Death Rays and Doughnuts

Not Dead Yet

2009-07-14T12:15:00.001-07:00

This Blog isn't dead, it's just hibernating while I iron out kinks and create newer and better content.

Fade to Grey

2009-01-11T13:55:00.000-08:00

The Paulitico seems to take some measure of joy in testing my assorted ailments and peculiarities, today it was parading the Ishihara color blindness test in front of me after watching Little Miss Sunshine.

We sufficiently proved that I am, in fact, still partially color blind and getting a little worse it would seem. This thought gave me something to chew on for a while, and it occurred to me that while so many seem to feel that life was more vibrant and colorful when they were younger and more hopeful, for about 4-8% of us that is literally true.

With any luck the fate of the world will never hinge upon my ability to determine if that little status LED on the cable modem is bright green or amber.

Birthday Diary

2009-01-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

January 5, 2009

12:06pm

Woke up to the cell phone ringing. Sleep deprivation has made my hands useless so they flail at the tiny buttons attempting to silence that infernal contraption. Eventually gave up and used my claw-hands to shove the phone under several layers of pillows.

1:37pm

Emerged from a dreamless sleep yet somehow had the image of a skyscraper made entirely of faux fur stuck in my head. Cole slaw before bed seems to be a poor idea.

1:43pm

Managed to get my hands working long enough to check my voicemails. My sister wished me well and then my mother and brothers sang me a happy birthday in a different message.

2:18pm

Tore myself from the extremely comfortable covers and sought out a hearty breakfast. Settled on a naval orange instead. A childhood spent eating them on sunny California days has instilled in me an almost automatic need to peel and enjoy the orange slowly in order to savor the experience for as long as possible while staving off weekend chores.

2:24pm

Sat down to the computer and trolled Craigslist for a job. I'm getting too good at spotting the regular posters to the job boards. There's a Dakota Roadhouse that can never seem to find the right "vivacious personality, absolutely no students of any kind", they seem to post that ad every other week. At least they're more subtle than the "Looking for bartender to work and dance in two piece bikini, no experience necessary". It's almost comforting to know that there are some jobs no one will tolerate no matter how bad the economy gets.

I turned off the phone because trolling for jobs online makes accepting the well-wishes of friends and loved ones feel oddly hollow.

4:03pm

Came to the strange realization that looking for jobs online is a lot like looking for sex online. It's mostly two people hoping to find something incredible and ending up disappointed. On the plus side the job hunt has yet to result in a trip to the Free Clinic.

5:16pm

Turned the phone back on, a few more people sending amelodic love but thus far no resume call-backs. It's still good to be loved.

5:19pm

Showers are something I can never fail to enjoy. The feeling of warmth and water on my skin does enough to remind me of sunnier weather and simpler times that the lingering side-effects of short and fitful slumber finally melt away and I can feel my extremities again.

5:52pm

Plugged into the Game.

"[Zeroes]: Ding 32! But in real life so no epic lootz for me."
"[Mikey]: Happy vaginal escape day!"
"[Virgule]: I'm only 2.01 in hexadecimal age."

My fellow nerds have an odd way of lifting my spirits.

7:07pm

Paulitico gets home offering 32 kisses and promises of sushi. The mention of food reminds me that a single orange, while high in vitamin C, does not a day's worth of food make. I suspect that it's poor eating habits like this that are contributing to my growing sense of foreboding. That or it's the odd thumps and shudders coming from the ground floor that shake my apartment so hard that precariously perched items fall over. On second thought, it's probably the shakes and shudders.

8:03pm

The Japanese/Nepalese restaurant serves up some decent sushi, though the real highlight of the experience is the large flatscreen playing East Indian hip-hop and Punjabi subtitled Japanese country/bluegrass. I'm not sure what's up with it always taking forever to get a check once the meal is done. Maybe I'm just getting to that age where I start rose-tinting anything beyond the five year event horizon of experiential interpretation, but I could have sworn that when your table is cleared that generally means your meal is over. The stumble home is intense and cold, we're expecting snow tonight and that last spicy chicken dumpling is hitting my stomach harder than reality is hitting the sub-prime mortgage market.

9:13pm

Snuggle with Paulitico while he reads. We tell each other syrupy things and then I let him sleep for the night. There's something unspeakably beautiful about him when he's sleeping. It would be annoying if I weren't shacking up with him already.

9:27pm

Plug myself back into the Game. I know I should take a last pass over Craigslist but my birthday present to myself this year is not ending my day with a reminder of how sleazy potential employers can be. That and my friends on the Left Coast just texted me that they want to see me in-game so that we can talk about boys and chopping.

3:59am

After a long and bloody struggle, might has triumphed over other might. The building stopped shaking randomly about a half an hour ago and my eyes are starting to deflate into the back of my head, it is clearly time to put an end to consciousness for another day.

Happy berfday me.

He Has A Point

2008-12-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

Paulitico: "How was your day?"

Zeroes: "It sounded like someone was being beaten to death with a sofa next door. That or an old lady wrapped in several layers of carpet fell down the stairs a couple of times in a row."

Paulitico: "You need to get out of the house more."

In my defense, you get a lot of weird noises in a New York apartment. Maybe I really do need to get out of the house more often.

Dear CA, AZ, AK and FL

2008-11-05T21:39:00.000-08:00

I'm going to put this as simply as I can so as not to confuse anyone.

To the 52% of California, the 56% of Arizona, the 57% of Arkansas and the 62% of Florida that voted to limit the rights of same-sex couples (in many cases adding discrimination to their state constitutions) I say simply:

Fuck. You.

When I was nine years old my mother was married at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. It was springtime and the Gardens were full of blooming flowers and an abundance of life, my mother was wed on stepping stones that crossed a small stream while her and her husband's family and friends stood along both banks of the stream. It is one of the happiest and most beautiful memories of my life, and one of my fondest hopes was that someday I too would be married on that same spot, surrounded by my family of both blood relatives and dear friends. That dream died on November 4th though, when the ignorance and fear of the people in my home state led them to write minority-targeted discrimination into their constitution. My shattered dream is but one of many thousands broken, as same-sex couples in California who have already been married during the brief window when such a thing was still legal are left to wonder if they will even be able to retain the rights they were given now that enforcing said rights will be an up-hill battle.

While I am filled with hope for our nation that we no longer suffer under the regime of a power-hungry megalomaniac, that joy is sullied with the knowledge that to more than half of this sad nation I am a second-class citizen. While there may be hope for the direction this country will be headed in the future, that hope is marred by knowing that too many Americans would rather that I not join them in this bright and shiny new future. Criminalizing marriage and adoptions by a minority group is sickening and inexcusable no matter the rhetoric used to justify such actions. I fear for the gay and lesbian youth of all forty-five states that have banned or outlawed same-sex marriage, for what hope can you have in yourself when the laws of your land tell you that you are wrong for being simply who and what you are? I am ashamed of my country when so many of us allow our fear of difference to dictate our actions, and I rage at any nation that would dare to call itself great when it deprives citizens of even the most basic rights and refuses to recognize that while not all love is the same, all love is equal.

While I may have hope for my future, I have very little faith in it.

If I Only Had Rack

2008-09-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

I'd be employed
But so single
They'd be payin' me to mingle
If I only had a rack

There'd be tippin' and some drinkin'
With some ever so light thinkin'
If I only had a rack

While New York may be an "at will" work state I have to wonder what it says about a society when federal equal employment laws are so flagrantly flaunted. The number of job postings I've come across that specify that the employer is only looking for females is mind-boggling. The number of ads that specifically reference Coyote Ugly is downright depressing. That movie has done to bartending what the movie Sideways did my dear friend Merlot.

While I'm the first to admit that gender inequality is part and parcel to the bartending industry, it's generally something that employers are savvy enough to express in subtle, less obvious ways than by outright saying that they're looking for a nice rack that probably won't spill the drinks. The friends I've made here simply chalk it up to New York having it's own way of doing things, which is fine up to a point. Leaving the trash all over the sidewalk, screaming at complete strangers, and cabbies that look at you like you've eaten one of their children if you ask them to cross the East River to name but a few. These are all fine and good as every city has it's own distinct personality (or complete lack thereof in some cases), but it's a sad statement on a town's sense of it's own importance when employers can't even be bothered to be clever about breaking federal laws.

On the plus side, it makes sorting out the coked-up scumbags a heck of a lot easier.

A Quick Hop to the Other Side

2008-09-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

It should come as no great shock to anyone that uprooting your life and relocating it nearly 3,000 miles is neither easy nor fun. The dust has finally settled as much as it's ever going to and I find myself living in a four story walk-up just across the East River from Manhattan, the City That Neither Sleeps Nor Shuts Up. I should be thankful that all of the furniture in my old apartment in Portland belonged to my ex-roommate as relocating from a spacious two-bedroom to a glorified efficiency studio has made things a little on the snug side. Throw Paulitico into the mix and it's been downright cozy. The one piece of furniture I did intend to ship was my Tempurpedic mattress, which I had every intention of being buried in (they're comfortable in ways that border on the profane), however Sunshine Shipping is composed of liars, cheats, near-do-wells and people of poor hygienic standards. A week after the scheduled delivery date a truck arrived at our temporary apartment bearing a cheap knock-off of the mattress I had sent, it was in completely different packaging and was such an obvious forgery that I wondered if they assumed I was too near-sighted to notice such a glaring change. I refused shipment and immediately embarked on the telephonic version of Theseus' descent into King Minos' Labyrinth, though instead of a fearsome minotaur at the end of my troubles I received the sad news that the shipment form I'd signed had contained a microscopically written liability clause making the shipment company liable for 8 cents on the pound. Receiving an $8 check for a mattress that cost nearly $2,000 is poor consolation at best.

If the move hadn't already exhausted me financially I'd have taken these thieves to court, but as I am made of bones and easily-bruised flesh instead of money I've had to enjoy the bitter taste of being professionally robbed as a tonic to lull me to sleep each night on my borrowed Aerobed. My only hope is that the people responsible die in a fire at some later date.

Aside from the inevitable casualties of moving (I'll miss you most of all broken bottle of lube) the transition from the West to the East has been... interesting. Everything here is cramped to the point of being claustrophobic, the entire populace of New York City could very well be raging agoraphobics and never know it. The City is also loud in a way that I'd become unaccustomed to living in my sleepy neighborhood on the east side of Portland. People are well-acquainted with their car horns here, often I'm pressed to decide if the person is suffering from near fatal road-rage or has just fallen asleep on the horn. The bars and restaurants almost exclusively use cheap plastic awnings to advertise themselves on the streets such that no matter where you go you get the impression you're entering a 99 Cent Store. That illusion is quickly shattered when you see the prices on food, feeding this many millions of people so far removed from viable farmland comes at a hefty fee. Though there is a definite green movement in New York, the limits of what can be accomplished this late in the game are akin to adding a few more sandbags to your seawall when you hear that a tidal wave is soon to crash upon your shores. The effort is appreciated but the end result may leave something to be desired.

On the plus side, there are so many different nationalities represented that I am reminded on a daily basis how large our tiny planet is and how necessary it is that we all find common ground despite our lingual and cultural barriers.

Final thought of the week: In a city where everyone is a stranger, can anyone really find a place to belong?

On Pride, Shame, and Joy

2008-07-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

Having successfully survived the June Gay Pride season I find that my knee-jerk small town reaction to homosexuals making a general spectacle of themselves in public has waned and mellowed enough over the years to allow me a slightly broader perspective. As the nation continues to socially mature and gay people are being pigeon-holed with minority status in order to be more easily marginalized like every other group of people who were outcast and then got very loud about it, it is becoming more and more common to see outsiders getting involved in our celebrations. In this case those outsiders are those mostly sane, semi-mild mannered heterosexuals that ten years ago wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near the chain-link fences we erect to help ourselves feel a little bit safer while we drink ourselves into an orgy of cheap consumerism and, well, orgies. Gay Pride is more and more becoming a venue where heteros can feel free to let their freak flags fly, as it's hard to look even remotely freakish getting a hand job from your girlfriend while there's an eight foot dragging queen singing about the joys of romancing parking cone onstage.

There's a small part of me that still resents the intrusion into what it feels should be an exclusionary 'gays only' environment, but that's also the part that still thinks it's enough to define yourself by who you sleep with rather than whom you aspire to be. The rest of me is glad to see the Pride festival become further diversified by the very people who's intolerance, fear, and outright ignorance made it necessary in the first place. As that diversification continues it also becomes apparent that what we celebrate in our sweaty, half-naked Masses isn't Pride, but is in fact Shamelessness. It's a way for all of us, gay, straight, and even republican to come together and say "Yes, we're perverts, but so are you! Now take off your pants, stop complaining, and let's have a beer."

Happy Shamelessness '08 everyone, I hope you flew your freak flags high.

Good Bye Cool World!

2008-07-21T04:29:00.001-07:00

Due to an interesting sequence of events heavily involving Paulitico, I find myself living in New York after two very intense weeks of packing and logistical planning. Suffice it to say: it is neither cheap nor easy to uproot your life and attempt to replant it in the Big City. While the views and daily activities have most definitely changed, I take it on faith that the characters in this delicious farce I call life will remain very much the same.

While I find myself in between jobs I'll try to fill this space with some interesting retrospectives on life, booze, and awkward social situations arising from a marked lack of boundaries on the part of yours truly.

-Zeroes-

Word me baby, word me hard.

2008-04-30T03:48:00.000-07:00

As an avowed lexophile I'm constantly searching for new and bizarre words, but every now and then I come across a word that is clearly not real yet utterly perfect.

