BuggBlog

Happiness is a warm bechemel sauce

While continuously whisking my first-ever bechemel sauce over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes this weekend, I realized that I'm often at my happiest in the kitchen. This is, of course, because I'm not required to do it -- it's a hobby, not a vocation, so I'm free to enjoy and experiment and generally do what I please just because I want to. Many, many people talk about their jobs in terms of this sort of happiness -- that the discovery of true joy comes when finding the job that allows you to feel happy and free because the work is such an integral part of you that it can't bring anything but happiness and contentment.

I'm not one of those people. I love my job -- what's not to love about being the editor of a gay magazine and getting to write about interesting people, manage a growing publication, review cars, read voluminous amounts, and so forth -- but it's hard. I get a certain satisfaction out of writing that I can't get anywhere else, a feeling of deep satiation that I really only know when I've written something I know to be good. That's content. Cooking is happy.

Triple twisted

Pretty entertaining shopping profile in the WaPo today of figure skating brat -- and I mean that in the best possible way -- Johnny "Eat It" Weir. In the middle of his paean to all things Vuitton and Dior, comes this beaut of a graf:

He opens his Louis Vuitton bag, which has inside it the following items: a Louis Vuitton camera bag and a cell phone with three fur tails hanging off it (one beaver, two mink). There is also a Gucci change purse, inside of which he keeps a spoon that has been twisted three times, of which Johnny will only speak mysteriously: "It's mystical," he says. "There are powers in it."

Powers, in an itty-bitty spoon that fits in a Gucci change purse? Yeah, I bet those powers really blow.

Home stretch

Ah, "home" puns. I could make those all day long.

Anyway, HomoMojo's big gay blog writing contest about "what home means" is open for voting. Please stop by and, if it so moves you, vote for me. Be sure to check out all the other entries -- there's some fine and interesting stuff out there to consider. The winner gets to designate a charity to receive a $50 donation. Good cause and all, so get on over and vote for someone.

Privileged in a Prius

As much as I love my old-fashioned, combustible engined motorcars, I do wholeheartedly support the moves to develop alternative-fuel and gas-electric hybrid cars and trucks. It's less for the environment, though that's probably a good enough reason on it's own, and more because it just seems wise to start disentangling ourselves from the outrageously unstable and ever more hostile Middle East.

What I don't support are the outrageously stupid ideas our state and federal governments keep coming up with in the name of "encouraging" us to buy hybrid cars. The Post reports today that instead of ending the special program that allows single-occupant hybrid cars to use HOV-lanes during rush hour, which has predictably resulted in thousands of single-occupancy cars throttling the traffic flow, the state legislature is trying to extend it. How many ways is this stupid? Let's take an obvious one:

Reading between the lines

Among the things about which I've been remiss is updating my "To-Be-Read Pile" in the left column. That's because, embarrassingly, lots of those books remain to-be-read lo these many weeks later. Not that that's stopped me from buying a big heaping helping of new books to add to the list. I've declined to add a couple of books that I'm actually working on -- it seems a bit on the insufferable side to proclaim with each hit that I'm currently working my way through second-tier Faulkner.

But that's what I'm actually doing. I'm about three-quarters of the way through Sanctuary, which I'm enjoying immensely. The funny thing for me about Faulkner and all sorts of other high-brow literature is that the biggest thing that helped me learn to enjoy it was to get my ass as far away from an English Literature class as possible.

See, in addition to wanting to be a journalist from my preteen years onward, I also harbored great ambitions as a writer. And I love books, obsessively so. I started reading some of my mom's novels while in elementary school. I think she let me flip through them believing I wasn't really understanding what I was reading, and by the time she realized I did it was too late. I was around 10-years-old when I read Stephen King's The Shining -- yes, I'm sure that explains a lot -- and I quickly took up writing my own horror and sci-fi stories on my first typewriter, an old Royal manual.

Home again, home again

While I haven't posted anything in awhile -- although I did write a huge post earlier today about the joys of writing on deadline, which I then promptly lost by accidentally hitting "reload" and sending it to blog purgatory, proving that I should be writing these damn things in Word and not the browser as I'm doing again right this second because I just never learn -- I have entered a a blog writing contest on the the topic of "home" over at homomojo. My grand statement on the topic is actually from my trip home to Kentucky -- see, a topic! -- over Christmas, a piece I wrote sitting in my Mom's kitchen, which helps explain the sentimentality.

Voting should start Feb. 15 -- I'll post the link as soon as it's available.