Zortnac's Primer, Being a Book of Intergalactic Etiquette

On Dealing With Emotion

2008-11-05T16:41:00.000-08:00

I could write. I've got things I want to say and express, but I spent enough time putting my ideas in to sentences before the election. For the moment, I just want to try expressing my sadness, frustration, and anger in a more creative way, turning to one of my favorite internet memes.

Write To Marry Day

2008-10-29T09:06:00.001-07:00

It's Write To Marry Day today. In the spirit of things I took what I wrote in my last post and re-vamped it a little, and then submitted it to the Santa Barbara News Press as a letter to the editor, inspired also by this great letter to the editor I read over at BTB. I think the News Press must be getting at least a dozen letters on Prop 8 per day, and there's nothing terribly good or special about mine, so I doubt it will get published, but here it is:

Please Help Me Protect Families

I want to appeal to your empathy, but please don't dismiss it a fallacy. I want to appeal to your love for your family, as I cherish my own. I am son to Chris and JoAnn, grandson to Noel and Lenore, Joseph and Helen. The relationships and bonds that strengthen my family are those that we are being asked by Proposition 8 to ignore and deny to same-sex couples.

Please don't be persuaded by claims that domestic partnerships are equivalent to marriage. This issue is not about the total count of benefits that make up each, it is about whether we are willing to look a family in their eyes and tell them they cannot have legal marriage, to instead settle for something separate but mostly equal. These families do and always will exist. These families are our friends and neighbors, they belong to our schools, our secular and religious communities, and we must lift them up, not categorize them separately.

I respect that we all have different views and values concerning what makes marriage sacred, and I know that we all value our families. I know that we can coexist without those views being threatened or our families being diminished. We can all enjoy our equal right to legally marry in the eyes of our government. Please don't take that right away from so many families and couples; please don't put a limit on what my relationships are allowed to become; please vote No on proposition 8.

A Simple Plea

2008-10-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

Next month Californians will all have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 8, which, if passed, will end the right for same-sex couples to marry, a right which has existed since the ruling from "In Re Marriage Cases" in the California Supreme Court this past summer. It will do this by amending our state constitution, and for the first time placing in to our constitution language that places restrictions on rights rather than defending them.

I respect your view of marriage.

I respect your traditions, your religious beliefs, and all that you hold dear concerning marriage. I respect and acknowledge that for you, true marriage only exists in one specific form, or only through an honored religious ceremony.

We can coexist peacefully along side each other, each with our own values concerning what marriage is, what it means to us, and how we choose to honor it. We can coexist peacefully in this way without any of us having to feel like second-class citizens in the eyes of our government; we can all enjoy the right to be legally married in the eyes of our state.

Please do not amend and destroy my right to legally marry in California. Please do not be persuaded and tricked by anyone who tries to convince you that in doing so you would be protecting children's education or your church's autonomy. Please vote No on Proposition 8, and maintain the legal right for all couples to marry.

For Posterity (who am I kidding)

2008-09-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to write this post because I want to have a personal written account of what I did the day of the greatest stock market crash in US history, maybe to help cement it in my memory so that I can tell my ~~grand kids~~ great nieces and nephews what I was doing. Actually, it was a pretty full day. I got up early so that I could have breakfast at Max's with my Grandmother, and then I stopped at work but really only long enough to say goodbye to whomever was there to hear it. I got dropped off at SBA, caught my flight to PDX and had a pleasant conversation with a French teacher about life in big cities, dating, and education. Back in Portland, I headed to my now-standard coffee shop to work, and later in the evening helped my friend Greg restore his lap top's wireless capabilities that the instillation of Service Pack 3 had completely gimped. When I got home I was so exhausted that I fell asleep fully clothed on my bed while still holding a glass of The Balvenie, which I then spilled on myself, waking up smelling like a drunk Scotsman.

That day's Talk of the Nation was brilliant.

Proposition 8 On The Streets

2008-09-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

That is, opposition to prop 8 on the streets. Today some of my friends sent me a photo of a "No on 8" sticker they spied on the corner near a coffee shop we like to frequent.

I'm heading back to Santa Barbara tomorrow, and I'm excited about volunteering to work the phones for the No on 8 campaign. My confidence is still pretty high that this bill is going down, and such positive thinking is exactly what I need to cut through my new-town-loneliness doldrums.

You can tell from the absence of my return that my exit was genuine

2008-09-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

So I finally did it, I moved my ass to Portland. Leaving Santa Barbara was something I've been thinking about for a while, though i knew it would only really be a possibility once I had finished grad school, which happened just over a year ago. Whereas in some sense you could say that my time since graduation has been wasted in SB, I don't think that was the case for me at all, having had a year's time to spend with my friends (living with one of them in once case), getting to know and become friends with my coworkers, etc. The only downside is now that I'm finally up here, my friend Aspen, who has been bugging me to move up here for a few years, is now living in Queens NY. It was a move that had very good reason behind it and I'm looking forward to when he and his partner can one day move back, which I think they plan on doing

In the meantime I think I've managed pretty well to make some friends in my new home, two guys that I first met when visiting Aspen with my friend Dana, both of whom are really great people (and one of which was instrumental in me visiting my first strip club, but I digress). When I say "my home," I mean that in a loose sense, one reason for which is that even though Portland is now my home, it doesn't really feel like it yet, maybe instead more like an extended vacation where I'm working. The other reason I use the phrase loosely is because right now my physical home is a very short term one, on the order of a couple of months: a furnished room with a meager stash of essential clothing and belongings where I'll live while I find a lease that's more long-term. The rest of my earthly crap is back in SB in storage where it will stay until I find a way to get it up here.

The drive up here was long. Long, straight, and for the most part, very boring. I guess that's Interstate 5 for you. Shasta National Forest and some more mountainous parts of Oregon provided some great scenery and mental refreshment. I saw the most awesome and ridiculous billboard promoting creationism along the I5 in rural Oregon, and I regret not having my camera ready, though I do remember the website it pointed to. My Grandmother gave me a sunflower from her garden for the drive, and while I had initially thought of doing something cool like leaving it on the CA/OR border as I passed it, turns out that would have required stopping on the highway immediately after a sharp bank. In the end I decided to leave it on the grass where I eventually parked my car at the official end of the journey.

I didn't make the entire drive from SB to Portland in one day though. I stopped in San Francisco at about 4:30 and spent the rest of the day with friends who live there, whom I had been planning to visit for some time. We all went out to dinner at a great German style pub, ate pub-style food and drank some fantastic bier. I stayed the night at my friend James' house, where he, his partner and I stayed up late looking at old children's books in his library, in my case, this great magic book for kids that I remember owning myself years ago. I need to visit SF again soon and maybe spend a full weekend there in order to spend some more proper time with my friends.

So now I'm here, taking it all in, adjusting to a new way of life, and drinking WAY too much coffee in my make-shift office that consists of a table at a local coffee shop. I've been getting some good work done, which so far has calmed my fears about the lack of an office environment killing my productivity. I can't wait to meet new people and get to know my new friends even more. One of my huge motivations for getting out of SB was that I always felt that it was a very hard town to be young and single in, especially if you're queer. I get the feeling so far that Portland is a completely different scenario in that respect :)

A note on the title...there's this old folk group called The Kingston Trio, and I'm totally ripping them off. They have this thing on one of their live albums where they return for an encore saying, "you can tell from the speed of our return that our exit was fraudulent."

I feel like we're not on the same page...

2008-08-14T18:16:00.001-07:00

Me:

Goooooooogle

Them:

Goooooooogle

Anticipating November

2008-08-09T19:46:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks back, some Democratic Party volunteers were going door to door to collect voter registrations. I never re-registered since moving out of my parents house, as over the years it's never been a problem to drive the 5 or so minutes to my old polling place. But since I plan on being in another state when the election comes around, I wanted to make sure that I was registered absentee. I'm excited about the presidential election, but I hope it doesn't reflect poorly on me to admit that I'm just as excited, if not more excited, or maybe anxious is a better word, about defeating California's Proposition 8. It's been sort of a roller coaster ride since May when In Re Marriage Cases was decided and Prop 22 was struck down as unconstitutional by way of the equally landmark precedent that identified Sexual Orientation as a suspect class worthy of strict scrutiny.

Since then it's been an exciting (nerve wrecking?) series of victories and defeats for both sides of the battle, starting with same-sex marriage opponents getting enough signatures to place Prop 8 on the ballot. June 16th was a great day for California when the first marriages now legal under the ruling took place around the state. I had let myself get a bit excited hoping that Prop 8 might be taken off the ballot for being improperly written, but that attempt failed when the judges denied the motion unanimously. That disappointment however was turned around when Prop 8's ballot description was re-written to focus on the effect of the bill, and then later upheld in court when the proposition's backers sued to have the re-write reversed.

Pepper all of that with good news of opinion polls that show the majority of Californians narrowly rejecting the proposition, but temper that good news with the unfortunately true fact that same-sex marriage bans tend to poll smaller than they actually perform in the real polls, similar to what I've learned is called the "Bradley Effect," where prejudices simply tend to "come out" in the voting booth.

Even after all of this, I really am hopeful that we will defeat this measure as a people. The campaign to fight the bill has raised enormous funds, and our Governor has taken a strong stance against the proposition. The new wording that will appear on the ballot will remind people in the voting booth exactly what the effect and true motive of this proposition really is, and speaking of the voting booth, the polls should be filled with younger voters thanks to our fabulous presidential candidate, and younger voters overwhelmingly vote progressively in favor of equality.

On top of all that it feels like we're at a point where it's simply the right time for marriage equality to be affirmed by the people. I've always maintained (and still do) that matters of civil rights should not be decided by public opinion, which is why our system of legislature and courts exists as it does, but there's nothing to be done about it now, and I have to admit that I'm eager to see what the religious far-right's next move will be after marriage equality has been affirmed by the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and now the people as well. Maybe they'll finally explain just how traditional marriage is being "threatened" enough to warrant "protecting," or what such rhetoric really even means. Is a little substance so much to ask for?

It's going to be interesting for me to see how this proposition will come up in my family, if it comes up at all. There are some relatives who I feel might be voting in favor of it, and I know that all of my family cares deeply for me as I do for them, but I wonder how that conflict resolves itself in their minds (maybe it wasn't a conflict at all?), and I wonder how a discussion of that would play out.

On How Not to Treat Your Gracious Host

2008-05-09T19:06:00.000-07:00

Last week I was listening to a Talk of the Nation podcast like I usually do at the gym. Actually...sometimes I wish I listened to them live so that I could have the opportunity every now and then to try and call in. But then, of course, I wouldn't have new material to keep me entertained at the gym. The closing segment was a pretty good discussion about the then newly released Grand Theft Auto 4. Neal Conan had on a guest from G4 (Adam Felbur? Adam Sessler? Who is Adam Felbur and why did that name first pop in to my head?), and they had a pretty nice discussion of the game's non-controversial aspects, but then gave fair attention to said aspects that do in fact exist. It was the kind of conversation that grown ups like to sometimes have until everyone's favorite fallacy jockey, Jack Thompson called up.

The interview was actually pretty predictable once Mr. Thompson got on the air, that is to anyone familiar with his hyperbole and his boasting of how he plans to bring the game's producers to justice by having them face criminal charges. Somewhere in the conversation Jack forgot that he was on Talk of the Nation and not the O'Reilly Factor. From what I've heard being a fan of the show for almost a year now (I know people like to make fun of how dry public radio is, but what can I say...it's like learning to love the taste of popcorn without butter and salt), I would say now that Neal Conan is not the type of radio host on whom you try to pull the same kind of bullshit that thrives on major television news networks' pundit-personality talk shows. The man is largely respectful, gracious, even-handed and maintains a pretty high level of objectivity in his questions.

During his time on the air, Jack made a comment that he was working with Florida law enforcement agencies to see that justice is served with regard to the afore mentioned criminal charges. After admitting that he was being harshly critical of a game that he had not even played yet, Neal Conan asked Jack which law enforcement agencies he was working with, because that's generally the type of follow up question you might expect in an interview after having brought up the topic yourself:

Neal: "...and which law enforcement agencies are you working with?"

Jack Thompson: "I'm not going to tell you."

Neal: "Alright. Well, thanks very much for talking to us."

Jack Thompson: "I'm done?"

Neal: "You're done."

Jack Thompson: "Oh great, well maybe I'll go play the game now."

Neal: "Good luck." *click*

I think what's so funny and telling about this is that Jack Thompson might literally be stuck in "O'Reilly mode." The man is such a joke at this point that the only type of media attention he can get is on shows like The O'Reilly Factor, Glen Beck, Hannity & Colmes, etc, shows whose ratings rely not on the intelligence of their content but how fun they are to watch, and we all know controversy = fun. I can only imagine this is why Jack not only felt it was appropriate to tell his host to go shove it, but also why he seemed shocked from being given the boot after only a minute or so of air time and before he could really start ranting like he's become accustomed to.

We're Overwhelmed

2008-04-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

I came home from work the other day and found a framed portrait on the couch; I didn't give the photo much attention, I figured it was something that belonged to my housemate that he was planning on hanging. A bit later when he came in from the garage...

"Hey, did you see the gift our landlady sent us?"

"She sent us a gift? For what? Is it that picture of some guy that I saw?"

"I don't really know why she sent it to us. Did you see who it is?"

"It was some guy in a hat, I didn't really recog.."

"It's Mel Gibson. It's a signed autograph of Mel Gibson."

"......shut up."

The disbelief didn't last that long because it was quickly replaced by the giddiness of the surreality of it all: our landlady, virtually out of the blue, sends us a nicely framed autographed photo of Mel Gibson. It's so delightfully random that I love just thinking about it. I like to imagine that she might be some sort of collector of autographed photos of famous people. Maybe one day she thought of us and wanted to send us a gift, and then, like some fine connoisseur selecting a delectable little tidbit from her collection, not at all one of her most prized but at the same time delightful in its own special ways, she blows off the dust and wraps it up, smiling all the while.

Despite the horror behind the idea of having Mel Gibson up on our wall, not only is this a photo of pre-anti-semitic-crazy-face Mel Gibson, but both my housemate and I have agreed that given the circumstances, this is just too completely and utterly an awesome thing to not hang on our wall.

Breaking News From Liberty Counsel

2008-04-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

Liberty Counsel, the socially conservative law firm famous for showing us how "freedom of religion" really just means "Christianity; everyone else can take a number," has made a breakthrough in their understanding of National Day of Silence:

"Students Have the Right Not to Remain Silent on the Day of Silence"

Amidst responses such as "No shit, Sherlock," "OLD!," and "noob! lolz," I'm hoping that their next epiphany might be along the lines of "Straight Christians Not Obligated to Have Gay Marriages." I won't, however, hold my breath. There's a post at Good As You that points out certain embellishments Liberty Counsel has taken.

More over, considering the socially conservative opposition to Day of Silence, a response they call Day of Truth, you can almost picture a parallel headline: "Students Have the Right Not to Be Truthful on the Day of Truth," though for the people behind said counter-protest, I hardly expect this to be news to them.

At Least, It Was Until It Broke

2008-03-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

I'm thoroughly convinced now that bad people go to the gym. Having my zune stolen marks the 3rd item of value stolen from me while at the gym, and also raises the important question of who in their right mind would be stupid enough to steal a zune? I really just...and I know this is sad...can't imagine life without my music collection and my podcasts (mmm...public radio, so dead pan and delicious), especially when at the gym, and so I wasted no time in replacing it with a zune 80, which is an 80 GB, 2nd generation of the first. Bigger battery life, a glass screen, an aesthetic re-design, a new touch-pad-but-also-clickable "sqircle" button, etc. Actually, as much as I love the term "squircle," as the button is a square with heavily rounded edges, Microsoft names it the zune...pad, or soemthing stupid, I don't recall. I think the most important upgrade with the new generation is that this is actually novel hardware, as opposed to the face-lifted Toshiba Giga-beat, which is essentially what the original zune was, that was rushed out on to shelves so that Microsoft could get their foot in the market in time for the holidays that year.

