Big Ad

http://www.bigad.com.au/

Absolutely hysterical.

Tragic... but stupid

http://entertainment.news.com.au/story/0,10221,16074264-7484,00.html

A ROCK band lead singer died on stage after an acrobatic leap went tragically wrong.

Patrick Sherry, 29, of Bad Beat Revue, was performing at the Warehouse Club in Leeds on Wednesday night as part of the Club NME tour when he fell, sustaining fatal head injuries.

Horrified onlookers said the singer tried to leap off the stage and swing off a lighting rig hanging from one of the venue's wooden beams but lost his grip and fell to the floor head first.
Sherry was taken to hospital but he died on Thursday morning. His brother, also a band member, said he died doing what he did best.

"he died doing what he did best"?!?!

Evidently, then, he wasn't very good at swinging from lighting rigs was he??

Round robin

I got this from "An Udge and a Wink": http://udgewink.blogspot.com/

"If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing blog entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your weblog."

Cause I find myself doing this. A lot. At work. Where I should probably be working. *grin*

Law & Order

I'm a big Law & Order fan in all it's incarnations. Well, I don't like L&O: Criminal Intent because the guy on there seems to know everything about absolutely everything and I wonder how there could possibly be any unsolved crimes in New York with him on the case. And I didn't really get a chance to sink my teeth into L&O: Trial by Jury because it wasn't on very long and it didn't really have a chance to find it's legs. Although it did have Amy Carlson who is absolutely gorgeous and I'd watch her in just about anything.

The point is this: I love courtroom drama stuff. I love reading about real-life court cases. I love reading about people in trouble with the law, mostly, I think, so I can feel superior. So here's a couple of people I can feel superior to:

Story 1: http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0726/sexparties_ap.html

This woman threw drinking and drug parties for her son's friends and HAD SEX WITH THESE BOYS because, basically, she was unpopular in high school and wanted to be "a cool mom". Let's think about this for a moment... Her definition of a "cool mom" is to be a drugged out drunk slut? Oh yeah, I can see the schoolyard fights now: Sonny Boy (who's friends she was trying to impress) is really going to yell "Hey! My mom is cooler than your mom!" only to have the other guy say: "Damn! You're right! My mom won't buy me drugs or beer or sleep with ANY of my friends... not like YOUR cool mom!!"

I've raised a teenager. Trust me... they do NOT want you hanging around their friends. They barely want you to TALK to their friends. They want you to feed them, wash their clothes and be there when they need you... but that's about it. Ok, they want you to buy them beer... but they DO NOT WANT YOU SLEEPING WITH THEIR FRIENDS!!!

You have to wonder A) How low this woman's self-esteem was that she figured that the approval of 16 and 17 year old boys would make her feel better about herself and B) How much crap her son has had to deal with because of her.

I may not know much about raising kids, but I know enough not to sleep with his friends. Ok, his friends girlfriends, but that's another blog. *grin*

Story 2: http://www.courttv.com/people/2005/0725/simpson_ap.html

You have to at least admire this woman's ingenuity. She called or wrote companies and said she was Jessica Simpson's assistant and that Jessica *really* liked their stuff. These companies then sent her upwards of $12,000 worth of stuff.

But I don't know which is squickier - that the companies sent her this stuff or that she figured that they would. Free publicity is a wonderful thing, but wouldn't you at least try and contact the celebrity (and I use the term loosely) through "official" channels so that you don't end up looking like publicity hungry posers when it comes out that you sent it to some trailer park trash who *said* she was connected to said "celebrity"?

Maybe that's just me, though...

New Snarkiness

After an absence of a month... Snarkywood is back.

*grin*

http://www.snarkywood.com/

So You Think You Can Dance

I wasn't going to watch this... I honestly wasn't. But I had to watch the results show for Canadian Idol and this came on right after that and I couldn't find the remote and even though the tv is... oh... 5 feet away from me I was just too lazy to get up and change the channel manually, so ... here we are.

It was actually kind of interesting. The breakdancing was amazing. I'm in love with Carrie Ann Inaba - she's gorgeous. . She was the choreographer for this show and she was one of the judges on "Dancing With the Stars". (Yes, yes, I watched that too... )

The absolute funniest guy was a ballet dancer who studies at Julliard. He danced in these freakin' bike shorts with the ballet codpiece and a short shirt totally open to show off his entirely hairless chest. He was a very, very good dancer. Except, at the end... what's this?!?! It's a freakin' rhythmic gymastics ribbon!! OMG, NO!! Put down the ribbon!! Anthony, Anthony, Anthony!!

