The Hidden Haven

Three Months that Changed My Life

2008-04-20T23:18:00.007-04:00

Beginning a blog post is the most difficult part of being a blogger, in my opinion. I guess this, like most anything, applies to many things outside the realm of its description. For example, beginning a blog is like beginning a new job-very unnerving. The conflicting needs of wanting to be liked, wanting to perform well, and wanting to make sure your customers get what they deserve are paramount. This is reflected in beginning a new relationship. Again, you want to be liked, perform well, and make sure the customer gets what they deserve. So I sit here at this keyboard, wanting to be witty, charming, interesting, brilliant, and well-liked.

It's been a long three months since my last update. I wish I had some wisdom to impart on you from this small life-journey, but I don't. All I have are my memories, and even those at this point are vague and unfamiliar.

The school semester is almost over again. I overburdened myself with classes again, and now must reap the scorched harvest of what I have sown. Sign language is like my sexy, but tormenting, lover. She taunts me with her possibilities and licks at my interest, but always remains just out of reach. Psychology is a bust. The teacher has turned me completely off to the subject with his constant displays of intellectual prowess over his students. He is an asshole just for the sake of being an asshole. My other classes are better; advanced public speaking is my forte this semester, and I do very well without even trying. Geology comes to me easily, for no apparent reason other than perhaps a gift from God, who was feeling a bit guilty over the whole psychology thing. I hope to pull off a 3.0 average this semester, and even then it will drag my overall GPA down significantly.

On the work front, I'm still at $3($N^_$(#!* Wireless. My favorite manager left late in January to pursue other career options, and I don't blame her. Replacing her is my co-worker Billy, who fills in many of the management gaps that the previous manager was missing. Where she was ineffective, he is strong. Where she was weak, he excels. I'm not singing his praises or anything, but he was a worthy follow up to her and has pushed us all further.

I've had to work more hours than before, to keep the insurance. Minimum 30 hours. That doesn't seem like a lot, but fitting that in with a grueling school schedule was not my idea of a good time. I'm not taking classes in the summer, instead just working almost full-time and trying to pay off some of the accoutrement I've surrounded myself with since the big news two months ago. Call them comfort purchases, if you will.

Late in January, I noticed I was urinating more than usual, and had an unquenchable thirst. I was trying a T-Hor trademark diet of lettuce leaves and bottled water, so I figured the situation was easy to understand. More fluid in = more fluid out. Hahaha not the case at all. At my last checkup for my reoccurring testicular pain problem (I'm not sure if I've talked about it on the blog, so I'll skip it for now), I had the doctor run some standard blood tests, since it had been 5+ years since I've had them run. About a week later, I get a letter in the mail, with all kinds of test result numbers and computer read-outs, none of which I understand. What I do understand, is this part:

BLOOD GLUCOSE: 151

Under which was written in scribbly doctor handwriting:

COULD BE DIABETIC?

This is the part of the movie where they zoom into the heroine's face, which she puts on her best "horrified" look.

I scheduled a follow-up with the doctor, and she told me that a fasting blood glucose of 151 is definitely in the diabetes range, and no, a retest isn't necessary, and no, the tests aren't sometimes wrong, and yes, I definitely have diabetes. She put me directly on Metformin, a treatment drug, and gave me what engine mechanics call "The 99-Point Checkup". She looked at my feet to check for sores (none), tested my feet for neuropathy (none), checked my blood pressure (a little high), looked over my cholesterol (also a little high), and referred me to an ophthalmologist to check for glaucoma (none), and diabetic retinopathy (also none). She also threatened me by telling me that if my cholesterol and blood pressure weren't better (read: "healthy" or better), she was going to put me on cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-lowering drugs.

Fuck.

Well, this wasn't completely unforeseen. I was overweight, never exercised, and ate whatever I wanted, mostly in the form of fast food for at least three of my four daily meals. Also, my dad has diabetes, and his dad AND mom had diabetes. I was practically a genetic bomb looking to go off.

I have to admit, being diagnosed as diabetic was depressing. I started doing some research on diabetes online, and was scared out of my mind. On a side note, if you ever think you have something wrong with you, don't look it up online. The internet is chock full of worse-case scenarios, horrible pictures, and chilling stories from people afflicted with the disease you think you have. Just get the scoop from a doctor, and take what they say at face value. Anyway, looking at all the stuff online that can happen with uncontrolled diabetes, I just about lost it. Having Matt, my loving husband, here to help me through it was a Godsend. He's been the most supportive person I've ever encountered in my life. I think I could be blind, deaf, toothless, 500lbs, diabetic, HIV+, and only have one good arm and half a good leg and he'd still love the shit out of me. I don't deserve him.

So what have I been doing since then, you ask? Well for starters, I've lost 35 pounds! I straightened my shit out and haven't eaten a fast food meal since, and have dramatically increased my intake of fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, and grains. I do on occasion dip into the pizza box for a slice or three, and sometime catch myself sneaking a rogue piece of candy, but all-in-all, I've been a hell of a lot more healthy. 90% of the time, my blood glucose reads between 85 and 120, and I've never seen it go beyond 143. I attend weekly diabetic meetings, to get the latest scoop on what foods are good and what are bad, the best medicines, and how to keep myself healthy and active so that having diabetes is just a footnote in the book of my life, and not the final chapter. I've even started a walking/jogging/complaining routine, but that seems to be a little harder to get off the ground than I'd hoped. I think with the improved springtime weather and school finally getting done, that last piece of the puzzle should fall into place as well.

And so, fine readers, my post comes to a comforting end. Is it the perfect fairytale ending we all hope for as little boys and girls? No. But I've made huge changes in my life, and continue to be dedicated to constant improvement. After some thoughtful reflection, I decided I'd rather be diabetic and healthy than non-diabetic and living the way I was.

Peace bitches.

It's All About Cycles, Isn't It?

2008-01-05T22:58:00.001-05:00

Almost every morning, I go through one of three routines.

Get up -> shower -> clothes/hair/makeup -> work.
or
Get up -> shower -> clothes/hair/makeup -> school.
or
Get up -> shower -> clothes/hair/makeup -> laze around.

With almost no finesse, no passion, no lust for life I follow the same boring cyclical existence day in and day out. What's not enough is that not only does my life follow the same daily story, but also a weekly, monthly, and yearly pattern. School is starting again on Monday, which means that I go back to a rigid schedule of School/Off/School/Work/Work/Off/Off. My monthlies are the same as my weeklies, just in larger form. And here we are, at the beginning of 2008, and I start it the same as always. Perhaps one year more jaded, one year fatter, one year angrier, and one year more disillusioned.

Two weeks ago, the button that fastens my pants fell off while I was at work. Granted, I had all of my torso and an arm down my pants at the time that it popped off. I only have one pair of work pants, because I'm part-time. I still haven't sewed the button back on or bought a new pair. I just cinch my belt up one more notch and let the inward -><- outward pressures of Belt v Stomach take care of the pants-holding-up problem.

So am I condemned to repeat yet another year without breaking pattern? Or will this be the year, will this be the one year I finally make those changes I'm always jealous of other people for making? Maybe this will be the year I stop writing run-on sentences or maybe it won't be. Maybe this year I'll get my act together and take some classes that interest me and aren't just toward some Generic McDegree to hang on the wall. Maybe I'll be a writer, or a poet, or a psychiatrist, or a teacher.

Or maybe I'll find solace living smack-dab in the middle of my comfort zone.

Matt is talking about moving to Seattle by year's end. I'm excited/scared. He talks a lot, so maybe this is just more of that. We'll see.

This is an odd time in my life. I don't have any long-term goals, short-term goals, or any goals for that matter. I'm rushing quickly toward a future I haven't even planned out yet.

Life in the K

2007-12-16T02:18:00.000-05:00

Sorry all you devout blog-readers, it's been a helluva autumn for me. Classes ended up being harder than a 16-year-old at the prom, and going back to work for my old job in retail has ended up more a fuck-stastic quagmire than I had ever anticipated. Let me fill you in:

Classes. Oh my fucking lord why would I ever sign up for a degree in computer programming? I have had to learn, literally, four new languages this semester. I had to learn BASIC, HTML/XHTML, AS/400 CL, and American Sign Language. No, the last one isn't computer programming, but it was my ONE elective class, and it ended up kicking my ass. My AS/400 teacher was a joke, the most unhelpful, condescending, arrogant fuckface I've ever met. The good news is that even though I haven't finished the final exam in his class, I already have enough points in the class overall to pass with a C. Fuck, I'll take the C and go home. This is bullshit.

HTML/XHTML ended up being very very fun. The teacher was awesome, and I made some sweet pages. I'll use that more than any of my other classes in the "real world" I'm sure.

BASIC...nothing to report. It's dumb, it's complicated, and it's not for me. Moving on.

Sign language, wow! That was a great time, very very hard but the teacher was good. She pushed us and I ended up learning a lot more than I thought I would. I liked it so much I'm taking ASL II next semester.

Ok on to the job. Working for $@#(&@_$()@ Wireless is killing me. Remember how I said I was hired in "part-time"? So apparently instead of the 20 hours I thought I'd be working, part-time to them means 30+ hours regularly, and 40+ during the holidays. I like what I do and all, but honestly I was looking for more of an easy ride, not a retail hell-hole. I'm stuck in there most days I don't have school, for 12-14 hour shifts. If I have to answer the phones "Thank you for calling $@#(&@_$()@ Wireless, where customers can now have their nights and weekends start as early as 5pm, this is T-Hor, how may I be of assistance?" one more time I'm gonna blow up. I didn't want this many hours, or this much responsibility, but good 'ol T-Hor can't say "no" to anyone, especially the boss he really likes. She is awesome, and the main reason I was willing to come back.

Personal life personal life...things are still going with A-Sizzle. Of course, things are in a weirder place than ever, but that is just par for the course I guess. It's hard to see her in a relationship now, but because a part of me knows it will never happen anyway, it makes me happy just to see her happy for once. She really deserved to be loved somehow, even if it's exactly who I'd like to see her with. Maybe more on that later, I don't know.

Matt is still here, somehow. I haven't managed to screw that up so I must be doing something right. We celebrated our 5-year anniversary in October. For better or for worse, I just don't see what he sees in me. I'm damn lucky to have someone as patient and loving as him. If you saw how I treat him sometimes, you'd punch me in the face. I can say with all honesty that I don't deserve him.

That's pretty much the three-minute-roundup. Sorry I've been neglecting you all recently, I just didn't have the time or patience to post. I'll get my ass moving as far as that goes and try to do what I can to make it happen.

T-Hor

2007-11-11T12:51:00.001-05:00

Is alive.

Hey! Welcome Back!

2007-09-15T18:27:00.001-04:00

So it turns out I'm *not* dead.

I've been keeping tabs on my site every couple of days, but honestly, I didn't really have much to say. Still don't. It's not that I'm too lazy to blog, I just don't feel like anything was noteworthy enough to bother writing about. I'll fill you in on my last several weeks of (boring) existence.

