Tonight’s “Heroes”. Amazing. Unbelievable. The best episode yet! That’s what good television is all about.
And no Nikki/Jessica two weeks in a row!
Yay!
Snowy Mondays.
I have spent the entire day sitting at the kitchen table studying. I’m starting to feel like I’m ahead of the college game again as last week it seems like all my instructors jolted awake and said “let them have homework”. I usually save Sunday nights for my Drafting class homework, but Earl and I got wrapped up in the Academy Awards so I ended up pushing it off until today.
By the way, did anyone else find the Academy Awards as boring as I did? I mean I loved sitting on the couch with Earl to my left and Tom on my lap and it was nice to see Jennifer Hudson win her award and I surely enjoyed seeing Melissa Etheridge win her award for her song in Vice President Al Gore’s documentary (which is recording on the TiVo as I type this), but on the whole I found the award ceremony relatively boring. The naked people behind the white screen making bird shadows and whatnot were sort of like fireworks, you “ooh” and “aah” the first time or two you see them then you start showing more interest in swatting bugs and such. While I was rather excited to have Ellen DeGeneres as the host I found her to be somewhat subdued and rather absent from large chunks of the show. I mean she didn’t do a poor job but I wasn’t dazzled like I thought I would be.
Earl is out of town until Friday night save for a cameo appearance tomorrow night before leaving again Wednesday morning. We’re having guests over this weekend so I’ll be busy sprucing up, plus I’m having dinner with our friend Eric on Wednesday so I won’t be a surly hermit or anything but gosh I think it’s going to be a long week.
High Banks.
Earl and I drove to Syracuse to visit with my Mom and sister today. We decided to go the long way, passing through the Village of Parish and City of Oswego, both of which were featured on the national news because of the recent snowstorm.
The snow has settled considerably since falling two weeks ago, but the snowbanks are still quite impressive.
Such A Gas.
To make my partner’s life of business travel a little bit easier, I offered to take his car to the grocery store today so I could fill the gas tank up on the way home. He cautioned me that perhaps I should get gas on the way to the market, because there was a chance that I wouldn’t have enough to make it all the way to the store. You see, he likes to live on the edge. I discovered very early in our relationship that he believed when the gas gauge was on “E”, the idiot light flashed a little gas pump and the warning chimes chimed, you easily had at least 100 miles worth of gas left in the tank. The vehicle you driving didn’t matter, you had 100 miles left if you were driving a Yugo, a Fiat, a tractor trailer or a tank.
So I stopped in to the local gas station to fill up the tank. Luckily, I made it without needing to coast. It was close though, because the gas station is over one mile away from our house. At the station I went through the usual routine: I pressed the “PAY OUTSIDE” key, swiped my card in a spastic, hurried manner hoping the reader wasn’t clogged with ice, punched my way through various menus including credit or debit, car wash or no, age, weight, zip code and sexual orientation.
After listening to the pump shake, rattle and roll as it presumably put a 89 octane Tiger in my tank, I put the nozzle back on the rack and waited for the next question. “RECEIPT? YES/NO”
I don’t know why I bother answering yes. We all know that nothing is going to print there at the pump. Do you know why? I’ll tell you why. The manager holds the secret key to the roll of paper in the pump and the manager is relaxing in Bermuda on stolen lottery money.
Why is the manager the only one that holds this magic key? Can someone please explain to me why the staff members of a convenience store are not allowed to change the paper in the gas tanks? They hold the key to the storage tanks of thousands of gallons of a highly explosive fluid but they are not allowed to change a 3/4-inch by 25 foot roll of receipt tape.
I find that baffling.
What makes the situation worse is that the manager never changes the paper on Friday, so by mid morning Saturday all of the pumps are out of paper and the Speedpass “Pay at the Pump” ain’t so speedy because you have to go into the store, stand in line behind the smelly woman that’s buying $200 worth of scratch of lottery tickets and four cartons of Pall Malls and then beg for your receipt.
Getting gas is such a gas.
Brilliant.
I stumbled across the video courtesy of Mark’s blog, I’d like to share it with you.
It’s from the television of “Boston Legal” and the ‘ex-gay’ movement. It’s fscking brilliant.