Whatever. All of these things were enough to sway me towards the 2nd generation zune instead of an ipod. It arrived in just a day's time thanks to amazon prime, and after an evening of use, it basically bricked. The unit froze during a file transfer, and afterwards when the software was insisting that it, for some reason, needed to re-flash the firmware, my brand new zune 80 proved to be un-firmware-flashable. A total bummer, or so my spoiled, privileged ass thought. Amazon, though, has a really prompt product return service, and the day after next I had my replacement, which works just fine.

I hate dwelling on negative things that can't be helped, changed or positively resolved, but I really wanted to find out who stole my original zune. I had left it on the floor accidentally and found it missing not 20 minutes later. If it was something I had lost on the street, I could understand more if I never saw it again, though I still think that the ultimately honest thing to do would be to turn it in to the police station or use craigslist, but in a gym, where you know that the person who forgot a certain expensive device on the floor will be back to look for it and to check the lost and found with about 99.99% certainty, not turning it in is a pretty shitty display of character. Enough ranting about that though; what's done is done. I had been hoping that when I eventually upgraded, I was going to give my old zune away or donate it or something. Now someone else certainly does have it, just not anyone that deserves to.

Responding to Hate; An Open Letter to Rep. Sally Kern

2008-03-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

A representative from Oklahoma, Rep. Sally Kern, was recorded making an anti-gay speech at a conservative Family®-based political group's meeting. Media coverage of the fallout from the release of the recording is here, and the recording is available on youtube, here. The youtube piece was produced by an LGBT political action group, the Victory Fund. My response:

Rep. Sally Kern,

My response, my opinion, is short and to the point: I think that the irrational hate that you are capable of expressing publicly makes you wholly unfit for your office. I think that to compare the gay men and women of this country to terrorists...pardon me, to say that we are even more threatening, and to describe us as a cancer, is to proclaim a brand of hate that is no less vitriolic and dangerous than the speech uttered by the KKK decades ago. I am a member of a community that faces violent acts of harassment and intolerance, and you, in your position of influence and responsibility, are contributing to, and enabling, that climate of violent intolerance. An uneducated individual who already harbors feelings of homophobia, and who hears his state representative claim that the homosexual down the street is more of a threat to him than terrorism, may choose to respond to that "threat" with violence.

I think you were right to say that you jeopardized your position with your words. As a gay American who feels affected by the horrible words you choose to share, I hope to see you loose office.

Regards,

- Christopher

Look Away!

2008-03-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

I had to blog this because it is just...so vile. My housemate and I have had a Indian meal moths, also known as pantry moths, in our...well, pantry. When first we noticed the problem it just seemed like we had an annoyingly large influx of these harmless little moths fluttering around the house. A couple weeks later, it was pointed out to me that moth larvae were crawling on the walls of our pantry room. Disgusting. We threw out all our open grains and sugary goods, sanitized the room, and started storing grains and similar sundries in tighter containers. The moths would appear in small numbers every now and then, but never as much as that first time. Once I had found that a moth had managed to actually lay eggs in a container of loose Tazo green tea that I had, and anyone familiar with the shape of the tins knows that this particular moth must have either been the Houdini of its species, or it was equipped with a miniature welding torch (which you have to admit is just a little cute, with the little matching face shield and all)

Recently I had noticed some moths hanging out in the pantry, and I've been trying to keep a watchful eye on which dry goods looked like they had been used as a breeding grounds. Last night I discovered one of those things that is so horrifyingly vile that when you see it you shudder and feel the need to retreat to a place far far away. I was trying to find a container of sunflower seeds for a salad, and while I noticed a container on the top shelf that looked like it was the same shape, it didn't seem right for a thing of sunflower seeds to look like it was filled with a greenish-grey spongy material. Turns out moths had laid eggs in the seeds and had filled the container with a dense webbing, which may have also been mixed with mold. Stuck on the surface of the container were all the moths that had matured to adulthood but couldn't find a way out, and had later died. I can't describe how disgusting a chore it was to rinse off the sunflower seeds so I could use them in the salad.

A Touch of the Plague

2008-02-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

This week I've had to work from home, leave work early, and call in sick all-together, thanks to this nasty fever/head-cold combo bug. In retrospect, trying to work from home the first ill day instead of just resting while cartoons on the television invaded my dreams, as well as going to work the next day, and going to the gym afterwards, and going to the gym the following morning, all while I wasn't "all better," but instead, "definitely feeling better so what's a little exercise going to harm me," were all bad ideas. Leaving work early was the start of a bout of fatigue and dizziness that developed in to one of the most hellish nights of sleepless fatigue, fever-dream-logic (both waking and non-waking), and dry mouth I can ever remember. I think I need to learn to take care of my body more because, ironically, it's my compulsive nature to want to take care of my body in one respect that has me completely failing in another.

I've been spending my time trying to do things that aren't physically assertive: reading, playing video games, watching Lilo and Stitch. Today I paused to wonder why my villagers in the town of Kasandora would build their homes so close to the very same evil pyramid that they were asking me to vanquish in their prayers not two burnt sacrifices ago. On that note, I beat the game in one sitting, though still with not enough world population to reach the maximum level.

The image I posted is, again, of the town of Kasandora, which is the city that is stricken by plague...and here I am myself, plague-stricken...hmmmm

On Being A HiFi Consumer Whore

2008-02-19T21:47:00.000-08:00

I think I'm done throwing money at my ears at this point. After grabbing a pair of Etymotic Research ER-4P in-ear headphones (or IEM's [yes, I know that the 'M' does not stand for "headphones"]), even though they sounded fantastic, I had let a friend of mine talk me in to investing in a portable headphone amplifier. The one I ended up choosing after some research on the fantastic head-fi.com forums, was the Minibox-e+. This was because I liked the look of the build, it had great reviews from the community, but mostly because I couldn't ignore the fact that a feature on the amp, "PtoS," was stuck there specifically for my model headphones. Etymotic makes two versions of my headphones, the ER-4P and the ER-4S, the only difference between the two being the amount of impedance. Etymotic made the ER-4P with less impedance so that it could be driven by relatively weak amplifiers in devices like iPods, though what you gain from that in bass and volume you loose in detail, and so the "PtoS" switch adds that exact amount of missing impudence back to the headphones, which can now be properly driven.

What's cool about the headphone amplifier scene is that, with few exceptions like headroom.com, they're nearly all hand-made by individuals, not larger companies. The community on head-fi.com likewise is very personal with people giving frank and detailed reviews of the products, and where the amplifier manufacturers also interact with people and seem to respond to questions and feedback.

I have to concede though...the one thing that really sucks about having a hi-fi setup is you really start to notice songs that were recorded poorly or with low bit rate. Still, though I know I have friends that call my excessive or throw around nasty names like "audiophile," listening to the albums from my favorite ambiance/trance label, Sending Orbs, encoded in lossless format sound...wonderful.

I Hope Aspen's Not Reading This; Strategies Of The Frustrated

2008-02-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

I really hope not...though I know the odds are against me (read: function of 1 out of total number of people who read this {read: small}, multiplied by some co-efficient {things usually are}). So, the usual theme of "woe is me"-related-conversation between my friends and I is that I feel like I'm suffocating in Santa Barbara. The gay community here is small, closeted, and frustrated from virtually zero grounds for social interaction (read: gay bars or some other form of social scene where being gay is, at most, assumed). Because of this, I find that it's impossible for me to date people, and it doesn't help that I'm finding out that I'm actually kind of picky. I think I average about 2 dates a year, and frankly, it's driving me mad and making me more than a slightly bit depressed. The part where this becomes shameful is that I...joined an online dating service.

...yeah.

On a whim on a monday (the day when this problem is on my mind the most), I checked out Chemistry.com, took the personality test and created a profile, and was shown 3 of my "matches." It should have been a strong foreshadowing of just how worthless a service this would be when I only received 3 matches, considering that before becoming a paying subscriber, you're allowed up to 5. Now..."free matches" doesn't mean the ability to interact with those matches, it's just sort of a tantalizing sales strategy. You can see your matches, people can see you and, if they're subscribers, express interest in you through the site's infrastructure (which is very strict about leaving no hint of alternate means of contact in your profile, which might threaten their business model). Aside from it being stupid of me to think that a website dedicated specifically to matchmaking would somehow magically make more gay people appear in this town, my dissatisfaction with this...scam, is the way they lure people in. The problem is that upon becoming a paying subscriber ($50 moneys for one month), there is absolutely no guarantee that these people who show up in my matches are, themselves, paying subscribers.

I've "shown interest" in 5 people now, the last 3 merely to test my theory, with no response, and that means neither a "yes" or a "no thanks, not interested." I'm thoroughly convinced at this point that I'm one of very few actual active, paying profiles in the tri-county's presence on chemistry.com. I'm looking at this on the bright-side and figuring that my $50 was well spent on being able to contact a friend from my past, circa 10-12 years ago, who ended up being one of my first 3 matches, and with whom I had a fun time hanging out and catching up. Of course, being a non-paying user himself, he wasn't able to use the site to respond to me, however knowing my last name, google was able to accomplish the rest. So...in a sense, given that this is, I'm pretty sure, the only good thing that will come out of this shitty service for the remainder of the month I bought, what I payed for was a $50 bit on information sent to an old friend. A very expensive ping.

I have a coworker who tried to cheer me up by telling me about a website he had seen on digg called lovetastic.com. When he asked me how I liked it I responded by showing what turned up after searching for my zipcode with a 50 mile radius: 3 people. He took it that I was not amused. However...I still made a profile. Ha.

Back in the Bird

2008-01-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

I'm really happy to be writing this in room 512 of the Iron Blossom lodge, in Snowbird, Utah. My family has had this time share up here in Salt Lake since before I was born, and my whole life it's been a yearly tradition to come up here for a week, go skiing, hang out in the pool at night, goof off in the rec room on the second floor, have lunch on the same bench of the middle floor of the Snowbird center...I could go on but I won't. Suffice to say it's a tradition that's very rich in experience and memory for me. Ok...one last thing...some of the walls here in the lodge are concrete poured in to a mold that left penny-sized indentations, and over the years I've been sticking pennies on to the holes. They're still there!

The big deal, for me, is that because of the UCSB school schedule, I haven't been able to come for the past 5 years. Coming back, today, has been...well, not overwhelming, but it's one of those great memory recall situations where just about every sense is triggering memories that are 5 years old. The sight of the lobby area and fireplace on the bottom floor of the lodge, the smell of the building and of the snow, the sound of the X-men arcade game in the rec room that's been there for at least...15 years. Being my first time on a pair of skis in 5 years, hopefully I won't hit any trees. One thing I'm excited about in particular is a tunnel that's apparently been built in to the side of the mountain connecting it to the basin on the backside. Sweet.

Begenning Anew in the Tradition of the Old

2008-01-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

Mike and I have a personal tradition of ours to play through the classic System Shock 2 together in co-operative mode around once a year. We employ all sorts of great mods that the community has put together, and yes, there is a very strong community behind SS2, it's awesome. Some of the mods enhance the game's dated visuals and models, and other mods enhance or modify gameplay mechanics to provide either a more challenging experience, or simply a different experience. After our 3 or 4 times through, I think Mike and I have played all the roles available to us, being the hacker, the psychic, the heavy-weapons wielder, the hi-tech weapons wielder, etc. We're thinking of trying to bring on a third player this time, because although the co-operative mode of the game does not provide more resources, it does provide equal "cyber modules," which are the games version of experience points, allowing you to essentially level up and develop your skill tree. Given that, when people choose their roles in a co-operative manner, you end up using the game's existing resources in a more complete manner. For example, a heavy weapons guy and a psychic would make a good pair, as their competing for neither the game's ammo nor the game's psi-hypos (which provide energy for your psychic abilities). We're pretty sure there's no way the game could support 4 players, but we're eager to try it with 3.

However, in the mean time, we're taking our first stab at a co-operative run through of a Black Isle classic, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, complete with the expansion, Throne of Bhaal. Our first night at it had me falling asleep at 3 AM after we had spent far too long installing all the different gameplay mods and bug fixes that we wanted to employ, but I'm excited that with all of that being finished, we're ready to get started. I'm using this extra time before then to decide on what kind of character I want to play through as, last time having played a Paladin, who is obviously lawful good (duh!).

Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal represent one of my fondest memories of video game role playing. The story-telling, the voice acting, the choices Black Isle made concerning classic 2nd edition advanced D&D rules, it all came together for a great experience. Like System Shock 2, Baldur's Gate II has a similarly strong community online devoted to creating the various mods that make replaying the game a pleasure.

In my new place, we're using a couple of TV trays and my bed to help set up our co-op experience in the same room, as opposed to over a network. Mike is reserved about appearing on the interwebs, so the picture to the side, his appearance has been slightly modified.

Arts and Crafts!

2008-01-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

I was in the market for a pocket watch because I could no longer explain me not owning something so cool. I really wanted to get one with lots of exposed gears and clockwork, "skeleton" style as it's called, but from what I saw anything that was of that style also featured mechanical movement, which, don't get me wrong, totally appealed the steam-punk in me, but the practical side in me knew that I would eventually get tired of the pain in the ass of having to wind the watch daily. I once had an imitation Penari kinetic mechanical movement watch, a mechanical watch with a pendulum that winds itself automatically from everyday movement, and I couldn't even keep that going. I suppose I'm just too..sedentary...and I didn't like wearing the thing to the gym, which is too bad because from all the crazy movement I'm throwing down when I'm at the gym, it would have been clockwork, positively clockwork.

So I ended up choosing a cool quartz movement watch, the Wenger standard issue stainless steel pocket watch, which sounds boring I'll admit, but it's actually a pretty nice-looking watch. What I really like about it is the cool leather case it comes with, and a sort of matching leather plait chain. However, in an incident very un-becoming of Wenger, the plat chain broke under normal every day use within a week. Rats.

So I made a new one!*

* "made a new one" involved buying leather straps and practicing how to make a leather plait, with no luck, and so I ended up seeking out the expert opinion of my best friend's dad, who was raised on a ranch and was also an eagle scout, so, he was very helpful.

HTPC (pronounced "aych tee pee see")

2008-01-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

One of the things I always said I wanted to do after I graduated was to put together a Home Theater PC, or as the FLA goes, an "HTPC." It's fundamentally no different from a regular PC, though it does differ in form and in function. For my HTPC, I knew that the primary purpose would be a music player for my library of digital music, a video player for my library of digital video, and most important, a sort of hub of all things emulated. So far the menu consists of NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, GBA, N64, MAME (coin-op arcade games, essentially), a DOS emulator, and ScummVM, which very specifically plays a collection of old Lucas Arts adventure and a handful of others.

Turns out, what's also been loads of fun is firing up the ol' 'fox and browsing Youtube with friends. Here's a screen shot of the desktop, wherein I'm using a cool utility called Avedesk, which lets you deck out the desktop with over-sized icons that pulsate with various effects when hovered over with the mouse pointer.

In it's form, an HTPC is usually meant to be different insofar as it should look good when placed on your media riser next to your other toys, be they an xbox, a dvd player, a receiver and stereo, etc. I ended up choosing Lian-Li's PC-35B because it's the smallest PC case available, and a slight smidgen of sexy thrown in. The downside was that it is, in fact, so small, that I have no room to add any expansion cards to the motherboard, and so when choosing said board I had to find one that would have on-board video and sound that would be good enough. On-board sound these days is actually quite good, and since this was never meant to be an HTPC powerhouse capable of playing modern-day games, the on-board video does the job well enough.

