In the Mornings, We Goldbrick

So here I am, back at the old post, literally. After six weeks of unemployment (temp assignments tend to become scarce in the summer, when larger companies can get their grunt work done by interns), my agency sent me right back to the school district, though fortunately to a different department. So now I'm part of a rather large team of temps up in the ballroom/auditorium at the top of the building (one of the ugliest and most poorly-proportioned rooms I've ever been in, though just what you'd expect at the top of one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen), registering new and transferring K-8 students for the next few weeks.

I quite enjoy the work, one gets the sensation of actually helping people, and there is enough variety in the requests and issues that I don't have a chance to get bored, but not so much variety that I get overwhelmed. I do get rather drained, psychically, interacting with so many strangers during the course of a day, especially since a lot of them are angry or frustrated, which always rubs off on me and makes me anxious. Still, I'm liking the assignment.

The best part is that it's almost always incredibly slow in the mornings. And when it's slow, there isn't anything to do, so I've been able to do some writing. Quite a lot of writing, actually... I finished the rough draft of Chapter 7 at Worst Luck, with Part 2 (which I actually posted a couple of months ago) and Part 3 up and ready for your perusal. After almost a year of not publishing, it feels wonderful to have some movement here again. If only I knew what the next chapter was going to be like, I could get to work on it.

As always, feedback is encouraged and appreciated!

Well, there's not much else to report. And the morning is just about over, it's starting to hop in here, so I guess I'll close up and get to work. Mille bacci!

(UPDATE EDITION) PS: I just had an Odwalla Super Protein Matcha-Licious soy drink with green tea for lunch, and it was far and away the nastiest thing I have ever put in my mouth. Just thought I'd warn you. And now for a little something pretty to take the bad taste out, the babe-licious Marcus Schenkenberg (pre-Surreal Life, naturally):

The OLOGY Meme

So here we are again. I don't have a hell of a lot to talk about, or at least nothing I feel like talking about, so I've done the usual: borrowed a meme from DM at GreenDuckies. Enjoy!

GRUB-OLOGY

What is your salad dressing of choice? Honey Mustard.

What is your favorite fast food restaurant? Boston Market.

What is your favorite sit down restaurant? The Cheesecake Factory. It is almost ironic, though, that I don't like cheesecake. But their food is wonderful, the service is really good, and the other desserts are just fabulous.

On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant? I almost always leave 20%. If the service was merely perfunctory, I go to 15% (I've never had bad service); if someone in my party has made a nuisance of him- or herself, I'll bump it up to 25% to salve my embarrassment.

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? I don't really think there is one. I get sick of things so quickly. But for the sake of argument I'll say cheese and crackers with fruit.

Name three foods you detest above all others. Avocadoes, celery, and squash.

What is your favorite dish to order in a Chinese restaurant? Steamed salmon with asparagus in black-bean sauce. Or else orange chicken. Or maybe honey-walnut scallops. I love Chinese food.

What are your pizza toppings of choice? Linguica, artichoke hearts, and olives.

What do you like to put on your toast? Whatever it will hold... butter of course (it isn't toast without butter), and jelly or apple-butter or peanut-butter and bananas.

What is your favorite type of gum? I don't chew gum. It bores me.

TECHN-OLOGY

Number of contacts in your cell phone? Hell if I know. I could go get my phone and count them, but I don't want to.

Number of contacts in your email address book? Again, I don't really know. I have three different email address books, I've added people rather indiscriminately over the years, and I've never cleaned any of them out.

What is your wallpaper on your computer? I use Webshots as my wallpaper program, which shuffles between hundreds upon hundreds of pictures, changing the wallpaper every four hours. My selections are of scenery I like, flowers, castles and other architecture, and of course hunky underclad men. Right this minute, though, I am displaying some decayed-looking Irish castle:

What is your screensaver on your computer? Same as the above, except when in screensaver mode it shuffles through the pictures every thirty seconds.

Are there naked pictures saved on your computer? Oh, not really, only about 2.5 gigabytes. The average picture is about 100k, so that's about, what, twenty-five thousand pictures? That's not a lot, is it?

How many land line phones do you have in your house? Just one line, with two extensions... one in the kitchen and a portable that floats around the house.

How many televisions are in your house? Four... one in my room, one in the Grandmother's room, and two in the living room (one for watching and one for playing video games).

What kitchen appliance do you use the least? The bread machine? The Fry-Daddy? The electric skillet? The automatic rotisserie? We have lots of small appliances we never use. But of the large appliances, the one I use the least is the dishwasher. I hate doing dishes.

What is the format of the radio station you listen to the most? Classical music (KDFC 102.1). But I don't really listen to it much, it's mostly ambient noise.

How many sex toys do you own that require batteries? Just one. And none that don't. Actually, it doesn't require batteries, they just make it vibrate, which is more entertaining than utilitarian. If a sex-toy can, indeed, be considered utilitarian.

BI-OLOGY

What do you consider to be your best physical attribute? My brain is by far the most useful and well-developed part of my body. Or, if we're limiting ourselves to external physical attributes, I'll say my skin: it's very soft and smooth.

Are you right-handed or left-handed? Some of each... I was born left-handed but taught to write and draw with my right hand. So my left side is stronger, I tend to pick things up with my left hand, and use my left hand for anything that requires strength or stamina; but my right side is more agile, I use my right hand for anything requiring delicacy or a steady touch.

Do you like your smile? Oh, God, no. I look like a rotting jack-o-lantern when I smile, all lopsided and a little bit scary.

Have you ever had anything removed from your body? In order: testicular duct cyst, age 18 months; two canine teeth growing upward in the roof of my mouth, age 9; lymph node under the chin which turned out to be infected with tuberculosis from a cat scratch, age 15; wisdom teeth, age 22; middle lower left molar, age 34 (the rest of my teeth are coming out within the next year or so).

Would you like to have anything removed from your body? I wouldn't mind having all this damned disgusting fat sucked out, and some of the extra skin tailored off. I have no qualms about liposuction, and if I could afford it, I'd be all tight skin and visible bones right now.

