UnderAchievers Anonymous

Back in the Saddle

2011-05-31T00:52:00.000-07:00

Ah the blog. How I have missed you.

I apologize to all and to the blogosphere. My life got a bit out of control, but I am back. A little bit larger around the waist, but I am working on that.

So school really began to kick my ass. There is no other nice way to express that feeling. I decided to take three classes instead of two back in the winter semester and my life became a blur of posts, papers, and group projects. Sigh. I have very much enjoyed going to school up until recently because it was at my pace. I had taken one to two lower level courses and easily kept up with the work. Community colleges are cheap in California and everything was gravy. Then I transferred to Cal State. Even though it was more expensive, it still didn’t seem like that much of a deal. But then, the dreaded winter quarter arrived. I figured I would pursue a major in Latin American Studies and pick up a minor in Hospitality Management along the way. Why? Well, I have travel industry and restaurant experience and I figured it might be a nice and easy fit on the resume if I needed it in the future. Wow, big mistake. First off, upper level courses demand more work than lower level courses. Secondly, how dry can you make travel industry management? This is a subject I am passionate about and the course material was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Analyzing lunch and dinner statistics across markets and different parts of the food industry, P x W = X – Y + (B – C). Yikes. I have never been so bored in my life. Yeah, not happening. And all this for a minor I will be doing nothing with? Umm, no. Not happening. I eeked out 3 A’s that quarter (earning me a spot on the Dean’s List), but I vowed never again. Fast-forward to this quarter and a couple of online classes related to my major. One class is going fine, but the other was taught by this complete ***hole. Another student in the department had warned me about him, but I thought I could win him over with my sparking writing skills and superior charm. This did not happen. After the third threatening e-mail to the entire class about how he wanted his posts formatted, I had had enough. So I now have dropped down to one class for the semester, but I still cannot get the professor to return my e-mails. Good times. Starting from this summer, I have vowed to return to one or two classes per semester maximum. I will not qualify for school loans this way, but my sanity stands a good chance of returning. Being a supervisor at work has proven to be more work than I had counted on and I cannot handle a full-time job along with loads of these classes that require mucho reading and writing each week. I have now reached the point too where I am going to have to start attending some classes in person and this is hard to do with my varying schedule each week. But somehow, it will get done. All this work and all this worrying for a degree that I will likely not be using. (I need to keep reminding myself of this fact.)

In the meantime, since I had no time, the winter pounds accumulated. I am not obese, but I definitely am a bit round around the edges. I am working on that and hoping to fit back into my clothes in a few weeks.

I went to Asia in March and had a GREAT time. I took Cathay Pacific which was a great airline. The service was great and the inflight entertainment superior to anything U.S. carriers have going. I think I have gotten a bit too big to sit in the back; on future long trips, I am going to have to bite the bullet and pay for business. There’s something about being squished into a seat in an upright position that prevents me from sleeping well. Economy Plus on United worked fine for a recent Hawaii trip, but 14-16 hours necessitates more space.

Hong Kong was amazing, as always. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HK. I love being there and visiting there. It just feels like an old friend. Some about the chaos and the mix of old and new that makes me love it there. The other nice thing about traveling now is that I can afford to stay at nicer places. Back when I was a flight attendant, I was always scared about running out of money. I remember coming back from Australia one time and panicking because I had no money left for a hotel if I didn’t get on the flight. Lol yikes. Those years were a lot of fun, but really lean. It never felt like I could get ahead. So for that reason alone, personal stability, I am glad I do not work in the airline industry anymore.

After a too short weekend in HK, I moved on to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) for a few days. I had not been to HCMC before, so I did not really know what to expect. It turned out to be a really interesting experience. The Vietnamese, on the whole, are not the friendliest towards white people. I suspect that there are lots of wounds inflicted by us that still lurk just below the surface for a large majority of the older population that lost family or friends during the ‘American War’ as they call it. Saigon itself hums with excitement. Armies of motorbikes, most driven by young kids, race around the city at a frenetic pace. Buildings are being taken down and rebuilt at lightening speed. In a few years, a whole area just across the river from the current heart of Saigon will be transformed into an enormous complex with a football stadium, business towers, and more. The whole country felt like it is on the verge of emerging onto the Asian stage in a big way. I had a really nice time there, but then again I am the gregarious sort who will point to something on the street and eat it without the slightest idea of what it might be. The Iced Coffee there is like rocket fuel, at least 3-4 times the strength of the Americanized version here. The women on the street pour it out of these old soda bottles and it looks super dubious. But the affect in the steamy heat can be really cool, a jittery high in a dusty, sauna-like cement jungle. There’s a couple of Americans that have set up motorbike tours of Saigon on Vespas and it is a really great way to see the city. I look forward to going back and seeing more of the country in the future; most people have told me Saigon is the most industrial place in Vietnam and that the North and the country are much different in character. So I look forward to visiting again and exploring more. Overall, I had a good time and the food was amazing. Plus I got to dust off my French which was fun.

After HCMC, I boarded a Qatar Airways flight to Bangkok. It was an interesting routing, SGN-BKK, BKK-DOH with a crazy mixed crew staffing an A330. The purser was British, assisted in First Class by an Egyptian guy. Then the staff on my aisle consisted of a couple of Thai girls, a guy from Hong Kong, and then a really cute girl from Madrid who had an accent like Penelope Cruz. We had a fun conversation in Spanish, which was nice. I was having withdrawals from not speaking with anyone for a week or so.

I arrived in Bangkok for the first time in many a year. What a wonderful place Thailand is. Very friendly people, great weather, still very cheap. The new airport is very interesting; I know the Thais ran out of money near the end of the financial crisis, but the overall design of the airport seems very rough. The duty-free areas were well organized and the airport was a much-needed improvement from the old one. Still, how many people view Bangkok as a hub for air traffic in Asia? This is pretty much needless griping though; Bangkok continues to be a marvelous time. The train system has been expanded and an underground subway has opened since I last visited. The Skytrain is still a great way to get around town and there is still a happy and gentle nature to the country, even though I did witness a fairly big Red Shirt protest on a Saturday. I had a great and very relaxing time. I shopped until I dropped, got a bunch of foot massages, and came back much refreshed

So that was my big spring trip. I also visited Honolulu a few weeks ago for a quick weekend and had a terrific time. We are definitely feeling the beginning effects of global warming. It down poured almost the entire time I was there, something I have never seen in my almost twenty years of visiting and living in the Aloha state. These super tornadoes and floods are just a preview of what is likely to come in the coming years as people in this country argue about whether or not global warming is real or not. Sigh.

On a personal note, I have had some distractions as well that likely have contributed to my neglecting the blog. I am in love people. I have been seeing a great guy named Paco since Thanksgiving. We met unexpectedly on one of those typical nights out at a bar when no one is expecting anything. I was dancing, he flirted, and the rest is history. We met up the day after meeting and slowly began seeing each other each weekend. Paco and I both work a lot, so it is nice to be in a relationship with someone who understands my pain. He manages the kitchen of a popular local joint in the East Bay and stays busy with the day-to-day pains of the restaurant business, something I can appreciate all too well. We usually end up spending a couple of days a week together and then texting or talking on our busy days. So far, it is perfect. He is a really great guy, very sweet and very chill, not a stressor at all. So we compliment each other well. My OCD planning seems to be a good match to his lack thereof (outside his work, of course). He also thinks I am funny! Bonus points. So far, I have been wrapped up in the giddy stage where everything is rosy. This is bound to eventually come to a close, but he has been very successful so far at chipping away the cynical wall I have built up over years of bad relationships. I hope you all get to meet him very soon.

So that’s a long, but semi-concise update about what has been going on with me. I hope you are all having a great 2011 and I will try to get on here more often. Promise. Blogging is not dead yet.

Cuidate.

Happy 2011!

2011-01-05T03:25:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to one and all!

I realize I have not blogged in a good while, but I was not feeling it these past few months. Between Facebook, Twitter, and every other social media site, it feels like we are both connected and unconnected, all at the same time. I recently met up with a friend that I had not seen in over a year, but it seemed impossible because I read his Facebook updates so regularly. I knew where he’d been, what he’d done, and who he had done it with whereas he did not know the same information about me because I’m not a frequent poster or check-in-er on FB. There’s such a sharing of information between texts, Facebook posts, check-ins, and tweets, but at the same time most of it seems so mindless. Nothing personal, but do I need to know that you’re hungry? Do I need to know that you’re watching Glee? The advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages, don’t get me wrong. It is great for family members to be able to see family photos and videos in almost real time provided one has an Internet connection. But the chatter can become overwhelming and I was feeling like I did not need to add my silly rants to the cacophony of ‘Dave likes Ice Cream!’ or ‘Susan is feeling SAD :(’.

Things are going really well for me. I finished off my first two classes at East Bay last semester with 2 A’s. I am taking three classes this semester and they started this week. Pretty decent, two Latin American studies courses and then a course in hotel and restaurant marketing for my minor. I feel like the marketing course is going to be very educational and very beneficial to me. Work has been good; we had a nice holiday season and it looks like we will be starting over with a new round of trainees in the next few months. The two that we had been training did not cut the mustard; one is gone and the other will likely follow in her path very soon. I have to admit, it has been a strange transition in becoming a supervisor these last few months. I do not take myself very seriously, but I am almost forty years old. One of my co-workers told me that she thought I was very intimidating to some of the new people. I had to laugh, I do not see myself that way at all. But I do tend to be a perfectionist and I like things to be done a certain way. So I am working on letting go a bit and not being so OCD. This may be a harder challenge than I thought though. Wish me luck.

I am planning a trip to Southeast Asia in March, looking forward to getting back to some of my old haunts. I hope to visit Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Saigon this trip. I have not been to Vietnam before, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I realize that one could easily spend a week or two in Vietnam and that Hanoi is supposed to be a lot more historic than Ho Chi Minh City, but I figured I would get my feet wet this trip and then revisit in another few years. I have not been to Bangkok in six or seven years which is stunning to me. I used to try and go once a year to shop and relax, so I’m really looking forward to seeing it again.

Hope you are all doing well and had a wonderful holiday season.

Cuidate.

You've Got Mail

2010-11-06T01:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have neglected the blog for a bit.

I suppose it feels like all of our lives have been taken over by Facebook, Twitter, and news feeds, so I have not wanted to add to the cacophony of beeps, whistles, and screaming voices that have begun to blend together. Especially with the recent political ads, all of the yelling and accusations began to resemble the snow and static of old TV sets. (Which anyone younger than 20 to 25 today will not remember. Scary.)

Culturally, it feels like people are married to their devices. I was sitting at a coffee shop recently having coffee and chilling out, waiting for a friend. Even though I live in a relatively urban area, it feels as though no one speaks to each other anymore. Everyone is constantly glued to their laptops or their phones. When I hold the door for someone or smile at someone these days, most people nearly faint from surprise. It is a bit disconcerting to be honest. I am worried that the next generations of people are not going to be able to communicate with each other face to face. Believe me, I am not immune to this phenomenon. I definitely find myself reaching for my phone whenever a message or text chimes through. Also if I’m in line for something or waiting. But if I am having dinner with someone or having a conversation about something substantial, I try not to interrupt the conversation with constant texting or checking of my phone. I wish other people would do the same. Technology has made things immeasurably easier for us. (This is most easily illustrated by the religious use of my phone’s GPS function. I honestly cannot remember what I did before GPS besides get lost a lot.) But in the same vein, we are filling our time with such trash in so many ways; reality TV, Farmville, Facebook, and youTube jump to the front of my mental list. If people could spend, say, 30 minutes to an hour a day relaxing, getting out in nature, spending time with a family member, volunteering, etc., any number of things rather than the crap we will our days and nights with, I believe our country would be a much nicer and more harmonious place.

In that vein, I have some days off coming up and I am hoping to get off the grid for a few days. Work has been a bit crazy lately with a lot of extra shifts and drama going on. To be honest, I am feeling a bit burnt out. I am hoping a few days in the woods clears some of that up.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Overload

2010-09-03T03:55:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have begun to experience feelings of a slightly dark nature, feelings that I don’t have much of an outlet for. So what better place to meditate on such apocalyptic musings as a blog where everyone can share in the ~~joy,~~ er ~~misery~~, or how about the apathy that I am trapped in? I feel pretty confident that I am not the only one wrapped up in this ugly cycle. Maybe we can all vent collectively.

Issue 1 – The Oil Spill. WTF? (I know that use of the term WTF is not that eloquent or original, but go with it.) Does anyone else have ridiculously overwhelming and lingering depressing feelings about it? It seemed like day after day as the news networks covered millions upon millions of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, there was little to be done. Every day, press conferences would be held; partisan politicos would yell at each other, and nothing would get accomplished. We are being told that fish stocks will be ruined for a generation, coral reefs throughout the region will die, and a large part of the oil is trapped thousands of feet below the surface and there is no viable solution for cleaning up oil in the water at those depths. In a freak coincidence, I finished an oceanography course this past spring and what they’re not telling you on the news is that sunlight only penetrates the first 100 feet or so into the ocean, maybe down to 200 feet in exceptionally clear water. So oil that is trapped at 1000 feet below the surface or 2000 feet below the surface has no chance of being broken down by sunlight. It may be there for decades, if not a century or more. Yet there are no technological solutions for this problem. Even potential solutions would need to be tested and researched and by the time that work is complete, the oil will likely have been broken down into some other byproduct that needs a new solution. Sigh. I just don’t really want to think about it. It makes me ill.

Issue 2 – The Economy. Anyone? I cannot wrap my head around the complex issues that we are dealing with because I’m not a figures person. Several issues here, all boggling my mind. The first is the banks. Our government just bailed them out with hundreds of billions of dollars in the past two years. So now they are reporting record profits and doling out enormous bonuses, but yet they can’t loosen their belts and begin to lend to businesses across the country to stimulate the economy? WTF? (There’s that expression again.) They can’t modify people’s home loans and stop foreclosing on them? (I realize that a lot of people bit off more than they could chew and should not have bought such large homes in the first place, but the responsible people who really are making an effort should be given a break.) I don’t get why the Obama Administration does not force the banks to start lending. It just does not make any sense to me. Leadership needs to come from the top and we’re not seeing much of it right now. Secondly, the issue of raising taxes. Guess what? When our country has record deficits and can’t pay its bills year after year, uh I think we need to raise taxes people. Why is this such a hard concept? The rich need to be taxed more. It’s not that hard. But across the board, we should all be paying more taxes. In return, our government would have the money to maintain our roads, to provide us with healthcare, and to build a quality education system. What kind of a first world nation are we that our schools do not have basic supplies like paper, pencils, books, etc? I realize that I am advocating a move towards a socialist country, but does that not seem like a more humane and fair approach to governing? Do we really want to be a nation of people that says, “No, you don’t deserve healthcare because you don’t make enough money.”? Really? REALLY? That is the kind of person and the kind of country we want to be? Yes, people game the welfare system. People game the system all over the planet, this is not simply an American problem. But basic human rights dictates that one’s citizens should have access to clean drinking water, basic medical care, an education, and an opportunity to succeed in life. If the government dedicated enough money towards programs such as these, then generations of Americans to come would have the opportunity to better our country and to give back to the country a return on its investment in its own population.

Issue 3 – The Media. I am a news junkie. On downtimes at work, I am constantly reading either local papers, The New York Times, Google News, or any number of other global news sources like the BBC. It has just begun to affect me recently in ways I can’t put my finger on. Every headline seems to have to do with something horrific; murder, genocide, bombings, floods, apathy, conflict, and the lists go on and on. I like to know what is going on as much as anyone, but the stories of suffering, war, discrimination, famine, pollution, lack of opportunity and loss take their toll after repeated exposure to them. I’m going to have to take a break for a while. The worst part about these stories is that there seems to be nothing one can do about any of it. How am I in a position to help a drowning family in Pakistan? How am I to restart the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks? How can I help to improve local schools in my neighborhood?

Issue 4 – The Environment. The Global Warming people are on media channels ALL the time and they continue to sound the alarm on reducing global emissions, but no one cares. The global meeting on Global Warming in Copenhagen this year was a joke; no one committed to anything concrete and the problems continue to be ignored. To be honest, I am in my mid-thirties and probably will not live to see the broad effects of global warming hit the planet. But for the generations of kids that will follow us, our grandchildren and great grandchildren, the world we are wrecking for them is going to be a far different one than the one that exists today. I do not understand why the U.S. government does not push harder for broad changes across the board in energy policy and environmental concerns. The French have been using nuclear power as their primary source of electricity since the 80s and generate enormous amounts of energy with no fossil fuel emissions. Yes, we are a nation with a lot of coal resources. But this fuel is also incredibly harmful to the environment in the current ways it is used. Until cleaner coal technologies are developed, our country should be pursuing other sources of power. Every home in the Southwest U.S. should be required to have solar panels on it; wind farms should be built in areas where it makes sense to have them and they shouldn’t be tied up in local lawsuits because some rich person’s view of the ocean might be obstructed. People need to remember that there is no ‘I’ in the word team. We are all in this together and sacrifices will be required to achieve solutions to global warming as we confront this problem in the next decade. Finally, does anyone besides me question whether recycling is truly working or not? I diligently sort through all of my trash and separate it before placing it out by the curb in a variety of brightly colored containers. But where is it all going? How many products do we see in stores that state ‘made from recycled materials’? Is anyone in the media following the trash companies to make sure they aren’t just dumping all of this material into the Pacific Ocean trash pile? Lots of questions with few answers.

Issue 5 – Politics. The gridlock of Washington has proven to be nothing short of a one of the ugliest fights in political history that I can remember. The Republicans in the Senate, both last year and this year, have systematically opposed almost every piece of legislation put forth by the Democrats in the majority. Is this really something that they want recorded in history for their children and grandchildren to witness? Is this a badge of honor? That Grandpa decided to play the spoiled child and not vote for any piece of legislation because that’s what his political leadership told him to do? Frankly, I just don’t get it. I get that the Republicans lost the election. I get that they are sore about that fact. But obstruction is not a political tool; it’s a cowardly tactic and the behavior associated with a spoiled child, not an adult. When our country is having a difficult time and finds itself in one of the worst economic states in its history, it’s not the time to play games like these. Republicans continue to stall on environmental reform, immigration reform, energy policy, and a host of other issues. Considering that Hispanics are fast approaching the majority of people in this country, it is unthinkable that Republicans have chosen to deny the people who do their dirty work (ie. clean their homes, do their dry-cleaning, cook their food, raise their children) a place at the table. These policies are simply driving one of the largest (and growing) voting blocks into the hands of Democrats at a tremendous cost. Nice going braniacs. Sarah Palin / Glenn Beck 2012. The Republicans are definitely on the losing side of history, but their delays and obstructions now will only prove to haunt them and all of the global citizens affected by these issues in both the short and long terms.

I could continue, but this rant is already far too long. I don’t know how people deal with things like this day in and day out; it simply gets to be too much to take in. For me, personally, my life has been pretty good the last few years. I am grateful for this, but being raised Catholic and by Depression-era parents, there is always this fatalistic sense that things such as my job or my health could disappear at any time. I fight against this constantly, but it is hard to get rid of completely. I went to therapy a few years ago when I was contemplating leaving the airlines and the therapist tried to convince me that these feelings were not based in reality. So it is something I need to remind myself of and something that Ketut Liyer (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) told me when I was in Bali. “Believe me, no BELIEVE ME. You will always be ok in this life. You very lucky, VERY LUCKY. Always have good health and good luck in this life.”

I am going to take Ketut’s words to heart tonight as I fall asleep and try to calm the racing thoughts that normally occupy my head.

Thanks for listening all, hope you are doing well. Cuidate.

The Painful Truth

2010-08-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Great article from Paul Krugman, a must read.

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

Sobering words to consider. Cuidate.

Happy August!

2010-08-05T01:53:00.000-07:00

I've been busy. Here's a meme for you all 'til I have something profound to impart.

1. Was your dad named after anyone?

Interesting question. I’m not 100% sure where the name Barry came from, it’s not a family name that I know of. My dad’s middle name (Leon) came from my dad’s uncle.

