Well haven’t I just been the social butterfly and ignoring my blogging responsibilities? I have had a very busy weekend running errands and going out. It was a nice change after a week-long dry spell.

So first if all, let me bitch about doctors. I thoroughly did not enjoy waiting around for 40 minutes only to be see a doctor for less than five minutes and be told they had no clue what was wrong with me. Now….what in the hell can ANYONE surmise in less than five minutes in order to give a prognosis. So I shall do what my auto mechanic always says, wait until the problem gets worse before you bring it in.

And speaking of cars, I finally had a chance to take mine it to get it serviced and to fix a nasty little rattling problem. The first problem is that I woke up 2 hours after my scheduled appointment, took it in anyway, and after four hours it STILL had not gone into the shop, so I went back and picked it up. But the nice part was talking to the courtesy van driver, John, an elderly Brit chap who talked to me about everything from politics to American society. It was very cool to get his perspective on things and was an honor to be called a “very nice and respectable young man.” It made me feel good to hear that. (An acquaintance of mine said today that “you;re one of the few people in this world who is not an asshole”) He had some very interesting views on things and I was somewhat taken aback by his negative views on this country since he had been here for so long, but, he does come from a different time and listening to him talk about how things used to me gave me an even greater perspective on life and this society. It was very cool.

Other than that, I go back to the daily grind of teaching tomorrow. Ugh. I like my students, and it has been awesome to see how fiercely loyal they have become in three days, which they showed when some were asked to volunteer to move out of my class. But this 8 am bullshit is ridiculous

I may just very well get my first REAL job soon. I applied for a publishing/writing company a month ago and hear nothing (this is not the one that I had my interview for, that one was a waste of time), and I got an e-mail this week saying I was one of 8 out of 86 applicants chosen to be interviewed. So who knows? I may actually get to make some real money at a steady pace for a change. It certainly would be nice to pay of all my bills and get the heck out of dodge.

I am really looking forward to starting work on Uz. I met with the creators yesterday and had a great meeting. They were very open to my ideas and changes to help make the show more theatrical and tighter. I think it will be a great experience and I cannot wait to start on it. The dance sequences a lone get my heart jumping. And it will be awesome to work on an original piece that has no precedence set before it. It will be all me! MUAHAHAAHAH!

And finally, and better late than never, my brother and his wife are expecting. So I shall be an Uncle sometime in February. Frightening thought indeed.

As of ten minutes ago, I am officially done grading those friggin finals. I have been dying to blog and have been experiencing a kind of cyber-constipation. But I’ll be damned if I am not free and clear to blog to my heart’s content.

Gee, where to start. This may be long so bear with me. Not that I need to be asking for forgiveness on that.

I drove down Friday to do laundry and planned on seeing some of the kids, especially since some of them were bugging me about not hanging out with them anymore. I ended up visiting a slew of people. I called up Jacob and what started as a trip to Joffrey’s turned into visiting three groups of people we called: The Teens, The Queens, and The Sex Machines.

The Teens

Actually, I really didn’t glean much from this visit, although Jacob did. We were both shocked as to how things had changed within that drama club subculture. And it wasn’t until I talked to him that I realized how truly different it was. My beef came from simply realizing that I did not like half the people in the room. Granted, they are only teenagers, but my despite recognizes no age limits. People are people no matter what and it enraged me to see how much some of them had changed (for the worse) and how some were fake, and how some were truly just nasty and awful human beings. Yes, they will learn and grow, but my god, I have no desire to have some of them around me. I have this need to surround myself with people who have a modicum of common sense and SOME kind of intellectual capacity. Some of these people are parriahs and juvenile morons. It surprises me how some of them have such a narrow and illogical perspective of what real life is. To be naive, gullible, and for lack of a better word, FUCKING STUPID, at 18 is just pathetic and sad. When you can;t see the forest because you refuse to open your eyes then you are just sociologically impotent. I feel sorry for people like that because when they finally wake up and see what life is about they will be destroyed. I feel even sorrier when they drag other people into their sick little circle as some kind of “saving” mission. Fuck that. Understand, I am not being pessimistic about life. I am being real. There is a fine line. I recognize that life has its ups and downs, but I am sure as hell not going to be fatalistic about it, nor will I be naively optimistic about every friggin thing. Life is NOT a Disney movie. Hmm..maybe I DID glean something. At least I got to see JeJe! WOO!