I bring to you two such words:

Husbear (noun) huz-bair: In gay male relationships, a significant other who is a "bear" (A term used by gay men to describe a husky, large man with a lot of body hair).

Howkward (adjective) hawk-word: When something is equal parts hot and awkward.

Feel free to leave your own suggestions in the category of fake words that are more fun to use than is sane or legal in most states.

-----

On a probably unrelated note Paulitico moved in a few months ago and we're nearing our year anniversary already. Being a grown-up is strange. Comforting and fun but strange.

Ambien Is a Lie

2008-03-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

Laying in my bed at 8:30 in the morning, wide awake and listening to the gentle ebb and flow of Paulitico's breathing I find myself cursing the name of those little white oblongs that promise eight hours of rest with no grogginess or other unpleasant side-effects. Like the million-odd penile enlargement products out there, Ambien is a dirty, lying little trollop.

Over the past month my sleeping cycle has become more and more irregular. Lately I find it hard to get more than four hours of sleep in one go, and what precious wakelessness I do earn is troubled and useless. I'm starting to lose little parts of myself. I'm less happy to see the sun finally cleaving the winter cloud layer that blankets the Pacific Northwest for half of the year, the pussy-willows blooming outside of my bedroom window no longer strike me as darkly hilarious. Even watching a hobo scream at a yuppie for giving him food instead of drug money is less amusing. The quirky, lovable jerk that is Zeroes is being slowly buried under layer upon layer of sleepless nights and accumulated fatigue toxins. The witty banter that's become my bread and butter is being slowly replaced by a dull and sullen ache behind my eyes that gums up the flow of everything that passes through my world.

I'm starting to feel like a teenage Republican. Clearly I have to find a way out of this mess.

This is Grumbles, the anthropomorphic sleep-deprivation slug. He looks kinda crappy because I drew him in Illustrator without the aid of a tablet. These things happen from time to time.

Faking Chanukah

2007-12-14T15:01:00.001-08:00

Let's face it, I'm a Humbug.

It all started when I began working retail when I was eight years old to help my mother's home jewelry business, it was weekend work and let me put enough money aside to get myself some fun toys as well as put aside a little nest egg to get me off of my feet when I turned 18 and moved out on my own. The only part of the job I really didn't like was the Christmas season. The angry soccer moms, the rude and pushy fathers, the general lack of anything remotely resembling empathy or good will towards their fellow humans. Just about the only thing I ever did learn to like about the winter season was the smell of cinnamon, though that has more to do with my love of odd tea blends than any great enjoyment I got from those nasty Holiday Doom scented candles. What twisted mind thinks that pine and nutmeg smell good together? After years of verbal abuse from harried consumer whores, my ability to enjoy a holiday that seems to be entirely about gifts and getting overstuffed surrounded by strange relatives and holiday friends has significantly waned.

I personally feel no great loss or failure to endure on my part, it's not my fault that folks lose their common sense (not to mention sense of decency, christmas lawn ornaments shame our entire species) during the holidays; people too easily forget themselves when everyone has to find something semi-meaningful to give every person they know on the same day every year. Maybe staggered regional holidays would have been better, like Spring Break, only with fewer wet t-shirt contests. However, all good planning aside, very few seem willing to accept that Christmas just isn't my holiday of choice.

Quite frankly I'm getting tired of telling my story of retail woes and holiday cruelty to the new people in my life, so I think I'm going to start telling people that I've converted to Judaism. After all, I love potato pancakes, dradles are kinda fun, and a menorah is significantly less obnoxious than a dead tree covered in plastic baubles that sheds tinsel and pine needles all over the house.

I guess the real conundrum is whether or not it's inherently wrong to pretend that you're Jewish for two months out of the year. Is it gauche to intentionally become a jigger?

Thoughts of Houston Past

2007-10-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

During Phase 2.5 of trying to clean out the unspeakable sty that is my room, I stumbled across this thought that I had felt the need to write down while working at the gay version of Cheers.

Enjoy.

"First confuse the enemy, then divide the enemy.

Then buy the enemy lunch and let them linger for days wondering why you did not call back.

In this way shall the Gayites be conquered."

Life was really weird down there.

To Insure Proper Service (TIPS)

2007-08-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

Due to the fact that I spend a large chunk of every week slinging boozes at the highs and lows of humanity, people often ask me about proper tipping etiquette. In an attempt to clarify the odd rules of "how much is enough" I'm laying out a few easy rules to make everyone's lives easier.

-In many states the minimum wage for people who make the majority of their income from tips can be adjusted down to as low as $2.13 an hour. What this means is that for many people working in the tipping industry their paychecks cover most of the taxes they pay on their income but nothing more, as servers are required to declare between 8-10% of their sales as tips whether or not they actually made that much (I'm lucky to live in one of the few states that has an across-the-board minimum wage). Don't be shocked if your drinks get progressively weaker and your service slower if you haven't bothered tipping your server. Why waste time on someone who's actually costing you money just by being in the bar?

-As a general rule never tip less than a dollar. While everyone likes laundry money, 50 cents is generally considered an insult rather than a tip.

-For bottled beers a dollar a round is generally fair (popping caps doesn't take that long, unless you've just ordered a whole six-pack in which case you should toss in another dollar or two).

-Draft beers and simple cocktails (i.e. rum and coke, vodka cranberry) are generally a dollar for every two drinks.

-For anything more complicated (muddled drinks, martinis, specialty drinks) take into account that these are very labor intensive and as such a dollar per drink is not uncommon. After all, any decent bartender takes pride in the more advanced drinks they serve and genuinely wants them to be enjoyed. Conversely, if they're only making .25 cents a round don't be shocked at how cheap that cosmopolitan can start to taste.

-Never tip at the end of your time in the bar. If you're ordering drinks and paying per round but not leaving anything it will be assumed that you intend to stiff the server for the rest of the night. Obviously your service quality will quickly decline. If you plan on tipping out at the end of your evening then start a tab, it saves everyone a lot of grief.

-If you start a tab with a bartender and there are multiple bartenders working, do not go to the other bartender for drinks even if they have a shorter line. It is almost universally true that bartenders keep separate tabs as they have separate tills, and mixing up a round of mojitos and kamikazes only to have the person tell you to put it on the other guy's tab is a sure-fire way to incite the staff's ire. If you're unhappy with the service or wait times for your current bartender then close your tab and reopen it with the other one.

-Also realize that just because you're ringing up a large tab doesn't mean that your bartender is being taxed less because it was all in a large chunk. If your server is letting you cut in line or is giving you preferential treatment realize that this is at the expense of other patrons and let that reflect in your tip. Few things sting more than giving someone exceptional service only to be stung with a 5% tip because the patron wasn't paying attention to their spending.

While not exactly tipping etiquette, there are two things to never, EVER, say to your bartender:

"I'm so drunk right now." At this point it becomes a crime to serve you. Fines can range from a few hundred up to a few thousand dollars depending on the local laws. If you get cut off try to realize that the bartender isn't being a dick but is simply abiding by VERY strict laws set up back during the Prohibition.

"Make sure to pour that extra strong!" This translates as "I want to get drunk as fast and cheap as possible and have no intention of tipping you." If your friend is ordering for you and starts to say something idiotic like this stop them by whatever means possible! (Foot stomping is entirely appropriate in this situation) many bartenders pour a little over the standard ounce and a half, but if they've just been told they're getting stiffed you can safely bet those will be the weakest drinks you've had all night.

That's really it as far as fair tipping goes, and don't fret too much if mistakes are occasionally made. Anyone who's worked for tips long enough knows that for every cheapskate who doesn't think that servers deserve to be paid for their work there s another generous soul out there who understands what it's like to live on the whims of others and puts a little something extra in at the end.

Keep in mind that all of this is in regards to tipping in The USA. If you're traveling abroad there are many resources out there to help you avoid faux pas in regards to tipping.

A-Wandering I Went

2007-08-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

I bring you news from not-so-far-off lands. Wild tales of inexplicable oddities waft from my lips into the waiting ears of those two or three of you still checking this site that I've left to grow fallow in my mental meanderings. Suffice it to say, I've been busy.

As of late, I've taken up semi-rabid sporting fandom. Don't worry, I won't be painting my face in the colors of my favorite team while vomiting cheap-labor made fan nostalgia all over my apartment in order to show my team spirit. Well, probably not. However, these girls are impossible to watch without becoming obsessively entranced by the siren's call of their cat-like prowess and nigh-invulnerabilty in the area of high-speed impacts. Despite the reputation of it being a bunch of slutty girls beating each other up while wearing roller skates, the Rose City Rollers roller-derby tournaments feature some of the best sportsmanship I've seen in any athletic event in far too long. They only dress slutty.

Speaking of dressing like a two-bit tramp; a one Mr. Zeroes has been seen publicly canoodling with a certain as-yet unnamed journalist in an assortment of low-class public venues. While no one's picking out china patterns just yet, nights alone seem to have become a thing of the past for the time being.

Speaking of happy new developments: I feel it necessary to inform you all that I am writing all of this on my brand-spanking-new MacBook Pro. I won't lie to you guys, it's like someone mated a puppy with a kitten and then stream-lined the amalgamate beast into a telepathic bunny rabbit that anticipates your every move and counters with happiness. I am quite pleased.

Expect more regular updates now that I can blog from work as long as my boss isn't paying too much attention. Now I just have to find a way to sneak my scanner and stylus pad into the gay bar.

Dear Newest Least-Favorite Neighbor

2007-07-05T03:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Ca-Ca-Poo-Poo-Face,

I realize that it is the 4th of July, and I also realize that with your pupils so dilated that you look like Gullum do to all of the drugs in your system right now that fireworks are preternaturally beautiful with their flashing colors and sparkly bits, and that the accompanying wall of sonic assault is really "helping you roll". However, it's 3 in the morning and I feel that I should point out now that the only difference between the popping sound of poorly managed fireworks and the popping sound of small arms fire in a hard-to-escape second floor apartment is the bloody mess your landlord will find in the morning.

Congratulations are in order as you've now replaced the smelly hobbits downstairs as my least favorite waste of oxygen! Expect your ticking care package within two-six weeks.

Sincerely,

-Z-

Gone Too Long

2007-06-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, I admit it. I've been gone for a little while.

See, the thing is, I'd been working a wee bit more than was entirely wise or viable. And then this jolly little thing called Gay Pride season rolled around. Perhaps you've heard of it.

All I can really say is that I remember very little of the past two weeks (three weeks really, it's been that kind of month), but I'm told that the Boxxes/Red Cap block party was a smashing success. However, no actual photo evidence seems to have survived the maelstrom of embarrassingly tight clothing, over-sized wigs and soul-sucking glitter; you'll just have to take me at my word when I say I'm thankful this sort of thing only happens once a year.

I think my friend Brian said it best with:

"[Pride] doesn't convey the 'We're here, we're Queer, get used to it' vibe any more; It says 'We're here, we're all fucking perverts, take pictures of me while I stretch out my anus and shame your children."

Turgid in my Loquacious Caul

2007-04-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

When a swarthy gentleman of obvious wit and perky buttocks arouses my passions, I find that instead of light-hearted banter and knowingly sly looks I begin to immediately vomit a near stream-of-consciousness flood of verbosity. The goal of such wild obfuscations being to confound and confuse my poor beau into never once suspecting my amorously licentious intentions. I can only assume that such shameless acts of verbal assault are the result of growing up an ugly duckling with my nose constantly ensconced in the musty tomes of my local library, a leisurely pursuit that allowed me to abscond from the doldrums of my daily routines in churlish suburbia; constantly hounded by the hormone-driven ululations of my fellow pre-pubescent kith and kin. Reaching maturation without ever developing the interpersonal skills of even the meanest debutante has left me ill-prepared with the vexing and arduous task of attracting a mate by anything remotely resembling normalcy. As such I force my hapless suitors through a labyrinthine morass of adumbrated intimations and obtenebrated innuendos, ultimately resulting in a sadly befuddled object of affection who briefly wonders if he hasn't been a secret somnambulist and has dreamed the entire encounter with this eccentricly peculiar narrator of bawdy intentions.

Seriously though, coy went out of style with Victorian collars being worn on people. I need to get with the times.

(bonus points awarded for people who can read this without a dictionary)

(edited 4-19-2007) It turns out that loquacious is spelled with a C and not a Q... I R smert.

Conversations that explain why I'm still Single

2007-03-21T23:35:00.000-07:00

Before preparing my sandwich, he pulls on some rubber gloves with a satisfying snap (safety first).

"Wanna play doctor?" he says in his come-hither voice.

"Hot! I'll get the bone saw" are the words that burst unbidden from my sly mouth.

"What?" He responds with a look of shocked confusion.

Once again, the only word that I can wedge into the ensuing silence is "...awkward".

-:~:-

"I can't stop thinking about you, I need to see you again. Can it be tonight?"

The sex was loud, passionate and sweaty after a long night of enjoyable conversations about video games and classic literature with a smattering of horror movies tossed in for good measure. He's handsome and athletic and knows the difference between "they're" and "their".

Of course the only logical response to his cries for more is "Tonight's no good, I've already got a date with your brother."

-:~:-

"Your time at the gym is really starting to pay off" he says as his eyes draw patterns of lust over my figure.

"Ugh, I'm already bored with that compliment" I say, rolling my eyes like a disaffected teenager. It's not that I don't appreciate the attention, I'm just not sure that my shapely chest should be the topic of conversation every day.

-:~:-

The Couple (Beautiful Eyes and Hot Lips) are handsome, fun to talk to, and a little dirty from what I've seen so far. Eyes, however, is madly in love with Lips, so he's reluctant to turn this evening of flirtations and 'accidental' brushes into anything that'll need a moist towelette afterwards. It would just be cruel to tell him that Lips has been plowing me like an Amish potato farmer for the past three weeks, so I pretend to be surprised when everyone's pants come off later.