I've got lots of USB controllers too, so come over to my house and we'll play through Secret of Mana 3-player style, or maybe run through the classic X-men arcade game :-D

New Digs part 3: Newest Digs

2007-09-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this, I think, about a couple months or so after I created the post, so the associated date does not at all reflect my laziness, and I want to be honest on that front. I am very lazy. I'm also very living in a new place. In fact, the time spent on laziness has allowed my new place to collect more things, and I can show nicer pictures! One can't simply make a post about a new place that's nothing but a bunch of moving boxes and spent plasma cells. Goodness, no.

I've moved in with a good friend of mine from college, both of us having decided that we would probably make good house mates, both of us having fairly similar standards for cleanliness and a good number of common interests (the most obvious one being other guys). After what turned out to be a pretty depressing sequence of failures in applying for housing, we found a really nice place downtown that's close to where both of us work, especially so for myself (5 blocks).

So far...I think it's safe to say that we're both enjoying post-college life. We have a year lease for this place, and come the end of it, I'll have to re-evaluate my life. Pictures follow. Correction: one picture follows, one of my room. Turns out it's the only picture I've got so far...but as a service to myself, I'm going to post more as they become available.

Stick A Fork In Me

2007-07-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'm done. Well, at least for now, since my friends keep telling me I should leave open the possibility of a PhD, though I currently have no such plans for piling it higher and deeper. To the right is my adviser Tim and I after I had passed my defense. I was fortunate to have a professor that I really admire on my committee, though she did catch me off guard with a couple of her questions. It's an exhilarating feeling...finally being done with school after, dang, after nine years. Four years at SBCC, and 5 at UCSB, though I don't regret a single one.

So, Masters degree in hand, I'm out in the "real world," currently working at a really fun place only blocks from my new place where I'm doing really fun stuff with ruby on rails. Web development is worlds away from my research, but it's challenging and fun to write and that's really all that matters. Also, I have a chance to work with some people I went to school with that I greatly admire. The plan right now, I think, is to be in Santa Barbara for at least the next year. A year from now I'll see where I'm at and re-factor.

My Time Is Valuable Young Man, Only I May Waste It!

2007-06-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

I was at the Home Depot today getting keys made for Shaun and I for our new place, and I was waiting in line for customer service to ask where I get the keys made (turns out my initial guess was correct and I waited for nothing; c'est la vie). Their line was pretty lengthy and there was no one behind the desk, and in fact I had seen the people who were behind the desk leave to help a pretty demanding customer. Having worked in retail for 4 years I know what it's like to try to run a store when short-staffed, and how hard it is to keep everyone happy, so I waited patiently. This old guy, hereafter referred to as Mc'Farty, was getting visibly impatient, making jokes to me about how bad the service is, etc. Funnier than Mc'Farty's jokes, however, were the outcomes of his rude attempts at getting attention from the busy staff, such as when he tried to use the store phone to access the PA system to broadcast his cause to the entire store; Yes, customers actually pull shit like that, and a quick side note, on most MUD servers, using a broadcast feature out of character to announce something stupid will get you in trouble; Mc'Farty was making both a social and RPG faux pas. I say that Mc'Farty tried to use the PA system because all he earned were a few beeps in his ear for not knowing the right key code. Ha.

The titular part of the anecdote is as follows. When help did finally arrive, Mc'Farty waived his right to be serviced and instead insisted on speaking to a manager to complain. I asked where I go to have keys made, and that was that. Twenty minutes later when my keys were done, I saw Mc'Farty still waiting off to the side for the manager with a proud and stoic look on his face, bless his little heart. I looked at the sign with the picture of the manager and saw a guy not much older than me, in his later 20s. I knew from experience, that on this busy Saturday with an understaffed store, that grumpy old people complaining is the very last on his priority list, as is the case in nearly every large cooperate store. I think it's funny because Mc'Farty not only probably thought that he was high priority, but that he had at that point officially waited longer for the manager than he had during the wait that had originally pissed him off, and if my hunch was correct, he'd easily wait another 20 minutes before he was given any attention. I really hope I don't get like that when I get old. If I do, they better not make me wait, my time is bloody important.

Fond Farewells; On The Ending Of A Dynasty

2007-04-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

I quit Borders today. Despite looking forward to it for some time, I was actually pretty down-hearted about it. Having worked there for...3 and a half years I think, I had built up some pretty strong friendships. We sort of see our self as a family at Borders...the kind of family that all go to the same parties getting drunk with one-another. I'll miss parts of it, other parts I won't. I'm still on contingent status so that I can be called in to cover a shift if they need me. If I do this at least once every 3 months I can maintain said status, and on those days that I'm working I'm allowed my hefty discount of 33% off of books and CDs, though it's hard to find CDs to buy that aren't RIAA affiliated. As a point of etiquette, being a major recording industry organization with vast influence, one finds that it is not polite to reduce yourself to acts of extortion.

Found On Road Dead...Or In This Case, Running

2007-04-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

Unless Ford becomes the first manufacturer of the flying car, or the intelligently self-driving car, or some other kind of really awesome shit, I'll not be giving them my ducats any time soon. My focus has had a long history of problems, including numerous recalls, my favorite being one where the "rear tire assembly may spontaneously detach from vehicle during high speeds." For the 3rd time in just as many years, the ignition lock mechanism in my Ford focus has jammed. This, it turns out, is actually a very large scale and well-known problem; the ignition lock manufactured by Ford for the focus models is poorly crafted and breaks long before it should. It's not a cheap repair either, costing at around $500 for parts and labor, labor, in this case, involving taking apart the entire steering column and basically knocking out the broken part.

In spite of the high cost to customers, and the frequency of the problem, and despite Ford actually acknowledging that it's a problem, Ford is not issuing a recall on the grounds that it's not a safety issue, to which I respond with a hearty "bullshit." Not only can one make the argument that being unable to turn on the car in any number of situations can be considered a safety issue, more importantly to me is the seriousness of the defect. This isn't like my power lock system which broke years ago rendering every lock button and my keyless entry system useless, nor is it like my CD unit that malfunctioned long before it should have. See, those things can be considered luxury items: things that, as nice as they are and as used to them as I've become, do not stop me from using the primary function of my car, which is getting from A to B.

For any device that employs an on/off state, if the mechanism for moving between those states is not working, then the device is completely and utterly useless. This is true for everything from cars to blenders; how ridiculous would it sound if Kitchenaid refused to address
a problem with one of their blenders constantly breaking and not turning on claiming that it's "not a safety issue?" To me it's simple: if the ignition lock is poorly made and constantly breaking, then I can't turn my car on; if I can't turn my car on then it's completely worthless to me as a car. Ford, you greedy bastards, address this problem and attempt to make good with your customers.

Of course, knowing that they probably won't, I'm eager to join a class action lawsuit that I found.

One thing I should mention about my car troubles, and I can admit that this is pretty funny: the first two times the part broke I wasn't able to turn the key and start my car. This time however, the lock jammed when my key was already in the on position, and as a result I couldn't turn my car off. I had to pull up the hood and disconnect the engine from the spark plugs one cylinder at a time until it died, and let me say that high voltage jolts from the spark plugs aren't fun, even when you're wearing gloves.

National Day Of Silencing Your Own

2007-03-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

This is golden. notourkids.com, an offshoot of missionamerica.com, is a political action encouraging righteous Christians everywhere to pull their children out of school on National Day of Silence (official site) as an act of protesting the "homosexual activism and indoctrination" it represents. Yes, you read that right. If you had any sort of silly notion that NDoS existed to bring awareness to school bullying and real-world violence towards queer people in hopes of fighting it, then clearly you got your information from some indoctrinating homosexual activist......like...me? Uh oh.

The website is funny to me for a couple of reasons, first is simply the content: in this FAQ they use iron clad reasoning to explain why NDoS is, in fact, not about promoting tolerance); in their mission statement they respond to the idea of teaching kids about bullying with: "Even the strongest of our junior high and high school children are not equipped to serve as frontline soldiers in this culture war." Frontline soldiers. Culture war. I love it.

But more so, and the reason I wanted to blog on this, is simply the name of the website: "Not Our Kids."

It's that classic idea that those doing the condemning are, themselves, so white and pure, set apart from what they label as sinful. "Not our kids..." and if your child happens to be gay? What is your opinion of fighting school bullying at that point? When your kid gets called "faggot" or when your kid sees on the news that an old man was bludgeoned with a pipe for being gay, do you still prepend the word "alleged" whenever you try to downplay the oppression, violence and bullying of Queer people?

I'm sorry I forgot, your kids aren't gay. Homosexuality is never a perfectly normal minority of any family, neighborhood, community or country, it's always the product of sinful lifestyle, broken families, overbearing mothers and distant fathers, not God-fearing families such as yours. Nope, no homos here. Not your kids.

I keep forgetting, your kids also don't have sex, which I'm sure is why you feel justified in promoting abstinence only education while at the same time fighting a woman's right to choose. Your kids don't masturbate or have any "impure thoughts" which is why you don't have to talk to them about developing healthy expressions of sexuality and how to respect the idea of consent and to despise sexual assault. Your kids certainly don't drink because you told them to "never mind the bottle of scotch grandpa keeps in the top cabinet, alcohol is wrong" which is much easier than teaching them how to drink responsibly.

Not your kids.

Do me a favor, please, protect me from the people you're helping your children grow to become. Wait, I'll better idea: get someone to help protect your poor kids from you.

The Simulation That Never Ended

2007-03-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here watching a simulation run in an terminal window through an SSH connection to one of the computers in one of the instructional labs at school, where the simulation is actually running. On my desk in my lab sits my laptop, with another 15 or so terminal windows open, similarly connected to various computers in labs to run simulations. All of this in an effort to divide up the work so I can get all of these things done sooner. If I had done this during the school year, running processes on 15 or some computers at 100% CPU utilization, that might make me some kind of douche bag, but since it's spring break and the labs are empty, no harm done. I'm hoping that they all finish before I leave for Mexico tomorrow since I'd like to take my laptop with me.

I'd be running them from sessions logged in from my desktop at home, but not only is our internet connection very iffy and prone to random disconnects (at which point my session and all of its spawned processes die and I can't figure out how to detach them so that wouldn't happen), but my computer has recently been randomly freezing up and showing me windows stop errors which I'm pretty sure is either from a bad motherboard or bad RAM, something I hope to fix when I have time.

In the mean time I'm looking at this single simulation I do have running from home hoping it will finish already and save its output before my computer, or my connection, take a dive. I'm not even playing mp3s or anything...I don't want to give my computer any more reason to croak.

I'm excited for Mexico. Tomorrow I leave for Burbank, stay the night with my friend Shaun, and then the two of us leave for La Paz for about 5 days. Shaun doesn't mind missing the first 2 days of school next quarter, and I'm taking a leave of absence (ie no classes and you pay a fraction of normal tuition) so that I can finish this thesis and graduate already.

Unwanted Personal Mannerisms

2007-03-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been making a very strong conscious effort to rid myself of this mannerism that I've picked up from working at Borders. Maybe mannerism isn't the right word for it...speaking habit? We'll just call it a mannerism. Essentially what's happened is that I've gotten so used to my repetitive routine when talking to customers, that I've worked elements of that routine in to my normal speech. The exchange is usually something like this: I'll explain something to them about our store, a policy, a product and whether or not it's in stock, and they'll usually respond with some kind of affirmation of what I said, with a question or statement of their own. My response to that is always the same: "yeah."

So now I have this little problem where I'm often finishing my sentences with "yeah," usually a very short pause after the sentence...yeah. It makes me sound like I'm not all there in the head...yeah. You know, like one of those people who isn't crazy per se, but who just sort of seems a little...off? Yeah.

God help me...yeah.

A Complete Failure To Empathize

2007-02-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

Recently I was depressed over a feeling of helplessness about recent movements by the religious right regarding same-sex marriage and the very real harm it's been starting to cause queer citizens. For a while the common cry from the religious right has been "protecting the sanctity of marriage," but more and more states have used their shiny new constitutional same-sex marriage bans to successfully destroy benefits and rights that had been available to same-sex domestic partnerships for years now.

I've heard a lot of people say, "I've got no problem with gay people, just don't call it marriage," but clearly they're not just protecting their "sacred" word "marriage" anymore, instead they're systematically trying to deny basic protections and benefits to queer people because they lack, or have completely ignored, any amount of empathy that would connect them to the human level of this issue.

Honestly, when you ask yourself, what in the world does, say, inheritance rights for your partner have to do with the "sanctity" of marriage? I think a lot of people by now know about the story of Laurel Hester, a policewoman in New Jersey who, before loosing her battle with cancer, had to fight to get her pension left to her partner after her request was denied by all 5 members of an all Christian board who claimed that in denying her this simple act of compassion they were, in fact, "protecting the sanctity of marriage."

While I've always disagreed with the rhetorical and never well-defined "sanctity of marriage" argument to begin with, trying to use it to refuse benefits often given to married couples is...beyond me. These types of protections and benefits that exist with marriage aren't granted to couples just because they're married; lawmakers didn't just sit down one day and watch things like hospital visitation rights spring fourth from a magic silver box labeled "The Sanctity of marriage and all things pertaining thereto." These things exist because lawmakers sat down one day and thought,

"you know, people who share a bond like this probably care a great deal for one another. It might be, you know, nice of us, and hey, maybe even beneficial to society as a whole if we, as a government, help people in relationships by extending to them certain rights and tools that help them foster and protect the dignity of their union."

I say "beneficial to society" because I think that the religious right is partially correct when they say that the The Family® is the "cornerstone of society." I say partially right because I take huge issue with the religious rights assumed ownership of The Family®. One mother, one father, biological children, and lets hope that they go to church at least once a week. I believe that family is good for society, but by that I mean true family and all of the beautiful diversity and kinship which is entailed. Society is strengthened by community and by bonds, and family creates those bonds, and that includes The Family®, and it includes single mother and fathers, and same-sex couples, and the Mormon eternal family, and adopted children, and my brothers best friend who spends Christmas morning with us, and communes, and friends who are so close that they consider themselves family, etc, etc. Family and unions are bonds that are good for society as a whole, and when you foster a healthy family or a healthy union by providing tools and protections for their benefit, you foster a healthy society of rich interaction and community.

Of course, this is obviously the problem. What I may one day call my family or my marriage or union is not The Family®, nor is it The Marriage®, and so in the minds of many, my family or union is already detrimental to society from the get go, corroding it from its foundation on up. Thus, my family or my union is not deserving of basic acts of compassion, in fact, better I didn't exist at all. Seeing things from this viewpoint, you can see why the religious right feels justified in their complete failure to treat us as equals. There's nothing wrong with denying same-sex couples basic protections usually associated with marriage when you've failed to identify with them on the most basic levels: as fellow human beings in love, who value their bond, just like you.

Now isn't that just one of history's favorite themes: dehumanizing your target to feel better about the injustice taking place.

Fun With A Theme

2007-02-21T23:33:00.000-08:00

Wait, I think I recognize these two from an old photo...

Oh...wait, I guess they don't really like it when you point out flaws in their reasoning, huh? My bad.

Thanks, CCF for protecting our children from the dangerous same-sex marriage licenses and for the source material.

On The Proper Dealings With The Unkempt: Being A Rant And Speculation On The Future

2007-02-20T14:22:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I'm going to be finding a new place to live. It won't be until the end of the school year for the sake of simplicity, but I'm pretty sure that I don't want to live in the placer house any more. This is been a difficult decision, primarily for two reasons. The first is that I genuinely like nearly all of my house mates, which isn't to say that there is one that I don't like, just that I don't feel the same sense of...warmth and consideration from one in particular that I do from the rest. The second is that I have the master bedroom with a private bathroom and I'm paying a ridiculously small amount of rent for it considering Santa Barbara prices.

