Which QAF character are you?

The US Queer as Folk that was on Showtime is 'required watching' for gay/bi folk. The show is especially important to me. It started airing when I started high school, and I have very fond memories of awkwardly sneaking around my parents' house recording it on VHS...which are still around here somewhere...

Anyways I was chatting with Nic, and he mentioned that I was most like Michael. Michael is kind of a 'nice guy', who is loyal and caring. I always considered myself more like Ted: professional, workaholic, and has a taste for the more 'refined' things of life (fine wine, music, etc).

So I took an online quiz--what could be more precise! And surprisingly, it looks like Nic knows me better than me, because the quiz has spoken: I am Michael Novotny.



Wow- I just noticed this quiz is on Teen Nick! Is Teen Nick airing QAF-- that would be...interesting :-) Here's the quiz if anyone is bored out of their skull and wants to try: Which QAF Character Are You?

On a more personal note, I feel like I've been in a christmas miracle movie recently: I think both of my xmas bonuses are coming through (this is awesome-- like 20% of my salary), and I just formally signed paperwork with a new company! So needless to say, if those bonus checks come in this week-- we are going to go nuts in Atlanta next week celebrating!!

Much Love,
Steve

Personality Profile?

Peter has a Personality Profile on his blog that is the typical Briggs Myers test that is done in school. I haven't taken one in a while. Here's the results:



So I am an 'examiner' apparently. One of the descriptions on their site of 'examiners' fits me perfectly:

At work, ISTJs get things done on a timely basis. They honor deadlines, and they believe in thoroughness. A half-finished job is not a job well done. They established procedures and schedules, and are uncomfortable with those who do not do the same. ISTJs put duty before pleasure. As long as they can fulfill their responsibilities, they feel useful and thereby satisfied. Their work does not have to be fun, but it has to count toward something productive. ISTJs believe that vacations are something that one takes only when work has been accomplished; thus, at times they do not take vacations even when they could and should.

This is me to a tee.

For multiple intelligences, my results were also not all that surprising:



So apparently I chose the correct career, but should have completed the double major (for music) instead of quitting halfway through the music program :-/

I notice that my 'introvert/extrovert' meter is very introverted. I think that's interesting, because I don't think I'm all that introverted. I love going out and being among people--with a lot of energy, but I think I am more introspective compared to what I would expect of most extroverts...or maybe I'm just confusing my terms.

This reminded me of something a blog buddy said in an email: he thought that I was probably attractive, apparently based on my attitude, confidence, maybe friendliness. I thought this was neat, because it shows how we humans correlate attractiveness with personality. I don't think my blog friend was being superficial or anything-- just reflecting a natural phenomena. I don't think I'm attractive at all, but that's because I am a perfectionist-- this is a much deeper problem than I let on to here on this blog, I think. Nic got an ear-full a few weeks ago, and I will be forever indebted to him for putting up with it and trying to be logical with a part of me that is conspicuously illogical :-)

This post was rather serious, eh?

Steve

Thank you hotmail

I was typing a reply to fellow blogger Joey, who is a super cool guy by the way, and hit save as draft, because I was ready to go to bed. I then went to the drafts folder, and saw three documents. The third was from 6/1/2002. It was addressed to one of my first internet friends, Wil. I had almost forgotten about him. What a happy accident to find this again.

Where were you 6/1/2002? I had just graduated high school two weeks prior, and was working furiously as the (apparently just-promoted) Assistant Manager of a local movie theater.

I don't remember how I met Wil online, but he was gay, and we shared many interests. I think he was a little older than me. In fact, I think he was like 25ish and I was 18. This is especially poignant now.

I don't think anyone else will find this interesting except for me. I know I'm not _that_ old (hey, stop snickering!), but I do enjoy finding little tidbits like this. You should go hide things in random places so when you're 26, you can write boring blog posts about them. Here is my draft:

You went to __my_theatre_name__?!? You had to have seen me. I work 75 hours a week. And sorry about the guys in line- you have to understand that this theater is the "prostatot theater." A "prostatot" is a 12-17 year old kid who dresses like a prostitute but isnt old enough yet. Either way, which starbucks do you work at? and my more important question is WHO WAS CHECKING YOU OUT IN LINE? Because I havent gotten the gay impression from any of those who work here, but I really wanna know. but anyway if you didnt notice the nametag I was probably the one yelling to keep the line against the wall and frantically pulling ropes to "herd the cattle" into the theater. I usually deal with the lines in the lobby. Also I got promoted to Assistant Manager of the theater! Yay me! Either way I can't wait to see insomnia, I haven't gotten a chance yet unfortunatly to see it. I loved The Following and Momento. Plus with Al Pacino and Christopher Nolan directing I think it will be great. Either way email back...sorry it took so long for me to, but I havent gotten much sleep lately. I really wanna meet- talk movies etc!

Ah- memories :-)

Steve

"Code 13" - movie theatre sex

I don't think I've told this story before, but Dave's post "open letter to the kid sitting in front of me with his girlfriend at the movies" reminded me of this, and I needed to do a post anyways...

All through high school and the beginning of college I worked at a movie theatre. One summer (maybe 2005?), I was the assistant manager, and we received a phone call from one of the local middle school principals. He described a concern over a 'club' that he discovered amongst the middle schoolers: the blowjob club. Apparently, the girls would get bracelets from the guys they blew, and there was some competition to get the most. So after giggling, we talked to the corporate office, and they said that they wanted us, the managers, to inspect the theatres during every show. As many of you are surely aware (*wink*), the top row of the theatre is often used for various lewd acts :-)

Thus, every set we had to walk the booth and stick our heads into the projection window and look down to catch any blowjobs, handjobs, etc. We took turns inspecting, and like clockwork we would catch people on weekends. I was always surprised at how cavalier some people were. I remember one girl giving the handjob of her life to some football jock, in a row packed with people! But the guy had nothing to be ashamed of :-) It was always fun to catch them, send in the 16 year old ushers to pull them out (no pun intended) of the theatre. Seeing them scramble to pull their pants up was a Chaplin-esque comedy show.

One weekday night, I peered into theatre 13. As I looked down, there were two people, completely naked, in the top row, fucking in the seat. They looked college aged; he was tall with short buzzed hair-- definitely an athlete. She was average height, well-tanned, with brown hair (as best I can remember). Now it wasn't a packed theatre, but there were people in there. I can't remember what movie it was, but it was something quiet--some drama for sure--something that made me astonished that the others hadn't complained-- the seats along would've made a lot of noise. Before I had the opportunity to call someone to go in there, she hopped off of him, and he apparently decided to try to impregnate our aisle and the backs of the seats in front of him...thanks buddy. They got dressed, and nonchalantly kept on watching the movie. I ran downstairs to tell the other managers. Their movie was almost over, but we made sure that the three of us were in the lobby, lined up against the counter, waiting for them to leave. We all wanted to get a better look at our not-so-inconspicuous amateur porn stars. As they left the movie theatre, I'm sure they wondered why three guys were just grinning at them :-) As they were about to turn the corner, we just started clapping. It was a classy moment.

From then on, any kind of sex acts in a theatre were termed 'code 13s'. This spread throughout the company. Even yesterday I was visiting a different theatre in the same company, and overhead someone mentioning a code 13... I grinned. I'm ok with being a part of a legacy :-)

Much Love,
Steve

My first song

Like all wanna-be musicians, I played around with FLStudio to 'make' music. This was my first attempt at something. It was done in the middle of George W's second term, and I was in a political phase back then...so I created some music and found a number of clips of funny, ironic, and hypocritical things that good Dubya said. I intended it to be more 'fun' instead of mean-spirited...but it does kind of play as an angry political statement. I'm so apathetic towards politics now, I don't care. I'm posting it because of the music part, not because I'm trying to 'make a statement' or 'send a message' or anything like that.