Do you prefer to read when you go to the bathroom? I keep a lot of magazines, Readers' Digest and Vogue and Vanity Fair in there... I don't do a lot of reading, though, just short bits and looking at pictures. I'm not there for all that long at a time.

Which of your five senses do you think is keenest? Smell. I can smell the subtlest differences in things, I can smell things from a great distance, and I can often tell the ingredients of my food by sniffing it.

When was the last time you had a cavity? I have one now, actually. It's very small, though; and since I'm having them all removed soon, anyway, I don't feel like getting it taken care of unless it starts to hurt. I haven't had a cavity filled for a couple of years.

What is the heaviest item you lift regularly? My great blubbery carcass? Hoisting myself out of a chair has become something of an olympic event. But if we mean inanimate objects, I'll say the Grandmother's mattress. She likes to change her sheets once a week, but she can't lift the corners of the bed anymore to get the fitted sheets on, so I always make the bed for her.

Have you ever been knocked unconscious? No. I've always wanted to, though.

MISC-OLOGY

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? Nah, I'd prefer to be surprised.

If you could change your first name, what would you change it to? Richard. People call me that all the time, anyway, it might reduce confusion. Or else Charles, which is what I would have been named if Grandmother had gotten her way about naming my father.

How do you express your artistic side? I write, and I perform in drag.

What color do you think you look best in? Blue, I think. Maybe red. Actually, I look best in black, but people get all pantsy about whether or not black is a color. I say it is, but it's so controversial I try to avoid it.

How long do you think you could last in a medium security prison? I don't know... I'm fairly adaptable, but then I also don't deal well with tacky people. All I can say is that I don't intend to ever find out.

Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake? Not by mistake, no. Oh, wait, I did once swallow a baby-tooth that fell out while I was eating a muffin, I guess that's technically non-food.

If we weren’t bound by society’s conventions, do you have a relative you would make a pass at? Hmmmm... my nephew's pretty cute. And I have a distant cousin I've long had the hots for. Of course, they're both straight, so it wouldn't matter, would it?

How often do you go to church? Just about every week. Although I'm not myself a Christian, I started driving Grandmother to church several years ago as an ongoing Ninth Step; and though at first it was a painful chore, I've since convinced Grandmother to change from the San Leandro congregation to the Walnut Creek congregation, and have gotten where I rather enjoy it... much nicer people, the sermons are always very interesting, and there's almost always one really cute boy to look at: my current church eye-candy is the boy on the right in this video (isn't he adorable? My attraction is completely non-sexual, though... he's pretty like flowers are pretty or vases are pretty... so I don't feel guilty gazing at him in church). And we always go to brunch afterward. It's kind of a nice family ritual we have.

Have you ever saved someone’s life? Not so far as I'm aware.

Has someone ever saved yours? My mother pulled me out of the Stanislaus River when my stepfather tried to teach me to swim, at the age of about seven or eight, by the Sink-or-Swim Method: flinging me off a rock into a very deep pool. I opted for Sink, mostly to spite him and also because it was very beautiful under the water. I'm pretty sure that's the closest to death I've ever been.

DARE-OLOGY

Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000? Do I get to wear shoes, or at least flip-flops? Is it warm enough out? Can I have sunscreen? If so, then I probably would.

Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100? Uh, yeah? Hell, I'd pay him! But yeah, I'd kiss anybody for $100. Men, women, dogs, reptiles, whatever. Kissing isn't that big of a deal.

Would you have sex with a member of the same sex for $10,000? Darn tootin'! And a member of the opposite sex. I'd do both at once. I'd feel uncomfortable, and they definitely wouldn't be getting their money's worth, but I'd be willing to do it.

Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000? No. Thank God, I do have limits! But I have a terrible fear of being dismembered, even on so small a scale. Maybe for two million, but still I don't know. The idea makes me very queasy.

Would you never blog again for $50,000? Hmmmm... yeah, I think so. It's not like I do this all the time anymore. And it's not like I have this big readership depending on me. And it's not like I don't have other things to do with my time and thoughts. So yeah, I definitely would.

Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000? Sho'nuff! Though I can't imagine why anybody'd want me to. And I'd hate every minute of it. But I don't worry about people seeing me naked, I just don't like being naked.

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? That sounds really painful; I doubt I'd be able to carry it off without hurling or passing out. But yeah, I'd certainly try.

Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000? No, I don't think so. Even the life of someone I felt was nothing but a canker in the eye of humanity. I just don't think I could bring myself to do it.

Would you shave your head and get your entire body waxed for $5,000? I've always wanted to get my whole body waxed... so I'd do that for free. And head-shaving? Sure, why not? I've long been curious what my skull looks like, I haven't seen it since I was five.

Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000? Oh, fuck yeah! I don't watch that much television anyway. But I would keep it a secret... I dislike when people say they never watch television, like they're somehow better than everyone else.

But you know, all of the above is kind of sticky... with my finances the way they are, I'd do just about anything for large sums of money. To give you an idea of how strapped I am: I'd perform anilingus on Dick Cheney for enough money to get out of debt (about $35k). Any more than that is just gravy!

HUNK-OLOGY

Okay, I added that one. But it was the easiest segue I could think of to the end of the post.

But before I go, I must admit something that slightly embarrasses me: I have fallen suddenly and very deelply in love with Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco. I don't really care about the music, it's cute and fluffy and the words don't make sense; but the videos have a very lush and vaguely gothic aesthetic, and all four of the boys are just ever-so-pretty-pretty.

But Brendon in particular (pix here, here, and here), I just want to put stuff in that boy's mouth... strawberries, chocolates, spoonfuls of pudding, whatever comes to hand. Here he is looking unspeakable in their latest video: But It's Better If You Do.

And now back to our regularly scheduled beefcake:

Do They Make a Pill for This?

