So Fey Survey!

1) Where did you graduate from and what year?
Creston High School class of 1988. AKA the Corny Shithole of the Midwest.

2) Did you have school pride?
Some, but not a lot. I smelled it was a form of brainwashing.

3) Was your prom a night to remember?
Yep, especially because on local access television, my Swedish date tried to make a joke and said she had to “screw” herself into her unusual dress.

4) Do you own all 4 Yearbooks?
Nope. I’m not even sure if I have one any more. I had to leave so much stuff with a friend when I left college, and she promptly sold it all at a yard sale and lied about the later checks I sent her to mail stuff to me.

5) What was the worst trouble you ever got into during High School?
- Umm, not sure. Sean Dunphy, Susan Priest, James Putnam and I ran Maxwell Nelson's moped up the flag pole on the rope, but didn’t get caught.
- Lori Crawford and I also dropped potassium down a toilet and ruined thousands of dollars worth of plumbing, and didn’t get caught.
- The only thing I got in trouble for (and it wasn’t big trouble) is – after my history teacher threatened to jump out of the third story window if we didn’t start answering questions – I said out loud, “Please, Dear Lord, let no one say a thing.” I was supposed to be kicked out of class for three days, but the principal was so appalled at the teacher’s comment about suicide that he just moved me to another, cooler, history class.

6) What kind of people did you hang out with?
Local community college kids, actually. I tried to keep this hush-hush, but I was ALWAYS at college keggers. I worked with a few college kids, and they hooked me up.

7) What was your number 1 choice of College in HS?
AMDA

8) What radio station did you listen to in high school?
Can’t remember, watched a LOT of MTV

9) Were you involved in any organizations or clubs?
Yep. Speech and Swing Choir and Theatre and, for a short while, the school newspaper.

10) What were your favorite classes in High School?
Theatre, Literature, Music

11) Who was your big crush in High school?
I had two, and both were realized because the other guy was much much braver than I was, but they weren’t made to work in the long run. One was a lovely one-night stand, and I still think the guy was one of the sweetest people I've ever met. The other was a secret, off-and-on two-year orgy. I believe one of them reads my blog, so I'll keep them nameless.

12) Would you say you've changed a lot since high school?
Yep.

13) What do you miss the most about it?
I was the person whom everyone came to for new music. That’s about it. I also kinda miss the view out my bedroom window. And the cottage cheese.

14) Your worst memory of HS?
Wow, I have a few.
- My little brother held his breath in shop class until he passed out. He fell against a wench and chipped his two front teeth – that was embarrassing. He was such a retard and a constant reminder to me - even though I lived in a foster home - that my family of origin was backwards, moronic, and dangerous. Our gene pool was an oily pothole, I swear.
- I got caught in a small lie to my music teacher, because I didn’t want to go to singing competition in the group he stuck me with. I ended up shocking the teacher by fessing up to everything and saying I thought he put all the "connected kids" in one group because he was a sychophant. I was the sherriff's foster kid, but I didn't want to be with the other well-connected or rich kids. I wanted to be the group with the better singers.
- There was this day this guy Brian Long had a serious mental breakdown right behind me in Choir because someone called him a faggot, and he went mental. I was too scared to stick up for him, and I was ashamed and embarrassed he didn't have thicker skin. I got called that all the time, but was popular becasue I knew how to handle it.
- But the worst was in 9th grade after I went back to school after being put in foster care and it seemed half the school knew about my suicide attempts and had some idea I had sex with men when I was in Muscatine the previous summer. I lived through it though, and by my senior year, I was okay.

15) Did you have a car?
Yep. LOL – a beautiful 1976 Ford Elite that was in mint condition and got about 10 miles to the gallon. My foster parents wanted me protected in a tank that I couldn’t go too far out of town on.

16) What were your school colors?
Red & black, Jeff Lindberg!

17) Who were your fav. teachers?
My literature teacher Charlotte Johnson and my drama teacher, Jim Lippold

18) Did you own a cell phone in high school?
They didn’t exist.

19) Did you leave campus for lunch?
As a junior and senior, yep.

