Amidst the bad puns, some happy news

Two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are getting married. Gay marriage is not only legal in Canada, but widely supported, even in the small towns and rural wilderness where these men patrol.

Amidst all the news coverage, usually featuring plays on "Brokeback Mounties" or "The Mounty always gets his man," the two are planning their officer's wedding. Or rather, officers'.

Some of the better articles (if not repetitive):
CTV Canada
Washington Post
Seattle Times

Pink Saturday

I LOVE Pink Saturday. In some ways, it's better than Pride Sunday. The pre-parties are a love fest, of friends new and old, and of the journeys we've taken. And a good excuse for some quality time with old friends.

Then there is the massive mingling in the streets. You see everyone. It is unscripted revelry at its best.

Here I found Derek Speck, who moved to Seattle a couple of years ago and just happened to be in town for a conference.



Here are some other pics:

Kevin and Kelly who joined us at Sean and Matt's.


Kevin sneezing so hard we all thought he blew something in his brain.


My checking his pulse to be sure he was okay.


Pink Party Posers: NZ Kevin, Javits, and Wilson


By the way, I took a page out of the Papa John Easter Egg Hunt guidebook. I'd guess about seven years ago, Papa John started to have a "grown up" Easter egg hunt for the parents (my generation) as well as the one for the kiddies. Instead of eggs, he would hide little airline bottles of liquor in the yard or in the house (weather depending, and not the same garden or room as the kiddie hunt). One Christmas my friends and I ended up chatting late night at my parents' house, and someone found a miniature bottle of vodka between the sofa cushions. She looked very worried and asked if my Dad "had a problem." "No," I assured her, "that's just left over from Easter." Which of course, was not reassuring at all and sounded insane enough to indicate that perhaps we had bigger problems than bottles in our upholstery.

My point being this: Pink Saturday is about boys and booze in the street. But it gets nigh near impossible to get a beverage in that throng. So earlier in the day I decanted vodka and mixers into water bottles and hid them in various spots around the Castro like some sort of deranged Easter Bunny. Should anyone's cup run dry, I was able to reach into the nearest tree, shrub, bush, or other hiding place and serve another round. Even outside I was hosting.


I was treated like a God.
(But I am just his humble waiter, er, servant.)

Awww

Debbie Sue Linda sent me some pics from the other weekend's lunch at Perpetua's.

Honestly, you can't say who is cuter—me or Roman:


Perpetua, however, has her own version of "baby's bottles."

Out on the Front Page

My buddies in the Barbary Coast Cloggers made the front page/image on Google News today, and the AP photo is also on the front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune Web site today (or it was when I clicked through).

Barbary Coast Cloggers

I haven't been to clogging class since I screwed up my ankle, but these guys are so much fun!

Story page.

Shameless

Happy Pride everybody!

boobies

On talking to Amy about men's penchant for squeezing breasts:

You're more of a 'honk-honk,' where she's more of an 'AhOOOOGah!'

gay ol' time

We all know that the orginal primary meaning of "gay" was "happy." Fred and Wilma had a gay old time. Christmas revelers don their gay apparel before they fa la la.

Although being gay makes us (gays) happy (in the self-acceptance and enjoying each other sort of way), I don't imagine the period when "gay" started to mean "homosexual" was a particularly happy time for gays and lesbians.

But here we are. Here and queer. Gay is gay (but not gay like a ten-year-old would slur). And gay is happy. And yet to refer to a bunch of "happy gays" is not redundant.

And gays, at least my gays--the mo's and the ho's--drink. And are happy drinking. And are gay drinking.

Last night I suggested that just as "gay" meaning "happy" linguistically evolved into "gay" meaning "homo," we should start pushing the transition the other way too.

The period with drink specials at the bar is no longer happy hour. It's gay hour.

C'mon. Get happy.



(Speaking of which, how coded was this? Was the artist really saying "get gay!"? Rainbow birds of a feather flocking (ahem) together.)

the 411 on 511

In the Bay Area, dialing 511 connects you to a voice-navigated transit computer that can give traffic reports, directions, and schedules and arrival times for public transit agencies.

We've started calling the computer voice at 511 Shilpa's boyfriend.

She's in a dependent relationship. She relies on him for her social life. She calls him constantly but he never calls back, and he lies to her often.*

Clearly boyfriend material.

-------------------------------------------------------------
*"Next N arriving in 4 minutes my ass. Where's my train?!"

My first gray hair?

And it was in my nose. That can't be good.

Life difficulties

Please stand by.

lovely lunch

Just had a wonderful UCSF Pride lunch. From my hall, we were the gay men and the straight women who love us. Or in other words:

The mo's and the ho's.

(And anyone saying "the fags and the hags" is gonna get bitch slapped.)

Schrabble

I just heard from Drinkie that after a night of imbibing, she ended up playing drunken Scrabble with a friend into the wee hours of the morning. I asked if they were slurring the words on the board as well as in conversation. Or did they spell out things like "pizza" and "calling old boyfriends."

New intoxicated danger: drunken tiling.

BOOZE
E
ENUTHERROUND
R

lazy man's joke

Only because I am me I suppose, I find this really interesting.

But I know there are more like me out there.

Cunning linguists.

misattrubution

I first learned of the whole "eskimos have a 100 words for snow" hoax in one of my linguistic classes at Davidson.

The oft-heard Churchill quote along the lines of "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put." appears to be equally fallacious.