I bought a new keyboard for my computer from Dell.

I bought it because I like the whole Swedish-minimalist look of things, and this fits that genre. I ordered two, in fact, because they were only $19 and I thought I'd want a spare if one died or I wore it out. Turns out I hate the damn thing. No matter how I position it on my desk, I can't get it comfortable for typing. And there is a hunk of plastic serving some unknown purpose that is on the cord close to the keyboard that "catches" on the edge of the desk, making moving the keyboard from desk-to-lap a jerkfest. So I'm looking to upgrade to this keyboard,

with some newly-acquired Apple Store credit. I've been pretty happy with my iPhone, and Apple makes that, so I'm thinking they have good products. Matt uses a MacBook laptop, and he's in love with the whole Apple everything. I just can't get used to their fucked-up interface. Gimmie Vista, or even XP for that matter, over OSX any day.

In other news, I've started classes again. This year, I'm doing:
Web Programming
Programming Logic
American Sign Language
AS/400 Systems and Control Language

I'm most excited about my Web Programming class, and that was an elective. I might be switching my major over to Web Development from Computer Programming, but we'll see how the semester turns out. AS/400 and American Sign Language are turning out to be my most difficult classes, AS/400 because I know almost nothing about it (and I'm betting you don't either), and ASL because it's very intensive and we're learning new words and signs every day.

Between almost-full-time work and full-time school, it's hard to get a minute to myself. I really should be doing homework today, but I've decided I want a day to myself, and this is it. Tomorrow I have to go to the school library to watch some movies on deaf culture, and finish up an assload of homework I've been putting off all week because I've been working too much. When a night owl like me goes to bed at 9pm, you know something is wrong.

I'll be back soon :P

Peace bitches.

I am well-known for my truckersex

2007-08-23T02:03:00.000-04:00

So after reading Lindy's blog, I decided to hit up the 'ol Google Analytics, and see my blog site stats; namely what people are searching for when they land at my site.

Truckersex.

That is what people are looking for. Be it "gay truckersex" or "girl truckersex" or "truckersex in my pucker" it's all the same to me. Apparently, this site is a Mecca (I have to capitalize that in the great spirit of liberalism, right?) for truckersex. Not trucker sex, you gotta leave the space out. So with no space, it means my site is a magnet for people interested in trucker sex that can't spell or don't have opposable thumbs.

Also popular are (and seriously I'm not joking with these):

Addicted to sex. (awesome!)
How can I lock my bedroom door from the outside without anyone knowing. (lol)
Peed the bed.
I peed the bed.
Really long pee. (haha that was a good post)
Can I put a grill under my porch. (yes)
Hidden humping with pillows. (me too!)
Hump pillow.
Manually stimulating cats in heat. (haha)
Krystal wet spot. (what?)
Maim buffet. (OMG?!)
Seger you know who you are. (hahahaha)
(and my favorite)
Stealing food from refrigerator at work compulsive.

I'm laughing so hard right now I have to stop posting.

Keep them coming, world.

Peace bitches.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

2007-08-13T00:03:00.000-04:00

He's gone!

Oh my golly he's finally gone! My little brother finally moved out today into a house with three other (non-relative) people. I vacuumed my room, and just sat in it and contemplated what wondrous things I could do with it.

It could be a present-wrapping room.
But I don't really give presents. I pretty much only receive them.

It could be an in-home gym.
But I don't work out. Obviously.

It could be a cat playroom.
But I hate my cats, and they hate me.

It could be a sex room. (*wink@Lindy*)
But sex isn't fun enough to deserve a dedicated room in my apt.

It could be my eatin' room.
Hey actually that sounds kinda fun.

But, it turned into my new computer room/library. We're gonna get a second-hand couch and put it in there, with a wooden-boards-and-cinder-block bookshelf. I already moved my computer in here, and then fung shui'd the dining room where my computer was to give us more space. It feels great having a completely extra room. The giant-sized closet in here is going to get all my out-of-season wardrobe, along with all the overflow from my bedroom closet.

Oh, and "he" is gone.

You know what? It feels good.

Contemporary Colloquialisms Scintillating Sentence Structures

2007-08-09T21:18:00.000-04:00

I don't have anything to write about today, so like before, I'm just gonna wing it.

I got a call from Sam's Club about a job yesterday. They pay more than I get now, but it's the un-fabulous career of cashier. I'm not sure I could stand there for all those hours and not either die of a blood clot or boredom. Or both.

It did prompt me to get ballsy at work, knowing I gots the skillz employers are looking for. I told work exactly how I felt about a whole laundry list of items. If even half of them get better, it'll be sweet. I'm just tired of accepting what people higher-up on the totem pole say just because they're higher up. I want answers, reasons, and justifications, not excuses. And you're damn right I'm gonna hold you accountable if you fuck up.

When you don't need the job, you sure do grow a set, eh?

Let's see...what else...

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my previous post. I don't know why I felt the need to write, I just had to get it out. I think someday I'll end up doing it for a living in some way or another. When I got the results from my term paper back last Monday the teacher said my paper was one of the best she'd read. Ever. That kind of stuff always gives me really great warm fuzzies.

Like when I lied and cheated to get my way into Advanced Placement English 12 my senior year. I'd gotten a D in regular English 11 (I never ever did my homework, in any class, in any school, ever.) but signed up for the highest-level English class that last year. The teacher asked what my grade from English 11 was and I told her "I don't know, but I'm sure it was great".

Well, she found out what it was and told me the next day I couldn't be in her class. I begged and begged her to let me stay, and she agreed to let me stay until the first paper was due later that week. She said if I could handle the complex syntax and grammar structure, as well as make meaningful, coherent sentences that both pushed her cognitive boundaries and pulled on her heartstrings, she'd let me stay.

Damn.

Well, of course the story finishes with me writing the best (by far) paper in the whole class, and she gave me an extension to prove myself. I kept writing the best, funniest, wittiest, and clever papers in the class, and I got extension after extension. Eventually I graduated, with little fanfare, to the rank of "class member", and no longer had to prove my worth on a weekly basis. It was in that class that my skills improved, and my thirst for the well-written word swelled from a trickling stream to a tsunamic torrent.

I'm sad to report that I have done nothing with this talent/obsession since high school. The only time I utilize writing skill is when I'm telling-off someone in an e-mail, and use the most prim and proper form of exec-u-speak to make everything sound so corporate and lovely, or when I blog.

I also occasionally dust off that part of my brain when it comes to a term paper or short story, but the standards in college are so low that simple declarative sentences strung out like crack whores could accomplish the same A+ with less effort.

Lol strung out like crack whores. Or popcorn ropes on a Christmas tree.

Those are the sentences that keep me interested.

Hopefully, since you've made it this far, they've kept you interested as well :P

Peace bitches

Edge of Seventeen (Well OK Sixteen)

2007-08-06T02:25:00.000-04:00

I'm watching this gay movie from my high school days called "Edge of Seventeen", and it inspired me to come online and make a remark.

Seeing such tender, awkward moments on the screen that perfectly represent my youth make me not regret living the life that I have lived thus far. I remember those moments when sex seemed so close, like I could go from making a vanilla shake working at Big Boy's to having crazy sex in the walk-in cooler. At any time, the tides could shift and I would find myself in a position of sexual opportunity. Stories abound, like the first time I ever went "all the way" several days before my 16th birthday. I had to hide in the closet when his parents came down to wake him up for church (classy, right?), but damn, the colors of the world changed that day, as if the kid-goggles of expectation and tentative, baited breath had been lifted and I finally saw the world through the full-spectrum eyes of an adult. Walking to my car in mid-morning shame never felt so vivid as that day.

I took every opportunity in my high school years, from getting blown in the practice rooms in the high school to trying to do a quickie in the driver's seat of my car, to taking full advantage of drunken high-school men. I was a complete manwhore. The way I went about my business was less-than-honest most of the time, but if I had to go back, I wouldn't change a thing.

This behavior continued on until I met Matt. We settled down, and now for better or worse I'm married. But I'm satisfied with that. I feel like I already had the chance to sew my oats as it were, and so now a life that seems a little "hay 'n grain" is OK with me.

I didn't have a point with this post really. The movie reminded me of those little moments I took for granted when they were happening. Those fleeing seconds of silence, wondering, when your eyes are closed, your lips are puckered, and you're on a crash course with someone else's head, wondering if they'll kiss you back, or if you're headed for empty space. Those times when you can't believe that someone is touching you...*down there*. You look up in shock because thus far, only YOU have ever touched that like that and made it do that. And honestly, it feels a lot better when they did it for you.

I guess I didn't take them for granted, because that would imply I received no life truths from them and didn't gain or grow from the experience. I guess what I mean to say is that I didn't appreciate them for what they were until much much later after the fact. At the time, I was kicking myself for not letting it be like in the movies, when the guy gets the guy and everyone is so suave and so cool you'd think it happened like that in real life every time without fail.

It was those times, in the nervous laughter, the averted stares, and the blushing, that I grew into the man I am today.

I wish I could come out again sometimes, and re-live that freshness.

I think I peed the bed this morning

2007-08-01T13:10:00.001-04:00

I drink a lot of green tea. A lot. This has become the tragic foreshadowing to the story I'm about to tell you.

When I was a kid, in addition to having ADD, red hair, and a penchant for pushing buttons, I also wet the bed occasionally. And by occasionally I mean every night. For 14 years. My parents tried everything they could to get me to stop, but it just didn't help. I went on these pills that sorta-kinda worked, but they made me go crazy. Like for serious, crazy. I would wake up in the middle of the night and sit on the side of my bed. And stare at the wall. For hours. I'd be completely awake but I wouldn't be able to get up or go to sleep or move or talk or anything. I would just sit there and stare. I had the liquid-proof plastic mattress covers, the non-organic material sheets and comforter, and an bottle of Fantastik with some paper towels for my morning clean-up ritual. It was a nightmare.

Eventually, I outgrew wetting the bed. I'm not sure what happened, but about the same time I started playing with myself, the bed wetting stopped. Coincidence? Maybe. That is until this morning.

I woke up like every other morning, to the sound of the alarm going off and Matt sleeping through it. I kicked him and yelled at him to get up, which he begrudgingly did. I felt that oh-so-familiar pee pressure on my bladder and got up and went pee The one this morning was a really really long pee, the kind my step-dad used to have when I was a kid. I'd get in the shower, he'd come in and pee, and I'd be almost done with the shower before his peestream stopped. It was crazy. Anyway, I pulled my jammies back up and noticed they were damp. I quickly flash to my memory to try and pull up any memories of fooling around and not cleaning up, night sweats, drinking in bed, drinking in general, ceiling leaks, rain, etc. Nothing. I look on the bed and notice there is a fist-sized wet spot on the bed. I put my nose to it. Yup, it's pee.