But they put him through to the next bit... only to cut him at the end of the day. The judge said "We're casting a show and I need my boy dancers to be strong." (Code-breaking: You're not butch enough!!) Anthony, of course, was devastated. "Are you saying I don't dance masculine enough? Are you saying that this," - proceeds to vogue - "isn't masculine?!?"

And then he was in tears. "I've never been told that I don't dance masculine enough." And *my* thought was "Oh, honey... if no one ever told you that you don't dance masculine enough, then they were just trying to spare your oh-so-close-to-the-surface-emotions. You are nowhere NEAR butch."

Poor kid... but it was funny *grin*

Please...

Is there anything sexier, in the world, than hearing a woman say "Please"?

In the right tone of voice, I will admit, you say "please" to me and you can have whatever the hell you want...

I think I'm easy...

Tunnelling to nowhere

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/21/border.tunnel/index.html

So you spend 8 months digging a tunnel over a football field long. You reinforce it with rebar and concrete. You put light and ventilation in. It's a business venture - you're gonna smuggle drugs *under* the border.

The day that you finish the tunnel, you pop the bubbly, you slap around a few high-fives... and end up in handcuffs cause the cops were watching you THE WHOLE TIME!! They put CAMERAS IN YOUR TUNNEL TO WATCH YOU!!

I have to admit to laughing my ass off when this story came down - much the same way, I'm sure, that the cops, FBI and whoever else in law enforcement was involved, laughed at these poor slobs for probably 6 or 7 months.

"Hey dude!! We're so brilliant!" says Doofus #1. "Tunneling *under* the border!"
Doofus #2 says, "Oh yeah... no one will be suspicious of all the cement, wood, rebar, and shovels we're buying. Those cops are so stupid!"

You have to know that the other guys in prison are going to laugh hysterically at them and make their lives hell... which, really, is no more than they deserve. *grin*

The Next Generation

I am gay. My boy is not. But we talk about my being gay, what it's like to be gay, issues that affect the gay community. He's really rather a thoughtful and insightful kid.

When he was 13 or so, we had a birthday party for him and he, about 5 of his friends and I sat around playing cards. Around about this time, they bunch of them had gone online and become "ordained" by some church - you know the ones. You used to be able to send away to be ordained by cutting out something on the back page of a comic book and sending it in. Same idea only more high tech.

Anyway, we were sitting and playing cards and the boys all said "Hey! If you want to get married, *I* can marry you." And they started making plans for who was going to perform the ceremony. Until one of them piped up and said to my boy "Dude, the problem isn't the ceremony, it's the license. She can't get one yet."

I thought this was fascinating. Not only was there no question in their minds that I would be able to get married some day, it wasn't a big deal for them. They didn't see the difference between my getting married or any one of their parental units getting married.

And I think that's true of mostly anyone under the age of about 30. Most of the resistance to same-sex marriage, or acceptance of gay relationships in general, comes from those 50. So, sad as it is to say, I think that in the next 30 or 40 years gay and lesbian relationships will become far more widely accepted... even, dare we hope, disregarded as a non-issue.

Those who've come before me have made tremendous strides and gained tremendous ground. I have a friend who's 50 who never thought that she would see legalized same sex marriage in her lifetime. Perhaps also in her lifetime, we'll see the rest of the world catch up to us to the point where I'll be able to walk down any street at any time holding my wife's hand and not have to worry about getting beat up.

Why are people so stupid??

My roommate just got off the phone with her ex-husband, father of her 18-and-a-half year old son - the son who has been planning for over a month to move out of here into his own place on August 1.

This Self-Centered, Uninvolved Man (or SCUM) lives in a city 2 hours away from here, near where he grew up. He moved away from here when The Son was 6 and has had really limited contact with him since. If he called to talk to The Son once every 2 months, he was doing well. And The Son got to see him... maybe 3, maybe 4 times a year.

SCUM has a bunch of "emotional problems" - mostly to do with his upbringing, abusive and alcoholic. He is, himself, an abuser. He never touched The Son, though. I would have beaten the shit out of him for that. Fortunately he was basically out of The Son's life, for the most part, before he could do too much damage. *I* think we did a bang up job raising this kid. He's smart, polite (for the most part), funnier than hell (he get's his sense of humour from me), he's fairly disciplined, is a not bad worker...

So, here comes the shocker - SCUM doesn't know that The Son is moving out... because he hasn't talked to him in 2 months. SCUM also hasn't told The Son that's he's dating 2 women. He's dating a 19-year-old (20 next month, if you please) who has a 2 year old son. And he's dating a woman his own age who just went through a divorce. Yup... he knows how to pick 'em, let me tell you. A *girl* less than half his age and a woman who doesn't currently know which way is up. But, in both cases, he gets to pretend to be a knight in shining armour, rescuing these women from the detritus of their lives.

