2003-12-31 
 

resolutions

So foolish to write them down and have people watching over my shoulder, but here goes.

I will start to "like least" instead of "hating most".
I will acknowledge those less fortunate than myself instead of averting my eyes.
I will continue to realize that everything in life is a choice, not a preordained burden.
I will, at some undetermined point this year, quit cigarettes.

Note to the world. Anyone asking me about the last resolution should know I will immediately spark up after you ask me just to spite you. Leave me alone about it, okay? But if I ask to suck on your fingers, you'll know why.

Labels: dose of mikey

* posted by me at 7:44 PM

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2003-12-27 
 

flotsam and jetsam

Some random links G and I stumbled upon while beachcombing. NB: Trying to watch some of these via dialup may be painful. Also, please note the ratings after each link. (for the sake of m & em and anyone else out there with little ones)

the end of the world
rated r for language

memories of what college might've been like
rated pg for general college shenanigans and the ability of the song to get stuck in your head forever and a day

a little noël fun
rated g for m & em - wanted something for you two to play with!

meaty friends
rated g for omnivores, pg13 for vegetarians

wtf?
rated pg13 for general stupidity and gutter humor, but if you can read whichever scandinavian language that is, do tell me how to get the ping pong ball further from the guys butt

Labels: linkage

* posted by me at 6:17 PM

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2003-12-25 
 

christmas on henry street

Labels: 1000 words

* posted by me at 8:29 PM

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2003-12-24 
 

eve

In an ironic twist, the antibiotics they gave me to combat the yuck on my back seem to have lowered my resistance to the head cold that's been going around. I'm sick. To top it off the antibiotics are making me feel queasy. I don't know how G does it, having to take 7 different meds each day...and one of those is a shot! He's much more of a trooper than I am.

It's times like this, when I'm getting all pitiful because my heads stuffed up, that I look over at him taking care of me and listening to my whines and know that he's truly in love with me. Who else would put up with my cranky self?

(That being said, kudos to mom, dad and dude who put up with me for the first two decades of my life and still do.)

Labels: dose of mikey, g, medical mystery

* posted by me at 7:48 PM

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2003-12-23 
 

sauerkraut kitchen

G's making a yummy traditional Christmas Eve Eve meal. Sauerkraut and Bratwurst with boiled potatoes. Yummy!

In other news - here's one of the pix from our new camera.

Labels: dose of mikey, g

* posted by me at 9:03 PM

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2003-12-21 
 

the cloak holders

G's been reading to me about a recent NYT poll that shows that we, as gay men, are still very much second class citizens, and that most people wish we'd just go away.

"The latest New York Times/CBS News poll also found unease about homosexual relations in general, making the issue a potentially divisive one in the 2004 election."

We're talking civil unions here too. While opinions on that issue are more evenly split, slightly over half the respondents felt these unions were somehow threatening to their way of life. Why?

"I want my children to grow up and be normal people like me and my father and my grandfather was," said Ziad Nimri, 41, a salesman and a Democrat who lives in Spokane, Wash. "I don't want my children to start getting ideas. They see it's out in the open and you see men kissing men on television these days."

Mr. Nimri said he was also worried that if gays were allowed to marry, they would get other rights too, like tax benefits. "Because they're a minority, they're going to start actually giving them more privileges than normal people would have," he said. "Minorities always tend to get more than your average person does."

Let me be clear here. I don't want any special rights. I want the same rights that anyone else gets when choosing a life partner.

The fact that it was 1967 before the Supreme Court struck down the anti-miscegenation laws doesn't give me too much hope right now. Back then (all of 36 years ago), they decided that the freedom to marry whom one chooses is one of the "vital personal rights" protected under the 14th Amendment. That worked for interracial couples, but the truth is that many people don't think we gays belong with the persons mentioned in Section 1 of that amendment. In fact, if it weren't for the 15th Amendment, some people would still argue that any races other than Caucasion were inferior. That's my point. If it took nearly a century for the courts to make the logical leap from the amendment to actually supporting equal treatment, how long will it take before gays get the chance? We don't even have an amendment granting us any rights, let alone special ones.

