shirts and skins
i'm looking forward to this long weekend because i'm enjoying that honeymoon period of becoming closer friends with some folks over brunches and down time and walking around a deserted town with some of the obnoxious people away for labor day. i also seem to have found myself on the mailing lists for the gay football team and the gay soccer team, and both are having practices outdoors on sunday. any excuse to yell "shirts and skins!"
and speaking of skin, i'm sitting shirtless in my south-facing apartment and looking into the north-facing apartment of some guy who's also shirtless, and we're kind of checking each other out through our respective burglar barred windows. he's hot. this could be interesting. more later. god i love the east village. and i love you.
posted August 31, 2001 in delivery, sexsearches too interesting to ignore:
- "at night at a late hour i have asked stars the name of my soul"
- "and whose immortal fingers did imprint that heavenly path with many a curious d"
- "the nature of things is completely exhausted in polarity and intensification"
mec
some things on the mind today:
new design on the homepage. unless people write me and threaten to stop visiting, i'll be extending it to the rest of the site in bits and pieces.
if you have my site in your favorites somewhere (and why the hell wouldn't you?), check it out: i finally learned how to create an icon there. a nicer-looking one will be there soon.
can i be a bitch for a sec? (of course you can.) enough aaliyah videos already. not because i wasn't saddened by it or didn't care that someone so young lost her life just as she was starting a really interesting career, but because seeing her dancing and singing all over mtv, bet, mtv2, and muchmusic is starting to creep me out.
rereading the word "sec" makes me think of "mec," which i think is the best, sexiest word for the male persuasion in any language i've heard so far. the one night that i was bored in paris, i signed onto gay.com as american soccer mec or something like that and met the most stunningly handsome, yet boring in bed, french boy.
today on the ole stationary bicycle i was reading the two new york times business sections, domestic and world, and learned that pfizer, maker of viagra and zoloft, also is the second largest manufacturer of chewing gum (dentyne, bubbalicious, trident, and certs). the mind reels. then about singtel getting approval to acquire australia's major telecommunications company. that article was boring, but it got me imagining: picture it, the telecommunications industry brainstorms how to continue to build revenue when everyone has their phone and cell phone and fax already. all of the telecommunications companies, like verizon and sprint, use thousands of consultants, so they start slowing down projects (we need to get buy-in from our steering committee, which doesn't meet until the end of the month), acting less efficient (we can't discuss that now because kathleen from marketing and bill's group isn't here, so let's talk about it offline on a conference call), and forcing people to not only have lots of meetings, but also constantly be following up via phone calls, conference calls, voicemails, etc. they eat the cost of this initially since it's billed back to their projects, but they're also introducing a new way of working that grinds to a halt without constant, persistent telecommunication, that will endure and proliferate with all of that consultancy's other work. they work this way with all of their clients across industries, so it seeps into the workplace and eventually the nature of work revolves around communication (meetings and calls and voicemails and emails) rather than execution (getting something the fuck done on your own). then a cute mec walked by and i tabled my conspiracy theory.
the village voice says this in my horoscope: . . . if we don't have enough of the normal, healthy kind of iodine in our bodies, we absorb radioactive iodine, which has entered the food chain through nuclear test explosions conducted in the atmosphere. similarly, unless we fill ourselves up with transformative, soulful stories, we're more susceptible to sopping up poisonous, degenerative narratives. this is always true, but it's especially apropos for you now, gemini. why? because you're erecting new structures in your psyche, and you need the very best building materials. for some reason this touched a nerve, in the same way that i would once be told to finish eating something so that i could grow up to be big and strong and wonder inside, what if i don't turn out big and strong?
from moon palace: "a conversation is like having a catch with someone. a good partner tosses the ball directly into your glove, making it almost impossible for you to miss it; when he is on the receiving end, he catches everything sent his way, even the most errant and incompetent throws. that's what kitty did. she kept lobbing the ball straight into the pocket of my glove, and when i threw the ball back to her, she hauled in everything that was even remotely in her area: jumping up to spear balls that soared above her head, diving nimbly to her left or right, charging in to make tumbling, shoestring catches. more than that, her skill was such that she always made me feel that i had made those bad throws on purpose, as if my only object had been to make the game more amusing. she made me seem better than i was, and that strengthened my confidence, which in turn helped to make my throws less difficult for her to handle."