I shake my head and wonder at the stupidity of people... he's not the first man (or woman) to do this and he sure won't be the last. Maybe this is why I don't date. I don't want anyone trying to rescue me when I don't need rescuing...

Summer sickness

The absolute BEST thing in the world is to have a head cold that travels down to your chest causing you to cough up great green gobs of goo during the hottest July on record so you can't tell if you're hot and restless because it's hot outside or because you're hot inside...

whew....I feel better now. Well, I don't really. I still feel like a bucket of warmed over poo.

I've known that this was coming for a few days. I could feel my throat tickle and thought: "Didn't I just get over one of these???" That one was back in May when I was ripping ivy off my wall and breathed in a whole bunch of plant spore things. At least that's what I'm blaming it on. It can't be because I smoke. That would just be silly.

Anyway, you know how when you're sick you just want to curl up on the couch with a nice hot cup of Neo Citron, some hot soup or some toast and jam, your laptop, a remote control and someone to fuss over you and *bring* you Neo Citron and hot soup or toast and jam? My roommate does her best. She nags at me to take tylenol and anti-biotics and she makes me Neo Citron and soup. But she's not well herself so I feel guilty when I get sick that I'm putting her out of her way to take care of me. But I *like* being took care of. But she's sick. But I *want* someone to fuss. But she doesn't get around well. Hence the guilt.

I don't get sick very often... at least not so that it lays me up for days on end. And that's a good thing. But when I do, I'm almost as bad as a guy for whining. *grin* Everyone is glad when I start feeling better *grin*

In the world...

I confess, I'm a news junkie. I check 4 or 5 different news sites or online newspapers a day. I feel incredibly disconnected from the world if I don't get to check them every day.

This week has been incredibly full: the bombing in London, the Karl Rove scandal, the shuttle re-launch, the missing Idaho girl who was found although her brother wasn't, Hurricane Dennis, Sandra Day O'Connor retiring, and Chief Justice Renquist now in the hospital...

Speaking of hospitals!! ohmigod! Did you hear that Brad Pitt is in the hospital? ohmigod, like, I hope he's ok!! They say it's just, like, you know, the flu, but whatever! He was just in Africa with Angelina picking up their new baby, although they say it's not "their" baby because they're just good friends and all, but still, why would he go all the way to Africa to help her get her baby, I mean, she probably has other friends to help her do that, right, and they're "just friends" afterall. And I wonder what Jennifer thinks about all this! I did hear that *she* collapsed on the set of *her* new movie apparently because she was overcome by all the stories about Brangelina, although they said it was heat stroke, but you know you can't believe anything they say!

And then there's Tom and Katie who... oh forget it. There's just nothing to say about those two. I don't believe it for a minute. Tom is getting loopier by the minute, though. His publicist should tell him to just keep his mouth shut and quit jumping on the furniture.

The point of all this? I'm not sure really. Perhaps it's just that real news, news that can actually affect your life, the life of your family and the well-being of your country so often gets buried by the useless minutae of "celebrities", *their* lives and who *they're* dating. Really, who cares??

I will, however, be buying my "People" magazine this week...

Lesbian drama

You've all heard about it... I don't know if you've ever experienced it. Well, last night a got a HUGE dose of it...

I went out with the previously mentioned gay-friend-who-won't-date-me... let's call her Jodie.

So Jodie and I went out to hear a band that she used to play in. We got there, grabbed our beers, and immediately ran into the partner of one of the girls in the band (let's call her .... Debbie). She starts chatting with Jodie. She basically ignores me except to ask me a question and stare at my eyes for just that bit too long that makes it uncomfortable.

Then, after a while, another friend of Jodie's shows up (let's call her Bonnie) and starts chitchatting with both of them. I've never met her before, so she's not talking much to me...

So then, we decide that since the band isn't going to be on for a bit, we'll go to another bar and play pool. We got bored there and went to another bar. Then we went back to the first bar, then back to the second bar, then back to the third bar. Then we went to a diner for some breakfast, and then we went got home at 5:30

The WHOLE time, and we're talking almost 8 hours, Debbie is glued to Jodie. I mean, Jodie can't turn around without Debbie being there. And if Debbie wasn't glued there, Bonnie was. Debbie kept giving me odd looks, and Bonnie was rather stand-offish.

I found out later that:

1) Bonnie told Jodie that she had a crush on her and would like to date her. Jodie said "Gosh, I think we'd be better as friends." But in a nice way. Bonnie, btw, is extremely closeted.