As I listen to it now, I kinda cringe. I think I thought the music was good when I made it, but now it just seems childish, simple, contrived, uninspired, and embarrassing. But as the masochist that I am, I am putting it on here for the public scorn and ridicule. If nothing else at least the sound clips are fun! It's not-so-cleverly titled "Step 2: Place foot in mouth":




In other news, I am flying to Chicago with friends Monday! It is going to be so much fun. We are going to Blue Man Group, shopping, find some gay clubs, visit the aquarium, etc. It will be great!!

Much Love,
Steve

Dream a little dream

Last night I had a very vivid dream. I really enjoy dreams, but I don't often remember them. However, last night's dream was very interesting. I don't recall all of the details, but I was in a mall, and I was on a date with TheOtherTyler. The date was great, but what was most interesting is the feeling I experienced inside the dream. I don't think that I have ever really been in love. I have had crushes, but I've never been in a real, fulfilling relationship for any long period of time. In the dream, what I felt was more intense than a crush-- it was just a wonderful, intense feeling of companionship...of love (I think).

Now don't get me wrong-- I'm not in love with TheOtherTyler. I don't know him. I've watched his youtube videos; he seems like a great guy and he is super cute! But in my dream I fell 'in love' with some person that my mind created, and it gave me a glimpse of what my life could be like if I tried harder. This was a dream that affected my entire day yesterday, because it just made me think about a lot of things.

My problem is that (a) I don't think I want to 'make time' for a relationship, and (b) I truly don't think that I am worthy of someone else's time-- i.e. I don't think I deserve to be loved. This (b) sounds much more dramatic than I intend it to be. Basically, I know that I wouldn't date me-- so if I wouldn't, how could I possibly expect anyone else to. I am not a fan of 'destiny', nor do I think its useful to believe that there is 'always someone out there' for each of us. The simple fact is that there are things about me, which I need to improve before I think I would feel comfortable trying to find someone. The scary part is I don't know if I will ever be 'good enough'. I am very much a perfectionist (thanks mom), and since we typically cannot achieve perfection, this just makes me depressed and hyper-critical.

It was a fun dream, because it added hope to my normal mix of anxiety and depression. It forced me to realize that there is a reason to 'be better'. I hear people all the time saying 'dont worry it will be better in the end' or something like that (destiny argument), and I just don't think that's useful. That implies that we should be complacent and things will come to us. I think we should be proactive in our pursuits-- we have to set goals and achieve them. Easier said than done...

Much Love,
Steve

P.S. Here's another pic of TheOtherTyler-- he is really hot :-) But my dream wasn't about lust...

I guess I should be excited and my 'home church'

I went to the symphony last night with my old boss and mentor who had an extra ticket, because his wife was sick. He is a great guy, very smart, and very religious. I won't go back into my religious views, but suffice to say that he and I had numerous long conversations about atheism vs Christianity. At intermission we were chatting and one of his fellow church goers came up and talked to him. She was very nice, but at one point asked me: "so do you have a home church here in memphis?" I find this a strange question to ask a stranger, but i just smiled and said 'no, not anymore' and it was awkward. She then tried to tell me how many 'singles' events they had at the church, I guess encouraging me to go.

The rest of the evening I was just thinking about how great it would be to have someone to share the night with, but that it would be so awkward. This crowd was very aloof-- and not 'diverse' at all. I don't think I saw a single non-Caucasian person in the crowd. Certainly there was no one that I could immediately identify as gay (although the same could be said about me). I guess I will have to muster the courage to bring some diversity to this little suburb...although I first have to actually pursue that whole 'boyfriend' thing. One day, I'll make some time for myself.

#

So I got back from spending the whole week in Dallas at one of our bigger offices. I like that office because its very nice and they have a nice gym in the basement. On Thursday, I got a big promotion (well it hasn't been announced yet, but they told me). I was made the software architect for our new product suite. This is great for the resume, and it will be a lot of fun, because I will be able to decide the direction for all of the technical aspects of the project. Also, there will be a sizable raise involved too :-)

The bad news is-- I'm not really qualified to be a software architect at this point in my career. I am recognized in the division for being a 'prodigy' (their words not mine, I would never call myself that) and have been setting the direction for two of our products already, just as part of a committee, not formally recognized. However, if I went to a real company (google, ibm, microsoft), that hired real developers not these 'i read a book ergo Im a programmer' type of people we have here-- then I would not be an appropriate choice. So all in all I have very mixed feelings about this: part of me is excited, because this is my dream role in some organization at some point in my career-- part of me is embarrassed, because I just don't have the experience to call myself an architect.

But I don't plan on being here after I finish the MS, so I'll take the resume bump (and the pay bump)!

Oh- still reading? Wow I'm surprised: here's a treat for you:

Surveys ARE FUN, Redux

Nothing interesting to blog about, but I feel compelled to post something. Here are some general announcements:

• Happy Birthday Landyn!


• Happy Blog Anniversary Tyler!


• Happy Real Anniversary (and blog anniversary) Mr HCI

I decided to post another survey that I found that I hadn't seen before. It's a bit meh...but you know thats just the kind of mood I'm in.

Would you rather be a fork or a knife?
a fork is SOOO much more useful...so a FORK

Would you rather be thief or victim?
a victim, because honesty is the best policy

Would you rather be water or fire?
FIRE- because at least then I'd be HOT (wow simple metaphor turns suprisingly introspective)

Would you rather have a dog or a cat?
I love dogs; cats are pretencious and generally unpleasant

Would you rather be a bus driver or taxi driver?
taxi driver; bus drivers have to deal with screaming kids every day

Would you rather work as a rubbish man/women or work as a janitor?
janitor for no apparent reason

Would you rather be gay and happy or divorced and straight?
well this is a gimme! I'll let you guess

Would you rather be famous or rich?
Rich; I don't want to be famous

Would you rather be a hobo or an inmate?
hobos have tons of freedom, and sure they are typically mentally ill, but that could work for me

Would you rather have a ipod touch or ipod nano?
Apple products cause me to break out in rashes/boils because of my intense hatred for Apple...so this is like asking if I want to loose a leg or an arm...both shit options

Would you rather have a wii console or xbox 360?
i have both! but xbox 360 is incredible more useful to me

Would you rather be deported to iraq or iran?
iran-- people are dying every day in iraq and Im a self-serving pragmatist when it comes to war. If they started a draft I would leave the country.

Would you rather be in the navy or the air force?
Navy- they have better tech jobs from what I understand

Would you rather be older and wiser or younger and smarter?
I'm not sure I know the difference in wiser and smarter, but I will always choose younger and smarter

Would you rather be a nerd or a geek?
Well I am a geek...so yea it looks like I've made my choice, eh?

Ok- heres a picture of a super sexy guy to round off this pointless post:



Oh, and I know that everyone else in the world has been listening to them for a long time, but I have been listening to a lot of "City and Colour" and "Bright Eyes" recently and I love IT! It's quiet enough to not get me all excited and twitchy so I can listen to it at work. It's just nice and calm music:



That's all.

Much Love,
Steve

I'm in the southern US, get me outta here!

I don't normally watch the news, but I happen to catch it tonight. As I was watching this, I felt like it was a bad parody sketch. I live in Memphis, TN, which is in the southern United States. We here in the south are known for bad accents, poor grammar, and heart disease (but hey where else can you get fried butter!). I feel like I was born in the wrong part of the country: I am kind of pretentious, I'm not big on family, I value proper grammar-- I would be much better suited to the upper new england areas, I think. So watching the news, I just felt disheartened. I MUST LEAVE!!

1. First story was about a single mom, who left her 3 month old and toddler at home while she left to go pick up her other kid from school. While gone, the kids set the house on fire and perished in the flames. When the aunt of the kids was interviewed, she was asked if she felt remorse...she said "no". This is obviously a tragedy, but how can you possibly leave kids this young home alone! They interviewed the other members of the family, inquiring why the Aunt would say she had no remorse-- they said she was probably on drugs. Winner winner chicken dinner!!



