iPod mod for your bod

Okay, while we were at the beach on Saturday (photos to come shortly), Barney gave me a little grief about my relationship to my iPod, namely, its constancy. I pretty much carry it with me everywhere, and frankly am often called upon to DJ or supply music so I try to have it, and a variety of adapters or speakers, handy.

I recently modded my car and now have an iPod dock in my ashtray and can control the iPod through the stereo and steering wheel controls. This annoys Barney as when he gets into the car, almost invariably the soundtrack is country. This is something new as until this month SF has been without a country station for a long time. (I am often his personal chauffeur, so he really doesn't complain that much--but I can tell the country music is trying his nerves.)

And on the beach, I pulled out a very cool little black foam brick that houses the iPod, has protected access to the controls and provides a seriously strong and high-quality output. I got this little baby at a discount from the maker at this year's MacWorld. I wish I could remember the name of the product as I highly recommend it.

But still, a long, long car ride up to Limatour Beach/Point Reyes and then out on the beach, Barney may have had enough of me and my iPod gadretry.

But even I have my limits.

Read further at your own risk. You've been notified.

Introducing the sexiest iPod mod yet: the OhMiBod.

From the Macinhack site, the OhMiBod Music Powered Vibrator Review.

Where did you have it last?

It's only Tuesday, and we're still dealing with the hour lost from Daylight Savings Time change.

I hate the adjustment, but I'm really a big fan of DST as I love the long evenings of sunlight. Bring on the summer.

But apparently, I've/we've been saying it wrong.

From the lovely and talented Nicole over at A Capital Idea:

It may look awkward, but AP style calls for "daylight-saving time" instead of "Daylight Savings Time" or whatever other concoction reporters are tempted to use.

Here's the entry:

daylight-saving time Not savings. Note the hyphen.
When linking the term with the name of a time zone, use only the word daylight: Eastern Daylight Time, Pacific Daylight Time, etc.

Lowercase daylight-saving time in all uses and daylight time whenever it stands alone.

Just so I can say it.

There are some words or phrases that are just fun to say: Rancho Cucamonga, Bodega Bay, Babaganoush.

And today I got to say: Twirl-a-Squirrel.

Pending....

It was a wonderfully fun and long weekend. Lots of sunshine in SF. Saturday was crazy full with a road trip north up to a Point Reyes beach with Barney, Shilpa, Lance and Dave Britt— followed a the road trip south with the rodeo queens on the shopping/party bus.

Photos and narratives to follow soon.

So, it's come to this...

This morning I received an e-mail from Margaret, my pseudo-sis in Atlanta:

Re: It's come to this

I threw a birthday party for my dog. But it was REALLY fun! Piniata, pin the tale on the dog/donkey, scooby snacks, party hats, it was fun!

It was the puppy's first birthday, but for heaven's sakes.





Barkley's friends:



And she had people guests as well as puppy guests, so it's not so crazy as it seems.



I will say the paw cakes and piniata loaded with dog food were really cute.







But still.

Margaret, c'mon.

Ba, ba, ba, my barber ran.

I walked down to the shop on Haight Street last night for my increasingly frequent and increasingly shorter haircut, only to find that Luis, my barber, has left the shop and skipped town. (Nothing delinquent, but just up and left.)

Hesitant, I decided to give a new girl the benefit of the doubt. That, and I was a good week overdue for a cut and I was ready to get cleaned up.

She was nice, but I got the distinct feeling I was only the second head of hair she had ever cut. Luis is very good at taking what I've got left and making the most of it. Clippers on the side smothly transtioning to scissors on top.

She did clippers on the side and scissors on the top, but with a distinct demarkation between the two. And she sort of "dug in" with the clippers to ge be a bald line across my right side. It's kinda military, and if I were thinner and buffer I could pull it off more than I can now.


It's not so bad, and certainly better than the previous messiness. But still, I long for Luis.


I'm down to a 1 on the sides. Barney, and now RMJ, are pushing for the full shaved look. I'm afraid I'll be all cheeks then. When I drop the el-bees, I'll consider it. Until then, just call me Shorn.