Tall Pines.
It was the summer of 1989. My boyfriend (we’ll call him “Tom” to maintain anonymity) had just broken up with me because I wasn’t the same person he had met two years prior (to use his words). In the real world he was absolutely right, I wasn’t. I was growing as a 21 year old man should do when one is 21 years old.
I worked for the second largest computer company (at the time) in the world. I was a proud DECcie (the DEC was more properly called “Digital” within the company) and was a member of BGLAD (Bisexual Gays and Lesbians at Digital) and DEC-Plus (DEC People Like Us). At our monthly luncheons my brothers and sisters would often talk about a club that was basically in the middle of the woods near the New Hampshire border. You’d think living near Boston everyone would migrate to Beantown for their Friday and Saturday night fun, but no, some went to a club called “DiRocco’s” between Lowell, Mass. and Nashua, N.H.
As a farm boy from Upstate New York I was hesitant to go out in Boston by myself. The anonymous one, Tom (just a pseudonym, I assure you) wouldn’t dream of going to any bar, let alone a club in Boston, lest anyone actually look at me.* But I knew I could handle DiRocco’s alone. It sounded like a wicked good time and the DJ got rave reviews from those that went there. And besides, the chances were very good that I would run into someone I knew.
The reason I wanted to go out was because I was mostly interested in the music. Having grown up via high school dances with “Working For The Weekend” and that dreck by Benny Mardones played over and over, I longed for some “real” club music in a club setting.
The time was right. It was the middle of August and it was hot. I had no plans and Anonymous Tom was off with his new boyfriend (so soon! Shocking!) So I gathered up my nerve and drove the 30 minutes to DiRocco’s. My fellow DECcies were right, it was in the middle of nowhere. My stomach was flip flopping. I hadn’t been in a bar in over two years and I had never been to one near a big city. As I parked the car I could hear the thump of the bass in the parking lot. The butterflies in my stomach increased in their churning intensity but I was also flushed with a rush of excitement.
It walked in and felt like I hit a wall of energy. The dance floor was packed with shirtless men and women. They were bumping and grinding at a frenetic pace. The music was loud! I could just feel the excitement of the crowd, almost as if they were consumed by a wild, sexually charged, power as they mingled and mangled and hooked up and broke up. All to the beat of the music from two turntables and a kiss-ass sound system.
I’ll never forget that first moment I walked into DiRocco’s. It was like the DJ controlled the party. If the music is too slow, they get bored and leave. If the music is too fast, they get tired too quickly and go home. You have to build it up slowly, beginning with a tease of what’s to come, then engage in foreplay before building it all up to a climax where everyone is sweaty and doing all they can do and more on the dance floor before you ramp it back a bit so everyone can come back to reality before heading home after last call.
When I made that first step into DiRocco’s, this was the song playing: “Touch Me” by the 49ers.** It’s derived of two different samples, “Touch Me” by Alicia Warren and “Rock-A-Lott” by Aretha Franklin. As the case with most Italian House songs, the person singing in the video is just a model lipsynching. At least this one is honest about it and doesn’t claim to be singing.
* That boyfriend would get so wildly jealous that I might exchange glances with another man that he forbad me from wearing mirrored sunglasses. I have no regrets, only learning experiences and that relationship taught me A LOT.
** I used to think the lyric was “Peter Pan was a man” but it’s “People can’t understand it”
Visual Lavinization.
![[Alice]](http://jpnearl.homeunix.net/~jpnearl/alice.jpg)
I have made an absolutely fabulous discovery on the internet. It’s called In2TV. It’s AOL’s free video streaming service. It has a TON of classic shows that you can watch on your computer.
Now I’m going to say that I like this service very much. I’ve already watched a number of episodes of “Alice” (from various seasons so that I could get all versions of the theme song stuck in my head), the unaired pilot of “Gilligan’s Island” with two secretaries named Ginger and Bunny, an unaired episode of the series “Aquaman” and early “Superman” episodes. And I just discovered In2TV last night around midnight.