later: "without saying a word, she slid up behind me, put her arms around my waist, and leaned her head against my back ... i took hold of her hands, trying not to tremble as i felt the smoothness of her skin. 'i think she's got me already,' i said. there was a slight pause, and then kitty tightened her grip around my waist. 'you do like me a little bit, don't you?'"
posted August 28, 2001 in delivery, print, sexradiohead @ liberty state park
thursday night, finally i get to stay the fuck in my own house all night and purge my head of the last two weeks' goings on. did i tell you that about three weeks ago, i was hailing a cab on avenue a, walking half-backwards, and walked into a parking meter? the fucker actually kind of hurt me, and i can still feel it when i take deep breaths. of course, all of my friends laugh and think that i was actually cruising a boy instead of hailing a cab. worked out briefly (i bitch and moan about my lack of energy, and maurice says, "eat tuna fish for lunch. it's my workout secret."), then had one of those nights where you survey the expansive east village culinary landscape and think "all i wanna eat is ice cream." then get thai food and read cookbooks and listen to new secret radiohead tracks from the world wide internet. read the secret, anonymous blogs of friends, remember meeting nice guys ultrasparky and blogstalker two weeks ago at barracuda with jonno and the minx.
also last week i saw the radiohead concert. we left new york at 4pm (doors opened 6pm, concert started 8pm, according to the tickets), arrive in scuzzy liberty state park in jersey city, and walk to the front of the line, ahead of an hour's worth of line. somehow nobody says anything, maybe because my friends are older, maybe because we're a group of homos, maybe because we're a group of semi-studly homos, but in any case, the ticket guys lift up the ribbon and we're first in line, and first through the security check (no blankets [what the fuck?], no food, no bottles, but somehow we get all these things through), and seven heads from the stage. very cool. i remember once being at a rock concert once where i thought to myself "it's so loud i wonder if it could make my jeans unravel." i felt things so strongly then. i thought about dying for things and being involved in things that would never end and anguish, and what now? then i proceed to get stoned. very stoned. drug stories are kinda tedious if you aren't getting to do them, so i'll spare ye, but basically by the time beta band got on stage, the heat and the crowd and the excitement got to me and i had to have a moment, crouching, praying that i didn't pass out or blow chunks. the last time i felt like this was when i took my bike on the caltrain and arrived in san francisco for the first time, age 19, and proceeded to bike from the station to the castro with no food or water in me in august at noon. i walked into a juice bar and barely ordered something before i made an embarrassment of myself right in the middle of my supposed pilgrimage to mecca. hopefully i can have an experience like this when i go back there in two weeks. just kidding.
radiohead was great, not as great as i'd made it out to be in my head, but getting to hear the music coming out of mouths and instruments instead of loudspeakers (because we were that close) was very cool, and making eye contact with thom and turning around and seeing the throngs of people singing along, and at that chemically-imbalanced time all the corners in my world started to round themselves, and i hope that seeing the beatles was like this back in the day. fog and worrywart are up on my mp3 page nowthey're the kind of songs that get in my head to the point that i walk out of my apartment, down 5th street just kind of vocalizing the sounds without knowing the words.
post new desktops to that section that nobody looks at, post new mp3s that i talked about earlier, i think that covers everything. trying to think of something fun and inexpensive to do tomorrow night, reading moon palace and at that part where effing has just buried his buddy in the desert, supposed to also be reading the house of mirth, things fall apart, and light in august, too much too much.
oh my GOD i cant believe its almost time for that and he said its this... whatever.i just wanted to pretend i was a regular blogger for a second there. won't do it again.
still have an email to defuse from a friend that i seem to never get along well with. a lot of people have been mad at me lately, so i'm looking for an astrology chart that i can blame it on.
louis: you can't hide forever. there's a hole in the heavens and you're throbbing right behind it.posted August 23, 2001 in delivery, music, print(whispers)
i can feel you.
