Miss You.

My friend Alli, whom I've spent the past 5 years of college cavorting and embarking on ridiculous and fantastic adventures with, has just boarded a plane for South Korea. She's going there to teach English-as-a-second-language to high school students for the next six months. We only got to talk for 5 minutes, but in a way I'm glad because any longer and I would've started bawling like a child.

I'll miss you and think of you every day, kid. Remember as our good friend Ralph Waldo said, "All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

"We're probably the coolest people that a lot of other people know. Probably."

--Alli

"Come writers and critics 

Who prophesize with your pen

 And keep your eyes wide; 

The chance won't come again. 

And don't speak too soon,

 For the wheel's still in spin 

And there's no tellin' 

Who that it's namin'."

What's up, Doc?

Today I have a doctor's appointment, though it's not about the cold that I've been fighting for a week now (I'm feeling much better today--I'd say at about an 85%?) it's about the mysterious goo that builds up in the corners of my eyes randomly; something I've ignored for about a year (I know, I know a guy my age needs to stay on top of his health--but I'm also a guy, so I tend to put things off in favor of the "no, I'm fine" argument). I'm worried it's going to end in one more prescription I'll have to pay out for every month but I guess if it makes me healthy then it's a positive change.

Another reason why I can't wait to leave Idaho: I grew up not really getting sick or having allergies or getting seasonal colds but when we moved to Idaho when I was 16 I found myself getting sick all of the time, and it became even worse when I moved to Moscow. Perhaps as I've gotten older my immune system has been worse, but is it a coincidence that any time I leave the damn state for an extended period I always feel healthier and less sick (even if it's on a vacation and I'm eating tons of junk food and binge drinking, I feel at my healthiest!). I think the state of Idaho might be detrimental to my existence.

The more we talk about moving, though, the more I start to fret about all of the little details. How much money we have saved, what we're going to sell, how much a U-Haul will be, what we're going to do for jobs, changing the addresses and notifying the 1,001 different places that need to have my address about the change . . . It's a healthy dose of feeling "blerg," as Tina Fey would put it.

Today will consist of the aforementioned appointment, laundry, and hanging the eff out. Josh and I have the day off together, which is nice, but there's always a bit of a struggle as to what we're going to do with our day (well, most of it). We want to go walk dogs at the Humane Society but there aren't any open to the public right now, sadly. So until some flea-bitten friends that aren't "high risk animals" come along, it looks like it's more episodes of The West Wing for us!

"Yeah, we are the blue, so strong and confused; 

Tracking down dusty roads finding what we lose. 

Dancing with the causalities: Spirits of wars, 

Shedding a few tears for the beggars and whores."

The future freaks me out.

I'm fighting a cold at present. I had 2 solid days where I felt just awful, and sadly one of those days I worked but luckily the next day I had off. Now the cold has settled into my chest and I'm feeling about 80% myself. The aches and pains aspect of having a cold along with the runny nose are all out the door, but unfortunately I'm still coughing up a lung (and by lung I mean gross, oozy yellow stuff) every few minutes and I still feel listless. 

Time will tell if I can get better by this weekend, which promises to be fun times with a drag show on Saturday and a near-full day off on Sunday (back to back weekend days off--SHOCK!).

The drag shows in this town are a funny thing. Sometimes they remind me of the speakeasy style bars of the fifties and sixties where men and women had to sneak into dimly lit basement locations filled with smoke and probably more mustaches than you can shake a stick at (that's what she said). You might find prominent members of the community huddled around the bar area of a drag show all talking amongst themselves and stealing come hither glances at the younger set. You might also find doe-eyed college freshman unsure of their sexualities and both in awe of and aghast of this buffet of open expression the likes of which they might not have ever seen before. They dance with, hold hands with, and kiss people they never thought they would've kissed for the first time. The shows are also a breeding ground for gossip, and rumor, and unfortunate social missteps that can turn into the aforementioned ugliness. Who shows up with whom, who dances with whom, who lets someone buy their drinks . . . It's all up for scrutiny.

[side-bar: As I type this my cat, not satisfied with the recent trip to the litter-box she's just taken, has turned around to go back in it not to do her business, but to sufficiently bury it yet again. Weird.]