20) If so, where was your fav. place to go eat?
This sandwich booth in the alley between Powell Gifts and Palm’s Clothing. It was called the Alley Sandwich Shop.

21) Were you always late to class?
Never late.

22) Did you ever have to stay for Saturday School?
Nope.

23) Did you ever ditch sat detention?
Never had it.

24) When it comes time for the reunion will you be there?
Nope.

25) Do you wish you were still in high school?
God, no!!! College, though…I never realized all that free time I had there!

If You Can't Fix It You've Got To Stand It

So, last night, I said to my right hand:

"I wish there was some way I could quit you!"


But am I gonna win any Oscars? NO!!!

Some Thoughts on Brokeback Mountain

A lot has been (and is going to be) written about Brokeback Mountain; what it means, how effective it is. It’s been called “the gay cowboy movie,” which is derivative in one sense, but very accurate in another.

Interestingly enough, the old old old theme of forbidden love seems harder and harder to make new in these modern times. But you DO cut right to the marrow of the theme when you have two people of the same gender together – especially two people whose “mythology” demands that they perform antiquated gender roles (i.e. “play cowboy,” with all of its requisite Marlboro man charm.) So, maybe saying “gay cowboy movie” is a great way of cutting through all the bullshit and getting right to the point. Ya can't get a love more forbidden than that!

In another sense, this film may mark a significant shift in our opinions of gay culture. For the longest time (and I have been VERY guilty of this), "gay" also meant "campy", "socially irreverent", and likely even "swishy". In the world of the manly man, we girly-men took lessons from Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, and Mae West. To survive, we sissies stole the word “faggot” from our bashers and became whirling dervishes of sequins and Broadway songs so fearful that we scared the bullies away by our sheer feminine brashness. And now, Brokeback Mountain (and the baseball player of the award-winning play Take Me Out) redefines our queerness as something that is more comfortably masculine....somewhat like a well-worn chambray shirt.

Perhaps, in the long run, even, the all-out assault of Jack on Will & Grace and of Carson Kressley on Queer Eye will quit seeming required behavior for all bone-smokers. Being a flaming queen will simply be one of many options - along with cowboy, baseball player, bar bouncer, and pro-wrestler (…well, maybe not pro wrestler…) Perhaps those men, who were for so long trapped searching for masculine essence in the costumed world of the leather daddy, line dancer, and bear, will also realize they can find the same sweaty machismo in khakis, Converses, and an unwashed SUV.

I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more films about manly football players, butchers, mafia bosses, and car mechanics who take it up the Hersey highway.

Or perhaps people will see Brokeback Mountain as a story of a man whose culture, upbringing, education, time and place didn’t equip him with the courage to deal with his passion, his wants and his needs. Perhaps if he’d been in San Francisco (even in the early 60s) instead of Montana, this would likely have been a different story. It’s quite obvious the tragedy is partially caused by his lack of bravery. If, despite everything, he'd been a little bit more of a man and taken what he wanted, damn the consequences!

Which is probably why I was so affected by the film. As a gay man, I intimately understand the struggle a scared man in that situation would go through. Especially since I was born in Iowa, a state as conservative as Montana. I understand how expensive some sorts of courage can be – what you have to give up can seem too high a price to pay. But I also accept the essential truth that a straight man (Roger Ebert) said of Brokeback Mountain, “We feel whatever we feel, whether we think we should or not, and to deny it can lead to heartbreak.”

It reminded me of Hillary Swank, after being raped in Boys Don’t Cry, tearfully telling an unsympathetic sheriff of her cross-dressing, “I have a gender identification disorder.”

Or of Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley, finally expressing his desires, and then finding out that his previous lies make it impossible to live out in the open.

Like Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, none of these people had the wherewithal – the previous experience, the knowledge, or the courage – to honestly face the truths their fates have dealt them.

And that is the something about this film that’s been keeping me awake at night.

I start wondering, what sort of things I have been a coward about? What sort of challenges have I not had the strength or education to face? And what are the feelings I have previously denied because of fear?

And in that way, the film is universal. Because that fear of the possible truth I haven’t faced has really nothing to do with me being gay. And it wouldn’t matter if I were a ballet dancer or a cowboy.