2. What do you think is the minimal age to get married?

In American society today, I propose 20. Even that seems a bit young to me, but to each his or her own.

3. What’s the longest time that you‘ve been involved with the same person?

2 to 2.5 years. It’s hard to determine exact end dates to the “What are we exactly?” question.

4. What actor/actress do you consider hot at the moment?

The cast of Glee. Alternatively, Betty White.

5. What is your favorite album by a band?

1, The Beatles.

6. What is your favorite album by an individual artist?

This one is super hard. (In my examination of this question, I realized I like vocalists, but not bands!) I’m going with Ray of Light by Madonna.

7. What is something that you‘d rather be a bit dirty?

A taco truck.

8. What was the last TV show that you watched?

Kathy Griffin, My Life on the D List.

9. How many people have you met from the blogosphere? Who are they?

I would say that I have met a bunch of people from online, but I have yet to meet a ‘blogstar’ per se. I have several friends who have blogs, so counting all of them up, probably…10? Rich, Suzanne, Jerry, my brother, I'm sure there's a bunch more.

10. What's your philosophy on life?

Don’t freak out over small stuff, don’t take for granted the little things (good health, family, a place to live, clean drinking water, food on the table, friendship, love), and laugh as much as possible.

11. Do you think prescription drugs are over prescribed?

Yes. The desire of our society for instant gratification is unhealthy. Of course some people need them, but a generation of kids being raised on Prozac and drugs for A.D.D.? Perhaps if we were paying more attention to our families and each other, we wouldn’t have kids that need to be medicated.

12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?

Yes.

13. What is your favorite memory in the last year?

Taking my parents to NYC.

14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Sleeping up to 12 hours on days off, then being lazy. I don’t do too many things that I don’t want to do.

15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:

In a slightly Rainman-ian way, I have very detailed memories from the past. For example, I can remember all of my school teachers from kindergarten on.

16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the 'world peace etc' malarky) - what are they?

I would like to have a nice place in Hawaii with a guesthouse, so family and friends could come and visit.

I would like for my parents to both have long, healthy, and fruitful lives and pass on together.

I would love a ride on a Concorde.

17. Who would you want to get together with and make a cake?

Suzanne Daniels. Duh.

18. Which country is your spiritual home?

The U.S. I feel equally at home in either Northern California or Hawaii.

19. What is your big weakness?

I love to eat. I also spend with abandon, hoping the money will keep rolling in.

20. Do you think Judd Corizan is a good person?

(Apparently he’s the blogger who I stole this meme from.) Sure. Anyone who gives me a good posting idea can’t be all bad.

21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?

Languages and Geography.

22. Describe your accent:

My accent changes depending on my mood. In general, I speak Northern California American English, peppered with lots of phrases like, “Wass’up, yo?”, “Right on!”, and “Sweet!” It took me a few years to adjust, but I say freeway now instead of highway. And, on occasion, I even spontaneously use the word “hella”. Beyond the pothead speak though, I don’t carry any strong regional American accent. I do burst into Southern, British, Eubonics, Pidgin’, and various impersonations ALL the time.

23. If you could change anything about yourself, would you?

I would like to be less of a loner.

24. What do you wear to sleep?

T-shirt and boxers.

25. What is your favorite casual outfit to wear?

That would be my daily uniform; t-shirt, long sleeve collared shirt unbuttoned (or sweatshirt), sneakers, Docs, or boots.

26. Do you use cigarettes or alcohol?

I don’t smoke, but I drink occasionally. It’s not a big passion of mine.

27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?

I would gather up my good friends, rent a private jet, fly to Hawaii, rent the Presidential Suite at the Halekulani, enjoy the sunset, and party until the day was no more.

Hope you are doing great. Cuidate.

Ten Years Ago

2010-07-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

Someone hit me up with an interesting meme the other day. Where were you ten years ago?

July 2000. I was living at 418 Pierce St (between Fell and Oak) in San Francisco, what I now affectionately refer to as The Crack Den. I had a small room in a 5-bedroom house that was dark and gross. My four roommates all had substance or emotional issues or combinations of both. I was a poor flight attendant, waiting tables on the side, and just struggling to make it work. I had broken up with Tim and moved back home to California from an apartment near O’Hare in Chicago. But emotionally I was still on the hook, we were talking, I was moping. It was an ugly time. Not only was the culture of the Haight and my home something I was not used to, but I was in a bad place. I was happy to be home in San Francisco, but I was lacking direction and nothing made any sense.

Workwise, I was finally able to begin holding international reserve that summer. United was going through an ugly dispute with their pilots in the summer of 2000 and nothing was running on time; planes were delayed all over the world; United staff were handing out hundreds of cots in a night in Chicago, Denver, and Dulles. Luckily I was spared a lot of the horror on the international side. I was flying to Asia mostly; Beijing, Osaka, Taipei, Seoul. I walked on the Great Wall of China for the first time, albeit with a lazy and contentious crew. Asia in the summer is hot, polluted, and miserable. Even though United was having a lot of problems, my being able to hold international was a good sign that I was gaining some seniority. Sadly my life was forever changed a year later, along with all of our lives, by 9/11.

Looking back, it was not the best of times, but it was not the worst of times either. I was coming to terms with the failure of my first significant relationship, but the progression of my career and my being home in San Francisco were both good points in my life. I was still struggling a bit to define myself and who I was (beyond identifying with my work), but the roots were there. Let’s face it; the twenties are an exciting time, but they also suck. One has such grandiose dreams and fantasies about life, but no clear map to guide you. I do not miss the stupid mistakes, the crack den living, layovers in Indianapolis or Tulsa, the visits to the payday lender, wearing glasses, or the constant insecurities about everything. I do miss being able to eat anything I want (within reason) and Madonna being cool. But beyond those small things, I am happier at 36 than I was at 26.

Hope you are all having a good weekend. Cuidate.

Mr July 2010

2010-07-11T04:37:00.000-07:00

So I had been wanting to get some decent photos of me taken for a while. I am 30-something and the way time flies by, I figure I will be in the gay nursing home before I know it. It will be nice to have some photos of myself to remember an earlier day when I was younger and less wrinkled. I met Walter through a mutual friend and after a couple of conversations and looking at his portfolio, I was hopeful that we could get get some shots that were tasteful, artistic, but not over the top. After looking at the proof sheets, I saw we had some decent shots. Still, I didn't realize the work that goes into the photos post-shoot. Walter has been e-mailing me these shots a few at a time this week as they become available and they are amazing. I could not be more thrilled with how they are turning out. Here are a few of the shots.

We shot a lot of these at the abandoned Naval Air Station in Alameda. My dad used to fly in and out of here in the 50s and 60s long before I was born. Funny how everything comes full circle.

Hope you are all having a great month and summer. Cuidate.

Finally...

2010-06-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I know I promised photos a while ago, but it took me a little while. Dun Da Da! (Please disregard the big stomach. I'm working on it . Swear, especially after seeing these photos.)

(You can see them in a larger size if you click on them.) It came out pretty well if I do say so myself. It took about 12 hours to get it done and it was not pain-free. (Near the end, I thought the artist was going to puncture a lung or something.) I am very happy with it and everything came out great, from the Japanese waves to the water lilies to the koi itself. I realize that koi have become something of a common tattoo, but they are intricate and easy to mess up. I took a while to find the guy I wanted to do it and then saved up to get it done. (He wasn't cheap!) Thanks Jeremy.

This being Pride Week, I finally have some days off. I have been enjoying the film festival and just having some time to get errands done. Pink Saturday is fast approaching and then the parade and main stage are on Sunday. I am, in writing, committing to a much less intoxicated year than 2009. Everyone got really sloppy last year and I am not quite sure how I made it home safely. I awoke close to midnight to a splitting headache, a dry mouth that tasted of midori margarita, and a forceful argument for survival between my head which did not want me to move an inch and my survival mechanisms that knew without two liters of water immediately, I might not regain consciousness again. Thankfully, I managed to claw my way to the bathroom where I consumed water and enjoyed my soothing cool concrete floor for the next hour before having the strength to find six ibuprofen and swallow them. Like I said, this year will be better. Food is a good thing to add to the consumption of a liter or two of margaritas. (On a side note, I think we cost some poor guy his job at CPK that night. Sorry whoever you were. Hope you enjoyed the cosmos at least! We lost track of you near the bathrooms and hope the manager was in a forgiving mood when you no-show'd your shift that night.)

School finished up and I scored 2 A's in my Oceanography and History classes. How sweet is that? I sent in my check to Cal State East Bay last week confirming my place as a part-time transfer student starting in the fall; pretty snazzy if I do say so myself. I decided to take the summer off from classes as I was super burnt out after the last few months of burning the candle at all ends. I have been taking some informal Spanish conversation classes a couple of days a week in the city and it has been helping me get reacquainted with Spanish which was much overdue. (How many perfective tenses can a language have? Oy vey.) I've never really studied grammar in Spanish, so it is cool to go over it and be forced to use it in exercises. Usually I just babble along with the root of the verb and then look questioningly at the person I'm talking to. They then will nod saying they understand what I'm trying to say and I skip ahead without properly conjugating the verb. No more free passes... I have to buckle down and learn this stuff properly.

Also, I have some exciting news to report on the work front. I was offered a supervisory position within the department. I still have not quite come to grips with the whole concept of me being in charge of anyone, but I suppose that will come with time. Mentally, I feel like I am still the 22 year old kid who was late to work everyday for YEARS. lol. But I am not anymore. (Try fifteen years and twenty extra pounds later.) I realize that this new role is going to be a challenge for me, but it also is going to be a great learning experience and an opportunity for me to have a greater say in the direction of our department within the organization. So it's good news, not to mention a small bump in the paycheck. Wish me luck!

Well, that's about it from me for now. Hope you are all having a terrific summer so far. Happy Pride week to all of my fellow gays. As one person eloquently stated this year, Pride is important because it is about us, as a queer community, celebrating for those who cannot; those who cannot come out and who live in a constant state of fear or shame. We hold all of you up and look forward to the day when you will be able to join us.

Cuidate.

Happy Pride Month!

2010-05-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

Check out this ad from McDonalds in France. Très mignon. (Super cute.)

Cuidate.

May Madness

2010-05-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

My, we live in interesting times.

My tattoo is finished. It took me three days, 12 hours, and 2 trips to Seattle to get the sucker done, but it’s done. Considering how large it turned out, I am really glad that I spent a little bit more money and traveled to find a good artist. Tattoos are not something that one really wants to skimp on because a bad one can leave you pissed off each time one looks in the mirror. I have not taken photos yet as it’s peeling, but I will probably post them here as opposed to Facebook as multiple nieces and nephews of mine have friended me and I would like to avoid grief from the parents as long as I can. Yes it is sad to admit, but I anticipate quite the dramatic pause followed by tears from my mother when I tell her. Good times people, good times. Catholic guilt is alive and well.

It has been my good fortune to piss off not one of my good friends, but TWO of my good friends within the past couple of months. Both of them have taken to not speaking with me, lectures, long e-mails, or combination of all of these. More good times. (Read last paragraph sarcastically please.)

School is wrapping up in the next week or so, thankfully. I don’t know why I bitch so much because it is not that hard. But the load this semester combined with the purchase of the house, too many trips (my fault, I know), the possible promotion at work, and everything else has just proven to be a bit too much. I received formal approval for my transfer to Cal State East Bay, starting this fall. It’s exciting to think that I am getting close to a degree. I usually only take 2 courses per semester, so it will take me a few more years. But I am just missing the lab portion of a science class and the remaining courses are all major-related. Super cool.

June is coming up, you all know what that means… My favorite month of the year, Gay Pride Month. The film festival starts mid-June and I will be taking some time off, so I will be able to get some use out of my fun and tax-deductible, yet expensive, gold pass to the film festival. It’s also a nice month because typically we have a good amount of warm weather, so that is always a welcome time to be off around here. (Most months of the year here are pretty consistent temperature-wise, cold and colder, in respect to the rest of the country.) Mostly, I am just looking forward to a break from work, school, and everything. People keep asking me about the house. How do I like the house? How is the house? What am I doing with the house? When can they see the house? It’s a house people; I suspect most of you live in them. I hate to be a be-y-otch about this, but I must confess I was a reluctant homebuyer. I did it because I needed the tax break and I figured it would be better to pay myself rent than someone else. But just all of the shit that I am now responsible for SUCKS. Water bill, gas bill, electric bill, window treatments, a backyard, not to mention improvements inside the house that is filled with lovely brown neutral trim everywhere. My tastes are very Latin in color and style; woods, bright colors, artwork, vividness. My house currently has all of the personality of a mental institution. So lots of work to do. Don’t think that I am not extremely grateful to have the house after a year of struggle, etc. But the rest of the stuff that comes with it is just a bitch. Probably a good thing I did not have children.

Kellie, my folks, and I had a terrific time in New York City a few weeks back. We squeezed a lot into our four days there; shopping, walking, sightseeing, and terrific eating. I love visiting NYC, but living there is a very different story. When I used to work in the city in the early 90s, it was a very different time and I was very immature and sheltered. Looking at New York now, as an adult, I do not see any way I could live there. The city has an amazing amount of character and it truly is the city that never sleeps. Living there though would be a completely different animal. I think I would go a bit stir crazy with all of the concrete. We saw Jersey Boys, which was a terrific show; the music was really cool, the staging was incredible, and it was fun to see in New York City because the audience contained a large (and vocal) contingent of Jersey natives. My parents and I also got to visit the Frick Museum which was incredible. Everything went really well overall, I am really pleased with the way the trip turned out.

So that’s the scoop on me. The news has been a bit bleak lately, has it not? Oil spills, home grown terrorists, financial crises, and on and on. I’m looking forward to a break from work, the news, and everything else in between in June.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Felicidades!

2010-03-30T04:56:00.000-07:00

What a day, what a day! Our boy Ricky has made his way to the light. We always knew, but it is nice to have confirmation. Ricky Martin has always been my big crush. I remember I was working in Chicago back in the Livin’ La Vida Loca days and some of the girls at the restaurant I worked at were obsessed with him. They had an in at the Oprah show, so they had front row seats when Ricky came on the show and got to meet him after. I tried to warn them that he likely batted for my team, but they would hear nothing of it. So Melissa and Jenny Bartelli, wherever you are, I told ya so. He’s such a good-looking man… sigh.

So I am moved into my casita. I moved in the weekend after I signed papers and the move went pretty well. The movers were two hours late, but aren’t movers always late? They did a nice job and even managed to get my enormous hulk of a dining room table into the house with only a minor scratch. I have had to work a lot the past couple of weeks, so I am still unpacking and settling in. It is such a strange feeling to know that I will own this place free and clear one day. My life has changed so much in the past five years since I left the airlines and began anew. Buying a house was simply never on my radar screen; the Bay Area, never making any money, the responsibility, and on and on. I’m sure when my hot water heater explodes or my roof caves in, it will sink in that I own this place. But until then, it is fun looking at shades, furniture, patio materials and garden supplies. Once it comes time to pay for the stuff, not so fun. But there is plenty to do to make this place into my home. I am settling in nicely.

Fulfilling a promise I made to my parents a few years ago, I am taking them to New York City in a couple of weeks for a four-day visit. It should be fun; I have not been to Manhattan in a long time. We have tickets for Jersey Boys, which I am hoping my parents will like. I assume a Circle Line cruise and Canal Street will be a couple of the required stops and then the rest is open to what they want to do. I got them train tickets from their home in upstate New York, so they should enjoy a leisurely trip into the city and back. I bought tickets on Virgin America, so I am looking forward to being a revenue passenger and not worrying about standby. Kellie is coming with too, so it should be a good time all around.

Finally, I am heading to Seattle next week to start a tattoo that I have been wanting for a while now. When I got my Virgin of Guadalupe, I really liked it (and still do). However, I did not want to rush into getting more and more tattoos like a biker or an indie rocker. I would like to get a few tasteful ones that mean something to me. So I researched what I wanted and found an excellent artist who should do a nice job (if his portfolio is any indication!). I am going to have the first half done in one session, then go back in another month or so to finish it up. No hints, I want it to be a surprise when it’s done. I will post some photos in a month or two of the finished product. I think you all will like it.

So that’s a quick update from me. Hope you are all doing well and starting to see the murmurings of spring.

Cuidate.

Will I Lose My Dignity?

2010-03-08T01:02:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting weekend. The delays with the house continue. I have no words for my frustration anymore; it is stressing me out to the core. I know it will all be worth it, but the process is enough to make me gouge my eyes out.

In a surprising turn of events, I came in contact with some shocking news regarding a friend of mine who I had not seen in a long time. I realized that I had not seen him in quite some time and his cell phone had been disconnected, but he had been talking about moving to Southern California and I figured I would eventually run into him. (We had some friends in common, but no one had mentioned him in a while.) I had put in a friend request on his Facebook page, but he had not responded in almost a year. I googled him the other night thinking I might come across some information or some update on where he was at these days. Instead of a news article or an address hit coming up, a TruTV web page comes up with my friend’s name and a mugshot. He apparently was involved in a murder in Southern California and is facing the possibility of life in prison without parole.

I was (and am still) in a state of shock. I have never had to deal with anything remotely like this at any point in my life. Granted, I was not super close with this guy. But to think that my friend could be involved in such a heinous plot and crime is stunning. He is young (not yet 30), very good looking, and has a magnetic personality that draws people to him. It seemed like the world was his oyster.

Two different sets of thoughts have been dominating my head since hearing the news. My first group of thoughts center around who my friend really was or is. I get that we are all complex people and, depending on stressors or substances, can do things that one would not ordinarily do. However, the premeditation and brutality of this crime suggest that there was more to it than a drunken or drugged misunderstanding. The memories of my friend involve us grabbing coffee, shooting pool, or hanging out at Dolores Park. He was complex, a little vain, but never anyone I thought to be capable of something like this. He wanted things out of life, but no more so than anyone else who lives in San Francisco and is sick of sharing an apartment. I have these scenarios running through my head of me being the relative or friend being interviewed on Oprah saying, “He always seemed so normal. This is not the person I know.” Along with these thoughts come accompanying feelings of guilt. In reconstructing the timeline, I realize that I brought both G. as well as his co-defendant to a Christmas party of some good friends after the murder, but before he was arrested. Considering the line of work I am in (and that most of the party-goers were in), it is such a weird, fucked up situation that they would have even agreed to go.

The second set of thoughts is sadness and remorse; sadness for what could have been for my good looking young friend as well as remorse for my friend’s ridiculously stupid actions and the lives he has shattered with this senseless murder. I also feel like I am mourning for all of the things he may never get to do. For someone like me, being in prison would be akin to a death sentence. I am restless all the time, always planning and always wanting to see and experience different things. If someone cut off my ability to do that, I cannot imagine what my life would consist of. Being locked in a cage with no hope of escape for the next sixty plus years seems ridiculously horrific. I suppose these are the challenges he is facing as he contemplates the realities of his life. What meaning or inspiration can one take from a life like this? Finally, I am so sad that it took me over a year to find out this information. He was a good friend of mine and I believe his parents are in another country, so I do not know what kind of support system he has in place. Without Internet access or a cell phone with numbers, I can only imagine how scary and isolating the world must be for someone of our generation. Navigating the world of prison must magnify this bewilderment.

I am writing my friend a letter this week and hoping to hear back from him. If nothing else, hopefully a note from a familiar voice will help him put a smile on his face even for a moment. It definitely made my house problems seem insignificant in comparison.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Cuidate.

It's Just...A Little Crush

2010-02-21T22:46:00.001-08:00

Guilty confession...I have two crushes as of late.

The first one is Alexandre Bilodeau, Canada's gold medalist in the moguls from the Vancouver Olympics. Great looking, family man, and he speaks French. What more can a man want?

The second is probably old news to most of you...Robert Kardashian Jr. I purposely have avoided watching their stupid reality show because I felt guilty enough watching The Girls Next Door for years. Little did I know that I was missing out on a hunky guy.

Like the song says, it's just...a little crush. lol.

Hope you are all doing well. I should have keys to my new house in another week or so, updates to follow.