It will come as no surprise to you, my faithful longtime readers, that I occasionally go a little bit overboard with the eBay. But for those just joining us, I will summarize: I almost always have some eBay obsession going on at any given moment, and that obsession tends to get stronger in direct counterproportion to how much money I can afford to spend.

For the last few years, I have been almost solely interested in vintage costume jewelry, then Suzanne Somers jewelry, as well as other rhinestone or CZ jewelry, vintage furs with heads and tails intact, and beaded evening gowns... drag stuff, essentially. Then when I started this new phase in my life, I went nuts buying argyle sweater-vests and dress-shirts and cute loafers... my office-boy drag. But for the last little while, I have been obsessed with two new things.

I've been collecting elephants, rather casually, for years... I like elephants, I think they're cute, there's something about them that appeals to me (it has been suggested that the trunk is a phallic symbol, but I'm not so sure that's why). I chose my domain host because it has an elephant as a logo; I've loathed the Republicans for coopting the noble beasts; and I get really angry when people think I'm a Republican when they see a piece of my elephant collection.

My first elephant was a stylized crystal one that Grandmother gave me on my 12th birthday, which I still have. And when I told Caroline and JB that I like elephants, a couple of years ago, they both started giving me elephants as gifts... mostly little ones, the kinds of things you find in import shops and the like. I have some fertility elephants from Africa (carved in fretwork to show a miniature elephant inside), a couple of mirror-jeweled elephants from India, a somewhat crudely carved wooden elephant from Tepic, Mexico covered in bright-colored beads, an enameled keepsake box with a jeweled pink elephant on top (I have a particular fetish for pink elephants, by the way, because of the whole alcoholic thing), and several porcelain elephants of various vintages and provenances. I even have a Beanie Baby elephant and a marcasite elephant pendant and a couple of Ganesha idols littered around my room.

But lately, just in the last couple of months, I've been on an elephant binge. I keep finding them in unlikely places and am unable to resist buying them. I've probably doubled my collection since April. I now have Lenox salt-and-pepper elephants, elephant bookends, a giant stuffed fuzzy pink elephant meant for a baby's crib (and absolutely the most comfortable pillow on my bed), an elephant pedestal, a pair of porcelain elephant boxes, a painted stoneware elephant, a tin and wood miniature rocking-horse elephant, a cast-iron elephant pen-holder, et cetera.

But here's where the obsession part comes in: one day at work, where I do a lot of browsing around on eBay during the slow moments, I came across this little gem:

Isn't he the cutest thing you ever saw? And he has my initial right there on his ear! It's like he was made just for me! The opening bid was only $15, so I put it on my watch list with every intention of buying it, and I checked on it every few hours to enjoy the sight of him.

A few days later, a couple of hours before the auction ended, I was surprised that the bidding had already gone up to $37. For this little thing? It's only three and a half inches tall, for chrissakes. I had only been willing to go as high as $25 for it; what's so special about it to anybody besides me? So I looked up some of the words used in the title to see if it was a collectible I'd never heard of, and soon discovered that I was in way over my head: Wien Augarten porcelain is some of the finest in the world, and it commands very high prices, even on eBay.

"But I looooooooove him!" my inner shopping-addict wailed, "He's so cuuuuuuuuute!" After a quick conference with Caroline (always the wrong person to go to if you want to be talked out of buying something) and a short wrestling match between the inner shopping addict and the last vestiges of my prudent Capricorn nature, I decided that I would bid as high as $80. For a wee porcelain elephant, eminently collectable and unspeakably adorable but so very very small!

Well, after all my justification and bother, it didn't matter: I was outbid in the final thirty seconds of the auction; then that bidder was outbid in the final five seconds of the auction. The elephant finally went for $115. I was simply out of my league, a casual elephant collector with few resources up against rabid moneyed Augarten collectors.

Fortunately, eBay has this little mechanism whereby they present you with several other items that they think you might like, every time you lose an auction (which happens so infrequently that I'd forgotten they do that). And amongst all the way-out-of-my-league Augarten items in the conciliatory selection, there was this little guy, who isn't Augarten, but is from Vienna and is an elephant:


So maybe he isn't quite as adorable as the Augarten elephant, but he's still awfully cute! Jolly, even; and twice the size of the other. And I got him for $2, plus $5 shipping! I also got the Lenox salt-and-pepper shakers at the same time, which are gorgeous and only cost $10.

I decided after that close shave with the Augarten collectors, that maybe I ought to stay away from elephants on eBay. But I was still on eBay, as there aren't very many sites of much interest that I can access from work (we have these filters that block time-wasters and porn). So I poked around looking for things that I might like to look at but would be unlikely to buy... like furniture, or fine jewelry, or vintage automobiles (I do the same thing in real life... if I have no money to spend, I do my window-shopping in places like Sak's and Nieman's, Tiffany and Cartier, places where I can't afford anything at all).

And like most of my plans, it finally went astray.

Something you might not know about me is that I have for most of my life been fascinated by miniatures and dollhouses. In fact, I am fascinated by anything that's supposed to be big being small, and vice versa. Gulliver's Travels always caught my fancy, as did The Incredible Shrinking Man; I longed for giant novelty pencils or grains of rice with Bible verses written on them. I could play for hours just with Barbie's shoes.

Have you ever read The Borrowers? It was a series of books by Mary Norton (who also wrote Bedknobs & Broomsticks) about a clan of tiny people who lived under the floorboards and between the walls of an English country-house; their furnishings and utensils were mostly adapted from the sorts of small things one might lose around a house, wooden matches and matchboxes and toothpicks and hatpins and blotting paper and stamps and birthday candles... they sat on thread spools or ring-boxes, they slept in jewelry cases, they ate off of pennies and old bottle-caps and drank out of thimbles.

The whole thing entranced me; I read the entire series in the sixth grade, several times each, and spent the next two years creating my own Borrowers' House out of shoe-boxes and fabric samples and game-pieces and anything else I could lay my hands on. About the same time, I found a store called The Dollhouse Lady, near my mother's house where I spent every other weekend in accordance with the terms of the custody agreement, which sold dollhouses and miniature furniture. I went to that store every time I got a chance and just stared and stared at the beautiful little creations, complete with electric lights and working machinery and tiny perfectly-dressed dolls eating dainty plaster food from real china plates as thin as a contact lens.

