer see why I should care.

A couple weeks ago I had a friend advise that I talk to everybody the way I talk to him. I'm secure enough in my friendship with him that I know I can tell him any truth and it won't make him want to murder me. When he first told me this I figured I would give it a trial run, and it went beautifully. I felt better about myself, and the person I was talking to didn't seem to mind. Why didn't I continue with it? Maybe I'm a dumbass; that is after all how I got myself in this situation in the first place. Lying, bending the truth, doing and saying things I didn't want to to provide a temporary happiness under the guise of caring. All it does is hurt everyone involved, anyway.

The post may seem jumbled but that's because the thoughts still aren't exactly clear in my head. What I do know though is that I'm going to placating upset people. Their problems don't go away, and more importantly they come back to dump their shit on me again. It's a cycle. They're going to hear the truth whether they want to or not because I'm done dicking around with this shit and letting other people bring me down. They might like it and they might not, but if they can't at least respect it then they can piss off. “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”

Believe It Or Not, I'm Not An Alcoholic.

2009-07-15T17:00:00.005-04:00

For the past couple of days I've been making drinking games out of the most mundane things. And no, that's not what I've been doing all this time instead of posting, smartass. So far I've got one for a Beatles song, one for "Gran Torino", and a couple are in the works including one for a gay porno. But this isn't just your run of the mill production featuring Brent So-And-So taking X number of cocks in his sweet hole, oh no.

"The Revolution Is My Boyfriend" is 90 minutes of overdubbing, abysmal acting, sodomy, and socialist propaganda. Breathy messages about how there can be no revolution without sexual revolution, and there can be no sexual revolution without homosexual revolution scroll across the screen. The flashing text reminds you "fuck copyright" as one of the young revolutionaries is chin-deep in his German comrade's dick. Oh, and there's a scene where they have sex in the trunk of a moving car. The first time I watched it I didn't know whether to laugh or masturbate; clearly you can see why it's a ripe candidate for drinking games. So far I'm scheduled to play it with two straight men and a homo. After all, heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!

Do The Right Thing (And Shut The Fuck Up)

2009-07-11T07:51:00.001-04:00

Allow me to not be the first to say that Sarah Palin is full of shit. To be fair I did not watch the entirety of her random press conference, nor have I been paying much attention to the pundits' reactions to it. I learned during the campaign that just about none of them know how to do anything other than yell. But her insanity and the inanity of people's reaction, one in particular, serves only to drive me more towards misanthropy than the whole of Nazi Germany could ever hope to.

John Tantillo is not a political pundit. He may have come up with the name for Bill O'Reilly's show, according to wikipedia he's got a masters and a doctorate in two different fields of psychology, and he's apparently some sort of marketing whiz. But if his opinion piece is any hint that doesn't mean he's intelligent. And in the esteemed tradition of Fox News, anyone who has even a clue as to what the fuck they're talking about dictates what to do, think, and believe to the middle class. Pawns of the liberal elite to manipulate Americans and turn this great country into Europe Lite.

'She's not a loser or a quitter, she's a maverick with a bright political future.' Doctor Tantillo contends that the reasons she offered--because of the wasteful spending and time consuming nature of investigations against her administration, and the media treating her family like shit--are valid and need not be questioned. Ask yourself, how much sense does this make: Palin leaves office, and the authorities immediately drop all investigations against her because she left office. The offender is gone and therefore they and their cronies don't need to be brought to justice. So if I kill someone in Ohio and then drive to Pennsylvania all is right with the world. I left the scene of the crime, right? State and federal tax dollars will continue to be spent on the investigations (frivolous or not, it doesn't matter), and the new governor will still be hamstrung by the probing authorities. Just because someone runs away from their cloud of shit doesn't mean the cloud of shit miraculously disappears and nobody cares anymore.

Of course media coverage about the Palin family has been unfair, irrational, invasive, probably inaccurate, and definitely stupid. But again, just because she's no longer governor doesn't mean the media is going to leave her alone. She's still a MILF, a severely retarded 30% of the American people still like her, that means there's still money in the media obsessing over her and her family. At this point, Sarah Palin is a lot like Obama in that she has a very noticeable celebrity factor. But for a second, let's pretend that after a few weeks the media will leave her alone in Wasilla. If she is as poised to grow as thew good Doctor suggests, what makes you think that as soon as she steps back into the limelight the media won't stalk her again?