However, all of the good aside, I find that I just cannot share a house with people who don't seem to care about...the house. My house mates are, for lack of a term less offensive to them, slobs. There seems to be no sense of pitching in around the house, and it really seems like I'm the only one who cares about having common areas that aren't littered with trash and smell like stale pot and old food. I don't mean to berate their lifestyle, but I can't live like that. I've always been hesitant to complain because apparently the person whom I replaced when I moved in was a compulsive control freak who took cleanliness to a level that he defined and ruled on with an iron fist, and I don't want to be compared to that. Besides, I don't think like that, I think that cleanliness should just be a goal in general that everyone in the house strives for in at least some amount. When I'm the only one in the house who seems to care that there is food on the kitchen floor covered in a trail of ants enough to stop and clean it up, then it's clear that I don't belong in that house.

I used to clean pretty frequently until I noticed that I was really the only one doing it, which can really make you wonder why you're bothering at all. I can spend my time cleaning so that my house mates can trash it within days...or I can just let it be and live in my room. I don't really like either of those options. I have a theory that messy people fall in to two general categories: those that honestly don't see anything wrong with living in a dirty house, and those that are just lazy or immature about it. As per the first, which seems to be half of my house mates, I really can't hold that much of a grudge at all since that's just the way they like to live, and so I have a measure of understanding. I have to say what bothers me much, much more are the type who acknowledge that things are bad, but who deny responsibility to do anything about it. "Oh, it's not my problem; none of those dishes in the sink are mine; none of mess in the living room is mine; etc etc."

This goes back to my earlier statement about no sense of group effort, sort an immature attitude that belongs back home when you were 9 years old living with Mom and Dad and arguing that it was your sister who should have cleaned the living room. One of my roommates in particular, the one whom I seem to connect with the least, has a sphere of consideration that doesn't seem to extend beyond his room and the bathroom that he has to use. I really can't remember the last time I saw him doing something around the house unless I count when his partner is doing it.

But enough ranting, because this isn't meant to be me attacking my house mates. This is simply me stating that I need a new place to live, because I'm clearly not working with this house. It's a shame, because like I said, I otherwise enjoy living with these guys, and even with those of them that I feel less of a connection with, we share a large number of interests.

Oh, and there's the issue of our eternal house guest whom is quickly being labeled in my mind as a leech who uses our internet, stores his booze in our kitchen, sleeps on our couch until past noon the next day without cleaning up his "bed," and doesn't seem to really contribute anything back to the house in recompense...but that's another story.

I Thought I Fired You

2007-02-20T14:06:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday morning I received a text from an old friend:

"coming to la on sun for work till wed. Can I stay with you? Xxxkeegan"

Keep in mind, by "old friend" I mean a person that I met for about 2 minutes a year ago at gay night at the Wildcat, who was from LA and in Santa Barbara for the night and who assumed that I was also from LA. Maybe he thought we had something special.

Dodging The Question As Jesus Would

2007-02-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

Wait, I don't think Jesus would have dodged a question....I digress. This week the Christian worship group on campus, Real Life, hosted an appearance by Chad Thompson, a professional ex-gay (read: traveling snake oil salesman, do pardon my sarcasm). Chad Thompson is the author of the book Loving Homosexuals As Jesus Would, which is at heart a personal testimony of an ex-gay and a call to Christians to treat homosexuals with love and compassion, even the ones who have embraced their identity and have no intention of following an ex-gay lifestyle.

On the outside, this seemed like a good thing. I was skeptical, no doubt, but I held out hope that what I would find was a no-strings-attached call to America's evangelical Christians to seriously reconsider not only their treatment of homosexuals in this country, but their perceptions of them which are largely based on stereotypes and perpetuate on comfortable ignorance. I have to give Chad credit, he did make those calls to Christians in the audience and everywhere, and he also made sure to always use "I statements," which is a fancy way of saying you make sure never to speak for others, only for yourself, which in Chad's case would be when he described why he thinks he was a homosexual.

The conversation started heading south, in my mind, when the more political side of Chad's message started to show. It started with Chad pointing out that it may seem like a contradiction for Christians to say that they love homosexuals, when at the same time so many Christian organizations, including multiple ones Chad is tied to himself, politicize themselves so strongly on anti-gay legislation and fighting pro-gay legislation. Having identified the very real contradiction, he sort of just left it at that, not really resolving the contradiction or condemning the religious right's political targeting of queer people but just sort of saying that it's not really a contradiction because they love us. Pay no attention to the agenda behind the curtain.

Following that was a light presentation of out-dated and easily refutable ex-gay propaganda about research concerning the origins of homosexuality which, fortunately for Chad, aren't really that easily refutable when the only place to call him out on it is a very brief Q&A session following his talk.

I don't want to go in to details, let's just say he needs to know that "genetic" doesn't mean a literal gay gene, and that when articles about research use catchy titles referring to the abstract "gay gene," any legitimate data and theories brought up in said research can't be dismissed by claiming that the "gay gene" doesn't exist. That's called a straw man. If I can take just a second to soapbox on the idea of nature v. nurture, whether it is nature or nurture that brings a person to their identity and their sexuality, if they are content with that identity or sexuality then any suggestion that they need "fixing" is a direct affront to their dignity.

During the Q&A session he was asked questions solely by queer people in the audience, and they made up less than half of that audience (honestly I think Chad was a bit more conservative than UCSB's more liberal-leaning Christians are used to). When confronted about the contradictions in both his opinions and arguments presented in his speech, Chad would generally sort of just dodge the question and bring the focus on something else. I called Chad out on the contradiction that he identified himself and then promptly swept under the rug, asking him how he can ask Christians to show unconditional love to homosexuals while at the same time use the power of their vote to see to it that queer people do not enjoy the same opportunities and protections as they do. I brought up the issue of same-sex marriage, pointing out that in Michigan 80% of evangelical Christian voters voted to ban same-sex marriage, and thanks to the wording of the amendment, just this past month it was used to void benefits that had been granted to same-sex domestic partners since before the same-sex marriage wave that swept country in recent years.

Chad avoided the issue of same-sex marriage and responded by talking about anti-discrimination law, saying that if such legislation were approved then he would be arrested for talking to me as an ex-gay. In the most polite way I could muster I told him that his response was so much bullshit, and asked him how he could justify voting against legislation that would protect a person from being denied equal opportunities for employment or housing simply because he was afraid of some bizarre situation that would be thrown out of court faster than you could say "wasting ministry time and paper" (nod to Brazil! fans). Chad was asked by the person after me to give just one concrete piece of reasoning as to how same-sex marriage could be harmful and thus justly voted against, and all he could offer were proof substitutes about how the "breakdown of the family unit" has been shown to increase rates of teen pregnancy, drug abuse, wanton sex parties at my house, etc, which was also a fallacy of false cause I might add.

To sum it up, Chad's basic premise behind his response to the attitude of evangelical Christians toward queer people is that "gay people do it to us too," and how he's "had more difficulty from gay people by being an ex-gay than he ever had from straight people by being gay." You know what Chad? Let me break out my violin while I bask in the irony of a politically motivated professional ex-gay who actively supports anti-gay legislation trying to kid himself that gay people would have a grudge against him just because he made a personal decision about his identity based on his faith.

Lastly, Chad described being ex-gay as a lifelong struggle for many, and that when a person like Ted Haggard or John Paulk are caught dabbling in the forbidden fruit, it's simply a "relapse," and that doesn't mean that they're still gay, just that they're human, because after all none of us are perfect (hell I know straight guys that relapse in to gay sex all the time!) The real point I'm getting to is that someone came up for a great idea for Queer Student Union's next shirt design:

"wanna relapse?"

The Temple Guards Can Kiss My Ass

2006-10-30T18:27:00.000-08:00

This year for Halloween my co-workers convinced me to go as a contestant on The Legends of the Hidden Temple. You may recall the program, it kicked major ass on the Nickelodeon network back in the days when we could enjoy quality programming such as Salute Your Shorts and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Pictures of the glorious night follow; my compadre Bruce and I were the purple parrots. I'm the contestant with the glasses wearing the Pendant of Life. Purple parrots win; winning is what they do.

For no mere mortal can resist the evil of 80's music

2006-10-27T01:14:00.000-07:00

Queer Student Union celebrated National Coming Out day with a dance again this year, and even though I said in the very beginning that while I was willing to help organize it, I wasn't going to spearhead it since it was sort of a task last year, I ended up doing pretty much that. No regrets though, and no self-martyrdom or anything like that. QSU is a really great group this year and I didn't have trouble finding help for anything. In fact, on the day of the dance I had a blast hanging out with Shaun most of the day as we zipped around grabbing food from costco and speaker equipment.

Since I had suddenly become in charge of the dance again, I figured that the path of least resistance would be to use the same flyer and music collection, and viola, we were having another 80's dance.

The dance went down without a hitch. The turnout was decent, the people who came had a lot of fun, and the room we used ended up working out really well for the event. The downsides were that all of my friends and co-workers, except for one, who didn't know about the dance except through my invitation and who promised me they'd be there all let me down. That kind of hurt. Some of them had legitimate reasons, but in the end I can't get over the idea of "all of them flaked but 1." Oh well. Another really shitty thing that happened, and I just found out about this today, is that a couple of people who sometimes attend QSU meetings and who were originally planning on going to the dance, decided to throw their own queer party in IV at the last second, and then decided to mass-text message a ton of people who were at the dance.

Turns out this is why there was a massive exodus of people long before the party was through. Finding out about that kind of sucked too. I don't know if these guys meant any spite out of it, maybe they just genuinely wanted to throw a party and didn't think that texting everyone of whom they knew were at a different party was sort of a shitty thing to do. Either they were being innocently inconsiderate, or they were just being dicks, and in either case I sort of keep expecting people to have outgrown that shit by this age (although one might point out that being a 3rd year grad student I'm not exactly in the same age group). I don't mean to arrogantly sit here and make it seem like I'm the only one who's allowed to have a queer party on a Saturday night, but when I think about all the work by a handful of good people that went in to putting it together, and when I think about how much all those people leaving within 20 minutes of each other really killed the dance...I really can't think of any word to describe it other than shitty. I wouldn't do that to another person's event...it would be a shitty thing for me to do.

That paragraph marks the end of me dwelling on the bad. From henceforth I shall focus on the good, and that was that everyone who came, including those who stayed, had a great time, and in that picture of me and Shaun, between the Queer bomb shirt, the 80's rainbow suspenders, and the candy necklace, I look REALLY gay :-)

Video killed the radio star.

I Feel It Simply Must Go On Record...

2006-10-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

...that I'm lying here with my laptop, late at night, without power and riding the pirated airwaves of my neighbors wifi. My flatmate forgot to pay the bill again. Joy.

On the Proper Dealings With Undesired Guests

2006-10-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Crazy old man with a sign...came back! (yes, those are two separate links)

When he came the first time we had first thought that he knew about the Queer Pride Week opening rally and wanted to disrupt it, but we later learned that he travels California universities like some wacky one-man Broadway show, "I'm a Douche!", and that he had simply come on that day by pure chance. I wrote an opinion piece on his first visit (a column that outed me to my father, just an interesting little aside).

Anyway, as proof that he really does simply travel the state preaching hate and brimstone (hopefully taking some time off in between), he just recently came back to our school. While he didn't happen to strike on a day of an important rally, he sparked quite the debate from students as well. One student threw a pink Jamba Juice at him, and although I'm not really sure if I agree with that action (stooping to his level and all that jazz)...it is damn funny and I won't pretend or boast to being above such temptations had I been there with my 12oz cup of cold delicious pink and within ranged weapon range.

I was a little bit disappointed with his sign though. Follow the "came back!" link above to see what I mean. Maybe I should have had a dialouge with him design concepts, and why a sign with so much text and such a small font that you have to be within at least 5 ft of it to read is not the best way to advertise your product.

At least he wasn't using comic sans ms. Seriously, is anyone else tired of that damned font?

National Coming Out Day

2006-10-11T22:25:00.000-07:00

Today QSU held a rally for National Coming Out Day on the Women's Center lawn. After some brief panicking over a busted PA system, we managed to check out a second one from a neighboring campus organization (Thanks EOP!) and the show was on. This is the first time we had held it on the Women's Center lawn since I first saw the rally my first year at UCSB 4 years ago. For this kind of event, where we want people to feel as empowered and safe as possible so that they can share their stories, it really is much better. I learned that the lowered design of storke plaza was decided because back in the 60s when powerful political protests were common, a lowered plaza would be idea for exerting crowd control on unruly demonstrations. Suffice to say, it's not a very good place to get people feeling courageous enough to step up to a mic and bear their soul.

After an introduction we were treated to a great talk by our guest speaker, Professor Leila Rupp, Chair of the women's studies department. After that...well, basically for almost 3 hours people poured out their souls to the crowd. One after another people went up and shared their coming out stories and words of encouragement, some stories very happy and some very sad, and a lot of emotion in between. To hear my friends share their tales of hardships over coming out to their friends and their family, and then say through their tears that they think of us as their family and their strength here at UCSB was such a powerful thing, and I'm sort of getting choked up thinking about it as I write. The positive feeling of community even got me up there to share my own story, which I wasn't sure I'd have the nerve to do.

In addition to the open mic we had a large white cloth stabled to a plywood board that was meant for people to write on, be it a simple signature, a well-wishing, a poem or a paragraph. A lot of people came up to write on it, making it another big success of the rally. While all of the writings were funny, smart, and poignant, there was something on the board that struck a chord with me. Someone who signed their name only as "H" wrote: "not yet..."

I saw that and I thought, "wow, that's actually pretty deep." :-) Unless outed by circumstance or a meddling third party, we all come out on our own terms and at our own pace. I hope that whatever pace "H" chooses for him/herself, that when the big moment comes he/she has the same kind of awesome community supporting them that I'm proud to say I have.

Oh yeah, and we had rainbow sherbet!

It's Me!

2006-09-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

Well, cartoon me that is. My roommate Scott (read: awesome guy) drew a cartoon caricature of me. I think it's pretty good! It even has the new beard that I'm sporting! What I'm saying in it actually makes sense too, since I tend not to trust sandwiches I either did not make or purchase myself, since they might have fatty things in them like mayonnaise or cheddar!

You Must Spawn More Overlords!

2006-09-24T20:51:00.001-07:00

People are jumping ship at Borders faster than rats on a sinking ship also being swallowed by a black hole (the first person who points out that the time dilation due to gravity would slow the rats down gets nasty email). More specifically, supervisors are leaving. In fact, even managers are leaving, and other supervisors are threatening to quit if they don't get the positions they want. This is no way for a hive cluster to be run; if those genetically inferior humans decide to attack, we'll be a chaotic mess.

Pasta!

2006-09-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

Two great evenings, and one minor disaster. My friend Mike can make some very good food, and he seriously goes out of his way to make it gourmet. On a Saturday, he and my sister planned a dinner party where he would make the pasta and she would make pizzas, with various appetizers all around of course. Mike wasn't going to settle for canned tomatoes, so he blanched and then hand-peeled and deseeded a whole shit load of tomatoes, which really isn't a quick task. Kimberly made some great little pizzas, margherita pizza, stuffed crust pizza, goats cheese pizza, all really good.

Mike didn't finish his past until about 10:30, but it was so good that we all agreed it was worth the wait, and I mean it was seriously delicious. It was a type of olive tomato sauce, I forget the name of it, but it involved at least an hour of cook time just to make the base sauce, which you run through a mill and then move to the second phase of the sauce, which is at least another hour of cooktime I think. However, like I said, all worth it.

The second evening was a Borders movie night of my own design, with American style bolognese fusili pasta, and by American bolognese I mean lots of tomatoes, very simple, not cooked in an oven, etc. Unfortunately, the afore mentioned disaster is that I broke what is probably the cardinal rule of cooking, and that is to not leave your cooking food unattended, which I did, so that I could show my friend Steph what half-life 2 looks like. Suffice to say...I burned the sauce. The bottom of the pot had that tell-tale feeling of something stuck to the bottom, and while I did the best that I could do, which is simply pouring whatever isn't burned directly into another pot, the sauce had taken on a distinct smoky/burnt flavor. The sauce had a while left to cook, so I was hoping that the extra flavor I would get from the ingredients plus a little extra salt and some sugar, I could cover up the smoky taste.