The thing is, I was so fascinated by The Borrowers and The Dollhouse Lady that I completely forgot about my first experience with dollhouses... forgot it so completely that when I was trolling around on eBay and started looking at dollhouse miniatures without any intention of ever buying any, I was thunderstruck when the memory returned to me, full-blown and almost shocking in its perfection of detail.

When I was small, about five or so, there was a toy that I loved to play with when we visited my mother's parents up in Twain Harte... it was a lithographed tin dollhouse filled with single-cast thin plastic furniture, late-50s vintage, which had been my mother's when she was little. I loved that house so much, I enjoyed just looking at it after I'd arranged the furniture, I could fondle the pieces and gaze spellbound for hours.

Later on, my sister Suzie and I both received Fisher Price Play Family houses, she the suburban home and I the vacation A-frame, as Christmas presents (our cousins David and Billy got the schoolhouse and the barn, completing the set). These toys were considered much safer, I suppose, made of masonite and plastic with no sharp edges, the little people mere pegs of wood with spherical plastic heads and extremely minimalist features, the furniture clunky and unattractive with little holes in which to place the peg-people.

Nevertheless, I loved these toys... the little furniture, the decorations painted on the walls and floors, the closet under the moveable staircase where you could hide things (I'd quite forgotten about them until just now when I was looking up a link). We had another full set here at Grandmother's, but we had the airport and the houseboat instead of the barn and schoolhouse.

I played with these well into late childhood, and incorporated the pieces into later toys, such as Lego and Playmobil (which was a little more detailed and therefore a little more fascinating... I had Lego and Erector sets as well as the Playmobil King Arthur playset). When I graduated up to my Borrower fixation, bits of all those playsets were incorporated into the warrenlike cardboard palace that grew atop my dresser; that fixation lasted until we moved out of that house into another and the whole thing had to be taken apart... I had the parts and thought about putting it back together, but then I discovered masturbation at thirteen, which took up all my spare time.

With so many toys being replaced by and incorporated into newer toys, it's no wonder I forgot all about the tin dollhouse with the plastic furniture at mother's parents'. But come that fateful day, a few weeks ago, I was cursorily glancing through dollhouse miniatures and came across one just like the one we had in Twain Harte.

The brand name is Marx, by the way, and I was instantly sucked into the really huge selection of vintage Marx dollhouses and furniture that were available. Eventually I started to bid on things, and was having a hard time... apparently I'm not the only one who pines to recapture a bit of his childhood, Marx has its own eBay category. I was after a fully-furnished two-story colonial, and nothing else would do; and though such auctions usually started around $20, they usually ended well over $100. One such house, complete with all of its pieces and its original box, went for nearly $500.

There were also these other brand-names that would come up in lots with Marx pieces, Renwal and Plasco and Ideal... I had to do research to find out what made them different. I learned that Renwal pieces (which are much nicer than the Marx pieces, being cast from a harder thinner plastic, in assembled parts for more realism and greater detail) were on a larger scale than the Marx pieces I remembered; furthermore, there were different Marx lines, soft plastic and hard plastic and Little Hostess and Princess Petite, each on different scales themselves.

This was all very dizzying, but I tried to concentrate only on the Marx pieces that were not Little Hostess or Princess Petite... and though I was able to nail down a couple of loose box-lots containing the furniture I remembered, I couldn't get a house I wanted, being contantly outbid at the last minute every time I tried. Eventually, though, this one turned up:



It was about the right kind (though the one we had was lithographed with blue clapboard over a fieldstone first-floor) and it came with a lot of furniture and a few little extras; and though it was rather expensive at $165, it was a "Buy It Now" auction, so I could just get it and not have to worry about getting outbid again (which is just horribly frustrating). So after a little dithering (dare I spend so much on something so frivolous? Where will I put it? What will I tell Grandmother?) I went ahead and bought it.

Well, when it turned up (oh, yeah, the shipping was $70, since they sent the 38"x18"x12" object assembled in an appliance box, making my grand total for this particular folly $215), I was thrilled and elated and unpacked it and set up the card-table and started playing with it right away... but I was also just a tiny bit disappointed: you see, the house and furniture I bought were on a different, larger scale than the other Marx furniture I bought, the Marx furniture I remember from childhood.

So it turns out that the Louis Marx Company of New York NY had two nearly identical lines in different scales: the soft-plastic furniture in a lithographed tin house at 1/2" scale, and hard-plastic furniture in a lithographed tin house at 3/4" scale (which was the same scale as the Renwal and Ideal furniture of the same period), in addition to the Little Hostess and Princess Petite lines, which I now know to be 1" scale (the standard in dollhouse miniatures, wherein one inch equals one foot). The tin houses cannot be differentiated by sight, I had to learn the height differences in order to tell them apart.

So now two new avenues of obsession opened up for me: I could seek out more furniture for the house I have, taking advantage of the superior aesthetics of the Renwal line, as well as searching for a 1/2" scale house to fit the 1/2" scale furniture I bought to go with the house I wanted in the first place. Yay! More endless searching and imprudent buying!

Anyway, I ended up buying a couple of slightly beat-up Renwal lots from their late 40s "Jolly Twins" line, which was sold in complete rooms, including the walls and floor made of lithographed cardboard; I bought the living room and bedroom, but not the kitchen and bath (I was starting to redevelop some prudence, and these things eventually ended at $35 each). And then yesterday I found another "Buy It Now" house, this one with most of the original furniture in the correct 1/2" scale as well as the original family figures (though of later vintage, circa 1970, but it has working doors and windows), for $50. So now I have two dollhouses and two spare loose rooms and more furniture than I can shake a stick at.

