This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about

Well I am getting to bed WAAAY too late considering Im driving a lot tomorrow(or rather in a few hours). Unfortunately, my work ran really late, and Im just now ready to go to bed.

So later today I head to pick up my friends and head to Atlanta for three days! This is my first vacation since the summer (last time I went to ATL). I cannot wait...and I would like to think that I can relax away from work for all three days, but Im not holding my breath.

On another note, my new cell phone came in today! The HTC Touch Pro. It looks really pretty, but Im not totally in love with it yet. I have 15 days to return it. Thankfully, I didn't pay for it (one benefit of being a prima donna IT guy that is underpaid, so really pushes for small things like free phones every now and again!).

I will try to post about my trip, but I don't know if I'll have any time. And if anyone is going to be in ATL for New Years Eve and wants to come out and have a good time (albeit gay male stripper debauchery)-- it really is a good party at Swinging Richards, regardless of the whole stripper thing. We are going to try to hit up some other clubs too!

I want to wish everyone a happy happy new year filled with lots of life and love!

Steve

Like a Virgin II...and hot naked sweaty men

So last nights meal didn't turn out too well. I overcooked the salmon, and probably screwed up on the marinade too because the aftertaste was really weird. On the spots where I kind of over-cooked the salmon...the marinate kind of glazed and tasted funny. The marinade was lite soy sauce, minced ginger, minced garlic, brown sugar, and I added a tsp of seseme oil which was a mistake (I was going out on a limb...and failed). I don't know what part of that marinade fucked up but it was not so good...

The rice was GREAT! Although...considering I had just bought I rice cooker- it certainly should have been! However- note to future rice cookers: 3 cups of uncooked rice is TOO much for one person. For some reason, I was thinking three cups was correct...turns out thats enough for a family of FIVE.

The worst debacle was the ceasar dressing. I am sure AJs recipe is fine...I think it is my less-than-capable hands that screwed this one. I'll have to ask AJ about this one day... if I ever get on MSN when he is.

Seeing as I have two and a half cups of rice left over- I am trying fried rice tonight. I just got home (yea its a bit late for dinner, I understand) and I am determined to cook something well!

On a side note- we are T-3 days from seeing very hot, very nude, very talented, and very sweaty men on new years eve! This will be my one night a year to break my already malfunctioning moral compass and enjoy some primal entertainment (and certainly some adult beverages!). More on this later.

Much Love,
Steve

Like a Virgin

I am trying my hand at cooking something more complex than microwave food tonight--wish me luck! I am a chef virgin...so I need all the help I can get.

I am doing a pan seared salmon with teriyaki glaze + steamed rice + AJ's ceasar salad dressing (i.e. caesar salad)

I am going to the store now...but am certain I am forgetting something.

In other news- I, being super productive, started prepping my room for painting. I am repainting my room (again) to this chic modern grey color, which will go well with my new bedroom furniture. I still haven't picked out the draperies or the bedding, but Im excited about how it will look.

As I may have mentioned before, I am really bad at being gay-- Im not very fashionable or flamboyant (as much as I would like to be sometimes). However, last year I spent some time/money redecorating my living room (new furniture, draperies, random aesthetic pieces). And this is the only enjoyable "adult" thing I have really done since graduating college. So now doing my bedroom is kind of exciting too! Hurray for not being a starving college student! (well maybe starving grad-school student after Im done with this bedroom...but its going to be modern, and stylish, and sexy!).

Wish me luck!
Steve

Grown-up Christmas List

Merry Christmas! As a non-religious person, I am glad that Christmas is commercial enough so that everyone can enjoy it! I certainly like the holidays-- everyone seems a little friendlier, and we get off school and work to relax a bit. If only I could get some snow here in the south, I could have a white christmas and it would all be well! I have had only one white christmas and it was in Dallas, TX (strangely). I feel sorry for our southern hemisphere friends who never get snow during the holidays!

Tonight I am going to some family-friends christmas party. Their kids are a little younger than me like 2 and 4 years. One is a singer, and very good. So I am typically roped in to playing piano while she sings. She is great, so its a lot of fun. Also, her brother, is really really hot... so that will be nice >:-)

Our line up is:
Grown Up Christmas List
Seasons of Love (from Rent)
The Prayer (never heard it before, but its good)
Where are you Christmas? (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas)
Santa Clause is coming to town
Silent Night (of course)
Little Drummer Boy
Jingle Bells
I'll be home for Christmas
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
The First Noel
Angels We Have Heard on High
Glasgow Love Theme (from Love Actually)
Taylor, the Latte Boy (really fun song)

This is really a lot of music as I look at it... Im pretty sure its all trivially easy, and if not...Ill just wing it! Thankfully, she is singing so everyone will be paying attention to her, and I can mess up or just revert to chords all I want :-)

Piano is fun.

