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Friday, 10 June 2005 (the epitome of hollow gestures) 11:37am Back home. I tried going to work, I honestly did, but I only lasted for a few hours (and one 2257 meeting) before realizing I had no business being there. Probably shouldn't have gone the last couple days, but that's my work ethic for you, especially since I've only been there a couple months, real employee or not. The Queer Open Mic probably isn't going to happen. Or, more accurately, it'll happen but I won't be there for it. With any luck I'll be well enough for the Tim & Roma! Show shoot tomorrow. It's in a neat location, an all-male adult theater of some renown, and I'll be seriously bummed if I miss that. Then there's the star party... Perdita's very happy I'm home. 12:58pm I really must be ill—I got teary watching the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Last | Top | Next

Thursday, 9 June 2005 (the breaks) 8:52am Feeling a little better today. While I definitely have low-level cold symptoms, but my throat isn't hurting, and that's a biggie. Last night, Collette did a throat-chakra thingy. She didn't claim that it alone would heal me, nor that it was a substitute for actual Western medicine—she knows I wouldn't believe it—but that it might help me deal with the psychological roots, the stresses that are causing my defenses to be lowered in the first place. That's how I parsed it, anyway. I'm not going to get all post hoc and claim that the chakra worked. It doesn't hurt to talk, and that's what matters. Hell, I might not even have to cancel any of my plans this weekend. 9:21am As part of my duties to get us 2257 compliant, I've been going through copies of model IDs. I'm not interested in where they live, just their name and date of birth, and I have to make sure the pictures is legible. If the Feds come knocking on our door, having an ID on file won't do us any good if the person is unrecognizable. We have a handful of bi titles, so every now and then I happen across the ID of a girl. It's a nice change of pace. This is all very sensitive information, of course, and some of the studios have been reluctant to give us their records in spite of the law. However, I think I can say this without violating anyone's privacy: there are a lot of xmas babies in gay pr0n. 11:03am Excerpted from Taos, with her full permission: Artists are often rather temperamental people. Worse, they're dangerous; they create art. Sometimes even beauty - and nothing hurts so good. And the Muse is always their first lover. Yeah, yeah, whatever, artists are a bitch to date - that doesn't mean they shouldn't date, or that people shouldn't date us. Contrary to popular belief, not all artists are psychotic; many of us are quite well-medicated these days, thanks. And some of us have social skills and a lot to offer in a relationship. (Yes, really. Stop slagging on yourself like that.) Yes, there's breakup songs and "You put WHAT in your novel?" and "does that really look like me? And you're hanging it WHERE?" and having to share with that cranky-ass Muse. But there's also Shakespeare's sonnets (which, yes, can be viewed as one long series of relationship arguments - and as some incredibly beautiful poetry) and Rodin's "Lovers" and those love songs that you would never admit make you cry sometimes. And you know what? They're *all* about you. They're all about *me*. And they're all about someone else. They're about emotions: loss, love, parting, joy. I could write every damn one of you into a novel tomorrow, you know. Think about that when you're not at your best. Think of your life as a possible inspiration for art - and live it that way. Art holds a mirror up to life - to fear art may be to fear living. Don't ever deny the Muse. And don't miss the chance to be the Muse, either. Yes. 4:29pm To further the goal of becoming 2257 Compliant, the pr0n library has been been moved into a new room, one with a skylight and windows looking out into the rest of the office. Since sunlight plus media equals very bad things, and we don't want to be too obvious when more mainstream clients are visiting, we're covering the skylight and putting blinds on the windows. Since I'm nominally responsible for that room, I got to choose the colors. The skylight cover will be black, and the blinds will be ruby red. Because, as I say, I can. The guy from the blinds store commented that nobody's ever chosen that color before, even though it's an option, and that along with the black skylight cover, the room's going to look really neat. Well, duh.. I just don't get how so many people can handle being surrounded by beige. sometime after midnight Want. C'mon, people. My birthday's a week from tonight. Last | Top | Next