2. Next was a story of two groups of three high school kids. The two groups were apparently sending harsh words over text messages to try to instigate each other into a fight for "no apparent reason". The one group showed up to the other groups house (2 brothers and a friend), and two kids were beaten in the head with a baseball bat so badly that they are barely alive in the hospital (probably not going to make it). This was just two groups of school kids attacking each other for 'no reason' (says the families, police, and the news). This sickens me. Hurray for southern family rivalries (honor system).



3. Next was my favorite: a Tennessee man was arrested for sodomizing a horse while a buddy watched and filmed it. In good taste, the news cast had 'Horse Sex Scandal' plastered on the bottom of the screen. Apparently, this was the man who a few years prior video taped a horse having sex with another man, who later died from internal injuries (Mr. Hands?). Hurray Horse Sex!!



4. Lastly, two city council members (a white man and a black man) got into an argument on camera. For some bizarre reason, the black city council member said to the other in an angry, taunting manner: "You better be ready- I'm a real black man....are you a real white man??" . To which the white council member, looking stumped, said "what does it matter?". I don't even know what he's talking about...but... HURRAY southern racism!

What's the news like where you live?

Much Love,
Steve

Surveys ARE FUN

Well they are fun when you are bored. Strangely, I'm not bored, but just wanted to post, and didn't want to have to tax my mind to try and be creative and introspective. So I will cop out and do the same survey that everyone else has done recently. I actually have a lot on my mind right now, because I have to make a major life decision regarding my job...and I just don't know what to do. I'm not good at making these huge decisions...I need someone to talk to about this stuff. I need my dad.

Changing to light hearted fare:

1. First thing you wash in the shower?
On days that I shave, I do that first, then hair, then body. Days that I don't shave-- body then hair. Don't ask me why...

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?
I own no hoodies. ZOMG! I know, right?

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?
Well I think it was the really hot stripper from last new years eve. I don't think I've kissed anyone since then...

4. Do you plan outfits every day?
No, not really. Although since I bought some new clothes- I have kind of :-)

5. How are you feeling RIGHT now?
Anxious, tired, stressed, depressed--in that order.

6. What’s the closest thing to you that's red?
My curtains.

7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having?
I love dreams- they are fun. I had one recently that involved hot boys-- but now that I need to remember it it's gone all fuzzy.

8. Did you meet anybody new today?
No.

9. What are you craving right now?
Sleep.

10. Do you floss?
Yes- but not every day.

11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?
Egg Rolls!

12. Are you emotional?
Not particularly. I am fairly laid back about most things

13. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
When I was in class like 6th and 7th grade, I would count by 2s and 4s, etc. to pass the time

14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?
What sadist bites into ice cream!?

15. Do you like your hair?
I do actually. It's dirty blond (more blond than dirty). It's wavy when it gets long-- actually it just gets poofy when it gets too long.

16. Do you like yourself?
No. Well, there are parts of me I like... but in general no.

17. Would you go out to eat with George Bush?
I would just to laugh as I confound him with polysyllabic words.

18. What are you listening to right now?
A rerun of House on TiVo.. but just had "I've got friends" by Manchester Orchestra on (great song).

19. Are your parents strict?
My mother was fairly strict when I was in high school.

20. Would you go sky diving?
No. Actually, I would like to be someone who would go skydiving. Maybe I'll be that person one day.

21. Do you like cottage cheese?
NOOOOOOOOOO!!! I can't even be around it; it freaks me out!

22. Have you ever met a celebrity?
Not really. I've shaken some hands at events, but not really.

23. Do you rent movies often?
Netflix, bitches.

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you're in?
My art that I bought when redecorating my room.

25. How many countries have you visited?
England and Italy are it, I believe. Hopefully Canada, Australia, and New Zealand soon.

26. Have you made a prank phone call?
When I was in 3rd or 4th grade I did... I recorded them with my computer. I wish I still had them.

27. Ever been on a train?
Yes.

28. Brown or white eggs?
White

29. Do you have a cell-phone?
Yes HTC Touch Pro and I want a new one.

30. Do you use chap stick?
When I used to smoke (in high school) I would go through tons every winter since I spent so much time outside. Since I quit smoking, I've never needed it.

31. Do you own a gun?
No, but my roommate does. He's the more masculine in the house anyways. I would just be nervously trying to rationalize with them, which I don't think would work out all that well.

32. Can you use chop sticks?
Poorly, but I try.

33. Who are you going to be with tonight?
My roommate is here.

34. Are you too forgiving?
Usually. I am really laid back when it comes to those things.

35. Ever been in love?
I have had lots of crushes. I don't think I could classify any of those as love since they weren't reciprocated. The few times people have liked me...its always been girls... and that was just terrible.

36. What is your best friend(s) doing tomorrow?
I have no idea.

37. Ever have cream puffs?
No

38. Last time you cried?
I cried april 2nd when my whole office (and all friends) got laid off.

39. What was the last question you asked?
"Why did you do it?" to Dave regarding his recent nude modelling work. And my follow up to him will be-- where do I get the pictures? :-)

40. Favorite time of the year?
Christmas, because I usually take a week or more of vacation.

41. Do you have any tattoos?
No and I never will

42. Are you sarcastic?
Yes- I have a dry, sardonic, sarcastic wit.

43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect?
Yes! I really liked it when it first came out. WHy they made those cheesy sequels is beyond me!

44.Ever walked into a wall?
I'm sure I have.

45. Favorite color?
Blue, Black, and Red (in that order)

46. Have you ever slapped someone?
I don't think so, but maybe.

47. Is your hair curly?
It gets wavy when its longish and wet.

48. What was the last CD you bought?
Third Eye Blind collection of best hits... but more recently I have pirated Manchester Orchestra's Mean Everything to Nothing, which I will be buying ASAP because I love it.

49. Do looks matter?
I would love to say no...but I would be lying. This is why I can't date (well one reason among many). I wouldn't want to date me (based on looks) so why should I expect anyone else to? (Wow-- that's dark).

50. Could you ever forgive a cheater?
Yes- but I also don't think I would require a monogamous relationship-- just an honest one. I don't expect my attraction to others to turn off when I 'fall in love' so I don't expect anyone elses to either. Maybe this wouldn't work in practice, but I have a few good friends who have this policy in their relationships and its fine. Although, I know others where this definitely wouldn't work.

51. Is your phone bill sky high?
I wouldn't know- I have been on a corporate plan for a while now.

52. Do you like your life right now?
I like parts of it (house, salary, freedom), and hate others (lack of free time, lack of more like-minded friends, lack of relationships or even prospects)

53. Do you sleep with the TV on?
I have to.

54. Can you handle the truth?
Yes- I prefer it.

55. Do you have good vision?
It's very good, but I need to go to the eye doctor.

56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people?
Probably, but I don't hold on to fury for long. So I would probably only still pretend to hate someone out of some feeling of obligation to the history of our conflict.

57. How often do you talk on the phone?
Not too often - I prefer email or text.

58. The last person you held hands with?
Nikki probably- my friend.. i don't know.

59. What are you wearing?
gym shorts and a ThinkGeek.com tshirt

60.What is your favorite animal?
My mom's new dog: Maggie! I love her-- she freaks out when she sees me. See, I'm that starved for attention that I get such happiness even over the fact that the dog loves me :-)

61. Where was your default picture taken at?
It's a Best Buy Geek Squad avatar, which is strange since I never worked for them (nor would I want to). I've used it for so long. I probably would've chosen something else had I known I was going to be a member of a long lived blog community.

62. Can you hula hoop?
I can look stupid swaying my hips around...but put a hula hoop in the equation and I fail. See- I had half of it down!