Much Love-

Advice, like youth, probably wasted on the young

I know it is cliche, and was highly over-popularized when it first came to radio, but... I ran across the song/essay "Everyone is Free to Wear Sunscreen" (actually titled "Advice, like youth, probably wasted one the young") today, and found it to be especially profound. I think it just fit my mood really well, and happen to inspire me a bit. So I am typing the lyrics here as a cathartic exercise to let the meaning sink in. I think there is a lot of truth to much of this:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97,

Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proven by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis or reliable then my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice....now:

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, nevermind, you won't understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've gone, but trust me in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind: the kind that blindsides you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts; don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. (if you succeed in doing this, tell me how).

Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of Calcium. Be kind to your knees -- you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40; maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body: use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or what other people think of it; it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance...even if you have no where to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions (even if you don't follow them). Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents; you never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings: they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but what a precious few should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps and geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old; and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse, but you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you are 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia; dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal--wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me, on the sunscreen.

The earth is not a cold dead place

Mboy posted yesterday and said that everyone was in a depressed mood recently. I read that and thought- I have actually been in a really good mood recently. I went to my company xmas party Friday, and played piano while others sang. I really enjoy this. I am not a good piano player, by any normal definition. I have bad fingering and technique. However, I am good at "fake music"-- I seem to have a knack for improvising and interpolating chords to create a rich accompaniment, especially when others sing (so I can relax on playing the melody lines). So it was a lot of fun!

Saturday, I spent a lot of time with my mom, which was fun, and hung out with friends last night.

Today, I started the day alone at Starbucks working on work stuff. Then I went christmas shopping with one of my good friends. When we were finished, he had to eat with his parents, and I probably needed to do more work. So I went back to starbucks. For some reason, when I got to starbucks, my mood shifted strongly. On the way there I had been thinking about my dad, which depressed me. Then I listened to my voice mail and heard messages from my friends a few nights prior that were trying to get me to go to a party at midnight.

All in all, I found myself very depressed. This of course after I responded to mboy saying things were really well! I don't know, I guess christmas shopping just for one person (my mom) made me lonely.

Although, only two days of work until I am off for a week and a half!! I cannot wait until new years.

Much Love,
Steve

Seven Pounds

One nice thing about working for a movie theatre company is knowing the managers. The theatres that still use physical film (not digital) still screen the prints before they open. When you build a movie you have to splice together all of the trailers and the reels of the film. And there are plenty of films that end a reel with a fade to black, which makes it very difficult to see where to splice (you have to count sprocket holes). Regardless, the point is there are plenty of opportunities for the $8/hr projectionist to screw it up--so its best to watch it once before paying customers see it.

So I watched "Seven Pounds", the Will Smith movie. The rest of this post is about the movie, so if you plan on seeing the film...DO NOT CONTINUE READING!!!

First, the film was amazing. The tone and direction was perfect; on par with Sam Mendes. The experience of watching the film was great. The viewers were sucked into this world, and taken on the emotional journey with our protagonist. Going in to this movie, I had no prior knowledge: I had never seen a preview or read anything. This is the way I prefer to watch movies. I enjoy letting the director do all the work in storytelling. This film was a great experience in storytelling, and I recommend everyone see it without any prior knowledge... so again STOP READING if you are going to see it.

Will Smith's character, Tim, is a broken man, who seeks salvation from his "sin" through sacrificing himself for others. Tim, a MIT graduate and aeronautical engineer, lives life to the fullest. He has a beautiful wife, whom he loves, and beautiful homes. While driving with his wife one night, he accidentally checks his blackberry and causes a car accident. This accident kills his wife and a bus full of six people. Tim blames himself for the accident, and decides to sacrifice himself for the benefit of seven deserving people. He donates a kidney, bone marrow, part of his liver, a lung, and finally- a heart. Its a beautiful story, and emotional. The end in particular is very difficult to watch.