Wednesday, 8 June 2005 (fight to control) 8:52am No internet connection at home? Check. Cold and rainy outside? Check. Throat hurting so much I can barely speak? Check. Personal relationships crumbling all around me? Check. Internet drama, in the worst way? Check. On the plus side, I received the contract for the Poppy interview in Girlfriends, including a photocopy of the article as it will eventually be published in the July issue. Looks pretty good. Much to my surprise, I actually get a byline; I'd been expecting to get maybe my initials at end, and then to be listed as a contributor in the masthead. My name is even spelled correctly. I can't help but be thrilled when that happens. 11:38am From The Nizkor Project: The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern: Person A has position X. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X). Person B attacks position Y. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person. Because I care. 4:10pm Why I need to not be sick after today: tomorrow night, I'm going to a newbie class at the Citadel with Taos, Kai and Collette. It isn't a party or anything, but I'd still like to have my wits about me. Friday night, I'm co-hosting the Queer Open Mic with Cindy. Saturday morning is a Tim and Roma! Show taping. Saturday evening Collette and I are going to the Mt. Tam Star Party, and I've invited c0g and Melissa to join us. Sunday at noon there's a Pirate Cat Radio meeting, and after that Taos is reblonding my hair. That's why I need to not be sick. 7:32pm I spoke to Lynnee tonight. I don't do that nearly enough these days. He always helps to put things in perspective. He also said that Mercury isn't in retrograde, but that Mars is doing something peculiar right now, and Mars is all about fighting and fucking, which pretty much covers the bases. I believe in Astrology roughly as much as I believe in the Easter Bunny (and have I ever mentioned how much I loathed going to church on Easter? that was always the worst), but at this point, I'll take whatever I can get. Last | Top | Next

Tuesday, 7 June 2005 (your first song) 9:34am I just found out that I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage won a Lambda Literary Award for Best Nonfiction Anthology. I'm not so egotistical as to think my piece had anything to do with it (there were nearly one hundred and forty other contributors, for pete's sake), but it's neat all the same. 3:45pm If you have something to vent about me, now would be the time. 4:35pm A poet acquintance of mine is fond of saying that all writing is autobiographical. Last | Top | Next

Monday, 6 June 2005 (the age of solar) 11:21am Thanks to the peculiarities of MSN Search's algorithm, my site gets ranked high for a lot of keywords. I tend to get hits from MSN Search for the word "Walgreens" at least every other day, for example. Because of my entry last week about the tranny pr0n site, however, I am currently the top result on MSN Search for c*m on my face. Lucky me. As you've probably gathered from the second to last sentence, I'm going to start using asterisks and whatnot to hopefully keep my site off that particular radar. I'm not morally opposed or anything; it's that it's a tease. I look at the raw numbers on my tracker and I'm all yay! people are reading my page!, and then I look at the details and see that they're from people looking for pr0n, and I'm all aw, man! Of course, I could just not use those words at all, but... 1:40pm The two pieces I finished last week are called "Coma White" and "Fundamentally Loathsome," which are coincidentally titles from Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals album. I'm not suggesting I didn't know the songs existed; it's one of my favorite albums, one which helped me through the tough period after breaking up with The Ex in '99, and I find myself returning to it a lot during this current unpleasantness. Rather, it just so happened that both of those titles worked for the stories in question, even though they bear no thematic similarity to the songs. Anyway, I'm thinking about continuing on this vein, writing stories/essays/whatever based on the rest of album's titles, but not necessarily inspired by the songs themselves. They're largely about drugs and/or emotional isolation, and I don't want to repeat the album's themes too closely. ("I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)" is going to be a toughie.) Not the most original idea ever, but I tend to be devoid of ideas otherwise, so I'm going to run with it and see where it takes me. Maybe nowhere, maybe somewhere. It's a little backwards in that for the first two stories I had the story idea before I chose the title—I've been working on "Coma White" under a different name for over a year—but pick pick. Besides, if it's good enough for Tennessee Jones, it's good enough for me, right? 11:13pm I had dinner with Maddy before my radio show tonight. During the show itself I became inexplicably tired (neatloaf coma?), so I put on a fifty-four minute track and napped. Because I could. Last | Top | Next

Sunday, 5 June 2005 (dasheth thy little ones against the stones) 8:49am sooner or later, every story gets told. you can't stop the signal. Last | Top | Next