2) Debbie has a partner that she's had for 8 1/2 years and they just had a baby together who is now 8 months old.

3) Debbie and Bonnie had a one night fling about a month ago.

4) Debbie is extremely jealous and has been basically stalking Bonnie, sitting outside her house, following her around and the like.

Conclusion: Bonnie was stand-offish with me because she figures that I'm sleeping with Jodie and is jealous.

Debbie kept staring at me because she was trying to figure out if I was sleeping with Jodie, which, if I was, meant that she didn't have to worry about Jodie hooking up with *her* Bonnie.

Debbie stuck close to Jodie all night because she didn't want Jodie to have the chance of moving in on *her* Bonnie.

Jodie kept trying to keep close to me to keep the other two away from her if only for a few minutes...

Major Conclusion: Women are screwed up and crazy!!

Love, Sweet Love

I'm a lesbian. A gay woman. I've been out to some friends for 10 years, I've been out to my family for 5. I've had 2 relationships, both long distance. The first one, well, we just call her "The Texas Psycho". The second one was my first true love. That one ended 4 years ago, and I haven't had a relationship since.

Partly because I vowed never again to get involved in a long distance relationship. Partly because I didn't know a whole lot of lesbians "in person". Over the last few years, I've gotten to know a lot more women, but nobody that really "lit my fire".

Now, however... I fell for a girl. She's terrific - cute as hell, smart, funny, talented, sweet, compassionate. She's mature, she's well-adjusted. She doesn't drink or do drugs. So, I hear you say, what's the problem?

The problem is, she's not romantically interested in me. I'm her best friend, but..... that's it.

I keep asking myself "why"? "What's wrong with me?" And then I have these bizarre little dialogues in my head, scenarios where she realizes that "Gee! Yes! I see it now! You're the one I should be with!!"

I want to keep her for my friend. I really like spending time with her - she's brought a whole lot of new experiences to my life.

But damn, it's going to hurt like hell when she finds someone to date...

Being Brave

So, the other day I went to this "Literary Night". It was four authors doing readings from their novels - gay or lesbian themed works. There were 2 gay men, 1 lesbian and 1 straight woman who writes gay stories.

I wasn't overly keen on the last woman because A) I didn't like the writing much and B) I'm just not into reading about men, period. *grin*. But it was well-written stuff.

Then, towards the end, the MC, who happens to be a very good friend of mine, announced that there was an "open mic" portion of the night. First, a little background. My friend is a big promoter, any way she can, of lesbian fiction. She tries to set up events for whatever authors happen to show up in town. However, there's a woman here in town who's the "established literary guru" and she's starting to resent my friend trying to "muscle in on her turf".

The ELG (established literary guru) may, at one time, have been a guru. However right now, she's cruising on reputation, and that's going downhill quickly. She always looks greasy, she's inappropriately dressed, and she has this annoying Elmer Fudd voice - when she speaks, I have a hard time controlling my laughter. She fancies herself an author and is incredibly proud of the fact that she got a poem published in a magazine that NOBODY has ever heard of.

Ok, so, back to the "Literary Night"... my friend announces the "open mic" which, since nobody knew about it, consisted of ELG reading a bad poem and another woman reading 2 poems that were equally as bad. So, basically, it was her own "vanity press" thing. During the break, I was joking with my friend and said "Wouldn't it piss her off if *I* read something." My friend's eyes lit up and said "You wanna?"

Before I could think too much about it, I said yes. I don't know what possessed me, I honestly don't. I'm usually not that brave. I think maybe because I *didn't* have a whole lot of time to think about it. I just said "yes" and knew I was going to have to do it in 15 minutes.

And then I started to panic. A little. I mean, I haven't spoken in public since I read stuff in church and that was, like, 20 years ago. And I was reading something that I wrote. Were they going to like it? Would they laugh in the right spots? I mean, *I* thought parts of it were funny, but would anyone else?

I got introduced, I walked up to the podium... and the nerves kicked in. My voice started to shake, my heart started to pound. I'm pretty sure that you could see my shirt moving where my heart was thumping.

But I DID it. *I* DIT IT!! I read *my* story to a group of strangers. At a gay/lesbian event. Damn, I was proud of myself. Both for reading something and for doing it in front of other members of my "community". It was an amazing feeling.

*grin*

Martha Stewart I ain't...

I got home about quarter after 5 from work and from somewhere came this insane idea that I should clean my house. Now... it's not a big house but I must confess that I'd let the cleaning go for a bit. Like... 3 weeks. or longer. I can't really remember , that's how long it's been.