Overheard at work - 22

The iPod is cranking in the office at the end of a long Friday.

Others join. Bodies start to sway.

Helen resists.

A: C'mon!
H: You guys have never seen me dance.
W: Well then faster kill faster, Pussy Cat.
H: No. I have on too many clothes.

WTF?

Head South

It's that time again.

Mr. Humphries is now free.

The hilarious and campy John Inman, Mr. Humphries of the hit BBC show Are You Being Served?", died this morning in London at 71.

I remember first discovering Are You Being Served on PBS stations' late night programming. I think I might not have seen my first episode until college, which is strange as it was such a freaking hilarious show and such a big UK hit. I wonder why it never got more domestic play.

Even so, I can almost always get the proper counter-call when asking someone in the propoer cadence, "Mr. Whoever? Are you free?"

John Inman and his partner of 35 years were civil-unioned in 2005. (Please, can we go ahead and get married already? Just the term "civil-unioned" should be enough to prove that separate is in unequal.)

Coverage of his death and tributes to his life abound today. Read more here, here, here, and here.

My favorite quote: "I bet everyone in heaven is laughing non-stop today." Or to put it another way, they are being served.

Video clips via BBC. And YouTube.

SF Simpsons

Watching the Simpsons tonight, episode "Bart-Mangled Banner:"

The Simpsons escape Alcatraz and find themselves swimming across the Bay.
Lisa: "Swim towards San Francisco!"
Homer: "We're not made of money!........We'll swim to Oakland."

Uh oh.

You know, we have a lot of fun over here at I'm Just sayin'.

Between the fun stories and occasional rants, there are plenty of overheards and random Web links to waste your time amuse you.

But you have to admit that the content here is pretty PG-13, a mixture of the wholesome and the Folsom.

So imagine my surprise to find that this blog has been featured in the Nfocus blog. Nfocus is the magazine of the Nashville social/socialite scene.


I recently posted about one of their events honoring my sainted mother (actually underway as I type this). A writer at Nfocus took note and said some kind things back about my blog.

Now I am a little worried about new traffic. While I am one of Nashville's sons and enjoy my social life in my hometown, I am also a San Franciscan with a decidedly diverse social life here.

I wonder:

(A) Will southern socialites be scandalized if they click-through?
and
(B) In Nashville, I am known as a proper, if not exceptionally colorful, Southern Gentleman. How will this new exposure affect my Nashville reputation?

Come to think of it, it might not affect my reputation at all. Most people who know me already know I am antic-prone.

As I've said before, I'd be impossible to blackmail. When I came out I decided to live my life honestly. Maybe I just don't have the patience or the energy to be duplicitous. I have no secrets.

Pride I have. But no shame.

Because you're worth it.

Wow. What can you say?



On so many other women, that much eye make up would look cheap.

And smoking TWO cigaretts at a time? Now that's just efficient.

From the Do's and Don'ts on Viceland.


Ben? Nice to meet you. Victor Hugo.

Delta Quadrant Studio Apartment

Listed in the 24th Century.

Home mods are cool, but this one is seriously ahead of its time.


Fully self-designed and fabricated, Tony Alleyne has completely refitted his studio flat north of London in the style of Star Trek: Voyager. Very well done.

I do find it interesting that the article finds it necessary to mention that he started this project because his wife left him. Maybe they were just trying to make it clear that it wasn't that his wife left him because he started this project.

I hope the Daily Show picks this up.

Conservative holes such as Coulter (best take on her f-bomb by Pam over here, and updated here), O'Reilly, Hannity, and the other wingnuts at Fox are virulently anti-gay as a baseline, but they have stepped up their rhetoric this week, with O'Reilly going ballistic at Mayor Newsom for recognizing Colt's 40th anniversary, and the right-wing love fest and liberal-bashing that was the CPAC conference. Ever present was the "solid, brave soldier" who has come forward (but not out)to tell his harrowing story of being unwelcome as a military recruiter by the students at Columbia University. He has said his experience with the anti-military students has been as emotionally intense as sniper attacks.