Marriage can be seen as both a religious union and a civil one. If it's only the former, then there should be no civil liberties granted to any couple joined by the church. If it is truly also the latter, then there should be no discrimination based upon the gender one chooses to partner with. The only stricture should be that the parntership is between two consenting adults.

Period. End of story.

BTW, anyone who isn't outraged by the fact that gays are still considered morally inferior folk and yet thinks of me as a friend, I have only this to say. "Hey Saul, have fun holding those cloaks!"

Labels: dose of mikey, g, linkage, politics, the gay

* posted by me at 7:46 PM

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2003-12-20 
 

mike almighty

Stayed relatively immobile last night due to shoulder sickness. Got nicely stoned and watched Bruce Almighty....a little preachy, but amusing none-the-less.

The double antibiotics are making me a bit queasier than I'd like, but the hole in my back seems to have lost its angry red edges and the swelling's gone down.

More news at 11.

Labels: dose of mikey, medical mystery

* posted by me at 3:52 PM

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2003-12-19 
 

hole in me

Had the doctor lop off an infected yuck from my shoulder and I'm in PAIN. OK, not pain so much as persistant soreness. I want drugs to make it go away.

Whine, Whine, Whine and Happy Holidays! :)

Labels: dose of mikey, medical mystery

* posted by me at 11:02 PM

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2003-12-17 
 

slogging

After a nice dinner with Lena, the Shephard and I hung out talking and now it's late. Totally worth it though, I miss chatting with him since he always posits such interesting questions.

I noticed that I hadn't posted since Saturday and I think that it'll be another week of slow blogging. The family drama back home blindsided me a bit as I went into the weekend and left me thinking too much on it instead of concentrating on the family visit that was happening on Sunday...or relaxing. Ug. Finally responded on Monday, but the whole affair left me with a rather sour taste in my mouth that I haven't been able to quite wash out yet. Usually my San Franciscan status protects me from the slings and arrows, but not this time. Don't know how Dude does it being back there all the time!

In happier news: the visit of G's parents went quite well. I think they enjoyed themselves and feel a bit more comfortable about us living in the big city now that they've seen our neighborhood and found it to be a little less threatening than they may've assumed. (and I'm talking purely about the big city aspect here, not the whole gay thing - I think they were afraid to find the grey buildings and dirt they remember from downtown in the 80's) I mean who wouldn't be charmed by all these Victorians? They also gave us a super gift of a digital camera. Pictures to be posted soon, but all day meetings over the next two days are making me sleepy just thinking about them so I'm off to bed.

Cryptic quote of the day overheard in the elevator: "Even the Pillsbury Doughboy needs some new shoes now and again."

ETA: Tagging this over five years later and I know very well that Lena is Victoria, but can't figure out who the Shephard would be...but his/her name intrigues me. Also, unsure about the drama mentioned. I assume it has to do with the split in our family tree, but I can't remember the particulars. Unfortunately, there's been a few too many incidents over the years for me to esaily nail this particular one down.

Labels: dose of mikey, g, looking eastward, seen and heard

* posted by me at 2:45 AM

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2003-12-13 
 

truth

Hard leaving the coziness of lieing down, but I need to get this down.

I will hold to my personal truth. That is the most and the best that I can do.

Labels: dose of mikey, spirit

* posted by me at 9:32 AM

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2003-12-11 
 

snow globe

Shortly before he left for Vegas on one of his many trips, V asked me what he should bring back. I asked for something that was typically Vegas yet magical, kitschy yet classic, basically cool yet hot, and - of course - romantic.

He returned with a musical snow globe from the Mirage that has pastel colored palm trees in the middle of a blizzard when you shake it. It plays a nice rendition of Edelweiss and features a simple wooden base. I thought I was being cute asking for a bundle of contradictions, yet - for reasons too long to go into here - it met all my requirements. Ten years later it still sits on top of my bookshelf reminding me that impossible is just a word people use when they choose to give up trying.

Labels: dose of mikey, memory lane

* posted by me at 2:12 AM

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2003-12-08 
 

hands

Labels: 1000 words

* posted by me at 11:41 PM

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2003-12-07 
 

scary sequel


As you may've heard - if you're a pop culture junky like myself - 32 Candles is due to come out next October. A sequel to one of my all time faves, 16 Candles, I have some very mixed feelings.

