Category Archives: Abstract Absurdist Otherness

Read it and weep! I’ve published and now, I be damned! There are some diamonds in this coal. Proceed with cautious carelessness.

Fly Me To The Moon

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It’s Thursday. No big deal. Last night was no big deal either. There was the dental appointment which went well. Only spent $90.00 for that visit. Spoke to my sister Annemarie on the phone. Her son Earl is sick with the flu and that sucks. But it’s the flu, he’s healthy so he’ll rebound with no problem. Came home, watched Law and Order Criminal Investigation and that was good. It was a repeat and it didn’t get hairy until the last ten minutes. After that was Law and Order the original that Bill was supposed to be in as an extra but they cut his scene. Nevertheless it was a very good episode and dealt with Jack McCoy in the second half, ending with a Bobby Kennedy tie pin from 1968 which touched Jack greatly.

Then it was bedtime for me. Slept really well, woke up on time too. Of course the first instinct was, ‘I don’t wanna go to work today’, but I had to. Many things to do today. Clients coming in, and I had to set up Greg Stevens conference call. I swear, if Greg ever figured out keyboard shortcuts I’d likely be out of a job. At least several times a day, he calls me into his office to fix something on his computer. This morning he needed to get the Microsoft Office helper off his screen. It just popped up and made Greg feel distracted.

There were a few other tasks that I had to do, and one of them was staying the hell out of Tom Chin’s way. He was on the warpath, but it didn’t have anything to do with me. Today is Valentine’s day. I ordered some flowers on Saturday to be delivered yesterday to Bill’s office. Of course they were delivered after Bill left for the day. But technically they were delivered on time. Apparently Bill ordered flowers for me on Tuesday, for a Wednesday delivery before I went to the dental appointment. By the end of the day today, Thursday, they still hadn’t arrived.

We made plans to go to Arthur’s for steaks for Valentine’s day, a nice idea since Bill and I haven’t seen each other in weeks, but somewhere down the line the plan changed and we’re staying here, Bill sleeping over, and having Grimaldi’s pizza which is how my birthday wound up last year. At least then we made it to Arthur’s, and since their credit card machine wasn’t working we bailed and came home for Grimaldi’s pizza on my suggestion. Today it was all Bill’s suggestion. Arthur’s, no Arthur’s, pizza instead. I don’t mind I’m pretty tired but I must confess I was looking forward to having a pint or two of Guinness, a juicy steak and perhaps a cigar while walking around Hoboken.

Still, now I’m in slippers, housecoat and curlers and I’m not going anywhere. Definitely looking forward to a three day weekend, have some dvd’s to watch. I have The Namesake, The Bourne Ultimatum and Hard Eight. I heard good things about all three, and I do enjoy the Jason Bourne movies. Hard Eight was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson so that should be interesting at least. And The Namesake is directed by Mira Nair so let’s hear it for Indian Chick directors! Namaste bitches!

And here is a pic of me in my Valentine’s Day finery. A red tie basically.
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And what is going on with the school shootings? Lawrence King, 15 years old killed at his middle school the other day in Oxnard, today a shooter goes shooting at Northern Illinois University. Crazy.

Coming Around Again

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It’s a snowy Tuesday, first real snow of the year. Looks nice right now, tomorrow it will be frozen and slushy making for treacherous walking. Safely inside where it’s warm I have a sudden pang for hot chocolate in a ceramic mug with a little ceramic bird on the rim of the cup that you can whistle through. Oh but those are long gone. Perhaps relics to be dug up in a couple of thousand years by archaeologists wondering exactly what type of ritual these chipped mugs served. Or perhaps they’re in some landfill somewhere, picked at by hungry gulls.

At work things have been very quiet. Most of the office has been attending a Bio-technology conference around the block at the Waldorf Astoria. That’s a relief, I’m actually able to get some work done without interference from Tom Chin. I spoke to Carla the former receptionist the other day, and she agreed that Tom Chin is really just a little old lady. She still hasn’t gotten her W2 and was wondering where it was, so she called me. We keep intending to meet up for a drink after work, but it won’t be tomorrow since tomorrow is my trip to the NYU Dental School, and Thursday is Valentine’s Day.

Bill called today and suggested going to Arthur’s for steaks. I told him it would depend on how my teeth are after tomorrow night. I’m obviously a bit apprehensive, not for the dental examination, but more for the fact that I fear they won’t see me since I’m not a New York City resident. I don’t mind students working on my teeth, I have faith in the school, for no real reason, just hope. Perhaps it’s will be like Scrubs, only for dentists. Last night was another night in front of the TV.

Watched a documentary on Malcolm X on PBS. That was good but I had seen it before. In the late eighties I was perhaps the only white boy wearing a Malcolm X T shirt in North NJ. I got into Malcolm after watching Do The Right Thing which closed with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. I never read Malcolm X until that point and everything I knew about him was that he was a bad bad man. He really wasn’t and most everything he said made sense. Once he left the Nation of Islam his vision widened, after his trip to Mecca where he realized that white people aren’t all devils as the knelt down next to one another praying to a rather large rock. Somewhere there is a Polaroid photo of me taken by Pedro with myself splayed out on the black and white tiles of a men’s room in Secaucus wearing my Malcolm X t shirt.

Since I had seen the documentary on Malcolm X before and I knew how it ended I decided to go to bed. No Advil PM, just straight sleep (if I can call it that). No dreams of me being chased through a beer hall/refugee camp by Siouxsie though my former room mate Jimmy Lee made an appearance apartment hunting in Hoboken. I heard he lives in Austria now with his Austrian wife. In case he’s Googling his name (and with a name like Jimmy Lee there must be thousands) and he probably is, hello to Jimmy Lee. And for other people Googling themselves, hello to Rae Guay, Maurice Menares, Bill Ryan, Isabelle Gonzalez, Ann Louise Boyles, and Catherine Cloud. Catherine just got a grant, Harpy discovered so congratulations to Catherine Cloud as well.

Gong Xi Fa Cai to Song and Ray!

Some snow pics

The other day with Chaz
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Tonight
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Sans flash
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From Rod2.0
An excerpt from Julian Bond’s opening plenary speech on Feb. 7 at the 2008 National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, convened by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Partial transcript:

Sometimes it is the simplest of acts, sitting at a lunch counter, going to a new school, applying for a marriage license, casting a vote, that can challenge the way we can act or think. That’s why when I am asked if gay rights are civil rights, I say, ‘Of course they are.’ [Applause]

Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives. The right for equal treatment before the law. These are rights for everyone. There is no one in the United States who should not share these these rights. Rights for gays and lesbians are not “special rights” in any way. It is not special to be free from discrimination.That is an ordinary, universal entitlement. [Applause]

That man had to struggle to gain these rights are precious. It does not make them special in any way…. The more civil rights that are earned by others, the stronger the arm defending my civil rights. If my neighbor gains civil rights in any way, it does not dilute my rights. [Applause]