I immediately think "God damn it; Matt peed on me in the middle of the night. I knew he'd find a way to make it look like it was my fault." Then of course I think to myself...that's dumb. He's a grown-ass man, and would just pee the bed next to me, then be like "'Sup?" if I asked him about it. No, I peed the bed last night. I hope this doesn't become a recurring thing.

Anyone else out there have an accident like this? I'd like to think of you as my support group, so even if you lie that's cool too.

No worries...

2007-07-30T15:50:00.001-04:00

Hey just letting you all know I'm ok. I know Lindy has been harassing me via comments about me updating; I've just been crazy-busy at work and school. I've got so much on my plate I feel like a big girl at a buffet. (No worries big girls, you are beautiful!).

Peace bitches.

Owie...

2007-07-23T22:42:00.000-04:00

Without going into too much detail, Travis is sick :( My tummy and associated parts have been upset, I'm running a tiny hair of a fever, and I've been making enough trips to the bathroom to have worn out a pathway in the carpet.

Of course it doesn't help that it's 97 degrees outside during the day here in Kalamazoo, and I'm trying to lower my electric bill by just having a box fan running in the window instead of delicious central air.

Speaking of central air, there is something wrong with mine. It will cool down for a little while, but then just kinda gets warm and doesn't really cool anymore. It's completely bonkers and frustrating. For someone that lives on the cool dehumidified air of our technological society, this is a nightmare. When we first moved in, it was completely warm, and the guy had to recharge the freon or something in it. Then it worked for awhile, but went warm again. He recharged it again. Now I'm not engineer, but after you charge it enough and it still leaks freon, isn't that the time you replace them? I would *love* to have a new energy-efficient model installed so I can run that bitch full-on all day long for pennies. I am a total whore for AC.

And my car AC is doing the same thing, btw. I just had it recharged and while it's giving me a good fight, I can tell it's in its last death throes. A 2001 Focus, and somehow I'm already having AC problems.

I am cursed my friends. My house AC is futzy, my car AC is futzy, and to top it off, I'm running a fever.

I must have caught something from one of those faggoty andy truckers.

Lollerskates.

Peace bitches.

I'm addicted to sex with truckers

2007-07-19T22:03:00.000-04:00

I'm totally addicted to sex with truckers that I meat at truck stops. Tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, fat ones, clean ones, dirty ones, Southern ones, Northern ones, Canadian ones, they all are delicious. One time I had sex with a dirty trucker and when I was walking back to my car I found a fifty dollar bill in my pocket. He paid me! What a great day, because usually I do it for free.

The only thing about sex with truckers is that sometimes I spread herpes across the country. It's not big deal, because I only hang out at one specific truck stop for a week or so at a time, then move on. By the time their crotch starts to break out, I'm at a different stop, spreading the love.

I go by different names, both to protect myself and keep it interesting. This week, I'm in the Marshall, MI area under the code name "10-4 Whore". I've been "Stick Shifter", "Big Loadz", "TruckerFucker", and "Red Light Dickstrict". I used "Dillon McHoneyPot" for a long time in the Indiana area, but too many dudes thought I was gonna be a tranny when I used that alias. That shit is sick.

I'm not sure when I was first turned on by truckersex, maybe it was playing with Tonkas when I was a kid? What little boy didn't have a whole set of burley plastic men dripping with machismo ready to drive that stick wherever it needed to be driven? Or those yellow dump trucks, with practically a gay disco's worth of flashing lights on the top and sides. I mean you turn that truck on in a dark room and it could be "teen night" at The Manhole downtown.

Anyway. I thought I'd share this little tidbit about myself.

Peace bitches.

A Meme

2007-07-18T13:33:00.000-04:00

I've been tagged. Then when I decided to ignore being tagged, I was nagged. And now I'm participating :P

So I guess this is called a "meme". Is that like Me!Me! or like may-me or me-may or mem[silent E] or maim or what? I say "maim" as in "I'm going to maim Lindy for tagging me". Anyway, here goes.

The Moaning Meme
4 things that should be removed from the face of the earth.

Calories
The smell of cat food. Not cat food...just its smell.
Memes
Hidden involuntary muscles clenching involuntarily

3 things people do that make you want to shake them violently.

When they shake ME violently
Pretend they didn't just mumble or say Nuke-U-Lehr instead of Nu-Clear
When they judge me without knowing me

2 things you find yourself moaning about.

Other people in the vicinity moaning. It's like yawning for me.
Bad luck that happens to me

1 thing the above answers tell you about yourself.

I sound like I live in New York City

2007-07-17T13:41:00.001-04:00

This is a test of the email-to-blog service. It'll be really cool if I this actually works, but I don't have my hopes up.

Still Alive

2007-07-16T17:06:00.000-04:00

So I went and got some dowels to put in the slider part of my windows, so that even if someone breaks the lock, they can't slide the window open without having super-human strength or breaking the glass. And if they break the glass, I'll hear it. I hope.

I also got a motion-activated light for my porch, with an eye-searing 150 watt halogen bulb to blind whomever is on my porch. I bought some of those magnetic alarms that when the two pieces become separated, they squeal really loudly. I put one on the door of my apartment, one on the door to the porch, and one on the window to the porch. I have an extra one, I think if I get really crazy I'll put it on my bedroom door.

I know I'm being overly cautious, but at the same time, I feel like if someone does break in and hurt someone, how could I live with myself if I didn't do everything in my power to prevent it? What if Matt got shot? Or our new Playstation 3 (YAY OMG IT'S SO KEWL) got stolen? I'd feel like an asshat for not buying $1 dowels and $5 alarms for the doors and our thousands of dollars of computer and entertainment equipment got stolen.

Matt and I discussed getting a gun, but we fight too often and I don't want to run the risk of shooting him for not putting the seat up before he pees. Or getting shot because I nag and nag and nag and nag and nag until he just pulls the trigger in an insane lapse of judgment. We did decide to get a baseball bat. At least I can show off my girly non-ability to play baseball to our potential assailants. Maybe he'll feel so bad that I swung at him and hit myself instead that he'll just leave and not take my stuff.

I gotta go to school, but that's the update :P

Peace bitches (and potential hamburglers reading this)
((omg how cool would that be to get robbed my McDonald's Hamburgler?!)

Someone just tried to break in to my apartment...

2007-07-13T04:57:00.001-04:00

Whoa.

So I'm sleeping in my bed, with a DVD of the British show "Absolutely Fabulous" playing softly in the background. (btw Lindy, you look soooo much like Jennifer Saunders) I wake up to what sounds like a big camping cooler being drug over the ground, bumping plasticy pieces with a big hollow inside. I don't think anything of it, I'm thinking someone is just bringing their kegger party back home to my apt building. But it gets louder, so I peek out my window blinds to see someone move a big recycling bin under my porch, and then stand on the bin and reach up to my second story porch.

My heart starts to race, I'm thinking "omg this guy is trying to climb on my porch to break into my apartment". I watch him for about 45 seconds, and I see him stretch to reach his hands on the floor of my porch. It's pretty high, so even on the 4ft recycling bin, he's still only barely able to reach the floor. He doesn't try and pull himself up, he just feels around for a second. Then, he jumps down and walks away. Of course, I jump out of bed, and go to the living room to see if I can see where he's going. Nothing.

On a side note, the porch leads directly into my spare bedroom, where even though it's 4am, my little brother is still up playing World of Warcraft and talking to his friends online through this microphone. I'm not sure why someone would try and break in when the light for the porch window is on and they could probably hear someone talking, but who knows, right?

I wait in the living room, and finally I see someone with a flashing light go from a dark corner of the apartment building next to mine over to our door and come inside our building. At this point, I'm thinking that the guy in the apartment above me just dropped his keys from his porch to mine, and didn't want to wake me up to get them. I hear the person I saw outside walk up the stairs inside the building. So I try and listen and I *think* I heard him go into the apartment above me. So I put some clothes on, and sneak up the stairs. Sure enough, the guy above me is talking to someone else in the apartment or is on the phone. I'm not sure. So I knock, and he cautiously opens the door, in nothing but boxer shorts. I ask if he was the one outside, and he says no. He does want to know if I hear anything about it though. Fuck.

So at this point I call the police. I'm not gonna be the dumb bitch who just went to bed while the person was waiting in the bushes until they heard me snoring again. (I snore so loud that could be true) The woman at the dispatch asks me why I waited so long, so I go through the whole story again. She says someone will be out. Cool.

About five minutes later, after I had woken up Matt who had slept through this whole thing, the police show up. She's very nice, just hangs around outside and tells me she'll look around but because it's been so long, there isn't much she can do. Just lock my doors and pray basically. She can't put the APB or 411 or whatever out one someone when all I saw was "a guy in a yellow polo shirt". I didn't see if he was black or white (or Latino, for Lindy), or if he was tall or short. He looked like he had an ok body (I know leave it to a queer to notice how bulging the biceps were on the burgler instead of a facial description), he had on a white or yellow polo shirt, and had short hair. Other than that, I don't remember.

That's it. There was nothing missing from my porch that I can see, and it looked like even if he wanted to, he couldn't (I couldn't have) get up on the porch anyway. I'll take some pictures tomorrow morning so you can see what I mean.

I can't believe that Matt didn't hear it, and Jared didn't hear it either. I was sleeping and clearly heard someone bring that bin up to the building. I guess I have to be my own guard dog.

So what do you think it could have been? My grill is on the porch, could someone want my tank of propane? Maybe scrap metal for it? I know there's been a lot of metal theft in the are recently because of unemployment and the high price of scrap. Do you think they were trying to break in? Why would they break in when my apartment was the only one with a light on? There isn't anyone in the apartment below me, but the bottom floor on the other side of the building doesn't require any recycling bins to break into and a family just moved in there. Why not bust into that apartment? Did someone from the party the guy had on the floor above me have someone drop their keys on our porch and they just didn't want to wake us? Or maybe the guy was looking for a good place to hang himself and decided that tonight wasn't the night to die? Maybe a crazy drunk, or someone looking for meth materials? I don't know what it takes to make meth, did I have some ingredients on my porch? And if he did get on my porch, what next? The porch door to the inside of my apartment was open (MATT!) so he could have sneaked in, but then what? There's no way you'd get anything too valuable back out the way he came in. He'd have to jump down. Maybe he was going to try and sneak out the door?

Any help would be appreciated. It's 5:23am now, and I'm wondering what I can do to better secure the house. I can get some of those window bars that go in the slider portion of the window, just the wooden beam to keep the window from opening. I can get the magnetically activated window alarm, and stick them on the porch window and door. Then if they're set, they'll go off when the window or door opens. I can put a chain on the porch door, but it already has a deadbolt (that wasn't bolted, MATT!).

I'm at a loss. I have to go to bed. At least it's almost light outside now, and all the entry points from my porch are secure.