Anyway, I like going to the drag shows because I can get hammered, and usually a mild flirtation with someone will get me hammered. Shallow perhaps, but conversations have led to friendships with some people I've met there, and hey if there's a rum and Coke in it for me who am I to complain?

Last night Josh and I watched Futurama: Bender's Big Score and it was actually pretty hilarious and a really great follow-up to the series. I recommend it for anyone who loves the show or anyone who found it even mildly amusing when it was one, because it actually manages to be funny and touching, and there's a narwhale in it.

I have to work for a few hours today, weirdly. When you're not in school and you work a job that's in a college town, you sort of, to borrow a phrase from Futurama's Bender, "get boned" in terms of scheduling. Que cera, cera.

"Somewhere I have heard this before;

In a dream my memory has stored
As defense I'm neutered and spayed.
What the hell am I trying to say?"

Trouble in paradise.

The more that I'm home (which is more often now that I'm not in school) the more our cat seems to think that she controls us. She wakes us up in the morning, usually around 6am (joy!) or earlier (double-joy!); she is excessively whiney but all together much more vocal than she ever was if we're doing one activity for  a long period of time (reading a book, watching a movie, etc.) that doesn't directly involve her; she has a habit of doing what Josh calls "getting it" whereupon if something across the room tickles her fancy she'll tear-ass over to it and pounce, be it lint or string or someone's foot. I don't know what to do about this animal.

Any thoughts or suggestions about cat behavior would be much appreciated!

"Why don't you ever wanna play?

I'm tired of this piece of string.

You sleep as much as I do now and you

Don't do much of anything."

Filling the gap.

Been a few weeks since I've posted, so rightly I've got to fill the gap with what's been happening in my post-grad existence so far. I know you all want to know, right? Good.

I submitted my article to Diversity News on the 15th along with an e-mail, but so far I haven't heard anything back yet, nor have i heard anything from Kathy regarding what she thought of the article. In all honesty I'm taking the fear-based way out by avoiding Kathy and the crew on Inland Oasis altogether on the off-chance that my article wasn't what they were expecting. This seems to happen a lot to me; people want something but they don't understand that I don't write press releases (unless you ask me to), I write news pieces and those two things are not the same. We'll see if I get published, and I'll keep you up-to-speed if I do. In the mean time I'm going to refrain from posting the piece I wrote just in case.

Work continues to be the main source of sanity, along with Josh and the few friends still living in the area. I'm up to 25 hours a week on average (give or take an hour) with weekends off, which has been nice because I've got to spend more time with Josh but odd because I find myself wasting away hoping the weather clears up. I'd love to take up snowboarding again some day. Maybe after we move? Right now it doesn't make much sense to buy all the equipment, buy a pass, and hope for snowfall in the mountains (when it's the valleys that are presently getting hammered). I should get a gym membership.

Anyone hear about this new President guy? I hear he's a Democrat . . .

. . . WIN!

I've been thinking about getting a Twitter account, but since I can't blog in a mobile way (as I don't have a phone that connects to the internet) I am failing to see the point . . . I just like the way that Twitter looks visually is what it comes down to. And that's not reason enough to spend more time online.

Things are stabilizing financially. I still haven't been able to put more than 2 grand away for the big move but I expect to be able to soon. $50 from every paycheck should get me to about $2,500 by the time we leave in May, plus whatever is sitting in the regular bank account by then. Not too shabby for a moving buffer.

How you know you're getting old #2: You see something on QVC that you might actually like to purchase. 

Today I saw a recipe album with 30 free insert cards, a glass cutting board (with 3 designs to choose from, 'natch) and a cheese knife for a little less than $30. And I thought to myself, "a place for recipes would be good since all we have now are cookbooks with pieces of printer paper and magazine clippings stuffed in them." Then the lady on QVC said the same damn thing, and I nearly fell out of my seat. It's like they know you have only the slightest need for things so they get good at selling them! I didn't buy it. I'm not 50 quite yet.

This blog is a new guilty pleasure for me. It's a little NSFW, so click responsibly.

This week I'll be working, living, and maybe drinking a little. You'll be updated more often, little blog. I promise to update you, and feed and water you every day, and to clean up after you.