Overall, the movie experience of seven pounds was fantastic. I cried at the end, because the acting is so good- it tears at your heart. I really cannot stress how great the movie is, and how it compares to an American Beauty, the Hours, or other beautiful films. However, as I walked out of the theatre something felt weird. I thought about it and realized what it was. Movies more often than not have some kind of message. This is just a natural consequence of story telling. Certainly, there doesn't have to be a message, and there are plenty of great films that don't. However, films such as this- rich dramatic pieces that deal with salvation and sacrifice, typically do. So I think that my brain was trying real hard to fit this into that frame, and figure out some "meaning".

This is a problem for me and Seven Pounds. In my mind, Tim didn't do anything wrong; he was in a car accident. Yes- he "glances" at his blackberry before the wreck, but this doesn't warrant the severe punishment that he places on himself. Had the "blackberry" been a symbol for "working too hard" or "living through work", then I would be ok. But Tim had a full life, he clearly enjoyed the beauty of the world around him, he had a great relationship with his wife, etc. So to sacrifice himself without sin seems like a strange paradox in the movie. I understand that in Tim's mind, he must pay for his action, and that makes sense. But as a viewer, am I supposed to take this as a desirable thing? Is the message that we should sacrifice ourselves for our sins? If so, then I disagree. I don't think Tim deserved such a harsh sentence for himself. If instead, I am not to infer a message, and instead just appreciate a heart-wrenching tale of redemption and self-sacrifice, then I love the movie. I just can't tear myself from my preconditioning of trying to infer meaning from movies like this.

If anyone else has seen it I would love to hear your thoughts.

Much Love,
Steve

Willful Suspension of Disbelief

I happen to be going through my hard drive the other day and found a whole lot of english papers from High School. I don't think this poem is any good, and I don't actually remember writing it...although that was eight years ago. Even in all of its disconnected-ness and over-embellishment, I feel like it means more to me now than it could've possibly meant back then. It's almost like my highschool self is prodding me to get out and obtain my personal goals. This is a strange euphoria that I feel right now...almost divine, that I stumbled across this today. It is untitled.


Untitled

I saw a sparrow lying on the branch of a dogwood tree that I had passed nearly ten times in the past four days.
On today’s occasion, a glimpse of dew caught my eye
The sparrow twitched its head forth and back
And in this moment, the glimpse of life sparked my sense

Many get caught up in the thatches of life
The irony of all, is the simplistic complexity that surrounds us
The real beauty is right in front of us
Don’t let rules and shallow threats ruin your drive
These are but roadblocks and street signs in the way of hope and inspiration

Live life
Live free
Free to will and to want
To please and open all that is yours in total exposure
The real truth is worth more than the loss of what petty instruments fill our homes

Step out today, released from your own mind
Experience that which is invisible to others
Do not spend your time searching for meaning, for these among us miss out on the true beauty that surrounds us.

Catastrophe and the Cure

First off- let me say that the last few days have been shit. I woke up on Friday, expecting a nice relaxing day at work and a nice relaxing weekend. I checked my email to find that I had to get on a plane to go to a customer site immediately. That really sucked, but at least I got to come home Saturday. I got home...only to have to jump on another conference call for three hours. Then the other people I do some work for called and they had a catastrophe! I checked it out and told them that I couldn't do anything Saturday night and they would have to wait. I HAD to do something fun because I was about to loose my mind. So I met some friends to play some Rock Band 2, which was even better by the fact that my friend just got the ION drumset for the PS3! This kit is much better than the one that comes with the game, but the bass pedal still sucks.

On to other things...

When I was flying and listening to my mp3 player I was reminded how much music affects me. I am the type of music listener that really believes in the experience of listening music. I really enjoy pieces that invoke some kind of emotional response in my brain. I find that amazing that something recorded years ago and played a hundred times can still flood my brain, triggering all kind of emotional responses.

Also, a side effect of this is that many songs are tied to a particular memory of a particular time in my life. Listening to Modest Mouse's "The Moon and Antarctica" will ALWAYS remind me of working on my "Internet Programming" course's final project, the winter of my junior year. Just as M83's "Run Into Flowers" reminds me of a particularly long day working on my senior project. Not only does music excite/anger/depress me, it also is a mini-trip down memory lane, and thats pretty cool.

So the music I find that evokes the most emotional response is ambient, instrumental, post-rock groups like Sigur Ros and Explosions in the Sky. The songs "The Birth and Death of the Day" or "Memorial" or "Your hand in mine" by Explosions in the sky really paint this picture of their meaning only with instruments--no lyrics. Its pretty amazing.

Does anyone know any other bands like this?

Much Love,
Steve

Never Ending Math Equation

I told myself that I would post everyday, and I missed a day. Shame on me... in fairness, I had exams et al yesterday.