O'Rieilly has embraced this brave icon of the Red-Blooded American Soldier. As has Hannity. Coulter looked like she wanted an hour in the cloak room with the rugged young man.

He's a junior in college, and a corporal in the Marines. So he's, what, early 20's? Oh, 36. What was he doing before joining the military and going to college.

Oh, lots and lots of gay porn. (NSFW)

One blogger has also found an online profile listing him for hire in NYC. ("Escorting" is such a nice word for "whore" isn't it.)

Well, considering the whole Jeff Gannon incident, the right will vilify, demonize, and dehumanize anyone remotely associated with homosexuality or homosexuals, unless they further the conservative agenda. Then even the whores are welcome.

As far as I can tell, the news "broke" in the online forum Datalounge, was then posted on the porn-centric blog of Tom Bacchus, which was seen and posted by the wildly popular Joe.My.God, which was seen and discussed by Andy Towle, who apparently dated the guy, over at Towleroad.

With such an (ahem) extensive career in porn (he brags about 11 inches), you would think he might worry about getting noticed doing so many interviews on national tv.

I just really, really want to see the Daily Show and the Colbert Report go to town on this one.

It's not the gay that bothers me, or the porn, or the escorting, or the idea of a gay porn escort nobly and admirably serving his country in the Marines, or even military recruitment on campus. No, it's the blatant and aggravated hypocrisy of the right-wing pundits that riles me.

Baby love

I've already sent LBL (little baby Leland) two outfits. One newborn onezie reading "Do I look like I was born yesterday?" and an awesome baby tee with googlie eyes reading "I appreciate the muppets on a much deeper level than you." I also bought an adult one of those for Kevin.

And now I've found this one from Glarkware.

But I don't think Mac and Emily would ever dress him in it.

It's not you, it's me.

I think we have all been there before.

Maybe this is why men start with the line "Can I buy you a drink?"

Catherine Tate (BBC)

Boston Crucible

As a follow up to my earlier Boston's attack on Lite-Brights rant.

This is a wonderful analysis of the increasingly embarassing security paranoia and cultural/generational disconnect of Boston powers-that-be.

From CTheory

Fear and Loathing in the Bay State
By Dion Dennis

excerpt:

So this is what it has come to: Two young artists (their demeanor an echo of 1960s creative expressiveness), paid a pittance to playfully market a surrealist cartoon movie starring several talking base-level consumer commodities, have been labeled semiotic terrorists and criminals by official reality. What does this political panic reflex, played out in the gerontocratic and the politically correct Commonwealth of Massachusetts, tell us? What are the object lessons that can be drawn from this emotive, mediated and bureaucratic externalization of early 21st Century nightmares and demons? According to the criminal statute applied, these crude LED "Mooninites" that literally flipped Boston "the Bird" were legally defined as "infernal machines." Among the eleven cities targeted by this particular guerilla marketing campaign, only in Boston were these innocuous "lite brites" perceived to be objects of terror. Only in Boston did official reality shut down major parts of the city, deploy the Bomb Squad, and make ritualistic arrests and arraignments. Therefore, the question can, and should, be asked: What does this say about the current conscience collectif in the land of the Puritans, Kerouac, and Kennedy?

In this syndrome, subjects inappropriately react to neutral stimuli as if such stimuli were signals of real hostility.

What is going on in this stubborn bastion of a once optimistic state-centered liberalism, as it reacts to signs that oddly refract images of a Vietnam-era collective self? Official and local media reactions constitute a classic case of what psychologists call "hostile attributional syndrome." In this syndrome, subjects inappropriately react to neutral stimuli as if such stimuli were signals of real hostility. Appropriately decoded, these reactions have significant diagnostic value. As a public event, the response of official organs displays complex patterns of displacement and condensation, as befits such a symbolic event and product. Below are some (hopefully) heuristic disentanglements of a couple of these very complex threads.

...

