Pumpkin Carving: The Art of Creating Terry

I promised you yesterday that I'd update you on pumpkin carving, then got distracted by my imminent death by AIDS... So, as promised, here we go. After actually buying pumpkins for myself and Orpheus (Aphrodite actually had two of her own, and they were warty), I dropped off the pumkins with 'O and parked. By the time I got back, he'd left the apartment to get suitable pumpkin carving knives. I hung out with Aphrodite for a bit, then O came back. I popped a bottle of Cabernet, and we went to work scooping, and seperating out the seeds. While Orpheus finished my pumpkin cleaning, I washed the seeds, oiled and delicately spiced them, and set them to roasting. By the time I was done with said enterprise, O and A had finished their marginal though soumewhat clever Creations. Orpheus turned out a pinched-faced average pumpkin with a twist... Super-cute dimples. Aphrodite made a tiny kitten on a huge warty pumpkin, making it look a tad... slow. After they were done, drunk, and watching The Simpsons, I set to work for five minutes creating my pumpkin (pictured above)! Terry the 'Tard (see the prefrontal labotomy scar at the left temple,) is the cutest, dumbest pumpkin you're ever going to meet. Know him. Love him. Just don't let him think that he's got a chance with you. Ever.

Lions and Tigers and Retrovirii, Oh My!

First off, all hail Latin, the ancient world’s (or, at least, ancient Europe’s,) lingua franca… Virus is a most interesting word. Its’ original meaning comes out to something like poison when rendered properly (thank you, Wikipedia). Virus is uncountable, a so-called ‘mass noun,’ for which there is no evidence of an historical plural. It is neutral, of the second declension, and there’s a great deal of contention over whether an ending could have been used for it at all in its given form. Due, however, to our cultural adherence to classical education’s obsession with the Mother Tongue, we insist on tarting up something that should just be given an English ending with something that LOOKS Latin, then telling people who use the English that they’re ignorant. In fact, doctors DO refer to ‘viruses,’ and the term ‘virii’ is to be found almost exclusively online, used by half-fact-touting retards who want to feel cooler than others.

Today, a community health nurse came in to work, and injected all comers with flu vaccine, fortunately with separate and distinct syringes, as I’ve been hit on online by at least one coworker. He looks rather sickly most of the time, was in the same injection group as I, and kept staring at my package lasciviously. I was uncomfortable. This doubly so after filling out the form divesting my workplace and community health from any liability in the event, say, of my untimely death due to contaminated goo used to grow the viral soup; mercury poisoning deriving from the preservative used to fix said goo, or, really, anything else having to do with injections on this particular day, blue moons, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera… (Note in daily life the over-use of tarted-up Latin by members of the legal community. It’ll make you feel better, I promise.) In any case, this got me nervous, so it was off to the home of the Neuveau-hypochondriac, the World-Wide-Weberverse!!!

In my playful, procrastinatory online romp, I came across a very helpful listing of possible side-effects by the CDC, which greatly reduced the weight of my fear. However, in the tradition of an information-starved addict, a second opinion was sought, this time from a far less encouraging albeit far rantier website. This source linked certain vaccines with pooled homosexual serums used for the then-experimental vaccine against hepatitis in the late ‘70’s and thus AIDS. The general thrust of this article was that viruses similar to aids were to be found in many of the cultures upon which vaccines are based, or in which they are nurtured. In terms of the hepatitis booster, infection of the anti-hep soup by HIV was specifically mentioned. Furthermore, CONSTANT VIGILANCE is obviously needed to make sure biological warfare isn’t used to infect us all with H to the IV!!! Man, were the mental 'virii' flying! To my great chagrin, the whole deal turned out to be somewhat true. Apparently, calf fetal goo is used to culture some vaccines, and an HIV-like virus is sometimes found therein. Some of the leading theories regarding the original source of AIDS involve use of secretions from animals in which, due to the nature of vaccines, full sterilization is impossible. So, if a particular body had ‘caught a ride”… Well, you get the picture. (http://heartspring.net/flu_shot_side_effects.html, www.cdc.gov)

Anyway, the long (I don’t kid myself… This isn’t short,) of it is this. Due to the jitters and generic vaccination reactions, I’m feeling like somebody pooped in my cornflakes. Obviously, all the dreck online is true, so I’m going to test positive for AIDS in six months and die, all because I wanted to prevent an annual, puke-flavored bout with influenza. I have the very worst of pretentious virii stuck in my head, while dead viruses float around my bloodstream, hopefully doing something marginally more useful. The point, friends, is this… God damn the internets.

Man, is Chris Thiele skinny!