The Queens

We next visited a mutual friend whom we had not seen in about a year. He used to be straight and then one day just came out of the closet. It was quite a shock for us and was the one time when my gaydar was OFF. Although I always had my suspicions. It was interesting because it was amazing to see how MUCH of a queen he had become. If human sexuality can be plotted on a circle, then he has become so gay that he may very well hit being straight again. And when I mean a “queen” I mean a QUEEN. It was in one respect funny, and in another frightening. It makes me wonder if the way people act is really determined by those stereotypes we see enforced day in and day out. Actually, I know they/we are. How much of who we are is an act; a fabrication of the things and people we see, and how much of it is real. I know that I, for one, am very careful about showing the real me, and there are VERY few people who know what I am really like. I don;t do it to be duplicitous. I have two sides to me, and most people only see one. It is up to them to discover the me underneath. I know it sounds like I am being fake, but I don’t pretend to be some other persona, I just choose not to let both sides be seen. Yes, it is a defense mechanism, but it is also a way of proving to myself who my real friends are. I have a friend who is precisely what I describe. He lacks a personality and is in fact an amalgam of whomever he is around or whatever he sees. It;s really weird and I never really thought about it until now. There is no sense of who he really is as a person, but a complete outer choclatey shell that does not melt in your mouth OR your hands. I wonder if people are more afraid to face themselves rather than having others know the real them. What is it that makes us feel that we are not good enough sometimes?
The Sex Machines

Ah, the last stop was to visit some older friends that we still keep in touch with. It was so odd seeing some of them drinking and smoking (keep in mind I knew some of these people since they were 12 and some even younger). It always amazes me to see them grown up and I always have to remind myself that they ARE grown up and not to switch to automatic parenting mode. In any case, the entire place was seething with sex, or rather a weak attempt at people trying to mack on each other and lay down their game. It was rather sad, but what was even weirder was how much weight these people had gained! My god, and we are talking like four people. It was SO weird. I am not Adonis, mind you, but I seem to be losing it while they seem to be gaining it. Regardless, these are also some of my closest friends whom I have known for a while and even though I don;t see them on a daily basis, I know they are always in my life.

It is the last group that made me really evaluate something (and you thought I was going to talk about sex, eh?). I always joke with people that I have 9 walls that I surround myself with. They work as my comfort zone and my defense against duplicitous people. I use them in a healthy way, trust me. I am not misanthropic, but I have become VERY selective about the people I call my friends. I used to meet people left and right and call them “friend” when I was younger and I was totally fine with that, until I started realizing that there is a fine line between “friend” and “acquaintance” and I got myself in trouble emotionally and mentally because of that gullibility. I changed all that and while I still do have a large group of friends across the spectrum, I am very careful about who I let into my life. This leads to a higher level of skepticism when I DO let someone in and let the guard down. Besides, the walls do and don;t have anything with getting to know me. I have a couple of friends who know me VERY well, but know nothing about me. One does not equate the other although one DOES explain the other.

Anyway, I am not averse to meeting people and making friends at this stage in my life. I think it is something I will always do. However, in light of recent events and a betrayal of a close friend I realized that I may be too forgiving sometimes about letting people in. When I start letting the walls down, they usually all come down eventually. This marks the first time when the walls came crashing back up. Part of that must have been a reflex, but I think part of that was also my realizing that I was allowing myself to be used and become nothing more than a friend of convenience. A flavor of the month if you will. It has been a LONG time since I have been someone;s doormat, and I have gotten over being angry with myself about this instance, because it was this that just led me to my new revelation. I am finally able to control my emotions when it comes down to stuff like this. I don;t get carried away or paranoid, and while I am still honing and refining, I feel such a sense of empowerment by being able to say “Fuck you and Fuck off.” without actually saying it. I find that I don’t care, and while that may seem more dangerous and negative, I don;t think so. I am not becoming emotionally impotent, but emotionally smart. My not caring occurred in the context where I realized I was the only one doing the caring, and friendship is NOT a one way street, and I refuse to drive down that lane. It’s like an escape clause or an emergency shut down button. I guess what I am driving at is that I really have no problems getting to know people and letting them in (although, God knows I enjoy making it a challenge, and always will), but I am certainly going to be able to allow/disallow those people who want to get closer.