I'm a Skipper

2007-07-10T00:10:00.000-04:00

I hate going to class. I hate getting in my hot car, sitting in the car on the ten-minute ride to school, with sweat running down my face b/c my car was sitting in the sun, only to have it finally cool down from the A/C just as I'm pulling into the parking lot. Then walking the mile through the parking lot, through the winding halls, still sweating from the 100° heat, only to find my class, have everyone stare at me because I'm late (naturally), and then squeeze into the fifth-grader desks they have at the college (sweating the whole time).

So I'm "that sweaty guy" who always comes to class late. Don't pretend you don't get a picture in your head as soon as you see that phrase "that sweaty guy". Well that's me, and that's how I feel when I go to school in the summertime.

So I don't go. I skip.

I'm a skipper.

iTunes is Being Difficult

2007-07-08T19:56:00.000-04:00

All I'm trying to do is back-up my iTunes library so that I can reformat muh computer. But iTunes is skipping songs when I'm trying to back them up, creating a back-up not worth having. I want ALL my songs, damn it.

I went to Wal-Mart thinking that it was a problem with my DVD-RW in my computer, but this new one I installed is doing the same thing. Drat. To the return line I go.

So now I'm transferring the songs to my laptop, and then I'm going to try and then burn them from there. Even if that doesn't work, I still will have copies on the lappy, so it'll be ok I guess.

DO YOU LIKE BOB SEGER!!!!

2007-07-05T22:55:00.000-04:00

So today was one of those days at work. It was non-stop customers, issues, bill payments, phone repair/replacements, new lines, upgrades, billing problems...etc. You name it I took care of it today. I was the only one in the office, as Bill had the day off. It's usually ok; I picked Thursdays to be my "alone day" because it's the slowest day of the week for us. Not today.

Towards the end of my 9am-8pm shift, a kinda cute-ish guy came in with a broken phone. He wasn't really my type, but he was still attractive-esque so I put on the not-really-flirting show where I don't come on to him, instead I just try and be witty, funny, smart, intriguing, have fire dancing in my eyes, and look good from all angles at all times. You know the routine, ladies.

Anyway, we were sitting in silence as I was putting his SIM card in his new phone, with only the radio playing the the background cutting the (obvious) sexual tension. Some dumb song was on that I've heard a million times but never bothered to think about before. As soon as the chorus of the song starts, Crazy McCustomer perks up his ears and tells me to listen. (songsongsong...thirty seconds pass...songsongsong) Finally I ask him what I'm listening for, and he gets this disgusted look on his face. He stands up in his chair, looks down at me like I'm a medieval scullery maid, and says much too loudly for how close were were, in a not-a-question tone, DO YOU LIKE BOB SEGER!!!

How about this. You there, at the computer reading this. Ya you. Say out loud "Do you like Bob Seger" WITHOUT making it sound like a question. Make it a statement. Almost robotic and monotone. There ya go. *That's* what I'm talkin' 'bout. He didn't ask me, he TOLD me do I like Bob Seger.

I must have looked up at him blankly for ten whole seconds before I said "Oh, is that who this is? Never hearda him."

It was worth sitting in abject silence for the next ten minutes while I finished replacing his phone just to say that to him. His left eye and half his mouth drooped in stroke-like shock from what I had said.

Anyway, work was awesome today :P

Peace bitches

Dry-Humping a Pillow to Channel 99

2007-07-02T23:06:00.000-04:00

I think I'll start a theme here on my blog. I'm going to make an effort to reach out to all of you, and connect in a way that connects us all in a sense. This, of course, is sex. Enjoy the story. If you have something similar or odd to add, feel free :)

The summer before my fifth grade year at Saint Basil's Catholic School (aka the place where little boys turn gay), I had my first combination orgasm/ejaculation. It was an amazing thing, although completely unexpected, and quite traumatizing to someone of such a tender age.

I'm thoroughly convinced that something chemical happens in your brain after you have your first sexual experience. It's not quite the boy->man conversion that is heralded in locker rooms across the country, but nothing to scoff at either. I changed that fateful day, for the rest of my life. Here's how it happened.

It was yet another steamy summer day, when sunshine dripped through your windows and ran down the walls. Practically nothing could escape the heat, the scalding humid fire so hot that it made the inside of your mouth seem like a cool raspberry slurpee. We had central air back then, but even so, the best refuge from the oppressive sun was the finished basement of my parents house. Down there, with earth on all sides of you, the sun dared not creep in. Dark and cool, it was my summer-time cave. I was fresh out of the fourth grade, laying on the plaid, scratchy sofa down in the dank recesses of my hidden basement cave. I was playing with the settings on my parent's new TV, exploring the differences between mono and stereo, SAP on and off, and close captioning. I set the TV to auto-look for channels, and to my surprise there was something beyond channel 62. It was...channel 99.

Scrambled colors, like rainbow eggs, it wasn't much to look at. A clear picture here and there was the most you could hope for. What WAS important however, was the sound. The sound came in crystal clear, and oh my was it something worth hearing. Girls screaming, men swearing like sailors on shore leave, this music that I now attribute to be the quintessential porno music. Women using new and flavorful words like "cock", "prick", and "dong", men saying nonsensical words like "pussy", "cunt", and "clit". What were these words? What were these people doing? Every couple of minutes, the static would clear, and the scramble would quickly come into focus. And what I saw would change my perception of reality for the rest of my life. Those people...were fucking.

It wasn't just the sweet kisses and touching you saw on TV and in PG-13 movies, this was hardcore, no-holds-barred, screaming, twisting, sweating, swearing, scratching, spanking, hair-pulling, neck-biting fucking. At first I didn't even know what to make of it. It was so completely foreign to me that what I was watching made as much sense as if it were completely in Chinese. Except that my penis could read the subtitles.

Apparently, you can see a sexual image on TV, and without even knowing what it is, you will become aroused. It's this amazing sexual connection that humans have, and it brings to light our most basic animal instincts. You don't even know what you're watching, but it makes you want to fuck.

In any case, without realizing it, I had begun to hump a pillow that I was on top of while laying on the couch. I kept hearing these women screaming, calling out strange names, peculiar words, and I heard men groaning, slapping, breathing. Heavy breathing, so labored that I could almost feel the moist air on my own face. I don't know what happened, as I blacked out for a couple minutes. But when I came to, I had...came too. I had my very first ejaculatory experience, right there in my undies, in my jeans, on the pillow, on the sofa, in the basement, in the mid-90s. I didn't know what the hell happened, except that I needed to get whatever this was in my underwear cleaned up and tell no one about the whole thing. Right as I finished dry-humping the pillow, my step mom Nancy came home from work. I ran into my room and slammed the door, greeting her with nothing but the back side of my head.

For years after that, every time I got an erection, I thought I would immediately spew jizz out of my dick in every direction, uncontrollably, to the horror of every nun teacher in my school, and to the chagrin of every priest in the church. I was literally a walking time bomb, ready to explode in your face at any moment. I carried this fear around with me for years, and every time I got a woody in school, I would excuse myself to the bathroom until it subsided.

Now, I wish it was that easy :)

Peace bitches

The Porn Store (aka Jerking Off on a Dirty Rubber Mat)

2007-07-01T03:48:00.000-04:00

So hopefully the title didn't scare anyone away. But given LindyStar's new focus on everything sweaty and sexual, I thought I'd share the story of my first visit to a porn store.

This was when I was in the military, and living in California. My friends and I all discovered the existence of a porn store in a nearby suburb. So, one lazy Thursday, we all piled in my car and took a trip down to Pornucopia.

Brandon, Brandon, Jay, and I all walked into this little hole-in-the-wall, and immediately, the smell of shame and dysfunction wafted over us. Finally, I thought, I was home. There was a loooooooooooong counter against the right side of the room, movies were against the walls on all the other sides. In the middle of the big room in the front were racks and racks of porn videos that were on sale. Most of these featured buxom 80's breasts and Jack Lalanne-style gay porn. I wandered through the store, looking at what to me was a never ending supply of erotica. This was something I wouldn't experience again until I got broadband internet several years later.

My friends and I were so sexually inhibited from being in the military that we were in complete shock at the selection of erotica paraphernalia. All of us were gay, so of course we gravitated to a rather small section of the wall titled "alternative sexualities", where we were lumped in with all the other fetishists. Fat chicks, big dicks, leather whips, whipped cream, girls that scream, girl-on-girl, you name it they had it. They also had two "back rooms"; one was a big theater that I never went into, and the other was a room with little booths against the walls. In the booths were five things, a television, a money slot, a control knob, a chair, and a rubber mat. (Aaahh you remember the rubber mat from the title of the story. Good for you!) You go into the booth, close the curtain, and put some money in the slot. If I remember correctly, it was a dollar a minute. Then, you changed the channels until you found a porno playing that you liked. Then...well you just did your business. It was really cramped in the booth, there was barely enough room to get your dong out and have at it.

OF COURSE my friends all dared each other to go into a booth of sin and have their dirty way in it. OF COURSE, all of us accepted the challenge and like roaches in the light, we scattered to all corners of the room, to each hide behind our individual curtains made of polyester and shame.

I took out a wad of dollars from my pocket, and fed the machine a fistful of excitement. On comes the screen, and off come my pants. Oh yeah, here we go. I flip through the seemingly never ending channel selection, until I get to a porn that is just perfection. I think it was "college guys" on a "beach" during "spring vacation". They were "experimenting" with each other, and of course it was everyone's "first time". I couldn't wait to "watch".

I tried at first, I really did. I just couldn't rise to the occasion, knowing my friends were tens of feet from me, and at any moment could burst through my curtain and say (all at the same time):
OH MY GOD HE'S REALLY DOING IT!
SICK DUDE!
GET THIS SHIT ON CAMERA!
WHAT A PERVERT!

I tried to relax, and as I was doing so, I could hear the different "channels" that my friends had tuned in to. Brandon S. was on the same "college guys" station as me. (we're still best friends to this day) Brandon W. was on some "Bears 'n Hairs" station that sounded like a bunch of rowdy truckers having their carnal treasures pillaged. Jay was on some twink channel. Ew. (Twinks are young-looking guys (usually skater-bois) that look like they're 15 or younger. Ew) So, it sounded like I was going to be safe, and that everyone really was jerking off in their tiny booths.

After a couple minutes, while I'm still trying to get the party balloon inflated, I hear my friend Jay come out of his booth and announce that he was heading outside for a "much-deserved cigarette". Lol. Eventually, Brandon and Brandon came out of their booths and headed outside as well. By this time, I had fed close to $15 into the machine, and I wanted my release, damn it! I thought I'd have better luck if I changed the channel, as the "college guys" weren't cutting it for me. I flipped one channel down. It was a video of this giant-breasted woman bouncing up and down on what looked to be a HUUUUUGE dick with a man for a penis. Not my normal cup of tea, but it was so big I could ignore her pitiful porn whining and focus.