"I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms.
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world.
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home.
Yeah I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone."

Quick Take

The column for Diversity is coming along well. I'm heading into work soon so I don't have much time to elaborate on it other than to say the World Health Organization's stats on HIV/AIDS are jarring. More on why I needed to look them up later.

"And they carried on like long division,

because it was clear with every page

Oh, that they were farther away from

Any solution that would play."

Not a rant.

The meeting with Kathy went well; apparently if I can gather enough content we can actually have a full page in the Diversity newsletter if we want, and after speaking with some of the Inland Oasis organization's members this seems to be the plan. I'm meeting with one of their board members, Chris, today to get some information for the column itself which will be a summary of what the organization did for World AIDS Day. If Diversity wants it, I'll flesh out a column and put together some information for a few graphics (a World AIDS Day stats box, for example)

No word back from Dinah, my old law professor, but if I'm right most staff won't be back on campus until today and tomorrow. It's all about the waiting game right now.

In regional news today, anybody out there hear about this? How disgusting man's injustice to his fellow man can be. I really, really hope that nobody gets hurt over there and that the local area police and the FBI resolve the matter quickly. I don't care what your lifestyle, religion, beliefs and values, or background are . . . Nobody deserves to be threatened or frightened for their lives because of the threat of violence. If I write too much more about it I'll rant, and I don't want to rant because I've only had one cup of coffee thus far today and to give a good rant I need at least 2-3 cups total.

Today marks the third technical day off in a row for me, and I'm going a little stir crazy. I was supposed to only have 2 days off in a row, which is awesome and gives me a chance to do all sorts of errands and fun stuff, but it's changed to three days in a row which is mildly unbearable. Thanks to the awful Winter weather three days ago my work had to shut down along with the rest of the mall. Now luckily the company pays us normal wages for the day when we need to do an emergency store closure, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm seriously bouncing off the walls in this apartment. I'd love to go outside, but the weather is like the song says: "Frightful." 

And I think that my cat isn't enjoying all this company that much . . . She seems disappointed if I leave to go run an errand and then come back, as if to say in the prim and proper English accent I imagine her having: "You were only gone for twenty minutes . . . You should at least be gone for 8 hours! I need a great deal of me time!" Well you shouldn't be so damned fluffy and fun to annoy then, feline friend o' mine.

I played around with my camera a little bit, as promised, and got the Mac all synced up with it (iPhoto is an incredibly easy-to-use program, by the way). Here are a few things from a few days ago:

Lucy wondering why she can't go, too.

Part of a neat candle holder I bought in Seattle.

Yours, truly.

Maybe I'll post some more later. 

By the way, Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! They were married 20 years ago today, and although I'm incredibly proud of them. I think I might tell their story here at a later date (or maybe just later today if it continues to rain and hail and be blustery). It's a pretty good one. It involves living in a tepee on a campground for a while.

"I shoot my name up every vain.
You can't get hurt, you can't complain.
No feet, no hands, no tail, no lies:
He's got youth on his side."

Flooding

I'm leaving in just a few to go to a brief, mostly informal interview with Kathy Sprague, a local business owner, entrepreneur, and equal rights activist who is also a board member of the aforementioned Inland Oasis group. We're going to discuss the idea of me writing a regular column for the regional newsletter Diversity. Fingers crossed that I can get some work! 

Earlier today I updated my portfolio (sparse as it is) to include physical samples as well as photocopies of the stuff from the UI Blot Magazine, and an open letter to the President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Team; the first in a series that they've been asking for on http://change.gov since early November. You can read the letter I sent in its original, unpolished form on my Myspace blog over here or if that link isn't working for you, with enough requests I might just post it on this blog as a separate entry.

I made a mix for a co-worker at her request, but I'm all out of blank CDs. It's on the list of things to get while I run errands to Safeway and Office Depot. Here's the (tentative) track listing:

Mix for Ava

"Dancing With Myself [cover]" - Nouvelle Vague

"Nature of the Experiment" - Tokyo Police Club

"Pants" - Lemuria

"Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" - She & Him

"See and Be Scene" - The Hard Lessons

"Ready, Steady, Go" - The Meices

"Plea from a House Cat Named Virtue" - The Weakerthans

"Breaking Down Walls" - The Black Fortys

"The First Single" - The Format

"Smoke Detector" - Rilo Kiley

"You're Supposed to Be My Friend" - 1990s

"I Fought The Law [cover]" - The Dead Kennedys

"Zombie Party" - Be Your Own Pet

"The Gap (between the rich and the poor)" - You Say Party! We Say Die!