And of course you know that, after browsing around in the real wood dollhouse miniatures listings on eBay, I'm going to have to get involved with them next time I have the time and money. There are dizzyingly grand house kits, there are brands of exquisite furniture, there are antiques and reproductions... it's a whole world of wee tiny miniscule magic!

I think what I need to do, though, is get the hell off eBay. This week I ordered a new evening gown custom made for Ducal Ball (which is coming up in July), and I bought an extravagant new wig to go with it, as well as a new necklace... there goes my state tax refund (my federal tax refund mostly went to the above insanity, though I did put a larger chunk of it into savings and my credit balance).

So maybe I should spend a little more time here, instead. But this isn't the easiest thing to do at work, it's so distracting. I can spend an hour or so without doing any work at all while I'm writing, though on eBay I can work for ten minutes and browse for two and go back to work and come back to browsing, switching back and forth without getting too mentally involved in either.

On the other hand, I have managed to get back to work on Worst Luck. I posted Chapter 7 Part 2 a few weeks ago, started my third rewrite of Part 3, and am thinking about the developing plotline more frequently. In fact, I'm even dreaming about the characters, something I only do when I'm really involved on a subconscious level with the story.

So if you have a mo', go check out the new post... it's not very long or very interesting, unless you're interested in the mechanical factors of a murder mystery. And hopefully I'll have Part 3 done within the next month or so. It will take some time to build up momentum again, but I think I have a lot of the blockages worked out that stopped me last year.

Well, back to work with me. Or maybe I'll take a quick snack break... there's ice cream in the freezer that I got at lunch, I think I'll go eat it (it's starting to get warm here). Cheers!

Kill Whitey

You may have noticed, if you've read through this website with any regularity or depth, that I have a lot of pet peeves. There are grammar peeves like misusing who and whom or ending sentences with prepositions, and there are domestic peeves like squeezing the toothpaste in the middle or folding towels in halves instead of thirds, and there are roadway peeves like going the speed limit in the left lane or coming to a complete stop before turning a corner.

But there's this one pet peeve that comes up every now and again to send me spinning with picayune rage... the use of the word "White" to describe an ethnicity. I don't know why this bugs me so much, but it gets right up my nose.

I mean, the whole point of such PC phrases as African-American or Asian-American is that they describe a person's cultural ethnicity rather than his or her skin-color. So why can't people pony up with European-American at the same time? It's no harder to say, and it's infinitely more descriptive.

But oftentimes I'll be filling out a form of some kind, and there are boxes for African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native-American, Pacific Islander, etc., on and on and on in all sorts of different permutations, punctuated by the pithy catch-all "White"... which includes a lot of different ethnicities, Nordic to Semitic, from Europe and Asia and Africa and the Americas. And it pisses me off. So much so that I've gotten in the habit of checking the "Decline to State" box (which demographically counts as White, anyway, but at least I got my say in).

And "White" isn't the only gross generalization... those little boxes cover all sorts of vagueness. I mean, "Asian" means anyone from the continent of Asia, from Turkey or Iran or India or China, but in general usage it only means those of the Asiatic (or in old-fashioned parlance "Mongoloid") genotype, leaving the whole Western half of Asia without a continent to call its own. Furthermore, what about all those islands? Is a Japanese person a Pacific Islander or an Asian? For that matter, where does it leave the Britons, neither exactly European nor particularly Oceanian?

Would a person whose parents or grandparents emigrated from Ethiopia or the Sudan be the same ethnicity as a person whose great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents were hauled to America in slave ships? And how does "Hispanic" (which in Latin means Spanish) exactly describe people from every part of the Western Hemisphere south of the US border? Isn't there an ethnic difference between a Peruvian from an Andean jungle village and a Mexican from a Yucatan beachfront city? It's a sea of confusion, that's what it is.

But then, when you come right down to it, having to classify ethnicity at all is kind of an asshole thing to do. The fact that it still matters whether or not a person is black or white (or brown or yellow or red, or Latino or Oriental or Indian, or whatever un-PC word you want to use... and don't even get me fucking started on the insulting PC catchall "people of color") just irritates me. You can't stop racism by making a big to-do about race... but then you can't correct the effects of the last two or three centuries of American racism without making a big to-do about race, either.

I mean, there was a time not that long ago when White Men (and by "White Men" I mean "European-American Christian socionormative males whose ancestors had been in the States for more than three generations") ran everything in this country, subjugating and repressing everyone else as hard as they could for as long as they could.

But then people started wondering why White Men were in charge, what special talents they had which others lacked. And they realized there was no reason, it's just the way it was, the way things had turned out. Since there was no rationale for the status quo, it had to be changed: and so the Civil Rights Movement was born. And out of the Civil Rights Movement came a far-reaching and idealistic reparative policy designed to right the wrongs of the previous two centuries, a little bureaucratic nightmare called Affirmative Action.

Affirmative Action was one of those good intentions that proverbially pave the road to Hell. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with a workforce that reflects the ethnic and sexual diveristy of its surrounding community? If a city is made up of say 55% women and 45% men, and those men and women identify ethnically as roughly 60% white and 20% black and 15% Asian and 5% Hispanic, why shouldn't the businesses and institutions in that city contain approximately the same percentages?

Unfortunately, people don't work out that way, we have these miniscule but cataclysmic differentiations between cultural sets and socioeconomic sets and education sets and language sets, all these little idiosyncrasies that make people interesting but totally fuck up a tidy demographic system... and the only way to make that percentage come to pass is to set racial and gender quotas on hiring and admissions, which cannot be done while observing fair and equitable hiring and admissions practices.

What we end up with is an impossible situation, a sort of a catch-22: how can we be sure that businesses and institutions are observing equal-opportunity practices if we don't track the numbers of minorities and genders involved? And yet, how can we fight racist and sexist prejudices with racist and sexist hiring and admissions quotas? We find ourselves fighting the enemy by becoming the enemy, and what good does that do?