One of these is a wild fabrication, see if you can guess which one it is.

Shallow and Loving It

2007-03-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the night, maybe it was the booze, perhaps it was the warm lighting and general good company elevating my mood to wonderful levels of self-acceptance. All I can say for certain is that when I looked over my shoulder into the extra-wide hotel mirror while taking a piss I thought to myself "I'd totally pay to see that guy having sex".

Seriously though, it's really nice to see some results after two years of lifting steel while grunting like a cro-magnon ape.

Contractual Nookie

2007-03-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Due to a recent rash of other people's boyfriends suffering from a severe case of wandering eyes, hands and tongues it's become necessary to acquire a disclaimer from any man that tosses a "let's play tonsil-hokey" look my way. Rather than administer it orally (who really has the time for that much legal jargon between rounds of drinks anyway?) I've decided to lay it out in written form so that potential suitors can simply give me their signed and dated submissions prior to any instigation of shenanigans.

I, ______________, am currently (check only one):
1 ( ) In a monogamous relationship looking to assuage my boredom with your face and/or body.
2 ( ) In an open relationship with strict rules, all of which I am violating by getting drunk and slipping my hands down your pants (while accidentally shoving my tongue up your nose because I'm too drunk to get it in your mouth on the first try) without my boyfriend/lover/butt-buddy's prior consent and approval.
3 ( ) In an open relationship because it's the only way my boyfriend/emotional fuck buddy/rent-provider is ever going to get laid, and as such, making out with me constitutes a social contract to also make out with him no matter how socially retarded and/or monumentally homely he may be.
4 ( ) In a long-term open relationship in which my boyfriend/husband/baby-daddy trusts me to make adult decisions and will not call either myself or Zeroes at odd hours in the evening drunkenly sobbing about feelings of betrayal which will result in an argument over who gets custody of the pug.
5 ( ) Visiting town for the weekend with my equally attractive/inventive/flexible boyfriend and looking to violate the sanctity of our hotel room in as many ways as possible that do not constitute a clear violation of the existing Geneva Conventions.

I, ______________, am aware that falsifying any of this information is utterly futile, as Zeroes has contacts and informants in more places than the Defense Department and any misleading information I provide will be quickly sussed out at which point I will be "called out" on my obfuscations in an awkwardly public venue.

Please note that checking boxes 1-3 will result in an immediate denial of amorous activities beyond the pre-existing level of meaningless flirtatious banter. If you checked number 4 you must provide a best friend/confidant who will verify the open and stable nature of your relationship. If you checked number 5 please be courteous and make sure that your room is amply stocked with the appropriate supplies for such an endeavor, as pausing mid-multi-coitus while one of us runs down the block to get more Mountain Dew and Crisco can really ruin the flow of a multi-day sexcapade. That and we'll be lying when we say we'll wait until you get back, and avoiding lies is what this contract is all about.

Signed:______________.

Witnessed:______________.

Date______________.

Life Is An Orgy, Bring Plenty Of Lube

2007-02-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

Seriously though, life is just like an orgy. We all have our roles to play, and while we may often feel stuck in the role we find ourselves in we are both allowed and encouraged to switch it up any time we want to. Maybe you're the center of attention, that every-hole-and-appendage-engaged kind of person who's having a great time but rarely gets a breather. Perhaps you're that sample-platter sort who wanders the room bouncing from one titillation to the next, having a great time without getting too heavily involved in any one scene. Maybe, just maybe, you're that obscenely hot couple who only play with each other in the public venue, giving the rest of us something to enjoy and look forward to. The options are as limitless as the number of positions you can get into with six other folks who's names you most likely didn't bother asking.

And then there's that guy sitting in the corner masturbating. Well trying to masturbate anyway, but coke dick is often limp and unresponsive. While anyone who's thoroughly enjoyed ShortBus can tell you that voyeurism is a form of participation, being so cranked up on party favors that you miss the show entirely is no way to live. Don't be that guy, he's a buzz kill.

In the sweaty, grunting pile of bodies that is life it can be easy to think that the role we find ourselves in is set in stone, but if you allow it, changing positions can be as simple as telling that hot guy (and his hot friend) to pull out and bend over, because it's your turn to lay some proverbial pipe.

After all, do anything for too long and you're bound to start chaffing no matter how good the lube is.

Monday Doodle 01/23

2007-01-23T23:02:00.000-08:00

The life and times of Zeroes is still in a bit of a flux, so for now it's just gonna be Monday Doodles until everything else gets to a semi-sane place.

I give you the Book Wraith, haunter of musty libraries and the occasional dowdy book club. Lately I've been obsessed with drawing spindly figures and spirals.

/AFK

2007-01-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

"Player Zeroes has stepped away from the keyboard."

Sorry for the MASSIVE lack of new posts lately. The holidays have a way of eating the lives of bartenders and then spitting them out like the tinsel-strewn remains of a bulimic Christmas convention.

I'll be gone until February while my life does some much-needed rearranging for the better.

Love and tickles,

Zeroes

O Father, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me!

2006-12-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

There was a certain video game that I got hours upon hours of giggles and explosions from playing. It was based on Dungeons and Dragons and therefore appealed to the lingering nostalgia that seems to define a post-80s existence. This particular game was so well received that the fans themselves would dedicate thousands of hours of their own time to make expansions and extra content purely for the joys of playing.

And then the angels trumpeted forth wondrous news. There was to be a Sequel.

I've been looking forward to this sequel the way that a full amputee looks forward the invention of affordable cybernetic limbs. The second game looks to have all of the wonders of first, along with shiny new graphics and a more immersive gaming world. It's basically like nerd crack and geek heroin had a baby.

And then, lo and behold, the game is put on sale for $20. That's right, brand new game, for only twenty McDonald's burgers. I actually squealed with glee as I put in my online order.

Time passed and the game arrived, protecting my hopes and dreams in it's cardboard cocoon addressed to yours truly. I burnt the sacred incenses, slaughtered the yearling calf as a sacrifice, chanted the seven holiest names while fasting, and loaded the install disc. After a half of an hour of installation and updates the game was ready for me, and I was all too ready for it.

And when I tried to play it I found out that my computer (which was a cutting-edge beast back when I bought it in 2000) simply lacks the hardware to even get as far as the play screen. This is the exact description of poor geek hell.

It's as though God Herself has cursed me for being a nerd. So fuck you God, I was saving up for a new computer anyway! In the meantime I'll always have other distractions to keep me amused.

Monday Doodles and Late Night Ramblings

2006-12-19T00:42:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, I seem to be at odds with certain folks in my life right now. It's not really intentional, it just seems to be how life is going. I'm hoping that a little mutual time spent in separate corners will allow cooler heads to prevail, and if that doesn't work I've got a crate full of chloroform collecting dust in my closet. It was cheaper in bulk, and much like lube it has a wonderfully long shelf life.

I've been getting some pretty decent feedback on the podcast I did last week. I'll consider it a resounding success despite the fact that the sound of my voice is like a thousand fingernails doing a sliding-step shuffle on the chalkboard of my soul. I've managed to listen to the thing once, though I think that might be all the fortitude I've got in me for now.

This week's boredom-induced doodle is a guerilla baby. Not to be confused with a baby guerilla (which is really very adorable), this is simply a very ugly and misshapen baby. Probably because it's mom smoked crack and snorted lines of cocaine off of her trick's peni (I prefer peni to penis', it sounds more dignified).

SPEAK!!! (part 2)

2006-12-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

For those of you unwilling to hunt down the Mary magazine mentioned in the podcast, I present for you now what is possibly the worst picture of me ever to make it into print.

In my defense it was a rainy Monday and I honestly didn't think there'd be a soul at my bar, let alone a soul with a digital camera and access to a printing press.

SPEAK!!!

2006-12-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

For those of you with a burning urge to hear my nasal, sibilant voice, I was recently the guest of some friends who do a podcast up here in the Pacific Northwest. The topic was porn, because that's how we roll up here in PDX.

Feel free to laugh with at, with, or near me as I'll be doing much of the same.

My Ghost Life

2006-12-05T00:37:00.000-08:00

Spending the Thanksgiving weekend in the sun and warmth was almost as nice as spending that same weekend in the arms of someone I love very much.

The first thing that I realized was that I left a much larger part of myself in Houston than I'd originally thought. The second thing that I realized was that no, I still don't like Texas. It smells like everyone drives their SUVs all the time, mostly because they do. SUVs and the cell phone-wielding yuppies who drive them suck, that's been true long before I moved up to Hippytopia in Oregon.

This is downtown Houston in November. A pleasant 74 degrees of deep-fried goodness.

From the second I stepped off of the plane to the first morning that I woke up in Chad's arms, Houston was all too familiar. I settled back into that city like a comfortable chair I'd forgotten I still had in storage (the smell and the stains were about the same). Seeing my friends again didn't feel like a reunion as much as it felt like I just hadn't been able to see them on account of being busy. For a year. REALLY busy. I still miss them all, but less so now that I know there's still a big piece of that essential MEness still down south, being cranky and lovable and nerdy all at the same time.

Seeing Chad again was not as intense as I'd thought it would be. We've talked so much and shared so much in this past year that I never really left him in any way that counts. He's always been in my heart because my love for him never faded. Of course it was unspeakably wonderful being with him again, but I won't write the particulars down as Chad is a little shy and, um, we had a year's worth of "maritals" to catch up on. I'm very glad that his roommate was out of town as it saved on the noise complaints.

This fountain has hosted many picnics. It cools you off on a balmy summer day.

Being in Houston made me realize that I've been living two lives this past year. One up here in Portland, going through the day-to-day trials and joys of paying rent and simply being alive; and one dream life down there, still spending Saturdays drinking Mountain Dew and playing Dungeons & Dragons until all hours of the morning or going out and drinking with my incredible friends and scoping out the parade of hot guys that pack into Houston by the busload (I'm in love, not blind).

This is the only decent (re: PG) picture of me and Chad. He's a lot more lively than my camera makes him look.

The question being: if both towns hold equal parts of my heart, which life is the ghost life?

Post-Vacative Hiatus

2006-11-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

I was in Houston last week, which I'll write about as soon as I can get all of the words to go in one direction at the same time.

For now I leave you with the TRUE spirit of the season:
After all, what else truly encompasses the spirit of Gluttony than a zombie, who is ever filled with an insatiable need for the flesh of the living.

One Life, Tangled

2006-11-15T01:13:00.000-08:00

This week's doodle is something I did a while ago and am posting now because I've had a dry week creatively due to a nasty case of the flu.

It's part of a series I did after a particularly messy break-up in which I was left for a lesbian. Nowadays I laugh about it because it's pretty much the only sane option.

On the perils of holidays.

2006-11-08T01:50:00.000-08:00

This week's Monday Doodle is a day late. However, since no one actually cares one way or the other, I choose not to care either.

Whilst on holiday, the Elder God Tiamat was negligent of sunscreen and did recieve a most unfortunate solar rash.

Footnotes: Yes, I'm aware that Tiamat was female, but the body position worked much better with a floral shirt. I'm also aware that Tiamat has seven heads, we'll just assume that two of them are busy somewhere else.

Dear Nordic God

2006-11-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

You were perfect in every way. From your arrogantly shy smile to your beautiful blue eyes, from the swagger you arrived on to the hint of a perfect, tanned six-pack you flashed me while I was serving you an ale, everything about you made my heart arhythmic and my knees less-than useful. Your lantern-jawed features could easily be seen chiseled from granite or marble by the Italian sculptors of yore who spent their lives in pursuit of physical perfection. In short, you're what dreams are made of.

And then you asked me if I knew where to find you some coke.

Two Weeks Lost, Then Found

2006-11-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

I disappeared for a good two weeks. Here is a brief summation as to why and with whom.

Halloween was a hoot (even if it had me working 20 out of 21 days), and I made a bone chandelier that was very well-received. I also got myself a brand-spanking-new digital camera so that I can start sharing the images that go along with these words I've been neglecting to put down in any solid form for about two weeks now.

To begin: my friend Kevin and his friend Rob threw a totally bitchin' 80's sequel party. It was complete with a Jaeger machine, video arcade games, and a non-stop cavalcade of 80's music videos projected onto the two-story living room wall. It was all that, including the bag of chips.

Kevin makes the hunkiest Rainbow Bright I've ever seen.

I was Punky Brewster and spent most of the evening being eclipsed by my friend Matt's Misfits (the enemies of Jem) outfit. Or at least his wig anyway.

Kevin and Matt rocked it 80's style all night long.

At which point I disappeared for a week and later arose from the Boxxes basement bearing this little treat. (It's about 4 feet across and looked great until the battery-powered christmas lights I'd entwined in it lost their will to live.)

On Halloween Eve my dear friend's from SB joined me in celebration. I've always thought that horns lend me an air of dignity I otherwise lack.

These would be the friends, Sheila and Roe, whom I used to pimp it with back when we ran the Saint Babs mafia.

Respect for the elderly

2006-10-24T00:47:00.000-07:00

This week's Monday Doodle is the Tommy Gun Granny, proving that you're never too old to kick ass and take names.

Strange Currencies

2006-10-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

I'm home from a night of revelry amongst the glitterati of the Portland social scene. The movers and the shakers of what tomorrow brings are never as larger-than-life as they seem in print. Random firings of my cerebral cortex fill my mind to distraction, as is the way of things at this hour in the morning when I should be well ensconced in the protective bunker of my bed sheets.