64. What was the most recent thing you bought?
Steaks to cook for dinner. And $100 worth of used books on Amazon.

65. Have you ever crawled through a window?
Yes- I sneaked out of another friends house ( I was sleeping over) many years ago to go visit a girls house at 2AM. I know...strange... it was actually one of the girls mentioned above that liked me.

Much Love,

Steve

My life in shoes

I spent a significant amount of time looking for shoes on Sunday. I have been wearing the same shoes for my day-to-day for over two years now, and they needed to be replaced. My defacto work shoes have always been doc marten standard issue. I have owned so many over my life, I can't even count how many. I just bought a new pair. Here are the ones currently in my closet:



Can you spot the new ones? :-) I know that these are out of fashion, but you know I'm just not very fashionable :\ So my Doc Martens are kind of my normal shoes, or at least they were until I saw this new doc marten shoe called the 'Lenny' that I really liked when buying the pair above. So I bought the Lenny and have been wearing it everyday. So here is my 'casual' shoe collection, and the new pair (Lenny) is in the middle :-)



The left are my running shoes...that have really gotten a lot of use over the last year since I joined the gym! The far right are my 'southerner' Birkenstocks that I have had since high school. It seemed like everyone wore them around here when they were popular. And like everything else, fashion has just passed me by-- so I still wear them :-)

Lastly, are my dress shoes. Far right are deer skin (?) nice shoes, next is calvin kline loafer shoes, and last are some black dress shoes for my suit (when I have to put it on...very rarely thankfully)



And so that's it! What have we learned:

• Steve has almost zero fashion sense


• Steve holds on to the past


• Steve has been going to the gym a lot, even though it doesn't really show


• Steve has more lesbionic shoe fashion preference; and that makes him a bad gay man

What can we learn about you through your shoes?

Much Love,
Steve

P.S. When grabbing these pics off my phone, I found this:



I worked as a manager of a movie theatre in highschool, and wrote this under one of the desks one night when we were there really really late. It's amazing to think how much time has passed since that period of my life. Talk about holding on to the past...

Tyler's Game

I haven't posted in a while, and I have been behind on everyone's blog! I'm sorry-- my group at work is in a crunch mode to get to our date in November. I loved this part (20hr days, order pizza to office, etc.) when our whole team was there and having fun. Now that they fired everyone, there are no more friends--everyone is trying to get everyone else. It's not a good environment-- I want out!

Anyways- I wanted to play Tyler's game. I thought this was a great idea, and even though I wasn't tagged :p, I'm gonna play anyways!



My answers are:

1. I was born in Dallas, TX. I lived there only a short time, and then moved to Atlanta, GA, and then to Memphis, TN in 2nd grade. I've been there ever since...and I should leave


2. I love scallops-- but only when prepared correctly. If you haven't paid more than $20 for them, then you probably haven't tried then when they are prepared correctly. Amazingly, even at nicer restaurants, you usually can't find good scallops. You have to go somewhere with a real chef. I know I sound pretentious, but poorly prepared scallops are just plain gross.


3. Coffee gets me through the morning every single day. I'm trying to switch to tea, but it just doesn't do it for me :-(


4. I love the type of work I do right now. I want to continue doing exactly that just at a different company.


5. I'm no fan of my physical appearance, but I am very thankful that I was given a good environment to learn and grow up valuing education blah blah. It's the only thing I really like about myself (queue the sad music)


6. I want to go to New Zealand and Australia, but NZ won out on the mosaic :-]


7. I love other guy's chests...especially Tyler's (in the picture). Tyler seems like such a cool guy too...


8. I love American Beauty. Everything about this movie is beautiful and perfect. I cried at the end in the theatre, not because I was sad, but it was just so overwhelmingly perfect and beautiful. I really get sucked in to 'art'--music and movies especially-- and so when something just is so overwhelmingly, I have a dramatic response.


9. LOST


10. I think pragmatic sums it up for me. Or 'work-a-holic'...but that's only because I don't want to deal with my life (again, queue the music). I think I would be pragmatic, even if I achieved all my goals and didn't have shit to complain about


11. I love Rome. I think out of all past periods, I would've enjoyed this the most


12. I will probably buy a trip to vegas for myself and my friends as my next 'big' purchase. I love it, and kind of want to try to go once a year. Plus, Gauss's trip really made me jealous :-)

Much Love,
Steve

Happy Birthday, Mirrorboy!

Well, I may be a couple of hours late...but I'll blame timezones :-) Anyways, we all love our patriarch the wonderful, love-able Mirrorboy. Its pretty amazing to think a just a year ago, this whole community didn't exist! I have met some wonderful people, and learned so much about other people and cultures. It has been awesome.

So I was trying to think of something I could do to celebrate the first year anniversary of Mirrorboy and his blog. First, I thought to send one of my favorite male strippers to his house in bumble-fuck, Australia

... but then I thought, no. His mom probably wouldn't like that (actually this is a rare circumstance where moms and gay sons can agree!).

So I ditched that idea, and decided to do something geeky. I whipped together a simple powershell script to gather some interesting info about Mirrorboy's blog. Blogger has a few APIs that you can use to get info. So what have we learned about Mirrorboy's blog (as of 09/18 at 1:12AM GMT-5):

• Mirrorboy has written 271 blog posts!
• There have been 3,930 comments total!
• All of the blog posts together have 125,247 words!
• All of the blog posts together have 733,991 characters!
• The average number of words per post is 499.06!
• The longest comment was 10,494 characters by Mr McCabbage on Eh. (It's epic, go check it out. I didn't read it, because I don't have three packed lunches and 36 hours to spare)

What I was the most interested in was to see who had the most comments >:-) (All anonymous comments are being counted as if they were from one username). Here are the top fifty commentors on all of Mirrorboys posts. This table includes their rank, name, total # of comments, average # of characters per comment, and the first date they ever submitted a comment. Note that this is NOT the blog's published date, but the time when the comment was submitted.

Rank	Username	# of Comments	Avg Characters / Comment	First Comment Submitted
1	naturgesetz	220	72.0	10/06/08
2	Anonymous	206	93.8	10/02/08
3	Mirrorboy	181	38.2	9/27/08
4	Seth	167	95.5	9/30/08
5	Planetx_123	166	87.8	10/29/08
6	Aek	159	48.2	12/17/08
7	cvn70	152	67.0	12/28/08
8	AJCon89	126	71.7	10/21/08
9	James	113	30.8	10/30/08
10	Mr. HCI	106	96.0	10/27/08
11	Jeremy	97	28.6	1/22/09
12	Peter	96	40.9	12/07/08
13	Kevin Wilson	82	61.1	11/25/08
14	Jake Annonymous	73	27.2	9/27/08
15	Col	72	57.4	10/27/08
16	xthecouragex	71	103.4	11/25/08
17	Steevo	70	106.9	10/02/08
18	Landyn	59	75.8	10/02/08
19	Tombi04	57	46.8	1/03/09
20	Deadwing	48	43.6	3/03/09
21	Poisoned Happiness	45	51.3	11/19/08
21	victor	45	83.0	10/04/08
22	Doomed But Cheerful!	40	91.3	10/22/08
23	J	38	66.1	11/19/08
24	torchy!	37	84.0	1/04/09
25	Mr McCabbage	36	185.3	3/22/09
26	Aahsazyl	35	20.0	12/31/08
27	Benji	34	24.7	5/22/09
28	goleftatthefork	32	25.9	4/01/09
29	Micky	31	50.8	3/30/09
29	Rhythym Changes	31	64.5	4/20/09
30	PoisonedHappiness	29	31.1	3/06/09
30	JC	29	52.6	10/01/08
31	Doug	28	65.3	10/27/08
32	WkBoy714	27	42.4	7/07/09
33	Tyler	26	24.8	4/09/09
34	Spastic Fantastic	24	39.7	4/24/09
34	Lach	24	32.0	9/29/08
35	~kiwi	22	33.5	2/27/09
35	Daily Dan	22	17.3	3/06/09
35	Tom	22	47.6	10/29/08
36	Ethan	20	54.9	7/24/09
37	Highwayman	19	30.6	4/08/09
37	Randy	19	104.3	3/02/09
37	Zee	19	99.1	11/09/08
38	pinstripe	18	23.3	12/19/08
38	Baz	18	91.3	4/01/09
38	Ryan	18	64.2	12/25/08
39	Tim	17	38.7	11/06/08
39	Jason Carwin	17	60.8	7/10/09