So the semester is officially over for me, and I am looking forward to next semester. I am taking Neural Networks and Natural Language Processing, which are both Artificial Intelligence classes. Just to dork it up for a minute--

(...thinking how bad it is that this entire post will be dorky...)

One of the interesting things about computer science is its intersection with humans. The human brain is an absolutely amazing processing machine. Computers today work very much like the brain but on a much much smaller scale. The brain exploits parallelism, meaning that it can do many many things at once. Your brain is like a lot of smaller computers put together. However, there are theoretical things in computer science that allow us to make statements that apply to humans.

For example, in computer science there is a concept of a 'Turing Machine'. This is a model of computation that describes a generic machine for solving problems. I won't go into all of the gory details, but basically a Turing machine is the canonical model for modern computers.

The question is "Is the human brain a Turing Machine?". Due to theoretical work in this part of computers science, if the brain IS a Turing Machine then that means that it is equally powerful to every other Turing Machine (of which computers are one). What this means is that computers can one day be indistinguishable from humans. Let me make this clear--- if the brain and the modern computer are the same model of computation, then that means that computers fundamentally must be able to solve the same problems as the brain. This is interesting, because it means that there is not a theoretical limitation on how powerful computers can be--its just an issue of scale.

If computers are as powerful as the human mind, then one day we can interact with computers, and we would not be able to distinguish between interacting with a computer or interacting with a human (this is the prized Turing Test). This is profound to me. There is something in AI called "The singularity" and it is a hypothesis that states that there will be some point at which humans will create a computer smarter than himself. Once this occurs, there will be a massive explosion of technology. This is because, as soon as you build one computer smarter than yourself, then it can build one even smarter and so on and so on. (I will post more on my thoughts on this later in another dork-fest post.)

Lastly, if the human brain is NOT a Turing Machine, then it must differ in some exotic way. Small variants of Turing Machines can all be reduced to the standard turing machine (this is hard to explain without details). But basically there would have to be some property of the brain that is exotic and fundamentally different from the Turing Machine model of computation. For example, if you have watched "what the bleep do we know" then you have seen the theory of how humans must be time traveling small periods of time ALL THE TIME in order just to do everyday things like "hit a baseball" (they invoke the all-holy quantum physics explanation for everything that doesn't make sense and make it really bizarre and exotic). The claim is that the human brain isn't smart enough to do all of the processing necessary to actually hit a baseball. This really isn't true-- they assume that the brain is doing all of the precise mathematics (calculus) to determine how to position the bat. This is false-- the brain uses simple heuristics all the time to do these things. If the brain did calculus subconsciously, then it wouldn't get things wrong so often. The fact that batters strike out is a good hint that many heuristics (which aren't perfect) are being employed.

All of this is very interesting to me...I am waiting for the machines to take over and make me bionic so that I can live forever :-)

Much Love and sorry for the dork-tacular post...hehe

Steve

Sharp Hint of New Tears

Memories are strange things. I recall from psychology class that the neural-physiological processes that form and retrieve memories are not well understood. However, I remember that they have run experiments recording brain activity as events occur: they record activity and have the subjects do something. Then they wait and have them "remember" it. They find strong similarities in the three-dimensional activity of actually experiencing the action, and just remembering the action "in your minds eye". This really isn't surprising, but interesting none the less; your brain "lives" the moment again, but with less fidelity.

Reading mirrorboys post today made me remember some bad nights I had when I was 15/16. As I was "living" these again, I re-felt all of the pain and emotion that has been permanently tagged with these memories.

I felt very alone back then as well, because I had no other gay friends and was struggling with my own sexuality. I don't think I was as strong as mboy, because I would've crumbled into bits the first day that I was "out"-ed. I know that this was all "part of growing up"...but I hated it. I hated every second of it: being alone and feeling ostracized from my peers and from myself a bit, too.

Mboys post really caused me to think how my life has changed in the last 10 years. It sounds like so long ago- but it feels like yesterday. As I inventory my experiences, I think that I haven't grown as much as I would've liked. On the positive side, I have finished my undergrad degree, received some awards for my work in college, landed a good job, and been fairly successful financially for my age. I am very proud of all the hard work I put in to my education and my job. However, this is my only sense of pride in my life. Without this, I have nothing. I hate myself in many other ways, and I feel very alone. I have a roommate and enough friends, but no one to share my life with. I think AJ is so lucky, and I know he is happy- and I am happy for him. But at 25, I really do fear that I will be alone for the rest of my life and die alone.