Cuidate.

2010!

2010-01-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I have not had much inspiration lately to write, I think I need to shake things up a bit.

The house process is driving me insane; slowly, but surely. Once again close of escrow date has been pushed back as the builder's financing end decides what type of loan they will or will not process. I had kept dealing with the madness because they had agreed to pay all closing costs, but at this point it has become ridiculous by any standard. I am likely going to go with an external lender that I had been working with. I am hopeful we can get through the process with some expediency, at this point closing sometime in February. Wish me luck.

Watching the photos of the earthquake in Haiti come pouring in, it is unimaginably horrific. Living near an active fault that is due for another big earthquake, it definitely stirs up the worst case scenario photos in my head. Granted, we have better construction standards here in the Bay Area and one would hope that I could get in my car and drive inland in some type of horrific emergency. It is a disturbing reminder though that human life is fragile and insignificant in comparison with the elements in which we live. *Note to self, I need to go through my earthquake preparedness kit and get new stuff for it.

School starts in the next couple of weeks. I am taking a US history course and an Oceanography course this semester. I did well in the fall, scoring 2 more A's in my critical thinking and literature classes. I expect to take a course over the summer and then start at Cal State East Bay in the fall. It is exciting to be almost done with my pre-reqs and moving on to my major courses. Based on my community college grades, I have guaranteed admission into Cal State. I am simply waiting for the final acceptance letter from them which I expect to arrive in the next month or so. I almost wish I could continue attending community colleges online as they are a lot cheaper! $26 a credit versus $200-300 at Cal State, so it's a big jump. I am not in any huge hurry to finish though, so I should have a bachelor's degree within five years by taking two courses per semester.

The city I work for has been engaged in a not-so-civil fight with the union that represents city workers. Traditionally, our city has offered a very generous compensation package; probably too generous. In any case, after union negotiations broke down this year, the city imposed a contract on us that forces city workers to pay for some health care costs and increased retirement costs. (I am still not altogether sure how a city can impose a contract on a workforce without us being allowed to strike, but that's another point of contention all together.) The biggest issue of the new contract however is that anyone hired with the city after July of this year has a drastically reduced retirement benefit in comparison with current city workers. The reduced benefit package has increased the retirement timeline of a few people in my department who are now due to retire at the end of May, 2010. Whereas before the city was able to attract lateral employees from other agencies around the Bay Area (like me in 2008), it is going to be very difficult to do this with our new reduced retirement package. The union and the city are due to start negotiating again within a few months to try and resolve the differences, but it is a bitter atmosphere right now. My department has also had a couple of new mothers leave and go to part-time status, so we are going to be very short staffed starting in June. Dispatcher positions are hard to fill and time consuming; between testing, interviews, background checks and more, it takes about a year and a half to train a line dispatcher. The training process usually ends up weeding out 30-50% of the people who get hired too, so these are not easy positions to fill even though the pay is generous. With the city's benefit package so disproportionately bad, we are just going to be training dispatchers for other departments at this point. We will spend approximately $100,000 per dispatcher in training only to see them leave in a year or two for another department. All the while, we (the current dispatchers) will be having to fill the overtime for five open positions at time and a half and costing the city even more money; it is an ugly cycle. I really like where I work, so I am hopeful that some type of compromise will be able to be reached that will allow us to hire people that want to stay with our department. For the next year to two years, Moi is going to be expected to work lots of overtime. It's nice in the pocketbook, but the work is definitely draining. Being locked up, even with people you like, for eleven to twelve hours a day wears thin.

Personally, not too much going on. I got down to Mexico at the beginning of December and had a lot of fun exploring Puerto Vallarta, Tequila, and Guadalajara. I am heading to New York in April with my parents for a few days and then (hopefully) to Europe at the end of May. So lots to look forward to travel-wise, as always. Also the Olympics are coming up, is everyone excited? British Columbia is gorgeous and Canadians are such great people, these games should be fantastic.

Sorry for not keeping up with the blog as much as I should, but c'est la vie. Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them: and they were so afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great job, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

-Luke 2, 8-11

Feliz Navidad everyone. Te cuidas.

More Randomness

2009-11-28T05:53:00.000-08:00

If you had to guess, what do you think will be the next major event in world history?

Someone important is bound to get assassinated in the Middle East, either in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

What one thing is unfortunately true?

Humans are an inherently self-centered species who do not consider much beyond their own selfish needs.

What is the most revolutionary television show ever?

Star Trek? Maybe Mary Tyler Moore? Survivor put reality TV on the map in a big way. Hard category.

What long-winded move, despite its greatness, will put you to sleep?

Schindler's List

If you could declare any one thing illegal, what would you choose?

Men being able to vote on abortion laws.

What always seems to move in cycles?

My love life

What is one thing men should never do?

Forget to manscape. It is important to reinforce that small difference between us and the great apes.

What is the next article of clothing you plan to buy?

Maybe a pair of cowboy boots. Still considering it though.

If you could cite one thing that would enable the world to operate more efficiently, what would it be?

Less self-interest and more international cooperation amongst nations.

Whose moral character could never be questioned?

I'm going to go with Jesus Christ on this one. Beyond that, no one is above questioning.

What is evidence that this is the greatest country in the world?

Different cultures ability to coexist with one another here.

What is your biggest pet peeve when driving?

The California driver (typically Asian, no offense) that gets on the freeway, then goes to the far left lane and goes between 40-50 mph. Said driver then decides to pull across four lanes of traffic to make their exit about 1/4 of a mile prior to said exit.

If you could attend one annual event (e.g. Running with the bulls, Mardi Gras), what would you choose?

I want to go to the hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque.

What rule of manners when eating seems ridiculous?

Not clearing anyone's plate until the entire table is finished.

Who doesn't belong in today's pop culture?

Paris Hilton

What aspect of a courtroom trial always confused you?

Why there is a delay between a verdict and sentencing.

If there was only one type of car that would be manufactured from now on, what should it be?

Toyota Prius

Who is in need of a 'fashion emergency'?

Susan Boyle

What book of reference do you frequently turn to?

The phone book. (Thankfully, it's online now.)

If you were using chopsticks, what would you hate to have to eat?

Peas

What activity is totally inappropriate for a child?

Pole Dancing birthday parties or how about pole dancing in general?

What is guaranteed to make any party better?

Gay guys. We are the cherry on everyone's cocktail.

What activity do you find completely deviant?

Anything involving little people and them being exploited (ie. midget wrestling)

Hope you are all doing well! I am in Mexico for a few days on holiday. Cuidate.

Autumn Arrives

2009-10-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

It started to feel like fall tonight. I was driving to the store at around 7 PM; it was dark, breezy, and fallen brown leaves were scattered about the street. As each car drove by, they would be driven upwards into miniature tornados of motion only to fall back down to rest a moment later. Halloween is this coming weekend and we set our clocks back the following night. 2009 is nearing its end.

So I have been a busy beaver, thus the no post for a while; not that that is so unusual. Blogging was a fad, then Facebook; now it seems to be Twitter. What will come next? Things that make you go hmm.

School continues at what feels like a slow pace this semester. Whereas school used to be fun, lately it is feeling like a chore. Once I am finished with this year, all of my pre-reqs will be done and I will get to concentrate on Spanish and Portuguese stuff which will be great. I have not spoken Spanish much lately nor taken a class, so I feel like my language skills are slipping. I am looking forward to the summer when I will (hopefully) be able to pick up a course with some classroom time. Due to my work schedule, attending classes can be hard to do. Summer session courses are expedited and I believe I can just attend one day a week. Starting with some of the major classes over the next few years, I am going to have to find some way to attend on campus a few days a week. I love my work schedule, but it does make it hard to attend classes or regular appointments because each week my days off rotate. I will officially be transferring to Cal State Hayward next fall though, so progress is being made.

I recently returned from a couple of different trips, one to Seattle and one to Vegas. Seattle was a shaman workshop that was super cool; I met some lovely Australians, Canadians, and Peruvians there. I am hopefully going to take some future workshops with my new friends and continue my learning process. I also met with a great tattoo artist in Seattle that I think will be doing a koi tattoo on me. It is a large piece (my right shoulder into a half sleeve), so I am still in the consideration process. I hope to go up to Seattle the beginning part of next year to get it done. It has been several years since I got my Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo and I really love it. When I had my first one done, I vowed to wait a few years before getting another as tattoos get addicting. The artist is very talented though (he has won a lot of national competitions), so if I am going to get it done he is definitely the guy to do it.

My Vegas trip was cool, I went to celebrate my friend Christi's birthday. Unfortunately, she was ill for the first few days that I was there. However, she was able to rally and we caught up the last couple of days I was there. I saw two Cirque du Soleil shows, Love and Ka. Love was good, but I was not amazed by it. There were some good stunts throughout it and the music, being the Beatles, was incredible. There was a lot of stunts occurring all over the theatre and I didn't feel like it had a clear direction or point of view. Ka on the other hand was great; it is staged in a huge theatre built specifically for the show and it has some amazing effects. Some friends had given it good reviews, but Christi and I went into the show with low expectations. It is definitely worth your time if you are looking to see a show. So far I have really liked Zumanity and Ka. I am looking forward to seeing O and Bette Midler in future visits. Short visits to Vegas (three to four days) seem to be a good amount of time. Anything longer and I get pretty antsy to get home.

Another fun part of my vacation was flying Virgin America to Vegas and back. Wow, what a cool airline! I definitely am more of a white trash, working class passenger. Yeah, business or first class would be cool, but I do not want to pay for it. Southwest has suited me fine because they fly out of Oakland, are always on time, lots of leg room, and I can check a bag for free. I have also really liked JetBlue, but I don't fly trans-con that much and that is primarily where they fly out of here. (Any west coast trips have to connect through Long Beach.) But JetBlue also has a generous amount of leg room and DirecTV right? Which is great on long flights. Now we have Virgin America which charges you to check a bag and skimps on the leg room. However, their inflight entertainment system Red is SUPER cool. It is an interactive system that has live TV, on demand TV programs, a cool interactive airshow type map with Google Maps technology, and a huge selection of musical selections including music channels and the ability to create your own playlist from 60 or 70 different artists cds. You also can order food or drinks from your seat and they are delivered to you by the flight crew. They also have inflight Wi Fi which I did not take advantage of on my 1 hour flight from Vegas to San Francisco, but a great perk to have! Virgin also does a really cool job with hiring good looking inflight crew and putting them in good looking uniforms. It is such a cool airline all the way around in that respect. With competitive prices, why would you not fly them over a Delta or a United?

Work is going well, we have been busier than usual lately which has been a nice change of pace. I have been working as a dispatcher for four years now and been gone from the airlines for five! It is really unbelievable, I do not know where the time has gone. I continue to count my blessings as each year passes. I am vested in the state's retirement system next year and can count of some type of pension when I retire; so so so cool.

The house saga continues, I still do not have any news. I do not want to talk about it. Thanks for your patience as mine has run out.

So that is a quick update on me. Just after the holidays, I am planning a Mexican getaway for a couple of weeks before Christmas. Before we know it, Christmas and New Years will be here and then 2010.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate!

36 and Counting...

2009-10-04T04:40:00.001-07:00

So it is my birthday weekend; I am 36 years old this year.

I know I say this all the time, but I genuinely feel that I lead a charmed existence. Since leaving the airlines a few years ago, I feel like I have found my niche in life. Even though my work can be a bit annoying or stressful at times, it suits me. I like working non-traditional hours and I have always greatly enjoyed working in general. (Check out that good Christian work ethic, who would have thunk?) My job offers me plenty of overtime and this is allowing me to buy a condo and take trips when I want to. I still have these lingering doubts that everything is going to come crashing down one day, but I suppose that is just my suspicious nature.

I tend to be something of a news junkie, watching Morning Joe in the mornings at work and DVR'ing Charlie Rose as well as hitting various news sites on the Internet throughout the day. So when the news drones on and on about people out of work, the health care debate, global warming, terrorism, and the like, it becomes a bit hard to separate one's self from the hype; everything is "fast breaking" and "hard hitting". When I give these ideas thought, neither of these concepts are in step with the pace of my life. I am neither fast breaking nor hard hitting; I prefer a slower and lazy pace of life. So this level of frenetic discourse probably does not help me to relax about stuff. It is an interesting self-observation, now that I have put it down on screen. *Note to self.

I am headed north today with a couple of girlfriends on an overnight to Mendocino. We are going to hang out, have a low key overnight at a hotel on the beach, and then hit some wineries and outlets on the way home tomorrow. I had a lovely Friday evening with a new friend and then spent Saturday evening with my friends Brian and Alex at a Brazilian steakhouse where waiters circled with hunks of drizzling meat. Good times were had by all.

This month is going to be a busy one for me. I have a bunch of people to touch base with, so I am going to be on the road a bit on days off with trips to Seattle, Vegas, and possibly Denver and Phoenix. So much to do, so little time. Facebook and the Internet are great for keeping up with people, but there is nothing better than chilling with the ones you love. So off off I go.

I am taking a couple of classes online, both required subjects, Literature and Critical Thinking. Thus far, Literature is proving to be a breeze. Critical Thinking is a philosophy course and it is one of those courses that I dread. Just logging on to the website fills me with loathing, but there it is. My reluctance is based upon my thorough lack of interest in a lot of the material (dissecting exactly why a statement or argument is true or false or logical) coupled with a large amount of writing to exacting standards. One of my strengths tends to be punching up other people's writing. For example, several people at work always have me proofread their e-mails or professional documents and I will edit or add to their work as needed. So this week's critical thinking assignment was to rewrite a poorly written sample letter to a potential employer. I was fairly confident about this assignment, but the professor was not a fan in his response to me. He gave me an 8 out of a 20! What is wildly funny is that all of the work I have turned in thus far has been total crap in my opinion and he has given me perfect marks. So the total lack of any read on this class and this professor have me a little spooked. No matter, I keep telling myself it will be over in a few months. The pitfalls of being a perfectionist.

Beyond that, I remain so eternally grateful for all that I have experienced in these first thirty five years. I am hooked on Shutterfly and had a couple photo books made that now proudly occupy my coffee table. When I flip through the pages of my life (literally), it is so cool to see what a journey it has been so far. From climbing pyramids to scuba diving, from flying to remote corners of the globe to hanging out in Dolores Park, and from sunny days to foggy nights, I have such fond and distinct memories of everything. Thank you to all of you for being such great and supportive friends and family. If the first thirty five years are any indication, the next thirty five are going to be incredible.

Gracias por todo amigos y hermanos. Cuidate.

Music...Makes the People...Come Together

2009-09-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has been so long. The family reunion left me in a fog for a while. No really, I am not kidding.

So I made the trek east. JetBlue was great, I hope they stay in business. Compared to any of the majors, they rock; leg room, DirecTV, A320 service, that is all I require. Syracuse, NY... Hmm. I cannot be politically correct in this circumstance. It is a hole. It was boring and economically depressed. There were a lot of bugs. There are some very nice things about summer in New York State; beautiful lakes, roadside farm stands selling fresh corn and tomatoes, and lots of historical red brick buildings. Sadly, I fear the bad outweighs the good. It is always good to see my immediate family, but my parents still think it is an acceptable idea to attempt to house twenty five people in a three bedroom home. When I do not visit for two or three years, the unpleasant memories fade and I think, "Oh, it won't be that bad." Hmm, yeah. Not having a bed is that bad. Especially when you are burning vacation time that you might rather spend elsewhere. If this situation rises again, I am going to bite the bullet and stay in one of the nearby motels of dubious quality. (The majority of them use the Beverly Hillbillies as a decorating template. Lest you forget, cell phones still do not work in this part of the world.)

So NY kind of blew...as in chunks. It was a lot of fun to see my brother though and his family. I spent the last couple of days in D.C. with them. D.C. is a such a cool town and they are always building new stuff. I spent an afternoon at the new Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian which was really cool to see. They have exhibits dealing with native peoples from Alaska to Argentina, so it was cool to see an American institution taking a more regional view of things. I also got to see the new aviation museum near Dulles which is nicely laid out. Some of the exhibits include an Air France Concorde, the Enola Gay, and one of the first prototypes of the Space Shuttle. My brother and his family are living in rural Virginia now after relocating back from a work assignment in Japan. It was great to see them and I hope to get out to visit more often now that they are living here in the U.S.

So I am back in the Bay Area. We are experiencing our short few weeks of summer right now and enjoying every moment of it; warm days, slightly breezy accompanied by non-chilly nights. September is a magical month here.

The saga regarding my condo continues. The short sale agreement expired around August 1st with no news in sight. In the past couple of weeks, the other realtor has been dangling the promise of news on a pending agreement in front of us, but nothing has come through to fruition. I was going to begin the search again for other possible properties, but the market has begun to heat up again and the low lying fruit in the market has been pretty well picked through. I have been holding out hope that this short sale will come through. Once again, the realtors say we should be hearing something this week. On average short sales have been taking four to six months out here in California, so the timing is not unusual. Rather it is an inconvenient truth. (Pun intended.) If the bank approves the offer, then it is going to be a race to close within thirty days.

Classes started a couple of weeks ago. The next few semesters, I am wrapping up my gen ed requirements in anticipation of attending Cal State next year. This semester, I have a literature course which is so pretty cool and a philosophy course involving ethics and critical thinking which is proving to be my gouge my eyes out course. It is a requirement, so I am hopeful that I can simply get through it. College truly is proving to be a bunch of hoops that you have to jump through. Over the summer, I completed my Math course and MacroEcon with two A's unbelievably. (I did not expect to get an A in Math and the college had lost my pass/fail form, so I was confident that the 4.0 streak was going to finally going to be broken.) So now I am predicting my Ethics course will break the streak. At this point, the continuing tension of the GPA is causing my OCD streak to spike. Once I get less than an A, I feel like the whole college experience will be a little more fun and I can relax a bit. All this for a degree that I will, in all likelihood, not use in a professional capacity. Good times, good times.

It is going to be a busy next few months. College football season is here, so I end up working a bunch of overtime for Stanford football games. I have a couple of trips planned, one to Seattle for a shaman workshop and then one to Vegas to re-celebrate my friend's birthday which got ruined in July when she contracted swine flu. Finally, a couple of trips to Hawaii and Mexico before the end of the year if the timing works out with school. Throw in a condo purchase and a move and the beat goes on.

One last rant, the dance radio station Energy 92.7 in San Francisco (with a strong gay following) switched formats last week to a Top 40 radio station under new ownership. Even though Energy did play the same twenty tracks repeatedly, it was a really cool station that was locally owned and was always sponsoring community events. The highly rated morning show staff of Fernando and Greg were laid off as was the entire station staff. Even though this is inevitably the way changeovers happen in radio (no warning and mass firings), it is still a sad time for what many of us felt was a great and unique addition to our city. Energy had won a bunch of awards over the last five years for being one of the best stations in the world and we all miss it greatly. People are putting together online protests and petitions, but it is doubtful these will have much effect. Thank you for a great five years Energy staff. There is a great big void in Bay Area radio now and we can only hope to have a station in the future that was as much a part of our city as Energy was. RIP.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Horrific Story from Iraq

2009-08-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder of how lucky we all really are to live in our country.

Anti-gay attacks on rise in Iraq

Gay Iraqi men are being murdered in what appears to be a co-ordinated campaign involving militia forces, the group Human Rights Watch says.

It says hundreds of gay men have been targeted and killed in Iraq since 2004.

So-called honour killings also account for deaths where families punish their own kin in order to avoid public shame.

The report says members of the Mehdi Army militia group are spearheading the campaign, but police are also accused - even though homosexuality is legal.

Witnesses say vigilante groups break into homes and pick people up in the street, interrogating them to extract the names of other potential victims, before murdering them.

"Murder and torture are no way to enforce morality," said HRW researcher Rasha Moumneh, quoted in the report.

"These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq's post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens."

In some cases, Human Rights Watch says it was told, Iraqi security forces had actually "colluded and joined in the killing".

Witch-hunt

Recently, posters appeared in Sadr City - a conservative, Shia area of Baghdad - calling on people to watch out for gay men and listing not only their names but also their addresses.