Anyway, so I start in the front hall, sweep, mop, put away every scrap of paper that is lingering about from those stupid freakin' flyers they leave in my mailbox every week. Wash the mats and dump everything that I don't currently have a plan for on the dining room table.

Then I straighten up the living room, searching and destroying every piece of garbage hiding under, in, or around the couches. Anything that I don't currently have a plan for? On the dining room table.

It's now 7.

On to the kitchen! Where I do all the accumulated dishes (don't ask. Suffice to say I was extremely lazy this weekend.), then sweep and mop THAT floor, sweeping all the dirt into, you guessed it, the dining room.

Now, the dumping the ground has to be done. I carry the garbage bag around with me and throw anything that I figure won't be missed into it. Whatever's left gets sorted into piles and put, pretty much where they're supposed to go. I vaccuum all the way through the downstairs and VIOLA! I'm done! It's 9pm.

You know, if I cleaned, like, once a week, it'd probably only take an hour or less. But nooooooooooooooo! I have to leave it until I can't stand it anymore and then fix it all in one fell swoop.

On second thought, that sounds pretty much like my entire life...

Work, Work, Work...

Ok, I work, on contract, as a computer geek. I don’t *want* to be on contract. In fact, I hate being on contract. I hate the uncertainty; I hate having no benefits at all; I hate the fact that I could be fired on a whim with two weeks notice. Although I suppose that’s true on any job.

I like my job. I’m good at my job. I like the people that I work with and I like the challenges that are everywhere in this company.

What really pisses me off is Madam Cranky over here in the corner. Our group was actually outsourced from one company to another. It’s been a long transition, but everyone finally seems to be settling in. Except Madame Cranky.

She doesn’t like her job. She didn’t interview for this job. How can they put her in this job when she has no training. Her boss hates her. She hates her boss. Why should she have to do a job description? Why should she have to do training to be backup for other people on her team? She’s not technical. Where did she mislead everyone that she wanted to do this job?

SHUT THE F*&^ UP!!!

Your old job is GONE! Get over it! Things will never, ever be the same again!! Do they pay you every two weeks? Do you have money for your mortgage? Do you have benefits? If you don’t like it – THEN QUIT!! Find something stupid and mindless that you DO like to do and LEAVE!!

(Oh, I can’t do that! I have 20 years in with this company… what if they’ll give me a package?)
You’ve been waiting for a package for 2YEARS! They’re not going to give you one! So get over it and quit!! You want to keep this job? Suck it up! The rules have changed and this isn’t Kansas anymore. Adapt or die! You must now follow THEIR rules – you must do what THEY say! Don’t like it? Quit. Gonna stay? SHUT UP!!

Gone With The Wind

I've been a bad, bad film buff - I've never seen GWTW all the way through. I've seen bits and pieces here and there and, of course, I know all the famous lines. But I've never gotten around to seeing it in it's entirety - until tonight.

And I'm about to be a bad, bad film buff again - I do not get the appeal. At all. It's long and drawn out and boring. Scarlett is a self-centered bitch; Rhett is an abusive rapist; Ashley is a wimp; Melanie is halfway decent... but Vivien Leigh has incredible eyes.

It reminds me of Wuthering Heights which I absolutely detested. I tried, from the time I was 12 to read that stupid thing and never managed it until I was 17 and HAD to read it for school. I plowed through the horrid thing, detesting it at every page turn. I wrote an essay about how much I detested it. Of course, it was one of my teacher's favourite books of all time. *grin*. I feel the same way about Jane Eyre. I have yet to get through it and I've been trying for 20 years.

It's the whole... strong man's man who keeps his whiny woman in line. And she has to play all these stupid "girl" games - "Oh poor helpless me!! Save me! Fix it! Save me you big strong man, you!"

Maybe that was the depiction of the time... but it still sucks.

Live 8 Live

Ok, so... it was pretty cool. There was lots of great music, lots of different bands. I watched live from London, Philidelphia, Toronto (not really Toronto - it was Barrie which isn't that far away, but I digress).

It was wonderful, it was touching... and it's not going to accomplish a damn thing. Perhaps I'm overly cynical (although in this case I doubt it) but signing the Live 8 petition, watching the concerts, listening to the stories, watching the heart-rending films is going to do exactly NOTHING to convince the G8 to send more money to the "starving people in Africa". If it works for THEM, they'll send money... if it doesn't, they won't. It's not like Bush cares. And Tony Blair is so far up his butt it's not funny. Paul Martin might vote for it - god knows Canada's relationship with Bush sucks already so what's one more?

On another note: I despair of a generation a representative of which said today, "Stevie Wonder? Wasn't he a one-hit wonder?"