My favorite copy editor (how huge a nerd am I that I have a favorite among copy editors?) has an interesting roundup today regarding books on language, which references her earlier clarification of the "up with which I will not put" misattrubution.

So now you know.

sick leave

Apologies for the lack of interesing posts these past few days. I have been busy with work and wretchedly sick. Silly reports to amuse and divert you to resume shortly.

Overheard at the bar

You're wearing "pre-stressed" jeans and a "factory trashy" shirt.

You're not slutty. You're faux ho.

Lyrical low

Okay, here't the sitch. Happy fun home visits notwithstanding, this has been a really difficult time for me. Elements at work beyond my, or clearly anyone's, control have been having a seriously deleterious effect on my life and my health. I don't know how much longer I can handle it.

And to that stress, that I need a new home and a new car and I am ripe for an ulcer, a breakdown, or just a fit. For years Kate has been saying I have the worst luck of anyone she knows. I gotta catch a break here sometime. And one of these days having a date with more excitement than anxiety wouldn't hurt things either.

But as I deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I am reminded of a song and its lyrics which were dear to me when I first considered coming out-- out from the closet and out to California. A summer ditty from Voice of the Beehive: Scary Kisses.

The chorus went something like this:

Baby, I want scary kisses.
I want hits and I want misses.
I want hell I want bliss - and all that soars between them.
And if you give me safety in a short time I'll be driven crazy.
I would rather run and fall than take no chance at all.

I was inspired by that verse then, and I have to accept the lines now. I have never let myself fail for lack of trying, and I am not going to start now.

I wanted Hell and I wanted bliss. And all that soars between them. Be careful what you wish for and all of that.

I've got the Hell part now. No regrets. I will accept it as part and parcel of the whole "rich life" deal. I've taken my chances, and I've stumbled on obstacles in the path. But I will rise stronger from the fall, and so will have fallen not badly. (There's the echo of one of Mr. Gaither's Latin aphorisms in there somewhere.)

Shake it off. Eyes forward. Shoulders back. Onward. Upward.

Auto update

Here's the latest sitch on the car. Pretty much everything about this sucks. But there may yet be a light at the end of a tunnel. And with my luck, it's an oncoming train.

As I may have mentioned earlier, by chance my neice Ellen was on my flight back to the Bay Area to visit her good friend and former next-door neighbor Morgan. On the flight back I was sandwiched between Ellen and Morgan's grandmother. (Side note, Ellen is waaay to cute for reality. She had her stuffed animals for company, played me songs on her Nano, then curled into my shoulder to watch a movie with me on my laptop. She is so sweet I just melt.)

Anyhoo, Morgan's Dad, Trig, and the two girls (Morgan and Madison) were waiting for us just past security. The traffic on the east side of the Bay was so bad, Trig planned to cross the bridge and head south to Saratoga via 101 or 280-- and as he was crossing the bridge into the City anyway, he offered me a lift home. On the way back, we were talking cars and such (we were in his super-nice, super-big pick up truck he uses for the horse trade) and he mentioned that he had a car he never drove and was thinking of selling. And here I am needing to get a new car. He has an old convertible volvo, which is what I went shopping for when the transmission went on the Saturn. Said it was a 2001 with about 54k miles and he paid $14,000 for it. Could be a match made in heaven.

Then I get home and open my mail: There is a notice from DPT that they towed my car and I owe them fees. Reason for towing: stolen auto. No one called me. No notice from the police, just a bill for towing and storage. This was Tuesday of this week. Wednesday I get another notice of lien and pending sale of my car in 30 days from the third-party "Auto Recovery" company with a City contract. So I call. Even though the car was stolen, and towed into the impound because the police recovered the stolen car, I have to pay over $700 for towing fees, processing fees, and $35 a day storage fees.

Under the department of ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? My car is stolen. The police find it. The police/city are charging me to get it back. And charging almost half of what the insurance company is valuing the car. AND, in order to get it back, I have to go to the skanky 750 Bryan Police station to get a release form, then go to the Auto Recovery office somewhere else for their forms, pay them the ungodly sum for a receipt to get the car out of the storage lot--which is miles away down at Pier 70.

Of course, I can't rush down there because (1) I don't have anyone who can take me (2) I signed the title away to the insurance company and (3) the insurance company has the keys! I finally got to talk to my claims person at the insurance company yesterday, and they will reclaim the car, but I have to go through the hoops to get it released because I am still listed as the owner. I suppose I will have to do that in the morning. Fun.

No word if I can get my stuff out of it or not.

I was kind of looking forward to the ease and fun of buying Trig's convertible. Until I checked online and realised I may have heard wrong. I don't think he paid $14 thousand for it, but rather $40 thousand. Kelly Blue Book puts a 2001 convertible volvo at $18,530. That's a bit out of my price range. Trig has my number and will be contacting me once Ellen and his mother have left. I'm hoping he has a number in mind that is much lower.

I did find a 2000/64k convertible model that looks good from a dealer in Richmond for $14,000. Bad idea? Any opinions?

I hate shopping for cars.

These are the people in your gayborhood.

I'm looking at an apartment tonight after work. It's in the middle of the Castro, which is a good/bad thing. There is no parking which is a painfully bad thing. It's at 18th and Collingwood. I looked it up on Google maps to see it's exact location.

If I take it, my change of address cards will read: "I've Gone Over the Edge."



(The bar on the corner is "The Edge.")

Look! Up on the Web...

It's a bird/plane/Superman.

For those that can't wait for Superman Returns to open at the end of this month, clips are available online here.