Personally I don't know what her motivations are for quitting (because that's what she did, she fucking quit, don't try to romanticize it) her job. My first thought was that she, like Mike Huckabee recently, realized there's more money to be made in the private sector than the public. But I can't pretend like I know what she's thinking, she might have even believed the things she said. Sarah Palin the politician is just as short-sighted, senseless, and stupid as her fans. The 25% that believed Jesus would return in 2007 (and have probably upped their rapture date to 'sometime in 2009') probably form her core constituency. Whether or not Dr. Tantillo can be found on the corner preaching damnation is an unknown. What is known, however, is that he's a bold-face dumbass incapable of thinking for himself. Stick to marketing, John.

I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire

2009-07-05T19:09:00.004-04:00

To make things easier for people in Ohio I tell them I'm from DC, since whenever I mention Rockville--even if I say it's a DC suburb--they assume it's in the shadows of Baltimore. Idiots. While I like the city well enough, I only spent the first six years of my life there. I like going back but I don't get to do it too often because my friends here rarely seem up for adventuring in the big bad city. I will concede to them though, it's a strange city. Political jokes aside (really Joe?), any city that has fried chicken stores with barbed wire lining the roof is not your typical residential area.

Another odd thing about DC is who the people there like, and I can think of no case better than former Mayor and current City Councilman Marion Barry. If the name sounds familiar, it should. Marion was first the Mayor of DC from the glorious years of 1979 to 1991, and just before that final year he was caught on camera in an FBI sting smoking crack with an ex-girlfriend/informant. When the feds burst into the room and arrested the Mayor, he offered the hidden camera the classic line "Bitch set me up." After spending 6 months in jail, the people elected him to a 4th term as mayor. Currently he's on probation for tax evasion. And as a personal sticking point, Marion was also the sole dissenting vote on the city council regarding a bill recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Why? "All hell is going to break loose...we may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this." If that weren't enough, yesterday he was arrested for stalking a woman. How many steps back is it this time?

Barry's people insist the accuser is full of shit, claiming she's accused him of stalking several times. You know how hoodrats get when their friends are threatened; it's always everybody's fault but the actual perpetrator. Just like little children. People love him in parts of the city but I never hear anything about what he did to benefit the community, whether it be black people, Ward 8 (most of comically-downtrodden Southeast), or the city as a whole. He's just a pretty cool guy, and doesn't afraid of anything apparently. Gliding through life sharply-dressed with a tongue that kills. Of course it seems typical that the residents of southeast, of all parts of the city, would fall for this time and time again. Like his 1992 council campaign slogan said, "He May Not Be Perfect, But He's Perfect For D.C.!" Idiots.

"Bobby. You're George W. Bush, and Love is 9/11. Do Not Invade Iraq!"

2009-07-03T12:20:00.001-04:00

Last night was a bad night. I was in a bad way. My BAC was .00 and I still haven't smoked anything since mid-May. And no, that's not why I was in a bad way. Last summer I was afraid to leave Rockville, and this summer I'm afraid to stay here any longer. I miss everything about Athens, from the parade of drunkards on Court St. literally ever night to the brick streets and genuine masonry in the buildings. Rockville is like one of those dull, depressing small towns you see in those coming-of-age stories, except they've dressed it up real pretty in tree lined streets and prefab, generic-European-looking storefronts in "Rockville Town Square", about four square blocks of overpriced food and stores full of things nobody wants to buy. The library's pretty nice, though.

Most of what I miss about Athens though is definitely my friends. That fact became alarmingly clear when, a little while ago, one of them drunk-dialed me. It didn't even matter that he had way too much. Just hearing his voice made be so unbelievably happy. A week removed and I still can't put it into words. And that caught me a bit off guard; I've spoken on the phone with other friends and while I was glad to hear from them, I wasn't anywhere near that happy. Then again, this guy and I have a bit of history. We've only really known each other for a couple of months now, but for two gay men who aren't an item we spent a lot of time together. A lot of flirtatious time. Now, I like it as much as the next guy but I had no idea it would lead to this. From the very beginning I thought my attraction to him would remain a physical one and nothing more. Sure enough, as time went on I thought about him more and more. Just how much I miss him hit me in the face again last night, with a simple question prompted by a facebook status: "what's wrong lil lumpkin?"