And that’s why I think I love this film.

Jello Wrestling in Self-Pity

Cuz sometimes it's fun to wallow in depression.

A quiz I bastardized from Joshie.

A N S W E R T R U T H F U L L Y
1. do you like anyone?: Absolutely no one!! What sort of question is this?Do you mean “Am I attracted to someone?”
2. do they know it?: I would hope people know if I like them. (If the question is truly the latter, I almost NEVER tell someone the truth in this regard.)
3. simple or complicated?: Simple like a short bus person

I N T H E L A S T M O N T H H A V E Y O U
4. Had sex: Only with myself.
5. Bought something: Yes, for sex with myself.
6. Gotten sick?: Only of myself.
7. Been hugged?: Can’t remember. Oh, wait, yep, a lot at the PRT event.
8. Felt stupid: I do right now.
9. Talked to an ex: I’m such a nice guy to them, buttering them up for no reason, that I’ve decided it’s time I quit talking to them.
10. Missed someone: Only the dead.
11. Failed a test: Home pregnancy test.
12. Ate cereal: Yep, frosted mini-wheat in the mountains of Tennessee (and this ain’t no joke.)
13. Danced crazy: I don’t think I have EVER danced normal, so yes.
14. Gotten your hair cut?: Just on my butt.
15. Lied: Nope…nun-uh, not at all, ever!

U N I Q U E
16. Nervous habits?: Lying on quizes
17. Are you double jointed?: No, but I’ve smoked two joints at once
18. Can you roll your tongue?: I can roll my tongue and my car.
19. Can you raise one eyebrow?: Not without the assistance of my eyebrow-raising finger
20. Can you cross your eyes?: I’m Catholic, we cross everything.
21. Do you make your bed daily?: Yep, to cover up the urine stains
22. Do you think you are unique?: Absolutely not!

H A V E Y O U E V E R
23. Said "I Love you" and meant it: Only as a joke.
24. Given money to a homeless person?: Only fake money.
25. Smoked?: Only with a homeless person as a joke.
26. Waited all night for a phone call?: I’ve waited my whole life for a phone call.
27. Snuck out?: Why, do you know a way?
28. Sat and looked at the stars?: There are very few celebrities here in central Florida.

M A N N E R S
29. Do you swear?: Fuck, no!
30. Do you ever spit?: Can’t remember…it’s been such a long time…
31. You cook your own food?: Yes, and kill it.
32. You do your own chores?: Only because I hate myself.
33. You like beef jerky?: I like jerking the beef.
34. You like pepsi or coke? A good line of coke any day.
35. You're happy with your hair?: If I could transplant the hair on my back to my head, I might be.
36. You own a dog?: Nope, I have a cat that owns me.
37. You spend your money wisely? Half and half.
38. Do you like to swim?: To China.
39. When you get bored do you call a friend?: Nope, I usually do an online quiz.
40. Are you patient?: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

D O Y O U P R E F E R
41.flowers or angels?: Flowers – they’re easier to hit with a bowling ball.
42. gray or black?: African Americans
43. Color or black and white photos?: Mullato
44. lust or love?: Is there a difference?
45. sunrise or sunsets? Total dark.
47. rap or rock?: What’s Yoko Ono
48. staying up late or waking up early? Both…sleep deprivation is FUN!
49. being hot or cold?: I’m both, I’m told.
50. Winter or Fall?: The one that’s most like death.
51. left or right: Liberal.
52. having 10 acquaintances or 2 best friends?: What are these things and where do I get them?
53. sunshine or rain?: acid rain.
54. vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream?: Asparagus
55. boys or girls?: Not a pedophile.
56. vodka or jack?: Before breakfast or after?
57. europeon or american muscle cars?: unicycles
58. cords or denim?: I remember thinking English cords were sexy once.
59. told someone you hate them?: Just myself.
Last one...
60. top or bottom?: Of my soul? You guess.

Homo on the Range

David and I are planning to see the highly anticipated Bareback Mounting...um, I mean
Brokeback Mountain this coming Saturday 1/21/06 at 12:20pm @ Regal Waterford Lakes.

Join us, won't you?