One gay man in Baghdad described the killing campaign as a witch-hunt. Nearly 90 gay men have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of January and many more are missing, local gay rights campaigners say.

The report, called They want us exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq, says horrifically mutilated bodies of gay men have been left on rubbish tips.

Sometimes their bodies are daubed with offensive terms such as "pervert", or "puppy" which is a hate word for gay men in Iraq.

The report contains detailed testimonies of a range of brutal treatment of gay Iraqi men.

"We've heard stories confirmed by doctors of men having their anuses glued and then being force-fed laxatives which leads to a very painful death," says Ms Moumneh told the BBC.

'Feminised men'

When questioned in the past, officials in Iraq have condemned the killings, but the BBC's Natalia Antelava in Baghdad reports that gay men there say nothing has been done to protect them.

"These killings will continue, because it has simply become normal in Iraq to kill gay men," said a gay Iraqi man who did not want to be named.

Mehdi army spokesmen and clerics have condemned what they call the "feminisation" of Iraqi men and have urged the military to take action against them.

The report said many gay men have fled to other countries in the region, despite consensual homosexual activity being illegal there, because the risk of victimisation is reduced.

HRW says the threats and abuses have spread from Baghdad to Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although persecution remains concentrated in the capital.

Officials say part of the problem in dealing with the attacks is that victims' relatives seldom if ever provide information to the police.

"They consider talking about the subject worse than the crime itself. This is the nature of our society," ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8204853.stm

Published: 2009/08/17 14:43:37 GMT

Cuidate.

It's a Cool...Cool Summer

2009-08-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

Gorgeous day today in the Bay Area; sunny, but not hot and breezy. I love living here. I am headed to the east coast on Thursday for my family reunion. This may be my last big one. I would rather spend time with smaller groups of relatives that I like rather than larger groups of people that get together because it is the right thing to do for the family image. When you only see someone once every three years and then get ignored by the same person(s) any other time, what kind of fucked up relationships are these? It is not mean if it is true. That's my position and I am sticking to it.

I am copping out and using some loaded questions today. I have not done any in a while and I like how they make me think.

If you could be an expert in one current event, what would it be?

I am a big airplane and airline nerd, so I can talk for days about airlines and airplanes. I also am an excellent travel planner and arranger.

What one feud will never die?

Israel and Palestine. Personally, my feud with my sister Melissa.

What one thing about nature do you hate?

I am not a huge fan of the bugs... and I am afraid of snakes.

What job on the set of a movie is best suited for your personality?

I would be an excellent production assistant (aka gofer). I can carry 8 coffees at a time with no problems.

Assuming you were single, why would somebody choose not to date you?

I am a creature of habit and do not like my regular routine disturbed too much. I sleep until noon or one if it is my day off. If you are a morning person, we are not going to click.

What aspect of the "good old days" would you like to see make a comeback in today's world?

I would like to see the 24 hour news cycle disappear and go back to daily newspapers and the evening news broadcast. I would also like to see people relating to each other more and less distraction with texting and video games.

What is your biggest regret in the last week?

That Diablo Valley College did not receive my pass/fail form for my math course.

When/where do you most often catch yourself flirting?

Uh...everywhere. I am a huge flirt.

What do you see as the best possible thing happening to you in the next week?

Seeing my brother and his family and my parents.

What do you often make fun of?

Almost anything; coworkers, right wing people, and stupid people are at the top of the list.

Why do people often make fun of you?

I don't know if they do. Maybe they are jealous of my fabulous lifestyle? Yeah, that's it.

What is something your friends know about you... but your parents would never know?

I swear like a motherfucker...constantly. I suppose that I have a very adult, crass, and inappropriate sense of humor that they would likely not appreciate.

If you were the boss at your job, what incentive or perk (aside from money) would you offer your employees?

Free soda machines and snack machines.

What one thing have you hold on to...for no good reason?

I have a blanket that I have had since high school that probably is hazardous because it was one of those old style electric ones that you plugged in. But I cannot seem to get rid of it.

Who is the most overrated band (or musician) ever?

The Bee Gees.

How are you most creative?

I suppose writing more than anything else as I get older.

Alright all. Hope you are having a great weekend.

Cuidate.

Yes, I am Alive

2009-07-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry everyone. I have sworn to myself that I am not going to beat myself up about not keeping up with the blog, but I have been keeping up my usual hectic schedule and free time has been at a minimum.

I started back on day shift at the beginning of July and this always throws a wrench in my natural circadian rhythms. I start my days at 8 AM which is the best of the day shifts. (If I thought 8 AM was a bad start time, I could have been stuck with 4 AM. WTF? What kind of evil genius made these shifts up? On a really evil note, my workplace used to have a 12 AM shift to 10 AM which seems to defy all concern for semblance of a life. Thankfully, that shift no longer exists.) One of my coworkers is out on maternity leave and expected to have twins, so my boss has graciously approved a transfer to her vacant night shift while she is out. I get back to nights in September which will be a nice early birthday present. How long my coworker will be out is still up in the air, but the longer I am on nights, the happier I will be. So each day I stumble through work being half awake and commuting at the same times the rest of you do. It is an ugly existence, but I am managing.

If you believe this one, I have still hearing NOTHING from the bank regarding the loft I put a short sale offer on. The offer requires the bank to respond to my offer within 90 days, so July 30th marks the ninetieth day. I expect to hear something this week, but this process has become so drawn out that I am hardly excited about the prospect of home ownership anymore. I am sure things will change in the next few weeks as frantic calls and paperwork change hands. Throughout the process, my mindset has been to refuse to get excited until I have a set of keys in my hand and this continues to be my philosophy. I feel cautiously optimistic, but there is still a whole set of lingering questions and fears regarding my upcoming jump into home ownership.

My family is gathering together for a reunion of my mom's family in upstate NY in a couple of weeks. I am looking forward to seeing my immediate family as well as some fun aunts, uncles, and cousins. Still, these things always end up being kind of dry and I am the fun token liberal gay of a large breeding Catholic family. (Conversation overheard from one of the previous reunions. "Oh my God, can you imagine John Kerry as President? How insane would that be?" No crazier than your boy W people. Yeah, I fully expect to see some Fox News T-Shirts this year.) Thankfully over the years, some people's dysfunctions have overcome my gay status and several of my cousins have healthy drinking problems. Life can be sweet that way.

I took a couple of courses over summer semester that are finishing up this week; (Yet another reason this one has not been blogging.) Macroeconomics and the humorously titled Math for Liberal Arts. Macro- has been boring as all hell, but the class is pretty easy. My math course has turned out to be unexpectedly fun. Ok, fun is not the right word, but amusing. The book is decent and deals with practical applications of math such as compounding interest on investments, different types of loans and how interest is calculated, as well as logic and statistics in relation to Vegas style games like blackjack and roulette. At least it is not plotting parabolas and useless stuff like that. Cal State requires a C in a math course to graduate and thus far, I have a B. So even though math is not my favorite subject, this course has not sucked as bad as I thought it would. I have just a few pre-req courses to finish and then I should be ready to start at Cal State next fall. Good stuff! The 4.0 remains intact and I wisely took my math course pass/fail, so I may be able to extend the streak until 2010.

Beyond that, it has been a nice summer. I pulled a muscle in my back a few weeks back while running (which was a new experience for me). It has healed nicely and I am back to my normal workout routine of running every other day. I got a low end rowing machine for my loft and I have been rowing while I catch up on my DVR programs on non-run days, so that has been a fun toy to have around. After the unfortunate incident of my former hip hop instructor becoming a strange alcoholic stalker, I had not found a replacement dance class in the last six months or so. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine told me about some classes offered at the YMCA in the city. I attended one and liked the instructor a lot, so I will probably start heading that way when I have time. They have two classes a week on Tuesday and Thursday and hip hop is a really good work out, so I am looking forward to getting back to class.

Gay Pride was a lot of fun (as always). I made the fatal mistake of consuming too much alcohol without enough food in my stomach and ended up paying for it later on, but overall it was a good time. After many years doing the same thing year after year, I am going to scale back Operation Parade and Cocktail next year. I am not a huge drinker anyway, so I think it is time to make a change as we enter a new decade next year.

One quick thought that I have been pondering lately is the transience of life. The passing of both Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite were a big reminder to me that all of us are going to pass away one day. I remember my first memory of Michael Jackson from a fourth grade birthday party of a neighbor. His birthday gifts from his parents were a Sony Walkman and the Thriller cassette. All of the boys at the party stayed up all night listening to the tape and watching 48 Hours. For a kid from a sheltered upbringing, this was revolutionary stuff. I spent the better part of the next year or two being obsessed with Michael Jackson (as was everyone in 1984) and dialing 1-800-MICHAEL in the hopes of speaking to the singer personally. In fact, my repeated dialing was the reason my parents finally acquiesced and got call waiting. My father complained he could never get through when he called home. Even though he got creepy after Bad, Michael Jackson in his golden years (or should I say black years?) was such a huge talent. It is hard to believe he has passed on. Cronkite was also a huge part of my childhood memories. My parents were dedicated fans who watched night after night, especially through the first big political campaign of my life, the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. I am fiercely nostalgic for the days of a non-24 hour news cycle and people watching the news each evening to get their fix of national and world affairs as well as news programs of substance and subtlety rather than car chases and sensationalist video clips. I remember Cronkite's gravely voice as he delivered the news in the twilight of his network news career and it never dawned on me that he would one day not be with us. As I grow older and begin to loose more familiar figures to me, it reinforces how quickly time passes and how one must make the most of his or her short time that he or she has here.

So that is a quick update from me. Hope each one of you is having a great summer and I will try to blog soon.

Cuidate.

My Favorite Week of the Year

2009-06-24T04:16:00.000-07:00

It is Christmas, Halloween, New Years, Veterans Day, and more, all rolled into one. I do not quite know why I enjoy this time of year best, but there you have it. Yes my friends, it is Gay Pride 2009. The big parade and shindig is scheduled for Sunday, but the film festival started last weekend. I saw two different films today, one a mockumentary (or as the director called it "a documentary feature hybrid") about a popular male escort in London and the other being a documentary following a group of gay people, both Jews and Arabs, in Jerusalem. Films like the second always illustrate for the complacent gays of San Francisco (like myself) that even though things might seem like they are getting better in this country, they still have a long way to go around the globe. I am taking a mini stay-cation this week and next before starting on dayshift a week from Saturday.

I had a really satisfying time pursuing further shamanic studies a few weeks ago at Mt Shasta. It is an absolutely beautiful area several hours north and most native groups of the area consider the volcanic mountain sacred ground. There is a huge amount of natural energy there and a lot of the work we were doing was outside, so it was a nice place to de-stress. Whenever I experience one of these weekends in a group of spiritually like minded people, it is very much reminiscent of the Circle of Life number from The Lion King. With the crazy pace of life, it is always nice to step back and just smell the flowers and feel the wind and the sun on your face. Even though these things are with us every day, often we are too busy to recognize them.

School has started for summer semester. So far, the courses look manageable. Macro should be fine and my Math course also does not seem horribly difficult. The quadratic equation and other algebraic formulas surprisingly were still somewhere in my brain and I am dusting those off and putting them to some use.

I have been giving some thought to my single status as of late. It seems to be a common pattern of mine to mourn the loss of previous meaningful relationships for a year or two before seriously moving on. There is a part of me that is frightened of letting go and getting hurt yet again. (Yes Kalin, there is a beating heart somewhere within this ice princess.) But I also need to stop being stubborn and reach out to people again. I tend to fill my life with work and big plans, but not leave room for a partner. I have made it a goal of mine to try and be more social, to see my friends and family more, and to not be such a control freak. It is not easy, I come from a long line of them. However, I am definitely feeling the ending of the mourning period and the urge to date again. Wish me luck.

I had a bad health week last week, first pulling a muscle in my back while I was running followed up by a cousin of the swine flu epidemic. I am happy to report I am well on the way to recovery in time for my favorite weekend.

That is a quick update on me. Hope you are all doing well and I will see a lot of you this weekend at Pride. Cuidate.

Getting Out of Town

2009-06-05T03:40:00.000-07:00

I burnt myself out this week; I worked six days straight at work and there is definitely a reason we work in four day blocks. By day five, you start to loose patience with Joe Citizen and day six turns ugly. I had no patience for anyone at work tonight. Thankfully, I have the weekend off. Praise be.

I need to get some more Loaded Questions to answer on here as I know the blog has been a snoozer as of late. Sorry kids.

People keep asking me about the house and it is stressing me out. The bank has ninety days to decide whether or not they will accept my offer. Only thirty five days have passed, so the waiting continues. My realtor seemed to think that with so many properties on the market, I would not hear anything back for a while and he was right. The whole prospect of home ownership still seems like such an anomaly to me. Until the keys are in my hand, I refuse to get excited about anything. So many potential things to go wrong, so little time. If I get the place, you all will be the first to know. Promise.

I watched Obama give his speech from the Middle East this morning; the man is an incredible communicator. The amount of stuff piled on his plate is extraordinary, yet he seems to shoulder the pressure with relative ease. After watching what has happened with his domestic agenda though, it is clear that he cannot do everything without some support from his party or centrist Republicans. People need to stand up and sign on to the President's basic ideals and goals that, as a country, the United States needs to engage in genuine dialogue and cooperation with the rest of the world. The United States cannot continue to go it alone in our rapidly shrinking (or should we say shrunk?) global economy. Rather, we need to recognize and interact with our neighbors on an equal playing field. Obama needs our support and we must stand up and give it to him.

I got forced back to working day shift starting at the beginning of July for a year. I will be working with a fun co-worker, so that should lessen the sting. Still, moi before noon is not a pretty sight.

I finished off spring semester with my 4.0 intact! Two more courses down in the slow slog towards my degree. I will likely be transferring to Cal State in the next year or so and then will start taking some of the courses in my major which are really peaking my interest. Over the summer, I will be taking Macroeconomics and Math this summer. Macro should not be too much of a challenge, but I have not taken Math in twenty years? I suspect my 4.0 might fall under the curse of "Math for Liberal Arts". Wish me luck...

I am off to Mt Shasta today, doing a shaman workshop this weekend. It will be good to rest up and recharge in a beautiful setting.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate mucho.

Those Friendly Skies

2009-05-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

Cute article that made me think back to my flying days.

http://www.budgettravel.com/bt-dyn/content/article/2009/05/06/AR2009050603392.html

Cuidate.

Simple Pleasures

2009-05-22T00:45:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, it really is the little things that bring enormous amounts of pleasure; not how much money you spend or how important you are or how much stuff you accumulate. So in keeping with lean economic times, I offer up what brings me simple pleasure.

1. Best of craigslist

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/

This material is some of the funniest shit anywhere. I cannot help, but crack up at Best of craigslist. A lot of these people would probably be award-winning writers if they were not just blowing off work and posting on cl.

2. (I preface this one by saying I know I am a horrible person. Yes, I am well aware of it. Thank you in advance for judging me.) So the building I work in has a public parking structure below it. There are elevators, but after 5 PM you need a key card to enter the building. Inevitably, when I am beginning a night at work, there is a person or person(s) parking nearby that sees me enter the lobby and heads in my direction. By this time, I have swiped in and an elevator has arrived because no one else is in the building. I am just pressing my floor when I hear people jerking on the door and saying, "What the hell? How did that guy get in?" It is mean and stupid, but it is really fun for me at the same time.

3. YouTube. What did we do before YouTube? Who knew that countless hours could be filled by looking up old Journey videos or Wonder Woman episodes? Good times my friends, good times.

4. It is fun to watch people in the service industry with a difficult customer. After many a year of people wanting more free bread, complaining about why they have to sit in the middle seat, or explaining to people why we won't take off in a bad thunderstorm, it is a pleasure and a relief to not have to deal with that anymore. Even better, usually I am the one in line behind them and end up with something free because I am patient, polite, I speak English fluently, and I smile. Usually I am thanking God that he and/or she got me out of that life.

5. Hanging out with friends or family members whose company you enjoy. Shared histories and laughter are really what it is all about. And a juicy bit of gossip is like the cherry in a Shirley Temple.

6. Reality TV. Some of the shows are really fucking stupid, granted. But what did we do before people got voted off the island? Why did Puck have to stick his finger in Pedro's peanut butter? Is it a bad sign that more people vote for American Idol than vote in national elections? There is something so great about hearing the words "Auf Wiedersehen".

Now that I give serious thought to the issue, I am confident gay people had a lot to do with the reality TV revolution. There would not be any Project Runway nor Queer Eye without the my peeps. Nor would there be any makeover shows. Let's be serious, who wants to see a straight person make over anything? Me no likey. As a side note, super super guilty pleasure is RuPaul's Drag Race on Logo. Set your DVRs, you will note be sorry. It is better than The Girls Next Door and that is saying something.

7. Sex and the City. The simplest pleasure of all, no explanation necessary.

8. Getting a haircut. There is nothing like a guy's head the first couple days after he has had a haircut. Grr, very sexy. Girls too, doesn't everyone enjoy a good haircut?

9. Finishing crap on your To Do list. I have been staring at a bunch of e-waste that I have been wanting to get rid of (old printers, digital cameras, etc) and I have had a post it note on my fridge telling me where to drop it off. I finally had the time to do it the other day and it took me all of about five minutes. Now every time I walk in my house, I say to myself, "All of that crap is finally gone!" and beam.

10. Eating junk food. In my line of work, this is an occupational hazard. Try sitting in the same room for eleven hours, bored for most of it. The question most asked is, "What can we eat next?" Taco Hell at 2 AM, divine; Jack in the Crack at 3, even better. If that doesn't satisfy your craving, 7-Eleven is always there with the Big Gulp and the McRib rip off. For the truly twisted, there is now a product called Chocodiles which are Twinkies dipped in chocolate. This seems so wrong on so many levels, but my coworkers swear by them.

I hope you are all having a great week. Cuidate.

Great article

2009-05-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Great article in USA Today on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone female currently on the Supreme Court. She speaks eloquently as to why we need more women on the high court. Hope you all read it!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2009-05-05-ruthginsburg_N.htm

Cuidate.

Swine Overload

2009-05-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

When the news of David Souter retiring hit newsrooms this week, it was like being in the eye of the hurricane that was swine flu news coverage. Yet again, the 24 hours news cycle turned what should have been a developing story into a full fledged news panic engulfing everything in its midst. I do pretty well with ignoring most of the hype, but even NPR was taken in with this one. Thankfully, Souter retiring seemed to give the networks something to talk about besides emergency rooms being flooded with people who did not even have the flu, much less swine flu.

Having lived in New Hampshire during my high school years, I remember well when David Souter was nominated to the Supreme Court. John Sununu (the older one) left the governorship of the state to become George H.W. Bush's chief of staff. Within a week of the inauguration, the Seabrook Nuclear power plant was given a license to operate after years of being stalled and it was clear that Sununu was calling the shots from D.C. Souter was nominated not long after this to the U.S. Supreme Court on the strong recommendations of Sununu and Senator Warren Rudman. Over the years, Souter has proven to be something of a mystery for the media and politicians alike. He has a strong dislike for the nation's capitol and flees home to his family's farm in New Hampshire whenever the chance arises. He rarely speaks in public, does not write books, or lecture like many of his colleagues do. He does not attend Washington social gatherings of any kind. He does not have a cell phone nor a computer and drafts his writings with a fountain pen. Though nominated by a Republican, he has ended up being one of the more liberal members of the Court over the last twenty years. He was once engaged, but has never married. There is speculation that he may be gay, but it is merely that; speculation. To me, he seems like a very classy guy who has worked hard to remain a private person and took his job very seriously. In today's age of instant celebrity or infamy (think Paris Hilton or Susan Boyle), it is refreshing to find someone who is authentically himself or herself and does not require more than that. It is also so cool that he is retiring. Yes, one has a lifetime appointment to the Court, but sometimes there are more important things than power or a job. If you think about John Paul Stevens who is nearly 90 and still on the bench, I imagine there are days he does not want to go to work. Anyhow, good luck to you Justice Souter. You have my respect and admiration.