I told him everything. Without names. I don't know what I was thinking, I was so tired and I didn't know what to do. But I told him everything. Throughout the whole conversation, he didn't even pick up that I was talking about him. But the one word I didn't want to hear out of the five hundred thousand in the English language did surface, several times: love. He said it, not me. There's so much about this I'm clueless to. How did something like this gain so much power over me, am I right to be telling anyone, am I worrying over nothing, do I really like him this much, why/how am I writing this post, did I just miss a golden opportunity to come out to my mother, why did I tell him specifically who I--in his words--am in love with. I didn't want to hear that word but it so perfectly sums up what I've been feeling. And they call this shit beautiful.

Like a fatass crab molting its shell, I've never felt so vulnerable in my life; not necessarily expecting but certainly being afraid of getting boiled, gutted, and eaten. He said he wasn't weirded out--"in fact I'm flattered."--but of course that doesn't satisfy my mind.

"He's just saying that," my brain goes.
"Please shut the fuck up," I respond, "this is all your goddamn fault."
...
"At least he didn't brutally shoot me down, or just stop talking to me.."
"Not yet."
"I swear to fucking god, if you don't hush the fuck up right fucking now--" Silence, for a second anyway.
"'Maybe when school starts'? I mean, I can't expect him to promise to wait; that's basically a long distance relationship and it's unfair to expect that out of him. I don't even want that."
"Okay so he didn't outright reject you. He's just letting you down easy, fall quarter will turn into 'sometime later maybe' and we both know that'll never come. You'll be lucky to remain friends."

You probably find yourself sitting there, thinking "what has this boy gotten himself into?" Is it love or is it just, uh, confusion? As soon as I know I'll clue you in.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

2009-06-29T09:23:00.013-04:00

You've probably never heard of it. And even if you have odds are it's because of recent token media coverage now that Obama has decreed June to be Pride Month, and for a month people act like they care about the homos. But if you haven't heard of it, don't feel bad. I didn't know what the hell a Stonewall Inn was until about a year ago when I happened to come across it on Wikipedia while combing through articles, following one link to another. Nobody told me about it in school, my mother never brought it up despite being a child of the age, you get the idea. I knew who Stonewall Jackson was, but I doubted and still doubt his name bears any relation to the place in New York City.

To make a long and complicated story short and neat in the interest of time and space, the Stonewall Inn was, 40 years ago yesterday, the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and much of the world. New York's Finest had taken to raiding gay bars under the auspices of enforcing the law, but the queerbaits at the Stonewall unexpectedly showed some resistance. The NYPD quickly lost control of the situation, and for five days a community shouted out their collective window and proclaimed they were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it anymore (seven years too early I know, but the line fits perfectly). Exactly a year after the riots on Christopher Street the community held the world's first gay pride parade, marching from the Stonewall Inn to Central Park.

Now, four decades removed from the riots where do we find ourselves? Everything those couple hundred pissed off queens could never have even dreamed of, for one. For a civil rights movement that started such a short time ago, the gay community has made truly remarkable progress. Prior to 1969, coming out anywhere was a formal request to be disowned by your parents and/or fired by your employer. While "the heartland", Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and huge swaths of Asia still have a long way to go, at least there are places on this planet where gay people can be somewhat accepted by other people and where the wandering can find refuge.

The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, and Canada are currently the only five countries on the planet where same-sex marriage is legalized without restriction. The marriage debate is an easy one nowadays to coalesce the whole gay rights movement into. It happens every day. And while the right to marry is certainly a very important one it would be irresponsible to assume the marriage issue is the only stain left unwashed.

In Ohio, I can be fired from my job effective immediately if my employer decides she doesn't like queers. In Florida, if my landlord feels the same way he can kick me out of my house for no other reason than that. In Jamaica I can be beaten and harassed by police officers. Half a world away, I can be tortured, mutilated, raped, hunted and killed--legally or otherwise--for daring to be myself. But no LGBT person anywhere is immune from rejection by so-called friends and family. Old habits die hard, and it's easy to say you accept gay people before your son or daughter, or even spouse comes out to you. Several people I know learned that the hard way, and it's something I am legitimately afraid to face. I don't know if people are born gay or not, but I can say with absolute certainty that it is not a conscious choice.

It's always amazing how much things change and how much they can manage to stay exactly the same. Our current president promised to be a "fierce advocate" of LGBT rights. He promised to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, opening the doors for the United States to eventually become #6 on the previously mentioned list. Infamously, he has taken no action against DADT and his administration defended DOMA in court using the Bryantesque comparison of homosexuals to pedophiles. Simultaneously, he declares June to officially be Pride Month as if that's supposed to make amends. The notion of a homophobic federal government sanctioning "Pride Month" reeks of the tokenism of Black History Month immersed in White History Year. And it's disgusting.