And even if it could be done, why should we stop at racial and gender equity? Why not keep track of religions and weight-classes and sexual orientations and hair-colors, while we're at it? Are we sure that enough ugly Catholics are being hired in large corporations, that enough gay red-heads are represented in the food service industry, that short chubby women are given a fair shake in the government?

I think the problem is that civil rights and equality, now that they have gotten rolling, need some time to actually reach a fair and equitable state; and Americans are not internationally known for having a lot of patience.

But one day (unless we manage to blow ourselves up first) we will live in a state where people are hired for jobs and admitted to universities on merit and qualifications, where people are judged by their actions and intentions rather than by their surfaces and accents, where people are allowed and encouraged to become their own individual selves instead of being forced to clump together under a banner or label.

We're obviously on our way there... African-Americans in leadership positions are not a bizarre rarity, women routinely work in every known profession, and homos can fuck eachother in the ass in every state of the Union!

But there's still a lot of work to do. Politicians can still wave a diversionary red flag about Mexican immigrants and get a lot of people het up about it, we still tell jokes about Oriental drivers and chiseling Jews and stupid Southerners, and the likelihood of a woman president is still (sorry Hillary) decades away.

In the meantime, I am going to continue gnashing my teeth whenever I see or hear entire diverse ethnic communities lumped together under the dull and useless "white" or the inflammatory and useless "black." I am a European-American, thankyouverymuch.

Of course, I'm a lot of other things, as well... even some things that can't be mentioned in polite society.

The Merry Month of May

So here we are halfway through a month and I haven't posted yet! Bad blogger! But I get the feeling, every time I sit down to write something, that I've already said it. So little is going on in my life, and so little going on in my brain, that I feel like anything I make up to write will be boring... basically a dreary catalog of my mental health.

I did, on that topic, decide to start taking the Depakote, just to see what might happen. For the first couple of days I felt dreadful, groggy and sleepy and kind of, I don't know, vertigo-y? Like I'd look at something and it would seem to move farther away? I'm not sure what you call that. I wished I'd decided to start taking it on the weekend instead of in the middle of the week. Then on the third day I felt great, energetic and happy. Until about five-thirty, that is, when I completely and utterly crashed.

Since then I've felt pretty good... I'm sleeping a lot better, at any rate. I feel a little dizzy once in a while, which I don't care for, and I get really sleepy in the afternoons, enough that I'm able to take a nap... but I'm in a generally good mood. I'll see how I feel after I've been on the full dose for a month, and if I don't like it I'll talk to Dr. Shrinkimadink again and discuss something else.

So let's see, what else? I'm still at the same job, I'm bored out of my mind by the work, but the people are a lot of fun and the dress-code is very easy to live with (what I'd call College Caj). Still, I wish the agency would assign me to something that used my talents more. I mean, I'm a brilliant word-processor, a great writer, and pretty damned good at a lot of other things; but most of my assignments so far have been these low-end, go-nowhere, a-trained-monkey-could-do-it drudgery jobs. Plus, it's always at the bottom of the pay-scale, so I'm still just barely squeaking by financially. It's very frustrating.

Well, that's all I can think of today. Tra-la! It's May! The Merry Month of May!

Oh, wait, before I go, I have to share this unbearably brilliant YouTube video I just found after I finished the post: SHOES! (not entirely SFW, due to adult language)

There's Got To Be a Morning After

So after running manic for several days, it was inevitable that I would plunge into a depression, even though I'm back on my meds and taking them faithfully every day. At least the Prozac is keeping me from the weepy despairing kind of depression... instead, I am just a little droopy-feeling, I'm tired all the time yet don't sleep very well, and the occasional suicidal ideation pops into my head. No big deal.

Still, it's making me wonder what to do next. I mean, the not-sleeping thing has been going on for a while now, and it's wearing me out. I'm strongly considering the Depakote that my doctor prescribed for me along with the Prozac. It was only in case the Prozac made me manic, which it didn't at first; does not sleeping qualify as manic enough to start taking the Depakote? The first thing it's supposed to do is knock me out at night; but what if it also makes my moods flatline into blah grey dullness? I'm leery about starting it.

Especially the side-effects. If I start taking the Depakote, I have to go have a liver screening after the first three weeks to make sure it's not poisoning me. And then there're the threats of weight-gain, hair-loss, and sexual dysfunction. I've already gained twenty pounds since I've been on Prozac, and am counting my blessings that the sexual side-effects have been negligible; might I gain another twenty pounds, and might the Depakote wilt my bone where the Prozac failed? And then to have to deal with hair-loss on top of twenty pounds and a limp dick? I don't know if I'm down with that.

But one way or another, the sleep issue has to be addressed. I'm considering going the prescription route and looking into Lunesta or one of those things to ensure my sleep. I've been taking Tylenol PM for the last month or so, and it works fairly well, though I worry about the addiction factor. I don't take it every night, only on "schoolnights" when it's absolutely essential that I get my eight hours; but on the nights I don't take it, I don't go to sleep for hours and hours after I get in bed. Melatonin is no longer enough, it helps me get to sleep but doesn't help me stay asleep... I always wake up three or four time in the night. And no sleep-aids at all has simply become a torture.

Last night is a good example: I ran out of Tylenol PM last week, and since I keep forgetting to get more until it's time to go to bed, I have had to do without it; so now I'm averaging about five or six hours of sleep a night, none of which are terribly deep; by last night I was so sleepy I could barely eat my dinner, so sleepy I couldn't even watch television; I went to bed before nine, and was so sleepy I couldn't even focus on the words in a book; so I turned off the light, lay on my side, and stared into the darkness... for three and a half hours, my mind running around in circles (though very slowly), my limbs aching whenever I lay in one position for more than a few minutes, and my teeth clenching up and biting my tongue.

As you can imagine, five or six hours of sleep, three or four nights in a row, is not quite enough for me to bring my "best" to work with me... I've been sitting here the last couple of days hardly doing anything at all, my workload cut down to a level that actually embarrasses me, as I simply stare off into space for minutes at a time. It's very sad, and rather irritating too.

