ad astra!

My account on Cyberspace BBS/GRNET turned ten years a couple weeks ago… so I’ve been online for ten years now… kinda cool.

I hung out with roommate Joe and Jay last night since I didn’t go to bed Sunday until after noon and slept until 5:30. We watched Sum of Us with Russell Crowe. It was cool to hang out with Joe since we’d never really hung out before. We went to the video store together, it was cool. Tonight is Josh Night since we haven’t hung out lately; he’s been housesitting. I might be getting a kitten, too! Yay!

John Mayer : Heavier Things : Clarity

I worry, I weigh three times my body
I worry, I throw my fear around
But this morning, there’s a calm I can’t explain
The rock here has melted, only diamonds now remain

By the time I recognize this moment
This moment will be gone
But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on
Well all I got’s

And I will wait to find
If this will last forever
And I will wait to find
If this will last forever
And I will pay no mind
When I won’t and it won’t cause it can’t
It just can’t
It’s not supposed to

Is there a second in time that I looked around
Did I sail through or drop my anchor down
Is anything enough to kiss the ground
And say I’m here now and she’s here now

So much wasted in the afternoon
So much sacred in the month of June
How bout you

And I will wait to find
If this will last forever
And I will wait to find
That it won’t and it won’t it won’t
And I will pay no mind
worry about the way the weather
And I will waste no time
Remembering our life together

Christmas pretty much sucked. More later, probably.

Luke 2

The Birth of Jesus

¹In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ²(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³And everyone went to his own town to register.

⁴So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in
Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged
to the house and line of David. ⁵He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ⁶While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷and
she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and
placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

⁸And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ^[1] the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

¹³Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

   ¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest,
       and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the
shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this
thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

¹⁶So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The
shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they
had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

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Counterfeit Christmas

Since we live in a house that changes hands sometimes twice a year, we get a lot of mail that’s addressed to other people who don’t live here anymore. Normally, we just write RETURN TO SENDER on it. On Monday we got a Christmas card & decided, instead of sending it back, to open it. Sure, it’s a federal offense, but we had to check it for white powder. We certainly didn’t want to be responsible for contaminating the postal service.

What we decided to do instead was send a card back to them, in the true and giving spirit of Christmas. We even wrote a little thank you note for the darling picture of Brianna. I guess that makes it mail fraud.

But hey, it’s Christmas. Update your friggin’ mailing lists, people. And have your mail forwarded. But this way, at least, they’ll be able to thank Phillip for the card. He can think of it as our Christmas present to him.

According to Debka.com, there is a possibility that Saddam was held for up to three weeks in al-Dwar by a Kurdish splinter group while they negotiated a handover to the Americans in return for the $25m reward. This, the writers say would explain his dishevelled and disorientated appearance.

Tuesday, 23 December 2003, is hereby declared Conspiracy Theory Day.

OH MY GOD. (Warning. LOTR:ROTK spoilers.)

First off, my brother got me both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers DVDs for Christmas. I haven’t seen either of them on the big screen, so when Jordan and I went to see The Return of the King I was completely floored. It is absolutely amazing. There were only two instances where I questioned Peter Jackson’s judgement, there was one shot of Merry that I thought was completely silly and useless and spoiled the moment, and all the fades at the end. That’s it. Otherwise it is a visually perfect film. The music is beautiful: I was absolutely mesmerized with the single violin melody that played as the army of Rohan charged the Orcs at Minas Tirith. Beautiful. The acting is beyond exceptional, Sean Astin needs an Oscar for his Samwise Gamgee. Everything about this movie (and the two that precede it) is phenomenal. These three movies are three of the best films ever made, without exeception. Which is fitting since they’re taken from one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. I mean, seriously, LOTR ranks up there with Homer. It just does not get any better. All of life is contained in this story: great loss, great triumph, great love, maturation, loyalty, courage, all these things what we go through in life are experienced by the characters. Tolkein does go somewhat out of his way to provide us with a happy ending, but it’s ok because we like happy endings. After 1200 pages(text) or 16 hours(film) of this story there has to be a payoff other than everyone dying. But even though none of the major characters die, in the end, the fellowship is broken�Bilbo and Frodo leave Merry, Pippin, and Sam to go off with Gandalf and the elves and Aragorn is set to rule Gondor. That is a life lesson, too, and it leaves our hearts happy to know that Frodo and company survived (be it at great cost to the extras cast) but it also makes our hearts heavy at the thought of them leaving us. So often LOTR speaks truths to us during its quiet moments, and that is what we look to literature and to the very best of film for.