I have settled back into work after a couple of weeks away. The nice thing about my job is that it is pretty routine. Yes, different stuff happens on different days, but the radio traffic never stops and the phones keep ringing. I have more time off coming in June the week before Gay Pride, so I am looking forward to that. Each year I donate money to the Film Festival, but inevitably only get to see two or three films because I am working a lot. This year, I should get to see a bunch and put my gold pass to good use.

After a couple of weeks of wrangling with realtors and sellers, I have tentative acceptance of an offer I made on a live/work loft in West Oakland. It is a nice property, very big and open, about two blocks from West Oakland BART. It is less than ten minutes from the Emeryville Bay Street area and the city is a hop, skip, and a jump across the bridge. The neighborhood is a little sketchy, but that whole area is gentrifying and it is a good place to invest. I am now just waiting to hear back from the bank that they will agree to the price, which could take sixty to ninety days. It is exciting to consider that I may be a homeowner, something I did not think was going to be possible in the Bay Area which I love so much. So keep your fingers crossed for me and I will keep you all updated.

I am finishing up school this week for the semester. Now that I taking classes to fill pre-reqs, it is not as fun as mindlessly taking whatever I wanted to before. Intro to Art was an interesting class these last few weeks whereas Public Speaking was not. I have enough credits to earn an Associate's degree, but I am short two PE credits. WTF? Gym class, which I thought I had comfortably left behind in high school, is haunting me again.

I am off to hang with my brother who is in town this week. Hope you are all doing well and had a great weekend.

Cuidate.

Back in Kali

2009-04-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

What up kids?

So I am back, got back last Monday and went directly back to work on Tuesday. It was a little ugly, but I am recovered now. I have not blogged because I have a couple of video clips that I wanted to post, but they were taken on my camera in .jpg format. Blogger and Quick Time can't seem to recognize them as anything more than still images. Grr! And the weird thing is, I downloaded a similar video a couple of months ago when I got back from Mexico. I have looked through the code and tried to figure out a way to make it happen, but it seems to be a bit too much for my lacking html skills.

Anyhow, Asia was amazing. I arrived in Hong Kong and felt as if I had never left. There is a certain comfort to HK that I do not exactly understand, but it feels very much like home to me; masses of people, heat, amazing street food, the harsh and frenzied tones of Cantonese, an unbelievable skyline, and one of my favorite airports anywhere. I had booked a hotel in Wan Chai off Priceline that was fine, nothing to brag about. I have yet to find a hotel in HK that really impresses me, but NYC is like that too. Unless you are paying big bucks, most of the rooms are the size of a walk-in closet. On Good Friday, I headed for Shenzhen to do some shopping unaware of two things. 1) Good Friday is still an official holiday in HK, a hold over from the British days. 2) People from the U.S. and the U.K. cannot get day visas at the border anymore. WTF? Apparently around the time of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government decided to make some cash off the gwai-los and require us to get regular tourist visas. So I'm heading for the border with about a half million HK residents who had the same brilliant idea as me to go shopping on the holiday. I exit HK and then am in line for my day visa, only to find out the great news. A nice waste of three hours or so. Still, now I know.

I spent the better part of the weekend in HK, going out on the weekend nights and spending the days either hitting the markets or exploring the city on foot. The bird and flower markets were pretty cool areas to wander through, but you cannot help but feel sorry for the larger birds (like toucans) that they have for sale in these cages that are way too small for them. I had some great dim sum on Sunday near the downtown area. Surprisingly, the standards of har gow and shu mai were kind of unremarkable in flavor; the American versions here in SF are more flavorful. However the fall back dishes of pork ribs and chicken's feet soared over their counterparts. They were not as dense, but the flavors were more complex and the better part of the meal for me. I also went in search of Anthony Bourdain's pork restaurant in the New Territories, but ended up at some beef noodle place he went to instead. It was good, but se no habla ingles. Thankfully the lady I got seated with was helpful and knew several English words including "beef", "noodle", and "rice". Sadly, that was about the extent of it. The waitress brought me what she was having to simplify things. The place had seating for 20 max and the line outside was at least 20 deep.

Because of the holiday weekend, I ended up having to forfeit a night in Singapore. I arrived early Tuesday morning with one day to see what I could of the city. First observation of Singapore - it's hot; really ugly steamy hot. I do not think the weather ever varies there. There are these amazing food stalls everywhere and the food looks great, but who wants to eat when it's scorching hot out and you are soaked in sweat? I made the most of my day there and had some chicken rice as well as did some shopping. I did not want to take a chance on missing my flight to Bali later that night, so I did not attempt anything too adventurous. World famous Changi Airport is definitely one of the world's best airports with free wireless service everywhere, an unbelievable amount of entertainment and food options, and a host of other services like free movie theaters and dry cleaning. I prefer HK, but I am biased and I know it. It is kind of like me and high end retailers like Nordstroms or Neiman Marcus. I am perfectly happy with Macys and Target, thank you. Whenever anyone is really nice to me, I am instantly suspicious.

I hopped a budget airline (Valuair, recently acquired by Jetstar Australia which is partially owned by Qantas) down to Denpasar (Bali). They fly A320s and did a nice service for the cheap fare. I landed in Bali close to midnight and then headed to Ubud which is about half an hour north of the popular resort areas of Kuta Beach. Ubud is a hilly, green area in the center of the island. They are mostly known as a spiritual tourist area; lots of holistic healers, yoga clinics, artists, and celebrations of local culture like nightly religious dances for tourists. I stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast type place that overlooked a river. Every night, I fell asleep to the sounds of the river and the tree frogs. Each morning, breakfast was delivered to my veranda by a smiling member of the staff. Indonesia is just as hot as Singapore was. Even the daily showers do not cool it off much. I was either swimming or showering three times a day. I did a lot of walking and exploring the area on foot. I probably should have rented a moped as riding one of those at least gives you some circulation of air that dries you off after sweating crazy amounts. I did not figure that out until I was ready to leave though. I was kind of scared to join the other thousands of motorbikes on the road, but next time I will go this route.

The countryside surrounding Ubud is gorgeous and consists of peaceful rice paddies and streams. One of the highlights of my time in Ubud was visiting Ketut Leyer, one of the characters from the popular book Eat, Pray, Love. Ketut is 90 years old by his estimate and very similar to his personality in the book. He gave me a palm and face reading and told me I will live until I am 110. Hmm... I am not sure if that is true or not, but most of what he said rang very true. When I arrived, he was making two pendants for two local children whose mother had brought them to him because they were having problems sleeping. Just to be able to sit with them and Ketut and watch him work was very special. He has a great amount of energy, an enormous grin, and two or three teeth max. Some of the reviews of meeting him on the Internet had not been very favorable, but I had a great time.

My final night, I headed to Kuta Beach to check out the area and the gay scene which is one of the only ones in Indonesia due to rest of the country being overwhelmingly Muslim. Kuta is reminiscent of Phuket or Pattaya or any of the other Asian beach resort destinations; lots of Australians and other white European and American tourists running around. The beaches were nice, but I am not a huge beach person. The bars were fun, there are only about two large ones and a couple of smaller ones. Nice and friendly people though all through Indonesia. By this point, I was about ready to start heading home and familiar sites like Macdonalds and Starbucks were looking pretty good.

The great thing about Bali is that it is super cheap. A meal, even in a nicer restaurant, is not going to cost you more than $5-10 U.S. On average, I would estimate paying $3 to $5. Major hotels that you book online are expensive, but there are a host of places to stay when you get there for anywhere from $5 - $30 a night. An hour massage is about $5. I suppose Kuta is like Cancun for Australians. A lot of Australians have been buying up property on Bali in recent years.

So I headed home last Monday. I have to say, my standby flights could not have gone better. With the exception of not making that one flight from HK to Singapore, I got First Class every leg which on flights that long is a GODSEND. I am very lucky (which Ketut told me a couple of times) that I have such generous friends and flight benefits again.

That's a quick synopsis of my trip. I have posted a couple of pics here. E-mail me if you want to see the set.

It is nice to be home. Cuidate.

Checking Out for a Few

2009-04-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

So I am sitting at SFO waiting to board a flight to Hong Kong.

I remember the first time I visited Hong Kong. It was in 1999 and I picked up a trip after I had transferred to Chicago to be with my first serious boyfriend. Aren't those some golden memories? Even though the relationship did not last, my affection for Hong Kong and all things Cantonese has never waned. I have not been back in about five years, so I know that much has changed. They even have a Disneyland now!

This trip is going to be a good one. After hitting the grind hard for the last couple of months, I am sorely in need of a break. Thanks to my great friend C, I have pass benefits back at United and I will be able to make the hop across the pond in the front of the plane. Very very very nice indeed. I should be hitting Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bali before I return to the States later on this month.

I finally wore myself out this week and contracted the change of seasons cold that was overdue. However, I am on the mend and vacation should be the perfect prescription.

The house hunt continues. I have seen a bunch of properties and recently saw one that I liked, but the paperwork and the negotiations seem to take ages. There is definitely a lot of foreclosures and other stuff hitting the market, so it is a good time to be looking.

Sorry I have fallen off the radar with a lot of you; I hope that you are all doing well. Happy Easter!

Cuidate.

Dear Mr. President

2009-04-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

There are so many things I would like to say to you, but the most important sentiment that comes to mind is thank you.

Thank you for your strong leadership and forward thinking.

Thank you for being a steady voice of reason in these trying times for our country.

Thank you for having the courage to take a stand on issues that are vital to our nation such as health care, education, and climate change.

Thank you for trying to create common ground in our two party system.

Thank you for appointing the right people to posts in your administration without using party affiliation as the main selection criteria.

Thank you for being well spoken and properly using the English language. (It has been a while since we have seen this in a President.)

Thank you for being an authentic person and honest about your imperfections.

Thank you for being a good father and having a beautiful family.

Thank you for having an incredibly intelligent and well spoken wife (not to mention wonderfully stylish) who represents our nation well.

Thank you for being exactly what our nation needs in times like these.

For this and many other things, I say thank you. Keep up the good work.

Cuidate all.

When Old Becomes Cool

2009-03-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

It seems like our society revolves around the new; new cars, the latest computer or ipod, cell phone, etc. I am not immune from this phenomena, but lately I have started to look back at the past wistfully. Case in point, a recent purchase of mine. Check it out.

Courtesy of eBay, I found this Royal Quiet De Luxe from the early 1940s for cheap. It is such an amazing machine. Almost seventy years old and it works like a charm. Is it practical in today's society? No. Is it hella cool? Yes it is.

Lately everywhere I turn, old stuff seems cooler than new; Mexican Coca Colas in glass bottles, vintage cars, black and white photos and images, Pan Am bags, and more. Even stuff from the eighties and nineties (that is not truly old) is a crack up. Jellies or a Pontiac Fiero anyone? How about Thriller?

This is not some deep, insightful post, just a snapshot of what is in my head these days. Hope you are all doing well.

Cuidate.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

2009-02-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

It has been raining a lot here. Far from being bothered, I actually have been enjoying it. After several dry years here in California, one would think the "experts" would be happy with the large amount of rainfall. Hmmm, think again. Watching the news yesterday, a local news station reported that the increased rainfall has not made up the difference and the reservoirs are only at thirty percent of their capacity. I hate local news media. Michael Moore had it right in Bowling for Columbine when he pointed out that news media personnel will chase sort of sensationalist story they can. We get cold calls from the media almost nightly at work asking if anything is "going on". Uh, newsflash. Even if the town was burning down, we would tell you it's a slow night. So you can save yourself some time and stop calling. Even when we do have something happen, usually the facts are all wrong and distorted when one reads the paper the next day. My friends always ask me, "Did you see what happened in _________ this morning?" Inevitably, I have to say no and they fill me in anyway. So a fan of local media, I am not. Which is actually kind of ironic, because I cannot get enough of the BBC and the New York Times. Things that make you go hmmm.

I have been keeping busy this spring with my online classes. I will not be taking three in the same semester again. It sounded like a good idea to start with, but my slight OCD sets in and I am constantly in fear of missing a board posting or an assignment for one course because my focus is on the other class that day. Two classes while working full-time is just enough. Art and US History have been decent so far, Public Speaking less so. Gotta love those general education requirements!

Over the weekend, I completed my basic motorcycle rider's course. It was a challenging, but fun course that I did with a girl from work. I am definitely hooked, much more so that I thought I would be. When I lived in Hawaii back in the 1990s, I rode a moped for a year which I enjoyed. I was riding a good distance everyday though and the small mopeds maxed out around 35 mph. So getting anywhere took way too much time and the freeways were out. Once I get my house or condo, I will probably look into buying a cheap first motorcycle and spend a lot of time in empty parking lots at night working on my low speed skills. Motorcycles are a lot more stable than one would think. Plus you can get all decked out with riding gear, always a plus. I do not see the bike replacing my car as a means of transportation, but it will be fun to ride on days off and weekends.

Speaking of houses, the search continues. My realtor and I put in an offer on a brand new condo unit not far from where I live now, but they were unwilling to bargain down from their list price. Considering the way the economy is right now, those condos will be sitting for quite some time. They already have not sold one since October, so one would think the writing would be on the wall. lol. In any case, I hope to get into something in the next month or two. I can really use the tax break and I am looking forward to being a homeowner.

So that is what has been keeping me busy. Hope you are all doing well.

Cuidate.

So Much Better Than I Imagined

2009-02-16T16:03:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone.

I got back from Mexico City last week and the trip was amazing. The city is clean, cosmopolitan, and filled with some of the nicest people anywhere. The dollar is strong against the Mexican peso right now too, so the food, accommodations, and lodging were cheap, cheap, cheap. The food was some of the best I have ever had, be it from the great restaurant where Kellie and I had mole to the kid selling tamales on the corner. I am definitely a city person in the grand scheme of things. I am inspired by chaos, art, late night markets, people dancing and having a good time, buses, kids, dogs, and movement. Quiet places are great for a little while, but I get nervous and anxious without some kind of action going on.

This video is taken near an Art market downtown. On weekends, they hold salsa dancing sessions in the local park. It was such a cool thing to stumble across, local people just out on a Sunday afternoon having a good time with each other.

Kellie and I are planning a trip to Asia in April, so this was a good test run. We were good travel companions and we both love to eat, an excellent combination. Here are a few photos I took. If you want to see more, e-mail me and I can send you the link.

Beyond that, back to my hectic life. I am still searching around for a house or a condo. I am also juggling three classes currently, so that is keeping me busy in the early morning hours.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Heading South

2009-02-04T05:18:00.000-08:00

A lot has been happening lately. Thus, me not blogging. My New Year's resolution is to stop feeling bad about not blogging. I am not a blog star, millions of people worldwide are not anxiously waiting for my next installment. So I am going to chill and do what I can do.

I started my classes this week. Usually I take two, but this semester I was under some cracked out impression I could take four. It is not happening. I am compromising with three. Divine intervention came into play as the gods wisely did not clear one of my waitlists for a class. To be honest, I was not relishing the thought of taking Ethics anyway. My course load this semester now consists of Public Speaking, Introduction to Art, and US History (the first half). So far, only Public Speaking is pissing me off almost two weeks in. Not too bad, one out of three classes. Besides a couple of dumb missing credits like gym, yours truly has an associates degree pretty much in the bag. I will probably take it easy for a year or so, finish up some pre-reqs, and then transfer to Cal State East Bay. The California higher education system is really something to behold. It is ridiculously cheap not to mention technology friendly as most courses these days can be taken either online or in hybrid form meeting just a couple of times a semester. Yes, our roads are in bad shape and the state is beyond bankrupt. But I, my friends, will have a diploma in a couple of years. Sweet!

Work is going well. I got pushed back to day shift starting in July for a year, but this is not set in stone. There is some possible shuffling around to be done and I may be able to get back to my beloved overnights. Keep your fingers crossed. Mark + days = bitter, bitter on the wall, who's the bitterest of them all?

In a surprising turn towards adulthood, I am biting the bullet and beginning to look into purchasing my first home. The housing market in Northern California is not nearly as bad as it is in other areas of the country, but there are definitely bargains to be had. I suppose I have avoided up until now out of a comination of factors; fear of perminently owning something, not really understanding the process of buying a home (not that I do yet anyway!), and being priced out of the market here. So with interest rates so low and me not having any decent tax deductions, my hand has been forced. A good friend from work is taking me through the process and has been invaluable in explaining everything to me. While I am still apprehensive, I am also excited to be starting a new chapter in my life.

In the midst of all of this, I had planned a quick trip to Mexico City with Kellie a couple of months ago. I have been to Mexico City a couple of times when I was working for United, but never more than time enough for dinner and drinks. I am really excited to explore some of the town. I am a big fan of most things Mexican and we are both looking forward to seeing the Frida Kahlo house, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Pyramids as well as eating ourselves into oblivion. I made reservations at a cool bed and breakfast and it will be nice to get away for a couple of days, even if it is not the best time with everything else going on.

So, I will be off in Mexico City for a few. Today is my mom's birthday, so Happy Birthday Mom! Still going strong at 69.

Hope you are all doing well and staying warm this fun winter. Cuidate.

The Story of My Work Life

2009-01-29T22:38:00.000-08:00

You know you have been a dispatcher too long when...

1. You spend more on fast food than on utilities.

2. You answer your home phone "dispatch".

3. The only thing that gets your adrenaline going is the walk to and from your car.

4. You find humor in other people's misery.

5. You're only happy if you have something to complain about.

6. Your idea of a good night involves someone getting shot at, chased, or dismembered.

7. You consider patience a weakness, not a virtue.

8. You have forgotten what it is like to actually eat a hot meal.

9. Your dog does not recognize you and the kids think you are just the person who drops in every now and then to bring groceries and do laundry.

10. You truly believe stupidity should be painful.

11. You have ever put someone on hold so that you could laugh hysterically.

12. If an officer screamed over the radio that a nuclear bomb had just been detonated, you would ask the 20 of the mushroom cloud and assign it a case number.

13. Dinner consists of a 2 liter bottle of soda and whatever you can scrounge out of the vending machine.

14. You see nothing wrong with discussing abdominal evisceration over dinner in a public restaurant...and you wonder why all the tables around you have cleared out.

15. You hear a fire engine, ambulance, or police car go screaming by your house and wonder not what's happening, but who is going to the call.

16. You read the newspaper accounts of a major incident that occurred during your shift and point out all the incorrect information.

17. Family members comment on how nice you used to be before you started this job.

18. You believe in aerial spraying of PROZAC and/or birth control over certain parts of your city.

19. You have no idea what a holiday is, other than it is the day when everyone gets drunk and beats up their family members.

20. You can carry on more than four conversations simultaneously.

21. You have the bladder capacity of a tanker truck.

22. You can resume a conversation with co-workers four hours later, in mid-sentence, and everyone knows what you are talking about.

23. You have a long term relationship with one or more paranoid, schizophrenic PTSD suffering relative of a public official.

24. You have ever had to explain to a college educated, gainfully employed, tax paying property owner that his or her child's lack of interest in vegetables is not a police matter.

25. You inform your new teenage driver, "I WILL ALWAYS KNOW!"

26. You have ever muttered the phrase "They let him/her carry a gun?"

27. You do not think it odd to find naked people, cows, buffalo, or any other bizarre thing running loose down Main Street.

Cuidate.

We Can All Dream Big

2009-01-22T06:50:00.001-08:00

The video is much better than the live attempt went off. We have been called.

Cuidate.

An Impressive First Day

2009-01-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

Despite all of the hype of the past few days, today's Inauguration met or exceeded expectations. It was truly a historic and emotion filled day. The first couple looked amazing. The president's speech was inspirational, hopeful, and appropriate. As Faith Hill said on Oprah yesterday, "We have been called."

The real proof will come in the next few months. As many pundits have rightly pointed out, George W Bush ran on a platform of uniting people and reaching across the aisle only to become the most divisive executive of the last few decades. The new president has some formidable tasks on his plate and it will take years to even put a dent in the majority of them. Not only that, it will take the reluctant cooperation of Senate Republicans who still have the minimum amount of seats to filibuster legislation and may feel the need to flex their power. Only time will tell.