Bob Dylan once asked a world, "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?" Like the black civil rights movement, and like the process of coming out for every LGBT person, there is no definite end but death. So long as there are gay people and straight people, institutionalized discrimination will always be something to struggle against. The point of the gay rights movement is not to reach some sunshiney, saccharine promised land. The point is to be free to live and love as we see fit. It's that simple. A freedom to be yourself is not just an American right, it's a human right. If a handful of broke, homeless, slightly drunk queers can stand up on a lonely New York night and spark a cultural movement, imagine what millions can do.

The Day The Lols Died

2009-06-28T18:33:00.003-04:00

Billy Mays, infomercial and internet royalty, has died. He was 50.

If America were a bearded middle aged white man with a loud, obnoxious voice commanding your attention and trying to get you to buy something (who are we kidding, that is America), then Billy Mays was the majestic eagle soaring over the suburban mega-mall and crapping on the BMW's in the parking lot. And with that precious eagle now extinct, all we have is Vince the garden variety ShamWow pigeon. There can be only one Billy Mays.

In addiction to being an infomercial personality, Billy was an internet (read:4chan) icon. Fox News, the it-getters that they are, clearly understand this as they cast aside yet another South American military coup to devote Sunday's headlines to the one and only Billy Mays--and in all caps too; he would have approved. Fox's storied relationship with 4chan, tracing back to hackers on steroids and corruptions of "lol", is one of but a few support mechanisms the internet community has in troubled times like these. Now who will yell at us through the television and computer screens? Where will the internet get its infolols from now? Today the internet weeps, for it has lost one of its few heroes.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to buy some Mighty Putty. To mend my soul.

Don't Wanna Be A Boy, You Wanna Be A Man

2009-06-26T18:19:00.006-04:00

All I can really say is poor Ed McMahon and poorer Farrah Fawcett. This was supposed to be their week of mourning, and in comes the King of Pop to Bogart his way into the dead celebrity scene and steal all of their thunder. McMahon was just as recognizable as Johnny Carson and Fawcett was not only a 70's pop culture icon but she died the one of the worst ways someone can die, at the hands of a rare and highly lethal cancer. I didn't even follow her slow descent into death but seeing the occasional video of her in her dilapidated state was incredibly saddening. I suppose you could make the same argument about Jackson's public character and facial features, but living with someone in a similar state as Farrah, I can tell you it's just not the same.

At any rate like, like it did in life, in death the name "Michael Jackson" cannot be treated with moderation by the mainstream media, and by extension most people. Anyone who has a facebook account can tell you about the flood of "RIP MJ" statuses, and the occasional stray mention of Fawcett or McMahon. One of them even called Thursday "The Day The Music Died", an allusion to (for those of you who don't know) the 1959 plane crash that killed Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (known as The Big Boppper), and Buddy Holly; three young rock and roll musicians who only enjoyed a year or so of fame before their deaths.

To me though, the loss of potential is what earned that 1959 day its moniker. Holly et al. had already become somewhat famous, yes, but they did not have full musical careers to their names by the time of their deaths. Rather than being able to fully flesh out their talent though, their influence lives on in the works of pretty much any guitar player/group that got their start in the late 50's and early 60's. had the three of them survived the crash, rock history as we know it would be a lot different. Contrast this with the life and death of Michael Jackson, who had been performing for 40 of his 50 years on this planet. Jackson already had a critically acclaimed and incredibly successful career under his belt, one that effectively ended in the 1990's. Michael had already explored his wealth of creative genius, if not fully then certainly moreso than Buddy Holly ever had a chance to do. Yesterday a great talent was lost, yes, but not much unfulfilled potential.

I was talking to Omar over MSN this afternoon when he said to me that, in regards to solo acts, there are three giants in western popular music: Sinatra, Elvis, and Michael. While you could argue for having more names among that holy trinity, there's no disputing that at least those three definitely belong there. And in terms of appreciating the man's talent for crafting incredible pop songs and putting on equally impressive shows, his freaky nose, Jesus Juice cans, and possible sex with underage boys is irrelevant. I can't really call myself a Michael Jackson fan but also as Omar said, for millions he was and is a generational phenomenon. Someone that's it's difficult to imagine life without, in one form or another.