Get your tickets on-line at Fag-Dangle (how appropriate!) www.fandango.com. Let one of us know to expect ya. Come by David's hacienda around 11:30am and we can carpool.

A Library Full of Book Reports

I haven't done this in a while, so I have quite a few to cover:

The Cat Who Came in From the Cold
By Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
It’s a brief book, so I’ll keep my review equally concise.

This short tale of the domestication of India’s first housecat culls a lot from Hindu, Buddhist and Sanskrit folklore. It even borrows the tone. The problem is that the legends and myths may be well-known to the people of India, but they are incredibly obscure to the casual American reader. I believe I know a bit more about world religions than the average doofus (I consider myself an educated doofus), and even I got a little lost.

This, however, is the perfect little gift for your Hindu, book-loving friend who also loves housecats. Do you know someone it’s perfect for? Most people, I suspect, don’t.

Naked
By David Sedaris
On the way to West Virginia, Cathy and I listened to the audio version of this book I had already read. Later, David, Michael and I listened to it on the way back from Tennessee.

Here, we have another collection of tasty, goofy stories of Sedaris’ twisted past narrated by the author himself (with some assistance by his Strangers with Candy sister Amy).

I have to admit that Sedaris' fey little elvish voice does take a small bit of getting used to (but I’m friends with David Almeida, so I should be used to this, right?) But Sedaris has excellent comic timing. And his sister’s additions are at first a little jarring, but as soon as we accept the conceit - that and the fact that Amy’s acting talents help mask her brother’s limited vocal range - we are off and rolling.

Sedaris kicks it off with a self-embarrassing exorcism of his past as an obsessive-compulsive little boy with “a multitude of ticks.” It’s a perfect beginning, throwing us right in to the deep end of the pool of his weirdness. He licks light switches, religiously touches lawn ornaments, and maniacally counts his every footstep, dissecting his mental illness for our listening pleasure.

And the quirky stories only get better. (My personal favorite is the tale of young Sedaris’ acting career.)

If you have not yet experienced Mr. Sedaris, you are seriously missing out.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven
By Mitch Albom
An old theme park mechanic dies trying to save a little girl from a malfunctioning ride. And the rest of this brief book is about his meeting five people in the afterlife; people who he has affected or vice-versa. It’s all a very granola-nut crunch, fluffy-ish read, but also very affecting. There are small surprises along the way, and the central mystery is stretched out for all it’s worth. But there also is a lovely hum-dinger of a plot twist that you will not expect. And although the message of how people touch each others’ lives is pretty standard, this airy little book does a nice job of reminding us that our actions are felt much deeper and wider than we can often imagine.

All Families are Psychotic
By Douglas Copeland
I happen to be a great fan of the modern novel. And not just those of Wolfe, Irving, Hoffman, Tyler, and Oates. I especially love those of “my generation”: McInerary, Easton Ellis, Janowitz, Chabon, and yes, Douglas Copeland (he of Generation X fame).

Some wild plots border on the ridiculous; this book proudly crosses that border and holes itself up in a seedy motel in the capital city of Ridiculous.

In All Families are Psychotic, a grossly dysfunctional familial unit travels to central Florida to watch their handicapped daughter launch her career as an astronaut. While they’re here, the entire clan gets caught up in a ring of international theft, smuggling, adultery, murder, and baby-selling. All in a three-day trip.

Did I mention that the plot was far-fetched?

Also, there’s AIDS involved.

I scoffed in disbelief a LOT while reading it!

Copeland succeeds more than he should be able to, given how preposterous the plot is and how incorrect some of his details of central Florida are. (This is land better-traveled by Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard.) But Copeland’s modern reference points have the ability to connect the reader to the story, and his comedy is wry and sharp. Also, the author’s novel may be full of stupid contrivances, but it is also rich with well-drawn characters.

Pick it up for a nice read, but try to keep your suspension of disbelief from stretching to the breaking point.

The Last of the Savages
By Jay McInerary
“The act of friendship is God’s way of apologizing for our families.”

That’s how this lovely book starts, and by the end, I was thoroughly confused and amazed as to why this isn’t considered a modern classic. I was truly affected by this novel, so much so that I read the book twice straight through. I even got emotional. Both times.