Today was all about celebration though. The world celebrated along with our nation as we continued our tradition of peaceful and orderly transition. Even though we are a young nation, we have managed to get some things right over the years. God Bless America!

Cuidate.

Random Stuff in the New Year

2009-01-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

So I was working on a post last week, but it still is not done. I am a bit of a perfectionist, so nothing ever seems good enough. It will be coming soon. Instead, you get to enjoy the random meaningless thoughts of MSC.

The Golden Globes were fabulous. I am such a huge fan of Kate Winslet and her double win was well deserved and a long time in coming. I have not yet seen Revolutionary Road, but The Reader really was extraordinary. She seems like such a genuine person (very Sarah Jessica Parker-like) and is quite possibly the finest actress of her generation. Not only is she hugely talented, but she makes great choices in the projects that she does. The UK crowd stole the show as they tend to do. Colin Farrell, Ricky Gervais, Emma Thompson and Sacha Baron Cohen were all hysterical and so witty. I am a big fan. Finally, Slumdog Millionaire swept many of the major categories including best picture and best director. My friend Brian convinced me to see the film a couple of weeks ago and I had not heard much about it prior to seeing it. It is quite an amazing film and truly captures the spirit of India in many ways. Be forewarned, it is a visually and emotionally harsh film, but it is a must see.

We have had a few days of unseasonably warm temperatures here in the Bay Area. Even though it is great to have seventy degree days in January, I cannot help the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that we may have reached the tipping point already with global warming. The next ten years are going to be critical in the fight for the environment. Let us hope that elected officials have the backbone to push through some real policy change and emissions reductions in the near future.

Kellie and I are heading off to Mexico City at the beginning of February for a few days. I am looking forward to exploring more of this great city. We will be doing lots of touristy stuff of course, but I am looking forward to some killer food too. Carnitas anyone?

I have a new secret addiction. My work colleagues have taken to calling it "the place that must not be named" for fear I might make an extra trip simply by hearing the name. Yes my friends, I am now a proud member of Costco. I had avoided shopping there in recent years because I did not think there would be much for me (the single guy that does not cook) there. Oh how wrong I was! I recently purchased a new cell phone there and I also scooped up a good number of gift cards for Christmas gifts. So far I have shown good restraint (I escaped my last trip with a bill of $70), but I do get a strangely giddy feeling just thinking about my next shopping trip there. There are so many unnecessary items that you never knew you needed! It is worse, much worse than Target. So if you call me and I do not answer my phone, I am probably at the place that must not be named buying a rotisserie chicken or 18 bars of soap for seven dollars.

A work colleague left for what sounded like a really cool African adventure last week. She was flying in to Johannesburg, South Africa and then planning to trek up to Tanzania with her boyfriend and cousin who is just finishing a stint with the Peace Corps. I helped her out with her travel plans, recommending flights, travel tips, and setting her up with the right people to get all of the immunizations she was going to need. She e-mailed me when she landed in South Africa, but I have not heard anything since. Not that there are Internet cafes on every corner in the bush, but my supervisor S and I are starting to get a bit concerned. We have sent a few messages just saying, "Hey, just let us know you are ok." No response in over a week now. Trish, where are you?!? Write us back girl. We have bad visions in our heads of you in some rural non-sterile hospital under a mosquito net with yellow fever.

At the recommendation of my brother and sister, I plowed through the Twilight series of books after my classes finished in December and January. Overall, they were decent reading. The fourth book was by far the best, but I suppose you needed the first few to set that up. One and two were good, but I started to get really annoyed with Bella through three and that did not let up until close to the end of four which I finished yesterday. We all were so spoiled by JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series that I do not know if anything will compare with that level of writing and detail in the future. Thanks for recommending those Mike and Kathy!

Not too much else going on. My friend Christi is coming out for a visit on Sunday for a few days, so looking forward to seeing her and hanging out. Which reminds me, I have to clean my apartment. Alright all, hope you are all doing well.

Cuidate.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-04T01:32:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a great New Year! Cuidate.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T05:12:00.000-08:00

Wherever you find yourself this Christmas Day, best wishes for you and your loved ones.

Cuidate.

All Work and No Play

2008-12-24T03:15:00.000-08:00

I have been working my ass off. Even for a workaholic like me, it has been too much. December is always a good time of year for picking up overtime as people with real lives want time off to prepare the house for arriving relatives, to shop, and do other miscellaneous things. I had already picked up a good amount anyway, but then I got mandated to work more. 70 hour work weeks have been the norm the past couple of weeks. Not fun. The extra money is definitely a plus, but I have hit the limits of my overtime whorishness.

So it is now early Wednesday morning and I have two more nights of work ahead of me before I finally get some consecutive days off. I am tired and irritable and I feel even more tired, irritable, and guilty because I have not blogged lately. I would love to be happier for you, the blogosphere, in this wonderful holiday season, but you are going to have to deal with some rants and anger from me. The world is a cold, dark place.

1. First off, some good news. Target is now carrying Tim Tams! Do you believe it? Tim Tams are the Oreos of Australia. They are these rich thick chocolate cookies that are really tasty. (Some Aussie friends of mine in London used to always bitch about the unavailability of Tim Tams in England.) If you have not tried them, make sure you do. Make sure you do not get fooled into buying the caramel ones! The chocolate flavored ones are the original.

2. Is anyone else annoyed by the stickers that breeding people have been outfitting their minivans and SUVs with as of late?

I am not trying to be a total dick. I have had the urge to blog about this for a while, but have refrained while trying to be realistic and sensitive to other people's feelings. What are people trying to accomplish by putting this on their car? It feels very "In your face!" to me, a gay man who is not planning to have children. (For the record, let me state that I do not have any kind of bumper sticker or decal on my car. The peaceniks of Northern California who cover their vehicles in "No on 8!" and "Celebrate Diversity!" bumper stickers irritate me too.) It feels like the person that is driving that vehicle is celebrating their ability and choice to breed; not only breed, but breed multiple times and they want to brag about it to the rest of society. Is this a good thing? The same vehicles inevitably have the My Child was Student of the Month at St Mary's Preschool bumper sticker. Again, I really could care less that your child was student of the month. My life does not need to revolve around your child. Yours does because you gave birth to it or adopted it. I also could care less that your child plays soccer or golfs or that you have a dog. If I choose to get to know you on a personal level, then I might care at a certain point. But I do not feel that I should be subject to your family's life story simply because I get stuck behind you on the freeway while I am in traffic. It is a pollution of public space. (I warned you all I was bitter!)

The other issue here is that I subconsciously associate the people who have vehicles with these stickers with the people who voted Yes on Prop 8. It is not necessarily a reasonable assumption, but I am honest about the fact that I make the correlation and it does not endear me anymore to the breeding families. Alright, rant done on that topic.

3. I get irritated around this time of year when people start asking me what my holiday plans are. When I tell them I am going to work or stay home, they act as if I am insane. My family lives in the east and I prefer to visit them at other times of the year. For example, I am likely heading out to see my brother on the East Coast after New Years when the flight loads taper off and I can get some time off. It is not that strange of an idea that one might want to spend their holidays in a non-stressful environment with friends and then choose to visit family at other times of the year. Welcome to 2008, soon to be 2009 people. The less stress, the better.

4. One other cool thing is that I got 2 A's in my classes this semester. It is unthinkable to me that I have a 4.0 average. I know it will not last through my entire degree process, but it is nice to have for now.

Alright, enough from me. Hope you are all safe and warm this Christmas Eve and somewhere you want to be. Cuidate and Merry Christmas!

This is Pretty Funny....

2008-12-04T03:18:00.000-08:00

Very clever use of one of our people's art forms by the No on 8 people.

Hope you are all having a great week. Cuidate.

Is the Blog a Dying Art Form?

2008-12-03T00:45:00.000-08:00

Is anyone blogging anymore? As the days go by, it seems like more and more of my favorite blogs are disappearing. As I clicked on one tonight, the all too familiar "Closed for Business" wallpaper was up. I was a bit late arriving at the blog party, so I am not quite tapped out yet. I have definitely slipped this past year in my blog diligence, but I blame that on having to work day shift for the better part of the year. A day person, I am not.

In the larger sense though, the medium feels like it is shifting from simple rants and raves of the common man or woman to a more evolved media form. Newspapers and magazines are being replaced by sites such as The Huffington Post or online versions of print media like NYTimes.com or SFgate.com. Online newspaper articles now feature comment sections as blogs do and people seem to have endless amounts of time where they engage in petty bickering back and forth with faceless people. When there is no accountability for your speech or actions, suddenly the exchanges become more heated and personal. It is not like anyone at the grocery store is likely to call you out and say, "Aren't you Gail36SF?" Yeah, not too likely. The other palpable shift seems to be from having your own blog or website to the social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace. When people see a few paragraphs of text these days, they usually say, "Ugh, I do not have time to read all that text." and then head to Facebook where they will spend hours poking each other or sending each other imaginary gifts. I am on Facebook and yes, it is fun. It is also incredibly voyeuristic and a bit of a strange experience. Since being on there for a month or two, people from my high school in New Hampshire who rarely spoke to me much less had a conversation with me suddenly are messaging me and wanting me to be their "friend". Uhhhhhhh ok. If you did not want to talk to me fifteen years ago, then what is the big attraction now? It is bizarre to look at some of their pages. Most of my classmates have married, have kids, and are living in the same general area of New England that I ran away from as fast as I could. I suppose one could compare the experience to turning on the TV and watching a Facts of Life reunion. Yes, I vaguely remember Mrs. Garrett, Blair, Tootie, Jo, and Natalie. But do I have a strong desire to see what has happened to them over the past fifteen years or so? Not really to be honest.

I am hopeful my friends and family that blog will continue to do so. It takes time and effort (which is the biggest complaint of many) to sit down and put something readable together. On the flip side though, it keeps your writing skills up, forces you think, and to put something creative out there for the world. Keep up the good fight people! I appreciate your efforts.

Hope you all have your Christmas soundtracks on full blast on your iPods. Cuidate.

Giving Thanks

2008-11-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

It is a cool and crisp morning here in the Bay Area. I am heading over to Pietro and Deborah's house in a few hours to celebrate Thanksgiving with my good friends Daniela, John, and an assorted cast of characters. I have much to be thankful this year, as always. Not to jinx anything, but I feel like I lead a charmed life. Yes, we all have our share of problems, but generally speaking I want for nothing. Here are just a few things I am thankful for this year.

First off this year, I am thankful that I chose to leave my old employer and start with the city I now work for. I will celebrate my one year anniversary in March and the switch has been everything I could have hoped for and more. The people I work with are fun, kind and hardworking. I did not realize what a black hole I worked in until I took the leap of faith and left. I am thankful to have a home that I love. I am thankful everyday for the privilege of living in this wonderful country where we are blessed with so many basic things that others around the world lack; clean water, an ample supply of food, a civil society that celebrates and encourages diversity, a relatively peaceful day to day life, clothing, and so much more. I am thankful to have a decent car that runs and does not break down. I am thankful for the public library system that is conveniently located next to my workplace. I am thankful for music and art which inspire me daily. I am thankful for NPR (and the BBC) because it fills a good amount of my driving time with reasonable discussion and analysis of issues versus the "gotcha" soundbites mainstream media coverage has become. I am thankful to have a good stable job with (what I hope!) will turn out to be a good retirement plan. I am thankful for the election of Barack Obama this year as I feel it is a sign of good things to come. I am thankful for good affordable public education that is allowing me to attend college for twenty dollars a credit! I am thankful for the Internet and how easy it makes our daily lives. I am thankful for the Bay Area. From it's natural beauty to our incredibly diverse and liberal society, I am thankful to call it home. I am thankful for Peets, Jamba Juice, Chipotle, taco trucks, and cheap Thai restaurants. Where would I be without all of you? Very hungry. I am thankful for a postal system that works 99.9% of the time and delivers mail and packages in a timely fashion. I am thankful to books, newspapers, and literature as well as the education system that taught me to read and to dream. It is hard to imagine life without reading. I am also incredibly thankful for my DVR. Silly, but true.

I am thankful to my parents. Even though I bitch about them and our differing political views, they are genuinely great and selfless people who have only supported me and my five siblings as we have grown into the people that we are today. I am thankful for having a large and loving family. Geographically, we are spread far and wide across the country, but we still care for each other as best we can. Finally (and most importantly), I am thankful for my amazing support network of friends (both local and not so local). From catch up phone calls to silly text messages to dinner dates and special occasions, you are all the fabric squares that makes up my rich and colorful patchwork quilt of a life. I am a very rich man because of the company that I am fortunate to keep. Thank you to all of you.

I hope you all have a great holiday weekend. Stuff yourselves today and shop like crazy tomorrow! Cuidate.

The H8 Debate

2008-11-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

So the gay community in California has gone to war with the Christians. No one is safe; Catholics, Mormons, or any other group.

I have to admit, this is a really tough issue for me personally. I have always stated that I do not care about getting married. My personal feeling is that the word "marriage" is what is the cause of all this trouble. Religious people feel like they have ownership of the entire concept. (Whenever you bring up the Britney Spears side of the sanctity of marriage as an argument, they usually start humming or just pretend they did not hear the question.) For argument's sake, I am more than willing to give them the word. If the federal government would confer upon me the same rights granted to straight couples, but call it a civil partnership, a funny buddy, non-holy union (any of those would work), then I would take it. The main issue with civil unions up to this point is that they have been approved at the state level. The majority of tax breaks and rights given to couples come from the federal government. Eventually, one of these cases is going to find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and that will force the issue. (There are all sorts of state issues like recognition of same-sex marriages by different states that are beginning to be heard in local courts.) My biggest fear is that with the current Supreme Court, gay marriage will be shot down for another twenty years or so.

As timing is everything, I feel that this issue got pushed way too soon. Gay people have been slowly making their way into the mainstream of American culture. From out gay celebrities to a strong presence in the news and on reality TV, people in middle America are just beginning to realize that gay people are here to stay and they are not that scary. As the PE teachers of America begin moving into suburban neighborhoods with their children and various animals, our visibility grows daily. We really are at a tipping point in the psyche of Americans. In another ten to fifteen years as older Americans die off, we will have a majority of people who favor gay rights. But we do not have it now. If we look at the history of same sex marriage rights in California, the Defense of Marriage Act passed in the year 2000 with a 61 to 39 percent majority. This year, Proposition 8 passed with a 52 to 48 percent majority. The tide is clearly in our favor. We already have domestic partnerships. If people could just be patient and give it a bit more time, I feel like this will be a no brainer.

As with anything in life, you cannot let what others say or do define you. If you are a gay couple and you want to get married, go ahead. Since when have gay people wanted to be part of the mainstream anyway? Who says you need a piece of paper to be committed to someone you choose to share your life with? I wholeheartedly support my fellow gay Americans who want to protest. I also thank all of the straight allies that are out there marching with them. But it is not my time and this is not my fight.

Hope you all have a great weekend. Cuidate.

It's A New Day

2008-11-13T14:40:00.001-08:00

I still have not come down from last week.

A New Day Has Come

2008-11-05T17:22:00.000-08:00

What an amazing, amazing night for our great country. I must be frank, I had doubts this day would occur. Even though polls had been predicting an Obama victory for quite some time, I still felt it was going to be a long night and a closer election than it was. The economic crisis definitely give him a boost, but his appeal across southern states such as Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina and western states such as Nevada and New Mexico were a welcome surprise. Our country has broken through an enormous glass ceiling and it seems that more are destined to follow. We have our first female Speaker of the House who is third in line of succession to the Presidency. It is only a matter of time before we have our first female president. It now seems possible. With Barack Obama's election, so much now seems possible. I will remember this night in the same context as the other major historic events of my life; September 11th, the explosion of the shuttle Challenger, the Millennium, and (on a more personal level) my coming out of the closet at 22. There is also something thoughtful and reassuring about this eloquent young man with such a beautiful family in these unsettling times. Pundits have said, "Yeah, he can give a good speech. But what else can he do?" I would argue that a decent speech and an inspiring personal story are exactly what our citizens need at this moment. Just as Ronald Reagan was the right man for his time, I am confident that President Barack Obama will prove equally skillful and inspiring. The American people are ready to get their hands dirty and start giving of themselves to build a newer, better American society.

Amongst the celebrations of the evening, there was some disappointment in California. Voters approved Proposition 8 which amends the state constitution to define marriage as only being between a man and a woman. The nicest part of the Prop 8 mess has been the support of my straight friends and coworkers. Many have expressed outrage that such a proposition would even be put forth in 2008. I definitely live in San Francisco for a reason. As I have discussed before in this blog, being gay is a complete non-issue. Yes, there will always be ignorant and intolerant people in any community. However the overwhelming majority of people here are tolerant, if not openly supportive, of gay and lesbians. When the California Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal earlier this year, I was very wary of the ruling and I felt it came too soon. Society is gradually warming to the idea of gays and lesbians being out and visible in communities across the country, both urban and rural areas. But we are still in the early stages. I am confident in another ten years, gay marriage will be less of a hot button issue and will be overwhelmingly approved. In the year 2000, California voters approved a gay marriage ban by a ratio of 61 percent to 38 percent. This year, a similar ban was approved 52 percent to 48 percent. Give it time my friends, give it time. History and time are on our side.

To the horror of some of my friends, I was not in complete disbelief over Proposition 8. Rather, I was somewhat resigned to it and unsurprised that the enemies of gay people continue to live in fear of us. I have no idea who the fuck these people think they are and how we gays are "threatening" their "lifestyle". But I do not need a government nor a society to define whether or not my sexuality and my choices are socially acceptable. I encourage all of my gay brothers and sisters to live your best lives and not allow yourself to be defined by narrow mindedness. You will be a heck of a lot happier, I guarantee it.

76 days until Inauguration Day. Cuidate.

As The Race Winds Down

2008-10-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Some great op-ed pieces from the NY Times. Well worth your time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26warner-1.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26dowd.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26brooks.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Cuidate.

TFF

2008-10-19T14:54:00.001-07:00

This skit cracks me up to no end. Sarah Palin is a good sport for going on the show, but she did not really deliver. The cast sure did though.

Hodge Podge

2008-10-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

Back to the Bay Area and back to the Grind. I worked most of the week and then worked a college football game on Saturday as part of a police detail. I am really hating my dayshifts, I have to say. There is too much activity going on, too many annoying people calling in with "What if..." questions, and little if any down time. Not to mention the alarm going off at 6 AM. I feel like I am back in high school. Not a good thing.

Tip jars are bugging me. Is there anyplace without a tip jar these days? Dry cleaners, coffee places, and the like. What is next? Muni drivers? Grocery store cashiers? I worked in restaurants for years, so I feel partial to servers and take out servers. But what is the criteria for giving a dry cleaner a tip? If they simply cleaned my sweater and did not loose it or fuck it up, does that justify a tip? If whatever person serving you (ie. at Peets or Jamba Juice) is pleasant, does that necessitate a tip? It just kind of bugs me. Dunno what the solution is.

Between the election and the financial crisis, NPR speaks of nothing else these days. It is hard not to get wrapped up in the panic of the media and the government. Once again, thank you 24 hour news cycle. I am fortunate that I work for the government, so I feel a bit more secure about my job security. At the same point, at best life is a crap shoot. Panicking is not going to do me any good. I will try to cut my spending Suze Orman. I really will. I am a hard worker and still young enough to prostitute myself in a pinch. There is always the corner Mary. (I am kidding to all of you taking me seriously. I would use the Internet, the corner is too cold.)

Obama is up, McCain is down, and Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving. Who would have thought a month or so ago that she would have turned out to be such a train wreck? I am thankful for small miracles. They occur all around us.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Bad Blogger, Bad Blogger

2008-10-06T21:43:00.001-07:00

I apologize for taking a hiatus over the past couple of weeks. The world may be coming to an end, but this blogger needed a vacation.