Then afterwards, we went to (of course!) Bilbo’s Pizza In A Pan!

I’m almost done with my Christmas shopping. I’m gonna have to dip into my savings just to get shit for people. I don’t mind, really, but I’d rather have hours at work to pay for it… the students came back and took my hours at every store. Which really sucks because I have seniority over them and I should get the hours, but then it’s never worked that way.

Not feeling too happy. I think it’s Holiday Angst. I really want to drink, but I haven’t been. Not this week at least. Last week we went to Diversions Saturday night. Which was really fun. Travis, Kyle, Matt, Josh and me. A carful of five fags on the way to GR. I got to see Kurt and lots of other people and got a free mix CD for their 10th anniversary. I’ve been going there for six of those ten years, which is kinda scarry. We gave Kurt a ride home to Grandville. He sat on my lap, which was kinda cute but probably not for him. Thankfully he’s like five-six so it’s not like he was too cramped. Then Kyle’s psycho ex-boyfriend kept calling him so we were passing the phone around the car. I also called Dino and we all shouted “Hi Dino!” into his voicemail, which I’m sure he enjoyed because it made him feel loved. We came back to Kalamazoo and went to Big Burrito, had some big burritos, then went back here. I ended up staying up until like 6am and found out we captured Saddam and then called Brad & told him to watch the news and then finally went to bed. Got up on Sunday and went to Grand Rapids for my Great Aunt Mary’s funeral service. She was a lesbian and lived with another woman for like 40 years or something. I wanted to see if they mentioned it. Betty was referred to as her “constant companion” and the priest even mentioned her by name. I thought that noteworthy and important. The priest also had a cold and called her Mary Wonton instead of Mary Honton. He gave communion, and since it was a Catholic service everyone was drinking out of the same whine chalice thingy (not the cup of a carpenter) so I was like.. umm.. 1)I’m Buddhist and 2)I don’t want everyone else’s germs. Same reason why I never liked passing a bowl/joint around. It just seems so damned nasty sharing saliva with strangers. I don’t care if you whipe it off with the holy cloth or whatever. An antibacterial whipe & I might consider it. That’s not to mention the whole transsubstantiation thing, where the wafer and the wine become the body and blood. That’s just gross, Saviour notwithstanding.

Then I went to Brett’s and drank and played Scrabble. Then we went to sleep at like 5am. I woke up around 8 to leave for Three Rivers at 9. After that I’ve had Tues-Thurs off. Last night was fun as Jordan and I went down to Marty’s house-in-progress in Three Rivers and hung out for awhile. Marty is a very nice older guy. He’s like 44 but you really wouldn’t know it. He has a really surprisingly sophisticated handsomeness to him that reminds me a bit of Edmund White or Gore Vidal when they were younger in the 1970s or something, or at least like the pictures I’ve seen. His house is in the process of being built and it’s just spectacular. I can only imagine how breathtaking it will be when it’s finished. I’d really like to try and convince him to have me help him decorate it, but I don’t think I’ll be in Kzoo when it’s finished. Although it would be great fun to spend his money to decorate his house for him. Find out what he wants, his taste for each room, then seek out the objects to fulfull his vision. Or just a vision. That would be FANTASTIC.