Not sure if any of this makes sense, but it does to me. So HOOPLA!

I am going to go make a fabulous dinner, and watch some TV and veg out for the rest of the evening. I feel fulfilled and accomplished in so many ways. And I leave this blog by saying one simple phrase: Fuck You and Fuck Off.

btw, that is not directed to everyone

And in the continuing trend of odd fucking phrases used to search my site:
sex goddess cliques

missing people of queens ny.

mean camel

man fucking female dog in heat

bitch girls

asian girls good values morals

story of being forced to fuck animals

shaving cream and sex

horse mating pics

Filipino bride bad stories
I swear to you…my site has NOTHING of the above. But my…what an insight into people’s minds.

I could not let this pass up. I was checking my site stats and here are a few of the search terms used to find my site. I even tried some of em out and I was actually on the first page for some of them…..and there is NOTHING on my site related to them at all!

Sara’s twat

Scrawny Men Sex

the physiological aspect of prison life

pictures of bathrooms covered in shit

shaving blog

see girls geting fuck by animals

kroean[sic] sex

frogs mating pics

Bubba is a cross dresser

I decided to start doing some ground work for my thesis (doing a cultural perspective treatment of Joseph Mancure March’s The Wild Party in tandem with its musical counterparts of the same name; one written by Michael John LaChuisa, and the other by Andrew Lippa. I am especially interested in the LaChuisa version because I think it is more faithful to the original text plot and context. Besides, I absolutely love his lyrics and music and think he is the MOST overlooked composer/lyricist of our time.

In any case, there are a few sung lines that the character Kate sings in regards to love that just struck me as absolutely amazing and true:

I’m gonna tell you something

Something I learned too long ago:

Love ain;t nothin but a whole lotta nothing

And you know what it’s really about?

It’s about comfort, not love, loverman

It’s about comfort

And keepin hold of it, hanging on to it

And doin whatever it takes to get more
Now as much as I love music, I tend to be a note whore and loves songs for their vocal potential before their lyrical, but this was a different thing. I find those lines to be so incredibly true. Trying to define love is as difficult as trying to prove God’s existence, they both require some measure of faith. However, the pursuit of the former is what tends to drive people insane most of their lives. Trying to fall in love, hanging onto those people with whom you fall in love, grieving over the loss when the love is no longer there. But how much of it is this thing called “love” and how much of it is truly an issue of comfort: being with someone, having someone around, sharing a closed space with someone else. After all, the only difference between a friend and a lover is the physical aspect (and, yes, I am excluding friends with benefits).

I am always in disbelief when my friends tell me they are in love because my reflex is to say “how do you know?” And then I watch as they flounder and are unable to answer me, and I just shake my head. I am especially skeptical when it is said after a SHORT amount of time. For me, to “love” someone, you have to know them pretty damn well; both their bad and their good qualities, and be able to connect with them on emotional, mental, and physical levels. That does not mean getting minor play talking about bullshit and thinking you are in love. Of course, I am torn in my thoughts about this because I truly believe that those relationships we have when we are younger prepare us for the relationships in the real world. BUT, there is a line I don’t think you cross in those interim stages. This culture and society is so based on sex that that seems to be the impetus behind people getting into relationships and staying in them. After all, the cliche is that people fall in love at first sight, which basically means falling in love with the outer/physical shell, not some metaphysical arrow of love.