This powerful novel follows Patrick Keane and his 30-year friendship with John, the last in a line of rebellious southern gentlemen surnamed Savage. The plot clearly borrows from Evelyn Waugh’s classic Brideshead Revisited, but it also creates a story entirely its own.

Patrick longs for the pedigree and history John has. John fights his Memphis upper-crust upbringing by running a gambling racket to fund his production of poor black musicians. Patrick slaves to escape from his middle-class beginnings into the upper echelons of respectable Wall Street society. John hopes to free himself and others from the stifling classicm of his past. Patrick subjugates his own longings for acceptability. John marries a black woman and starts on a world tour of excessive sex, drugs and rock and roll.

That these two are friends who come to trust and depend on each other so intimately is the power than binds this tale. Through the Kennedy assassination, 60s race riots, war protests, hippie movement, drug-binged 70s, and me-ist 80s, these two best friends alternately challenges and accepts each other. What’s most compelling is how, over 30-plus years, these two people change, despite and because of each other.

By the emotional end of this novel, my sturdy objectivity was completely gone, and I was actually choking up. I am giving this paperback copy to Sarah French and starting a search for a permanent hardcover version for myself.

You’ll probably have trouble finding this book, too, but it’s definitely worth the hunt.

The Snow Garden
By Christopher Rice
Young Rice is the progeny of vampire-slash-witch-slash-everythinggoth chronicler Anne Rice. While I am impressed he is not treading the same mucky, overblown ground his mother turns into 4000-page books, I am still not a fan.

There is an excellent premise here, though. A professor’s wife dies of a car accident while he’s sleeping with one of his students. There are some nice curves, also. The wife’s car crashes into the same river a young girl drowned in when the professor was a student. And the professor was somehow involved in that incident fifteen years earlier. And did I mention that the professor may have poisoned his wife’s well-used stash of alcohol? And did I mention the professor’s lover also nips from that same cache of poisoned Chivas? Also, did I mention the student lover was a boy?

All this is good and exciting, ripe with possibilities, except that instead of choosing a mature way to telling the story, Rice decides to make this half teen soap opera. All of the sudden it’s loaded with ennui and bad dialogue and gay rights and immature people we don’t ever really end up caring about. It’s like early Brett Easton Ellis decided to write for Beverly Hills 90210. Or worse, Saved by the Bell.

Let ‘em all drink the poisoned scotch for all I cared.

The Poet & the Murderer
By Simon Worrall
This is yet another book about Mark Hofmann, the geeky master forger who in the early 80s set about to bring down the Mormon Church. He was doing a passable job embarrassing the church hierarchy with undetectable forgeries, while also creating and selling letters and “lost works” by some other of America’s great historical figures. Hofmann’s work as a criminal was amazing, beyond reproach. No, his problem was that his debt got the best of him, and he desperately started planting pipe bombs, killing two people, to try to escape getting caught. But he accidentally detonated one of the pipe bombs on himself, and some very smart people got very suspicious.

Thus was caught probably the greatest forger the world has ever known.

It’s all fascinating and impressive stuff, and journalist Simon Worrall deftly bookmarks the whole story around Hofmann’s drafting of a lost Emily Dickenson poem. So many people wanted to believe this “new work” was real, and Hofmann’s forgeries and back-stories were so outstanding, that people would not let it die. Over and over, this poem was sold and resold, even by the venerable auction house Sotheby’s, who had a very good idea they were peddling a forgery in 2002, almost 20 years after Hofmann got caught.

There are two essential problems with Worrall’s book. One is that two other books, Salamander and The Mormon Forgery Murders, have been written about Hofmann. (Salamander is actually the best of all three). There is only little new to tell, even with Worrall’s framing the story around Dickenson’s “poem” and Sotheby’s deception.

This leads us to the second problem. Instead, Worrall spends most of the middle of the book filth-mouthing and maligning the Mormon Church and its history. Truthfully, it is a strange, dark history, but one has to wonder if Worrall himself has the same goal as Hofmann does to bring down the religious institution. So much ugly rhetoric, so much bile and vicious vitriol is flung that one starts to doubt the author’s journalistic integrity.