Is it unethical to sleep with my boss, whom I'm dangerously attracted to, so long as I make it abundantly clear that I would be mortally offended should our mutual gratification cause any change for the better (or worse) in my work schedule.

I think about the man with whom I'm madly in love with. I imagine the two of us wrinkled and satisfied, reminiscing about days gone by and both knowing that we've made the right choice in sticking it out through thick and thin. Is what I feel (and truly believe in the core of my being that he feels too) enough to last us into our dotage even though he's several states and degrees of social perception removed from me?

Is it wrong to be a drunken make-out whore? Do I demean myself by enjoying what the moment presents? Or am I simply adhering to a sexual revolution that I fear is meeting it's death at the hands of a generation that was raised ignorant of the prudish values that made that sort of destructive social anarchy a necessity for the evolution of the American psyche?

Will I ever truly make good on the promise of the talents given to me by my forebearers? Or will I simply allow myself to slip into hubris and result in nothing as so many have before me? I was born with so much more than obscurity inside of me, I need to be true to that.

When all is said and done, I think I've made the best choices that I knew how given the circumstances. Why, then, do I still feel sadness over the way certain threads of my life have developed thus far? Perhaps I need to take my own advice and look at my life from the perspective of several hundred years, rather than the paltry handful of decades that we are all given.

I know I've faced the reality that my mother, to whom I will always look up to because she is human and fallible rather than being an uplifted Saint, will some day die. Am I kidding myself that I can take the visceral fact of it with quiet dignity? Or will I collapse, blubbering, into the arms of any friend that will take me, when the time finally comes and she moves on to whatever comes after the heart stills and the breath grows cold?

Like I said, it's late at night, and Jagermeister is a harsh and unfathomable master. This, children, is why I generally stick to Jack Daniels. He's a surly, cantankerous lout; but at least he's simple in his motives.

PS: On the existential note: Is that smell me, or have I missed a corner of my room in my semi-annual cleaning cycle? Whatever it is, "musky" is a rather generous word.

I make drawerings...

2006-10-17T01:28:00.000-07:00

It's been brought to my attention by pretty much everyone that knows that I'm capable of holding a pen long enough to draw a line that I don't draw nearly enough. The truth is that I do draw a lot (usually at work on Mondays while I stare at the empty bar), but most of what I do is just doodles. So here is the first of what I'm thinking might become a weekly doodles posting. Enjoy, or not, it's out of my head now either way.

iSuck

2006-10-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

Recently iTunes came out with a mandatory update. It's one of those updates that you don't technically have to download, but the program screams at you like a wailing toddler every time you access it until you finally submit to it's infantile tantrums and just download the damn update. What the updater failed to warn me was that it was a complete program overhaul. What was once a nice quiet program that played my music when I needed it to and burned a few CDs once in a while has hit puberty and turned into a cantankerous beast that eats up inordinately large amounts of my processor speed for no discernible reason, and has decided that the large spacious drive I installed it in is not to it's liking and has planted itself in my already overburdened C drive causing my entire computer to turn into a sluggish beast whether iTunes is running or not. The fact that my nice little music player has sprouted a multitude of annoying bugs like acne on a grease-fryer's face isn't helping what has become a very strained relationship.

My short patience with technology is compounded by the fact that we recently updated the POS at work which was basically like giving our completely functional register system a lobotomy. The tech geeks who sullied our baby have spent the last month trying to get the system back to where it was before they violated it. So far, I haven't seen anything I'd call an upgrade.

Why must geeks constantly seek to fix what was clearly not broken?

On the plus side, with the weather turning to snuggle temperatures my bar business is picking up. It turns out a cave is less depressing when it's not sunny outside anymore.

I'm A Bad Homo

2006-10-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

"I support gay bashing, I just don't think we should leave our dirty work to straight people."

It's true too, I think every now and then someone needs to get their butt kicked. Not because I promote violence, but because there are some modes of behavior that cross the line. The bitchy twink who sweats glitter and treats everyone he perceives as not being hot like shit, the cracked out muscle-headed circuit queen who's life revolves around uninspired cookie-cutter dance music and consuming enough drugs to be just a hair shy of an overdose, the tragic, bitter old troll who feels he's wasted his life and wants everyone else to be as miserable and self-hating as he is, the drag queen who thinks that putting on 8" heels and a 6' wig gives him the right to act like someone who can actually sing or dance in real life and therefore deserves some kind of special recognition, and soap-box homos who denounce other folks without recognizing their own glaring flaws (it's true, I'm a hypocrite sometimes). These are all examples of people who should probably get a boot to the head, and then an intervention.

"I don't support gay marriage, or straight marriage for that matter."

It's true, I don't think that our government has any right to support or legislate what is an entirely religious institution. Civil unions are about as far as it goes in my book. Anything more than that is a clear violation of the separation between church and state, and we're all seeing how badly things go when that principle is ignored under our current overly-zealous christian government.

And finally:

"Cher is overplayed, Madonna's entire career has been self-derivative, and Barbara Streisand's singing sucks."

No really, it's true. Dolly Parton, on the other hand, is a Saint.

Sorry Guys

2006-10-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

It's official and true, after years of devout bachelorhood I've finally found my one, true love. That's right, this brazen harlot of Babylon is hanging up his easy-access snap-on pants and trading them in for a wedding ring.

Who have I fallen for you ask? What paragon of manhood has snared my fickle attentions and bound my heart for all eternity? Surprisingly, not the kind of guy you'd think. You see, we haven't even met yet, and that's fine. Because this is love, this is real. It doesn't matter what that stupid judge says.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Michael Bublé. Combine his pouty bedroom eyes with a voice that's like a thousand clever tongues on the foot of your soul and you get this sultry young Canadian. His voice is a throwback to a bygone era when men were men and women were flawless beauties each and every one. Listening to him is like being a little kid again, staying up late and creeping through a darkened hallway to listen to the radio through the livingroom door while your parents spoke of important grown-up matters too boring to distract from the wild and strange world that came creeping it's way through the radio. He's a history of love and loss and all that's in between rolled up into the kind of package you'd like to wake up next to every morning until you're old and satisfied.

So yeah, as soon as that restraining order expires, he's all mine.

Update 10/13/2006 My friend LR is the one who exposed me to the infinite love that is Mr. Bublé, he deserves credit for that and so very much more.

The Crazy Train

2006-10-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

At almost thirty years of age I have never once in my life owned any sort of motorized transport (unless you count that one time I hooked a guy up to electric nipple clamps and rode him around the back yard like an epileptic AT-AT). For the better part of three decades I've managed to get by on my own two feet and the odd bicycle when I can keep one from getting stolen or impressively falling apart underneath me. Aside from those times in life where getting from point A to point B is too far for my little legs to carry me I really enjoy not having a car. It's very affordable, parking is a breeze, and there's no such thing as having too perky a butt.

However, living up here in fair Portlandia there comes a time of year when riding my bike is just not very practical. I'm not the psychotically dedicated type that will try to ride my bike home through a blizzard. At least not any more, that's a mistake you only have to make once. As the weather turns brisk and the leaves all turn that lovely shade of almost-dead it comes time to put my bike away for the winter and exchange it for a bus pass.

And therein lies the problem. There are two modes of public transport up here. There's the high-tech and usually quite clean MAX system that ferries working stiffs from the outlying territories into the city proper so that they can be productive little consumer bees, and then there's the regular bus system. You know the one I'm talking about. This is where all the hard cases go, those burnt-out used up revenants of humanity who's only goal in life seems to be getting more cracked out than Whitney Houston. I'll grant that the MAX usually smells like pee, but the bus usually smells like the crushed dreams of people that haven't showered since the mid-80s. Personally, I'll take a little urine stink over the emaciated lady screaming and hollering about why the girls don't like her as she clings to my shirt hem. Pee odor is something you can at least tune out.

Had I my druthers I'd be riding the MAX to and from work, happily gazing at the world as it melts past my window, or lazily reading my latest collection of short stories as the automated voice on the P.A. system narrates my trip through life. But I live too close to town for that service. Instead, I get to wait in front of the Plaid Pantry trying not to make eye contact with the random black guy hanging out trying to sell me something. No, I'm not remotely racist, but I've yet to have a random white guy with a hard-luck story try to sell me a leather jacket or cell phone service on the street. The white people just ask for money or scream and yell at cracks in the sidewalk for talkin' smack 'bout their baby's mama. Only a great fool talks smack about someone's baby's mama, at least that's what I've heard from the mumblings around the methadone clinic located a few blocks away from my house. So I don my hoodie, plug myself into my iPod, and do everything I can to get through the winter without getting sandwiched between two overweight mongoloids having a marital dispute.

All aboard the Crazy Train, next stop: the out-patient clinic for the pathologically high-spirited.

"It's not ah tumah"

2006-09-27T01:49:00.000-07:00

I feel like someone has burrowed my brain whilst I was sleeping and replaced it with a large, slightly used cotton ball. That and it feels like my throat was host to the East Malaysian pygmy-weasel Olympics.

So yeah, no funny words until I find out where my think-meats went and get rid of all these esophagal varmits.

-Z-

The Big Three-O

2006-09-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

As the anniversary of my third decade on this planet gets closer I'm finding myself going through a lot of the sort of self-examination that usually comes with the arbitrary milestones we often assign ourselves. I was going through an old box of stuff I wasn't quite ready to throw away yet when I came across the only evidence of my last time-based milestone.

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is me at the ripe old age of 21. I'm enjoying my first legal drink of alcohol on a Monday night in a small town with my very good friend Erica (who will always be in my life in some capacity or another), she was willing to join me in the little hole-in-the-wall gay bar that served what passed for the queer community on the slowest night of the week. I'm comforted by the fact that my hairline was just as receded then as it is now. Huzzah for vanity!

NoMuerto

2006-09-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Some mornings the act of crawling out of bed is much like pulling my reanimated corpse through the layers of stolen viscera, labrynthine tubing and arcane machinery needed to keep me from the greedy hands of death for one more day.

But hey, that's Wednesdays for you.

Judge Not Lest You Become the Object of Your Disdain

2006-09-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

These are words I've often tried to live by. Or at least words I've found to ring frighteningly true whether I want them too or not.

Case in point: I've often been known to loudly mock the frivolity and vanity of gym bunnies and fake tanners.

Gym bunnies (aka Bro-Brahs) have always made me throw up a little bit. Not to mention I've always gotten the impression that I was being judged simply for the fact that I wasn't a regular attendee at the Church of Narcissus. Combine that with the fact that I spent my entire scholastic career getting picked last in team sports (I brought enthusiasm to the field, skills and natural athletic ability were someone else's job), I've definitely spent a lot of time feeling like one of the losers when it came time to disrobe for assorted social functions. I guess going to High School in California where they kill and eat the ugly kids gave me a pretty warped view of beauty.

Then I started working at the biggest gay bar in Houston, where there was a constant push to look incredible naked, because the only way to get better shifts or a promotion at that job was to catch the eyes of one of the bosses. So I started working out at the little on-site gym at my apartment complex. I'd only go at three in the morning when I got home from work, partly because I didn't want to share the space with anybody else but mostly because I was mortified that some hot beefy guy would be inwardly laughing at me for sweating and struggling with a 10 lb weight. I pretty much lived at the gym when I wasn't putting in ten to twelve hour shifts at work. Slowly but steadily I started getting in better shape, I even had a very helpful coworker give me some pointers on how to get more out of my time there. Still, I'd only go at night because I felt like a hypocrite for giving in to the completely shallow need to conform to some warped version of what male beauty was.

The sad truth of the matter is that I started getting serious about my health and well-being for exactly the wrong reasons.

I eventually left Houston and my crappy job there for greener pastures in Portland. I joined a gym, now confident enough in my weight-training abilities to not look like a complete tool when I went in to move metal around in the hopes of looking like that impossible ideal of physical perfection. It was the first time I'd ever belonged to a real honest-to-goodness gym, and it was everything I'd always feared it would be. The place was full of impossibly well-formed meatheads lifting what amounted to slightly less than my entire body weight while grunting and sweating. There have been many times where I've worried that the guy next to me was having a series of strokes due to the noises he was making during his workout. Mid-afternoon or late at night the place isn't so bad, but come the dreaded eight o'clock hour the building gets flooded with all the vacuous aberzombie queers that I always secretly hope will choke on their $50 pooka shell necklaces.

Yet still, for all of my disdain I still go to the gym several times a week.

Mid-winter, 24Hour Fitness has an evil habit of selling their tanning packages on a two-for-one deal. I've always thought of fake tanning as being about as lame as the monkey sidekick that those utterly useless Superfriends groupies the Wonder Twins would drag around with them. Being a sidekick's sidekick has to be about as low as you can go. And yet, my skin was starved for sunlight, even if it was decaf. You don't go from the searing light and heat of a Texas sun to the general overcast gloom of Portland without some serious withdrawals. So I started tanning, in a tanning bed. Naked as the day I was born, holding onto the support rails while I was lightly searing myself like a nice cut of mahi mahi. When people began to remark on how dark I was starting to look I'd jokingly play it off as my swarthy Mediterranean genetics sucking up all the fluorescent light in adamant defiance of ever getting pale from the northwest gloom. I was honestly too embarrassed to admit to anyone but my closest friends that I'd do something so pointless and shallow as get a fake tan. So I scaled back my tanning schedule in order to avoid any further suspicions that my healthy olive skin was the result of anything but entirely natural causes.

So here I am, after spending the majority of my adult life rolling my eyes at the buffed-out over-tanned people of the world I've finally become one (minus the buffed out and overly tanned part). I have to say though, there's nothing like the hormonal charge of a good workout or the feeling of pre-carcinogenic light bouncing off your bare tush first thing in the morning.