Granted, this all sounds like the ramblings of a cynic or one who has had his heart broken, but it’s not. I just makes more sense. When I think of the married couples I know, friends who jump from one relationship to another, those who give themselves up physically so easily and freely, those who say or think “love” too quickly, I wonder if it all isn;t in some pursuit of just “being” with someone and getting that comfort of having someone around. I mean think about it, the married couples that last the longest are those that share the most comfort, not the most love. Maybe one means the other and vice versa.

I just hate the word “love” and the way it is tossed around. People imbue simple words with the most abstract of ideas, and in this case to explain those butterflies and nervous tendencies so stereotypical of falling for someone. And again, I am not saying people should not seek relationships with others; it IS part of the growth process. I just have a problem with the lack of understanding people have about it, the flippancy at which they connect and disconnect, and the fallacy in thought behind what they think will keep that comfort close by. And that bullshit of “I feel ready” is just that, bullshit. There is a difference between taking a risk and pre-planning some “fated” event. I am sure this is all sound and fury; people have been like this for a very long time and to ask for simplicity and a pause for logical thought would be asking too much. It seems we are too concerned with our base animal natures and not with anything of substance.

Well, enough of the silly sentimental bullshit I have been spewing forth onto these pages. I feel the need to analyze, criticize, and eviscerate those issues that bother me and that I see as culturally (in)significant. You know you have been in graduate school too long when you start using parentheses to created words within/out words.

Ok, so here is my recent quandary. I have decided that I am a little tired of being online in the sense of using AIM all the time. In the last 2 1/2 months I have been online EVERY night and have stayed up into the wee hours talking to people. Granted, I do not regret that. I met up with some great people and it was pivotal in my friendship with The Elf, so I do no begrudge it. However, I am officially tired and bored by it. Maybe it’s the dearth of conversation. Maybe it’s the plethora of mind-numbing conversations. Maybe it’s the forced conversations I find myself having to have. I told a couple of friends about this, one of whom agreed, and the other disagreed. He disagreed so much that he called me a “whore” and a “pun” (pronounced poon…I have no clue what it means). And he KNOWS who he IS.

It made me question what it is about using instant messengers that people are so drawn to. Is it the ease in communication with people because then they never have to say anything face-to-face? Is it dangerous mode of dis-socialization and the need to only connect with people on surface levels (although, I know I have had deep conversations online, but they lack a certain groundedness because of that missing “live” human quality). What made him call me a “whore” simply because I felt the need to get away from it for a while. I grew tired of sitting on my ass and neglecting important things. I also find that sometimes, cyberspace as a place of composition can be dangerous because of the lack of hearing emotions and dips and highs in tones that we associate with sarcasm, anger, depression and so on. Plus, something about the lack of the real-time conversation creates lags.

Now granted, I am not staying away FOREVER. I am planning on going back, but I just need a break. People think it is so detrimental NOT to be connected to people in cyberspace. Could this be what so many sci-fi writers have warned about the dehumanization effects of technology? Are we really moving to a co-dependence on technology as, what?, a substitute or cover-up for human contact. I know I am not speaking from a position of fuddy-duddiness. I am a phone whore and a face-to-face addict. I think IM’s have their benefits which serve long distance issues, but when people are so nearby what is so hard about picking up phones or going to see someone. Have we really become that busy? Have we become that jaded about the value of “real” conversations? And just what the hell IS a Poon????

On a another note….the elf leaves for KY on Wednesday for 2 months. It will be interesting (read quiet ;b) to say the least. I imagine I will miss him terribly, but nothing like absence to make the heart grow fonder. Then again, out of sigh out of mind eh? Although the conversations will be few and far in between, they will be looked forward to. I will miss him.

Meanwhile, my ass will be stuck here waiting to start this new musical and waiting to teach yet another semester of exciting classes.