Congrats Naturgesetz! And grrr.... I lost to Seth by ONE! *shakes fist* I also collected a histogram of all the words in the each of the blog posts, because I thought maybe that would be interesting. The unfortunate part is that this also includes any html that one puts in there. My 'word' splitting is very simple, so html is all included. Sure, there are ways around this, but this was a 'simple' script :-) So here are the top 25 most used words with their use counts:

Rank	Word	Count
1	blogspot	874
2	style	834
3	blogger	562
4	color	556
5	about	541
6	height	523
7	width	522
8	_q08i_4aq	428
9	people	378
10	there	360
11	really	332
12	mirrorboysblog	312
13	class	303
14	would	292
15	tracker	272
16	googleusercontent	271
16	https	271
16	footer	271
17	387878206502427000	270
18	think	259
19	because	252
20	school	248
20	strong	248
21	border	236
21	cursor	236
22	things	227
23	400px	211
24	s1600	193
25	other	191

See...not as interesting as maybe expected.

Anyways- I hope you enjoyed our little journey into the blog-world mecca blog of Mirrorboy. Until your next birthday-- may your year be filled *cuddles*, *snuggle hugs*, and *pounce hugs*! I love ya buddy, and I'm so glad you are here and have had such a positive impact on everyone!

Much Love,
Steve

P.S. if anyone wants the script hit me up on MSN or my email.

P.P.S I notice that Jake Anon's first comment is 2008-09-27 00:29:00 GMT+10:00 (or at least that's what Blogger reports). Lach's first comment shows is 2008-09-29 14:31:00 GMT+10:00... a mystery?

Memphis Gay Film Fest - Day 1

Ok ok... so technically it's the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, but who likes lesbians?? I skip all of their movies, because I don't want to see their girly parts. Creepy.

I went ahead and bought the festival pass. I'm sure I could've gotten in free since I work for the home office of the theatre chain, but I didn't ask the marketing woman, and am fine giving the money to the gay and lesbian community center-- they need it!



First, I saw "Mississippi Queen"- a documentary about a lesbian woman returning home to her parents, who started an ex-gay ministry. Any regular readers probably know my feelings about religion in general. I found myself twitching in horror, and really holding back the screams of frustration. The film interviewed many ex-gay ministries, including Memphis' own: Love in Action. I found it interesting that everyone they interviewed had failed. Each had 'slipped up' at one point or another, and had to return to the ministry. They all seemed to concede that going through ex-gay 'treatment' won't stop you from having same-sex attraction, but will instead teach you how to cope with it and how to grow your relationship with god (vomit). I was curious, as I always am, at understanding these 'ministers' relationships with god. It's clear that they genuinely believe what they preach, but listening to them talk is like watching a psychopath: I just can't identify with that reality. The documentary concluded with the documentarian and her parents just concluding that they won't see eye-to-eye on her sexuality, but that that won't stop them from having a relationship. I found this strangely satisfying.

Second, I saw "Make the Yuletide Gay". To my delight, this film starred Adamo Ruggiero of Degrassi fame. I became a Degrassi fan when Adamo's character, Marco, entered the scene and the 'gay' plot line started. I also thought Marco was super cute. Apparently, Adamo 'came out' in real life about a year ago! I find it especially interesting, because in some Degrassi behind-the-scenes interview a while ago, I remember them asking Adamo if he was gay in real life and he said 'no'...which crushed me. :-)



The movie was a comedy about a gay couple, Olaf and Nathan, in their senior year at university. Both are going home to their parents for the holidays. Nathan (Adamo) decides to surprise his boyfriend Olaf by showing up unannounced! However, Olaf failed to mention that he was still very much in the closet at home. Hilarity ensues.



This movie was 'fun', and Adamo was adorable--I want a boyfriend like him. However, this was not a 'good' movie. There were many times where the writing was contrived, the characters made no sense, and the acting was a little poor in spots. It was very typical of a 'gay' movie--ala Trick, Broken Hearts Club, etc-- but being gay, you have to watch them, and you just expect them to be campy and kind of crappy. So I would watch this if you want to chuckle and stare at how cute Adamo Ruggiero is... but just don't let your expectations get too high :-)

Tonight, I am checking out "Ready? Ok!", which is a comedy about a 10 year old boy who just happens to love dresses and cheer-leading. Oh, and it's got the guy who plays Ben Linus from LOST, so that's cool.

Much Love,
Steve

So much in a week

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Personal Responsibility

This is sort of a political / ideological post...so brace yourself.

Welfare is a highly disputed topic in America. Most middle class people resent the fact that people in poverty can't make money, and they do not want to 'fund their laziness'. Adding fuel to the fire, people in poverty have a high probability of using drugs, drinking, and having unplanned pregnancy.

My roommate read me a post where someone wanted to add urine testing to qualify for welfare money. His logic was that he had to pass a urine test to make the money for them, so they should have to pass a urine test to get welfare money. Sounds good, right? So his argument is that people should exercise some personal responsibility, and an abrupt discontinuation in funds is an acceptable solution to reducing how much welfare money is handed out.

There are some really interesting connotations throughout the whole problem of welfare: middle class people emphasizing personal responsibility seem to believe that their success is the product of their actions, and that people in poverty have failed and made bad decisions to get them where they are. I don't believe that we should 'personalize' it like that. I think that by doing so is self-serving, and really misses the point. Certainly there are hereditary traits that can prove useful in the workforce, but in high school, college, etc. the environment in which one grows up is probably the most important indicator of success. Thus, if we were to swap 'Middle Class Joe' with 'Poor Urban Anthony' early in their life, would they end up in different places? Is there something intrinsically 'better' in Joe that allows him to make 'good choices'...? I think not. With regards to socio-economic status, I think we are overwhelmingly the product of the environment we grew up in. So when Joe looks down with resentment at people in poverty, he is confusing 'personal responsibility' with cultural disadvantages.

It seems a bit naive to try to fix welfare by just discontinuing funds to drug users. I don't think anyone would be surprised to find 60-70% drug use among people in poverty (again a product of that subculture). So when this poster suggested this, I would like to respond with: "ok, but what about the rest?". You see, if you just discontinue funds, you have made an abrupt change to the economics of the situation. I wonder what 60-70% of people will do now that they have no income. Obviously, the optimistic (read as naive) answer would be that they get jobs. This seems unlikely to me, since their culture has not encouraged that in the past. I think we would see crime increase, and then the middle class would incredulously complain about crime growing...jeez just more bad choices, eh?

The point is that such a suggestion, as tempting as it is to say, is incomplete. Instead you could say: "Only give out money after a drug test, and shoot everyone that fails." Now that would be a solution. However, I don't think 'killing' off millions of Americans would really fly. We have to be a little smarter than just allowing our base human emotions suggest silly 'solutions'. The same is true of abortion in my opinion. Regardless of religious beliefs, it is naive to suggest that we can just 'stop' aborting millions of babies a year. You cannot expect people to suddenly 'have' personal responsibility--it has to be organically cultivated.

Instead we have to introduce social change subtly. The situation IS changeable, but we have to remember that people are involved...not robots. And people don't respond well to aggressive, overbearing, repressive regulation. We must be more intelligent. The real problem is NOT personal responsibility, and to suggest that is naive. The real problem is changing the CULTURE to encourage 'better choices'. The 'poverty culture' that is found in many urban areas (especially in memphis), doesn't encourage education and hard work. We have to address that problem-- NOT just tell people to make better choices.