Sticky Sheets

2006-09-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt that I was having sex with a very handsome shaven-headed tattooed man. At the Taco Bell Flagship Self-Service Eatery and Truck Stop. In the bathroom.

This is why it's not a good idea to abstain from sex for several months and then eat far too much Taco Bell with your best friend right before you pass out on the couch. This is the sort of thing that makes you wonder if you have heretofore unknown sexual fetishes involving hot sauce and public places. I mean, sure, everyone gets excited by the hot sauce, but bathroom sex? Eew.

Has anyone else ever had sex dreams that made them wonder if they were a lot kinkier than they'd given themselves credit for?

I ain't ded yet

2006-09-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Life has been a little stressful and odd, and my head keeps filling up with words but won't assemble them into anything coherent.

This weekend I'm locking myself in my room with a random word generator and a whole lotta caffeinated tea. The results will either be brilliant or will ensure that my name is cursed for generations to come. I'm cool with it either way.

My Joy Comes On Silent Feet

2006-08-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

Update: I wasn't entirely sure if I should even post this one as I'm not completely satisfied with how it was worded. I was in a very strange mood that day so my ability to articulate my thoughts was a little off-kilter.

Today I was supposed to be on a boat on the river, basking in the sun and drinking in calm happiness like sweet clear mountain spring water. However, that wonderful mess of human drama that links us all together had other plans, so instead I spent the day with a dear friend watching a movie and having some very satisfying sushi. I had mentioned on several occasions to random friends and coworkers that I was really looking forward to being on the boat today, and then it went massively south through no tinkering of my own.

I've noticed that this happens a lot in my life. An event that I want very much will loom. I'll set things up that I can participate in said event. I'll speak to assorted close friends about how very much I'm anticipating the upcoming event. The event will loom closer still. Then something will go HORRIBLY, IRREVOCABLY WRONG that I have no hand in and I'll end up doing nothing instead of something I'd been looking forward to, sometimes something planned months in advance. Friends will have a falling out or go insane and can't leave their rooms for fear of more mental breakdown. The weather will mysteriously turn vicious and cruel. Planes will fly into buildings. Like I said, stuff that I have very little control over. These events will be mysteriously absent should I choose not to tell anyone about my plans. My hopes seem to only be cursed when they are shared with others.

So I plan my hopes in secret, it's like a game I play with the world. If I sneak up on happiness it can't elude me, but if I announce my intentions ahead of me glee will flee like a startled cat. I don't know why my life is like this, it just is. Maybe I seek out things that I don't really want, and some divine part of myself beats me to the punch. Or maybe this is just another way in which the world I live in is more challenging, because I'm never satisfied by an easy life.

I dunno, maybe I never will. All I can really say is watching Graham Norton do a Belgian Chocolate scene is equal parts funny and very, very wrong. At least I'll always have the movies.

If there's a better job to aspire to, I can't think of one.

2006-08-25T02:00:00.000-07:00

I think this woman just might be my newest inspiration. Is it creepy for a guy to be a sex therapist whereas it's liberating for a woman to be one? Check out her awesome personality in the Toddy and Pony podcast, also the Toddy and Pony are a hoot.

Pet Peeve

2006-08-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

Why is it that right after I finish talking about how foolishly in love I am with my man back in Houston with someone they then proceed to ask me out on a date? Is "I'm madly in love with someone that isn't you" a secret Portlandish code phrase for "I'm just making this up to get into your pants"?

I'm thinking I should get one of those colorful Applebee's-esque buttons made up that says "Ask me about the drink specials and my out-of-state boyfriend!"

Hydrodynamic Physics Is Harshing My Game

2006-08-18T00:19:00.000-07:00

I don't want to give the wrong impression with this story, as I think I'm one of the few men I know who actually goes to the gym with the express purpose of not talking to or scoping out anyone. There's just something about it that creeps me out, like when someone tries to check out my johnson in the men's room. So here goes:

During the course of today's abdominal workout I found myself next to what turned out to be a pretty cute guy whom I eventually noticed was sneaking glances at me. I was flattered and intrigued but really couldn't think of anything remotely appropriate to say without it coming off as a cheesy porno-esque pick up line. So I said nothing. We both continued in our workouts next to each other, he and I occasionally catching the other looking. It was fun but a little distracting.

I eventually got to the set where I lay on my back and lift my legs all the way over my body and head in fairly rapid succession (it's great for building up that sexy v-shape that points right to my no-zone when my pants ride low or my shirt goes high). Because I'm wearing a loose and unflattering shirt it starts to ride up my chest every time I launch my legs up and over my body in what would be a clear invitation to a gang-bang were this maneuver performed anywhere outside the gym. I'm sweating like it's going out of style, and my shirt is riding up higher and higher, when all of a sudden my sweaty back meets with the smooth mat I'm lying on, catches an air bubble perfectly and releases a noise akin to the worst case of squirts a person is likely to have without it actually being fatal. There is simply NO WAY to pretend the noise didn't happen, and I don't want to turn to a complete (if cute) stranger and tell him that the mat farted, not me.

Horrified, I continued with my set, while Mr Cute Abs Guy got up to grab a mat for himself.

The smirk on his face as he tried not to burst out laughing was a very good reminder of why I don't cruise cute guys at the gym. The fact that I accidentally kicked him while doing my power-bottom leg-lifts really didn't help.

Looney for the Luna!

2006-08-12T16:11:00.000-07:00

It must've been the full moon, but it's been a crazy week at work. That's the joy of working for a multi-club complex in the heart of Portland's Vasaline Alley I guess.

Things started out slowly, with a vacant-eyed blond manboy wandering in from the streets and deciding to take offense at and then assault one of the security guys. In the course of restraining him until the police arrived to haul him away the stitches on his chin were ripped out due to his struggling. Obviously this guy has a thing for biting off far more than he can chew. Blondie showed up again twice the next day, and he eventually had to be hauled off in a police car for the second time that week (that we know of). This, kids, is why we don't do handfuls of meth in lieu of eating.

The same day as Blondie's second arrest I had the joy of interacting with someone whom I'll have to call Grandfather Jackson. During the course of trying to hunt down the button to order a basket of french fries for one of my customers (how exactly does "B F Bskt" mean french fries?) a gentleman of questionable sobriety meandered up to the bar. He was dressed in what could easily be the height of burnt out post-drag fashion from the 1980s. This consisted of a sausage-tight black sleeveless shirt (homemade), with what could only be described as an american-tribute-to-Mad-Max-studded-red-square-of-cloth covering the upper right front corner of his shirt. This ensemble was of course completed with a pair of awkwardly tight jeans, a gaudy belt, and an odd, brassy half-necklace contraption that most of the staff originally mistook for a trecheotomy implant. Whilst my (far too cool for words) manager and I were trying to hunt down the elusive french fries order, Grandfather Jackson stood at the bar occasionally releasing ear-splitting bursts of hysterical laughter quickly followed by total and utter silence. Our interaction went something like this:

Zeroes: "How can I help you today sir?"

Grandfather Jackson: (long slow stare) "I'll have a mumblemumble"(something that may or may not have involved vodka).

Z: "I'm sorry sir, but I don't feel comfortable serving you anything alcoholic today, how about a water or a soda?"

GJ: "Well then..." (deep, meaningful pause). "Good luck" (quick, sassy turn towards the door).

GJ then saunters a few steps towards the door, turns around and says "No, I mean it, GOOD LUCK!"

Z: "Thank you sir."

GJ again saunters several steps closer towards the door "No, I MEAN it, GOOD LUCK!"

Z: "Ok, you have a great day sir."

GJ then wanders to the door, stops, turns back around, and slowly makes his way back to the bar.

GJ: "What is your name please"

I politely give him my name in as cheerful a manner as I can manage without bursting out laughing.

GJ: "Trust me, your name will live in INFAMY!"

At which point he marches out the door and hangs out on the front patio mumbling to himself until he says something unkind about me too close to the maintenance guy who tells him to get lost.

Later we had to call an ambulance for a mildly smelly gentleman who probably shouldn't have been mixing methadone and tequila. Live and learn (his bike is still locked out in front of the club as of this writing).

To top it all off we had two Code Reds last night. A code red is basically an all-clubs call that all security personnel converge at the named club. I'm told at least one of them involved a cluster of angry girlfriends (the real kind, that have their own vaginas and everything) jumping into the fray to protect their brawling mens. Sadly, the melee occurred at the dancefloor I wasn't bartending at, so I didn't get to see anyone's cheap Prada knock-offs go flying.

Full moon weeks rock! Not only am I now (in)famous with the homeless insane, but I have several reasons to feel really, really good about how I've lived my life so far when compared to these assorted burn-outs.

It's all about perspective.

Shameless Self Promotion

2006-08-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, for those of you in the Portland areola you can now enjoy happy hour at Boxxes with me Monday through Friday. There be drink specials galore, and if you're very, VERY nice, I won't use the baseball bat that they gave me as a substitute for day time security personnel. Come in on Thursdays for the $1 well drinks and $2 call drinks (sorry Toddy, Maker's Mark is still full price).

This ends my shameless self-promotion on this site. In regards to bartending anyway.

Queer Bear Cheer!

2006-07-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

I love living in Portland, where the random freebie newspaper (the Mercury) gives us little gems like this:

(article text for those of you who don't feel like squinting or clicking the link)

Okay, LOOK. First of all, I've got nothing against you gays. You're ANNOYING, and you ACT FUNNY-but... an orgasm's an orgasm, right? Me. I don't worry about going gay, because I get laid A LOT-but if I were in prison or something, who knows? Anyway, I digress. Here's my beef with you gays: See this rainbow on my chest? THAT'S MY FUCKIN' RAINBOW. Before you gays came along and started using MY FUCKIN' RAINBOW to advertise yourselves, the only competition I had was the leprechauns. Now I can't walk down the street without somebody yelling, "YO, QUEER BEAR!" That's not my name, people! It's "CHEER BEAR", and it's because I'm so goddamn HAPPY. That's what rainbows are supposed to signify-HAPPY. Not getting banged in the ass by some guy wearing leather chaps. (However, I'll allow that getting ass banged can make certain people happy... if not ecstatic.) Anyway, my point is this: I HAD THIS RAINBOW FIRST. Do you think McDonald's would put up with this shit? Like if you gays suddenly started waving flags sporting a Quarter Pounder? They would never stop suing you. Me? I'm not the litigious type. Therefore I'll give you gays ONE CHANCE. Cease and desist using MY rainbow symbol, and I'll walk out of here a nice guy, and you'll still own your shirt. If not, the only date you'll be having is with my lawyer, "Legal Bear". You'll recognize him by the ambulance on his chest. THAT'S MY RAINBOW GAYS! They may call me "Cheer Bear", but I'll give your ass something to worry about!

We have been warned, and rainbows are tacky anyway guys.

State of Disunion

2006-07-14T02:01:00.000-07:00

Right now I feel hurt, rejected and angry. Taking the higher road might be the best course of action in the long run, but at this moment in time I wish I'd been a lesser man in the face of someone who's got a lot of misery ahead of him.

Most of all I wish I was tired enough to sleep it all off. Damn you insomnia for being such a loyal friend.

-Z-

Fingers Crossed ..::update::..

2006-07-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

I start training to bartend at Boxxes/Red Cap Garage on the 18th and will be the new daytime bartender at Boxxes Monday-Thursday and nighttime bartender Fridays at Red Cap Garage starting at the end of the month! It's an awesome crew of folks, many of whom have been my friends outside of the bars for a while now so I'm greatly looking forward to working with them. The fact that they're all as nuts as me really helps.

The guy upon whom I've had my eye (and hands, repeatedly) continues to be a wonderful person. Now I just need a fast motorcycle and I'll want for nothing in life.

Fingers Crossed

2006-06-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

I don't want to jinx things, but I've just been offered a full-time job at a bar I actually want to work at and a guy I've had my eye on for a while has apparently had his eye on me too. I'm withholding names to protect the guilty.

Currently, life is very hopeful.

Dear Sir

2006-06-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Guy in the Powder Blue Ensemble at Fred Meyers,

While I'm flattered that you found me attractive enough to give yourself whiplash while strolling through a public venue, arms laden with sundry items and perishables, there are some things you need to take into consideration. First and foremost, there is a fine line between a subtle glance at an intriguing stranger and the leering grin of a potential stalker. You might be a wonderful and caring person, but it's a little hard to see that while you're twisting yourself near in half staring at me while never once slowing your forward momentum nor changing the direction of said progress down the aisle. Secondly, and probably most importantly, even if I were to find you attractive (the fact that there was a long list of reasons why this would most likely not be the case aside) there's something about having a cart full of extra-absorbent toiletries, assorted vitamins and fiber pills, and a small assortment of chocolate-frosted sugar-bombs that does not put me "in the mood" for the attentions of gentlemen. Much like when I'm trying to angle myself for minimum visibility at the pee trough in the men's room, I'm at the food market for a very specific reason, and I can assure you that that reason has nothing to do with things going into or out of my pants unless they're comfy and unflattering underwear. I just have my priorities, and at the market they revolve around at-register price reductions and four-for-five-dollar specials.

So please, sir, spend a little bit more time during your morning routine in front of the full-length mirror practicing your subtle glance. It will keep the objects of your desire from experiencing brief moments of panty-soiling terror as they wonder if they're going to have to apply for yet another restraining order, and your lower back will really thank you for not getting twisted into such odd contortions on such a regular basis.

That Essential Inch.

2006-06-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Toddy recently endured a very ugly face of humanity, and it got the two of us talking about integrity and personal accountability. The conversation reminded me of a passage from the book V For Vendetta that's recently been made into a movie. They kept this particular part in the movie almost word for word, and I feel it bears repeating as it sums up the depth and weight of integrity to a point that it nearly overwhelms the soul.