You know, there is a reason I hate alcohol and have a VERY low tolerance for people who drink and for being around people or situations that involve drinking. However, I have been known to sip drinks (and no, that is not hypocritical) and every time I do it just reaffirms why I hate alcohol (among the many other reasons). Something about the taste of it sends me into nasty shocks; my friends love to torture me by offering sips JUST so they can see the faces I make. In any case, about a month ago I was at Sara’s house and she had me try this hot chocolate mixture with Kahlua and Irish Cream…not a problem….had no reaction and could barely taste it. Move to today. Sara is in Orlando with her friend Sue at an 80s rock concert starring Poison and I ask if I can hang at her house and play her Xbox. She says OK and I enjoy a leisurely day there. Why, oh why, I got the bug to make that same hot chocolate drink I will never understand. You see, I may know about the different kinds of alcohol (to a degree), but I know SHIT about measuring. I think I put way too much of something in there because by the time I was done drinking it I was having a head rush and my stomach was in pains. Consider it a psycho-physiological response and not an allergy. I conditioned myself to hate it mentally so much so that my body got duped. How can you be so sure you ask? Well allow me to share an embarrassing story:

Picture it: Valentine’s Day. 1998

Two of my girl-friends surprise me by showing up at my apartment and drag me to dinner at Carraba’s (this after they both decide to play a game of flash-the-camel). So I give in and go and we have a really good time. We get back to my place late and they have a bottle of champagne. Naturally, I turn it down, but after much bitching, whining, and complaining I offer to have a SIP just to appease them. And when I mean sip, I mean less than a millimeter. Everything is fine. A couple more hours of laughing and such and they go home. I go to sleep excited because they are showing a remastered Gone With The Wind on TV the next day and it has been a long time since I have seen it. Oh, but you see…I would never get to see the damn thing. I wake up the next morning feeling like death and slipping in and out of consciousness the ENTIRE day. I can’t get up and walk around, I can’t even stand to pee because I am so dizzy. No barfing, no cold symptoms, no sweating. Just the feeling of death. I finally blackout and wake up the next morning just fine. Sure, it could have been the food or something else. But I don’t think so.

The lesson: NO MORE SIPPING OR MAKING DRINKS!!!!

Now for two stupid things I saw on my way home:

1.A billboard for clam juice with a lady holding a bottle looking WAY too happy about a bottle of clam juice.

2.A couple rolling a grocery cart full of food into their house and looking quite suspicious about it.

I need to get a digital camera and start taking pictures of this stuff.

Well, I have had a busy morning. I finally got some sleep after 3 days of very LITTLE sleep, simply because I could not fall asleep. I woke early and finished a painting project I began. It has been about five years since I put paint to canvas. Just felt uninspired and had no reason to. I found inspiration a couple of days ago and went to town. It was odd getting back to it, but I chuckled when I was done and realized I was covered in paint and felt an extreme sense of relief. I also did a little housekeeping this morning after a week of not being able to clean up anything because I have barely been home due to the show I was working. Let me just say that it was a BAD idea to leave a bag of trash sitting outside for three days. Not only did it leak, but there were weird things crawling out of it and feeding off of it. I never wanted to retch so much in my life.

So I’ve been busy, which is an understatement. Most of this weekend is a blur to me mostly because I did so much and stayed up so late every night that my recollection is weak due to exhaustion. So where to begin….

The first, and most important, was a declaration of friendship. I battled with this for several days. I know it seems quite odd that friendships require mulling over and decision making in their creation. But I have spent my life making and losing friends and to me, my friends are my life. I live and breath through and with my friends and, to be quite honest, they are my family and always have been. I am thankful for all the friends I have made in my life, but the process of slowly losing touch with most of them due to time and space has been rough on me.

Sara made an interesting point today when I was raving about how happy I was that I never have to worry about matters of the heart or dating bullshit. Frienships are just like any other relationships and to me, in absence of “those” relationships, I have my friendships. Both are exactly the same except for the element of sex (despite the friends with benefits thing). She brought up some examples of my friendships and compared them to lovers and by God she was right. They are precisely the same. I go through the same ups and downs, the same heartbreaks and joys, and the same enjoyment of having close connections with people. And since sex is complete worthless and pointless for me, it works out grand. Of course, this substitution also explains why I occasionally had problems with some of my friends which lead to “break ups,” for lack of a better word.