It wasn't hard for me to make good choices growing up. My parents both had college educations, we had plenty of money, and all of my friends were from similar circumstances. However, had I grown up from parents that may or may not have finished high school with friends in the same situation, I may not have made the decision to go to college. If I were an arrogant person, it would be easy for me to draw the conclusion that I am just 'better' than them, because I made good choices to go to college. However, this is wrong, and serves no purpose other than my own 'emotional masturbation'.

(crickets...) Yea I don't blame you; I barely wanted to read it again. But I feel better, and I guess that's part of the point of a blog...so much success!

Love Much,
Steve

But... he's gay?!

As I mentioned before, I do 'contracting-like' work for a regional movie theatre company in my off-time. We have been doing some work for one of the theatres, so I've spent a lot of time there over the last two weeks. For some reason this theatre is like a magnet for really cute, probably gay, high school and college guys. There is this 'star employee' there who is a senior in high school, who we will call 'Derek'. Derek is super hot-- he is a runner, tan, short buzzed hair, smiles all the time, and is totally cute.



(This pic is obviously not him, but this is how cute and built he is. Just think this with short brown buzzed hair)

Derek is very effeminate to me. Well... not like flamboyantly gay effeminate... more like suppressed-high-schooler-in-a-conservative-suburb effeminate. I mentioned something to the district manager just joking around- (he and I are really close friends) telling him that I suspect he bats for my team. He said that he thought he was dating one of the girls at the theatre, but that they wouldn't 'make it official'. I said: "but....he's gay!?" and we argued about how effeminate mannerisms don't mean you are gay.

My argument was that I believe effeminate mannerisms are an indicator of homosexuality. I know there is a correlation from some stats I saw a few years ago, and this really shouldn't be surprising. It makes sense: the physiological properties that encourage homosexuality also encourage effeminate mannerisms-- i.e. they are both emergent properties of our physiology.

I, personally, am not effeminate at all....well I don't think so, but maybe a little. I know that when I hear recordings of my voice, I always think I sound gayer than I expect. But I could just be hyper-sensitive to it. I actually wish I were more effeminate, then maybe it would telegraph my 'interests' better :-)

None the less-- I'm looking forward to the day when 'Derek' comes back from his first year of college with a boyfriend named Jefferey or something. I can high-five myself, and hope that he has some strange interest in boring, out of shape, 20-something computer nerds.... hey there's got to be a niche out there somewhere, right? :-)

Oh, and I love you all.

P.S. I took Friday off from my real job, and decided I wasn't going to check my email. Well, I looked Saturday night, and realized that my whole team has to be in Dallas this week, and that I had been nominated to drive two of our servers there (8 hour drive). FML.

Much Love,
Steve

Lesbians, oh my

I'm not going to talk about how crappy my birthday was--literally the highlight was Tyler's happy birthday wish and the hot guy on his blog. I'm 100% serious-- the rest of the day I worked, or was at the hospital. I picked up Chili's on the way home and watched my roommate play halo for a while...that was it. Pretty terrible. But ENOUGH ALREADY...jeez

So my mom and one of her friends told me that one of my childhood friends growing up (a girl) told her mom to stop looking for boyfriends for her, because she was a lesbian. I had heard this from her brother before, but it was always a 'bicurious' label. I guess she decided to come out completely. And good for her. What is frustrating is my mom and her friend talked about how 'weird' it was and they were frustrated 'how' she said it. They expected her to say 'I think I am gay'. Apparently, her certainty about her sexuality was strange to them.

I didn't say anything, because my mom in a hospital bed is not the place to pick a fight, but WTF!! I just read a post from James talking about an awkward conversation that his parents had with him, but that seemed to indicate that they were encouraging him to be open with them. This must be nice, because regardless of what my mom thinks (she must suspect something, she's asked me before), she has to be aware of the fact that these offhand remarks are 'closing' the door to our communication. Very frustrating!!



Oh, and Tyler asked about Brent Corrigan: in 2006, I went to Las Vegas for the first time with my parents. We happened to go on the weekend of the gayVN awards. This was right after the whole 'age' controversy erupted for Brent. So he was there trying to kind of put himself out there. I had been reading his blog, because I thought he was hot and interesting...in fact he's the first blog I ever followed. Anyways I was walking to the bathroom in the Venetian casino, and I saw him walking down the aisle. I just looked shocked, and he could tell I recognized him. He said 'whats up', and I just said I was a big fan. He hugged me and said that was sweet. He was very nice, and very cute. He seemed shorter than I expected. I, being a person with low self-esteem, have a hard time getting words out when I am nervous about being around people. So I'm sure I looked very awkward, but he was really nice, and I definitely appreciate the hug! :-) So that was that... I haven't been following his blog for the last year or so, but you can see many old comments from 'MemphisSteve' - that's me :-)

Much Love,
Steve

Happy Birthday to... oh fuck it, we'll do it next year

So as I mentioned in the last post, Sunday is my birthday, and I was looking forward to a nice Saturday evening out, even though I had to travel for business. This week has been a non-stop shit-fest of the worst kind. I'll just give you a run down:

Monday: day was 'ok', but I had to yell at dumb people at work. This is normal, so no worries there. I was planning on taking my mom out to a nice dinner to celebrate her birthday, but she wasn't feeling well so we went to 'lonestar steakhose' because its close by. Lonestar steakhouse a typical American southern chain pseduo-steak house. This is a place that sells steaks like a steak house but they are mass produced and probably frozen. It's tacky, trying to be fancy. Any place that has giant framed belt buckles with cowboy hats on the walls-- is not the kind of place for me. It's like people saying 'olive garden' is their favorite Italian restaurant. I know this is a bit elitist and snobbish, but I really appreciate good chefs, and want to eat real food prepared for me, not steamed in a pre-frozen bag...

Tuesday: my mom called at 6AM crying because she was in tremendous pain. She hadn't used the bathroom properly for days, but that's not really abnormal for her anyways. I went over there and we went to the Emergency Room. A bowel obstruction is nothing to play with-- it can turn serious quickly. The ER was crazy, I witnessed a few people 'coding' a.k.a code blue, meaning they need recussitation. Its scary, because I know that my dad was one of those people when he was airlifted. So the whole ER scene makes me uncomfortable and angry.

One of the nurses showed me her 'code card'- a code pink is an infant abduction, and a code brown is a bomb threat! I asked her: does this happen enough to warrant having specific codes?

They sent my mom home with laxatives...bad move

Wed: her pain went from bad to worse, she couldn't sleep and she said it was worse than childbirth. However, the GI doctor couldn't see her until the NEXT day at 3PM. It was unnacceptable, but he said it was probably just constipation, and that the ER couldn't do anything, but if it got really bad to of course go to the ER. (this was the GI nurse, not the doctor saying this).

Thurs: my mom is now almost unable to walk she is in so much pain, and in retrospect we should've just gone to the ER immediately. But we went to the Drs office at 2PM, and waited for two hours with 30 people that were just there for random, non critical ailments. I was frustrated and pissed that they wouldn't give priority to the crying woman who is screaming in pain. Fucking insane.

GI doctor felt around and noticed that there was pain when he released pressure, and said 'you need to get to the ER immediately. You are having an emergency right now.' I about punched those fucking nurses for making her wait for two hours for this, but we rushed back to the ER. They were concerned that the colon had perforated and become infected. This means that your feces escapes the colon wall and infects your body. This can turn you septic very quickly, and that is very serious. It can happen quickly too, which is even more scary.

Thankfully, it is not perforated, and they admitted her (didn't get a room until about 2am of course) to treat the infection with antibiotics. Today, things started working again, but they haven't gotten rid of the infection completely. She will be in until next Tuesday it looks like... the whole time I'm just thinking- there is no fucking way that I am going to lose two parents before I'm 30.