Saturday, 4 June 2005 (to a wall) 8:49am How did the crotchety old bastard put it? Oh, right: Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. Yes. sometime after midnight When I was a pre-teen, my mother was very fond of the Ricky Nelson song "Garden Party." She found great resonance in the line you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself. I wonder if she still does. I know I do. It feels like a lesson it's taken twenty years to learn. Last | Top | Next

Friday, 3 June 2005 (no tomorrow) 9:32am Hung out with Lilah last night, something we should have done a long time ago. Watched a bootleg tape of the original Mulholland Drive pilot, and talked well into the night. It's an excruciatingly tiny world. 12:09pm From AVN Online: IRVINE, Calif. - Sexy City Cash has launched a hot new site, TSfacials.com, a c*m f*cial site with a twist – a trannie twist, that is. According to a statement issued this week, the site “combines the intrigue of the transsexual niche with the wide appeal of c*m-soaked f*cials,” and features a bevy of trannie models getting fucked and facialed by hot guys in a series of exclusive and reality-based video clips. Whee! We're an intriguing niche! What's really intriguing is the writer's insistence on spelling tranny as "trannie." Actually, that's more annoying than intriguing. Still, though, I love the phrase "the wide appeal of cum-soaked facials." It's very American, somehow. 5:07pm the thing is, i still want to be you when i grow up. that's never changed. sometime after midnight The reading went well tonight. My pacing was off a smidgen because I stupidly hadn't eaten for about eight hours, and the sugar I ingested before going on just confused my system. The piece was well received, though, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. She called herself Coma White. Her straight, shoulder-length hair was the color of a firetruck after a rainstorm. On the bridge of her nose rested a pair of imported European glasses that drove the wireframe fetishists mad. The natural arch of her eyebrows gave her a constant look of ironic amusement, as though she was in on a joke which nobody else quite got. I feel like I'm reclaiming something, something which I never should have let go in the first place. I've been getting that feeling a lot lately, as I've been asserting myself more and more, finally determining my own destiny, outside disapproval be damned. Can't bloody well please everyone, and some people will be actively displeased. So be it. If they don't want to come along on my trip, it's their loss, not mine. It's a shame, and they will be missed, but I've wasted too much of my life trying to live it for other people. You probably think this song is about you, don't you? Last | Top | Next

Thursday, 2 June 2005 (on par) 8:51am Retool 'n Grind went well last night. Granted, aside from Red and myself the only other reader was Collette, but at least that's another reader, y'know? There was also a new face in the audience the form of my coworker Ally, with whom I went to the play party last Friday. (Well, I didn't go with her as a date or anything, but we were both going directly there from the office, so we traveled together.) I think it speaks to how low my expectations are that I consider it a good show even though we barely hit double digits. I read my piece for The Bad Date Show on Friday. Much like The Porch Light show last year, it was kind of a momentous occasion for me, as until recently I wasn't sure the story would ever see the light of day. Though it's gone through several drafts since then, the fact that I wrote it at all was a catalyst for the death of a friendship last year, as the other main character insisted that I'd violated her privacy. There were other factors, too (nobody is forever) (tm c0g), but that was a major one. It took me this long to realize that there was no longer a good reason to not tell the story. What, is she going to talk to me less than she already does? Besides, she's anonymized beyond any possible recognition now, and I actually think the story is much stronger for it. Feh. If nothing else changes in my life from this point onwards, I can't let anyone else dictate my art, to tell me I'm not allowed to write about something or express my feelings. Fuck that. They don't have to read it if they don't want. sometime after midnight Has it ever felt like every one of your interests was in conlict with the others? Last | Top | Next

Wednesday, 1 June 2005 (rebel to sell) 4:13pm So what is the difference between a blog and a diary, you ask? Thanks to my brother for the link. (Irony alert: thanking someone for a link is tres bloggy.) Just as I was coming to terms with not having a parking space anymore (I was even rather proud of myself for taking the train this morning, yet being the first in the office this morning as usual), I've been given one again. The right thing to do would be continuing to take the train more often than not. Cheaper overall, better on the environment, more time to read, et cetera. And yet. I finally heard back from Girlfriends; my interview with Poppy will be published in the July issue. I also got completed and submitted my piece for the new Suspect Thoughts Press anthology, as well as being mostly done with the story I'm reading at The Bad Date Show this Friday. Yay for productivity. Last | Top | Next