First and foremost, it's made for TV which is a format sure to ruin almost anything. Ever watch one of those made for TV movies when they finally come out on DVD? There's often a sudden revelation/calamity scene followed by a not so smooth cut which leads to five seconds earlier in the same sudden revelation/calamity scene. It's like a record skipping. Alternatively, the same not so smooth cut can also lead into a recap of the previous 15 minutes of script. That's a bit like a CD skipping. Both of these skips are due to the television producer/editor deciding that the public is too stupid to remember what was just happening before they ran to the kitchen for some pretzels and another beer.

On the other hand, both Molly Ringwald and A.M. Hall have both supposedly signed on to the project. That should make viewing this potential disaster almost worthwhile. (Barring death, there's no good reason to have someone else playing an original cast member in a sequel. Write them out or don't write the sequel.)

Nobody else has signed on. I'll be very sad if Michael Schoeffling doesn't come out of retirement for this one. I'm not sure I could take a sequel without Jake. "Jake!" <--- from under a glass table top

(SPOILER ALERT) Preliminary info on plot tells of a potential romance between Sam and Farmer Ted as Sam gets over what could've been with Jake. (In this scenario, she followed him to college but something went wrong along the way or something didn't quite work out, because that's the way things happen in real life. Did I mention that Ted's an internet multimillionaire? Natch. That's actually pretty real life too.)

And there's the rub. 16 Candles, as well as it managed to echo the real world, was not real life. It was a modern fairy tale that gave everybody the right to hope for something better. And when fairy tales say happily ever after, they ought to mean it.

My own preference for a plot, would have Sam and Jake experiencing some crisis in their new parenthood, which most of my generation would appreciate. Meanwhile, in a major subplot, Ted -who did make a bundle on the internet- finds his princess. Or prince.

Oh ok, as gay as I am, that wouldn't seem right...although, the only thing that would make Sam and Jake not being together a permissible plot, would be if he had come out of the closet in college. Yum! I'd buy that wholesale! (why am I suddenly inspired to create some fanfic? probably the chance to write the script myself before someone else has the chance to ruin it.)

Anyway. Whatever happens, I'll be sitting there glued to the tube with most folks of my generation for whom the original is now a classic. We'll all be expecting to be completely horrified, but somewhere deep inside of each of us there'll be a teenager who's hoping that sometimes fairy tales can still come true.

Labels: dose of mikey, random review

* posted by me at 2:23 AM

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2003-12-05 
 

wet


G helped me deliver meals this eve which was quite kind of him since it meant braving rush hour traffic in the rain which he did with no complaints, something I admire about him.

I'm usually different. It was coming down pretty hard...for SF...and I managed to get rather wet running back and forth from car to apartment with the hot plastic trays containing the night's meals. Any other situation would've had me whining. I am a princess after all.

Somehow being faced with a man whose whole apartment's smaller than my bedroom, a man who couldn't walk and a man who sincerely apologized for me having to be out in the rain...somehow that made me rejoice in the fact that I could afford to walk around in the rain after work and get wet.

Labels: dose of mikey, g

* posted by me at 1:19 AM

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2003-12-03 
 

p.t. update


Every morning at work, C asks me for the P.T. update. (She knows I'm doing the public transportation trip and finds it amusing to hear whether or not I'm over it yet.) Three whole days and I'm still doing o.k. The drunk man yesterday morning on the platform was a wee bit annoying, but I've read half of The Cheese Monkeys already. I am enjoying that little perk immensely.

Labels: dose of mikey, san francisco

* posted by me at 9:56 PM

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2003-12-01 
 

just another muni monday


Going back to work after four days off in a row was HARD. Since November is officially over, my parking pass expired and I've decided to try the public transit option for the month to save some money and let G use the car during the day to get around. So far so good. I admit to some trepidation over doing this since Muni used to be the bane of my existence with the constant holdups underground and erratic bus schedule. Looking on the positive side, I now have at least 20 minutes each way to lose myself in a book. Since I don't get to read so much anymore, this may be enough of a treat to make it worthwhile.

I'm curious to find out if I can stay positive for an entire month...especially during the extra crowded holiday season.

Labels: dose of mikey, san francisco

* posted by me at 10:14 PM

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