So I need to reschedule my birthday from Sunday to some other time. Hurray and happy birthday to me.

I've decided I'm not getting older than 25, and I suggest everyone else do the same. So this birthday is NOT my 26th birthday. I am in fact turning...25!

I hope everyone else is having a better time than I.

Much Love,
Steve

Birthday Wishes

Next Sunday is my birthday, and I'm not really excited about it. I will be 26 years old, which seems ancient :-( I don't know what I want to do on my birthday. I really want to go to the club, but I know my other gay friends don't want to go. I don't want to 'drag them along' (wow, thats an unintended pun). A year ago, everyone enjoyed going to the club...now I'm the only one left that wants to go, which sucks. Soooo..... any of you all want to go to the club with me on my birthday? :-)

I am making a resolution to myself to 'fix me' this year. I cannot go another year where I feel like I am letting myself down. I know I am fortunate that I have been given opportunities to do well in school and work, and I feel like I am 'doing well' in those aspects of my life. But my personal life, physical fitness, etc. I know is lacking. I don't want to wake up 40 years old having been complacent all those years and full of regret. I don't want to waste the next 6 years of my personal life as I feel I wasted the last six. I don't want to feel so uncomfortable in my skin that I feel I am not worthy of someone else. I recognize what and how to fix those thing I hate, and I have the means and opportunity to accomplish my goals; I just haven't. This *must* change.

That's my 'call to arms' to myself. Hopefully, it will work. Wish me luck.

Much Love,
Steve

I don't think OkCupid gets me

After seeing the cool quizzes and tools over at OkCupid, I had to sign up. It's free, and I like taking online quizzes. I got a nice ego boost from the "Commonly Confused Words Quiz", scoring "English Genius". I really appreciated that they had a question on the appropriate use of 'hanged' or 'hung' for past tense of 'to hang'. I love the George W. Bush quote where he mixed it up (go figure)-- and anyone educated in the difference would think that he committed murder in the oval office :-)

Anyways-- I got in my email today the "Flowchart to my heart", and I must need to answer more questions or something, because anyone reading this would be VERY confused about 'Steve'.

Here are the questions it chose to include:

1. Would you date an atheist?
   
2. What best represents your opinion on same-sex relationships?
   
3. Is your duty to religion/god more important than your family?
   
4. What most closely describes what you're looking for in a relationship?
   
5. How much can intelligence turn you on?
   
6. To you is an abortion an option in the case of unwanted pregnancy?
   
7. Is contraception morally wrong?
   
8. Would you date a current drug user?
   
9. What is your greatest motivation in life so far?
   
10. How important is religion in your life?
    

Now if you read these as questions to find a date, I think you would infer that I am SUPER RELIGIOUS. I mean honestly, they ask about atheism before they as about same-sex relationships! I don't think atheism even matters if they aren't interested in BEING in a same-sex relationship! And I just can't stop giggling at the "is your duty to religion/god more important than your family"!! hahah lol... I mean its funny for 'me' regardless, but it makes me realize that there may be a lot of people that would actually answer 'yes' to this. As many probably know- I am a bit outspoken about my anti-religious beliefs, but the internet is a little skewed to talk about this more than it really comes up IRL. While I am an atheist, I am not picketing churches or meeting up with 'atheist clubs'-- I spend very little time thinking about religion during my day.

I don't think OkCupid gets me :-( ...otherwise they would be asking things like:

- "are you ok being with boring people for extended periods of time?" or
- "do you look like Mitch Hewer?" or
- "would it bother you if your partner almost spent thousands of dollars to fly to Broadway to see Harry Potter's 'rod and tackle' ?"

Instead I look like a 15 year old bible-thumpin' baptist girl who is scared of contraceptives and atheists :-)



Much Love,
Steve

Making fun of gays

I am sure that everyone can relate to this, but I guess it hasn't happened to me in a while, and thus seemed worthy of blog mention.



I was at a friends house tonight playing Rock Band 2-- *cough* expert drums *cough*. These were work friends-- and I'm not 'out' to my work friends / colleagues. It's not really their business, and I don't really feel the need. However, I don't really care if they know or not. The only person I am actually concerned about is my mom-- she would freak. None the less, somehow a conversation started where one of my friends was describing how his cube-mate was sent a video link that pretended to be a music video to a song, but turned out to be raunchy gay sex. He was describing how 'funny' it was-- because it was so disgusting :-S

And then he said "I can't even stand two guys kissing; it's just disgusting-- it makes me sick". I didn't really know what to say. I suppose I should have reacted in some way, but didn't. I'm not usually always silent in these situations, but I was this time. One of my other friend's wife, who I think suspects I am gay, chimed in to say "I don't have a problem with homosexuality or anything -- but I don't want to see _anyone's_ porn".



Now my friend is a really nice, smart person, who I don't think would ever wish ill-will or inequalities on anyone. But he was a product of a very religious household in the southern U.S. And I would venture to guess that many of these households have the "oh, theres nothing wrong with it as long as I don't ever have to see it, deal with it, or think about it" mentality. They preface everything with "I don't have a problem with gays, but..." and then they spout off something that is ridiculously offensive--- even though they think they have 'made it ok' by claiming their 'tolerance'.

I'm not really offended by what my friend said-- I wish it weren't the case, but in 2009, in the southern U.S. two guys kissing is 'pornography' to many people. I just don't know if I should have reacted in some way. Maybe I should be more aggressive in actually trying to help the situation. Does my silence make me complicit to his discrimination? Maybe coming out and showing my work friends that "gay people are real people too" would help the situation....

What have you guys done in similar situations? Are you always outspoken? Are you always silent?

Much Love,
Steve

Smart and Successful

Sorry this will be a little 'reflective'...

I just finished reading (listening to the audiobook of) "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. All of his books are interesting, and really 'up my alley'. This particular book is about challenging the typical (at least western) intuition about what makes people successful. Certainly in America, there is conventional wisdom that successful people are the smartest and brightest-- that they are talented. And that what made them successful was their own personal effort and achievement. This 'pulled up by the bootstraps' kind of mentality certainly was apparent to me when I was in middle and high school and university.

The purpose of the book is to show that often times, if not all the time, success is much more a product of extraordinary but arbitrary circumstance. This isn't to say that successful people are not partly responsible for their success, but that it is not as large of a factor as one might suspect given our cultural biases.

For example, the book opens with an interesting observation (and I'm getting this stats wrong, but they're really close): if you observe 'successful' hockey players in north america (NHL, etc.) there is an interesting stat: 40% of successful hockey players were born between January and March. Another 40% between March and June; only 10% of 'successful' hockey players were born between October and December! The reason for this is that the age cutoff for league play when you are a child (like 8 y/o) is Jan 1st. Thus, if you were born really close to the first of the year, then you would be held back, and the next year the league you joined would be almost 12 months older than you December bday buddies. When you are 8 y/o 11 or 12 months of development makes a tremendous amount of difference: you are bigger, stronger, more mature. You are able to gain a false sense of confidence because you excel over your 11 and 12 month old team mates. When the scouts come to recruit into the youth competitive leagues, these are the kids much more likely to be recruited. In competitive leagues, you practice 2x as much, and get much higher quality coaching than recreational players. So by the time you enter high school or college-- you really are better and more talented! And this is all due to an arbitrary differentiation based on birthday. This has nothing to do with talent or skill-- but something completely arbitrary. The same can be seen with kids who were held back in school in kindergarten and first grade: they are slightly older, and slightly more mature. This allows them to master the material just a little better, and whats more important is they believe they are smarter, and this belief drives them to be even more academic than their peers who comparatively believe that they 'dont get it' or 'arent smart enough'.

