My sister just e-mailed that they found a scorpion in her office near her work area.
Her office in Kentucky.
Surely, a sign of the apocalypse. I expect the rain of frogs by 2 p.m. In the meantime, I'm working with my legs well out from underneath my desk.
A kilt as a part of Scottish formal wear? Kinda hot:
Kilts worn with worn, nondescript American t-shirts? Kinda not:
(Appy-polly-logies to Jimbo, from whom I cruelly stole the action shot.)
Via Towleroad, I caught wind of a new book, You're Going to Be Gay!, that features photographs of adult gays and lesbians alongside childhood pictures that should have announced to the world at large their upcoming homo-tude. Like any gay man who looks back fondly at the days when friends and family refused to see the flaming truths in front of them, I love these sorts of pictures.
Luckily, when I was last at my mom's house going through two big boxes of old photos I managed to begin a long-term scanning project that, in addition to chronicling the history of my family, will show exactly how nelly a little boy I was. For example, here's a shot of my sister and me with our Grandpa Joe (actually our great-grandfather) circa 1975:
Honestly, the gunpowder horn, rifle and miniature football jersey aren't fooling anyone -- maybe it's the way I'm striking a pose. Although those pants would have made anyone look gay. Just FYI, despite her hair and the big animal trap she's joyfully carrying, my sister turned out straight.
School pictures and other portraits seemed bring out some of my best unintentional swishiness, but I haven't gotten the chance to scan some of the more obvious evidence. I do have a couple instances, though, including this one from a couple years before my rifle-totin' pic:
It may not seem obvious in these more enlightened days, but I took huge amounts of shit in elementary school for having such long hair, and was called "hippie" with some regularity. I, however, loved my hair. It was very luxuriant and lustrous and felt good in the wind -- I was an early connoisseur of such things as Body on Tap. Interestingly, my shirt appears to be a prescient Native American interpretation of Space Invaders. But even before my locks grew long, I think I looked pretty gay. In fact, I couldn't even be bothered to wear pants:
As opposed to my sister, who though sleepy managed to maintain a sense of propriety. Of course, all this nelly-ness may be mostly in hindsight, at least as far as the photographic records go. Then again, I know my parents never ran to grab the Kodak when I donned my sister's clothes or commandeered her Barbies, so my pool of evidence is limited.
A minor tempest over at Queerty as touchy Madonna fans take the gayer-than-thou site to task for daring to criticize She Who Must Be Worshipped. From the comments:
I wouldn’t be a proud gay man without Madonna.
And that, my friends, is the saddest thing I've ever read.
It may just be me, but when your company name is "Camel," you might want to think twice before using a product name that looks an awful lot like "Anus."
Just a pinch between the cheek and gum, indeed.
So much of D.C.'s downtown architecture from the 60s and 70s has the run-down ennui that evokes such cinematic masterpieces as Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, so it's no great sadness to see them fall like dominoes across the city to give way to new construction. Maybe they'll even get around to that godawful New Executive Office Building one of these days.
Anyway, this is just a shot I snapped outside a church in Southwest on Saturday where I was giving a little presentation:
The building itself looks sad. I'd look sad too if I were that ugly. It's all a little blurry and wonky at the top of the frame and it could use some better cropping, but I was using my iPhone so give me a break. Mostly, I just like the framing of the naked trees. As far as I could see, no apes were on the scene protesting their enslavement.
Mostly unrelated, and even more worthless, a few years back at a conference in Los Angeles I was staying in Century City and I totally realized that I was on the site of the ape riots, which was also under the shadow of the Nakatomi Building. That was about the only moment I actually enjoyed in L.A.
Some people are just bound and determined to stomp all over the new glories of the modern communications age. For example, the Post has spotted a trend of cab drivers and passengers being annoyed by the lack of conversations in taxis.
Those people can shut up. Really, I would enjoy the silence. This is progress, people. The ability -- nay, the right -- to jump in a cab for convenient transportation without being subjected to inane, time-passing conversation is something to cheer about. Way back in the days before cell phone ubiquity, I wrote a column complaining about this very topic:
The only problem with taking cabs is the possibility the cab driver will attempt to start a conversation -- make that the certainty the cab driver will want to chat. I’ve developed a number of defenses against this, most of which involve reading newspapers or other large pieces of paper that form a barrier between myself and the driver.
There are those drivers, however, who are undaunted by my silence. In these cases, I’m generally subjected to long-winded monologues about the Redskins or whatever testosterone-induced sport happens to be in season. Then, when I finally make the point that I don’t watch or care about sports (with the exception of men’s gymnastics, of course), I’m greeted with a disdainful snort.
Like he’s going to care about any of my personal hobbies.
Sometimes the “conversation” drifts towards the other subject that seems to interest cabdrivers: breasts (also known as “ta-tas”).
Last week during my cab ride home, the cabdriver suddenly honked his horn. “Just look at the pair on her,” he said, turning his head toward me. “When they stand at attention like that you just have to salute, don’t you think?”
I understand that some extroverts among us consider this to be the equivalent of the Algonquin frickin' round table, but we introverts who just want a little peace and quiet before we arrive at whatever socially stressful event we're traveling to don't agree.
I'm willing to accept that I have particularly bad cab karma, an unfortunate situation during my days of dwelling car-less in some of D.C.'s most transitional neighborhoods. I've had cabs refuse to take me home. I've had drivers put me out when I told them the address I was headed to. I've called for cabs to pick up a friend at my home, only to wait for hours before anyone showed up. I've endured blatant attempts to swindle me via contorted readings of the city's laughable zone system. I've had a cab driver tell me, unbidden, that AIDS was God's punishment "for all these men fucking each other."
But bad karma or no, if the trend is for cab drivers to keep their conversations to themselves I'm just going to count my blessings.
Hey, it's an invitation, not an insult. At the top of the left hand column you'll see the return of Bugg Bites, which I had previously boxed like an emotionally unstable Three series due to Twitter's unnerving habit of locking up my site. When you're looking to increase your regular readership beyond a number you can easily count on your fingers, toes and one other appendage, you really want to make sure the damn page will load in a browser.
But, all things considered, the Twitter feed seems to be playing a little nicer now, and maybe when they finish their maintenance later today it will work in the beautiful, seamless way in which the Internet is supposed to bring us all together through the magic of technology. Except when it doesn't.
So, let the navel gazing (re)commence.
So I'm sitting in my periodontist's office this morning, reading a magazine and doing my best to compartmentalize the knowledge of what awaited me in my immediate future, when I realized that the soft classical music playing over the waiting room sound system was actually a selection from a movie soundtrack.
Darth Vadar's theme, to be specific.
As they say, it was all downhill from there. As the anesthesia begins to fade, I'm getting ready to head to my shelf of unfinished pain prescriptions for a little put-me-down. Until that kicks in, I'll just amuse myself with repeated viewings of this:
I particularly enjoy the part where, after she's excused her behavior by saying she had to stop and say hello to the 8-year-old before diving into the safety of her car, the video shows she actually went on to great a gaggle of 7th graders.
Leadership in action.
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