Not helping the situation, I watched a documentary called "A Certain Kind of Death" on netflix a few nights ago. It was really interesting, but really sad. It was the story of what happens to people that are found dead that have no living kin. The first person on there was a 58 year old gay man, who had no family, whose partner had died years prior, and who was just found in his apartment face down. The city sold all of his possessions and used the proceeds to bury him. The only people present were a minister and the grave digger. I don't want to be that man, but I don't know how to be better, at being Steve, to prevent it.

This is already too long of a post, and I should be studying for my Artificial Intelligence exam tomorrow morning!

Much Love,
Steve

Misfortune Cookie

This is the brief story of a fortune cookie.  

I have always had strange fortune cookies.  The strangest was one that read: "On the way to work tommorrow, turn left when leaving your house."  I still have this one today, because it was creepy.  Everyone else had "happiness is the essense of bliss" and shit like that...mine- a prophetic message of future terror!

Yesterday, at dinner, I got one that said "Tommorrow will be a very productive day; don't oversleep!"

As I mentioned in my last incredibly long post, the club I went to gave my credit card to someone else--so that was already bad enough to ruin my trip.  My plan was to leave nashville at 10am and get home around 1pm to spend the day on other things.

I awoke at 8:30 this morning before the alarm clock.  I thought to myself, wow that fortune cookie must be accurate- I didn't oversleep!  I left on time, got 50 miles outside of town and received a phone call from the movie theatre...nothing was working! It was like a nightmare- I was walking them through things while trying to avoid getting in a wreck.  About an hour into it, it was clear that I needed to get internet so I could remotely see what was going on.

I don't know if you've been to middle tennessee...but not a lot of wifi around.  About one hour from Memphis, I found a McDonalds that had wifi advertised! woo hoo- things were looking up!  I brought my laptop in to find that the church crowd had just let out...with ALL of their children.  I don't have a problem with children as long as they aren't screaming, pooping, vomiting, running, talking, shouting, punching, or making funny faces--in this McHell-hole, each of these participles was occurring in spades. 

I finally got online after a bit of trying, and then for the next TWO AND A HALF hours tried to figure out what was wrong.  This is two and half hours of people coming and going...all with kids...all screaming.  Everytime I was on the phone- the person on the other end thought I was in a slaughter-house.  At 3:30pm I conceeded that I needed to turn around and go back to Nashville.  I get there and set things in motion to "start from scratch" all of the work I had performed on Saturday.  

A few hours in, I decided to just double-check a couple of things.  I found that I had missed something earlier...something simple...trivially simple...insultingly simple.  I fixed it, sighed, cursed greatly, and packed up.  This is a little before 7pm-- I had wasted the whole day- sung the entire Rent soundtrack thrice, and was really ready to go home.

About 80 miles after I left, three cars, a few hundred feet ahead of me, got into a huge wreck.  A number of us pulled over to see if we could help.  Everyone was fine, but one car had flipped completely over.  

It is now 10:30, over 12 hours since my original departure time, and I have accomplished nothing except screw myself out of a Sunday.  I cannot recall a day where I have been so UNPRODUCTIVE.

But I didn't oversleep...

Much Love,

Steve

Thick as Thieves

I should be in bed...strike that- I am in bed...I should be asleep. Alas, I am following AJs lead on the daily blog post. I think I will like to look back on this in the future, so a post a day will be best. I will try to alternate serious and silly posts... I do have serious things that I want to post, but often times I don't have the energy or time.

So today I am in Nashville, which is the country music captial of the world! This is my fourth trip to Nash in the last two months. I do some computer work for a movie theatre company, and they just opened a theatre here. I really like Nashville. The gay culture here is better then memphis, but still pretty bad. Movie theatres tend to attract gay people like flies. So many employees are gay, and very cute >:) which makes the work go by a little better!

I did my work, and myself and two other friends decided to hit the town. I dont go out to clubs very often--a few times a month--not weekly. Nashville has a club called PLAY that is really nice. Its modern, clean, has nice people in general, and good music for sure. The crowd is around my age, but most are really attractive. I have major self esteem issues which I will get to in another post--so I come off as very unapproachable--its unfortunate, because I think I am a generally happy, friendly guy :-)

So we arrived just in time for the 1AM drag show. I don't know if you have been to a drag show before, but let me explain briefly. I don't know the history (note to self: check netflix for drag docu), but for some reason as gay people, we are obligated to attend and cheer and tip men who feel the need to wear homemade dresses and lip sync to pop songs. I LOVE them! Its completely rediculous, and campy, but its so much fun! It's just a pervasive part of gay culture that is a requirement to keep your membership. PLAY has a great show- they have some really "famous" drag queens. Also, Kelly Pickler (from american idol) was there tonight! Apparently she lives here pursuing a country music career.