Especially now that the job is starting to get a trifle boring. I mean, you can only do so much data entry before the little names and numbers start swimming together. You can only look at so many manila folders before you develop a serious aversion to the color and texture of them and want to start shredding them and setting them on fire.

Ah, well... like I always say, it could be worse. It has been worse. Just read down a ways and you'll see.

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So, let's see, what else have I been up to? I did a drag show this past weekend, and rather enjoyed it. Actually, I did two drag shows, about a block apart from each-other. But though I enjoyed performing again, and though I really relished the positive feedback I got while I was in drag (Oh, Marlene, we love you... you're my favorite performer... etc.), it was a lot more effort than I had expected.

I mean, first of all was trying to find dresses that would fit. I mean, I've gained almost twenty pounds since the last time I was in drag, last September, and most of that is on my torso. I had a few undefined things, what I always called my "fat dresses," things I could throw on easily without cinching my corset too tight; there were enough that I was able to put together three outfits in a black and silver color range; and so I picked out some music, packed up my bags, and was ready to go.

But come the show, all sorts of unexpected problems turned up. For example, though I knew I wouldn't be able to get into my smallest corset anymore and was glad that I had a larger one at hand that I'd bought by mistake last year, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to get into any of my bras anymore. I simply no longer wear a 38, and cannot get into a 38 anymore, not even with a crowbar. Fortunately the corset I did have was high enough that I could attach my boob-pads to it instead of wearing the bra, but I was quite taken aback by the oversight.

It also took me over an hour to put my face on, when it used to only take me twenty or thirty minutes... I had sort of forgotten how to do everything; though it's like riding a bike and you never really forget, you still get rusty, and I had to go very slowly to make sure I did it right. And then I used the wrong rouge for contouring and had to do a hell of a lot of blending to make it look more natural.

Then of course there were people everywhere. I was kind of braced for it, I kept myself calm and didn't let myself get worked up by the energy around me; but I still got a little (what's the word) demophobic every now and then and had to close my eyes and take deep breaths.

Still, despite the discomfort and strangeness, I did enjoy myself immensely, getting to spend time with friends I haven't seen in months and months, and getting out into the public eye again. Of course, that was just the first show, the Living Sober Spring Fling... as you'll no doubt remember, I had committed to two shows that night. So after packing up my goods and chattels, I schlepped on down to Harvey's for Cookie Dough's Monster Show.

Though the show was a great one, I simply did not enjoy myself. I was able to see friends I haven't seen in a long time, but I wasn't able to spend time with Cookie because she was busy with the show, and I couldn't spend time with anyone else because I simply could not stay inside that bar... it was hot and airless, but most importantly it was jam-packed with people, many of whom were noisy and a bit rowdy with drink. I spent almost the entire time there sitting at the door with the doorman; and though I could see the show from where I was, and could judge its high quality, I was too distracted by sucking in fresh air and wishing I could go home.

Feeling a bit ashamed of myself, I left the minute my performance was over... I got out of drag as fast as I could, very rudely left the bar without saying goodbye to anyone, and went back to my car as fast as my tired old legs would carry me. I felt horribly guilty for bailing like that, but there was nothing else I could do... the phobia had got under my skin and I had to be alone.

Well, I wasn't entirely alone. I went out and got some food with Shiloh after putting my luggage in the car and reparking in a more convenient spot, and happily got all caught up with him on our various doings. But I still would have rather been alone, or better yet alone with Shiloh and no restaurant full of people. They were all getting on my nerves something fierce... so much that I did something I almost never do, I faced the wall when we sat down so I didn't have to see the people.

I wonder how much of this demophobia is new, and how much of it I had simply talked myself out of in the past. Is it a side-effect of the Prozac, or is it something that just gets stronger with age? I don't know, but I'm getting where I just can't be around very many people for very long at a time. If this doesn't let up, I am going to have to start planning my outings more carefully so I have some downtime in which to recover in between populous events.

And I'd really rather not... planning is not my forte, you know.

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So anyway, that's what's going on in my life these days. How's with you?

Manic Monday

Okay, so what if it's actually Tuesday... I was manic yesterday, too, so it counts.

I realized this morning when I woke up at 5 a.m., after going to sleep after midnight, and then being unable to get back to sleep — not to mention the fact the I've done this exact thing the last three mornings in a row — that I must be manic. Also, I've been getting into these incredibly long and complicated arguments on the JUB message board, arguments about nothing really, and obsessing over my arguments in between the times I'm posting them (argumentativeness is one of my first red flags of mania). And I'm having difficulty focusing my eyes on one thing for very long. And every now and then I start weeping for no apparent reason. Manic.

Fortunately I know why: I'm manic because I've been off my meds for four days and didn't realize it. When I went to take my pills this morning, I saw that I hadn't had a pill since Friday, and hadn't refilled the box on Sunday when I'm supposed to. Oops!

I've always had this problem about doing things regularly, developing daily habits and all. I get distracted so damned easily. I was concerned when I started taking daily meds whether or not I'd be able to remember to take them regularly. For the most part I have, but every once in a while I slip. This is the longest slip I've had, I usually only forget one morning, or at the most two mornings in a row.

And after four days of withdrawal, having taken the meds againg this morning sent the whole psychoemotional mechanism spinning up and down like a yo-yo. It also upset my stomach, which was already a little jumpy from the stress of mania, and never does appreciate the Prozac even on the best of days. It's not been pleasant.

I am half-tempted to take the rest of the day off sick. I mean, I was sitting here at my workstation a little while ago with tears in my eyes while entering college transcript information into the database... it doesn't look right. Not that anybody can see me; I'm all alone in this room and can have all the breakdowns I want so long as I keep processing these folders.

So I guess I'll stay. I need the $56 more than I need the four hours off. And if I went home, I would be too tempted to go resume my argument about the definitions of "gay" versus "homosexual" and what exactly constitutes an identity of bisexuality.

Wanna hear about it? No? Well then skip down six paragraphs because I'm going to vent now.