I’m in Plainwell tomorrow and then Saturday is the family Christmas gathering. Jim wanted one of those cat-waterfountain things but I couldn’t find one. I’ll have to look on Friday night or Saturday before I leave. I’m already giving him The XMen collection, which is a good gift but it’s the fullscreen version and opened. I bought it at Meijer, opened it, realized it was fullscreen, said “shit” and then decided to give it to him. Cuz I’m a dick.

I paid my Alltel bill today. It was $85. New York City roaming killed me. Speaking of which, I haven’t heard from Dino in like 2 weeks. I hope he’s ok. I need to check in on him and make sure he’s not thinking dark thoughts, that he’s still with Charlie, and if he’s found another job. And I miss him.

Going back to the whole crappiness thing… I really was a shit-knob to Josh today and I’m sorry… he was talking about meeting people to date (offline as opposed to online) and how str8 people don’t have this gay world where they only meet the people they date and hang out with in bars or on the internet. Which is true, but for us homos it’s been that way forever. Historically you went to a gay bar or other meeting place and met people there. Str8 people are easy to find in our routine lives, but gay people are not. You might meet a fag here or there at work, but it’s hard for me at least because I work in a mostly female dominated environment. Out in the stores there’s lots of homos, but I don’t know how many of them I’d consider hanging out with. The bars and the chatrooms are about all we’ve got. And I think these are valid, if not decent and upstanding, places to meet people. I’ve met some really good people both on-and-offline in the gay world. Josh may have been speaking of how he might feel a fragmentation between his gay world and his “real” world, but it’s not so for me. “Going out” to the gay bars and clubs is a part of my life. It’s an activity I choose to do for its social aspect. You tend to meet people in that sort of environment, and to me it’s a good thing. Chatting on the internet, as geeky and shut-in as it may seem, is pretty much a 24 hour version of the gay bar or coffee shop or quilting club, it’s a non-intrusive way to meet people. He does have a point in that if you meet someone in an environment other than a bar or virtual space you have something more in common-french class, for example- than just being gay. Being gay is no excuse to hang out with people. I mean, it was when I was a young fag, but now there needs to be some sort of comraderie or at least shared interest. But sometimes it just involves drinking, and that fulfills its social needs, too. One point I really wanted to make is that as you develop your identity more and more the gay part integrates itself into the rest of your life.

When I first started out at college my friend Kate was writing a paper on identity, and she asked me if I felt my identity was cohesive or fragmented and I told her I felt fragmented: I wasn’t all that out at work, but I was within my cirlce of friends. I no longer feel as if I have a “gay” life and a “non-gay” life, more so that all these aspects are integrated into one life that I live. Being gay is only part of it. I also have a job, I also read, I also play Xbox from time to time. None of these encompasses a particular fragment of my existence, but rather they are pieces of a whole life lived.

But what he said about meeting people just sort of pushed the happy mood in my head off a cliff, because sometimes it just feels impossible to meet anyone I’d want to date. When I do, things get complicated and they never call. I could call them, granted, but I’m not in that particular mood as of late. I’d prefer to exist as myself and be pursued. I’ve done the work, sent the flowers, all that stuff enough thus far. That and right now I prefer not to make plans. Things happen around me and I decide to participate, like this weekened when I ended up at Diversions. It seems to be a bit more fun that way, anyhow, and I like how everything unfolds.

However, the problem still exists. I can only really think of a few people I’d want to date, and they are unresponsive at best. One of them was even flaccidly unresponsive, and I can only think of that as a reflection upon myself. Basically, what Josh said just got me down and made me feel like I will indeed die cold and alone. He asked if I wanted to go for a walk and I said no and walked out of his room. I don’t really know why, but I did. In that particular moment I didn’t want to, although it probably would have done me a world of good to do so. He then said what I did was mean and blocked me on AIM like a 12 year old. Which I guess is ok, cuz it was shitty to just walk away like that as I know it makes him feel bad when people do that. But we live in the same house and I wanted to go down to my room and be pitiful for awhile, so it’s not like I abandoned him or anything. He could’ve followed downstairs. I wanted him to, anyway. That’s probably why I’ll die cold and alone. Because I can be a top-notch asshole sometimes. But really, I didn’t want to go for a walk and at that moment I actually wanted to be alone.