So this being my first time, I wasn't quite sure of porn store etiquette. I didn't see any tissues or anything around, so I just finished up on the dirty rubber mat on the floor of the booth. I figured the mat was there to keep people from slipping around on previous customers.

I walked outside, to a smile and a waiting cigarette from my friends. We all high-fived each other in the parking lot, got in my car, and left.

It wasn't until I was recounting my story from inside the booth when my friends corrected my poor etiquette. Apparently, there were papery-towel like things on the booth wall before you stepped into the curtain. You were SUPPOSED to grab one of these before you went in, and use that instead of the floor.

Oops.

God rest the soul that went in that booth after me. It was a really dry summer, and I hadn't gotten laid in weeks.

Beat that, Lindystar :P

Peace bitches

Horlo

2007-06-28T20:51:00.000-04:00

Please don't worry, my scary-red burger didn't end up killing me after all. It did, however, almost kill Matt. Well, I almost did.

Let's see...what's going on? I started the part-time job at Centennial, and for some reason 30 hours a week part-time FEELS like 40 hours. Maybe it's just because I didn't work for six months. Any work feels like too much work.

I wish I had some funny hor-like stories to talk about. Honestly, I've been a total yawn lately. Nothing of interest happens around, next to, beside, over, below, or inside of me. It's the same ol' same ol'.

I will be purchasing an Apple iPhone this weekend. I'll be your canary and see if it's really as great as they say it is. I'm so excited about that.

Anyway, I've gotta work (again) tomorrow, so I'm gonna cut this one short. When I get my iPhone, I'll be able to post blogs and pictures right from it, so expect some up-to-the-minute hor journalism coming this way soon :P

Peace bitches

How I Almost Died Today

2007-06-21T20:39:00.001-04:00

This is self-explanatory. I ate one bite of this burger, and now my stomach hurts. I'm putting the picture here, so that if I end up not making it past tomorrow due to a severe case of trichinosis, the evidence of my demise will be readily available to the authorities.

I, Travis, of sound mind and body, do here declare that said hamburger was served to me by Matt. He is wholly and completely responsible for the condition of this burger.

PS** The green stuff is avocado, that is my doing, not Matt's. To my knowledge, avocado is *supposed* to be green. Hamburger, however, is not supposed to be red. Take from that what you will.

PSS** Farewell, cruel world.

Peace bitches

Again, Personal Issues Abound

2007-06-16T04:49:00.001-04:00

Check out the invitation-only blog for details.

Invitations are given out freely, just leave me an e-mail addy in the comments.

Mamma Nook and the Infamous Flaming Hair Dance

2007-06-15T01:39:00.001-04:00

Back when I was in high school, I was in a lot of plays and musicals. It was my calling, honestly, I just never followed up on it. Anyway, the woman that would always direct the plays for our high school was Lorraine Nook. We called her "Momma Nook". She was a 70+ year old woman, as round as the day is long, and had the warmest, softest set of hands I'd ever felt. She was an amazing drama coach, and an all-round wonderful person.

One time after a performance, she threw a cast party at her house, complete with all-you-can-eat pizza. The whole cast was there, partying it up at Momma's house. We were all having a great time. Momma's house was on the beach, and that, coupled with the fact that it was late winter, made for a blistery chill in her sitting room. She had a fireplace however, and she offered to light it for us. We thought this would be an excellent idea.

Now the fireplace was gas, so Momma reached down and turned the key that poked out of the wall down by the floor, and we heard a very loud "whoosh" as gas started filling up the space where the fire would be. Momma was going to light the fire with a clickstick lighter, the kind with the trigger and the long spout. The problem was, that while the gas was on full blast, she couldn't get the lighter lit. She kept clicking and clicking the lighter, but it wouldn't go. Finally, about a minute later, a small flame poked out of the top of lighter. She was ready to go.

She opened up the glass doors to the fireplace, and immediately, we all smelled gas. There were probably ten to twelve people packed in this small sitting room, ready to warm ourselves by her fire and share stories of another performance well done. Momma bent over and stuck the lighter under the faux wood. Her face was awfully close to the fireplace, and Neil, that was sitting next to the fireplace, said something to her about keeping her face away from the fire. She mumbled something about knowing what she was doing and clicked the lighter. I will never forget that sound.

The fireplace exploded in flame, fueled by an over saturation of gas in the tiny compartment. The fire lept up the wall, and Momma jerked back, startled. Unfortunatly, she didn't move fast enough, and her hair caught fire. Everyone in the room went into slow motion, and for the longest three seconds of any of our lives, we sat motionless and watched the flame dance along this old woman's hair. Individual strands would burn down like dying worms, moving fast like a forest fire out of control. One strand after another succumbed to the dancing fire, moving from front to back.

Eventually, Neil stood up and started beating Momma's head with his hands, putting out the fire.

Momma seemed unconcerned that half of her hair was now ashes on her scalp, and finished setting up the fire. We all watched in horror as this kindly old woman turned down the gas and closed the glass doors. She then excused herself as prim and proper as a Victorian English woman. She bustled into her room and closed the door.

Of course at this time, everyone burst into laughter, tears, shock. None of us could believe what had happened before our very eyes. Those of us that stood for the whole ordeal in shock, unmoving, were now more embarrassed at our lack of participation.

After an hour or so, Momma Nook came out of the bathroom. Her hair was a little combed-over, she was missing most of both of her eyebrows, and she had brown flecks of color in her once completely green eyes, but she was none the worse for wear.

She went to the doctor the next day, after the party mess had been cleaned up and everyone had gone home. He gave her a clean bill of health.

I don't have an ending to this story, or really, an explanation for it. I was highly tempted to turn this into a humorous anecdote, but Momma composed herself so well that I think she deserves a little respect.

Ode to Hot Guy #862,049

2007-06-14T11:02:00.000-04:00

Dear hot guy,

While I know it's a bit unconventional for me to be writing you this letter, I felt it necessary given our current, fleeting relationship.

I'm not sure if you meant to look at me while I was pumping gas at the gas station. All I know is that when you peered through those fake Oakley's into my eyes, you were looking directly into my soul. A thousand sparklers lit up, the symphony started playing, and the whole world came to a slow halt for those three seconds we shared visual contact. If there was as such a thing as eyesex, then you popped my cherry.

I really liked your hair. How do you get it to stay up when it's so hot outside? You must not use mousse. Gel? Pomade? Or does it just look like that when you wake up in the morning? I'd love to be there to find out.

I liked your Chevy Corsica. Is it fast? Maybe you were just looking for a car with a lot of space in the back seat? You're a dirty bird, aren't you?

You didn't have to tell your friends that I was staring at you. I wasn't staring at them, after all. It was meant to be a personal thing between us. I guess the peroxide that I know you use to give your hair that sun-kissed look has leaked into your brain, causing a temporary lapse in judgment. Why would you do that to someone you love? When your friends turned at laughed at me, queerly pumping fuel into my car, a little bit of our relationship died. I thought we had something special. I thought you could hear the music. Your heartbeat was the rhythm to the music in my soul.

I didn't want this to turn into a "dear john" letter, but you left me no choice. The guy at TGI Friday's (#862,050) has taken your place in my life, and for the most part I'm happy with that decision. He smiled at me when I gave him an extra big tip. I wasn't the one paying (wink).

Please have your emotional baggage out of my life by Friday night. While I wish you the best of luck, I hope you don't treat your next boyfriend like this.

Always yours,
(until something better comes along)
Travis from the Gas Station

Zen and the Art of Online Relationships in a Mssively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

2007-06-13T23:27:00.000-04:00

This is a post I made in the forums of my World of Warcraft guild. I'm the GM (read: boss) of the guild, and late one night I decided to explore my own feelings of online relationships, and how they pertained to me. This is what spilled out that night. Never has it been more relevant to me than now, almost a year later.

This can be quite an exhausting read, so if no one makes it to the end, I'll understand. It took me two bathroom breaks and four chicken kievs.

I would like to start this random thought stream with the question of whether online relationships are a one-person occurrence or if they are an actual vehicle to life betterment. I will preface this theory with my own personal belief first: that online relationships can, and often are, just as meaningful to people as real-life relationships.

I've been in my guild for some time now. During this time, I have forged friendships with people I'd met in the online realm of World of Warcraft. It wasn't until recently that I really took the time to evaluate these friendships, and start to question their validity in comparison to the world of the real. I've spent a lot of time on this, as I think of myself as a pretty cognitive person, capable of discerning between that which is meaningful and that which is frivolous. I will admit, however, that the idea of meaningful online relationships, especially those formed on a massively multiplayer online role playing game, has given me much pause. I will elaborate on the thought process involved to get to my current philosophy.

As I stated earlier, the possibility of online relationships being a one-person occurrence seems very probable. By this, I mean that the valued part of a forged friendship online is possibly the manifestation of a person's offline needs, and thus the "relationship" being made is nothing more than a person's projections of their own human desires being put on someone's character in-game. An example: lets say that there is a 15-year old girl that has an eating disorder that plays World of Warcraft. Because she has an eating disorder, her "ideal" relationship could be with someone that either shares her dysfunction, or with someone that has achieved her dysfunction's ultimate goal, naturally or not. So the girl would be inclined to be friends with someone that claims to be skinny. This girl could be attracted to someone online just because of their claimed body appearance, and nothing else. This, to me, illustrates a one-person attraction. Given that the girl is filling a need in her own psyche by starving/binging herself to become her version of pretty, someone online who claims to have achieved her goal would be the personification of her dysfunction, and she would have an attraction to that person for no other reason than they are who she wants to be. By projecting herself on this other person, she is in essence dating herself, and the real person behind the character is of little importance.

Something I feel must be addressed at this time is the reality that without trust, there are be no truths. This is especially important in World of Warcraft, because, in essence, there is no trust. People can say and be whomever they would like to be, with no consequence. The possibility that someone you think you know online is nothing more than a figment of their imagination is entirely real. Because we have no way of verifying identity or character, the idea of real-life trust is thrown out the window. People take what you say at face value, but also know that because they have no way to verify your claims, do not actually trust you. This is not a faith issue, as our online persona are built on the idea of a world without true trust. RP realms, where everyone talks in dialog befitting the environment REQUIRE that trust be non-existent for the players to enjoy their time. Without trust, there can be no truths. And without truths, there can be no relationships.