I took off for Honolulu the last Thursday in September. I flew Hawaiian, partially because they have a non-stop out of Oakland and partially because I just like 'em. Kitschy Hawaiian music and videos, an airline that still has pretzels and a meal service, and local employees. What more does one need? Now that Aloha is no more, Hawaiian is all the islands have. I hope they are able to make it in these financially strapped times.

My good friend E joined me on Thursday and spent the next few days with me. What seemed like a good idea in the beginning turned out to be a not so good idea in the end. We ended up fighting like an old married couple and irritating each other to no end. I suppose that I have a routine when I go back to Hawaii and he had some different ideas about what he wanted to accomplish. On top of that, the trades were not blowing to their usual strength and it was unseasonably hot for most of the days. That being said, there is no place like Hawaii to me. I was able to meet up with some old acquaintances and make some new ones. I always enjoy my time there.

I came home for just a quick day here to pack and repack before heading to Phoenix to help my friend Christi relocate to Las Vegas. I lived in Phoenix for just shy of a year back in 2004 and going back always feels like putting on an old familiar t-shirt. There is a certain feel and a certain smell to the town that will never go away. I love the dry heat, the stillness of the desert nights there, the margaritas, and the promise that the town seems to hold closely, but never delivers on. (When the hell is that stupid light rail going to be finished anyway? 2024?) This trip was all work and no play. Moving is never fun and Christi and her mom were a bit over their heads with this one. So my birthday was spent packing stuff into boxes and eating pizza on paper plates and plastic chairs. Friday morning, the packers arrived and the house was packed up onto a 16 foot rental truck in a few short hours. The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the remaining chaos and preparing for our early morning departure on Saturday.

7 AM came soon enough and off we went. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the 16 foot truck drove very well, almost car-like. Compared to previous nightmares with U-Haul trucks (aka tanks), driving this thing was a breeze. We made good time until heading north from Kingman, Arizona towards the Hoover Dam. Ignoring all of the large No Moving Trucks signs, Christi kept encouraging me forward saying, "We've checked with security a bunch of times and they say it's fine." So we arrive at the security checkpoint just south of the dam only to run into Mr. Stern Security Guard who, in no uncertain terms, emphatically does not allow me to pass in the moving truck. Back to Kingman and then detouring around the famed dam adds a couple hundred miles and two and a half hours onto my drive. Ah, the fun never ends when you are moving. I finally arrive in Vegas at around 4 PM. Between the long hours that day, the previous night's food poisoning, and the unloading of the entire truck at double speed, this puppy crashed something fierce. Thankfully, four Ibuprofen and a good night's rest did wonders for my worn out carcass.

We spent yesterday recovering, returning the rental truck, and I met up with an old buddy of mine from years ago in Thailand who now lives in Vegas. Small world. My friend took me to dinner at the L.A. Chinese chain Chin Chin at the NY NY Hotel on the Strip. I used to get takeout from there all the time when I was a flight attendant, but I had never eaten in. The food was really good and we had a nice time. After dinner, we ended up walking the length of the strip to the TI resort. It was a perfect night in Las Vegas (and a rare one); not too hot and not too cold. The biggest addition to the Strip as of late is a massive project consisting of a new hotel, a business tower, a city center, and high end condominiums by the MGM Mirage group. The area will begin to open sometime next year and consists of six or seven massive towers that are a huge addition to the ever changing skyline. Vegas has truly become the city that never sleeps.

I arrived safely back in San Francisco this evening and am back to work tomorrow. Hope you are all well. Thank you to all for the massive amounts of well wishes, e-mails, calls, and texts I received on my birthday this year. I have the best group of friends and family ever.

Cuidate.

The Glamorous Life...NOT!

2008-09-19T16:20:00.001-07:00

Great article in the NY Times this week about being a flight attendant. It certainly is a thankless job these days. My feet started hurting thinking back to international flights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/travel/14Airline.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=flying%20the%20unfriendly%20skies&st=cse&oref=slogin

Hope you all have a great weekend. Cuidate.

The Shortcomings of Sarah Palin

2008-09-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

I have been searching for the proper way to address my feelings on Sarah Palin when along comes Ryan Quinn this past week on Towleroad.com. He does a much better job than I am able to do.

Ryan Quinn is a writer whose work has appeared in Outsports.com, XC Skier Magaine, and the Anchorage Daily News. He is a former college athlete and NCAA Division I National Champion, and came out to his teammates at the University of Utah during his sophomore year of college. He is often called upon to speak on panels discussing identity and social barriers in sports and culture. He was born and raised in Alaska, and now lives in New York City.

To my fellow Americans:

I'm an Alaskan. I grew up in Wasilla. Sarah Palin was my mayor. She wanted to ban books at the library where my parents taught me how to read. There have been many interesting pieces of journalism introducing my gun toting, mooseburger-eating former neighbors (I now live in Manhattan) to the rest of the country, and most have focused on how proud Alaskans are of their governor making the surprise leap to the big leagues.

Sarah Palin's story is compelling, but it is one that could happen only in Alaska, where the politics and the economy are simple and where it's not difficult to spend a lifetime sheltered from the complexities and diversity of the outside world. I love my home state; I wouldn't trade my childhood there with anyone. And I hope the Palin intrigue will translate into a boost in tourism that will further enrich the state's $5 billion budget surplus, so that when Gov. Palin returns to Juneau in November she can continue to serve Alaska's interests with relative ease.

But as reporters roam the streets where I grew up, chatting with my ecstatic neighbors, I feel compelled to offer another view, as an American, by point out that John McCain has demonstrated an alarming lapse of judgement by choosing Sarah Palin as his party's VP candidate. Choosing a running mate was his first and only concrete test of judgement in the campaign process. Here's why he failed.

My fellow Alaskans have vouched for Palin as a charming, interesting person. I can add to that that she is perfectly friendly. But now she is running for the highest office and so it must be noted that Sarah Palin the Friendly Neighbor is different from Sarah Palin the Executive. The latter is a woman with intense agendas guided by a narrow set of culturally conservative and extreme religious values. She believes that abstinence should be the only form of sex education taught to teenagers; she believes that creationism should be taught alongside science in our schools; she is against a woman's right to choose even in cases of incest and rape; and her church believes gay and lesbian Americans can and, one assumes should be corrected by prayer ("pray away the gay" is their cheery slogan).

When she was mayor of my hometown, these extreme views came off as petty and irrelevant to people like me who did not share them. There seemed little cause for alarm. Most Alaskans are happy to live and let live; we don't think of ourselves as Republican or Democrat. Besides, as mayor, it's not like she had the power to wiretap our phones, amend our constitution, or send us to war.

But she did try to use her power to ban books. Wasilla's popular public librarian rightly objected, and the community rightly backed the librarian. The books were never banned, though Mrs. Palin did fire the librarian for not agreeing with her political views, then rescinded the firing after it was clear she'd made an unpopular decision. Sarah Palin's behavior is revealing: in a state as isolated as Alaska, in a town as small as Wasilla, books are vital to the culture and to the education of its residents. The small town values I learned growing up included attending story hour at the public library. Those values most certainly did not include trying to ban books that the mayor's church friends didn't think other people should read.

It will be interesting to see what effect Gov. Palin's penchant for reform will have on the McCain campaign. Will she put one of Cindy McCain's private jets on eBay? Maybe one of the McCain's seven houses? It certainly hasn't meant she'll answer any questions from voters or the press. Her very first media interview won't come until later this week. The reason is clear: she's not ready to answer questions about the housing crisis, foreign policy or healthcare. So far she's been allowed into public view only to deliver a speech similar to the one she gave at her party's convention, the one in which, with the sass and smile of a punch line, she ridiculed community organizers who step up to help less fortunate communities whose government has allowed them to fall through the cracks. Her speech made for good television, something the McCain camp felt they desperately needed. And it sure fired up the folks at the Republican National Convention. Who can blame them? They finally have a candidate who can shoot a gun, drink a beer AND speak in complete English sentences. This is real change for them.

In recent days, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin have directed accusations of elitism at the Democratic ticket as well at the media, suggesting that there is something undesirable about a presidential candidate with extensive knowledge of foreign policy, inner city community struggles, constitutional law, and the complexities of the major domestic crises. This is baffling. Don't we want an elite leader? Don't we want a White House made transparent by an elite press? We are a large and complex nation with large and complex problems. Common sense suggest, and the last eight years have shown, that perhaps the president should be something of an elite leader.

Barack Obama studied international relations at Columbia (he also has a law degree and has taught constitutional law) before returning to Chicago to be a community organizer. Meanwhile, Mrs. Palin ran for Miss Alaska (she placed second) and then received a Bachelor's degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho. She returned to Alaska and became a reporter at a television station's sports desk.

For just 22 months Sarah Palin has been the governor of a state of just 680,000 people that is "awash" in money (as former Alaska governor Tony Knowles put it) and receives more pork-barrel money per capita than any other state. Alaska has no tricky border or immigration issues with the remote parts of British Columbia and the coast of Siberia. There are no inner cities struggling with poverty and daily violence. There is a lot of drunk driving (Alaska is dark and cold much of the year), though the state police force is well funded and the road system they patrol is startlingly simple; I can't think of a stretch of highway lasting 15 miles that has more than 4 lanes.

To use a metaphor from track (a sport the Palins are fond of), putting Gov. Plain on a presidential ticket is like Coach McCain sending a promising high school long-jumper to compete for Team USA in the Olympic decathlon. It's a really bad coaching decision. And by all accounts McCain's vetting process was hasty and impulsive.

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin shows that he is moving further and farther to the right of mainstream America. If he's doing it for political reasons, he's no maverick. If he's doing this for reasons of principle, he is merely out of touch with most Americans. Ninety percent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention were white. That might resemble the America that the Republican party sees, and it certainly resembles the demographics that shaped Gov. Palin over the many years she's lived in Alaska. But it's not the America most Americans live in. Not only is Sarah Palin's executive experience inadequate, her worldview is not possibly diverse or nuanced enough to appreciate either the domestic challenges or international complexities that a VP must grasp at the most basic level. A McCain/Palin administration would be risky at best, and potentially disastrous.

I'm sick of Republicans suggesting I'm unpatriotic while they ruin my reputation around the world. I'm sick of people casting votes of fear because threats that are mischaracterized and exploited by their own political leaders. I'm sick of distorted television commercials being my country's primary method of public discourse. And I'm sick of being told that straight, white, Evangelical family values are better for my country than my family's values. Anyone who has paid lip service to the idea that America's strength relies upon its diversity, be warned: it's actually true, and it will be even truer in the future. I think my generation will be known as the diversity generation. We get America. We are ready to be leaders for the world community. We are motivated. We think. We are patriotic.

And if we vote, we cannot be outnumbered.

Eloquent and exactly on point. Hope you are all having a good week. Cuidate.

Summertime

2008-09-03T15:35:00.001-07:00

So summer has arrived in the Bay Area. We had unusual stretches of heat during July and August this year, but September is our one true month that we can expect heat from year after year. While there is little humidity out here, anything above 80 or 85 starts to become uncomfortable for those of us who love the fog and the cool night air. Temperatures in the city are in the 80s and where I live in the East Bay, 90s approaching a 100 are more the norm. I am not a heat person, so I have been lying around like a dog in the sun. Kellie came over yesterday and we watched hours of No Reservations while sipping margaritas. Thanks to our friends at Sauza for making one fine ass tequila.

I am headed for Hawaii in a couple of weeks for an early birthday getaway. Even though I live in California, there is always a part of my soul that feels incomplete when I have been away from the islands for too long. I am looking forward to doing as little as possible and having a few mai tais along the way.

My friends finally convinced me to create a page on Facebook. As I feared, it is myspace for adults. There are a lot of people on there and each day, it seems like more old friends, acquaintances, and relatives pop out of the woodwork. But thus far, it has not lived up to the hype IMHO. The applications are not the greatest and simply configuring your profile the way you want it seems to be a major chore. I liked the updated Friendster better, but that is so five years ago now. Sigh, oh how the years go by.

The Advocate (the gay magazine similar to Time or Newsweek) has had a couple of interesting stories lately. I hope it is not simply a fluke because the last few years have been lackluster at best. The first story focuses on twenty people of varying body types and their self-image. Gay men tend to be harsh critics when it comes to body types (even with one's own body dysmorphia), so this article is particularly relevant.

http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid59986.asp

The second story that caught my eye was a piece by out writer Christopher Rice, son of Anne Rice. He directly addresses the online world of chatrooms and gay websites that have replaced reality for many gay men. While I do not agree with everything he says in the article, it is a provocative piece and definitely makes you think about one's own behaviors and m.o.

http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid58429.asp

Besides that, not too much going on. I am just working a lot and starting a couple of new classes online. Intro to Psychology and Intro to Sociology this semester.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

The Legend Reborn?

2008-08-23T20:42:00.001-07:00

I had not heard anything about this, but I just came across this clip on a friend's Facebook page. I guess the original members of Journey found a Filipino kid on youTube and hired him as their new lead singer. Check out this clip. It is incredibly freaky how much he sounds like Steve Perry. I have watched it three times now and have chills.

Cuidate.

No Points for Second Place

2008-08-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

It is always a pleasure to watch both the Summer and the Winter Olympic Games as they come around every four years. People from all over the world gathering for the love of sport and competition while (hopefully) leaving politics behind. Though this is never accomplished completely, it is a worthy goal to have.

Alright, so by now you know I have an issue. Bitter, bitter on the wall, who's the bitterest of them all? ME. My issue is the American push for dominance. Just competing at the Olympic Games is an enormous honor and makes one an Olympian. If you are fortunate enough to win a medal, I would consider it icing on the cake. But the press makes it seem as though it is a gold medal or nothing. In the women's gymnastic team finals, it was a battle of nerves. All of the favored teams, the Americans, the Chinese, and the Russians were falling left and right under the pressure of the competition. In the end, the Chinese delivered on the last event and claimed the gold medal. The press was acting like there was a funeral going on and then began a campaign the next day accusing the Chinese of having athletes below the age of sixteen. Why is it so hard to celebrate the success of a silver medal? No matter what color the medal, winning one is an honor that will stay with the athlete until they die. Do we really need a moment to moment medals count by color? Is it really gold or nothing? Does it really matter which country takes home the most medals? It stands to reason that the countries with larger populations (ie. China, Brazil, India, the U.S., Indonesia) would be more likely to earn medals for their countries. Obviously countries like Vatican City or Togo are going to have less likelihood of winning medals than the larger countries.

In the true spirit of the Olympics, it would be nice to see the Americans be happy with the medals we bring home and not be so focused on dominating everything. If the U.S. government wanted to steer our foreign and domestic policy in this direction also, I would not be complaining.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

Summertime

2008-08-12T00:11:00.000-07:00

MTV's The Real World had a big role in my life early on. Growing up, my parents were adamant that we not have cable TV in the house. "Why pay for something you can get for free?" grumbled my Dad. When I was 18, I finally convinced my mother to let me pay the cable bill and have it installed. Considering that we lived in rural New England, channels like Fox and MTV were not accessible any other way. One of the first shows that caught my eye was The Real World San Francisco. This was my first real look at reality TV and I was transfixed. Not only was it slickly edited with great camera angles and cool music, but San Francisco became this place that I had to visit. I emotionally fell hard for HIV-positive cast member Pedro, but did not quite have the vocabulary or self-awareness to see that. (I would not come out of the closet until four years later.) In effect, the show gave definition to and inspired the life that would become mine.

Throughout its nineteen incarnations, the show has continued to entertain. Still, the Las Vegas cast set a precedent of sex, drinking, and partying that has carried through each season that has followed. This year's Hollywood cast was no exception and none of them proved to be very interesting character studies. One of the cast members, Brianna Taylor, has aspirations of a singing career and has released a CD on iTunes. I downloaded the single Summertime and was very impressed. She has some good chops and the song is a good first effort. The other songs did not move me nearly as much, but she definitely has a future in the music business. If you are looking for a decent song to download, check it out. I keep trying to convince myself that I will not watch when each new season pops up, but it is a hard thing to give up.

I have been keeping busy this summer. I have about a week's break before my next online course starts. I received 2 A's for my summer session courses, so I have a 4.0 average thus far in my coursework! Being a bit of a perfectionist, it is very satisfying to be doing good work in school. I was fairly bored, distracted, and unhappy in my high school years and this was definitely reflected in my grades. The online general education courses are pretty simple overall, but I am sure some of the upper level courses that I will have to take in person will prove to be more of a challenge.

My Mini Cooper Hector passed the 50K mile mark today. He is such a fun car to have and drive. I hope to keep the car throughout my life and keep it up for use as a retirement vehicle. I will have to see how feasible that is as time passes. He is due for a set of tires this week.

Alright, I am off. I have to be up early for work.

Cuidate.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

2008-07-27T02:18:00.000-07:00

So I have been crazy busy taking a couple of courses this summer on top of everything else. Summer sessions tend to be more expedited than your normal school semester, so basically I have been getting my ass kicked. I am used to working overnights where I had plenty of time to do school work, but now that I am on dayshift, there is little downtime. Yes, boo hoo, whine a little more Mark. I am not wired to be a day person, that is all there is to it. I will grind out this year and then (if there is a merciful God) I will get a transfer back to nights. One of the courses I have been taking is Cultural Geography. It is basically the study of people across the globe and the factors that influence us (physical geography where we live, religion, sex, sexual orientation, culture, standard of living, etc.). Geography has always been one of my strong points and I definitely have gotten to see a lot of the things we are discussing in class first hand thanks to my travels. We just finished our big "class project" for the semester which was a comparison of two nations of the professor's choosing. Unfortunately for me, our group of three quickly dropped down to two. Then my partner was not the most helpful in the area of research. So... Guess who got to do this project solo? One other issue was my lack of knowledge of Powerpoint. I have been out of the office environment for a long time, so I had to figure it out pretty quick. I am a perfectionist (hush all of you!), so I was not completely excited with the outcome. Some of the other presentations in class looked a lot more polished. To be frank, I am simply glad to have it over with. I spent at least four full days on the damn thing. The countries my group was given were Canada and South Africa. I did not know much about either, to be honest. I have not been to Africa at all yet. I did have the privilege of flying all over Canada during my Northwest days, so at least I had some experience there. The real shock was what a chaotic nation South Africa is. A full quarter of the population is HIV-positive. The life expectancy is 42 years old! (Canada's, by comparison, is 81.) On top of that, their electrical grid is collapsing, they are running out of clean water, and on and on. The crime and murder rates are through the roof and a full fifty percent of the population below the poverty line. As always, it makes one fortunate for the basic necessities. Clean water, food on the table, decent health care, and a safe environment in which to live.

Anthony Bourdain is back on the Travel Channel with new episodes of No Reservations. He is definitely adjusting the focus of his show to a more somber and political tone from his earlier shows that were solely about the food and a good laugh. The laughs are still there, but he is now visiting the smaller, more out of the way countries and including some great food along the way. His first three episodes have been Laos, Colombia, and the surprising Saudi Arabia. Surprising because I personally have never seen a show actually been given permission to film in the Kingdom. Even when reporters are reporting from there, they always have a cardboard backdrop behind them. The show was a fascinating glimpse into a country that few Americans have seen before. This week, he is tackling Uruguay. I cannot say enough about how much I love his show and brand of television. I suppose it is because we are both world travelers, he and I. At the end of the day, there is no better place to be than sharing a great meal with friends and family. This is true no matter who you are, where you are from, or what your politics are. If we could concentrate more on this type of diplomacy and less on the "You're either with us or against us!" brand, the world would be a much better place. I have about twenty five episodes hogging up all of the memory on my DVR, so if you are in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by.

Runway is back too. Good stuff. So far, no one has made anything I would consider amazing. It is fun to see every one's personalities coming through though. There are two female designers who look almost identical (Jennifer and Leanne) and I had to go to the Project Runway website to figure out which one was the designer I liked. I like Jennifer's stuff, but I believe it may be a bit too mainstream for her to win. In any case, her first dress of paper towels came out really cute and I liked her second dress too. No one designer has emerged with a big "wow" factor yet, but... It is early in the game kids, give it some time. On a sad note, rumor has it that when the show moves to Lifetime next season Bunim-Murray Productions will be taking over casting. The same people who have been bringing us The Real World for twenty seasons will now be casting Runway. While The Real World was great during the first few seasons, it has sucked for the last ten. Not willing to sit still and give up market share, rumor has it Bravo has picked up another fashion reality show. If Lifetime wrecks Runway, at least we will have something else to watch.