Halloween in Madison was quite interesting this year in its’ complete and utter lack of any sort of luster. Granted, it wasn’t ACTUALLY the holiday itself, and any event co-opted by Mountain Dew is bound to suffer from commercial malaise. Also, the lack of originality exhibited by the student body was inexcusable given their past shenanigans… Last Halloween, I saw a 9’ penis walk half a block down State Street, stop, bounce up and down for a good 30 seconds, then erupt with whitish water, repeating the exercise along the full length of the pedestrian mall. I saw Bert and Ernie in perfect clothes and breathtaking paper mache heads, complete with awesome little four-fingered fabric gloves. I saw the SLUTTIEST cops, maids, race-car drivers, hobos, octopi, what-have-yous that I’ve ever seen outside a bedroom. This year, the best costume I saw was a gentleman in an Army dress uniform holding a sign that read “Conserve Your Precious Water!” While this was fun and clever, it certainly wasn’t slutty in the least. Even my costume, which devolved from Sinead O’Connor to Tranny hooker, lacked that certain ‘joi’ I have in past years associated with a romp downtown with the kiddies. Having said this, however, to the call of “How much?” from a drunken frat boy, I responded, in my very best Harvey Fierstein impression to date, “If you have to ask, hon, you can’t afford me.” I think his girlfriend peed herself laughing, but I couldn’t see, ‘cause her skirt was covering her panties entirely.

The weekend itself started off inauspiciously, as Orpheus and I were planning on donning costumes and going out on Friday. Since he didn’t feel like it, and didn’t want to call his friends, we ended up doing nothing on Friday night, not even doinking. Saturday, though he stretched himself to please me by dropping trou in the morning, Orpheus said something quite hurtful after breakfast, for which he apologized half-way through his shift at work by telephone. Finally, after some napping and a great deal of eating (I made mojito chicken burritos with black beans and rice for dinner, and we didn’t exactly eat light), and another doink, we donned our costumes, and went over to his roommate Aphrodite’s BF’s apartment for awkward social interaction. This turned out to be far less awkward than I’d feared, despite the fact that I nearly lost fingers cutting limes for gin with BF's dull-ass kitchen knives. He had friends over, and one of them was the most delightfully bawdy bitch. She was a dirty pirate. From Ohio. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of Lake Erie. We ended up all going and walking up State Street, though I swore I wouldn’t, and it was… Sedate. The cops were raging assholes, and nervous as heck, but it seems like all the extra drinking due to the game earlier in the day helped anesthetize the kids some, so there was no real reason for over-authoritative tension. A great time was had at the capital bars, which were quite accepting of my tartly attire.

Sunday, I made my normal pilgrimage to DM’s place, with the added bonus that he’d already installed the new OS 10.5, and therefore I got to play with it while listening to his enthusiastic critique for a good half-hour before game play started. However, I’d had so much to drink out on Saturday, I had a low-grade headache when I returned to Orpheus before the concert we attended last night. We went to one of our favorite cheap joints for rabbit food before-hand, and I popped an Excedrin or three, but still wasn’t feeling the love… Then Nickel Creek’s opening act got going, and everything just got better. The energy built all through the show, which was probably one of the three best concerts I’ve ever seen involving modern music. Afterwards, I was crashing, but we still had to bring Orpheus’ printer to his sister, who is a transfer student to the UW Madison this year. As he forgot to bring the driver CD with the first time, he had to leave me at his place and go back with all appropriate software in tow. I was home alone at his place, getting ready to go to bed, when Aphrodite came home crying about BF. I fixed her a drink, let her talk for about fifteen minutes, then lay me down. The next thing I remember is Orpheus slipping under the covers with me, and giving me a good hug. At least there was no sex. I don’t think I could’ve taken it.

Today has been, more or less, a waste. After work, though, I go to Orpheus' place to carve pumpkins with he and Aphrodite. I'll update you on that enterprise, to be sure...

Werewolf bar mitzvah, spooky, scary...

The calm before the storm has officially past. For those of you who don’t know, Madison has played host to several puny, pathetic student “riots” each Halloween for the last few years. In that time period, the City of Madison and the UW have learned to control the students with some aplomb, much as happened back in East Lansing at good ‘ol MSU (my Alma Mater,) in the course of that particular four-year tourist-driven riot craze. This year, they’re corralling off State Street, site of the annual festivities, and cattle-prodding the traditionally half-naked attendees into staging areas where several mediocre national bands will be playing, likely competing for bored audience members. Last year, it was still just a giant fenced-in meat market, where everybody was free-ranging within the pen, and checking each other out. It was a lot of fun, though not quite as cool as the year before. As it’s likely to be colder this year than last, perhaps the enforced press around stages will at least be good for the ladies, preventing colds and such… However, there is one complicating factor.