Well, I insisted that it still tasted burned, but other people insisted it was delicious and even took home some left overs so I guess I shouldn't complain.

The theme of the evening was "action heroes and their ditzy fish-out-of-water companions," so we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Romancing the Stone. A good time was had by all, and I think I want to do it again and this time NOT burn the sauce.

Swarming With Dishonest Nigerians

2006-09-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Borders learned one of their favorite costly lessons again, and I say "again" because they really don't ever seem to learn that if you want to make a profit selling video games then you actually have to put effort behind your venture. For about the 3rd time since I've started working their, our pissant video game inventory is going half off in order to clear out stock and forget the whole idea ever existed until the over-paid folk in higher decision making jobs decide its time to try and fail again.

What's cool about it this time is that all of our video game systems are also half off, and while I missed out on the opportunity to buy an xbox 360 for half off, I did pick up a PSP. Not for my own enjoyment, since I can't really afford it right now and since only 3 games appeal to me (Lumines, Loco Roco, and the Gradius collection), but to try and sell it on ebay for at least enough profit to justify the purchase of something I actually want. Well, easy enough right? Well not if my friends in Nigeria have anything to say about it.

About 1 hour after I place the auction up, just after midnight, the item sells with the "buy it now" feature. I get an email from the buyer, an ebay account created minutes before buying the item:

Hello ,
Season's Greetings to you.I am Mark Smith from Orlando, Fl ,US.I'm contacting you concerning your item on Ebay which i eventually became the winning bidder for your item.Morever i'm presently serving our beloved nation here in with the United Nation and i intend sending this item to my son who works with the American Embassy in Nigeria as a visa Officer.So i will like you Ship the package via Global Express Guaranteed Non-Document or USPS 2-5 DAYS POSTAL SERVICE Shipping to Nigeria and I will like you to go know the Shipping cost and calculate the shipping cost and the item for Payment get back with the amount i will be paying immediately..I will be sending you my payment via PayPal,So kindly send me your (PAYPAL EMAIL ADDRESS) So as to immediately make out my payment.Make sure you get the package ready for immediate or next day shipment okay?.Expecting your reply so as to immediately make out my payment.
Regards
Mark Smith

The bad english, the strange too-much-info description of why he's buying it and who it's for (like I care), and of course, the fact that he wants me to send it to Nigeria (read: Nigeria and 419 scams). I was interested to see how he planned on using paypal in his scam, since paypal is pretty fool proof, and of course that simply turned out to mean that he would send me an email that looked like it was from paypal, which he did, telling me that the funds wouldn't be credited to my account until I provided proof of shipment. No such paypal policy, practice, or option exists.

Anyway, fun for all I'm sure. I figured no big deal since I can relist it once for free and have the final value fee refunded (although it's a minor hassle). I relist the auction, set an option that prevents people from bidding or buying if they have negative feedback or have no paypal account, and the next morning find that I have a question from another buyer, no doubt thwarted by the security measures I had placed but who, nonetheless, decided to go fishing anyway:

Dear seller,
My name is Ales Frank From Uk. I am interested in Buying your item on Ebay.I want the item urgently i can't wait till bid end So let me know the cost of the item. I need to send this item to my Son in west africa as their gifts. I will make my payments via MONEY ORDER CASH ON DELIVERY PAYMENT which as I was told is reliable and Secured.. SO to ship the package i will require USPS SERVICE for the shipment I will only need the Below information so as for me to make the payment.

I think, wow, it's more common that I had thought. Later that day, I find that my auction had been bought out again, this time by an ebay user with a positive rating of 3 out of 3, and (obviously) a paypal account. This is their email:

Dear Seller, I won this item above and I just want to inform you that I will like to buy this item for my friend's son who is studying in Africa and I will like to make an immediate payment for this item. Please do calculate the shipping cost, plus the money for the item and give me the total price so that I can send out your money, I would have love to hardly the shipping but due to my job, as I travel a lot to attend to medical calls. So please do get back to me ASAP for payment for this item.I will be making the payment through Stormpay Money Order or through my Paypal account.Do e-mail me your paypal ID if you want me to pay through paypal. Your urgent response will be highly appreciated.
Regards,
Mr Carissa Heim.

So, what...did this guy go through 3 legitimate purchases before trying to scam me? Were those the positive feedbacks left by people before they had realized they had been scammed? Or had the account simply been hacked? I don't care either way, because at this point I'm getting pissed. As it stands I have ebay fees of $20 for two listing fees and two final value fees that I now have to get credited back to me. My auction is relisted again and now in its third run. This time, I've added the last possible measure against these douchebags, an option that forces people to pay immediately through paypal the moment they use the "Buy it Now" option. If they don't, my auction stays up.

Fuck Nigeria.

And something I'll add after I ran the spell checker, fuck their terrible spelling too. I should have pasted the emails after I ran spell check.

Magical Girl Transformation Sequence Done Right...Done Spicy

2006-09-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since the idea was recommended to me that I've forgotten who originally recommended it, and I only remember that I shared the idea with my friend and coworker Nate very shortly after. Nate beat me to task, and the idea was to do a brief write-up on our very own magical girl transformation (MGT) sequences.

Here’s the deal: in anime there is a particular genre sometimes called “magical girl” that involves the main character, usually female, having special powers. Invoking these powers usually means a very long and drawn out sequence of fan-fare and special effects, and it usually represents the most expensive animation for the series and is shown at least once every episode. The most familiar example would of course be Sailor Moon’s transformation sequence, with all of its ribbons and blurry background speed-lines and dramatic music and you get the idea. I had wanted to photoshop up a nice image to show my MGT, but I have taken so long to do this already, which is unfair to Nate, that I’ll just add it sometime in the future.

Being a link to Nate’s blog, this sentence reveals a description of his MGT. As for myself:

All is quite. All is very quiet, in fact, one wouldn’t even say you could hear a pin drop because the pin knows better. Either narration of some omniscient presence, or a comment of my own has let my enemies, my teammates, indeed, all of the surrounding on lookers know that I’m about to transform in to something absurdly bad ass.

Silence is broken with a menacing sound of string instruments in 5/4 time slowly crescendoing as Holst’s Mars: Bringer of War begins to play from jerry-rigged telecom satellites, commandeered and transformed into giant speakers through will alone. Swarms of African Grey parrots fill the sky chanting in unison to the dramatic score, “dah-nah-nah-nah, dah, dah… dah-nah-nah-nah dah dah” in a perfectly mimicked voice of Bea Arthur (African Greys can mimic human voice almost perfectly so the on-lookers have no problem believing this). The swarms of birds are so thick that they begin to block out the dark clouds that have been forming, which had been beginning to block out the sun, which had been moving in to an eclipse.

In most magical girl transformations, the hero usually has some sort of incantation or title to her powers that she feels the need to share, but since it’s usually only a couple words long, and since the transformation needs to take a long time to spend every drop of the special effects budget, this usually results in some milking along the lines of Sailor Moon pushing her breath capacity to the limits:

“MooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN ……… pooooooooooooooooooowwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSS ………” and so on.

No such bullshit here. In order to make full use of the time, all along I’ve been reciting Benedick’s soliloquy on bachelorism from Oscar Wilde’s Much Ado About Nothing. Just as I’m about to reach the last line in the dialogue the ground beneath us begins to violently shake. I act surprised, but that’s just for show since I of course know what’s coming. Without warning...Holst’s Mars: Bringer of War becomes Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, and Moai statue heads burst from the ground firing bright blue beams from their eyes in to the surrounding crowds. As each individual is lanced by the terrible azure light, their clothing is transformed in to fabulous sequenced slacks, jackets, and top hats and everyone falls in to formation to perform a spectacular musical number choreographed to Queen’s exciting and upbeat music with occasional jazz tap solos by people whom I favored over others for no particular reason.

Near the end of the act, an old woman strangely resembling Maggie Smith descends from the heavens in a rocking chair to fashion me a fresh costume from her seamstress tools. Just as she’s finished, and throws me down the costume, the old seamstress strangely resembling Maggie Smith bursts into a small nova of rainbow confetti, so thick that I am able to change in to my costume without compromising the entire sequence’s PG-13 rating.

Completely avoiding the fight, I convince my enemies to surrender under the threat that I have an entire arsenal of exploding old women who resemble famous British actresses that explode with more than just rainbow confetti.

The entire production having then seemed to be for naught, many on-lookers return home disappointed and a little angry that they didn’t transform out of their gilded costumes automatically and back in to their street clothes.

I Thought Not Having Internet Was Bad

2006-09-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

The power is out here at our little castle on Placer drive. There is also a small lock attached to our breaker box and a pamphlet from the power company letting us know how we can do our part to fight terrorism by paying our bill on time. A couple days back Cox had cut our internet connection because we had paid our bill too late, and the payment didn't go through before the cut-off date.

I imagine the same thing has happened here. My roommate has had a lot on his plate recently related to his band and putting on large events, so I hope this is a rare thing. Cox service going down for part of the day is one thing, having no power in your house is really another.

Oh...right...for the curious, I'm currently on my laptop and stealing bandwidth through the walls off of my neighbors 802.11 signal. He was kind enough to no encrypt it.

Unrest At Work

2006-09-12T10:06:00.001-07:00

Things are getting strange at work. People are complaining more about the working environment more than they ever have in the past, and people are also jumping ship. I don't know where this leaves me, since I've always said that it's pretty much just the people who are keeping me at Borders. I'm just about as fed up with all of the petty shit I have to deal with and also the customers, but the company I keep makes it all worth it and perhaps then some. Of course, if everyone leaves, or if most people leave, that might leave me in a position to quit as well.

to a Perfection

2006-08-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

I had planned on starting Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space after having finished the Hyperion Cantos, but finding myself hooked on Dan Simmons I went straight to Ilium and I've got Olympos (the sequel and conclusion) on my shelf ready for when I finish. Ilium is as good as it is hard to describe. Greek Gods, far-future quantum physics technology, sentient robots habitating the outer planets of the solar system and who study Shakespeare and Proust, mount Olympos on Mars, the Trojan war....all of this told over different points in history, during the trojan war and on in to the far far future.

I always really liked far-future science fiction. I feel like science fiction can really work as a medium for writing about the human condition when your characters are in a future so far ahead that everything is alien and the author had a clean creative slate.

Anyway...here's a picture of a loofa sponge I took when I was taking a shower. I liked the way the beads of water formed on it.

"We must make haste, Avatar!"

2006-08-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm playing through Ultima 7 Part II: Serpent Isle again, just since it's been a really long time and since I'm on a retro games kick after having built my retro machine. I have a bit of a history with the game: I bought when I was in....7th grade I think, and immediately regretted my purchase after finding out that I had not bought the wolfenstein-like Ultima Underworld that was also on shelves at the time. I made the best of it however, loaded it up and started playing. The first thing that struck me about the game was the sheer amount "virtual sandbox" gameplay it featured. I could wander around town, in the forests and mountains, fight anyone and take anything (well, hopefully without getting caught). I didn't get very far without buying the hintbook, which I still have, since the more subtle plot directions in the game were lost on me at that age (there was no "quest log" or anything, just dialogue with NPCs and the trust placed in the player to figure things out).

I never actually finished the game that first time through, since later that year I got a cd-rom and sound card kit for Christmas and after installing them found that I didn't have enough main memory left in DOS to play the game (it's infamous for both having huge memory requirements and being incompatible with EMM386, an extended memory manager). I didn't know enough about modifying things like autoexec.bat and config.sys at that age, so on to the shelf it went. For about 4 years I'd try again to get it to run, but to no avail. I really missed playing it, and as bizarre as it sounds, the game would start popping in to my dreams in various forms, I think it's safe to say I was obsessed. I only ever finished the game for the first time sophomore year of high school when our new family PC, some all-in-one piece of crap from Compaq, came with a DOS utility called Buttons for DOS that made it easy to restart the computer without things like CD-rom drivers and such. Loading it up again 4 years later was a moment of truth; the game was just as much fun as I had remembered.

If you ever want to check out the roots behind explorable, open, and incredibly detailed RPGs that are so popular and so well done nowadays (read: Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Oblivion), check out Ultima 7, both parts. Getting them to run on modern machines has ceased being an issue since the latest release of DosBox, a full DOS environment emulator. Just make sure you have a relatively fast machine, and use a good front-end for DosBox, such as D-Fend.

Feeling Overwhelmed

2006-08-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

I finally finished Rise of Endymion, and with it, the entire Hyperion Cantos. (The wiki link has spoilers, but they are marked. Be warned.) I say I'm feeling overwhelmed because the end of Rise not only brought tears to my eyes, something a book hasn't done in a while, but also because of what takes place and because of what is revealed over the course of the story. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I almost wish that what was said in the book was a true philosophy so that I could subscribe to it. What got me crying in the end was the love story that takes place and the bittersweet way in which it wraps up. Endymion was a very fun read, but mostly setup for what happens in Rise of Endymion. All in all I think Hyperion is still my favorite, but Rise comes closest to it out of all the books. I think next I'm going to read Revelation Space by Alistar Reynolds.

Doing It Old School

2006-08-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

I'm finally putting my retro gaming machine together so that I can play some of my old favorites that either do not run or do not run well in DosBox, which is pretty much now the most effective way to play old dos games (so long as they're not too CPU intensive). Also worth looking into is VDMSound, which, although long since abandoned by its dev team, is a good alternative for games that can get away with not having that fullyemulated DOS environment and as a result run faster.

It's a simple P2 with 128 MB main memory on an old Asus board. I was hoping to get the version my board that had ISA ports so that I could have ultimate unquestioned sound card support in DOS, but alas, a good sound card remains my last hurdle. I've found a great site that lists which sound cards and their chipsets are most compatable with DOS, so now I know what to look for on eBay.

Kidney Stone

2006-08-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

When you heard people say that passing a kidney stone is the most painful thing they experience in their life, or at the very least one of the most painful things, they aren't kidding. Apparently I've had warning sings in the form of soreness in my lower back in the area of my kidneys but I didn't know enough to think it was a kidney stone. I'm only 26. I wake up in the middle of the night with a really nasty pain in my lower left abdomen. Later I would learn that this was the pain from the stone passing from my kidney to my bladder via a very small tube called the ureter. Going to the bathroom didn't help, though for some reason I thought it would. I go back to bed still half awake hoping the pain would just subside, but instead it grows very quickly. Within minutes I'm very much awake with the conclusion that what I was feeling was far too painful to be something that didn't require medical attention. I can best describe the feeling as someone twisting a knife in my abdomen, or perhaps tiny mage lords having an epic battle right above my left hip.

actually I thought I was experiencing the pain of appendicitis, but I would also later learn that appendicitis is always on your right side.

I call 911, realize in my mind that I was able to drive (a stupid decision I later regretted for its sheer stupidity) and ended up just asking them where the nearest emergency room was. I get in my car and drive to Goleta Cottage Hospital, literally screaming the whole way from the pain. By the time I get there, I'm pale, sweating, shivering, and nauseous, and these are just symptoms of the pain. I fill out a form, they stick me in a bed in a gown, tap me with an IV, and give me some morphine. This was my first experience with morphine, and I'm not sure if it was the nature of the drug or the fact that it was given to me intravenously or perhaps both, but I experienced a strange sensation in my throat and then, as if someone had their hand on a large volume dial labeled "Chris's Pain," and steadily turned it down. Over about 3 hours I slept a bit, had an MRI to confirm a kidney stone, and had about 5 doses of morphine. The radiologist told me the stone was almost done passing and that once it entered my bladder, the 4 mm stone wouldn't cause me anymore serious discomfort.