Alright, I was supposed to be in bed two hours ago. I have been drowning in South Africa and Canada, so did not have the time to post. Hope you are all doing well and staying cool.

Cuidate.

It Lives!

2008-07-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, it lives. Guilty Bloggers Syndrome is alive and well.

After my parents popped into town last week, the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival was in full force and that seguayed into the weekend festivities. It was a Southern Comfort year. Honolulu Coolers in the morning which transitioned into SoCo Lime shots for the remainder of the day. The only thing that was not perfect this year was the weather which was cool with teases of sun here and there. I am fine with the cool, but the clouds did put a bit of a damper on things. The following day (Monday) was absolutely gorgeous without a cloud in the sky. So that was a bit of sand in the wound. Still, a good time was had by all. Everyone always bitches about the parade and shows up two hours late, but once they make it there it is good times. The parade had the usual greats (the Dykes on Bikes, Gavin Newsom, Police Chief Heather Fong, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White) as well as some great celebs this year (Margaret Cho, Cyndi Lauper and more). San Francisco is such a cool city because they throw this huge party and they do all this for free. With the exception of Mardi Gras in Sydney, I cannot think of any other city in the world that is as supportive of its gay population. It was a very marriage-themed year, lots of floats and signs promoting our newly gained freedom to marry. Still my favorite time of year.

I have kind of settled into a routine at the new job and it is very comfortable. I have ended up working normal hours (8 AM to 7 PM), but que sera sera. It is such a fun and positive place to work. I will be on this schedule until July of next year and then hopefully I can return to my beloved nights.

My thoughts lately have been of Obama and who he will choose as his running mate. I would love to see Bill Richardson (governor of New Mexico and former Security of the U.N.) on the ticket. I do not know if he and his people will have the balls to though. Conventional wisdom says he needs to choose someone more mainstream (read white) for the ticket. In truth, Obama is basically going to be in cleanup mode from the W debacle for the next four or eight years providing he gets elected. Yes, he can steer the national agenda in the right direction and hopefully tackle health care. Still, financially our country is strained at best and he is not going to have a lot of money to throw at problems. Simply the optimism generated from his positivity as a leader may be enough to give us the fresh start and perspective that we need as a nation. JFK proved to be an incredibly inspirational leader (still being talked about almost fifty years later) and Obama brings forth these same kinds of emotions.

Hope everyone's summer is going well. Cuidate.

Heat Wave

2008-06-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Bay Area has been struck by record heat the past couple of days. In Oakland, we have been right around a hundred degrees and the City has seen temperatures in the nineties. Very, very, very unusual for this time of year. Global warming continues to rear its ugly head. It has been a dry year in the hills and wildfires continue to spark. Santa Cruz County is dealing with its third batch of fires this year already. A church in east Oakland caught fire today and took out five buildings before it was brought under control. Being only ten blocks away from my apartment, it was a little close for comfort.

My parents are in town, having made it here after almost a month in Japan. We are such different people, they and I. I feel like the black puppy in a litter of white and brown spotted dogs. My dad is such an amazing man. Military veteran, engineer, mechanic extraordinaire, great father, quiet, funny, fearless, and loyal. Still, being the son of conservatives he cannot help, but utter comments like, "Well, just wait for a Democrat to take over and then we'll really see the country messed up." I cannot imagine what it must be like for both he and my mother to visit here. This is such a different culture and way of life than he and my mother are used to. My mom has come a long way over the years in giving me acceptance and support. Still, she also has uttered some statements along the way this trip that make me laugh. I was channel surfing the other day with my Mom and we came across Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D List. I did not give it much thought, but left the program on and my mother looked at me in horror and said, "Oh no. She was on Larry King last week and I cannot tell you what filth came out of her mouth." Hmm... So maybe my mom is not quite Kathy Griffin's target audience. The "Suck it Jesus" Emmy Award speech probably did not help her case. I assume by this point that my mother conveniently chooses not to think about my day to day lifestyle at all. I tried to educate her about the humor that Kathy Griffin employs being very gay themed and oriented, but my mom did not get it at all. For me, I am an inherently curious person. I always want to know what makes people tick and how their human experience is versus mine. From my mom's point of view, apparently not. The less she has to think about anything different than her life experience and views, the better. I try my best to bite my tongue and not interject too much bickering into our conversations considering we see each other so rarely, but some of the ridiculous statements that come out of her mouth cannot go unchallenged.

Anyhow, my parents were returning from attending my niece's high school graduation in Japan. They were flying military standby and got stuck heading back to the states. Thanks to my generous friend at United, I scored them a couple of buddy passes that got them this far. I am taking them to the local Air Force base tomorrow and they are going to continue their quest to make it back to their car in Maryland. It's similar to an episode of the Amazing Race, but in slow motion with old contestants. Maybe The Senior Race or The Geriatric Race? (All of you haters, pipe down. I am fully aware that I am going to be old too someday and you can all feel free to make jokes at my expense.)

Exciting news from the peninsula. I have completed my training phase at my new job and I am working on my own! Training seemed to fly by for me and I am starting to recognize all of the people I work with and not be so lost by the many faces and voices we deal with. A big thank you to all of my friends and family who have helped me through the retraining process and been so supportive. My life is so rich and wonderful because of all of you and I thank you for this.

Gay Pride week is almost here! The film festival began last night and I am trying to squeeze in some films this week. Next Sunday is the big day and I cannot wait. My favorite day of the year. Looking forward to hanging with old friends and meeting up with new ones. Come one, come all. Get in touch with me for info if you want to join the party.

Everyone stay cool and I will write soon. Cuidate.

Dangerous Addiction

2008-06-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

Like a phantom from long ago
Our eyes met with lust,
Comfort and fire.

Time has passed;
The bad is forgotten,
The good is remembered,
The wreckage from the crash long since cleaned up.
But scorch marks always remain below the surface,
Not always visible to the naked eye.

The intense taste of anticipation as we kissed,
The familiar and the new
Combined with the ease of days past.
The salty taste of his neck,
His body enveloped in mine,
All of my neurons firing in a chaotic frenzy.

Waking up with him by my side,
Strange, disturbing, wonderful, frightening,
My gut screaming at the rest of my body,
“What the fuck are you doing…”
The rest of my body ignoring it all,
Drowning in the pleasure of his return.
Imprinting every square inch of him into my memory,
Wishing the moment would last forever.

Of course it does not.
That is not the way life works.
My addiction to him is dangerous,
Possibly lethal.

Yet here I sit, waiting for my next fix.

Cuidate.

Take 2

2008-06-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

As promised, Kellie's take on the film. Thanks for being my first guest blogger girl! (Warning...Kellie's review does contain some spoilers if you have not seen the film yet.)

Final Fantasy?

If you haven't seen it yet... you're late. I like to think of Sex and the City - The Motion Picture, as one possible version. All the glamour, humor, fashion, music, and witty repartee were there, however I was left wanting a little more. And with Sex.... that's never good. So I'm giving it three and a half stars. I'm a purest by nature and some of it didn't ring true.

There is no doubt in my mind that Michael Patrick King had much input from many sources. I would love to have been in the editing room to see what made it and especially what didn't make the cut. It felt 'movie' like, but I feel it had lost the city grit I love the television series for. It felt glossy, as it should - it's a movie, it's Hollywood, it's fantasy. Not good, not bad... just different.

And while on the subject of gone Hollywood... Samantha... it was in the back of my mind throughout the movie if they moved her character to California because of the off-set rumored upsets? Like character punishment. She came back to NYC for all the major events, but that seemed disjointed. "Yeeeay, Samantha's here!" they'd exclaim, as if it was a surprise... I was thinking 'yeah, she'd better be there!' I was proud that Charlotte finally grew a couple and wasn't a total Pollyanna. Now that's character development! Charlotte's character matured the most and finally let go...and let go she did, in many different ways. Miranda was Miranda... her character was always strong, solid and very human. I believe Cynthia Nixon is a great actress and she has stayed true to Miranda. The male counterparts were weak. They dressed Steve like an undeserving dork and I barely saw or heard from Harry, whom I love. And I could have used A LOT more gay! Anthony and Stanford were present, but the television series incorporated gay story lines more frequently, it made the show what it was and that aspect seemed absent. I adored Jennifer Hudson's' role, she seemed to fit in just perfectly and I had wished she was in the movie from the start.

Now for the meat... Carrie and Big. What happened? (I say that in a lot of my past relationships too) But, seriously, what happened? I don't believe this version, I'll say it this way... It's unbelievable! It was nice to see them; they were great; Carrie was mostly true to character, but Big was a Big Wimp.A fifteen year relationship and 3 years of living together and I'm asked to believe this scenario? That being said...I'd like to ask- please go back, re write and give me something better! Then I could see more NYC, more clothes, more glamour, more laughs. That would be fine with me. It'd be like "Sex and the City - The Other Version". Not a sequel, but perhaps what happens to them in a parallel universe.

The one thing I have learned from my own writing class is that writers make the rules in the world in which you are writing about and in that world anything is possible. So, it's okay that an entire walk in closet was created out of thin air... or a really large crawl space. Some of my favorites: Carrie's gray sweater with the feathers. Charlotte's black dress at the wedding. Samantha's big sun hat. The resort they stayed at in Mexico, Leon Andre Talley's cameo. The lesson on forgiveness. Carrie's cell phone with duct tape on it. Plum Skyes cameo. Steve's butt. The rendition of Auld Lang Syne. The movie was total fantasy, but it was an inspiration to appreciate your friends, look good when you leave the house, enjoy your life and don't ever forget to laugh a little.

My Sex and the City day was a wonderful day and it was entertainment at its best! We were one of the first to see it on opening day because we went to the matinee, Thanks A Million to my number one gay (a Mark of all times good). The movie allowed me to reflect on my own life, my dear friends, sex and the 'other' city (SF), my own Mr. Big and my wardrobe. I feel very fortunate to be living the life I have; even though, like the girls, I complain and try to figure it out all too often. I couldn't do it without my friends, whom I consider my family, and their great sense of humor. The only thing missing right now? A great pair of shoes... who wants to go shopping?

SEX - The Review Is In

2008-06-01T03:05:00.000-07:00

Friday might as well have been a holiday throughout the U.S. The girls of Sex and the City hit the big screen in a big way four years after the end of the landmark television series. I had purchased my tickets weeks in advance and my gal pal Kellie accompanied me to the packed theatre in downtown San Francisco. Kellie will be filing her own review as a guest blogger within the next couple of days.

(I do not want to spoil the film for those of you who have not seen it yet, so I will not be giving away any spoilers.) I give the film a four star rating out of five. To be frank, expectations for the film from me were low. I would have been happy with just about anything they did. The girls looked amazing, the clothing, the music, and the cinematography of the film were right in sync with the television show. New York City has never looked better nor more inviting than it does in this film. My main issue was two fold; the story line and the participation of the male cast in the film. The film started out wonderfully, but then reached a point about half an hour in that I found unrealistic. It seems writer and director Michael Patrick King needed to write this particular angle into the film to drive the plot for the next ninety minutes. Unlike most of the other story lines throughout the six years of the series, this one did not ring true for me. It was overly dramatic and did not honor the characters lives over the past four years as I felt it should have. Secondly, the men of the cast were relegated to mere cameos. Big seemed a mere shadow of himself in this film, Steve is dressed frumpy and written to be a mere extension of Miranda, and Harry might as well not even be in the film. Smith seems to get a good deal of screen time, but does little with it. Stanford and Anthony also make mere cameo appearances, though they provided some great humor for the little screen time they were given. So that is my bitch session. Still, overall it was still entertaining, funny, and emotional in many spots. Jennifer Hudson is also a wonderful addition to the cast and really owns her role. I will certainly be going again to see it and I am sure the film DVD will proudly take its place alongside my well worn six seasons of DVDs.

I happened to be reading some comments on a BBC article about the film earlier in the week and I was shocked at the negativity of many. It seems that men (or at least British men in this case) and some women as well do not understand the show and seem to hate it in many cases. Women who live in urban areas and gay men make up a good portion of the loyal fan base for the show. For the women, there is a certain amount of appreciation for a show that speaks to their lives and lifestyles. Sex and the City defined the modern woman. It brought "out of the closet" so to speak the reality that single women were having sex and a good amount of it. The frank discussions of sex, emotions, and men amongst the girls made it ok to discuss subjects that were previously taboo. In many places, I suppose these subjects still are! Another revolutionary concept brought forth was that it is ok to be a single woman in her thirties or forties. Even though the bulk of the characters end up paired up, the show boldly made the statement that one can create their own definition of family, friends, and relationships in this day and age.

As a gay man, the show speaks to us on many levels. The first two seasons of the show were written by a mostly gay male writing staff and it shows in both the frankness of the conversations and the quick witted humor. Gay men are masters of the conversation and take no prisoners. Most will also answer any question you pose to them honestly and without the filtering that mainstream society holds the straights to. Gay men also tend to move to urban areas (fondly known as "gay ghettos") where they can form communities of acceptance to their non-traditional lifestyles. In the many interviews with both the female cast and Michael Patrick King over the past few weeks, all were quick to point out that the show was purposely written to be about these four ladies and the family that they have created for themselves. When one lives in an urban area, you do not often meet the extended family of the people you hang with. Either they come to visit sporadically or your friends "go home to visit", but in almost all cases these visits tend to be awkward and looked upon with a certain sense of dread. In my case, I love my biological family very much. But after living in likely the most liberal urban area of the United States, going to visit the family in rural America seems almost like visiting a foreign country. When you are used to a visual diet of Priuses, designer dogs, Thai restaurants, and medicinal marijuana clinics, it is quite a shock to encounter Wal-Marts, enormous gas guzzling trucks with large American flag bumper stickers, people in flannel shirts, and FOX News as a serious news source. The writers of the show made a conscious effort to never introduce the parents or a large number of family members of the four girls into the show because it is not a realistic part of the urban living experience. So this part of the show also strikes a big chord with me. Being able to choose your family in our culture (either gay or straight) allows you to surround yourself with people who love you, accept you, support you, and do not make demands of you that a biological family might make.

Finally, the film and the show continue to be what Michael Patrick King calls "a valentine" to people that are single. I know that all of the people in my life care for me incredibly and simply want the best for me. But there is pressure, from both family and friends, that I settle down with a partner. As I continue on my life's journey and explore my inner self, I realize that this might not be in the cards for me. Rather than looking at this as a negative, I am quite content with my life and the decisions that have led me to this point thus far. If someone comes along to share and enrich my life, terrific. At the same time, I do not feel the need to "be in a relationship" simply to check off the box or to have a man around. I have a wonderful support system of family and friends as well as a need for space and time of my own. So the show and the film continue to reaffirm that whatever path you choose for your life, it will be ok. Love comes in many forms and thankfully for me, my cup runneth over.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.

What Can One Do?

2008-05-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

I have been watching and listening to the news coverage of the cyclone disaster in Myanmar (formerly Burma) with a heavy heart. 134,000 people dead or missing and over 2 million people without homes, food, clothing, and shelter. To take it a step further, the military dictatorship in charge has refused to allow aid or aid workers into the country. The level of this humanitarian crisis is mind boggling and horrific, yet the government does not nothing and contributes to the murder of its people on an enormous scale. The flooding and loss of homes was only the first blow of a potentially lethal battering. Now the focus needs to be on sanitation, burial of the dead, and prevention of disease amongst the masses of people struggling to survive. It is also critical to assist in getting rice planted, so survivors do not starve in the coming months after the world's attention has moved on to the latest disaster of the month.

What does the world do in these situations? As has been the case in recent history, nothing. The world sat back as genocide occurred in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Darfur, and we continue to do so now as the lives of millions of people are in jeopardy. What part of us as human beings can justify this? Moreover, as citizens of the most powerful nation in the world it seems unthinkable that we are not able to come up with some sort of compromise to provide aid to people in need. Is military action the answer? Should the world join together to forcibly occupy a country with the intention of saving innocent civilians? Or in doing so, would we create more chaos than good?

It is clear that misguided good intentions are not the answer to the problem. (Anyone remember the food drops into Afghanistan at the beginning of the war? Shockingly, Afghans don't eat pop-tarts and spam on a regular basis. No, really...) A while back, my brother thoughtfully bought me a copy of Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) which documents 3 U.N. workers stories and experiences in Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and other war zones of the 1990s. It mostly illustrates the incompetence and frustrations of the United Nations organization as it does not have any real power, authority, or military might to enforce its peacekeeping missions. It would seem that organizations such as the International Red Cross/Red Crescent or Medecins Sans Frontieres should be allowed entry to any country as they are strictly humanitarian organizations, but as always it comes down to politics.

There is a part of my white liberal thinking that would like to believe that a difference can be made. On the flip side, there is the resignation that life is a crap shoot and some people are a lot luckier than others as far as the cards they are dealt. In any case, my thoughts and prayers are with the people of Myanmar and I am hopeful that some sort of deal will be struck to bring them aid.

Cuidate.

Apologies to the Loyal Fan Base

2008-05-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not blogging more frequently lately. I have been busy and am trying to resist putting out crap just for the sake of a new entry. Less is more as they say.

I am really liking my new workplace. Granted it is a smaller department, but everyone is very chill and no one seems to stress over stupid shit. I have been in what feels like a never ending cycle of training. Last week, I went through the formal Emergency Medical Dispatching portion of Fire training. I am now certified to give instructions on childbirth or instruct you on how to preserve an amputated tooth. (Put it in milk. Who knew? Useless fact of the week.) I am cleared to work overtime starting this week and should be completed with my training period in June. Contrary to expectations, it has been an enjoyable process so far.

The race for the Democratic nomination slogs on. Apparently no one ever taught the Clintons that it is not fashionable to be the last one at the party. I have a lot of unveiled contempt for both Bill and Hillary. If Bill had resigned when the whole Monica thing went down, Al Gore would have been president for a year or so and easily re-elected. The global map and the Supreme Court would be far different than what we look at today. Still, no use dwelling on the past. Just get out Hillary, show some self respect. Go Obama!

The weather has been very up and down the last few weeks. Cold and breezy one day, hot the next. The Bay Area usually gets a week or two of weather in May, but it has yet to make an appearance.

Anybody else bothered by the Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair hubbub? I heard about the controversy on the radio before seeing the photo and got the impression that there was something indecent about the photo. Then I pull it up on the Internet and see a gorgeous, tasteful, artistic photo. Are people nuts? What about that photo is indecent? Any Britney Spears video would be considered more sexual than that photo. Cyrus is 16 years old and is not going to be Hannah Montana forever. (Sorry to disappoint you kids and pedophiles alike.) It makes one wonder who is the judge of whether something is obscene or not. Art is art for a reason. Kathy Griffin recently commented on her Bravo special Straight to Hell "The Catholic League launched a protest after my Emmy Awards speech. Then I found out The Catholic League is a guy in a room with a computer." That is what this deal seems like. Some guy in a room saying, "That's baaad."

Sounds like the 3G iPhone should be with us shortly. I was holding out for it and rumors are that Cingular will be offering a $200 price deal with a 2 year contract. Not bad at all. I am thinking I will break down and get one for my birthday in October. It would be nice to be able to surf the Net if need be while out and about. Initially, reports about call quality were sketchy. My friends who have them all say the call quality is decent, so looking forward to picking up the new toy in a few months.

Sex and the City opens in the U.S. on May 30th. The cast visited Oprah last week and did not reveal any spoilers. It was great to see them all together again, they seemed so happy to be reunited. I know straight guys do not get this show, but for women and gay men it is pure joy and delight. No it is not realistic for Carrie to have $30,000 worth of shoes in her closet. It is realistic though to surround yourself with wonderful friends that become your family over the course of your life. This movie will make hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide and I predict it will be the film of the summer.

That is all that is going on with me for now. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the tail end of spring.

Cuidate.