Relationships are the foundation of society. Human beings are innately drawn to each other, as we function better as part of a collective rather than on our own. Many psychological and physical needs are met in this group mentality as well, so much so that a solo human being would go insane without the comfort of other people. This need extends to our gaming as well, as some of the most popular games of recent times involve many players working together. In these tight nit groups of people, the inevitable bridges of friendship are formed, and thus we are posed with the question, can online relationships be meaningful? Can you develop true feelings for someone you cannot touch, or hear, or see? Yes, we have our characters, but I would encourage any of you that actually look similar to your online character to step forward. Most of the time, this avatar is an ideal, a fantasy, which is the intent. So to narrow the question, can meaningful relationships develop in a world devoid of physical contact? My belief is yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Even without touching someone, we are able to connect to them on a very personal level. Even without seeing them we are able to learn about them, love them. Even without hearing them we are able to communicate with them, feel their essence. I would post it to you this way: just because a person is blind, does it mean they cannot love? If a person is deaf, does it mean they cannot make friendships? While World of Warcraft poses its own problems to throw a wrench in online relationships, I do not believe that these are insurmountable. Earlier I stated that without trust, there can be no truths. Yes, I believe that most of World of Warcraft is a fantasy, and I treat it as such. But I have seen, late a night, under cover of darkness, and using the anonymity of being in an online game, the true sparkle of honesty come out in some people. I have talked with them about death, about relationships, about sex, about life, about everything. I firmly believe that in these rare moments, people forget about their characters, forget about the masks that cover their true personalities, and let down their guard. It is then that the true human being is revealed, when the only sound to be heard is the click clack of a keyboard.

I think because our desire to communicate, to share ideas, to share pain and sorrow outweighs the need to keep up the facade any longer, we are driven to bear all in honesty. Our human community is based on truths, based on trust. Because these exist in rare moments online, I believe that meaningful relationships can form in those special moments.

They have for me.

With this, I will end my thought stream. I encourage anyone that has anything relevant to add to this conversation please do so. Personal experiences, thoughts on the topic, a story you heard, anything. We are nothing if not another branch of the human community in World of Warcraft, and I encourage all of you to experience it to its greatest potential.

Delayed-Reaction Taggage

2007-06-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

So I mosey on over to Lindystars blog (link to your right and down a little AKA Danielle is a Hor) and see that she's been "tagged". Well she tagged me like three weeks ago and I didn't know what it meant, so I just started writing a blog. Now, I understand I guess you have to put seven random things about yourself. Hrmmm. So I'll do my original tag, so that I can't be accused of being lazy.

1) I drink about a gallon a day of Arizona brand diet green tea. I don't know why. I think is started because I was drinking a lot of pop...and then just decided that pop was bad for me, and tea was good for me. I like tea, so it's cool. I'm not sure if it's really healthy or not, I mean the ingredient label on the back doesn't just say "Water, tea leaf particulate". But hey, it's better than pop, eh?

2) I'm completely obsessed with chicken kiev. Like the ones that come frozen and you pop them in the oven. I know they're like...carbs wrapped around machine-pulled-chicken-matter, injected with butter-flavored lard. I know. And me eating them goes against weird fact #1 above. But I like them so fuck you.

3) I'm a total neat-freak from hell. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say there is a donut stick wrapper under my brother's bed that I saw there a couple minutes ago...and I'm trying really hard to not pick it up and then vacuum his room.

4) I don't like drinking. I think alcohol tastes gross.

(total side note) I just got a call from Prudential about a job offer. They saw my resume online or something. I didn't want the job because it's full-time, but that's beside the point. The guy had a really hot voice. You know how sometimes you can be talking to someone on the phone, even if you don't know them, and can picture what they look like? Yeah, this guy was smokin'. Like...I should have said "No thank you, I'm only looking for part-time work at the moment...but...if you want to have phone sex, I'm down with that". That's how hot he was. Like the cable guy that was here last week that I kept sending psychic messages to have his nasty way with me. It didn't work. OK back to the survey... btw I just put some chicken kiev in the oven. Someone help me!

5) I watch gay movies (no not p0rn you perv) and I hate them. They all have crappy plot lines, poor acting, and bad cinematography. But I watch them whenever they come on LOGO. *sigh*

6) I used to masturbate my dog when I was a little kid. I know how inappropriate that is now, but back then I considered it something for me, not something for him. Wait, ew. I meant...hahahahaha. I didn't know what I was doing, so I just thought it was nothing. It was something for me to wonder about, like how fireflies, when you squish them and rub the glowy stuff on something, will only glow for a little bit until the light dies. Yet they live for months and it never goes out. Weird.

7) I'm scared that I'm really a mentally-challenged person, but I'm so challenged that I don't even realize that I'm retarded. Like I have friends, and I go out and do things, but that the god-honest truth of the matter is that I live in a fantasyland of my own creation, because I'm to retarded to comprehend the world around me like everyone else. Everyone treats me like I'm handicapped, but I don't know it because they've always done it.

Wow. That was entertaining.

Peace bitches

Onward and Upward

2007-06-12T01:11:00.001-04:00

So I kinda sorta wanted to make my blog a place where I could write about things that were happening to me, without worrying about typing some personal feelings and having them misconstrued by someone close to me.

Well I already fucked that up by letting the people that are close to me in on the fact that I have a blog. Grrr!

So...I have a story to type here. But I can't put it in here. Nothing against the people reading, but it's one of those so-personal-that-only-strangers-can-see-it kinda things.

So I'll be starting another blog. Let me know if you want in.

Peace bitches

Join the Experiment!

2007-06-10T23:05:00.000-04:00

This is an experimental post. I sat and looked at my blog for a full ten minutes, and couldn't think of anything worthwhile to write about tonight. So the experiment part of this post is that I'm just going to type and try to create an interesting post from nothing. Here goes!

I saw Michael, and old friend from HS today. It was a strange reunion, because when he first moved to Kalamazoo about a year ago, I met up with him and made all these promises of hanging out, but then totally blew him off. I blew him off because he acted too queer when we were at Steak 'n Shake, and everyone kept looking at our table, making me really uncomfortable. How hypocritical could I possibly be? I don't know if it was just the day we met, or where my life was when it happened, but it's something that has stuck with me this whole time, and something I regret. But obviously not enough, because it happened again today.

I was coming into Harding's Friendly Market, and saw Michael on his way out. I greeted him with the standard hug, and stood for awhile to catch up. During this time, he must have screamed and looked like a total homo at least one thousand times. Of course, I went back to my old ways and looked around, embarrassed I was standing next to this faggot. That's exactly what went through my head, and I'm embarrassed to even admit it. I figure anyone reading this can understand the importance of honesty with ones self.

I cut the conversation short, promising to "hang out" and "call me" and "miss you so much *muah*" etc. I then went through the grocery store, unable to think of anything except how embarrassed I was at him, and then later, during the bread isle, embarrassed at myself for acting like a fool.

Michael has complete right to act however he wants to, and I should have the decency to respect that. There was a time many many years ago when I acted just like that, and the only reason I don't today is because of my stint in the military. When I'm embarrassed around him, I'm subconsciously projecting my unhappiness about my own latent homosexual tendencies on him. I'm not angry at him, I'm angry that I live in a world that discouraged me from being who I really was those years ago, and resentful that I can't be as open and free as he is.

This is for Michael; thank you for being who you are. Thank you for showing me that the world isn't as bad a place as I make it out to be, and that there are people out there who have the courage to not think about or care about what people are thinking every second of your life. We should all stop lowering it an octave, sucking it in, stuffing it, putting makeup over it, and pretending that we're anyone except ourselves. The sexiest people in the world are the people that are confident with who they are. The least sexy people in the world are the ones who did everything they could to be someone else.

In the end, we're the ones ultimately responsible for our own happiness. No one else can be held accountable if we end up bitter and resentful.

So sing those sentences, pooch it out, let them flap, and go product-free for a day. Just walk around confident that you are exactly what you're supposed to be, and anyone that tries to tell you anything else is covering for their own feelings of inadequacy.

A-fucking-men.

Well that runonsentanceturnedouttobemoreinterestingthanIthoughtitwasgoingtobe. Goes to show you, just put the proverbial pencil to the page and let go. I swear I didn't plan on writing about that. But that is the beauty of spontaneity.

Peace bitches

Cat Orgasms

2007-06-10T00:22:00.000-04:00

Not much happening tonight. I didn't take a shower until like 4pm, and then only because I wanted to go to the store to pick up some hamburger buns. It was just one of those days, ya know? Not much going on, nothing on TV, even a slow day on the internet. Hrmph.

My cat is eternally in heat. Like, she purrs and moans and yelps all the time, every day, all day long. She rubs herself all over the carpet or your leg, and makes sure to put her female parts (yuk!) in your face at every available opportunity. She grosses me out. The vet said that female cats that aren't spayed pretty much stay in heat all the time. The only way to stop it is to either get them fixed or "manually stimulate her to ovulate". Yeah, that's right. I need to rub kitty clitty to get her to stop being a total psycho.

The vet recommended a q-tip, slowly inserted in her vagina and then thrust vigorously until she orgasms. She said that it might take awhile to get the rhythm down, and to be prepared to get scratched. Yeah I'd scratch you too if you put a q-tip on my g-spot.

I haven't done this, for the record. I think I'll just have her fixed. But if you ever have the problem and only have enough money for a box of q-tips...well there ya go. Let me know how it goes. No, take pictures. Yeah.

Peace bitches

The Job (meat)Market

2007-06-08T19:16:00.000-04:00

Lets see...

I've been sorta-kinda looking for a part-time job for the past couple of weeks. I've been keeping my resume updated on several online job sites, and I've been applying to the places that I eat/shop/hangout whenever I think about it. For example, I was at Target the other day, and decided to apply while I was there. Now at Target, they have the "booth of shame" that you sit in and fill out your application on the computer. Everyone knows you need a job, and all the current employees behind the cushy-customer-service desk look at you with a mixture of disgust and disdain. Still, a bitch gotta try, right?

So after I filled out my application at Target, it tells me "Congratulations! You qualify to speak to a hiring manager! Please pick up the red telephone next to you to speak with a hiring manager now!". I'm thinking...sweet. I'm totally gonna be one of those people walking around in a red shirt pretending to work but actually doing nothing. And getting paid. And getting a discount. So I pick up the phone...and get a busy tone. Um... So I wait a minute for it, pick it up again...and get a busy tone. OMFG. So I walk up to the disgust and disdain desk and ask why the phone isn't working. The hoochie behind the counter looks me up and down and says "It's not a public telephone, SIR." OMFG. I politely reiterate what I meant, that I received an invitation to pick up the phone. She calls over the PA system, "MANAGER TO CUSTOMER COURTESY DESK MANAGER TO CUSTOMER COURTESY DESK PLEASE". Wonderful.

A manager walks up and gets the skinny from hoochie #1 behind the counter. Manager comes up to me and thanks me for the application, says their telephones aren't working at the moment and that someone would call the number I put on my application to take me to the next level. Wicked. Vanilla candles and Lisa Frank stickers here I come.

[fast forward two days, aka today]

Got a little card from Target stating that while they thank me for my application, they regret to inform me that they are unable to offer me a position at this time. OMFG. No call, just a letter. It's almost as bad as a text-message breakup.