First, we can see the historical and hysterical echoes of the 17th Century Salem witch trials. The two artists, the long-haired, bearded Belorussian immigrant Berdovsky and his sidekick, Stevens, stand publicly accused of producing, as defined by Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 266, Section 102, an "infernal machine." (Etymologically, the term "infernal" refers to Hell and the identities and products of the demons of said residence). So, like Arthur Miller's John Proctor, they will undoubtedly be asked to "make a deal" with official reality, to acknowledge their "infernal" (demonic) specific intent (as defined by the statute) and, in doing so, externalize the demons of the populace as they reaffirm the dominant symbolic order. Contemporary ritual exorcisms will be performed in court, press conferences and press releases, and remixed and expanded by local and 24 hour news media, as they are archived for subsequent use.

Just sayin'

Hey kids. I know there haven't been a lot of posts lately, and few "personal" posts. (I know this because some of you have been complaining.) It's not that I haven't been busy, just that there hasn't been all that much to blog about. Every night this week I have had something going on, but either I haven't had the time to write about it, or the events, while enjoyable, were not necessarily supper-funny-blog-times.

Yesterday, however, was pretty classic.

I stepped into Shilpa's office for something or another. And she stopped to say something along the lines of "I'm so proud of you."
"For what"
"Trying not to go out so much during the week. And refraining from enabling me."
"Well, I need to spend some time and home and take care of things and spend less money and get more sleep. I'm starting today-- a concerted effort to stay in on weeknights."
"Oh by the way, that improv thing is tonight. Are you still in?"
"Sure.... Wow. That didn't last long did it?"

And Kevin called. It seems that Drunk Girl is getting a little stir crazy since the surgery last Friday (he had his shoulder socket stiched back together or some such). So I invited him along to the improve show and Lisa added him to the list.

(Shilpa's friend Lisa's friend Jay--whom I call Linus-- is an improve troupe called Blue Blanket Improv who play 50 Mason on the first Thursday of the month. It was going to be a big night for them as they were getting reviewed by the Chronicle. Turns out they have joined with another troupe, Spanking Monkeys I think, and are now going by Chicken Scratch. I don't think they are much better for the merging, with the exception of the quick-witted blond whose Anna Nicole was HIGH-larious.)

The improv was funny, but again, not as nearly as funny as Kevin, Shilpa and I when we're in our groove, which we were.

Kevin was so happy to be out, and we were punch-drunk with laughter, so even though we drove all the way back to Shilpa's (for Lisa to get her car), we decided to hit the Cat for 1984.

Again, hilarity ensued. And flickr-addict Shilpa brought her spare camera battery as mine had died (and she has lost her camera, again).

Fun shots:








And we met some random/interesting people in from NYC for some Budweiser marking video.




The place was pretty full of attractive 20-somethings. And apparently Rod Stewart's love child.

(N.B. I am not counting the figures in the foreground in the "attractive" assessment.)

I started talking to this random, kinda sexy, tall guy on the prowl then Kevin and I sort of threw him at Shilpa (the gays are always trying to take care of our girls).

Apparently, the guy was a bit of a loser conversationally and Shilpa tried kicking me to take her away. Pushing the hook up agenda, I merely kept backing away and out of kick range...until Shilpa looked like some sort of yoga contortionist stretching her leg as far as she could from the banquette to continue prodding me. The opposite of subtle. Kevin and I finally relented and let her escape the boorish boy. I personally thought as lame as his mind was, he would still be good for some attention. But we all have our standards, and low as they may sometimes be.


Tonight: Impromptu PYRAMID!

Harper Valley PTA alive and well

The School Board in Evansville has fired a wildly popular and successful science teacher with an impressive resume for unknown reasons. When the community, students, other teachers, and parents demanded to know why, the Board has refused to aswer. Clearly, politics and power at play. Read the comments too. Quite interesting.

This is so diheartening, but despressingly not surprising.

My friend David Fox was elected to the Nashville/Metro Davidson School Board last year, hoping in bring reasonable and forward-thinking policies to Nashville. (I don't know but I imagine reasonable policies such as "evolution is science and therefore belongs in a science class.") I hope never to read of such backwater controversies from my hometown.

Pull my finger

I don't understand this Japanese(Korean?) web game, but apparently the goal is to time your farts so that the other guy at the bus stop doesn't notice.

Happy Friday to all you commuters.



Pull my Chinese finger cuffs.