It’s a book supposedly based on history; if a reader (and especially one like me, who knows much about Mormon history) senses such a strong bias on the part of the author, the whole thing begins to smack of forgery.

Repetition Repeatedly Repeating

Is there joy in repetition? Or is this just something else I am going to grow bored with after a while?

I’ve been making my bed. Every morning. Repeating the same activity every time, just before my shower. My covers are quilted gold and plum, rich and shiny, simple but beautiful (if I do say so myself.). So when I finish the stretch and pull, the fold and the smooth, the tug of war and the final “why do I have 10 pillows?”…it looks so nice. With the estate-signed Patrick Nagels I have on my wall (the ones I got at a yard sale from a “Christian decorator” selling her ex-husband’s “porno art.” The ones that cost me less than fifteen buck apiece. Framed. My own personal headboard.) Ahhhh. (Except the "nude-woman-art" does make me look a little straight…)
And I’ll have to do everything over again tomorrow…

I’ve been drinking so much herbal tea, it’s ridiculous. First the tea bag, then the hot water, then the delicious wait. My two favorites are Twinning Red Bush and Celestial Seasons Decaf Teahouse Chai. I’ve grown addicted to the “brew time” - the quiet moments filled with nothing while I wait for the hot water to go dark. This is, perhaps, one good reason why people at work have a hard time giving up smoking; those breaks of pure thoughtlessness away from the day. Tea bag…hot water…wait. I find I am so relaxed…just sitting there…taking in the aroma, warming my hands on the cup. It won’t be the same when the weather gets hot again.
The stained cup is empty. Time to brew another batch. Tea…water…wait.

What are some of your rituals, your daily repetitions? And do you enjoy them as much as I do…for now? Is it the pervasive heredity of my Catholic upbringing, that stubborn clinging to ritual, rearing it’s papal head? Is it necessity? Or is it joy? Or maybe just contentment?

Or is this just something else I am going to grow bored with after a while?

The NOW quiz

You notice very few of these quizzes fill us all in on what's happening in each other's lives? So I invented this one. If you have a question you'd like to add, please feel free to leave it in comments. I'll answer and credit the originator here.

If not, then paste this one at your web site or just enjoy reading...

What’s happened recently that’s made you happy?
Over at David’s, introducing Marcie to Scrubs, which is still a very good show and which she had never watched before. And then seeing a shirtless JD (Zack Braff) trying to enter a freezing ocean by splashing a little water on himself while sing-songing “There’s a little, there’s a little more.”

What’s happened recently that’s made you sad?
The voices in my head are mad at me; they’re giving me the silent treatment, and it’s DRIVING ME CRAZY!

What’s happened recently that’s made you mad?
See above.

What happened the last time you were turned on?
Umm, this is terrible. But at the Jeff Horn campaign kickoff, there was this guy Garrick. Great name, friendly person. He went out of the way to introduce himself to me. He’s not typically the type I like; he has quite a bit of facial hair, he’s thinning, he’s a red-head, and his small glasses are so thick, it’s hard to see his eyes. But there was something about Garrick’s confidence, his charm, his pouty lower lip and the little bit of hair showing on his nicely defined chest that really turned me on to the point that I got nervous and tongue-tied. Which is what happens whenever someone really turns me on.

What are you wearing today?
That people can see???
Black polo and grey wool slacks.

What are you listening to right at this moment?
Imogene Heap – Have You Got in You?

What’s your current favorite song?
Imogene Heap – Daylight Robbery

What are you reading right now?
Christopher Rice’s The Snow Garden. I know he’s the son of Anne Rice (whom I don’t personally like, but everyone else loves, so what the fuck do I know?), but he take a plot premise with lots of potential and makes it as gay-trite as possible. I’m not enjoying it.

How’s work?
It just got VERY busy. Lockheed is switching from the current, very-user-friendly online Training System to a terrible one that’s going to cause us lots of grief.

On top of that, the program we started here in Orlando got picked up and reshaped by corporate as a corporate initiative that now even affects employees’ performance reviews. We have to figure out how to migrate from the old version to the new one.