THIS IS HOMECOMING WEEKEND!!! How could the Administration of the UW have possibly been so stupid? I mean its one thing to be a member of the Big 10 conference and thus be forced into scheduling negotiations to get a sneeze in edgewise, let alone a game rescheduled. It’s entirely another to let history whack you over the head with a double-whammy like, oh, an historically riot-prone weekend and the biggest game of the year all at once. As an aside, the same thing happened two years ago, which was when this annual bloodbath was first recognized as an actual problem by the city. Madison, already widely known for its’ acute alcoholism, will be awash in liquor for the next 48-odd hours, and ready to blow like a powder keg… Especially if the damned Badgers don’t win tomorrow. Add to that the traditional freak-show progression of out-of-towners who come for some “riot action” and the normal sprinkling of drunken lout football fans, and wow. I have half a mind to buy some crappy tickets, but don’t know if I really feel like being trampled, especially if I have to pay for the privilege.

No. Orpheus and I have alternate plans. I’m going to don my tired, third-year drag. I haven’t decided if the short silver sequined number and four inch hells… excuse me, HEELS are going on ‘Sinead O’Conner’ or an unfortunate ‘Natalie Portman’ from ‘V is for Vendetta’ as yet, but either way it works out well. My hair is buzzed close to the scalp, and I can get rid of the goatee easily enough. In said getup, my beau and I shall trip the light fantastic on the capitol square at the slightly more upscale bars. Hopefully, we won’t be able to smell the teargas when the riot police are called out in force, but I figure that the screams will still be more than audible. Ahh, the wonder that is an undergraduate education… How glad I am that my liver survived thee. I'll post again on Monday, if still extant.

Random, bitter-sweet musings

Today, the United States Government finally put sanctions on Iran. I was wondering how long it would take, with president ‘Imadinnerjacket’ spouting off various types of racio-sexual intolerance every time that he opens his mouth in public. Funny to muse upon, however, is the frequency with which similar crap comes out of the mouth of our own fearless leader, the fear-mongering, trustafarian, born-again, alcoholic freak. Just some food for thought. At least the fiasco with Blackwater seems to be going well, leaning toward better oversight or outright contract cancellation. I’m slathering over the soon-to-come public hearings.

I’m having a disjointed day. Last night there was much consumption of alcohol at Orpheus’ place concurrent with the viewing of South Park and other mindless programming. Thus, sleep was a dreamless joy quite fierce in its’ black, death-like totality. I’ll have to remember to chase poor-man’s Cosmos with Cabernet Sauvignon again in the future. Oh, yes… Spike TV’s show ‘Manswers’ is the scariest load of dreck I’ve ever seen. In fact, I popped the cork on the Cabernet because I feared I’d have bad dreams about the “how tiny does a bikini have to get before it becomes illegal’ contest they had at a local “club” in some run-down, blue-collar hellhole. Also, the redneck hot tub fashioned with garbage-bag liners in the back of one’s pickup truck was most distressing. Especially considering that the bubbles were caused by vented exhaust. Necessary for operation: a friend revving your engine and no doubt checking you and your honey out while ‘ya neck in a veritable soup of CO emissions.

Add to this my horrible new job description, which involves making telephone calls all day long, and you have: Mush mental, otherwise known by the Brits as Brain porridge. Seriously, these calls are getting in the way of my daily review of the NYT while addressing multiple customer issues. If I’m on the phone all day instead of doing e-mail duty, there’s no way in h-e-double hockey sticks I’ll be able to keep up on current events! Que serra… I’ll just have to get used to mouth breathing. At least the cat will be happy. With an IQ approaching normal in this country, I’m sure to become a cat @!#$er (or the president,) by default!

Woah, boy...

I AM TERRIBLY EXCITED, as the new Mac OS 10.5 Leopard is coming out in two days. This is, in essence, merely a whiff of disappointment to come, as I don’t currently have the funds to invest in said wonder-upgrade, and won’t until Christmas… However, that doesn’t mean that I am not absolutely beside myself with anticipation. I have a 24” 2.33 GHz Core2Duo iMac with a fairly nice graphics setup and 2 gigs of RAM, which puts me directly in the sweet spot as far as an upgrade is concerned. I’m convinced that I will install the new operating system, and it will instantly solve all of my problems, world hunger, war, strife, and Orpheus’ annoying propensity for holding back those three simple words. Leopard will instantly make my life Better. I am convinced. It must, after all… Otherwise, why would it excite me so?