“Ah Gogo, don’t go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better.”

Then Jordan came by to pick up the hard drive we’d bought off eBay for cheap and we discovered it was SCSI, which we should’ve seen before we bought it. So yeah, I’m retared and Jordan doesn’t have a SCSI controller. Then I went to Fourth Coast and started reading Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love. Then I came back here, burned my NYC pictures to a CD-RW for Saturday, and now I’m writing you all this. I should go to bed soon.

Jordan gave me one of his senior pictures Wednesday night, too. Jordan is a totally awesome kid who I wish I would’ve met when I was seventeen. That is, if we could both be seventeen together. But he’s as old as my little cousin (who’s no longer little) so it’s kind of weird to hang out with him sometimes if I think too hard about it. Sometimes I think “Holy shit, when I was 17 I hung out with this 24 year old and he seemed so old.”
That was my week. Hope yours was just as fucktacular.

Paul’s Christmas Wish List

For those of you who weren’t paying attention the first time:
No, you don’t need the goddamn yellow Hummer.
you are not the fucking left leg of Voltron!!

I’m mailing out my holiday cards this year with Eid stamps.

The Picture of Everything is something one might spend hours fucking around with.

The Josh Quote of the Day:

“You tend to lose track of what day it is when you don’t sleep for a week.”

Ended up going to the Perfect Circle concert with Corey because everyone else I asked couldn’t go or didn’t get ahold of me in time. Corey’s a pretty nice guy. He’s my ex’s ex’s ex. So it was like a little ex boyfriend party or something.

The warm-up band sucked. I don’t even think suck begins to describe the degree of their suckiness. Suck, suck, suck! There were girls on guys shoulders flipping them off. It was bad. Perfect Circle rocked, though. They all had the flu, but they still put on an awesome show. Played all the songs from Mer de Noms that I like and a bunch from Thirteenth Step. Great fucking show, guys.

Got called in to work today at Plainwell because they had two sick calls. That sucked, too.

Josh’s birthday was on Sunday. I was in Ann Arbor, and I guess he had a fairly shitty birthday. Kyle passed out on the couch Sunday night, that was rather entertaining. I decided not to get him a present since I took him to Stratford, but I want to do something nice like take him out to dinner since the guy Jay who he liked said he would but they decided to call it off.

Now I’m going to catch up on the laundry and maybe make some cookies for everybody.

Today I bought tickets for the Perfect Circle concert at the DeltaPlex in Grand Rapids. I got two, so I just need to find someone to take the other ticket. I’m hoping it will be Kurt, but I can always sell it at the door or bring my brother.

Rock on!

I’m at Kim & Barb’s right now, we’re making dinner. Well…. she’s working on the big (after)thanksgiving dinner and I’m updating my blog. Cuz I’m a dick.

From Jeff’s livejournal:

lucky
I flip the middle cigarette in my pack upside down when I first open it.. it’s my ‘lucky’… it’s something I’ve always done, and I try to rationalize some sort of nonsense as to why I do it, but the pure and simple truth is that it’s just habit. There’s one cigarette left in my pack, the lucky. Flipped upside down and wondering where the hell everyone else is. Snuffed out in an ashtray, thrown in the trash, and forgotten… that’s where they are, but he sits there and wonders, why am I different, why am I left alone, what will become of me — the different one? And he’ll join the others in my lungs, in the ashtray, in the trash, in a landfill piled with billions of others, still wondering if he’s to end up just like everyone else — why was he the last to know?

I think that’s cool.

I dated Jeff a million years ago (ok, 5 years ago for like 6 months) and I wish I still knew him instead of only reading his livejournal every now and then. Some people you meet and never want to forget.

I wonder how these little guys see anything!
It’s fucking hilarious. I got the link from Guy’s livejournal.
Guy doesn’t like me, I guess. (Can you imagine?) But I read his livejournal anyway.