I was in Bennigan's the other day, eating delicious food, and thought..."I've always wanted to be a server in a restaurant, I think I'll apply here!" When the manager came over to check on my meal (they always do that at Bennigan's) I asked if they were hiring. He looked at me for I swear three full seconds, up and down my body, then decided to tell me "No." Was my appearance important? Cuz I had on a nice polo shirt and non-ratty boot-cut jeans, complete with matching brown shoes and belt. Seriously, it was stylin'. But he just looked me up and down, decided I would probably eat all the food in the back, thus leaving nothing for them to sell to customers, and declined my offer. Not even a "Fill out an application and we'll keep it on file" lie. Whatev.

The thing is, I don't really need a job. Money is good. Great, in fact. I'm just tired of sitting at home all the time while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for my two-day-a-week class to come around again. I'm in exactly the right position to be looking for a job. I'm laid-back, I'm not in need of a job so badly that I'll take anything out of desperation, and I have the luxury of turning down jobs that I either don't want or that don't mesh well with my schedule. For example, Cingular Wireless called me up the other day to schedule an interview. I had applied for a position to be a sales rep in the store on Westnedge in Kalamazoo. The guy was super-shitty on the phone, like I owed him a favor just because he was calling me in response to my application. (Background: I worked for another wireless company for almost three years before quitting to go back to school full-time. I'm super-fabulous at customer service and sales, especially in wireless. I'm premium meat for this guy.) Anyway, the dude let me know that I would be coming in for an interview on Friday. Um...no? I said that I was busy this week, and while I would LOVE to work for his company, I had previous obligations to school and other people that could not be broken. I let him know that anytime Monday or later would be great for me, however. He just sat on the phone not saying anything like I kicked him in the balls. Seriously...you work at Cingular, you're not Prada calling me, asking me to model your new Fall line. Please.

He wasn't too happy about me being a tad aloof at his job proposal, so I decided to make sure I wasn't making a mistake. I asked if they were flexible with their hours, because I plan to attend school full-time in the fall again. He was like "Um...you get two days off a week. Just not Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays or Saturdays." HAHAHA! Sunday and Tuesday? I decided maybe he was just fucking with me so he'd have an excuse to hang up on me, so I told him to get back with me when he had an opening Monday or later. He said he's have to "check with the manager". Ok. They never called back, obviously. They sent me an e-mail stating that they were no longer taking applicants, but thanked me for my interest. My resume will be on file for sixty days. Lol.

Seriously, I'm not bending over backwards to work for a company that treats its employees like they are peasants to be exploited. I want flexible hours, good pay, getting to work around people, and interesting stuff to do. That's not too much to ask. I don't think so at least. I consider myself, my knowledge, my attitude, and my time valuable. I'm not stuck up, but I've had companies walk all over me. Do things that aren't in the job description to cover someone else's ass that feels lazy. I've been the bottom guy on the totem pole. Ok, rant over.

Anyway, my old manager from my old company called yesterday. It seems they now (six months after I requested it) have part-time positions available. Pay is great, hours are flexible, and I already know everything there is to know. Plus, everyone in the whole damn company knew me and loved me.

Maybe I'll take the job. I haven't been technically offered it yet, but I have a feeling I will be. Who knows? It would be nice to get out of the house.

Well I know it wasn't much to read or think about. Sorry guys :P Maybe I'll have something funny next time?

Peace bitches

And so it goes...

2007-06-07T00:51:00.000-04:00

I'm going to write this post with as few words as possible starting...now.

Talked 2 Lindy. Us = Monday.

Brother here. "Sorrys" all 'round.

TiVo here. HDTV makes me :)

Class sux.

Polenta yummy.

Weather odd. Happy tho.

Self-tanner = orange Travis.

Still smokeless. Yay.

Matt back soon. China no more! Sex scheduled.

lolz Travis = funny.

Peace bitches

I think I might finally be free...

2007-06-03T23:42:00.000-04:00

So my brother Jared and I got in a fight this evening. It started with me wanting to show him the new iPhone ad that Apple released on my computer, I thought it was pretty cool. He replied that he wasn't interested in seeing it. That pissed me off because he asks me to "look look" or "check this out" or "omg wow l00k!" all the time, and 98% of the time, I do. Not because I'm interested, but I see that he is and know it's polite to at least feign interest in something that a person you live with is interested in. Nope, he just looked at me from his computer, and said "no".

Well I got pissy, and then he got pissy, and then the argument blew up into waaaay more than what it started as. I brought up all the crap I'm pissed about, he decided to do the same. Finally he said something that was a) none of his business as it related ONLY to the relationship that Matt and I have and b) was not even truthful in the way he presented it. That was the last straw. I told him he needed to be out of the house by tomorrow before dark (Monday). We fought a little more, said some mean things, and that was that.

Now, there are some caveats. This is only MY side of the story. If you want his, then you're not my friend because you didn't take what I said at face value and you can stop reading my blog :P Also, I'm editing this for both journalistic and temporal value. You've been warned.

So he starts to cry, I say some mean things about alligator tears and that there is nothing he can say or do that will make me change my mind blahblahblah. He starts to call our mom, because he doesn't have anywhere to go if he can't live with me. So...I call mom before he can so that she doesn't immediately get just his side of the story. A little shitty, but I felt it was necessary. I also left the apartment so that he couldn't hear me. I got in my car and drove around with my mother on the phone at ten o'clock at night. Funny how things eventually come full-circle and you become all of the stereotypes you wanted to avoid.

She lets me know that giving him only one day is not really fair, and I agree with her, except that I also know life isn't fair and that someone living under my roof through my good graces should be a little more appreciative of that fact and show me a little respect. I've backed down before when I threatened to kick him out, and this time I'm not gonna do it. He doesn't respect me, he doesn't clean up, he's rude, and he shows no care for anyone but his own selfish needs. He isn't enrolled in school, he only works enough to pay his bills and nothing else, and I had given him until the first of August back in April to get his money together, get into school, and move out, but he hasn't done anything to make that happen. He torments my cats (they hate him), he cooks bacon at midnight (not a fun thing to have a bacon-smoky apartment at midnight), and now I'm just rambling. Let's just be clear that he is basically an annoyance on every level.

I don't know what I'm going to do. Hold him to my threat and make him move out tomorrow? I'd be devastated if someone told me at 10pm that I needed to be out of my house by 8pm the next day, especially if I didn't have anywhere else to go. Mom doesn't want him back, he burned all his bridges with her for years. He doesn't know many people in Kalamazoo. He's fucked. And yet he had the balls to be a shithead with me, the ONLY person who would take him in when no one else wanted to. The person that gave him a roof over his head for a meger $200 a month, furniture, cooking utensils, a whole apartment's worth of everything included. But he couldn't leave the attitude at the door when he came in, so he can leave out that same door now six months later.

Good riddance.

No news is good news

2007-06-03T13:49:00.000-04:00

I don't have much to post today.

I've been grilling on the new gas grill for a couple days now, and I'm getting much better at it. I had a fight with my brother about whether or not you're supposed to clean the grill thing off after every meal. He insists that a quick one-over with a wire brush is fine, but I'm too anal about things that touch my food for that. I take it inside, and clean it off with hot water and soap in the sink until there's no black crap on it. Oh, and the metal plate that acts as a buffer between the flame and the food I took off and cleaned, because it had charred food droppings on it. I'm not sure if I'm being dumb and grills are supposed to look greasy and "rugged", so if you know, let me know.

I ordered a new Series 3 TiVo. I have the DVR through Charter but it's really crappy. We used to have TiVo before we got the HDTV, but the old TiVo didn't record in High Def, so instead of spending $800 at the time on the Series 3 TiVo, we just got the $15/month one through Charter. It's OK...but having had TiVo before makes me miss it. TiVo is just...superior.

Still haven't had a cigarette, so this is day #3. Someone told me not to count the days, it will just make me want one more. I think counting gives me strength. Each new day sets a record that will piss me off more if I break it. Wow that was an odd sentence. Let me re-sentence-ize that. Because each day I am more proud of my record, as the days go by, if I were to break down and have a smoke, I would be a little more pissed with each passing day because the pride is cumulative. Does that make sense? Hopefully someone out there understands what I was going for.

Wow I thought this was going to be a short post. Guess not :)

Peace bitches

I died a little on the inside today (update)

2007-06-01T23:21:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: He apologized for what he (didn't) say, and I realized maybe I was a little short on nicotine, and that those things conspired to make what happened last night possible. Crisis over :P

I don't think I've ever been so insulted as I was just several minutes ago. I was talking to Matt, my boyfriend of almost five years, who is in China right now for school. I let him know I quit smoking today, and he didn't even acknowledge me.

He's been bugging me to stop smoking since we got together. He's pushed and pushed and we've fought so hard about it I thought we'd never talk again. But now, when I tell him I finally did it and have a little celebration when talking to him, he ignores me. To him, it didn't matter at all. It's like I told him I sneezed today. Nothing special.

Well, this is a GIANT thing for me, both mentally and physically, and it's taken a lot of planning and orchestrating to make it happen. That he didn't even congratulate me, or thank me, or even just acknowledge me...hurt me so hard. When we got done crying, I went the the bedroom and bawled my eyes out into my pillow for a good five minutes. I'm not a crier.

I know stories like this don't translate well to the written page, because so much of it is derived from my own personal experience that you don't have to draw from. But this blog isn't for you, it's for me. I'm sorry that this post isn't funny, or entertaining, or really even relevant. But right now, that's exactly how I feel.

Irrelevant.

Two Important Announcements:

2007-06-01T21:03:00.000-04:00

Hey! I'll make this quick.

Announcement #1: After a little more than five years of being a pack-a-day smoker, your friend Travis is now officially a non-smoker! Yay! A little bit of willpower, a whole lotta snack cakes to satisfy that oral fixation, and a couple months of bupropion have all conspired to make me a non-smoker. Hip, hip, hurray!

Announcement #2: I bought a gas grill today, and popped my outdoor grilling cherry! The damn thing took three hours to put together, then another half hour of worrying if I put the tank on correctly. But I fired it up, and made two hamburgers on it. Granted, I'm violently ill from food poisoning b/c I can't cook, but the important part of life is the journey, right?

Summary: I'd stab you in the neck for a cigarette, and I'll probably never eat grilled food again, but I couldn't be happier! Life is *so* good!

I want to be truly outrageous too!

2007-06-01T19:10:00.001-04:00

*This* is what I'm talkin' 'bout. If you haven't seen this, then we'll have a much harder time being friends :P

There is something magical about JEM / Carebears / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / My Little Pony / Gummi Bears / Smurfs that transcends my feeble ability to comprehend it. This...is what I grew up with. This is my home, in a way. God, this takes me so far back I might not be able to return.

I miss the 80's :(

I drowned my cat :(

2007-05-30T11:39:00.000-04:00

I had the craziest dream last night.

I was in some rain forest jungle village, and the native people were treating me like a god. It was *so* cool. After a while they got tired of me sucking up resources without contributing, and asked me to perform a "miracle" or something. Of course I couldn't, so they decided to test if I was a god or not.