To be fair, as an ardent hardware-enthusiast, I still prove a most disappointing technologist. This is, of course, rather unfortunate, as the vast preponderance of my friends are actually quite tech-savvy program-wise. These are people who breathe numbers, and literally laugh when I can tell them exactly what is “under the hood” of their latest desktop by sight, but am confused by the simplest command prompts or software snafus. For example, on the occasion that I came to Sunday role-playing (Dungeons and Dragons, you saucy prudes,) and loudly proclaimed that I’d successfully reformatted my two-year-old Windows craptop WITHOUT LOSING ANY DATA, my Dungeon Master gazed me down levelly and said, “Do you assume that this is some sort of accomplishment to be bragged about? You didn’t even install a new operating system!” The guys were cruel in their ceaseless taunting after that one, let me tell you. Furthermore, DM (Dungeon Master, his once and future name herein) is a Mac-head himself, and has helped me through several problems I’ve had with my desktop, smirking the entire time.

Any way you look at it, though, my Mac is my favorite computer to date. It is, perhaps, not quite as versatile as my Compaq laptop, the first Turing machine I bought after the divorce. MegaMac, as Orpheus has dubbed it, was procured for entirely different reasons. Whereas Muschi (the craptop,) was picked up for her affordability, 64-bit processor, solid configuration and versatility, my decision to acquire the iMac was based purely on “fahrvergnügen,” to misappropriate the German. I have greatly enjoyed getting to know my precious, 24”-screened wonder, and have had more fun and frustration getting used to the excellent Mac OS 10.4 than I ever thought possible. If it’s even 1/10th true that installing Leopard will, in fact, add “a whole new Mac to [my] Mac,” $130.00 is more than worth it. Either way, le-sigh.

'What is the weight of your fear'

By way of introduction, I am 27, 5'10", brown of (receding) hair and (near-blind) eye, 175 pounds, with a 32" waist... Not perfectly svelte, but certainly not a hideous blob, by any means. My smile makes me look both diabolical and more than a little hot. I am dark of mien in summer when tanned, but winter sees me soften to an unhealthy-looking yellow, as if jaundiced, damn florescent lighting. No matter the season, I look best when more of me is covered. There is an art and depth in such mysteries as hidden flesh which gives me confidence. I was born in 1980, the year of the Monkey, and am a Taurus on the cusp of Aries. Though gifted of the throat and voice, most people assume the worst: A fag in sheep's clothing... I am in fact bisexual, and resent what people always assume before asking, or waiting to be told. I am a divorcé. I have a beautiful, stupid, fat cat with all her claws (My wisdom teeth went missing surgically, and I could never put another creature through the removal of something that is supposed to be with one until the moment of, and possibly causing, death). She is a calico, and I am in love with her, though not in the way she would seem to prefer (I say philos, she says eros... Why can't we just settle on agape?). I have a wonderful boyfriend with bushy eyebrows that are as unruly as they are moody, an enigmatic smile, and deep green eyes. He hasn't yet said "I love you," though we've been dating for 9 months. He is 23, and an aspiring poet. He makes me want to sing.

I used to have a blog on another site, but found it too... Exposed. At the time it enjoyed some popularity, I was going through a divorce, and left out too much of my dirty laundry in far too public a form. I said things I shouldn't have said, and was contacted by people from my past that I didn't really care to hear from again, and who now know quite a lot about my private dealings, my sexuality, my financial status, what have you. So, here I take refuge behind my astrological sign, my second language, and a Tori lyric... Squire to the great astrological Monkey, indeed. Here, I hope to be comfortable (and anonymous,) enough to write bravely, if not well.

Today's post is titled 'What is the weight of your fear,' which is a question that came to me earlier while I was writing my bio for this very blog. To ask a question like this, one must first answer it for oneself, so... For the past seven months, my fear has, for the most part, been less than it was in the previous eight. And now, brilliantly, it is further reduced. Last year was difficult. It was my first year alone after my divorce was completed in December of '05. Following the breakdown of my car and a bout with pneumonia, I was laid off from my previous job of three and a half years after several stays of execution in December of '06. I met a wonderful man who I shall here call Orpheus in January. We have been dating officially since February. I finally got a temporary job in March, just as I was running out of money and contemplating the humiliating move back to my parents' basement. Today, my fear is less weighty because I was finally hired on by the company I have been temping for all this time.

As for the second part of the equation, which doesn't show up in titular form, 'and how do you plan to bear it?' I'd have to say with patience. My fear, like anyone's, is a multifaceted beast. I fear the enigmatic Orpheus will prove too young and passionate, too unfixed to love me. I fear this job really isn't a good fit for me in the long term. I fear bankruptcy and lack of medical insurance and beatings by jocks and pestilence... In short, I fear just about anything marginally bigger than myself, which is alright. I'm terribly nearsighted, and if the glasses are off, threats remain unseen. With all the good luck and good wishes in the past odd-year, coming out to my parents, learning to love Orpheus, adapting to a roommate situation, et. al... I am stronger, wiser, and a little more financially able. I cook much better (as O's wasitline will attest), look much better, am not an alcoholic, and can see a future for myself for the first time in quite awhile. I can smile again. Any way you look at it, that's a good start.