"Lions and Lambs" - The Get Up Kids

"Knights" - Minus the Bear

"Body" - The Servant

"Wolf Like Me" - TV on the Radio

"Time to Pretend" - MGMT

"Well Thought Out Twinkles" - Silversun Pickups

"Jane Says [live/steel drums version]" - Jane's Addiction

I highly encourage all of you out there to legally download these songs and give them a listen to. I tried to have something for everyone on here. The version of "Jane Says" is a personal favorite because of the addition of the steel drum and I mean, come on, when has Perry ever sounded so good on a live recording? This is from way back when around the time of the first years of Lollapalooza so the poor guy doesn't sound so strained when he's belting the chorus. You also get a good idea of the size of the venue thanks to the natural sound, the echo of his voice, and the crowd's noises.

The news says that up where my folks live is going to be experiencing some flooding today and tomorrow. I need to call my mom to see if they're all doing okay. Today wouldn't be a terrible time for them to come down here seeing as I have today and tomorrow off and, you know, there are no floods. House guests a-go-go!

"Charge me your day rate,

and I'll turn you out in kind.

When the moon is round and full,

gonna teach you tricks that'll blow your mongrel mind."

Do you read me?

If you're a reader or even a stumble-upon user who finds yourself here, please help yourself to the "I Read It" widget on my blog's sidebar. I'd be interested to know the kinds of people who read the stuff that fumbles around in my brain and forms into words. Thanks for your support, and enjoy the tumbling-tumbling-tumbling through the post-graduate existence with me.

The search for meaning continues!

So I updated my resume the other day and realized that the bulk of it is student media work and retail positions. Is that how resumes are supposed to look when you're first starting out? I think I might post mine on here for feedback/constructive criticism. 

Right now things look a little sparse, but hopefully that will change. I've got a bit of work lined up with a regional newsletter called Diversity (I don't think they have a web site otherwise I would link to it where these little parentheses are) writing a column for the local GLBTA Community Organization Inland Oasis. Fair warning, the web site is under construction in several places as the organization is fairly new; its st

ill very well done and has a very clean and clear design.

I've also e-mailed my former professor of my Media/First Amendment Law course regarding some on-campus work for the media department. I'm not a student anymore, but I emphasized the fact that I'd be willing to do any clerical or teaching assistant work for absolutely free. The only thing I want is a bump on my resume.

I've registered on Monster.com but I need to update the page when I have more time. Anyone know of any good Head Hunter web sites for fresh-out-of-college folks looking for a job?

In other news, this little picture has been circulating around the internet lately and I thought I'd share it with you all. Who doesn't love the furthering of viral yet hilarious material through mass circulation and hits on Google, right?

Courtesy of Brian Cronin's "Comics Should be Good!" Blog

Apparently this is an image that was slightly altered from an actual panel in a classic Batman comic . . . Though the original image's said comic is one of those "imaginary world" stories that were published again and again through the 1950s and 1960s in lieu of an actual, in-continuity story that would have lasting repercussions on a fictional character.

Wish I'd seen this around the holidays so I could engage in the funny as well!

Been watching a ton of 'The West Wing' lately. Man, it's great television! I know, I know, Aaron Sorkin is a genius and an incredible writer and everyone already knows that . . . But as someone who is just now getting into it thanks to the 3-disks a month plan on Netflix and my friend Kim's DVD collection, can I say that the episode where Leo McGary testifies regarding a certain Presidential health issue seriously had me to the brink of tears?! I nominate his and President Bartlett's friendship as the BEST older fellow bromance of the decade. 

Have a good week, everyone. I get to work today despite the near-foot of snow outside. Alas.

"God Speed, all the bakers at dawn.

May they all cut their thumbs, 

and bleed into their buns until they melt away."