I found a lot of this echoing my own life. I was held back in kindergarten. I was always one of the oldest in the class. I always felt that I was smarter than my peers in grade school, and was usually more well behaved. Now the book doesn't try to claim that these are alone reasons for success-- there are chapters on parenting and cultural legacies as well; but the point is that my birthday being in August and causing me to be held back was a completely arbitrary advantage that I was awarded for no effort of my own. I can see many of these small, coincidental, and arbitrary advantages in my life: I was arrested when I was 15 for making fake IDs for my friends. Its a story for another day, but it forced me to get a job and hang out with different friends. The circumstances that lead to this were very random, and yet this has CERTAINLY contributed to my success. I'm still very young (well old to some of you!), but I do feel like I have accomplished a lot for someone my age, and I am happy with my 'direction' so far. But I have to recognize that so much of this is not my doing, but through wonderful happenstance. It is humbling to recognize this, and that's healthy I think.

One thing I know for sure: when I was arrested or any of the other 'bad' things that happened to me when I was 14-18-- I hated them at the time. I thought I had bad luck, and that they were completely bad things. It was only a few years ago that I realized the amazingly positive impact that they had on my life. So if nothing else, please recognize that the bad things that happen in life may in fact turn out to be pivotal in shaping who you become. We can at least be hopeful that our pain has some merit-- if nothing else the hope itself has some utility.

As much as I complain about some things, I am happy that I am who I am. I have to recognize that both the 'good' and the 'bad' make me 'Steve', and for that I am thankful.

A nice treat for the (probably none) readers that made it this far :-)



Much Love,
Steve

Puppy!

My big project at work is done, and we made our date, so I should get my big bonus $$$ at christmas time! I think I want to take a trip somewhere. I've never been to Canada, and I've heard there are some fun things to do in Toronto. I've also never been to Seattle. And I would love to visit the UK again. Or I could pay off my student loans-- that would probably be the 'responsible' thing to do.

In other news, I had a great time with my 'fag hag' Nikki on Saturday. We went to a really nice restaurant, ate a great meal, and chatted for a few hours. Around 11PM it turned into a kind of upscale bar with yuppie-chic music, etc. I certainly didn't mind the scenery of nice looking guys :-) Nikki hounded me for not 'getting out there' and finding someone. I have a really bad self-image problem. She says I'm crazy, which is nice of her...but knowing something and doing something are completely different things.



Lastly, this weekend and whole week, I am taking care of my moms dog, Maggie. She is on vacation with her, um... 'gentleman caller' in Mexico, and I'm in charge of the dog. I love dogs, and Maggie is still a puppy which means she won't stop chewing on my fingers. Her teeth are like razors!! Although thankfully, she seems to be doing well with the whole 'going to the bathroom outside' business. Here are some pics-- she is adorable.




Much Love,
Steve

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night

So long ye folk of Blogland... at least for the next week! (this is me being coy). Did my title trick you into thinking I was leaving forever? (this is me blinking, realizing no one is reading). Sorry, cheap ploy-- although I don't think it would really matter (this is me looking for attention).

All this week I will be in Dallas, TX as the lone team member trying to 'triage' any problems that come up with our product. When you write software, you go through many stages: there is a period of 'construction' where everyone is writing code and the product is generally unstable. Then you go through 'integration' where all the pieces have to fit together and play nice with each other. Lastly, there is a period of 'quality assurance' where the code is frozen and the test team exercises the code to find bugs. So if QA finds any problems, development has to 'triage' the bug, and determine the risk/impact to the software. Then a decision has to be made whether or not the bug is serious enough to stop shipment of the product. For us, this week is our last week-- our 'general availability' (GA) date is 7/20. We have a very low number of bugs right now, and those will all be fixed with our second release candidate on Monday. So QA is still pounding on the system all this week, and my role is to support them and when something comes up, to solve it quickly and make a go/no-go recommendation. It will be a stressful, long week :-(



My two team members somehow convinced management to let them take a five week European vacation starting last thursday... don't ask me how-- it makes no fucking sense why on the eve of the biggest release of this product they would allow them to leave the country for five weeks (they are from Europe so they want to see their family, which is fine-- but not my problem, really).

So, it's just me... wish me luck guys!!! I'm feeling a bit sassy like the cute guy in this pic :-)

Much Love,
Steve

es ist Bruno!

So I watched Bruno, the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie, tonight. I still do some side work for a movie theatre chain, and know all the managers- so I get to see movies early if I happen to catch them when they are screening them.

Let me preface this by saying that while I fancy myself an 'intellectual' person who doesn't piddle in the pedestrian dealings of the common man....thats all bullshit. I am not hung up on being politically correct all the time-- if something is funny I laugh. I believe we can laugh at ourselves, when its meant in jest; laughing at pain and hard ache is something different, of course.

Borat played on a fine line of offensive and funny. I laughed, but wasn't sure if I should have. I felt the same for much of Bruno. Bruno, like Borat, is funny because it captures candid reactions from people that are facing their 'worst fears' in social stereotypes. Borat was the inappropriate, obtuse, and rude 'tourist'. We aren't supposed to laugh at tourists, because they are supposed to be incredulously well-intentioned. Borat forced people into a corner, where they didn't know how to react. Often this was awkward and funny. If reality television has taught us anything, it's that we love watching people squirm. We laugh at embarrassing situations... I'm not really sure if this is good or not-- but I can't deny that I find it entertaining. Although I find masturabation entertaining too... I guess they are both self-serving.

Bruno is the homophobes worst nightmare. Not only is he effeminate, but he is relentless and uncaring of the clear discomfort of his audience: he calls the angry army sargeant a 'she', he tells the ex-gay minister he has nice 'blow job lips', he makes very obvious advances (and strips) in front of conservative presidential hopeful Ron Paul. He is not just gay-- he is inappropriate and aggressive. I am pretty sure that even I, as a gay person, would be uncomfortable in a room with Bruno. So I don't think you can construe Bruno as making fun of gay people-- I think its so over the top that normal people understand that "Brunos" don't exist. And if they do-- its not their homosexuality that is discomforting its just their plain disregard for other people's attitudes, comfort, and personal space.

So yes, after the first fifteen minutes, I laughed. I laughed a lot, and had to cover my eyes at some points because it was so uncomfortable to watch: he goes hunting with the straightest southern guys in Alabama and tries twice to get into one of their tents nude; he calls hotel staff into his room to unlock he and his 'sex slave' who are hand-cuffed and bound in leather with dildos- because they can't find the key; he gets a hollywood agent to setup a meeting with a top network exec to focus group a 'pilot' that is nothing but him dancing and making fun of Jamie-Lynn Spear's baby fetus.



The climax of the movie is one of the most awkward, embarrassing, and unfortunately real scenes I have seen. Bruno decides he wants to become straight and after 8 months of 'therapy' hosts a 'cage fighting' event with $1 beers (typical homophobic red-neck lure, see poster picture). Then he riles the audience up for fighting by stripping girls down to bikinis. He goes on a diatribe about how straight he is, and then someone calls him a 'fag' from the audience. He invites the heckler into the ring. It's another character from the movie who had a falling out with Bruno earlier. In the ring, they fake fight a few minutes ending in a staring match, and then the staring turns into obvious sexual tension, and they kiss. The kissing escalates into very homo-erotic humping, making out, etc. The crowd goes ballistic-- they hurl beers at them, at one point a chair thrown into the ring-- it is absolute mayhem. I just don't know how the police were able to control this without someone getting killed. I have never seen such a riot. It was like a car wreck-- I didn't want to watch, I didn't want to laugh-- but I couldn't take my eyes away. If nothing else, Sacha Baron Cohen has enormous balls.

So after typing this, I'm not sure how I really feel about the movie. I'm glad I saw it- I definitely laughed really hard. I'm not sure how I feel about the 'ethics' of the movie, or if its good that it exists out there. Or whether it would be better/worse to live in a world where this weren't funny. More questions than answers... however, I suppose this is the best result of reflecting on things.

What are your thoughts?

Much Love,
Steve