I ended up calling my Aunt and Uncle for a ride and to drive my car back for me, since being under the influence of morphine I was a total wreck. In fact, that's what made the rest of the day so terrible, aside from the small remaining amount of stone-related pain, was the intense nauseousness brought on by the morphine. I vomited about 7 times over the day, the last 4 times nothing but water, which is really frustrating when you're supposed to be drinking lots of it. A couple days later I passed the stone, and finally got to see the tiny little thing that caused me so much grief.

The Cruciform

2006-08-05T03:09:00.000-07:00

I wish more people have read the Hyperion Cantos so I could share this with them (I'm looking directly at you Mike). Very minor spoilers follow: in the series there is what is called the "cruciform," fist-sized coral like parasite that grow in huge numbers along the walls of planet Hyperion's labyrinths. Once worn, they slowly attach to a human and spread countless tiny tendrils throughout the body, and when you die they bring you back to life, slightly less intelligent, and, with enough resurrections, sexless.

Anyway, my dad brought me back a crucifix from Argentina that is large, and made of shell so it looks sort of like coral. Creepy. My dad is really an evil AI agent of the Techno Core (if you don't get it, read the books. They're excellent)

My Parents Spent 4 Days Dressed As Klingons And All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt

2006-07-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

Comic-Con 2006 is come and gone, my 6th time in 7 years (last year was the first time I hadn't gone since my first time). It's true what they say, that the first year is always the best and nothing quite matches the "magic" of that first time: staying late at the convention center top floors watching anime with Luke and Lisa's huge crowd and eating jelly beans, learning for the first time the concept of getting sketches from your favorite artists, going to your first panel and seeing stars from your favorite sci-fi shows.

Even still, this year was a total blast, possibly even more so because of the fact that I missed last year. Cherrished memories this year include driving down with Josh and Jim, my first Brazillian BBQ, dinner at Freds with Luke and Lisa, the drive back with jim and nonstop good conversation, getting my Joe Phillips sketch, and of course Josh getting pissed out of his mind, being dragged back to the hotel making enough noise to get the cops called to our room and finaly puking on the floor at the foot of my bed. On a similar note, Josh's visits are never long enough. I really need to make a trip of my own up to Utah. Select comic-con photos follow:

Sci-fi channel's new booth (well, either new this year or last, new to me either way) was a very cool sort of sculpture that had couches built in to it.

Nintendo had large presence this year in the form of a very large nintend DS booth. Here swaths of people gather around the download station.

Artistic and very stylized toys seem to be a very big trend right now. I thought these ones were kind of cool.

Luke and Lisa at our annual dinner at Freds, the coolest Mexican place in all the Gaslamp.

At comic-con it's very hard to make your booth stand out, but Adult Swim pulled it off with flying colors.

This is great: a yoai booth was selling paddles that said "Yaoi" with both "softcore" and "hardcore" sides, as well as the ingenius shirt also seen in the photo.

I Believe You'll Find It Next To The Cooking Section

2006-07-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

A woman came in to borders and asked for the "section on how to cure homosexuality." Yes, a whole section. Now before I could tell her that our ex-gay section had been changed in to the travel section, I was sort of busy standing with my jaw agape next to my coworker Caitlin, jaw also agape. I was thinking of about a hundred different funny things to say in response, but Caitlin beat me to it with a very simple "uh....the....Christian section?"

I don't think that was quite the answer she wanted, in fact I think she wanted to hear something like "right this way ma'am," and then leading her in to a special alcove where she could find such sub categories as "Violent Methods," "Methods Involving Electrodes," "Beating Over Head With Bible," and face-out books on special with titles like "8 Minutes to Craving Pussy!", "He's Just Not That In To You (Because He's Straight Now, You Fag!)," and maybe "The Devil Wears Prada And We're Here To Exorcise The Demons, Homo!"

You Think You've Gotten Over Someone

2006-07-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

And then you have a dream about them where you're every bit as attracted to them, possibly more so because of how emotions seem to be magnified in our dreams. On the bright side the dream took place in a very cool dreamscape I've not dreamt about for a while.

I look forward to wearing these two new shirts I ordered:

I Killed a Squirrel Today

2006-07-11T02:40:00.000-07:00

:-(

It was all my fault. For starters I was driving too fast down the small road that leads to Mammoth, which usually has a lot of squirrels running around, secondly, when I think about it I probably shouldn't have broke, as maybe the squirrel had taken in to account my speed and planned on missing my tires, but then I decelerated and maybe that threw him off. Either way, I hit the poor little guy and got to watch in my rear-view as it spasamed on the ground. Feeling just...terrible, I had to back up and try run him over again to put him out of his pain.

I think that might be why I ended up taking a nap that lasted until 1:30 AM. A completely fucked up sleep schedule is my punishment.

Borders Corporate Addresses The True Threat To The Workplace

2006-07-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

The new employee handbook...I'm sorry, field guide, has been released to Borders stores everywhere, so be sure to be on the lookout for new and improved quality service from your local friendly booksellers. It's the usual stuff mostly, "new and exciting paradigm," "engage the customer," "be familiar while embracing exciting changes," and similar such bullshit. One of the useless cosmetic changes is that now all employees are officially "booksellers," instead of being a bookseller, or a cafe seller, a register clerk, etc. Having the right label is apparently key to properly embracing new paradigms.

Anywhozen, the real meat of the handbook, wherein Borders addresses the most serious threat to the modern workplace, is where the field guide spells out its policy on blogging, the tool of the devil and all would-be destroyers of worlds.

Ignore the highlighted part for now...I'll get to that in just a moment. I just don't get it...we're a fucking bookstore chain, I just don't see why there is a need for a blog policy. It's as if the people who get paid (too much) to write this dren felt left out when they saw all the big important companies making headlines for firing people over discussing company-eyes-only stuff on their blogs. Still, I love the bulleted items of the policy. First off, out computers are the very definition of "ass," short of having a small orifice for expelling waste. We don't even have the capability to connect to most of the internet outside of a very small set of selected addresses. On top of that, how exactly is "do not use company time to blog" not covered by the more general and all-encompassing "hey dumb ass, don't dick around while you're on the clock?"

The anti-discrimination thing, covered more explicitly in other parts of the field guide, basically means, don't be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc, to a fellow co-worker on your blog. Personally, if someone wants to call me a "filthy faggot" on his or her blog then that's their right, and it's not Borders' place to step in and fire that person as a result. Besides, who doesn't enjoy a nice healthy blog war?

The highlighted part is the best, making you think that the (over-paid) person writing this must not have completely known what he was talking about. I really don't even have to explain it: I'm told to respect fair use, and then in the same sentence, I am forbidden from using Borders logos in my blog. Just so we're clear on which logos those are:

In other news, someone must have forgotten to carry the 2 or something because I was selected as employee of the month. Whoop-dee-floofle-doo. Although, the $25 gift card and lunch with my boss isn't bad.

Take Care, Colorfull Crabs; Capture Comes Without Caveat!

2006-07-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

There were these really pretty crabs in a spot where we were snorkeling in La Paz. I think the one picture came out really nicely because it was so close to the surface of the water and the lighting was good.

Apparently my brother had taken 4 or so and brought them back to the harbor in hopes of populating the place with pretty crabs. I'm sure the crabs were really thankfull for that, as I know I'd love to be snatched off of some scenic island house to be dumbed off in a smelly shit-hole in downtown LA.

We're Having Fun!

2006-06-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

And yes, the menu my uncle is using says "Gringo."

I Rode The Red One

2006-06-27T21:10:00.000-07:00

A Breach of Etiquette; A Man Proves His Douchebaggary

2006-06-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

Today at work a man was using his cell phone as his mp3 player. This in and of itself is really not all that bad or shocking, even though it is sad to see people using cell phones as their mp3 players, since it makes it seem like they've totally been sold on the lie that cell phones can make good mp3 players. What this guy did to forge new territory in being a complete tool was that he wasn't using earphones...he was pulling the 2006 equivalent of holding a boom box on your shoulder and blasting your music for all to hear, only instead of walking a busy city street, he was in the sci-fi/fantasy genre section of a bookstore...blasting his country music on his belt-strapped cell phone. Instead of asking him to stop with the assho...er...music, I thought it would be better to make sure each and every coworker had a chance to whiteness him in all of his bastardly glory before making the not-so-subtle overhead announcement that customers are reminded to check out our exciting selection of headphones.

Meh-hee-co.

2006-06-25T04:32:00.000-07:00

It's 6:40 AM, I'm on 3 hours of sleep, and I'm heading out the door for the summer family vacation to Mexico. The sleep thing is from Mike and Chris having coaxed me in to going to eat at Brew House (never a bad thing and in fact always a very good thing) and to a bar afterwards, wherein we stayed out pretty late. We were supposed to go check out a band that Chris knew through one of his friends at The Neighborhood, which was formerly the last dedicated gay bar in town, Hades, but when we got there at about 10 and heard no music playing, yet still were told there was a cover charge of $5, we promptly concluded to head to The Sportsman to play foosball instead. Unless it's a band I know I'll like, or unless I can be promised lots of attractive guys on the dance floor who are of my...persuasion, I'm not big on cover charges.

Time to leave now. di.FM has played DJ Food's "The Crow" 3 times now in a row. Way to go guys. At least mess up and play something repeatedly that isn't on a mix I already own.

But I Hate Sports...

2006-06-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

I never get athlete's foot, as a general rule, except for maybe a couple of times when I was a kid and that maybe have just been something I thought was athlete's foot because my feet were itchy. Keeping in line with the pouring-when-raining bylaws of fate and irony, I actually get athlete's feet (well just one foot actually) and it's so bad that I need prescription strength treatment for it. On top of that, the infection was compounded with a poison oak infection; double my pleasure.

There's a policy at work that's not really a general Borders policy but apparently more of a store rule that open toed shoes can't be worn, for good reason, I admit. Still, having a good reason for a rule isn't, in my opinion, enough to enforce said rule even under special circumstances. In this case, special circumstances equaled my foot swelling up to Hobbit proportions when spent all day in a shoe, while standing. I tried to explain to one of my supervisors that in my 3 years at the store I had not dropped a single thing on my foot nor had a lost it in a industrial strength book shredder, and how this establishes a pretty low probability of a foot incident, low enough to let one employee go a day in sandals to save him some pain. Alas. I took a picture of the infection when it was swollen, but I'll not post it for reasons of etiquette.

However, I will post this picture from the student health building. The label that is blurry and hard to read (because camera phones are absolutely worthless) reads: "Anal Scopes, KY jelly, and something I can't read or remember." Of all the drawers and all the labels, it was the only one with a happy face sticker.

Summer School

2006-06-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

Summer's here, the end of a year that I view as a general academic failure. My grades weren't what I wanted them to be, the last two quarters I was doing less work that I should have been, and I can't seem to find any type of masters project that I'm interested in. I hate to think that I'm burning out in school when I'm this close. Non academic-wise, it's been a great year. Chris was an awesome roommate for the 7 months we lived together downtown, QSU had great activity and membership this year and I got to meet some great new faces. The only sour note that the year ended on was getting sort of rejected by someone I really had a thing for. Well, not so much flat out rejected as me deciding when to take a hint. Unfortunately it seems like now I'm being completely ignored and avoided, and while that's happened once in the past, the other time it was someone I barely knew so it didn't really hurt so much as it sort of just ticked me off. In this case, things have been friendly and casual and he's a really great guy. I've been flirting but with no results or response (and thus my taking the hint), and while I'd be happy to at least be friends it's starting to seem like that's not gonna happen, which is really kind of...bumming me out. This is all assuming I'm not simply letting my imagination run wild here of course...I mean, all it takes is about a week of ignoring me before I think it's intentional, but while getting rejected is one thing, being avoided has a unique sort of sting to it...it makes you feel like a weirdo, like you must have been a creep or done something bizzare to drive the person away. Another lesson learned I guess...or, I'm not sure if there's a lesson here...ah well.

Joe's back in town for a couple days as well as another friend who's been away at college in San Jose, so this is looking to be a great weekend. For now though, I've got some Syrah and a book, one of many I want to read over the summer, so I shall get started.....now.

Move it or Loose it Sister: Epilogue...or...The New Digs: Part 2: Newer Digs

2006-06-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

I'm out of the temporary arrangements at my parents' and in to my new place in Goleta, which is just so wonderful for so many reasons. It could be not having to deal with the nerotic rules of my Mother, it could be the awesome house I moved in to, it could be my very cool roomates, it could be the fact that I'm now a stone's throw from both work and school (as opposed to a 15 minute drive on the 101), or it could very well be a nice combination of all of these things. My new landlord is a kindly old lady who, in an example of her kindness, is willing to buy me paint if I want to repaint my room. We even have a really nice back yard with a Lowquat tree and a charming wooden tool shack covered in ivy. It's just super. Pictures follow:

E3 expo, now with E3!

2006-05-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

My friend Joe who works for the video game developer Withheld in Withheld got Mike and I badges for E3 this year, and, being my first time and all, it was a total blast. I could only go on wednesday and friday which meant driving back and fourth twice, but I wasn't able to miss class. Still, 2 out of 3 days isn't bad. Photos follow:

10 or so years since I used the powers of up, down, left, right and space to help this guy save that dumb-ass sorority blond and he hasn't aged a day.

I parked my car at a golf course in Montebello under a telephone line with lots of birds on it, and they pooped on my Decepticon logo. This has nothing to do with the convention.

A life-sized suit of armour from the Final Fantasy Universe. Customers who reserve a special editon of FF12 recieve one of these in the special edition packaging. That is, I think the armour IS the special edition packaging.

Outside view of the convention center, which doubled conveniently as shameless plugs for not only big-name video games, but more importantly, the films they represent.

My best friend on the lonely drive up for day #2. (no, not my crotch, the jelly bellies)

Mike told me to strike this pose. I don't know what he was thinking. I don't know what I was thinking by saying yes, and I don't know what sonic was thinking by letting me say yes despite not knowing what Mike was thinking.

I don't know, so do please indulge me, what the fuck? I think the people playing the game knew what the fuck, but they sure weren't telling me what the fuck.

This is me playing New Super Mario Bros on the new DS lite. Taking this picture was very tricky.

Metal's tribute to the WoW gaming community: Leeroy Jenkins: Paladin of the Horde

I tried to take a picture of Nintendo's Huge-gantic-ormous booth but I was deflected and stunned by its radiance and ended up taking this bloody horrible picture of the ceiling instead.

The look on Joe's face is right about after I told him that that was a trick arcade machine, and now he had Hepatitis-C.

Sega and Sonic toys that I was not allowed to buy, only observe behind glass.

This is Scramble, and it was one of the uprights in the History of Video Games exhibit in Kentia Hall. For as long as I can remember, in my parents house the glass case covering the screen, with all of its artwork and game instructions, has been used as a picture frame. I don't know where my Dad got it from....well aside form the obvious answer: "he got it from a Scramble upright arcade."

T'was on the first day when I found the blessed holy land.

Promotion for America's Army (be the video game or the actualy military, either way) included paratroopers landing in a nearby parking lot to show all the kiddies how much fun you get to have in the military before you land in someone else's country and get shot by people defending their ho....I'm sorry, by terrorists.

Move it or Loose it Sister, Bonus Stage

2006-04-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Things have transpired. I'm now in the middle phase of my move, aptly named the Space Paranoids phase for no other reason than I really like the movie Tron. I'm back in my old room at my parents' place, having completely cleaned it out and steam cleaned the carpet so that it's livable. Although, I don't think I waited long enough for the carpet to dry because I swear there's a faint mildew scent. I've got my new bed set up and everything that goes on top of it. Why are Nautica brand bed sheets so damn expensive, and why do coupons for linens and things and Bed Bath and Beyond always exclude Nautica stuff?