The passage is written by a woman who is being tortured to death to another prisoner (one of the main characters in the story) and passed through a rat whole in the wall to someone she has never met nor seen, but is also being tortured to death for information. These are her words:

"I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you. I have a pencil, a little one they did not find. I am a woman. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I will ever write, and oh God, I'm writing it on toilet paper."

"I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's grammar. I wanted to be an actress. I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss Watson's class. Her wrists, her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the pickled rabbit fetus in it's jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't."

"In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I moved to London, enrolling at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart. But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It's the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free."

"London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At night I'd go to Gatew. This or one of the other clubs, but I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene but I never felt comfortable: there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life. Their ambition. All they talked about. And I wanted more than that. Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in 'The Salt Flats'. It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together, and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses, and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life."

"In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody."

"In 1992, after the take-over, they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I seduced her. I didn't blame her. God. I loved her. I didn't blame her. But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. They came for me. They told me that all my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair. They held my head down in a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak. The other gay woman here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It is strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to nobody. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Except one."

"An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world that's worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I don't know who you are, or whether you are a man or a woman. I may never see you. I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you."

"I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you. Valerie."

I hope that none of us ever find ourselves persecuted and tortured to death for being who we are, but I also hope that none of us ever allows ourselves to lose that last inch of ourselves. That last inch of integrity.

Darwin Meets God

2006-06-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up with an extra set of arms and a letter taped to my chest congratulating a Ms Shelly Neaderson for her lifetime of dedicated faith and boundless altruism. It was signed God. God has a surprisingly sloppy signature, like a coked-up five year old actually. Don't ask me how I know what that looks like.

Apparently Ms Neaderson had been praying for an extra set of arms, probably to help feed more homeless people at once or pray twice as hard for the plight of starving kids in Africa and China or some other goody two-shoes nonsense. Unfortunately for her not even the Celestial Post can be counted on to deliver consistently. I wonder if God tortures angels for this kind of screw-up, or if He turns them into self-hating minority Republicans. Hopefully he just lets them off with some light unspeakable torture and a stern talking-to.

I have to admit that at first I was bummed. The idea of spending the next week cutting arm-holes in all of my shirts and sewing sleeves back on to some of them (it is almost summer after all, having four arms to show off might not be such a bad thing) didn't exactly sound like fun. Not to mention it'd be pretty hard to hide any future criminal activities from the law. Being built like a gimpy arachnid makes you kind of obvious in a police line-up. It was really bumming me out until I decided to start looking on the bright side of things, sure I might be a freakish god-mutant now, but just think of all the things I can do! I can bartend twice as fast, hand-stands are gonna be a breeze, I'll finally be able to defeat my arch-nemesis Jeff in ninjitsu knitting class, I can deliver the ultimate pimp-slap to hos who be dissin' on me (yo), and there won't be a butt in the world that's safe from my clever hands!

It was at this point that hideous melodramatic laughter welled up from the depths of my soul and sang it's clarion of evil across the land, at least until my downstairs neighbors began banging on their ceiling with a broom handle. At least I like to hope it's a broom handle, you can never tell with creepy hobbit-looking hippies who smoke so much they stink up the entire apartment block.

While I'm sure I'll eventually have a change of heart and find Ms Neaderson to give her her rightful arms, I'm having far too much fun abusing God's gifts right now.

I wonder what he'll screw up and send me next time!

Blessed Art The Rons

2006-06-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm having a hard time with my fellow meatbags I like to remind myself of a time when a complete stranger saved me.

It was during the hurricane Rita evacuation down in Houston. Some of you may have seen the pictures from it, some of you haven't, but it's not an underestimation to say that the situation was both surreal and dire. It was the first time in American history (that I'm aware of) that both sides of a major four-lane highway were opened up to outbound traffic in order to expedite the evacuation of a city that has nearly two million residents.

Due to the fact that there had been no gas service for an entire week on account of all the damage that Katrina had caused most people were hitting the roads with half a tank or less. Also due to the panic that the hurricane was causing in light of what Katrina did to Nuevo Orleans many people were desperate to get out and so grabbed any vehicle they could find no matter how poor it's condition was. The result of these two factors meant that about a fourth of the vehicles on the road simply broke down or ran out of gas about a mile or two out of town, turning the already congested roads into a slalom course of derelict dodging. This was much harder than it sounds as the traffic was moving so slowly that you often didn't know the car in front of you had broken down for several hours as progress out of the city was measured in inches per hour.

As the road and the hours wore on the traffic was thinned some by the cars that could go no further. I was often reminded of the dinosaur scene in Fantasia where they're all making an exodus from the spreading dessert trying to find water and slowly dying off one by one until even the last stalwart survivors were only bleached bones in the scorching sand. It sounds overly dramatic, but the mind thinks odd thoughts when you've been in a car for an entire day.

On the second eve of our travel my roommate and I finally came to a rest stop and had nearly exhausted our supply of gas. It turns out that the golf coast produces gas for a large chunk of America, and no one had been able to ship or fly any new supplies in from elsewhere so there hadn't been any place to resupply the entire trip. The storm was due to hit any hour and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a few willow trees to protect us from whatever the biopolar and chaotic maelstrom that passes for weather over the Atlantic had been cooking up. To say we felt scared and helpless would have been pretty dead-on. We noticed that there was an RV parked not too far away from us for the night and they had a large red plastic gas container. So I walked over there full of hope that I could convince this person to sell me some of their gas, a commodity that had gone beyond value due to the extreme rarity it had recently begun to enjoy. The man who's RV had the spare gas was a shorter grandfatherly type named Ron Tomlinson. Not only did he let us have the gas he refused to accept any sort of compensation for it. It was exactly half a tank's worth, which we were pretty certain would get us the rest of the way to San Antonio where a good friend of mine was waiting with extra beds and margaritas. We knew that Ron wouldn't accept any money, but we had no way to show him how much his simple act of kindness had done for us so we wrote our numbers on a piece of paper and told him that if he was ever in California or Oregon to call us and we'd be happy to put him up or buy him dinner as he'd been like an angel to us. We also folded about $80 into the slip of paper because we couldn't not give him anything, it just didn't feel right. Both myself and my roommate were moved nearly to tears that a complete stranger would insist on giving us his gas so that we could complete our trip. I'd run into a lot of extremely selfish people in Texas and I felt blindsided by this man's kindness. It was very humbling.

We completed our trip uneventfully. The roads after that last rest stop were clear of traffic as all of the cars that couldn't make it had been weeded out by that time. The drive from San Antonio to Houston takes about two hours on a good day. It took us twenty-seven hours to make the trip and that had to be one of the best and longest urinations I've ever had in my life when we finally got to my friend's house.

On Leadership #38

2006-06-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

Leadership rule #38

"Any tyrant who demands that you sacrifice your life to invade a sovereign nation should be hauled into the street by an angry mob and murdered in the most convenient method possible.

Conversely, any leader who gives you both the knowledge and means to defend your home from the whims of tyrants should be glorified."

Seriously folks, anyone who has managed to miss the memo that war is an ugly business that makes monsters of us all should not be allowed to graduate from kindergarten.

Everyone Has a Type, Mine Is Bold Face

2006-05-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

There's a building-sized poster up promoting Portland's lacross team. I have no idea what the name of this team is due to the fact that the advertisement largely consists of a very dopey-looking guy in the team jersey with the caption "actual size" in large bold letters. I guess that kind of tritely stupid advertising is still very relevant and cutting-edge in the sports world, where negro integration has finally settled down and women are still looked at as something funny to fill time in between real sports played by men.

But I digress.

LR and I were driving past this towering advertisement featuring a man who is not what I'd call intimidating even at 50 feet tall when this conversation began:

"Ugh, he's NOT cute."

"My friend Uzumaki loves that kind of guy, he's all over the huskular goofy sort." Uzumaki is a wonderfully crazy friend of many years who is currently dating a cop because you really do need special training to date certain personality types.

"I don't think I really have a type."

"Me either" I say. "Actually, I really do have a type. Pick the worst idea in the room and that's who I'm all over."

It sounds self-depracating but it's true. The only guys I have any real, strong, romantic connection with seem to be the ones that treat a relationship like it's a protracted war of attrition with occasional bloody skirmishes from time to time. I'm only happy in a relastionship when it's in constant flux and neither of us has any idea where it's heading or what the body count will be when it gets there.

Part of me worries that I'm too afraid of intimacy to really connect with someone that I can see myself happily retiring with someday. The sort of dangerously normal fellow who'll read you the news in the morning long after the thrill of sex has left the relationship.

The rest of me thoroughly enjoys a challange, and reels at the idea of ever being happily settled. To me stasis is a kind of living death. To be so completely connected to the minutia of my daily life that I'm always the exact same person from one day to the next scares me. I don't want to get to a point where I define who I am by my daily rituals and quiant IKEA furniture.

If this means that I can only date men who are proficient in four to five styles of hand-to-hand combat and know exactly how to disable an opponent within a few seconds then so be it. At least this way I won't get bored.

Best Warcraft quote EVER!

2006-05-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

"...check out Rough Trade. Queer guild on Proudmoore. Remember man, slap you around, push your face in the pillow, cum and then leave your apartment TOPS play Horde. Bitchy, sloppy, “hold me in your arms” bottoms play Alliance."

This guy is an odd character with some real issues, but he makes me laugh often.

Paranoia and You, A Practical Guide

2006-05-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

My good friend LR was recently given a wonderful little book by one of his psychology professors. The Paranoid's Pocket Guide is a delightful collection of literally hundreds of reasons that you should spend every day of your life cowering in a corner somewhere, alternately sobbing and vomiting as you realize just how utterly and thoroughly boned you truly are.

Some of the gems found within:

"Nearly a third of all bottled water purchased in the United States is contaminated with Bacteria." E-Colicious!

"Deadly new germs are emerging around the world at a startling rate. Equine morbilli virus, which causes a potentially fatal respiratory illness, was discovered n Australia in 1994; blood banks do not yet screen for recently discovered hepatitis G; and Bartonella, a bacteria discovered in 1990 can cause illnesses ranging from cat scratch fever to fatal heart-valve infections. Humans are exposed to this germ from cats carrying infected fleas. Medical researchers are baffled and expect to see many more unknown mysterious diseases." Are you sure you washed your hands? With Soap?

"In one year over a ton of explosives, including dynamite, C-4 plastic explosives, ANFO, raw ammunition nitrate, and blasting caps has disappeared from commercial sites in Georgia, California, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Indiana." Waiter, I'll have a side of pipe-bomb, hold the nails.

"Remember those hostile memos you wrote to vent at your boss and then deleted? They're still in the computer system - along with your cover letter to the headhunter, that screenplay you've been working on during office hours, and all of the other files you think you've destroyed. The chances are very good that your company will hire a data-retrieval expert to resurrect files that employees have deleted. That is, if they haven't done so already." What ever happened to the good ol' Suggestion Box?

"Bathroom sinks cause over 45,000 injuries every year." Maybe you should start brushing your teeth in the kitchen.

And my personal favorite:

"If you urinate when swimming in a South American river, you may encounter the candiru. Drawn to warmth, this tiny fish is known to follow a stream of urine to it's source, swim inside the body, and flare it's barbed fins. It will remain firmly embedded in the flesh until surgically removed." What's that itching sensation?

The bottom line of all of this being; you have so very many reasons to live your life in constant fear of the world that if you kow-tow to even one of these tiny demons of doubt you'll spend the rest of your life crushed under the weight of all of his friends. Fear is, after all, a package deal.

Letter to the Editor

2006-05-23T01:57:00.000-07:00

I'm finished with harboring rancor for the people whom I feel I have been wronged by. The short-sighted ex, the two-faced friend, and the sleazy bosses who used me as a placeholder. I see these people out and about and cannot say anything to them because my chest seizes up with loathing and loss. The silence I hold inside of myself is like a vice. It crushes the air from my lungs and the words from my mouth, words that left unspoken continue to bore into my psyche like angered maggots, slowly devouring my nobility.

A man I once worked for said to me that hating someone is like drinking poison every night before you sleep. It can only ever kill you, and leaves your nemesis unchanged.

So I have to let all of this go. I have to find the path that allows me to keep who I am and still lets me to cast off this weight of antipathy I've been carrying for the past month. I have to remind myself to see these people as people. People composed of infinite flaws and infinite possibility, the two things that make us great and beautiful creatures. I have to remind myself that we all do what we believe to be right, none of us thinks we are monsters, and none of us know the mistakes we make until they are cold and buried in the tomb of our personal history. To continue to define any other person in my life by the mistakes they have made will only lessen me as a person, and it's not something I'm willing to do.

So I'm sending all of this destructive pathos out into the world as a letter, signed with hope rather than tears.

-Zeroes-

Down-Size Me

2006-05-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life all I really want to do is launch into a bitter tirade against the infinite capacity for poor behavior that tends to pop up in my fellow humans from time to time. To verbally shake my tiny fist at the uncaring heavens and tell the whole of Creation to go bugger itself for making such a flawed machine. In all fairness though, I am just as much a part of this flawed existence as the next guy, and beating myself up hasn't shown much success historically.

But I get ahead of myself.

On Friday, April 28th, I was handed my final paycheck at CC Slaughters with the impressively non-specific message of my bosses wanting to "ramp up the daytime". I accepted my paycheck, handed in my keys, said goodbye to the assorted friends and coworkers that were in attendance that evening (without ruining their night by letting them know of my recent firing) and went home to enjoy a quiet evening of reflection. I've often been of the opinion that business is business, and getting emotionally worked up about it does not change the realities of the situation. Much as getting fired for the third time in my life does not change who I am as a person, how I behave during and after such an event directly reflects on the caliber of my person. So I remained calm and upbeat. After all, now I wasn't going to feel obligated to show up at 10 the next morning to help them haul trash out of the basement. Because really, who wants to get up before noon on a sunny day and get covered in garbage?