Unfortunately, it’s an AOL product so naturally it’s not done as well as it could be. For example, you can download many of the shows to your computer in DVD quality and watch them in full-screen. The bad news is that AOL decided to utilize Windows-exclusive software to do that, so you can’t do it from a Mac or Linux computer. Non-Windows users are forced to watch a smaller picture as it’s streamed and they can’t save the file. From what I can tell (since this is a Macinhouse), Windows users can download the files and watch them full-screen but they expire in a couple of years and you’re limited to the In2TV player, so there’s no transferring to an iPod or anything.
Now this service may have been around for a while and you may already know about it, but I’m hooked. In fact, I’ve become so excited about streaming video over the internet that I’ve also started downloading more videos on iTunes in the process. Those we can watch full screen on our Macs (all bow before Apple).
So get over to In2TV for complete Visual Lavinzation.
Update 10:20 a.m.: OMG they have “V: The Series”! OMG.
![[Diana]](http://jpnearl.homeunix.net/~jpnearl/diana-v.jpg)
Productivity.
I’m not a morning person. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I barely speak English before noon. But in an effort to be a worthy, contributing member to society, I’ve been getting up around 7:30, even though my first class isn’t until 11:00. After getting up I usually mess around on the computer, feed the cat and watch The Golden Girls for a bit before getting in the shower and officially starting my day.
As a quick aside here, I must say I don’t understand those who don’t shower first thing in the morning. I am not awake, functional or pleasant if I have not showered in the morning. It’s the way I wake up. Those that don’t shower aren’t bad people, I just don’t understand how they can get started with their day. That’s all.
Anyway, this morning my mother called to reschedule our planned outing for this evening. I was already awake but I could tell she was hesitant to call me because she knows how I can be in the morning. While we were talking I noticed that the call was full of static. This has happened on and off for the past couple of days, since the completion of my wiring projects in the cellar.
So before I took a shower, before I was dressed and before I was speaking English, I rewired the phone connection to the outside world (including making custom cables), installed a shelf in the server room and relocated all our network equipment to the new shelf.
Now there’s no more static on the phone, the internet is faster and life in general is good.
And I haven’t even showered yet. Viva la productivity!
Modesty.
I love watching and observing people. I find human beings so fascinating because no two people are alike. Everyone has their own way of doing things and it’s interesting to watch others go about their business.
One trend that I’ve observed with my return to college has taken place in the men’s room. The young guys don’t use the urinals. Instead, they opt to go into a stall and do their thing there. I’ll walk into one of the college bathrooms and there’ll be a line of men waiting for the stalls but rarely will someone be using the assortment of urinals lining the wall.
Why is this?
I’m no Jaime Sommers but I have decent hearing, so I can hear the guys unzipping and peeing. I don’t hear their pants hit the floor like they’re getting ready to squat or anything (and I’m certainly not watching) so it’s obvious that these guys are choosing to go behind closed doors to do the same thing I used to do against a tree in the front lawn (until my father taught me to use the back lawn).
I guess I’ve never been pee shy so that’s why I don’t understand. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy public bathrooms by any stretch of the imagination. They’re usually frighteningly dirty and as a clueless gay man I’m always afraid that I’m unintentionally giving out some secret signal to some not-so-clueless gay man who thinks I’m stomping, coughing or waving an intended advance when in fact all I want to do is pee. When I walk into a men’s room at a rest area or whatever I’m always sure not to cough, not to clear my throat and to keep my junk squarely aimed at it’s target. I’m not sharing. Not there.
This streak of modesty among my fellow male students has piqued my curiousity though. What happened in my generation that is causing us to teach our offspring that peeing in a urinal is bad? Is it low self esteem? Were we too free in the 80s and now the pendulum is swinging back to some weird Victorian age when it comes to bathroom habits?
I find it very interesting.
Birthday Boy.
We have a birthday in the house today. Today is Earl’s forty-mumbleth birthday and to celebrate we have completely opposite schedules. I’m yinging while he’s yanging.
Perhaps tonight we’ll have the cake I baked after my class gets out at 10 p.m.
I offered to take him out to lunch today, but the universe helped with his birthday celebration by collapsing the roof on one of the buildings at his plant. So he’s running around like a maniac.
At least the activity keeps him young.
Happy Birthday Sweetheart!