- rita dove, the darker face of the earth
indecisive twins
the freaks come out at 11pm at the gym, i discover today. one guy nearly breaks his neck doing a squat that's way too heavy for him to control as he's coming up. he looks around to make sure that nobody saw him bang his neck on the bar and then goes over to the calf raise machine. look at a british fag rag that lists open relationship horoscopes; gemini, big surprise, is made for 'em, according to them. not sure about that, but i vouch for the indecisive twins rolling inside.
posted August 20, 2001 in deliveryradiohead tonight!
radiohead tonight!
radiohead tonight!
radiohead tonight!
posted August 16, 2001 in musici bet that feels good
at one point during jin-roh, kei, the female lead, looks at the birds flying low over the canal and says, "i bet that feels good." a gentle line from an anime full of explosives, x-filean conversations, and tragic interpretations of little red riding hood.
bad blogging idea: posting about a playlist with no music to listen to or lyrics to read. that's like telling us how hot you are and not img src-ing a goddamn pic.
summertime. living is easy. i thought this was a straight girl blog, but jami correctly pointed out that the taint is typically not a straight girl point-of-orientation (POO).
continuing my transition to couch potato, an additional fixation: undressed (soundtrack, hyper-sexed cast, casually gay cuties) and the new nike commercials. in fact, i like undressed so much that i got undressed and when mtv said check out community at mtv.com, that's just what i did.
this is the icon i got on my mad phat profile. my next goal is to say "chickenhead" in every single chatroom and message board from here on.
i'm spending the weekend of september 8th in san francisco. are you there god? it's me, margaretall alone in the castro. peace out.
a shy and hidden bird is warbling a song
woke up late sunday, had brunch in my quiet apartment, enjoyed laying low, detoxifying myself, listening to
in the swamp in secluded recesses,
a shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
solitary, the thrush,
the hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
sings by himself a song.
song of the bleeding throat,
death's outlet song of life (for well dear brother i know,
if thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would'st surely die).
- paul hindemith, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd: arioso
and making those little code (breadcrumbs here, a de-embedded table there, an extra meta tag just in case someone ever wants to find a site that has the word "hapa" in it) adjustments that nobody but you will ever know, but that require care and love just the same. coding brings out the happiest possibilities of obsession-compulsion,
because it's one thing that you can make perfect over time,
and i got the idea driven home in me that a good website should be beautiful on the inside as well as out.
and i think it's good for readers to test this on the stuff you read online: if you're not opening up source code to read the comments and highlighting pages to read the hidden, background-colored text and mousing over the links and images to read the alt tags and titles, you could be missing out on the best sh*t. am i breaking a code of silence by saying this?
posted August 13, 2001 in delivery, musicone good lay (is all i need)
somewhere in heaven, a film was made of me entitled one good lay (is all i need). it would, on a good day, air on the independent film channel, but more likely appear in a gay film festival somewhere like toronto. in it, i play a guy who keeps finding lust in all the wrong places, like on 13th street after i drop jami off from a ghastly club in chelsea—a handsome marlboro man bikes by just as i'm remembering the marlboro man that i hooked up with on this very block. i was remembering him and well, goddamn, he pounded the sh*t outta me, so i was trying to conjure him back, but this guy rode by instead and we kinda smiled at each other, and since i had two overpriced beers in me already, i turned and kept smiling and he did too, so eventually he stopped and i stopped and played cat and mouse for a quarter of a block until we were standing in front of each other saying things like bruce. dante. gramercy. east village. wanna hang out at my place? and we were two blocks from said place when he said "i'm chickening out, i shouldn't be doing this," and poof, gone. that was before the awful semi-sex with the guy who seemed so nice before we started making out and so selfish and boring during, and then back to nice when i abruptly broke things off and said i needed to get to bed, and before the guy broke things off with me while i was probably being just as selfish and boring to him. and all of this was before i finally achieved the title of the film with some fuck buddies that got me back into my own skull. funny sometimes, when people that you have these fly-by-night experiences with help you out so much.
posted August 10, 2001 in delivery, film, sexbe careful, it's chipped right there
spent a weird day all by myself, added an extra workout day because i was so bored, chatted with joey, watched british kids dance and cook (i love how my generation is making all the networks create drum-n-bass versions of their traditional programming), headed out to a party in williamsburg. tomorrow i Just might see a mOst special frieNd from outta towN, Oh my!
had a date last night. don't know how it went, really; i think both he and i are hard to read. trying to focus on whether i had a good time or not, but i have to admit that this year has been kinda sucky when it comes to datin', matin', relatin'. not just for me, either (it's not just me, right?)the stars and the stock markets are conspiring against our social relations now. and i still think about things like sitting at lucky strike with b., my ex, and him reaching over to take my glass and say be careful, it's chipped right therelittle, caring things like that that made me fall in love over and over again but never say so to him.
what would things be like if i moved to san francisco or london?
posted August 04, 2001 in delivery