I have to get out of here. If all goes well and I get picked I'll only be here for a month when this place in Goleta opens up, but I'm already starting to go insane. The other day I think my mother mathematically proved that my dishes spend too much time in my room before I wash them. I think the theorem she proved also had a lemma in it about squegeeing the glass door on the shower when I was finished.

This past week was queer pride week at UCSB, and that's been a lot of fun. Instead of the usual opening rally we did sort of a mini carnival with booths and popcorn, etc, which was a real success. The wedding was a blast as always, but one of the real highlights of the week was the closing party we had on Saturday. Good music, good crowd, and I got to hang out with this guy I really like. In fact, the only thing bad about the dance was that because I seem to have no spine I never asked him to dance. I think I have this problem where when I meet someone I like I beat around the bush in friend-mode never making a move out of fear of rejection, which makes just about as much sense as never scratching your lottery ticket out of fear you didn't win anything. I think that in order to have an attractive personality I'm going to need to start exuding some confidence. At least I got him to say he'll go miniature golfing with me, and I shall hold the bastard to it.

And apparently the date is set: this Saturday I finally get a haircut.

Compound Loss

2006-04-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

Man, you can't just rob me of both my favorite sandwich place in town AND what I thought was a clever name for a Nintendo system at the same time...that's rough man. The Santa Barbara Sandwich Company is gone...I didn't even see it coming nor do I know when it happened, all I got was an email from my friend Mike who found out in similar past tense fashion. Apparently the landlord, whose name is not pronounceable in the common tongue, raised the rent up by 40% or something, and they were forced to move out.

And Nintendo has an official name for their new system, formerly the Revolution. The new name is Wii, pronounced "wee." I...I don't know why. I liked the name "Revolution," because it was at least cliche-sounding. They should compensate me by making the system cheaper so I am more likely to be able to afford it when it comes out.

I believe that in the event of both of these terrible events....I BREAK SHIT!!!

Now Selling "The Truth"*

2006-04-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

*Not actual truth; see product for details; beware of heavy amounts of bullshit; void where prohibited

Today is National Day of Truth, a protest created by the Alliance Defense Fund in response to the National Day of Silence. The basic idea of National Day of Silence is that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (hereafter referred to as LGBT or Queer) are bullied, harassed, closeted by general intolerance, and basically, silenced. Sometimes that silencing has meant death. In order to draw awareness to the issue and try to raise tolerance, members of the Queer community and their allies spend a day in silent protest, usually handing out a small flyer to explain why they are silent.

Notice that the description doesn't really say much about defending homosexuality on moral grounds, nor does it touch any issues like same-sex marriage or adoption, it simply, more or less, sets out to try and bring a stop bullying and homophobia. Many religious groups, protestant and catholic alike, usually explain that they are against bullying, intolerance, hatred, name-calling, etc, even though they stand firm on their belief that any sort of deviance from the heterosexual norm is a sin and ultimately wrong. So why, then, would you protest something you should be standing behind? Some like to insist that National Day of Silence is really just part of a larger immoral agenda, and so they cannot stand behind it. Personally I like to think of that defense as both so much hand waving and bullshit, you see I've got this crazy notion that if you don't want to see people being harassed and harmed because of who they are, then you stand behind that position, period. Perhaps a look at their mission statement will shed more light on things:

"I am speaking the Truth to break the silence. Silence isn't freedom. It's a constraint. Truth tolerates open discussion, because the Truth emerges when healthy discourse is allowed. By proclaiming the Truth in love, hurts will be halted, hearts will be healed, and lives will be saved."

Looking at this it almost seems like they completely miss the point of Day of Silence to begin with. "Silence isn't freedom?" Yeah, no kidding, in fact, you might even say that Day of Silence is against people being silenced. Oh wait....that IS what it's about. Do they missunderstand the use of silence as a device to draw attention to the harm of being silenced? Perhaps. Of course, it's also possible that they're not neccesarily stupid, that they know full well what Day of Silence is about, but nonetheless thought some rhetoric about "truth" would be a good way to once again promote their flagship lie, that all gay people are unhappy and in need of their brainwas....love.

Remember, God's truth is that gay people aren't born with their sexuality, and the choices they've made or the gay-inducing traumas they've suffered can be fixed! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, nor to the facts. Facts are bad, and so are numbers. Numbers lie, especially the kind that point out strong correlations between sexuality and biological factors or the kind that show small long term success rates for ex-gays.

Reach Out And Touch Me

2006-04-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

I've got this new fandangled phone with a ga-google-zillion-f-wad different video game related ringtones on it and no one has been calling me. Call me and I'll assign you a cool ringtone! Just think, wouldn't you like to rest soundly knowing that when you call me the J.E.N.O.V.A. battle music from FF7 is playing? Or perhaps the thrilling crescendo in Actraiser when you spiral down to the planet to engage in battle? Is Castlevania your thing? I know it's mine! I've got 4 different Simon Belmont classics! Is your name Gybrush Threepwood and are you, in fact, a mighty pirate? EVERYTHING MUST GO! We're giving it away here at Chris' crazy ringtone emporium! 705-6630!

It's an even bigger sale than these vegetables, which is what google image search gave me when I searched for "sale!"

Move It Or Loose It Sister, Part Deux

2006-04-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

I'm in phase 2 of the move, which I think will be the middle phase but that depends on there only being 3 phases so I'm not sure I want to commit that nomenclature just yet. However, I will name this the Deviled Egg Phase.

Most everything at my place is in boxes except of course for my computer and other things to big for boxes. I've almost cleared out my old room at my folks' house so that I can shampoo the carpet (my room was used as a dog kennel in my absence), all except for the gigantic avocado green metal desk I've had since the 6th grade. I tried moving it myself and learned the hard way that I would need help.

When I was cleaning out the room I cam across an old garter belt I had caught at a wedding of a friend of mine (traditionaly, women gather to catch the bouquet and men gather to catch the garter belt). I think I had no idea where to keep it but at the same time I didn't want to throw it away because it seemed like an important keepsake kind of thing, so I just stashed it out of the way somewhere, but it occurred to me that if anyone over the years had found it, it probably seemed like I was trying to hide an article of woman's clothing. The idea of people thinking I'm a cross-dresser is actualy kind of funny, so the thought really didn't freak me out or anything. In general I have trouble throwing away things that hold a memory to them, but yesterday I was pretty proud of myself as I ended up throwing away a lot of it. It was very liberating.

DON'T UPSET THE WILDLIFE

2006-04-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

Last night was co-worker Meagan's B-day bash at Caitlin's house, which is in a nice little far corner of IV where you can actually find parking, and that's saying something because I think the actual word "parking" was not only removed from Isla Vista dialect, but every time you mention the word the skies darken, the ground shakes, and passing old Jewish women mumble something and spit on the ground. We were going to the car for a trip to freeb!rds which you don't eat because it's awesome but rather because it's open, and as I'm getting in the car Marcos or Veronica start freaking out about some kind of animal in the bushes next to the passenger side of my car. If I was drunk I would have ran away screaming and tearing off my clothes but since I was only slightly buzzed I approached the bushes and made a hissing cat-like "fssssss!" sound as loud as I could over and over again (because I am dumb). I was thinking...worst case scenario, a raccoon jumps from the bush on to my face and introduces me to the world of reconstructive surgery, but instead a cute little baby skunk started exiting the bush towards us. EVEN THOUGH IT WAS CUTE....and it really was cute.....we dialogued over our options for about 3 or so minutes, put it to a vote and then, screaming, climbed in to the car as fast as possible.

It was sort of a blur....we may have just gone straight for the screaming and car-climbing-into part.

Treasure!

2006-04-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

So I was cleaning emptying out this old behemoth of a desk that I had in my old room since 6th grade so that I can clear it out and make room for my new bed and mattress (my old loft will become storage space) and I found some things that I had thought were long, long gone. I found a VHS cassette of Galaxy Express 999 Signature Edition which I had thought I had lost years ago in a car accident (I had left it in the car before it was towed away). Well turns out I did, but I still had the box and apparently I decided to store something much more valuable in it, old home movies. The thing has about 3 hours of family birthday parties and holiday gatherings, including some golden scenes such as my cousin Matt and me on top of a truck using the antenna like a microphone and singing (screaming) Michael Jackson's Beat It, me racing my bike down the concrete grade that enters the park we used to live near and crashing in to the badminton game in progress, my cousin knocking over the camera while it was recording, all of this set to the sounds of mid-80's rock on the radio. I love it. I need to find a way to transfer it to DVD so I can give more age-proof copies to my family.

The second thing I found was a folder stuffed with all of the drawings my friend Joe and I used to do, including a map-like fold out of (about 15 pages taped together) of the secret underground base of some sort of evil and deadly organization, likes of which I'm sure we had conjured many. Also in the folder are plans for futuristic weapons with ridiculous amounts of "power crystals" and "lighting coils", etc, attached to them and labeled, plans for our very own Megaman game wherein we thought up new bosses for Megaman to fight, and last but not least some drawing from I think...3rd grade of arrest warrants for each of the 4 ninja turtles (they were stealing pizza).

I plan to have pictures of the "best of" as soon as possible.

Birthday Powers Activate!

2006-04-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

Birthday!!!!!

I'm just going to scream the word is all. My mom got me a Stitch plush doll! Yay! Go Stitch!

Can You Hear Me Now? CAN YOU!?!?!?!

2006-04-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

I have been assimilated, my resistance was futile, my distinctiveness has been added to their own, and no I'm not talking about the headsets we wear at Borders now. My mother surprised me with a new phone for my birthday, and so I bid a fond farewell to my old LG phone with its non-camera non-bluetooth non-cool-new-anything and welcome the shiny new trendy Motorola Razr, IE, the phone that everyone and their 5-year-old daughters have. I did not, however, get the pink one. :-(

So here's the deal; here's what you need to know. Verizon are a bunch of money-grubbing evil fucks. I only hope that the "truthful" image of the Verizon "can you hear me now" guy up there that I photoshoped accurately portrays this. I assume that the guttural ancient language he utters is that of his dark Cthulhu lord, whom he plans to unleash upon the world in a bath of blood and fury so that all may despair and "hear him now." Or at least that seems evil enough for Verizon.

The Motorola Razr is manufactured with certain capabilities, much like a CPU has certain instructions that it supports. In my story, these features involve "OBEX Object transfer," which is a fancy name for moving files between your computer and your phone by either bluetooth or a USB cable. What does Verizon do? They flash the phones with a bios that disables those capabilities, this is of course so that they can proceed to rape you with little extra charges here and there. Everyone likes to customize their phone, and since most people have a computer with access to the internet wherein you can find pictures, mp3s and MIDI files (for ringtones), who in their right mind would pay $3 for a ringtone or a wallpaper? Yeah, you wouldn't. In fact there's an old saying, perhaps from the Bard himself: "When a customer can get it for free, fuck them over by crippling their cell phone."

In addition to the file transfer stuff, the phone also doesn't support java, which means no fun little java applications from the internet for me. Instead they use something called BREW, which in and of itself is really no problem, but unlike Sun's Java 2 runtime environment which is free to use, commercial and hobbyist programmers alike have to pay something like $500 dollars for the development tools, which basically means you're not going to find many free BREW programs on the net.

I think I spent about 3 hours looking in to the problem and finding all the necessary stuff to download, but in short I re-flashed the phone's bios to an earlier version where Verizon didn't disable the features, but rather just made it look like they weren't there. Now all you have to do is tell the Motorola software that you have a version of the phone which supports the features, and it works. The software that Verizon service centers use to do things like flashing the bios and backing up phone books isn't supposed to be available to the general public, but that's why we have the internet. I hope they don't expect people to feel bad about that since, after all, they're essentially taking advantage of their customers.

Oh and major bonus points and gold pieces to Motorola for selling separately for $50 the software required to interact with your phone from your PC. I guess I'm still living in my ivory world of rainbow bridges and gumdrop skyscrapers where devices that connect to your PC come with the software you need to do it.

My phone "works" now. I've made a small image of zortnac for the phone's wallpaper and I gouged myself silly at vgmusic.com, filling my phone wath all sorts of awesomzorz MIDI files for my ringtones. Only problem now is that I can't decide between Monkey Island or Guardian Legend or Final Fantasy or Mario, etc etc.

Aaaaannnnnnnnd.......nopenotgonnahappen

2006-04-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

I had gotten my hopes up, prehaps a little too high, on moving in to a place in goleta. The house was awesome and the people there seemed just as cool if not cooler, but then in the end they rented to someone else. I had sort of put all of my eggs in to one basket since early on I had gotten the impression from the person I was in contact with that my getting the room was pretty much a sure bet, although in the end it turned out it was between me and one other guy, a friend of the other housemates. I even bought a new bed, since I've been pining for one for a while and decided this would be a good time to get it. So now I'm out of time and it looks like I'll be moving back home, even though my old room has sort of been trashed and marked for demolition. I'm not sure how I'm going to make it work, but by the Gods I'm sure something will pan out.

Oblivion Plays A Lot Like Morrowind

2006-03-31T18:03:00.000-08:00

But my goodness, my goodness, is it pretty. The first thing that hits you about this game is the draw distance. I mean...there is no draw distance limit...everything from the trees 30 yards away to the hills in the distance to the snow covered mountains against the horizon is there, albeit with their level of detail lowered (and you can in fact see the transitions in some spots between loaded zones and off-in-the-distance unloaded zones), but even still, they're being drawn. it's just something you have to see in action. On top of that, the lighting effects make the game very pretty. Spells, fog effects, evil green glowy inside of dungeons, they all look great especially with the high dynamic range lighting that the game uses. Speaking of fancy effects, the game brings my PC to its knees at 1024x768 resolution, but it runs well enough so I'm happy.

I also really like all the fun little UI gadgets that they've installed over the last game. Instead of just "picking a lock", you can actually try to manipulate individual tumblers in a cross sectional image of the lock's mechanism. Trying to raise an NPC's disposition towards your character is represented by a little 4-step mini game representing the types of things you can say to the NPC and how they would react. By the way, the lock picking thing was, I believe, ripped off directly from picking locks in Wizardry 8 which did a similar thing with tumblers: try to raise one tumbler at a time, fail and they all fall down. Oblivion improves on this by making lock picks required, which can be lost each time to fail to set a tumbler, and by lowering the chance that all the tumblers fall when you mess up if your skill is high. This makes me really eager to see if Oblivion also copied Wizardry 8's trap disarm mini game and improved upon it.

My Pain May Be A Thing Of The Past

2006-03-31T17:43:00.000-08:00

For about 5 years now, I've been plagued by a terrible pain in my lower back/hip/butt area. It's a pain that seems to come and go, making it hurt when I walk, lie down flat, use my leg muscles in any number of every-day movements, sit cross legged on the floor, etc. Sometimes it gets so bad that I can't even sleep because of the pain and I can barely roll over in my bed or get up. After having seen a doctor a couple of times over the years and after having an MRI after one doctor theorized that my problem was sciatica I sort of gave up hope.

Well, recently I did something to a vertebrate between my shoulders on my upper back, some kind of injury I'm not sure, it feels like a pulled muscle and it's sore to the touch like a bruise. This, along with a new development in my hip problem, motivated me to go see a rheumatologist, and I'm really glad that I did because I may finally have an answer to all of this. Apparently there is a small joint in my hip that has become dislocated, as evidenced by the fact that when I lie flat, one of my legs becomes longer than the other. The on and off nature of my pain is explained by the joint getting popped back in over time, and then getting popped out again. It also explains why when the problem is acting up, sitting is a comfortable position while lying down is not.

The doctor referred me to a physical therapist whom he claims can help me. Apparently she'll fix the problem and teach me exercises to repair and strengthen the muscles and ligaments so it will become less likely over time to throw out the joint again. The doctor tells me it's a problem with a very high success rate for those who seek physical therapy. I'm really happy about this. For too long I've been really upset about being in my 20's and constantly suffering from pains some old guy with a fake hip bone.