And then my consulting company lost a part of its contract with Lockheed. The assessments are now going to be DDI and not De La Porte. And then I just found that even though my company won't make profit off of it, Lockheed wants me to direct and coordinate the new assessments. It looks good for me, and it offers me job security with Lockheed, which is my biggest client. But it doesn't make me or my company any new cash. And I don't know how it affects my standing with my company...

And I just found out my two-day trip to Dallas is now four-day (at the end of this month).

And this month is National Mentoring Month, so I am very busy, and will be for about 18 months.

How’s your love life?
Ehh…
My hands are very soft, but the pulp porn novel I bought in North Carolina kinda sucks. And not in a good way.


How much sleep did you get last night?
5 ½ hours. I’ve been having insomnia about some personal things and how work is going to be grueling for the next 18 months.

What’s the last dream you remember having?
I had a dream Tuesday night I was 15 or sixteen, and I lived in a house on the ocean that was constantly changing. The walls, floors, windows, stairs. It was not so much scary as it was fascinating.

It seems my step mom was cured of her paranoia and schizophrenia, so I was proud and happy for her. I was living with her in this beautiful strange house, and I was happy to be there. But I was also aware I was going to get in trouble with my step mom for something I don’t remember, but also knowing someone else – that sexy Garrick I just met - was going to get into more trouble with her for something entirely unrelated.

Then John Taylor, the bass player from Duran Duran showed up, and I knew my step mom would forgive everything, because John was going to be our guest. I knew she’d know how excited I was to have him staying with us. Also, I knew she’d find John kinda sexy. My plan was to get John Taylor to flirt with my step mom and distract her, so Garrick and I could run up the ever-moving stairs to my sunlit bedroom to have sex while the wind blew off the ocean through my open windows.

Then I woke up, dammit.

But still, it was a good dream.

What are you currently looking forward to?
- Working on Orlando Vigilante.
- Getting the book about the subject I am considering for my next play.
- Sleeping in tomorrow.
- Seeing Brokeback Mountain
- The possibility of a Democrat president
- Going back to Tennessee on vacation

First Quiz of the New Year!

Prone to using a letter opener to open a letter or prone to using your finger to open a letter? Finger – I don’t even have a letter opener. And I open my mail above the trash can; that’s how much faith I have that I’ll get something important.

A thief or a liar? I am neither. (Now, you figure out the answer.)

Sociopathic (lacking conscience) or emotionally sensitive (too much conscience)? I am a HUGE sociopath!

A conformist or a gadfly? I’m sort of a non-conformist cousin to the common gadfly.

"Low-fat eating is the way to lose weight" or "Low-carb eating is the way to lose weight"? I figure the way to lose weight is “low-food eating.”

An orange or a potato? Physically a potato, mentally an orange – a green, sour orange.

Attracted to younger men/women than yourself or attracted to older men/women than yourself? I’m attracted to money.

A pervert or a prude? A prude-vert.

A Star Trek fan or a Star Wars fan? Hmmm, I’ll stand out but the only science fiction that was more good than evil was Star Trek: TNG. I’m not a big fan of the genre.

Good at listening to someone or bad at listening to someone? Hmm…what?

Someone whose inner child still believes in Santa Claus or someone whose inner child is dead and you are heartless and bah humbug? Funny, my inner child still waaaay believes in Santa, but my inner child also believes there is a Jessica’s Law to protect us from people like Kris Kringle.

Likely to try the Baked Fettuccini w/Chicken dish at a restaurant or likely to try the New York Steak at a restaurant? Right now, the steak I guess, but neither option is really attractive to me.

Scholarly or hard-working? And they say there are no stupid questions…

More easily turned on with video (tv, movies) of sexy looking people or more easily turned on by seeing sexy looking people in person? I like video taping live people without them knowing.

A mall Christmas shopper or an online Christmas shopper? Maul.

Someone who always knows approximately what time it is or someone who often couldn't really tell you to within a half-hour what time it is? I always know what time it is down to the millisecond. Damn aliens and their abduction experiments!

A pear or a carrot? Ooo, a pearrott. Squawk! Give me a fuckin’ cracker!