Four days later I discovered that I was fired to be replaced by someone whom my employers felt was more youthfull and attractive. I will withhold my personal feelings on this person's overall virtue as gossip is the true heart of darkness.

To say that my opinion of the situation took a turn for the less-than-sunny would be a mild understatement. I currently feel as though I hold within my chest a white-hot fragment of pure malevolence. It is as though I am being powered solely by the great gravitational stresses put forth by a quantum singularity forged purely of my disdain for all of the people involved in this incident. Everything I do lately is discolored by the poison of malice that circulates through my system where once there flowed only innocuous, innocent blood. The plus side to this being that my time in the gym is proving to be very productive.

I'm under no illusions that every person at some point in their life will be mistreated by others solely on what can only be described as superficial standards. None of us are strangers to the callous ugliness that all humans are capable of. In fact, I have to consider it something of a good sign that I can still feel the sting as sharply and truly as though it were my first time. It means I haven't let myself become embittered, and for that I am both proud and thankful.

I console myself in the fact that I am not the only person I know who feels this situation was poorly handled, and that my replacement will have some large shoes to fill. Though the small-minded and utterly human part of me may hate every fiber of his being at the moment, I ultimately hope he does well in life. My former bosses I'm not so sure about, but I get the feeling that these roiling waves of antipathy will pass; to eventually be replaced by a simple sense of calm pity. Pity and pointed dislike, but mostly pity.

I'm not entirely sure how to end this particular entry, because it is not yet ended in my mind. Simply know that I will be just fine, my finances are quite in order and my friends are many and wonderful.

-Zeroes-

I Need An Intervention

2006-04-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

For the past few days I have been suffering under the needful claws of addiction withdrawal. All the food I've suffered to eat has been tasteless mush, the water I drink befouled, even the air I breathe has done little more than stave off the inevitability of death because what I truly want, what I truly NEED has been denied me.

In the course of installing my new 160GB slave drive and transferring all my files to it, World of Warcraft was lost to me. To make matters worse the install discs had magically vanished, possibly spirited away by some foul-tempered imp bent on spreading human misery. I tore my closet and bedroom to ruin trying to find the missing discs, but all to no avail. I spent two solid days away from the warm, womb-like glow of WoW. Sadly, it was never discovered.

Much like a child cast from his home by great calamity before his time, I have been tested by the fires of adversity and come through this a stronger, better man. No more will I be beholden to the needs of sources outside my own mind. No more will my gut twist as I lay in bed praying for the sweet emptiness of sleep. Nor will I be woken in a cold sweat during my short and fitful slumber, having dream't of returning to the lands of Azeroth only to have my joyous hopes dashed on the cruel rocks of the morning sun. No more, for I am a changed man.

After all, it took me an entire ten minutes to throw whatever clothes I could find around myself before bolting out of the house when I remembered that Fred Meyer (right down the street from me) keeps copies of the game for a small fee. Clearly a man not wrested away from his vice like I have been would have run into the streets stark naked, screaming his needs to the heavens the entire way to the self-checkout lines, slavering with joy and hunger over the box as he fitfully ripped the precious golden discs from their protective sleeves only to slam them into his cd-drive like a juicer ramming the needle home to it's all-to-familiar vein after too long a time without.

And so I say only this, the Tooth Fairy of Doom has returned his services to the Horde. Tremble before my sparkly might.

Scarlet Harlot

2006-04-04T01:17:00.000-07:00

A few snippets of what resembles thoughts on the Red Dress Party:

The Portland Fire Marshal is a jerk, but who's shocked? Little-men often gravitate towards positions of near-power.

-------------

Him: "Why are you two-fisted drinking? I thought you were slowing down on alcohol"
Me: "I am, this one is for drinking, this one is for throwing"

-------------

Me, in my underwear and porn socks/combat boots, up on stage in front of god-knows-how-many people. Pictures later.

Crouching Tyler, Hidden Dildo

2006-03-30T11:50:00.000-08:00

After watching the badly subtitled Slavic twink porn at work I've decided that my calling in life is to produce the world's first kung-fu theater style gay porn. Obviously it will have to be badly re-dubbed so that the bottom's mouth is flapping like Mr Ed on sweeps week for the better part of five minutes whenever he says something as simple as "Fook Mi".

There will of course have to be some sort of plot about forbidden love and ancient artifacts of unimaginable power. Of course there will be the obligatory beautiful sweeping camera shots of flying wire-fighting atop whispering bamboo that leads to flying butt sex atop said bamboo. And don't even get me started on the ninjas. I'm thinking a group of black-swathed men busting into the dojo at which point condoms (those packet edges are SHARP) end up being howitzer ed across the room like ninja stars at the hero as he deftly ducks and dodges, only to be felled at the end by his hunky protege who was secretly a double agent the entire time. Of course this will lead to a gang-bang involving clever use of the weapons training ring.

Eventually the entire plot will wrap up with a raid upon the emperor's palace, though at that point all the plot switch-backs and allegiance changes will leave the nail-biting viewers clueless as to who's side the hero is truly on. As we all know emperor is just a wacky foreign word for daddy (mmm, daddy). There may or may not be jade falcon style fisting as a political statement on the common man's struggle against tyranny, that and it helps to cater to a wide audience for higher box office gross.

In the end our beleaguered hero will emerge a wiser man, having learned much in his travels about the necessity of sacrifice, the power of true virtue, and how to find another man's prostate in under two seconds.

I have heard my calling World, and I have no choice but to obey.

Here and Now

2006-03-28T03:08:00.000-08:00

In a nutshell, my life since coming to Portland has done nothing but head uphill. Here and now is exactly where I want to be.

I have a great job. I mean, like, a GREAT job. The pay is over-ample and some of the nicest, sweetest, and most honest folks I know come into my bar on a regular basis and let me get them drunk (taking polaroids of people's naughty bits after you've gotten them toasty might be wrong, but it's oh so much fun). On top of that my bosses are some of the best I've ever had. Though given the string of recovering alcoholics and latin-boy obsessed old men I've worked for at this point any boss who acts even remotely like a functional adult would suffice. Add to that the flimsy dress code (pants are acceptable but really not required or encouraged) and it really is a great day job to have. I'm still tuning the gay porn on seven screens out on the basis that if the folks running this country can choose what they believe exists so can I. Purely in the interests of democratic fairness mind you.

The friends I've found (and in some cases rediscovered) since getting here are exactly the sort of folks I want in my life. Gone is the two-faced constant doubt of the southerners and the endless self-aggrandizment and flakiness of the Californians. Not that my friends aren't still just as human and falable as everyone else. They're just better at picking up the pieces when the inevitable accident does happen. For the people in my life I am constantly thankful.

My to-do list is wonderfully short, though oddly tall:

-I need to find a studio where I can live and still have room to get serious about my art again.

-I'd like to find someone to cuddle with at night and run amok with in the sunlight. But who isn't looking for that these days?

Aside from that, thanks World for being what I hoped you could be. Keep up the good work and I'll do the same.

On Leadership #23

2006-03-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Leadership rule #23:

"If they love you your people will follow you into the Gates of Hell. If they fear you your minions will only obey you until they think you're not paying attention."

This is why it's so important to have annual BBQ/e-parties. It really helps employee morale and can provide hours of entertainment/blackmail if you secretly film everything.

Gay Dos and Don'ts

2006-03-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

I didn't write this, but it's still very relevent and warrants reposting. Enjoy.

ADVICE FOR RECENT ARRIVALS
Dos & Don'ts & More Don'ts for Gay Boy Refugees
by Nate Lippens

So you made it out of that backwater town in one piece. Now comes the hard part--acclimating to a new place and living an openly gay life. Soon enough you will discover which bars cater to your distorted physical ideals, that meth is very bad, and that a deep tan is ugly and pre-cancerous--but what about the other stuff? Here's a cheat sheet to save you some time and trouble.

1. You are not a strong black woman. You never will be.

2. I know it was terrible being the fag in your school/small town/own mind, but don't introduce yourself to people with this information. Being gay is, and should be, the least interesting thing about you.

3. If your mother is the greatest woman who ever lived, keep it to yourself. The holiday orphans don't want to hear it. On the flip side, your family will always be a part of you even if you never speak to them again, but try not to spend your life in reaction to them.

4. Rainbow flags, bumper stickers, and wind socks are no different than Green Bay Packers fans painting their faces green and gold: a complete embarrassment. Pride can be as ugly and warping as shame.

5. Gay life can be empty and depressing, but bitching about it outside the confines of a few close friends will get you tagged as bitter. Yes, the gay mainstream is alienating with its cookie-cutter bars, bad dance music, and Queer as Folk. It's enough to make you turn straight. But electroshock doesn't work and Jesus is a sci-fi character.

6. Don't fraternize with people who haven't come out.

7. Your masculinity has most likely been called into question. Anything you do in reaction to it will be a failure. Don't try to prove or disprove anything.

8. There is a difference between being effeminate and being a queen. Being effeminate is just that--being. Being a queen is an affectation. I can't throw a ball, but I don't call anyone "girl," even female children.

9. Avoid she-bonics: referring to each other as Girl, She, and Her. "What's her problem?" That you are an idiot. This includes: Bitchslap, Girlfriend, Shit pussy, Mangina.

10. Don't be a misogynist asshole. Leave the tuna jokes back in your small town with your usage of Jew as a verb. If it weren't for lesbians and feminism, we'd still be sucking cock in truck-stop restrooms. I mean exclusively.

11. I've never been to a bathhouse. No, really. So I can't advise you on it but I do know they are basically a petri dish of STDs. If you are okay with HIV, herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and other STDs, by all means fuck your brains out.

12. Do not have black-and-white photos à la Bruce Weber taken of you and your beloved. And if you must, then don't hang them up as "art" in your home.

13. Don't kiss and tell. Or fuck, suck, rim, or fist and tell. Think of your bedroom like Vegas: What happens there stays there. It will keep you from gossiping, which is the true heart of darkness, and will create a sense of mystery. Besides the cruelty of nicknaming someone Princess Tiny Meat (it would make a wonderful DJ name though), it isn't good karma. And what modestly endowed dude who sucks a mean cock is going to want to go home with you after that?

14. Bros before hos. I learned this the hard way: Do not sleep with a friend's ex-boyfriend. Ever. Even if they say they don't care, they do.

15. You are 200 times more likely to be an alcoholic than your straight counterparts.

16. Beauty fades. Develop some inner resources, otherwise when it goes, those of us with less far to fall will laugh at you. To your aging face.

17. Men, like lotto tickets, should not be had every day. The odds are the same.

18. Romantic friendships will end up being neither.

19. Cultivate friendships with straight men. "But we have nothing in common," you say? Bullshit. You are men. Many straight men are in fact softer and sweeter than their faggoty brothers.

20. Make friends with at least one dyke, you silly faggot. When the shit goes down--for instance your mother dies--fags will drop you in an instant if you aren't fun. Dykes will come to your house with food.

21. Don't make friendships based solely around how outrageous you are. It's a shitty kind of attention.

22. Don't refer to anyone as a fag hag. It's rude. Also don't hang out with fag hags.

23. Don't date people who have scars that are older than you.

24. After all of that, you are still not a strong black woman.

Dear Democratic Party

2006-03-04T01:53:00.000-08:00

By the time you read this letter I'll be gone. I just want you to know that it isn't you. You're a very nice political party and I'm sure some day you'll make someone a very happy president. Never for a second doubt that. But the reality is that we've grown apart. We're just two different people now, and I'm hoping we can be two different adults about this.

The time has come to face facts that neither of us has been very happy these past 11 years, and I think it's time we both recognized that and went our separate ways. I hope that in time you and I can go out for drinks and reminisce about old times and older friends. I'll truly value all that I learned during our time together. Truly I will.

But honestly, you've kind of let yourself go lately. I mean, we had a great connection when we first met, but have you weighed yourself lately? Or looked in a mirror before you left the house? In truth I've found myself feeling more than a little embarrassed introducing you to my friends, and not just because you insist on wearing that heinous pony tail/goatee combo that went out of style in the early nineties. Mostly it's because you've lost your backbone. You really used to stand for things. Now all I see you doing is playing hopscotch with your cousin the Republican Party. And don't think I didn't notice you and the Green Party making out during the christmas party when you thought I was busy practicing carols with the Libertarian Party. That stung, it really did. I mean the GREEN PARTY?! Do you know how hard it was to be intimate with you without the rancid stink of patchouli ruining it for me later that night? I know I said it was the booze, but really it was the tofu stuck in your teeth that made me cut things short in bed.

And let's not even get started on your obsession with "connecting" with a younger voter. I know EXACTLY what you were doing behind the closed curtain of the voter booths with those younger guys. Did you really think I couldn't hear you? I was standing in the NEXT BOOTH for christsakes! After that I didn't even feel guilty when the Communist Party took me out for coffee, meaningless political banter and a sloppy blow job. At least he LISTENED to me.

Ultimately, you brought this on yourself. You've gotten so caught up in trying to out-do your crazy republican cousin that all you do is mirror whatever he says. If he came out as pro-puppies you'd probably start collecting anti-puppy signatures for the next ballot. When was the last time you two did anything that wasn't to spite each other? This whole codependent thing is really ruining it for both of you.