And now, without further ado, here is BrokenAxe trying to find a faster and cheaper method of travel.

My Computer And I Are On The Same Page

2006-03-29T17:54:00.000-08:00

I was working on my laptop trying to learn LISP (a type of programming language based on lists and function calls rather than successive statements) for this project I'm going to attempt. I was following a chapter that had a sentence generator as a small project program. I set up a basic grammar and defined nouns and verbs like, boy, girl, table, saw, touched, liked, and I swear to God, I swear to God, this was the first sentence generated when I tried the program.

[51]> (generate 'sentence)
==> (THE BOY LIKED THE BOY)

Edit: Only minutes later and after some nonsense about women seeing tables and boys throwing balls, here is yet another sentence:

==> (A MAN TOUCHED A MAN)

What is it With Brazilian Guys?

2006-03-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

I swear...some guys are just born gorgeous. I need to travel to Brazil and see how many people these guys are representative of.

I can't decide which of these would make a cooler poster for my wall, although honestly I don't know why I NEED to have pictures of guys on my wall. I may in the end prefer to use the space on video game posters and artwork. We'll see.

I NEED MY FIX

2006-03-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

WoW servers upgraded to patch 1.10 today, and while the patch was available at the promised time, none of the realms have been put back up yet. As of now they're...about 4 hours behind schedule. My hands are shaking amd I can't evrn typr straht. Loosing.....controll.....

The Most Fun I Have Wasting My Time

2006-03-24T20:03:00.000-08:00

In the boards that I post at people are given symbols based on their post count as a status symbol of how efficient we all are in wasting our time arguing amateur politics with strangers. It goes from a small star to multiple small stars, to a large star in bronze, silver, gold, etc. The highest one, at 50 thousand posts, is a metallic radioactive symbol. People pointed out that over the years, too many people have it, and in fact have far exceeded the number, and so we need a new one.

So I made some in photoshop, some of them a play on the original radioactive symbol, and a new biohazard one. I don't know why I have so much fun making these little things....seriously it was like 3 hours total and I was fully engaged the whole time.

OMG Chocolate hi2u!!1111!ONE

2006-03-24T19:17:00.001-08:00

I have found my new favorite crack, and wouldn't you know it....you can get it at Trader Joe's (I know, crazy, right?). It has to be some of the darkest chocolate I've ever had. You can taste the cocoa. I also just want to say that it's not a problem and I can stop at any time...

Move It Or Loose It Sister

2006-03-23T20:45:00.000-08:00

My worlds has been upset...thrown in to chaos...well maybe it's not all that bad. I'll be loosing a roommate, a great one too which is a bummer, and because of this I'll either have to find a new roommate or a new place to live. Right now there are two options on either end, one being my friend Mike being a potential roommate, the other being a nice place in Goleta that might accept me as a new house mate. I guess we'll see what happens. It's a shame, if I move out I will have not once, in almost a year's time gone to the beach from the place only 2 blocks from the beach.

10 more 'tll 60!

2006-03-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

Oh shit...someone just hit level 50....(It's me, I hit level 50)

Empty Legal Threats Are Fun!

2006-03-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

Everyone's favorite Ex-Gay ministry has put up some billboards in the mid-west advertising their product (a nicely packaged lie), with a new "Gay? Unhappy?" campaign. I mean, I have to admit, I am gay, and I am sometimes unhappy. I was unhappy just the other night when I was in the lab at 3 AM and the results from my project weren't coming out right. Just last week I was damn unhappy when I got another parking ticket! BLAST YOU STREET SWEEPING!!! So...does this mean that exodus has a solution to both my parking tickets and my statistical tests for a school project? If I go to the website and find that they don't....I'm going to be pretty unhappy.

Anyway, a Blogger posted a parody of the billboard on his Blog: Justinsomnia, and was sent a cease and desist letter from Liberty Counsel, a faith-based legal group and ministry. For the full details, and the letter, check out the letter.

In the interest of standing up against intimidation from those who would rather not see us express ourselves in response to their hatred (yes, yes I know, they call it loving Christian outreach, I call it hatred because of the hatred it fuels), I'm mirroring the image here. Just make sure you see the original to get the joke ;-)

I've come up with my own parody (I may do some more if they come to me). No disrespect meant to ex-gays or insults meant to their sexual identity which is uniquely their own. However, when you broadcast the notion that homosexuals are unhappy because of their nature rather than because of society's response to that nature, then expect a little tongue-in-cheek response. ;-)

I'm Never Flying Golbin Air Again

2006-03-09T23:24:00.000-08:00

Being in one disastrous plane crash is one thing, but being in a second? This is unacceptable. Goblin Air needs to check their warp drive plasma manifolds or whatever it is that makes the things.....not disappear.

Aliens Aren't All House-trained

2006-02-27T10:41:00.000-08:00

I had this dream where my entire extended family was up at my parents' house for a dinner party, but somehow at the same time high school English class with Mrs. Williams was going on in a dimly lit room. One thing led to another, and sure enough, Aurora Borealis was occurring outside, and, as Aurora Borealis tends to do, it burned small holes in the ozone layer allowing harmfully space-acid through that burned small holes in the roof of the house and the furniture and on my head, but I guess I was able to take the burning hole off my head and put it on the floor. About at that time aliens landed on the front porch, to abduct me I could only assume. Before I could start screaming I looked over at my mom who looked normal except that she had big oval alien eyes, and she told me that "the aliens shat on the carpet."

What's weird is that I remember knowing with a certain fear that the events were somehow leading up to alien abduction, but I totaly didn't see the shitting on the carpet coming.

Back in Business

2006-02-26T04:17:00.000-08:00

So after a final few last-attemp jabs from fate in all things car related (namely, I needed 3 separate jump starts on the second replacement car), my Focus is back up and running. I even decided to wash it and add a great little sticker that goes very nicely in contrast to a sticker my co-worker has on his Focus. His is blue on his silver Focus, and mine is black on my red one. I think it looks just snazzy.

OMG COMICON UPDATE:

Hotels sold out this year in a record 3 hours. I spent a very stressful evening that day trying to find another place to stay and got lucky with a place that Josh and I stayed at one year that isn't on the comic-con list this year, but is still two blocks from a hotel that is, which means it's two blocks from a shuttle point. That's really all that matters is distance to a shuttle point so that you don't end up having to drive or walk LONG distances to the convention center. Last time we stayed at the Westin Hortin Plaza, which is built in to awesome said plaza and in walking distance from the convention center so you don't have to deal with the shuttles at all. I'm on the waiting list for that place, but it's nice to know that we've got rooms even if that doesn't pan out.

Replacement Car #2

2006-02-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

The Back Story. Essentially, my car broke down, and I borrowed my brother's Toyota Forerunner, which, by the way, got me a speeding ticket on the first day of driving it because I wasn't quite used to the difference in acceleration between it and my focus. Last night I'm pulling out of the gas station and this horrific shrieking metal sound comes from the engine and the air starts to smell of burned rubber. Great. I pull over quickly in the In and Out parking lot and call my brother for help. He arrives in my Dad's Aircraft Carrier on Wheels that I've decided to simply call "the biggest fucking truck I've ever seen," or what is officially called the Dodge Ram Mega Cab. Turns out Trevor's Forerunner blew a timing belt or something, so we ditched it there at In and Out and I got to borrow the Lincoln Towne Car, but only until Friday, when apparently it has to do some sort of task in LA.

I half seriously asked if I could use the new truck, you know, one of those things where you could play it off as a joke but only if they say no? Anyway, my Dad's response was that I "wouldn't know what to do with that much truck." My response, being the good little smart ass liberal son that I am, was that the only people who know what to do with "that much truck" are people who've kidded themselves in to thinking that they need "that much truck" to begin with. I think I also snuck in a small penis compensation joke in there, just for good measure.

Busted by Homeland Security!

2006-02-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

There are multiple parking spaces outside of the building my Gym is in that belong to other businesses in the building and are tow-away zones for unauthorized vehichles during business hours. For 3 years now I've been parking there safely after about 4-ish, but yesterday, in one of the TSA spots (an acronym I've not bothered to find the meaning to until now), I cam back to my car to find a warning on the windshield:

That's right! Transportion Security Asministration! I officially pissed off the Department of Homeland Security!

I'm a terrorist.

Feeling like the bottom of the heap

2006-02-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

Ugh....I was at a party last night and felt a feeling that I've not felt since high school...Embarrassment at the hands of others in a social setting. There's this guy I saw on facebook that looked pretty cool, so I messaged him saying hi. I've got a pretty dry sense of humor, bordering on strange I guess, and I think that sometimes when I'm shy I think being silly is my way of dealing with that. So anyway, the message was a silly one, a dumb joke about him being tall, and maybe that was a bad idea; maybe I should save my sense of humor for people who know me. So the guy doesn't respond, whatever. I see him at this party, and later in the night I overhear him repeating my message verbatim to other people, going on about how "creepy" it was (I guess he thought the message was serious?). I don't know if he knew I was standing right there or whatever....but I felt like I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

I seized the opportunity and walked up to him and basically just said that I didn't mean to creep him out, that I was just being silly. He formally introduced himself, shook my hand, said that is was cool and all, but he seemed kind of drunk at the time so he probably still thinks I'm a creep.

Maybe I am a creep...that would explain the restraining order my parents have on me at least.

Not a car day

2006-02-06T18:03:00.001-08:00

I must have picked up a nail or something the other night over at Ludick's house, because I remember hearing something coming from the tire when I was driving home, but I couldn't see anything with my flashlight when I got out to check. Well, I don't know why I just said "nail or something" because I know for a fact it was a nail, having visually confirmed it the next day when I saw it sticking out of my very flat tire. I wait for 2 hours at Big Brand for their free flat tire fix, and head home for a bout half an hour to eat before I have to be back at school. When I try to start up the car I find I can't turn the key in the ignition.

Crap.

This is all to painfully familiar....this has happened to me before. In fact, this is the second time my ignition lock has failed on me in just as many years. Way to go Ford. Turns out that the ignition lock parts in ford Foci are notoriously BAD and likely to break often. Mel Clayton Ford (read: scam artist assholes) wants me to pay $450 for parts and labor. Yeah, does lube come with that ass raping? I found the part online for $30. I'm going to do my best to solve this myself before I pay those jerks a fortune to fix a part that didn't last 2 years after the last time they "fixed" it.

Windriders never get broken ignition locks...

Watching doesn't guarantee a citing

2006-02-06T18:03:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how all of my friends spent their superbowl Sunday, but I'm moderately pleased to say that I spent mine doing nothing at all related to football. Instead, I went with a friend of mine from grad school and some friends of his to go sailing on a small boat he has in the venture harbor. More specifically, we went whale watching. Only thing is...we didn't really see any whales, and I got seasick and threw up twice, which Chris made damn sure to get on camera. I'm not entirely sure if it was the sea that made me sick or the Arbys that Chris insisted upon eating before the outing. Afterwards we drove around the pricey neighborhood of Venture Keys: large houses with private marinas connecting to the ocean in their own back yard. All in all I would not have traded the day for anything else. Still, if I go out again I'm taking some DramamineÂ®.

An another note, below is a picture of the coolest boat name in existence. Yes, you read it right: "My Cat Ate A Whole Watermelon."

I'm not an attraction, and this isn't a fucking zoo

2006-01-30T20:26:00.000-08:00

There was a small group of straight guys at wildcat tonight. Now, that in and of itself is obviously not a bad thing. There are straight people at wildcat all the time, they have just as much right to be there on a Sunday night, etc etc. Now, I don't know for sure that they were straight, but I had a very strong feeling about it, the vibe they gave off, their mannerisms, and most importantly the reason I'm writing this in the first place: they were in the middle of the dance floor, beers in hands, not dancing, and just sort of watching everyone like it was some kind of show.

"Hey Joe! You wanna go see the queers a'dancin? I hear it's quite a sight"

"Yeehaw!"

I gain nothing by painting them as rednecks, but I dunno, it just seems funny.

Who the fuck is this dumb?

2006-01-12T10:12:00.000-08:00

Ok...so I'm at Wildcat lounge and some guy asks me for my number. I'm pretty jazzed about the whole thing because, well, that never really happens to me. We dance for a little bit and then eventually split up for the rest of the evening. A day or so later he messages me asking if I want to hang out. I tell him I'm not able too because of prior commitments, but that I'd really like to. The next day he asks me if I want to join him for a yoga class. The text message session goes something like this:

Me: "Sure! where and when?"

Him: "City Yoga, on fairfax and Santa Monica"

"Santa monica...as in...LA"

"Well yeah, where are you"

"I'm in SB"

The conversation ends there. I really felt like responding, "I'm in SB, you know, the TOWN WHERE WE FUCKING MET?" Who goes to a club in a different town, meets someone, and assumes that they're not only also out of town, but form the same place as you? A friend weighed in on the subject with the claim that in LA, they're "as cute as they are dumb." I have to say, the guy certainly was cute.

A sea of Heads

2006-01-08T02:35:00.000-08:00

I went down to Club Rage in West Hollywood with Marcos and Peter the other night. I usually have a good time....for the most part. The problem with Rage is that it's an 18+ joint...it's usually a twink-fest, and there's rarely room to dance. This was especially true last night as we were literally shoulder to shoulder on the dance floor because it was so packed. However, it does have a very nice dance floor and some very nice lighting and sound equipment (which they boast as state of the art). Apparently Fridays, which are called "GameBoi" is an Asian night. I really didn't think anything of it, although I did notice that about 80% of the people there were Asian, rounded out of course by the usual 2% strangely old and creepy old guys. Peter made an interesting observation that, assuming that many of the Asian kids were children of first generation immigrants, people coming from a country where homosexuality is much more of a taboo than it is here in the states, that there was probably a much larger number of people who's parents not only didn't know they were there, but would probably suffer a minor coronary is they did find out. Also, as I allude to in the title of this post, when you're 6'1" in a room filled predominantly with people of an ethnicity that has a smaller mean height, you tend to feel really freakishly tall...

Excuse me, sir, I believe you have my power!

2006-01-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

I love when random events line up to make interresting coincidences and such. I was watching Office Space with some friends when, during the scene where Peter is being hyptnotized by the occupational therapist, the power to my residential area goes out at the EXACT moment when the hypnotist reaches "one" in his countdown to put Peter in to a trance. We all exclaimed how cool we thought it was; my friend Matt, at first, thought I had done it as a prank of some sort (not that I deny having power to control the Santa Barbara power lines at will). We rushed to get flash lights, and for extra added security, I grabbed my newly aquired red swingline stapler.

Christmas, again, Renga Style

2005-12-25T12:27:00.000-08:00

Writing this live, from my parents living room on Christmas morning. I've got a TON of pictures from Christmas eve with the whole clan and then some, which I plan on uploading later. For now, I'll just show the wrapping job my sister did on the Season 1 boxset of Battlestar Gallactica she got for me.

Thanksgiving Renga Style

2005-11-25T22:21:00.000-08:00

I will always be thankful for my huge family and the crazy gatherings we have. This year's thanksgiving had to be the best ever, while at the same time, melon collie being the first year without my uncle Joe. Nearly the whole clan was there, sans Geralyn and Rick and my cousins. What made this one so great is that we had about 10 more people decide to attend at the near last minute, a day before. With the huge turkey and all the extra food planning, we didn't end up eating until like....8:30, which is certainly the latest I've ever had a thanksgiving dinner. In fact, I hear some people have more of a thanksgiving lunch. WTF? I'd totally be up for that. Give your body the rest of the day to digest and what not.

I took it upon myself to make the gravy, so I started ahead of time making a roux. My sister saw the finished product and thought it was gravy, so she stuck her finger in it saying "oh gravy!" and then yelled in pain when she found out she had stuck her finger in to hot oil and flour. But my sister's minor injury aside, the gravy turned out very good, and I received some props on it. Well done, all in all.