Anyway, over the years I have become very guarded about the people I let into my life and to whom I lower my defenses. It saves me a lot of heartache and allows me to focus on my close friends. I have surface acquaintance friends galore (for God’s sake, I have 110 people on my buddy list) and I enjoy them just as much as my close friends. The difference is my emotional connection and the degree to which I love them (and again, I use love not in the norm).
But I digress. After four years, I finally let my guard down and let someone in again, and to be quite honest, the experience is not only exhilarating and satisfying, but fulfilling. I make it sound like some Buddhist experience, I know. But to find someone with whom I can so closely connect on all levels, with whom I can both bullshit and talk on an intellectual level, and with whom I can make laugh over and over again to no end is amazing to me.

As for this weekend… I spent Friday at rehearsal, then a birthday party, then I crashed at a friends house where I talked to a fellow immigrant until five in the morning. I got up at 9:30, went to pick up the elf (who made the most amazing breakfast I have had in a long time), and went to rehearsal until 4. Then off to a pot luck dinner until about 9:30, then socialized for a little, then came home and got on the phone until 4 a.m. A phone conversation that degraded into pure nonsense…I still cannot recollect much of the last half other than a few snippets about the movie Snatch and a discussion about the animal planet network which involved animal noises (wombat wombat wombat).

I….am…exhausted.

I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be a slow day, but oh no. I had to redesign a site, had to think of a new design for mine, consoled and advised 8, I say 8, people online all at once and fielded two conversations with friends who were in tears. Tonight was the night for EVERYONE to have problems.

On a good note, I had a great dinner that Sara’s out-of-town friend Carlton made and then I came home where I now sit typing this and conversing with my fucking friend . Needless to say it has been a busy and fulfilling weekend full of surprises.

My Saturday night was filled with adventuresome dining at a Chinese buffet, which should be condemned and the building razed. Then, I ventured to play Laser Tag which I have not done in a VERY long time. Needless to say, I sucked at it because I kept inadvertently shooting my own damn pack. This is just another shining example of why I would be worthless in the army. I got so frustrated that I just shot my own pack to get myself out.

After all that fun, I proceeded to what has to be the largest most interestingly decorated (read: ceramic, cow, stuffed fighting fowl, full armor suit, animal prints, and more more more) “mansion” I have ever been inside. If that is what it is like to live in the lap of luxury then sign me up. And that is not about the materialism, but the comfort of it all. I was also subjected to the further tinking of the Elf; however, I was happily relieved of it for a while while the elf pursued other baking goods: nutty tarts (j/k FFJ). The evening ended with a Mission Impossible-esque search party for a missing friend which lasted until 2 in the morning when we finally found him and I attempted to get his attention by throwing mulch chips at the window because there were no rocks around.  Espionage…not my field either. However, it was worth it to also have me hang my head out the window screaming, “Lance! Treat, treat Lance!” and having the getaway car speeding at a whopping 45.

And then there was yesterday. I was happily allowed to partake in a test-making party for a thespian induction ceremony, which turned into a “let’s go get ice cream and then visit a run-down house off of railroad tracks so we can pilfer odd items from the shed.” Yeah, we’re talking a mix of Goonies and Stand By Me. Ah…my Fe-Fe kids done do me proud .

The most interesting part of the day was researching my journals and finding INTERESTING entries which spoke of recent events (I swear I am like Nostradamus sometimes). In my further denial of what is obviously some kind of truth and reality, the little Elf decided on the the question with a friggin’ happy meal toy from McDonald’s. An 8-ball-esque Jackie Chan in a kicking position with a slotted stand that reveals answers when rotated. EVERY SINGLE one of the answers were in the “right” direction and not the ones I “wanted” them to be. I realize I am being ambiguous, but it keeps me safe. Besides, those parties whom this involves know what I am talking about and yet again will find great satisfaction in my relenting to the tinking away of both the chisel and fate/life/coincidence/whatever. So I concede….let the friendship begin/continue/grow and let it go where it is supposed to. Palm lines, veined letters, line letters, Jackie Chan, grandmothers, journals, and on and on and on. I will revel in the joy that it brings and in the amazement I constantly find in the little similarities in life that I thought were relegated to myself. So put in the tray of cookies and bake away!