Well, I've said my piece. I hope some day you grow up enough to change the parts of you that drove me away. Because really, I still prefer your yellow-bellied whining to the gun-toting shenanigans of your cousin.

Sincerely,

Zeroes

On proper bedroom etiquette.

2006-03-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

[A jolly conversation I had with jsb_gambit, a sexy redhead.]

[23:47] jsb_gambit: :) i could use a milkshake i think
[23:47] theaspensays: how about a malted shake
[23:48] jsb_gambit: with whipped cream?
[23:48] theaspensays: of course, why get a malted shake without whipped cream?
[23:48] theaspensays: that's like having sex with a guy and then not smacking him around afterwards for being gay

[I sometimes wonder if me being raised as a southern baptist has had negative effects on my romantic life.]

It's Better Than God

2006-02-23T02:40:00.000-08:00

My friend Delicious introduced me to what may be the best dessert shop this side of the Mississippi. It's called Pix, it's in SE on Division and eating there is like having cherubs raised in the Candyland Correctional Facility for Wayward Angels gang-rape your tongue while singing a merry medley of Disney classics including (but not limited to): "A Whole New World" and "Bear Necessities". In all honesty if the only form of payment these people accepted were dead kittens there'd be a lot fewer fuzzy balls of love running around right now. I apologize to cat lovers, but once you've eaten there you'll understand why Mittens had to go into the wood-chipper. Really, it was for the best.

-Zeroes, the consumer whore-

ps I don't call him that because I think he's delicious. In all honesty I've never eaten of his flesh, that's just weird, why would you even think that? What, are you sick or something? Ugh.

Montage

2006-02-23T02:25:00.000-08:00

...he leans in close to, I dunno, kiss me I guess. Just then a huge glob of foam falls on my head and slides right into my eyes. Vigorously shaking my cranium to dislodge the stinging detergent bubbles from my face I feel an impact as my teeth connect with and split the skin covering the bridge of his nose.

"Look, not to be mean or anything, but I'm really not interested and I'm just here to dance. Also, there's blood running down your face. Maybe you should go take care of that."

"What?!"

"I said there's blood running down your face, go to the bathroom and wash up."

Fast forward to:

"...I think you should jerk off with me on the phone."

"I really love it that you only call me when you're drunk and horny."

So I do it, because I still love him no matter what. Also, he's obcenely hot even if he is several states away these days.

Rewind to:

"...can you believe we're getting married?!"

"So I guess I won't be seeing you again this weekend."

I only wish he'd mentioned his boyfriend before I spent three days screwing his brains out. I would've given him more to remember me by when marital boredom inevitably sets in.

Two steps and a shimmy to:

...takes my hand and leads me down the hall to his bathroom, both of us reeking of post-coitus. He tells me we should do it again in the shower.

Then he points to the monstrous dildo he's suctioned onto the shower wall and refers to it as his "boyfriend". I lost his number pretty fast after that.

Left-right tango into:

"...kiss me baby, kiss me!! Waaauughaghaghagahgauaaa....."

What the hell kind of noise was that? Did he just have an orgasm or a stroke? No, wait, he's trying to talk. No stroke after all. Damn, now how am I supposed to get rid of him?

Take a big running jump to right now,

...and you'll understand why I find myself wishing that my creepy love of boobs included an appreciation of below-the-belt lady-parts. It's not that I don't like guys, I do. I really, really do. It's just that they're often insane. Not "fun at parties" insane, more like watching his shell-shocked neighbors on the evening news saying "he always seemed like such a nice guy" insane. Trust me, I'm under no illusions about being just as nuts as every other XY chromosome sack out there. It has me wondering how I've traumatized other men during my time on this big blue-green ball of mud and molten metals.

Open Letter on Bar Etiquette

2006-02-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

More often than not I find myself slinging booze at assorted gay bars around the country as a way of paying rent and buying shiny things. It's a good life but it's come to my attention that there are those of you out there that didn't seem to get the memo about why it's wrong and foolish to sleep with the help. So here are three pointers to keep you from pissing off your bartender and making your future drinking experiences awkward:

1) It is both a fun and acceptable part of the business transaction to flirt with your bartender. There's a very good chance he/she will indeed flirt back. However, do notice that the cute bartender is also flirting with a large number of the other patrons. It's part of the job, often a part we all enjoy, but still just part of the job. Unless the bartender flirts with you while he/she is off the clock, don't confuse witty banter with an overwhelming desire to get into your pants.

2) Never, EVER, ask for a bartenders number or offer your own unsolicited number. If you give yours he/she may indeed intend to call at some point in the future, but most likely it won't happen and then you'll find yourself upset that your phone never rang. If the person serving you shots has any strong desire to see you outside of the dimly lit club with it's throbbing bass and vocals they will make an effort to get your number all on their own.

3) As with anyone in the servant caste, getting romantic or physical with someone who's job description involves serving everyone else comes with it's own slew of problems. If the encounter is purely physical you'd better make damn sure you pull out all the stops and knock his/her socks off as some of the less scrupulous bartenders have been known to report on the varied sexual prowess of previous conquests. Do you really want to be known as the guy who gives lousy head and smells like cabbage and old feet? As far as dating goes, this is just about as unwise as dating a coworker. Unless the two of you are psychotically over-mature in regards to issues such as jealousy and insecurity your two to three weeks of pre-marital bliss will most likely end with an in-club screaming match and thrown cocktails. I can tell you right now that security tends to frown on that sort of thing.

Please follow these guidelines to ensure a happy and productive boozing experience. And remember, it's all about having fun, don't let horny ruin everyone's good time.

Kittens

2006-01-29T00:54:00.000-08:00

I was thinking it would be fun to rig a bunch of kittens to explode on human contact and then release them into an unsuspecting Los Angeles. Because hey, everyone loves kittens.

Racist Venting

2006-01-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

The cell phone rang at 7 this morning.

Through the noise of what sounded like a busy social event that I would rue having missed, or a very tedious social gathering of loud pub friends, a clipped and oddly high-pitched voice spoke to me:

"Zeeross?"

"Yes"

"Zeeross?"

"Yes"

"Zeeross?"

"Yes! What?"

"I ham callingk from Cahpeetlwon and wud lik to inform u..."

I hung up.

I hate hanging up on people, it's rude and shows a laziness I typically associate with the kinds of people that have made this country into the mess it is today.

Normally when my credit card company calls they have something important to say, so I try to at least listen long enough to find out if they're pitching some crappy service or actually trying to help me out. It's usually the former but it pays to be nice all the same. However, it was 7 in the morning, and they were calling a cell phone that has limited minutes which would be poorly spent trying to translate the unintelligible gibberish that was being spewed out in a poor attempt at English Those of you who know me know that mornings and I have come to a tense cease-fire accord, and it's little things like this that push the entire relationship back into a Cold War state that would make the Cuban Missile Crisis look like harsh words being exchanged by irate soccer moms from their gas-guzzling SUVs on a hot weekend afternoon.

Call me old-fashioned but I'm a firm believer that anyone working in a field that requires large amounts of verbal communication should at least be proficient in the language they are to be using. You don't need to fluent. Heck, few Americans are, but it would be nice if you were at least able to speak without an accent thicker than three week old Christmas gravy on a cold winter morning. I myself would never consider working in a communications-heavy job in France for instance. I know a little French, but unless the job consisted of me insulting their mothers, commenting on the size of their tits, or asking them "who cut the cheese?" I would be woefully inept at such an endeavor and therefore try to avoid such situations all together. Besides, I really don't think it's ever polite to make fart jokes with a total stranger no matter how awkward the silence is.

I understand that it's a great money saver to outsource many of our jobs to foreign countries. But trust me, phone operations is not one of them. Besides, the south needs those jobs badly in order to afford the monthly payments on their over sized lives. How are our own noble rednecks going to keep treading those fickle financial waters, just barely keeping their heads above water, if they are being replaced by gender-indeterminate, unintelligible foreigners?

Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are gender-indeterminate, unintelligible, or foreign. Often those qualities switch from week to week, but I try not to mention it as they're good folks and I love 'em.

Does thinking people should learn a language before they start using it on native speakers of said language make me a little bit racist. Probably. Do I care all that much about it? Not really.

So please, you strange, garbled, foreign person who called me (at 7 f**king AM), hang up the phone, go take a few night classes and come back later. I promise not to hang up on you until I find out that you're pitching volcano insurance like I do with all of those sweet southern folk who waste my daytime minutes.

I only miss him when he's around.

2006-01-29T00:50:00.000-08:00

Before I left Houston I was dating a guy that I loved for two extremely valid reasons:

1) He always knew when I was BS'ing him.

2) He never, ever, let me get away with it.

3) He had the kind of butt that was so perfect I find myself comparing every other butt I see to his. It's the kind of posterior that makes you seriously question the merits of atheism.

OK, so three things. But to be fair I only threw the last one in to make you jealous.

Unfortunately, we spent most of our time fighting over just about everything under the sun; or having mind-blowing grab-the-headboard make-up sex. Or having more of said sex. And then some more fighting. The last time we spoke it was the kind of fight that had us both erasing each other's numbers from our phones. The kind of trite made-for-TV verbal smack-down that people generally only resort to during sweeps week on the WB. Obviously at the time it seemed completely rational.

Now that a decent chunk of time has passed and sanity has settled back in, I miss the guy like babies miss oxygen when you forget to hide all the plastic bags after a shopping spree. The result of this is like waking up one morning after an incredibly lucid dream to discover that no, you can't actually fly. This leaves me with that dissatisfied feeling settling into my bones that I generally only get when I've been picked last for the softball team. Or having the really hot guy I've been flirting with all night hook up with my best friend. Mostly the first one really. I blame a childhood love of books and an infantile loathing of my peers for my poor athletic skills.

Lately I find myself snuggled up in a human burrito of covers and shivers trying to fall asleep while my head is a theater that only seems to have gotten the highlights reel from my time with the [omitted] (I'm omitting his name because if I'm one day famous and decide to reprint my online whining as a text accompaniment to gay soft porn I don't want to get sued). It's all recriminations and calling in late for work because I had sex with my boyfriend. I hated his friends, he whined too much, his roommates were pissy queens, he freaked out about everything and the only thing we had in common was a love of health food and his butt. I lied to him about something extremely important and kept him at a distance because I was leaving for Portland and didn't want to get my heart broken again (I'm sure he's got better complaints about me but not talking to him makes getting his side of things kinda tough). After all of the crap I still love the guy though, and not just because of the insanely good sex. Though that really did help.

The point of this being that if [omitted] ever reads this he should know that even if it had to turn out exactly the same way I'd do it all over again. Only with more ninjas.

Santa Barbarians and Prodigal Suns

2006-01-29T00:48:00.000-08:00

So I finally made it around to Santa Barbara. What's really creeping me out is that it's like I NEVER LEFT. Aside from the fact that they moved the microwave and got a new silverware holder the Home house is exactly the same. And the town hasn't changed a bit either. It would be far too easy to wake up one morning completely convinced that Texas was all just some weird dream. Or at least it would be if I didn't have the string of people in Texas that are infinitely more real to me now than most of the folks ever were here. I almost feel like a wedding crasher that no one's caught onto yet. It makes me wonder what kind of person I was before I left.

What, Again?

2006-01-29T00:47:00.000-08:00

For the love of Pete! It looks like the Gulf Coast is gonna get slammed by another god-level storm. At this point I think everyone is simply gonna evacuate to whichever state is still left once the dust settles. My money is on Florida, it was their turn to get beat up last year.

To all of my friends not currently living in the Gulf Coast area, be very happy that the worst you have to worry about is the occasional earthquake and the legions of consumer-damned Aberzobies. It beats the stuffing out of ocean swells that eat entire towns and winds that'll rip trees right out of the ground to give your living room an unexpected garden makeover.

Wish us luck down here, we're gonna need it.

Fashion Alert

2006-01-29T00:46:00.000-08:00

Ok y'all, time to get crackin' on the latest fashion trend!

Ever since hurricane Katrina went and whiped out that little stretch of land we used to all like getting drunk and crazy in there've been tons of destitute gay folks running around with nowhere to go!

This season's newest hot fashion accessory is a Katrina Refugee all your own! They go great with Prada or Gucci, can drink like a fish, and will occasionally cook you breakfast out of sheer gratitude.

Get yours now before all the good ones get snatched up!

But seriously, if anyone is in any of the areas recieving refugees do anything you can for these folks. I have to say that Houston has by and large been made better by these people who are wonderfully polite, very hard working, and occasionally quite cute.

Moving Day Is Upon Us!

2006-01-29T00:31:00.000-08:00

As of October 1st I will be on my way to beautiful and scenic Portland Oregon.

The timing on this couldn't be better as the recent influx of refugees from the remains of New Orleans is quickly turning Houston into a powder keg that I'm more than happy not to be around for when it goes off.

For those who don't know, Hurricane Katrina has effectively wiped out what was once New Orleans. The few buildings that survived the initial onslaught are now under water and will have to be torn down when the city is eventually drained. Anyone who has visited New Orleans in the past should realize that that city is gone for good. Nothing of what it used to be has survived.

So yeah, for all of my friends in California and Portland I'll be road tripping my way up to Portland around mid-October.

Love you all and see you soon.

Aspen

ps Avoid the Texas coast and Louisianna for the next year as it's about to become a socially unstable biohazard.

Lessons

2006-01-29T00:29:00.000-08:00

California taught me not to take life too seriously.

Georgia told me what ignorance is like.

Colorado showed me how to fight.

Michigan reminded me how beautiful the world is when we leave it alone.

Sweden let me know there's a whole world out there that has nothing to do with American values.

Oregon helped me to just be myself.

Texas taught me what true friendship really means.