They put me in this boat that looked like a Birkenstock shoe, but it was all wood. They told me I had to take the boat down the river and out to the ocean and back. I thought, well that can't be too hard. Then, the started drilling holes in the boat. At this point I'm freaking out, because the holes aren't small, I can fit my fist through them. As soon as they'd core out a hole, I'd put the plug back in it. Eventually, they pushed me off the bank of the river, and my boat quickly sank several miles down the river.

At this point, I discovered that I could hold my breath like a Sri Lankan pearl diver, and I went underwater mermaid-style and just floated around and looked at things underwater. I kept finding cool things in the sand on the bottom of the river (which at this point has magically turned into a lake).

From underwater, I hear a cat meow. I rise to the surface and see my cat, Lailai (yeah she's ghetto) standing by the shore looking at me. I decide that she wants to dive for hidden underwater treasure like her dad, and swim over to her.

For some reason, I think that she can't go underwater while she has all this fur on, so I rip it all off of her, until she looks like a plucked chicken. Then, I grab her up and swim out to the middle of the lake. She...is not amused, and is screaming and hissing at me.

I dive underwater grabbing her by the paw and pulling her under. She was meowing underwater, bubbles and all, which I thought was completely adorable, until I realized that she was also breathing in water when she did it. She didn't last long.

She died before I came up to the surface.

That's when I woke up. Weird.

Peace bitches

Things to Remember (Notes to Myself)

2007-05-29T19:48:00.000-04:00

Travis, please remember;

You love turkey rubens. I'm not sure if it's the sauerkraut or the thousand island dressing...but you're surprised and mad at yourself for forgetting you love them so much every time you eat them. It could be the half-German ancestry peeking out in me. Then again, I look SO Irish. No really. If you met me in person, I could tell you I rode in from Ireland across the wide oceans on the rim of a Guinness glass, and you'd believe me. That's how red my hair is, how pale my skin is, and how green my eyes are. I invented St. Patrick's Day. When I first thought of it, I had named it St. LetsGetShitFaced Day, but some dickhole named Patrick filed for the patent before I could...and the rest is history.

Don't forget to pick Matt up from the airport on June 16th. Don't forget to tell him how much he smells like egg rolls from being in China for a month, no matter what he actually smells like.

Wash those damn sheets. I'm sure by now there are bedbugs in them.

Get more solid-print t-shirts. They look good on you in the summertime.

If that rash doesn't go away in two weeks, have the doctor look at it. Maybe Jenny was right? In that case, you've got a lot of phone calls to make, and a lot of 'splainin to do.

Checking your blog for comments every twenty minutes is crazy. What is even crazier is having every blog post automatically forwarded to your cellphone. Don't let anyone know you're doing this...it will hurt your street cred.

Four days from now, you will be a non-smoker permanently. Don't wuss out on me.

Peace bitches

Notes on Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior

2007-05-28T13:38:00.000-04:00

Let me preface this post with a warning. Everything I am going to write about is true. I'm not making it up to look better, because frankly, if I wanted to impress you I would use words like effrontery or pomme de terre. Those are impressive, whew! Now, on to the show.

I am afraid of the dark.

When I'm cooking meat, I use a thermometer to compare, double-compare, and triple-compare the temperature of the meat to the "FDA Food Temperature Guide" I have pasted on my refrigerator, so that I never ever eat raw or undercooked poultry, beef, or pork.

I am afraid of aliens.

I am afraid someone will murder me in the middle of the night while I lay in bed sleeping softly by cutting a notch out of my neck meat and letting my essence dribble out like applesauce out of any mouth in a senior citizen home.

I am afraid when I wash my feet in the shower that I will slip because they are still soapy and hit my head on the spigot and die.

I am afraid of milk past its expiration date.

I am afraid of deli meat because once when I was a little kid, my grandfather made me eat a bologna sandwich that tasted like poop, and when I was mostly done with it I pulled the bologna apart and saw that in between the two pieces it was completely green-moldy.

Every time one of my cats scratches me (out of love), I run the whole area under hot water and scrub with antibacterial soap because I'm scared of getting cat scratch fever. Yes, it's real.

I set the slidey-chain thing on my apartment door only half way, so that if someone has keys to my apartment and tries to get in, I'll be able to tell because the chain will be all the way over to the left, and not in the middle where I put it.

For all of these obsessive-compulsive things that I do, there are still things that I do that defy humanity's generally-accepted common sense. Like I smoke. I have unprotected sex. (ok that is a bit of a cop-out. I've been monogamously coupled for four and a half years) I eat raw fish, either in salmon form or sushi form. I only wash my bed sheets like...once a month if that, even though I know they could be harboring bedbugs or something.

I'm figuring that this post will scare off most of you from reading this blog, so the people left are either psychiatrists looking to make a fortune, or people that understand and respect the quirkiness that comes with the territory.

Do you have similar character flaws? Post them in the comments section :P

Peace bitches

The day I was worth five dollars

2007-05-27T23:02:00.001-04:00

When you stay inside all day, only bothering to take a shower because you don't want to "lose the habit"...that doesn't really make for a day filled to the brim with blog-worthy stories. So I'm gonna pull an oldie (but a goodie) out of my MySpace blog, to fill in the gap where a good story should be. Here it is. Enjoy.

These two women came in my job today, looking for phone service. I greeted them in the lobby, and asked if they had any questions while they looked around. They told me "No". So I walk back into my office, and while I do so, I can hear them whispering and quietly laughing to each other. I don't think much of it, so I got sit down and continue surfing YouTube. After a couple minutes, I go back out into the lobby to check up on them. It seems that one of them has a malfunctioning phone and is looking to purchase a replacement. I direct them into my office.

Now, the first woman (the one with the malfunctioning phone) was tall and skinny, and the second one was shorter and curvier. The skinny woman is looking very fierce btw, with her stiletto boots and tight skirt. As we're talking, I notice she's also carrying around a Coach bag, which perfectly matches her outfit, of course.

She ends up purchasing another phone from me, and is asking about how durable this one is compared to her old one, apparently she's hard on her phones. I ask if she keeps her phone in her purse most of the time, and she says yes. So I tell her that unless she's tossing her $300 Coach purse around like she just don't care, she should be fine.

With a giant rush of wind and fury the shorter, curvier woman stands up out of her chair and yells to the skinny woman, "YOU OWE ME FIVE DOLLARS, BITCH!".

....moment of silence...

So I guess what had happened is that as soon as I walked out into the lobby to greet these women, the shorter one had used her finely-tuned sense of Gaydar(tm) to point my "obviously homosexual tendencies" out to the other, skinny woman. This led to a debate in the lobby while I was in my office, which resulted in a friendly bet of five dollars. And the homosexual headhunt was on.

True story.

Putting things in your shopping cart back on the shelf...

2007-05-27T01:25:00.000-04:00

So, I was at Target today. I decided that the cheap-o lamp I purchased from Wal-Mart that subsequently broke two days later and is now held up with duct tape and hope needed to be replaced, and that Target was the place to go. (Todd Oldham, helloooo) So I get the the store, grab a cart, and make a beeline for the lamp aisle. After looking at them for about ten minutes, I finally pick one that I like, making sure, like milk, to grab the one all the way to the back, to get the maximum amount of lamp freshness possible. I don't want a lamp that someone already opened, used for two weeks, and then threw back in the box and returned. I know, it's anal. And no, none of the boxes looked opened. For all I know, they could put the returned ones toward the back to trap people like me in their own embarrassing obsessive-compulsive quirks. I know I would if I worked there. I hate people like me.

Anyway...so I put the lamp in my cart, and go over and grab the light bulbs I'm gonna need to make this whole contraption work, as it had 5 squid-like tentacles, each requiring their own 40 watt bulb. I smugly start walking toward the checkout lanes, when I notice they are selling Lisa Frank stickers again in the pens/pencils/thingsforgayguys aisle. While I stand there in shock/awe, I smell vanilla. In the next aisle over, they have their candles on display. I, coincidentally, am a total hor for candles. Off to the next aisle I go. This continues for about an hour, as I wander aimlessly in capitalistic wonderland, enjoying each new discovery more than the last.

After awhile, I decide I don't want to buy the octo-lamp anymore. I push my cart over toward the lamp aisle, but am thwarted when I see there is someone now in the lamp area. I can't very well take the box out of my cart and put it back on the shelf like it's some sort of unwanted, rejected, aborted baby while someone else is trying to figure out what lamp they want to buy. So I walk around some more, this time hitting up the gas grills and wondering if I can make cookies with grill-marks on them. During this time, Target announces that I only have fifteen minutes until the store closes. I come back about ten minutes later, and the bitch is still there. So off I go again, thinking to myself that any normal person would just say "Excuse me ma'am." and put the aborted lamp back right in front of her, feelings be damned. But I'm OCD, so I don't.

Knowing I only have five minutes to get this lamp back on the shelf, I make a tough decision. Do I wait for Grandma McFuckThatBitch to finish making her choice, and then run up to the checkout lane, or do I ditch the box somewhere in the pillow aisle and leave now? I decide that, because I am potentially being filmed at every moment, I will not leave the box in a non-designated isle.

Finally, Grandma leaves the aisle (without a lamp, I might add...what a bitch) and I rush up, throw the box back on the shelf when I'm sure no one is looking, and rush up the the counter to pay for my new stickers and vanilla candles.

This story didn't really have a point, it was a slow day.

Peace bitches

Welcome

2007-05-27T01:03:00.000-04:00

Several things have conspired here, with the end result being this blog.

First of all, it's 1am. I cannot be held liable for actions I make after 12am. It is a scientific fact that 90% of all the poor decisions in my life have been made after the magic stroke of midnight, so most likely, this will just be another sadistic statistic.

Secondly, this blog is partly the result of being "tagged". No, I don't know what it means, only that when someone does it I apparently have to do something or I...like...get labeled as "nerdy" and no one wants to go to prom with me or something. I don't know, I'm just covering my bases.

Thirdly, (is that a word?) I've always appreciated the idea of having a blog. Now granted, most of the blogs I've read have just been the printed version of what people that talk to themselves mumble about. Like that bag lady that always sits by the door at the grocery store. I can hear her mumbling to herself about mittens on kitties or something, so she would be the type of person that I suspect would have a blog. I have, however, been pleasantly surprised at the quality of journalism that I've found on some blogs, and so, to that end, I have decided to take a stab at it, pushed over the edge finally by previous reasons one and two.

I have this notion that I'd like to become a journalist someday, but a journalist of what I can't say. I'd really like to be one of those people that does reviews on cnet.com or engadget.com or gizmodo.com or something. But alas, they are funny and witty and I, usually, am not. So, this will be my proving ground, to hone my skills at being charming, witty, and funny. Bear with me, as I've been told it's a learning process.

So, Lindy, you're a total hor and if this doesn't work out I'm blaming you for the crushing defeat of the journalism career that never existed.

And Jamie, now you gotta.

Peace bitches,
Travis