See, I got interested in this thread on the Hot Topics message board, where the thread originator related a story about how he had told his friend that he thought Angelina Jolie was attractive enough to have sex with; his friend told him that this attraction means he's bisexual instead of gay. This confused the young man, since he had always identified as gay and never thought of himself as bisexual at all.

A lot of the respondants stated unequivocally that yes, the boy is bi, and that's that. I disagreed. On the one hand, sexuality is never as cut-and-dry as that. But more importantly, as far as I'm concerned, if I say I'm gay, then I'm gay, and there's nothing anybody else has the right to say about it. Even if I do occasionally find myself attracted to a woman.

This provoked a maelstrom of snappy responses, all of which got right up under my wig. It seems from the tone and comments of my respondents that the occasional attraction to females disqualifies me from the hallowed halls of Gay, and that I cannot therefore claim to be gay because I'm not 100% gay... and that by saying that I'm gay rather than saying that I'm bisexual constitutes living a lie, being hideously dishonest, and purposely misleading people.

So I of course got pissed off... you can't call me a liar and not get a reaction. But of course I can't just say "you're wrong, you're a butt-head, and you should go douche with Drano." I have to try and persuade these people to my point of view, or at least explain myself in such a way that they can understand and allow my beliefs even if they don't agree with them. Which, as anyone who has ever tried to argue with people who are prone to making such immutable and absolutist statements can tell you, is an uphill battle.

The whole thing has been very tiring, and the reality is that I don't give a rat's ass what these people think. I think they're wrong, they think I'm wrong, and that's all there needs to be to it. But I keep going back in there and arguing point for point with this one guy, and obsessing about those points of argument when I'm away from the board. I mean, I'm obsessing about it right now: my pulse is going a mile a minute and I'm a little short of breath.

Hopefully my seratonin levels will even out in the next couple of days and I can get back to being my serenely apathetic self. In the meantime, perhaps I can exercise a little self-control and stay away from the message board, or at least stay away from that particular thread. I'm not helping anybody by belaboring the point.

However, I did come to a sort of epiphany of understanding while I was discussing this issue, one that I would like to share with you, about the politics of sexuality and the politics of choice.

One of the bones of contention between myself and one or two other posters was the concept of a choice in our sexual identity. They simply could not allow the concept that sexual identity (gay) is not the exact same thing as sexual orientation (homosexual)... that there is more to sexual identity, that it covers more and implies more, than the bare bones of orientation. And every time I made this point, or whenever I stated that I chose to be gay rather than bi or closeted, my respondents shrieked me down for implying that any facet of sexuality is a choice. They believe that they had no choice whatsoever.

Well, anybody who throws up his hands and cries "I had no choice" is simply full of shit. I mean, there are things that we cannot choose, things which are immutably part of us... sexual orientation is one of these, as is race, height, the shape of the skull, the size of the penis, various congenital defects and adaptations... anything that springs directly from our genetic codes and early childhood influences.

However, our sexual behavior, how we express our sexuality and how we conduct our lives in view of our sexuality, is our choice... one of the most important choices we ever have to make. Every action we take is chosen by us from a number of different choices. We might not know what those choices are, we may be presented with choices so undesirable that the choice we make seems inevitable, but there is never an action taken in which some choice was not available to you.

Nothing you ever do is ever not your responsibility.

I feel that too many people are taking the "we have no choice" tack when it comes to civil rights. Whether or not we choose to be homosexual or gay (and I aver that these are separate if overlapping constructs, one of which is inborn and one of which you choose) has absolutely no bearing on the issue, because it is not our desires or our propensities that are being restricted: it's our behavior that is being restricted, our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness outlined in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.

I really don't think the Religious Right gives one good crap whether or not we are homosexual, they don't care whom we desire... they only want to be sure we don't act on it, or at least don't act on it openly where they have to know about it. But in reality, under the laws by which our nation must operate, they don't have any standing in legislating the behavior of people who have nothing to do with them and do not in any way infringe upon their rights.

By Rule of Law, straight people have no standing in the issue of gay rights, their desires and comforts and beliefs are irrelevant to the case. The only right they stand to lose is the right to withhold our rights, which is inherently un-Constitutional in the first place, because it is based on traditional prejudices and a particular and unproveable interpretation of a religious text.

I mean, the First Amendment is very short, and very clear. And if you need backup, there are the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and great rattling sheaves of other documents penned by our Founding Fathers and preserved for our guidance; these documents very clearly state that all of our laws must be arrived at by the exercise of reason... not by popular sentiment, not by religious belief, and not by mere tradition. And there is absolutely no rational justification, no cause discovered through the exercise of reason without recourse to the Bible, that excuses the rights that are being withheld from us.

If I say that my partner has the right to the use of my body, the right to my property, the right to make medical decisions for me, and the right to sit with me in the hospital or read my mail or raise my children, the government does not have the right to say otherwise. Now, if homosexuality were still qualified as a form of insanity, then there would be some legal standing... but since that theory has been disproved (through the Exercise of Reason), whatever standing the government had in legislating sexual behavior or same-sex partnerships has evaporated completely.

Now the government clings to that legislation, purely on the standings of religion and of tradition, which is not only against the law of the Constitution but against the ideals and principles upon which this Nation and its Constitution are founded. You don't have to call it "marriage" if that upsets your dainty feelings; but the government cannot legally withhold those rights, and never could. Furthermore, the government has never had the right to bestow the right to create such partnerships on officers of any church, and the entire legality of cleric-performed weddings has no standing and should be dismissed.

To summarize: It's not an issue of the government granting us our rights because we cannot help what we are; it's an issue of the government ceasing to apply anti-Constitutional restrictions upon our behavior, because the gender of the persons with whom we have consentual sex and the gender of the persons with whom we build our lives and share our property is quite simply none of their fucking business.

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Did I tell you I was feeling kind of manic? All that screed, and on an empty stomach. I need some more Pepto, and maybe something to eat, and then I'd better get back to work. Have a happy super frabjous day!