We had fun, watched the show, inbibed some adult beverages, and danced a little. Around 3:30ish we were all tired, and were ready to go. I was picking up all of the drinks (I sometimes do just to express my gratitude for having such awesome friends), and had opened a tab with "cute bartender #2" (don't recall his name). When I went to close out the tab, he looked confused, and went to the manager. When they came back, he explained that he had given my card to someone else accidentally. I was upset but its easy to happen with all the music and lights. He comped my tab (about $60) and gave me two free passes for next time. Unfortunately since I am from out of town, I can't get it in the AM. I am a little concerned, but the bartender said he knew the guy he confused my card with, and that he was trying to call him. He reassured me that he knew him to be trustworthy. I will just check the account in the morning, and the mgr is going to mail me the card tommorrow afternoon.

It kind of ruined the night, but it was still fun. There were so many hot guys it was like a buffet. So support your local drag queens, and go be silly for a night. It is fun if you let yourself act like a fool for a few hours.

On a separate note- on the trip up I sang with the entire RENT original cast recording. I highly recommend RENT- it is a phenominal musical, and Im not a huge musical fan. There are four moments that give me chills every time I see it; it makes my heart shutter, like its going to explode because its so beautiful:
1) the bag lady's high G (?) she hits before the final chorus of Seasons of Love
2) the end (c maj sus4?) chord with Collins in the gospel version of "Ill cover you" at angels funeral.
3) the duet section of "without you" between roger and mimi
4) the final D major suspension chord in the finale when Angel runs back on stage

If you haven't seen it- see the play. The music is beautful and awesome in and of itself, but you can't really get the contetual power of the lyrics without the rest of the play. I've seen it on Broadway and on tour 6-8 times. Doesn't get any worse- I love it!!

Ok Im falling asleep writ.....

Much Love,
Steve

title is again a song title... this time from an emo band which matches half of the staff at the movie theatre (including the really cute guy)..

A formal introduction

Hello-

My name is Steve, and I have a terrible screen name that will probably haunt me forever.  My screen name is planetx, which either makes you think that I believe crackpot theories about phantom planets crashing into earth...or convinces you that I am incredibly obese...maybe planet sized.  Neither are true- the actual origin of the screen name is a band called (you guessed it): Planetx!

I am not a particularly good writer; I have a tendency to be long winded and use many polysyllabic words to get points across...that probably could've been done with less effort on both of our parts.  I also love the ellipses... I think it stems from the fact that I talk alot and really fast.  So when I type, its like a having a (one sided) conversation; so I like to punctuate to accent the inflection of my sentences.  < notice how I warned you I wasn't a good writer, and then spent a paragraph proving I am terrible with stupid banter.... and you thought I wasn't a good writer :-) >

So a little about me:

• I am 25 (I know, crazy old- I only started feeling old within the last year)
• I am a graduate student in Computer Science
• I am not stylish, particularly attractive, nor can I dance (we'll get to that in a minute)
• I am gay, but not stlyish, attractive, or dancy (well maybe not an ENTIRE minute).
• I am staunchly agnostic (next post)
• I am also opinionated on politics, social issues, education/learning
• I really enjoy music both playing and listening.  I play piano (fake music... Ive been meaning to actually start a curriculum), and drums (have been in a few bands and looking for one to join in the summer).  
• I love many types of music:  for me music is equally about the subject experience and the objective attributes (construction, technical aspects, etc.).  I appreciate subtly- and think some of the most amazing music I have ever heard is simple and subtle...but perfect in evoking a feeling and emotion from the listener (think sigur ros).

I am looking forward to this blog for myself.  I have already met some wonderful people through the comments sections of others blogs.  I don't expect to gain any readers or friends through this, but I enjoy the cathartic aspect to blogging/journaling.  If nothing else I want to document some of my opinions for historical reasons.  Maybe there will be some personal things that may be therapeutic to discuss, albeit anonymously (and deniably).

Oh- and I am always welcome to discuss any nerdy topics like science, computers/programming, religion, homosexuality, etc. in comments or other means!

Much Love,

Steve 

P.S. ten points if anyone knows the artist whose song title matches the blog post title...